Theft (10 page)

Zeb looked up.

“To track you down. Some girl from New Mexico. That's what the scanners are picking up.”

Zeb listened to Frank talk, and his heart sunk deeper into his chest, a good sinking, something that made him feel more like himself than he could remember, more peaceful than he had felt in years, maybe ever.
Goddamn
, he thought. They had done it. They had brought Willa to him. He listened intently now. Frank shrugged, but grew more serious again. “I don't know what bringing in a girl will do, but they're not letting up this time, Zeb. They're keeping at it.”

Zeb nodded again. “Good to know,” he said. He could see Frank looking around at the walls, getting more and more nervous about Zeb taking refuge in his place of business, but not wanting to say anything. “Don't worry,” Zeb said. “I'll be on my way.”

“I'm not saying you have to leave,” Frank said.

“No. I am,” Zeb said. “It's time.”

Frank looked at him to make certain. Zeb didn't look back at Frank. He new that even a glance could implicate him and make him think he knew more than he did about Zeb's plans. “Thanks, Frank.” Zeb said. He could smell the smoky walls of the bar in the next room, could remember vividly the nights he'd spent drinking and dancing with Brenda in Gnarly's. “Next time you come here, I'll be gone.”

It took Frank a few awkward seconds to turn and leave.

THE FIRST SNOWFALL OF the season came on the night Zeb set out from Gnarly's. Not the spitting kind of snow that usually comes
between fall and winter, but the kind when huge, wet flakes looked like stars taking their last breath before hissing and dissolving into the earth. Already it was blanketing the land, making it impossible for him to walk without leaving imprints significant enough to be tracked even by the least skilled of his trackers. And so he walked in a large irregular circle that cut through the meadow, over the rockier part of the land, through a dense copse, traveling a mile or more before he began circling inward, methodically, making erratic offshoots that eventually led back to the same chaotic trail. He walked fast and warily. The new team, including Willa, would pick up his trail soon enough, and, as long as he completed this pattern before they caught their first sign of him, he could buy some time. He didn't worry about Willa's safety or whether she would be the one to find him first. She was the same kid he'd grown up with; she was smarter than the other trackers. He wondered what tricks they had used to get her to agree to turning him in, but he hoped he would have time alone with her to share a word before the others reached him. That's all he wanted: time.

He completed the last circle; then he walked through the trees. From that moment on, he forgot about his trackers. Now it was the end of
them
tracking
him
. It was the beginning of him tracking the lion that had killed Rosalita. If he acted like prey, his followers would treat him like prey. And so he turned himself from the hunted to the hunter, a subtle shift of psychology that could make all the difference. Because it was more than the weight of the footfall that left an imprint to be followed. It was the state of mind too, each thought leaving an afterimage that set the track down and informed whoever was trailing you. It was evident in the space between each imprint (speed), the weight of the imprint (determination), the solidity or shakiness of the impression (confidence in the direction you're traveling).

Bottom line was, his mind was off his trackers and fixed on the cougar now. He remembered that when he'd killed the young male, he'd offered some meat to Brenda, and she had shunned it. “The meat doesn't matter. It's the spirit,” she told him. He ignored her American Indian bullshit, except that he kept hearing her
words in his head like a chant after that. Any lion meat he didn't eat, he placed in prominent places on rocks around his home, an offering to the ravens, foxes, and rodents. He split the skull and offered the brains to the scavengers, too. He did not want to keep anything that looked like a trophy of this cat.

But as he placed the meat there, he saw the green-lit eyes of the female mountain lion lurking in the trees. By morning, when he rose at dawn to feed the animals before he headed in to work, that lion was still there. She sat in the open, not hidden. She didn't move as he tossed hay to the mules and horses. She watched him.

He thought of speaking to her then. The words came to him, an apology, and then the words felt useless, even silly. Her offspring was sitting inside his gut, the male lion, her son, becoming Zeb's own muscle and bone. It became clear to him that the mountain lion was consciously prowling the edges of his land, not hunting deer, but hunting him.

“So she lives up there in the woods,” Brenda said. “Mountain lions live here. Doesn't mean she's got eyes for you.”

But not long after that, Zeb found the remains of a stray dog he'd been feeding every evening for the past few weeks. It had been mutilated, its body eaten. After that, his beloved Aussie, Hitch, went missing, too, and his obsession with the cougar took over. When he was on the road, driving for Mike, he would sometimes see the cougar crossing the highway, ghostlike, but vivid. In the aftermath, he would realize it had been a deer, or sometimes nothing. But his mind stayed with her all the same. Zeb and the cat were in constant conversation.

It was the cougar that had tunneled into his brain and led him to the decisions he'd made recently. It was the cougar that made his confession real. It was the cougar that made him long for his blood relations. He felt half cat, half human, and always on the outside of everything. When he found Rosalita that morning, he knew it was time.

