Mile Marker

Published by Monofonus Press Austin, TX Š 2009

Smitty parked his truck up the road from the accident and jogged back to get the money out of the wrecked car. The canyon was empty and still and his footfalls seemed very loud. Ahead there were skid marks on the blacktop. He slowed and moved to the road’s edge. A resinous pine smell came from the trees that Lewis had glanced off of, and the exposed sapwood glowed in the evening light. Smitty went cautiously over the bank and made his way down.

Lewis’s car was wrecked to scrapyard status, antifreeze and oil were leaking out on the rocks. Smitty walked across the hood and dropped down to the other side and looked in the window. Lewis was bleeding and moaning a little. With effort Smitty opened the door. Lewis turned and looked at him with windshield glass stuck in his face and his front teeth bashed out. Smitty told him sorry brother and reached over him and grabbed the ammo can with the money. There was a pint of whiskey on the seat and Smitty opened it for Lewis and handed it to him, but he was too shaken up and he dropped it and it spilled out on the floorboards. Smitty couldn’t do anything for him. He left the door open and climbed back over the hood and up the hill.

He parked in front of the high school and Wolf came out from the shadows and climbed in beside him.

She was wearing her nice clothes because there’d been student teacher conferences and the teacher’s assistants had to be there too. He thought she’d say something about him being late or the state of his truck but she didn’t. He’d busted a headlight and caved in the quarter panel in the wreck. As they descended the low hill toward the main drag he worried they’d be pulled over. His heart felt worn out from pounding. Wolf sat beside him solitary and unsure looking and swayed with the motion of the truck.

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She’d been up since five and looked beat. Smitty rolled down the window and spit then rolled it back up. The air smelled slightly of cow shit as it came in off the fields. “ What’d you say me and you go to the ocean?” he said.

She rubbed her eyes and blinked then looked down at her open hands. “Last time you said that you spent eight months in jail.” She turned and faced him. “ What’d you do? You’re acting like you did something. Are you working with Grover again?” There was a note of despair in her voice.

“I told you I’m done with all that. I can’t go back to it.” He paused. “ We could be outta here in a couple hours if we hurry.”

“It’s not that easy. I have a job.”

“Quit. Jobs are made to quit.”

“Couldn’t we talk about this in the morning?”

“No.” He’d made his argument and didn’t know what else to say, unless he told her the truth and he wasn’t doing that. Up ahead a heeler dog came out from between parked cars and pissed on a lamppost. Smitty and the dog made eye contact as he passed by. He reached over and touched Wolf ’s leg. “Grover told me once that when he was younger he shot out every streetlight in Bozeman from the back of a pickup truck.”

“Grover McGee,” Wolf said, yawning through the words.

Smitty’s skin went cold. Maybe it was Wolf saying Grover’s full name, maybe it was seeing Max kiss her that night at Brown’s, or maybe it was Lewis up in Hyalite toothless and bloody, Smitty couldn’t be sure; but the fear rushed into him and he felt it buck a little in his chest then it switched to anger and really started to run. He felt himself go, and like a fish fought in the current, it pulled

on him and there was nothing to do, if he didn’t want to be afraid, but be angry.

Smitty took his revolver from under the seat and pushed it at Wolf. “ Take this.” He handed her the box of shells from the glovebox. “Load it.” He was smiling but felt crazy under his face like he might lose it and squeeze out a tear or maybe punch Wolf in the side of the head, but he couldn’t ever do that. He made a fist to see how it felt.

The thin cardboard box that held the shells fell apart in Wolf ’s hands. She threw the box and the whole mess onto the floor then opened the cylinder on the revolver. “It’s already loaded. Great idea, being on probation.” She held the gun in her lap and didn’t make any move to give it to him. Before he realized what he’d done, he’d run a red light. There were a couple of seconds of wonder and relief then the blue and reds came up behind them.

Wolf turned around to see. “Throw it out.”

“It’s not the gun. It’s more.” He switched off the headlights and stomped on the gas and tried to think of a prayer to save his ass but couldn’t think of anything except jail and Grover McGee. He couldn’t decide which was worse. He felt a little sick thinking what would happen if Grover and Max caught him. Max’s nose had healed crooked and Smitty knew he’d take any opportunity, small or large, to get even, to get over, to get Wolf. By taking Grover McGee’s money he’d made a killing mistake.

He kept on the accelerator and gained some real distance on the lights behind him and felt a spark of hope so he pulled the truck to the side of the road behind an abandoned gas station marquee to see if the cop might pass them by. They waited in the dead night.

“ You never think of me. You do this impulsive shit and expect me to go along. It’s not romantic anymore. You’re fucking up my life. I love you, but you can’t keep doing this.”

“I’m not fucking up your life and it’s not impulsive. I’ve been the same way as long as you’ve known me. This is the way I am. I’m trying to make it better for us. I did something so we could leave here. So we have to leave. There’s no choice.” “ What if we had a family? What would you do then?” “ We’ll burn that bridge when we come to it.”

Wolf laughed quietly then took several deep breaths. She was on the verge of panic and Smitty was worried. “ We can go anywhere,” he said. “ We live here.” “ What do we have to stay for? I’m not making any money. You don’t have any friends, anybody to hang out with. Your job ain’t shit. You more or less hate your family.”

“I need time to think.” “ We don’t have time, baby.”

She laughed again, a choked–up laugh, then balled her fists and shook them in front of her face. “ We could make it.” “ You don’t know that.”

The spot light came up on the cop car and flooded the cab. “Hup, we’re in trouble.”

“Throw the gun out.”

