Coyote Wind (6 page)

He was in good shape, for sure. Bad drunks now, their muscles melt away and they shake, too weak to do anything close to this.

They rode up into timber. A grouse banged off beneath Bart’s horse. The animal skittered a little, Bart calmed him, another grouse boomed away from a bush. But the horse was used to them now, didn’t even snort.

“You lead,” said Bart, moving off the trial. “Where is it anyway?”

“Three miles, maybe four,” said Du Pré.

“You think Bodie is stupid?” said Bart.

“Very,” said Du Pré. “He’s a bad hand with stock. You should fire him. He hurts them.”

“Consider it done,” said Bart.

“Booger Tom work for you all these years, eh?”

Bart nodded. “He’s a nice old man, allowing for cowboy quirks. I like him, he hates us, how could he not? Rich, drunken assholes is what we are.”

Du Pré looked away. What about this?

“Runs in the family,” said Bart. “We aren’t smart enough to be artists. We could get away with a lot more if we were.”

Du Pré laughed. He was beginning to like this Bart. The
other
Bart was a bastard and he hadn’t met the rest.

Du Pré flicked his eyes left, right, up, looking for sign, the leaf without the raindrops on it, the shadow in the grass where feet had pressed it down, the branch swaying wrong, where the eagle had lifted off, great wings beating.

They came to the little meadow at the foot of the draw. Du Pré saw a pile of duffel, a big tent all up and taut.

The place where the helicopter had landed.

“I’m staying up here a few days, maybe,” said Bart. “Had this stuff flown on up. You do what you want, but I need to stay.”

Du Pré looked at him.

“Why you need me to bring you up here for, you knew where it was already?” I got work to do, this ain’t it, for sure.

“I didn’t really,” said Bart. “The flying service just landed these things for me where they came before. I need you to show me where the wreck was, of course.”

“OK,” said Du Pré. Must be nice, call a helicopter to do the heavy work, say send me the bill.

They grained the horses, hobbled them, turned them loose.

Du Pré led Bart up the draw.

The trail was slick and wet, their boots were not much good for hiking, high heels, slick soles.

They sweated inside their slickers. When they opened them to cool down, their shirts steamed.

D
U
P
RÉ STOOD BY
the hole in the ground where the little engine had been. The earth had been turned and raked, looking for bits and pieces. They had waved metal detectors, sifted, a lot of hours.

“The plane hit up there,” said Du Pré, pointing. The yellow scar on the gray rock was barely visible through the light rain.

“Quick, anyway,” said Bart. He walked round, hands in his pockets. The little watercourse was chuckling with runoff. Stunted chokecherry bushes lined the sides of the stream. The place where Du Pré had found the skull was a foot under water.

“It’ll snow tonight,” said Du Pré. The air smelled of it, and snow was falling hard up higher.

“Tore it up, didn’t they?” said Bart. The FAA people had been very thorough. Du Pré could see where someone had even rappelled down the rock face, to measure the scar on the rock. Thirty-odd years and it still showed yellow. These mountains, they rotted very slowly.

But rot they did.

“You going to stay tonight,” said Bart, coughing.

“Yes,” said Du Pré. Why not, I can’t read this man, make anything of him. What do I know to be true about this all?

What in the hell happened here, exactly? And why?

Du Pré rolled a cigarette, flicked his lighter to flame. His mustache was wet. The cigarette turned brown. He cursed and threw the sodden butt away.

Bart pissed. The yellow stream steamed, white tendrils.

“I’m just going to wander around,” he said. He walked up the path, stooping from time to time.

Du Pré always thought he could think better if he was moving, it probably was just foolishness, like most of life. In a little patch of grass and brush near him he saw a smooth, rounded boulder, a kind of rock from someplace else to the north. The glaciers had covered this place long ago, and crept down from Canada carrying pieces of other mountains in their guts. A close-grained reddish stone, with black mica in it.

Du Pré wondered how far it had come.

The FAA people hadn’t cast out this far, the grass hadn’t seen a foot on it. Du Pré went to the rock, sat on it, felt the cold through his slicker and jeans. He tilted forward, unbuttoned his slicker, brought out his tobacco pouch, rolled a cigarette, wiped his mustache hard. He lit the smoke, hid under his hatbrim, back to the little wind.

The Olesons ship their stock the day after tomorrow. So I’ll go back in the morning, see Madelaine, get a piece of her sweet ass.

