Open Season (22 page)

“Why don't you fight it?” Vern asked. “It sounds like a ridiculous overreaction by the department. You should be able to win it at your hearing.”

“I don't have the time or money to go against them and I need to support my family,” Joe said truthfully. “I'm not sure I have the determination I need. I guess I'm not really sure I want my job back at all if this is what they're capable of.”

Vern drained his drink and ordered another for both of them. “What does Marybeth say?” The tone of the question was not kind.

“I haven't talked to her about it yet,” Joe said, flushing just a bit from the implication. “I came straight here.”

“Joe,” Vern said after the drinks had been delivered. “We seem to have some kind of misunderstanding here.”

“What do you mean?”

Vern chuckled in his most kindly way, as if he were sharing the embarrassment for both of them. “Joe, I don't think that I ever actually offered you a job. If I remember correctly, I just asked if you might be interested in something with InterWest. I believe I said I was ‘testing the waters. ' Don't you remember that phrase?”

“I do remember it,” Joe said, trying to understand what was going on and where Vern was headed. He still wanted to trust Vern, but Vern's statement that there
wasn't
a job waiting for him at InterWest had left him shaken and wary. “But I know what I heard from you. I know what you meant.”

“Look,” Vern said, glancing around the bar and lowering his voice. “It's not going to happen.”

Joe sat back in his seat.

“Besides,” Vern said, rolling the sweaty drink slowly between his palms, “I talked to my bosses at InterWest and they now think things are just fine as they are. For a while there, they tossed it around and they asked me if you were willing to make the commitment and I had to honestly tell them at the time that I didn't think you were. They reconsidered after that and now they don't see the need for additional employees at this level and at this phase in the project. Maybe if you had come back to me sooner—or with some enthusiasm. Before this thing in Cheyenne happened. It would be pretty hard right now to convince them that you suddenly changed your mind and it wasn't connected to the fact that you got thrown out of the department.”

Joe started to speak, but he caught himself.

“One of the reasons I wanted you aboard with me was because of your clean record and your sterling reputation,” Vern said, sounding almost apologetic. “But lately you've been neglecting your real job and running around the county with a wild hair up your butt trying to reopen that outfitter case. Don't think nobody has noticed it. You've been the talk of the morning business coffee at the café. There's talk that you burned down Clyde Lidgard's trailer house for some reason that only you know. Now you've been suspended from the department. I really don't think there's a job for you with us, Joe. I'm sorry.”

Joe was stunned for the second time that day. He couldn't believe this was happening. He didn't know what to say to Vern. This was exactly the opposite of what he thought he would be able to tell Marybeth when he got home. And his girls. And his mother-in-law. The worst thing about it was that he had not really wanted to come to Vern and ask in the first place. He had talked himself into it as he drove and drank on the highway. He had done it, he thought, because it was the most responsible thing to do. As Joe stood up, he considered raising his fist and smashing Vern in his grinning mouth as hard as he could. But he didn't. He felt too defeated for that.

“All is not lost, Joe,” Vern said as Joe clamped on his hat. “Wacey might need a new deputy, you know. He's going to get rid of that McLanahan guy just as soon as he takes office. All is not lost.”

Joe turned and leaned forward into the booth, with both of his hands on the tabletop, and put his face directly in front of Vern's.

“You're wrong, Vern,” Joe said, nearly whispering. “All is just about lost.”

“Now, Joe ...”

“Vern.” Joe cut him off. “Shut up and listen for a change.”

Vern's eyes quickly confirmed that no one in the bar was paying them any attention. He looked suspiciously back to Joe.

“Vern, I lost my job and my house today. My faith in the belief that if you do your job and you work hard and you're honest then good things will happen is real shaky right now. My family is one paycheck away from being on the street. One paycheck. Now I've lost my only prospect for another job. And to top it off, you tell me I've lost my reputation. Then you tell me that
all is not lost.
”

Vern reached up and put a hand on Joe's shoulder, but Joe angrily shook it off.

“Hey, Joe,” Vern said, “it's time to start thinking a lot more about Joe Pickett and a lot less about what your family and everybody else thinks. That's what I've learned, Joe.”

Vern's eyes turned hard and his lip curled back in a sneer. “Welcome to my world. The
real
world. It's a place where nice things don't necessarily happen to nice people. I,” Vern said in his most grandiloquent way, “am an entrepreneur. I create wealth. I empowered this InterWest deal into being. An offer was made to you, and you passed on it when you had the chance.”

Their eyes locked.

“Vern, have you ever heard of a species called the Miller's weasel?”

The corners of Vern's mouth twitched slightly, then out came the false smile. “Miller's weasels are extinct,” Vern said. “They don't exist, even though every decade or so a rumor pops up that somebody saw one. Kind of like sightings of Bigfoot or something.”

“Vern,” Joe hissed. “If I find out you're involved in all of this, things are going to get real western.”

The look Joe had seen on Vern's face when he walked into the bar passed over it again. But this time there was some fear mixed in. It was good to see.

 

The night had
turned sharply colder and the stars were shrouded by clouds. Joe's hands were shaking as he dug in his pocket for his keys. He started his truck and began to drive to his house. He hit the brakes and cursed loudly when he realized that he was headed in the wrong direction. His family was at Eagle Mountain now, so he turned in the middle of Main Street and roared away in the other direction.

Land Acquisition

Sec. 5(a) Program. - The Secretary, and the Secretary of Agriculture with respect to the National Forest System, shall establish and implement a program to conserve fish, wildlife, and plants, including those which are listed as endangered species or threatened species pursuant to section 4 of this Act. To carry out such a program, the appropriate Secretary -

(1) shall utilize the land acquisition and other authority under the Fish and Wildlife Act of 1956, as amended, and the Migratory Bird Conservation Act, as appropriate; and

(2) is authorized to acquire by purchase, donation, or otherwise, lands, waters, or interest therein, and such authority shall be in addition to any other land acquisition authority vested in him.