HE WALKED BACK FURTHER into the woods now. He built a debris hut, nothing more than a tunnel of branches and leaves to warm him so he could rest until evening fell. He needed to sort through some things in his mind. He needed to unclench some things from his heart. It wasn't lack of love that was driving him. It never had been. If anything, it was too much love and his inability to embrace it. He felt the heaviness of Brenda's body, a solace to him. He remembered the ugliness of his mother's twisted limbs, how they hid the beauty that was the core of her. He longed for the strength of his sister's spirit, her innocence. He needed to take some time to let it all go. With layers of sticks and mulch protecting him like a sleeping bag made of earth, the trackers, if they came this way, would likely walk right past him. The scent of this kind of shelter could even waylay police dogs, his own scent buried beneath the strength of musk and urine that soaked the forest floor. It was a good place once he built it. This was home to him. This rotted forest, decomposing and regrowing, constantly. He would wait.

THE DAY CHET COMES back from the cabin starts out like any other Sunday. Before daylight, I turn over in my bed and see Zeb sitting cross-legged on my floor. “C'mon,” he says. “The fish are waiting.” He stands up, two fishing poles and tackle boxes in his hands, and walks out. I toss off the covers, trade my pajamas for overalls, and I meet him out back. He hands me my pole and tackle box. Together, we peek in on Mom, who is still sleeping, alone, while Dad's already up delivering milk, one of his part-time jobs.

“Think she'll be okay while we're out?” I ask.

Zeb stands at her doorway and pushes the door open a crack. The covers twist around her legs but don't cover her back or arms.
Her skin droops from her skeleton like wet clothes on a hanger. It scares me. I can see Zeb's jaw tightening, too. “Dad'll be home in half an hour,” he says. “I think she's okay.”

Zeb stands there longer, like he's looking for something.

“Let's go,” I tell him. He stands still. I hear Mom breathing, and I'm glad for it, but the heaviness of the sound, like a wheelbarrow running over wet gravel, frightens me. “Zeb!” I whisper. I nudge him.

After a while, he turns and knocks my shoulder, hard. “C'mon, let's go,” he says.

We walk out under the half-night, half-dawn sky. I can feel the morning in my nostrils, the smell of wet hay and earth, the air not yet thick with the noise and the dust of the day. We walk through the field, past the house where Zeb was born, our tennies and the legs of our pants soaked with dew. Bullfrogs hum.

Zeb sits beside me on the shore of the pond while I set up my rod and reel, then he walks to his favorite place among the rushes. It feels sometimes like me and Zeb have a fishing line and hook inside us. When he walks away from me, I feel a tug in the center of my chest. I'm still shaken from seeing Mom like that, and that hook between me and Zeb feels like it's deeper because of it, like it's bleeding and sinking into me even more.

I sit quiet for a while, long enough that the sadness about Mom fades and being away from Zeb finally feels good, and the surface of the pond turns from silvery-black to blue with pink edges. The sound of bullfrogs gives way to insects buzzing. Fish jump now and again, but my pole and Zeb's stay as still as the herons we see hunting here. The sun warms my skin through my overalls, and I feel like I never want to move from this quiet place. When my pole bends toward the pond once, I know it's nothing to jump up about. A few seconds later, though, the arc in that pole bends to a half a circle, painting a picture of the size of the fish I'm about to catch.

I jump to my feet, let the fish run the line out a little, then I jerk the pole back to set the hook. My reel goes
tick-tick-tick
, and I drag the fish in, watching it flop out of the water, its silver sides
glinting in the sun. I have it almost to shore, and there's no telling if that fish is coming out of the water, or if I'm going in.

Zeb watches from across the pond. When he sees me struggling, he understands the size of my catch. He digs the handle of his pole into the ground, sets it with a rock, and comes running to my side of the pond.

He has his arms around my shoulders in seconds, helping me turn my reel and pull. “Steady, steady,” he says, but he's no steadier than I am, and that fish is fighting like a bucking bronco.

“Sonofabitch!”

“He's a beaut, Zeb!”

“He's a sonofabitch!”

We pull. The fish is suspended above the pond now, thrashing on the end of the line, no letting up.

“Jesus, Zeb, he's a monster!”

“Just pull him in, Willa,
pull him in!
”

“I'm trying!” And right about then I give the pole over to Zeb, duck underneath his arms, and wade quickly out into the pond. With the water nearly up to my chest, I reach up and grab the flopping fish with my hands.

“Good job, Willa! Yeah! Steady him. Steady him.”

We work together to get this monster to shore. I try my best to tame the thing, and the reel ticks faster, and then
snap
, the line breaks, and my huge fish slithers down the front of my overalls, hits the pond, and slips back under the smooth surface.

Zeb walks toward me, lifting his knees high and splashing into the pond. Then he stops. He shades his brow with one hand, looks out across the bright water. “I'll be damned. That fish is gone.” His voice is high and confused.

“We let it get lose, Zeb.” The smooth surface of the pond sparkles, no sign that fish ever existed. “I guess it's getting time for church, anyway.” But my escaped fish has Zeb's full attention now. “Hey,
I'm going
,” I tell him, but he just keeps looking out across the pond. I walk back home alone, thinking about how close I came to that beautiful catch.