He dropped the cigarette. The butt hissed in the wet sparse grass, brown stains shot through the paper, it went out. Du Pré stared at it idly.

A little fleck of white down there between his boots. He poked at it with a finger. A tooth. With a filling in it.

Another one, white with dried brown roots.

Du Pré slipped his pocketknife out of his pants, dug carefully. Three more. One had a filling in it, too. Hoo boy.

Du Pré put the teeth in his shirt pocket, next to the little box with the coyote scat. He snapped the flap.

Now what about this?

 Whoever hauled that head up here had used this stone for an anvil, knocked the teeth out of the head, probably pounded most of them to dust but these got lost.

Was it coming on dark?

Maybe the guy was working drunk.

Now I got to tell the Sheriff. Now we got a little more, maybe the Headless Man begins to speak.

Or maybe a drunk just fell on this rock, knocked out his teeth.

But these are molars.

The rain ran off Du Pré’s hat, a filmy sheet.

Du Pré saw a flash of movement off at the edge of his vision. He turned his head, slowly. A coyote, yellow-gray. The animal’s head snapped up. Du Pré had been sitting still thinking and the wet held his scent close.

The coyote was gone, like so much smoke.

God’s dogs, the Cree called them. Smart sonsofbitches. Du Pré had seen one robbing a bees’ nest once, big clumsy bumblebees. The coyote had waved his thick tail at the nest, the bees attacked it. Then the coyote had turned slowly, the bees kept after his tail, and the coyote gobbled down the honey and larva while the poor bees tried to sting through five inches of fur on the tail. Poor, dumb bees.

I feel like them bees with this murder, here. I’m probably after the wrong end.

Du Pré heard a small plane snarling overhead. In this muck? Better be above it.

Du Pré stood up. He looked again where the coyote had been. The animal was long gone, and surely looking back at Du Pré from some safe and hidden place.

When I die, Du Pré thought, I want to come back as a coyote. If they are God’s dogs they must know about everything important. Me, I tell my dog everything.

I like it when they sing.

T
HE SNOW RATTLED ON
the tent, the size of little hard kernels of corn.

First time that I have eaten caviar in the wilderness, Gabriel thought. First time. Catfoot used to make good caviar from them paddlefìsh eggs. This stuff comes from Russia. Probably even up trade, ounce of gold, ounce of caviar.

And I am liking Bart here. He needs a job. Maybe I tell him, Bart, just sneak off, ride the rods to Portland, get a job as a dishwasher, you’d be happier. Get killed by another hobo on the way, you’d be happier than you are now.

Du Pré was sipping whiskey. Bart was drinking pop. His face wasn’t red, he didn’t look like he had hanging out the window, cursing.

We all need something to do. Trouble was, Bart would think he had to be the best at whatever he did, make up for the rest of his life. Me, I’m glad I didn’t have money waiting on me.

“You like that caviar, eh?” Bart said, grinning. In there, a generous man, really.

Du Pré nodded. “I make some a little different, out of the paddlefìsh eggs. Put just a touch of the hot pepper sauce in them. The eggs are a little bigger, not much.”

“What in the hell is a paddlefìsh?”

Du Pré described the big fish, sometimes a hundred and fifty pounds, he’d heard it was a relative of the sturgeon.

Catch them in the Missouri, the Yellowstone. Bottom feeders, mussels, crawfish, what have you. Maybe stirred the bottom with the paddle on its nose.

“Makes his own caviar,” Bart murmured. He stared off far away to someplace cold.

“I barely know how to do anything,” he said finally. “My resume would be short. Drink. Write checks.”

Suddenly he grew agitated, scratched himself. Closed his eyes and shivered. When he opened his eyes they weren’t the same eyes, they were darker and very desperate. He scrabbled in the box where he had the booze. Lifted out a fifth of vodka, chugged half of it down, choked and heaved, forcing himself not to throw up. Then he sat back, eyes closed again. His hands gripped folds of his trousers. The tendons stood out, practically twanging.

Du Pré watched, wondered. The poor son of a bitch.

Bart let his breath out slowly. His eyes opened.

“Happens when I go off it,” he said, “about the third day. Docs tell me I’ll die of it sometime. Heart attack or seizure or something. If I jerk and foam, just leave me alone. It would be better than this.”