(b) Acquisitions. - Funds made available pursuant to the Land and Water Conservation Fund Act of 1965, as amended, may be used for the purpose of acquiring lands, waters, or interests therein under subsection (a) of this section.

 

In the dining
room, there was a long, dark hardwood table that could seat fourteen people comfortably. In the middle of the night, Joe sat in his robe at the foot of it under a dimmed chandelier and felt sorry for himself. Hours before, he had switched to drinking water, and he filled up a stubby cut-glass tumbler from a pitcher that was older than he was.

The Kensinger house was magnificent, but he had surveyed it with amused dispassion. The bar area alone was half of the square footage of his house on Bighorn Road. The walls were hung with original Bama and Schenck contemporary western paintings and eighteenth-century English sporting prints. Two-thousand-dollar Navajo rugs hung from ceiling beams. There was a pure stainless steel kitchen with a walk-in refrigerator/freezer, giving Joe the impression that food preparation in this place was a serious, almost clinical affair. In the book-lined den (the books were mainly leather-bound editions of sporting and history categories with stiff, uncracked spines), a powerful telescope was mounted on a tripod to study the Twelve Sleep River and the wildlife that came down from the foothills to drink from it. To Joe, the house was not built or arranged to be lived in as much as it was a stage for entertaining. Small children would kill this house, and this house would kill small children. It was a kind of rancho deluxe contemporary western living museum.

Joe sipped his glass of water and looked around the dining room in the dark. The unreality of this place, given his situation, was overwhelming.

“Can I get you anything?” It was Marybeth. She stood in the shadow of the double doors. He gestured at the half-empty pitcher of water to indicate he was okay. He looked at her as if he were seeing her for the very first time. To sleep in, she was wearing an extra-large T-shirt that extended to midthigh. The cotton cloth strained across her pregnant belly and substantial breasts, her nipples poking out like buttons. Beneath the T-shirt, her legs were firm and thin, and her toes were curled into the nap of the thick carpet. Her hair was down around her shoulders and sleepmussed. She was lovely.

When he had first come in, he had told her everything. The kids had been in bed, and Missy Vankeuren was who knows where within the house. He had held nothing back as they sat across from each other at the dining room table: what had happened at Game and Fish Headquarters, what Dave Avery had confirmed, what Vern had said about the job and his reputation.

“One way or other, that man has made sure he still has power over you,” Marybeth had said. “Vern Dunnegan may be the only person I have ever truly learned to hate.”

He had told her about his plan to go back up into the Crazy Woman Creek canyon tomorrow where the outfitters had been murdered—while he still had the authority to do so. Maybe he could find something that would substantiate what he was beginning to suspect about the outfitters' murders. He had laid it out in flat, declarative sentences. When he was through, she had looked at him and had said, “That's a lot to think about,” and then she had gone to bed. They had left things on a difficult, unresolved note. Now she was back.

She came from the doorway, pulled out a straight-backed chair next to him, and sat down. She reached over and slipped her hand between the folds of his robe and put a warm hand on his leg. She looked into his eyes.

“Joe, I've been thinking about everything you said.”

He waited for what would come next.

“Joe, all is not lost. You have me. You have your family. You have character. That's a lot, and not many people can say that. We love you and appreciate who you are and what you've done.”

He looked at her quizzically.

“Joe, you are a good man. You're the last of your kind. Don't forget that. There aren't many like you left. You have a good heart and your moral compass is a model of its kind. You need to do what you need to do. Things will work out, and we can talk about it all later. We're being tested, God knows why.”

Joe was taken aback. For some reason—and he felt more than slightly guilty about it now—he thought she was going to tell him that she had had it and maybe the best idea was for her to take the children and go and live with her mother in Arizona for a while. He felt he had failed her. But she was showing that she was stronger and more committed to him, and them, than he had given her credit for. He started to speak and ask her why, but she didn't let him.

“Don't ask me, Joe. There isn't anything logical about it. There's nothing I can really explain to you other than I trust you and I'm with you until the bitter end.”

“That's a lot to live up to.” Joe said.

“You bet it is,” Marybeth answered. “But you haven't let me down yet.”

Joe thought she had never seemed as beautiful as she did at that moment.

“I'm not sure what I should say next,” Joe said, flushing.

She withdrew from his robe and guided his hand under the T-shirt to her belly. He rested his hand on her and then spread his fingers. Beneath the taut flesh he could feel the baby shifting inside of her.

“We make wonderful babies,” she said softly. “We're bringing good little people into the world who have a mom and a dad who care about them and love them. They know right from wrong because their parents teach them which is which, and because their parents live by example. Somewhere, there is a reward for us, Joe. We need to believe that. We won't just be abandoned.”

Joe stared at Marybeth, still unsure what to say. “But right now, I just want you in my bed,” she continued. “I need you there.”

He followed her to a bedroom he had never even seen before and to a bed he had never slept in. In it, they made love in a warm, clumsy way that at least for a few wonderful moments made him forget where he was.

 

He didn't know
how long he had been sleeping, but when he opened his eyes it was still dark outside. He eased out of the bed, not wanting to wake Marybeth, and padded along the cold stone tiles in the hallway. Then he realized, standing in the strange house, that he wasn't sure where the closest bathroom was. He stopped at a curtained window and brushed it aside to look outside. There was still no sign of dawn. Stars shown brilliantly in the black sky. His intention was to be in the saddle by seven and to the elk camp by noon. Beyond that he wasn't sure where he was going or how far he would go.