Du Pré nodded. Well, Bart had the comfort of knowing the manner of his death. You could get used to it some that way.

A sudden bash of wind slammed into the tent, lifted the uphill side, nearly blew the thing over. Cold air knifed through. Du Pré buttoned his down vest.

Du Pré rolled himself a cigarette, lit it, didn’t look at Bart. Maybe I end up riding down the mountain tonight. He remembered where the ax was, outside, buried in a stump. What do I know about this?

Du Pré had seen a lot of crazy drunks but they always got nuts after they had been drinking for days. But no one he knew had enough money to do that very often. You got the D.T.’s, dried out, went back on the job. But
this
poor guy was a real pro, some life.

Bart cooked steaks on a gas grill. Fresh asparagus.

Du Pré had spent a lot of time up in the mountains, but the menu had been jerky, sardines, fruit leather, tea. Maybe rabbit.

Bart opened a bottle of red wine from France. It was very good. Probably sold for the same price as Du Pré’s house, a case of it.

“I’ll be OK now,” said Bart. “I didn’t find anything much up there. Did you?”

Du Pré shook his head, scratched the teeth through the cloth of his shirt.

“Your family all gone?” said Du Pré. Probably better they were.

“Well, mostly,” said Bart. “Father and mother dead. One sister lives down in that house with me. She’s worse’n I am. Hires studs, flies them out. Other sister went straight, sober, she’s in Seattle works as a counselor there, alcohol. My brother died a long time ago.”

Du Pré’s ears pricked, went up, like a coyote’s. He thought he heard one howl. In the blowing snow? They howl when they hunt, try to scare up a rabbit. But not in blowing snow.

Blowing snow, they try to sneak up on grouse buried in the drifts. Get hungry, get bold, go down and cut a sheep out of the flocks. Though not so much now the ranchers using those dogs, Maremmas, those others look to be all covered in noodles.

“He just disappeared from Chicago,” Bart went on. “Last seen at the airport, had a flight to Denver. We thought he might have come up here, but he didn’t. Never a trace.”

“He sick like you?” Du Pré wanted to bite his tongue.

“Gianni? I don’t know. Maybe he hadn’t been at it long enough. All I remember is he had his appendix out. Sixteen or so.”

Du Pré thought on that one, gummed it round. Lots of people have their appendix out. The Headless Man did, For one.

They talked of nothing much, slept.

In the morning Du Pré had coffee, saddled up. The cold leather creaked, snow bowed the firs down.

“You want me to take your horse, send the helicopter for you?” Du Pré said.

Bart nodded. He was a little shaky, pulling on tomato juice with a lot of vodka in it.

“Please take the horse,” he said, looking close to tears. “But don’t have the helicopter come for a couple days. I don’t want to go back down at all, truth to tell. Couple days, I’ll be all right.”

“You not going to be all right, do this,” said Du Pré.

Bart nodded.

But he didn’t want to talk any more.

“Y
EAH,” SAID
D
U
P
RÉ
, “he about shit I told him all that.” Madelaine swirled her sweet pink wine in the glass. She smiled, looked up at Du Pré. “What did he do with the teeth?” “Last I saw, he was looking at the teeth, they was sitting on his desk, he was dialing on the telephone. I am out of it. I don’t want any more.”

“And Foosli is still up there?”

“Fascelli? Yes. I don’t know. I feel damn sorry for that poor son of a bitch. Here’s Foosli one minute, next he’s gone. Fascelli, I mean, damn you.”

Maria brought her hamburger to the table. She sat, demurely spread her lap with paper napkins. Still the torn black jeans. Du Pré wondered maybe she wanted part of her bad ass hang out of it.

“What happened to this counselor you had to go see?” said Du Pré. Used to be, kid get caught with beer, they got yelled at by a cop, parents made them stay home for a while, dance with the chickens. Now they got lame social workers all over them. No wonder they’re more homicidal.

Government peckerwood wants to help, that never add up.

Maria shrugged, wrinkled her face like she had a bad smell under her pretty nose.

“He wanted to know, you molest me or something,” said Maria, she looked down. She was laughing.

“WHAT!”

Du Pré stood up, white with rage. Who the hell are these people anyway?

“So I told him lie down on the floor, suck himself,” said Maria, “and I walked out.”

My child, my child, thought Du Pré, now she tell me who I got to kill.