“It’s too late for that. Give me it.” He snatched the pistol from her. “ You either come with me now or get out.”

She stared at him. “I’d just be running with you.

To be with you.” “ Well, that’s enough, isn’t it?”

“I don’t think it is.”

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He was hurt. “OK. Get out then.”

“No, Smitt, you need to stay. You need to stay with me.”

He wanted to but he couldn’t. “ We don’t end here. We don’t end anywhere near this place.” He reached over her and opened the door and pushed her out. “I love you, baby.” He drove away and left gravel, dirt, dust, and wind.

Wolf Anything stood at the road’s edge and watched the cop car tear off after Smitty. She stood on her swollen–feeling feet and looked at the distant lights of Bozeman. The stars swarmed against the black sky. She thought of herself home in bed with Smitty. She thought of herself as alone, and the empty night roared back at her. She walked west, away from town, away from the lights. She couldn’t shake the stars and the rising moon tracked her every step.

Smitty led the cop out to Four Corners and south into the Gallatin Canyon toward West Yellowstone.

The siren came to him in waves. He watched the cop in the side mirror and in the rearview. Clusters of small, white crosses filled the spaces between road reflectors and marked the curves where people had died, wreaths and plastic flowers leaned against them. Love, he thought. Every time I drive this road and see those crosses. That’s love.

Death on the highway. Anybody can love a person that dies like that. Even a piece a shit like me. Wolf was gone. She’d made her choice and it wasn’t him. He drove faster. He knew the road: every frost heave, every pothole.

The canyon walls crowded the road and the turns grouped together and the cop was often out of sight: on then off: light flicker. He’s called for

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backup, Smitty thought, but that won’t do him two shits. They can only come from Bozeman, unless there’s a state trooper, which would be unlikely on this stretch of road this time of night. Unlucky. I should count on bad luck. One two bad luck.

He turned off his lights when he went around the next corner and slipped onto a narrow dirt road that led down to the river and parked the truck so he was hidden behind a stand of trees.

The cop passed by without slowing. Smitty shivered with relief and took a deep breath. He waited a few minutes then turned on his lights and headed back toward town with a constant eye on his rearview.

He pulled off the road before he got to Gateway and circled around on the river road and parked under the bridge. The water was low and dried–up algae was sunbaked and stinking on all the rocks.

As the adrenaline faded he felt drugged, bleary with fatigue. He found a blanket behind the seat and climbed into the back of the truck and within moments of lying down he was fast asleep. Bats flew in and out from under the bridge and shit on him while he slept. Every so often a car would rumble across the bridge and Smitty would wake briefly and wonder where he was. Mostly he slept hard and dreamless.

He woke in the morning and scraped off the guano and decided to stay put. It was Wednesday, the water was low, and the fish were holed–up in the deep water upriver. Nobody will bother me down here. The cops’ll think I ran for it and they’ll check the village at Big Sky then they’ll go to West Yellowstone. Nobody would be stupid enough to think I’d be lurking under a goddamn bridge, truck and all. He went for his fishing pole behind the seat and pulled out the ammo can instead. He

popped the seal and the money was there and the money was his.

The fishing was better than he’d expected. He caught two with a Black Fury and one with a tobacco–juice–spitting grasshopper skewered and alien–weird. He cooked what he caught on a fire under the bridge. It smelled like piss and he wasn’t sure if it was the wood or the dirt he burnt it on.

Once the sun set he went out to the river bank and watched the sky go from blue to black and the stars came out. He intentionally thought of nothing; it was a trick that he’d discovered as a child.

He’d let himself relax so much, so deeply, dissolving into his own mind and the ringing waves of memory and echo, that it felt like the stars and the sky flowed through him and he was floating.

Much later in the night he returned to himself, and he was very cold and damp from dew. He stumbled to the truck and curled up under his blanket and hugged himself and shivered and thought of Wolf and their bed. He heard coyotes in the distance, they sounded heartbroken and lost. Smitty felt a bare love for them, an almost genetic bond.

The morning came on bright and ugly with too many grasshoppers and birds.

By noon he was stir–crazy and didn’t want to stay where he was but he knew he had to, so he waited. He rigged his pole and caught a few more medium–sized rainbows then built a fire and cooked and ate them. They didn’t taste as good as the ones he’d had the day before. It depressed him being under the bridge so he let the fire die and walked upriver and found a pool in the trees and sat there naked and herded waterskippers with his hands. A fox came and looked at him then ran off. Cowbirds flew around and perched then flew

around some more. There was a pull–tab beer can half–buried in the mud and when he lifted it free he was surprised to see how new the paint on the can looked. He tossed it over by his clothes and decided to keep it. He’d seen other people keep old beer cans so it wouldn’t be weird.

He left the bridge as soon as the sun dropped and drove north to catch the highway west. He was reluctant to drive back toward McGee and the cops, reluctant to be out in the open at all, but there was no choice. There was no other way unless he wanted to walk or fly, and he wasn’t about to go to the airport or the bus station. He wasn’t that stupid. He drove on and passed no one except truckers on the highway. When he got to Four Corners, in the distance on the rise, he could see a cop’s light bar silhouetted against the gas station lights. He turned west onto an unpaved county road and turned out his lights again. He couldn’t remember if this was the road that went by Cutter’s Pond or the one that went out to Lefty’s machine shop. He looked around at what he could see of the slate–colored fields, a house or a barn or anything to help him get his bearings, but there was nothing to see. Two small deer leapt out of the tall grass along the road and darted in front of Smitty’s pickup. He didn’t slow down and they bounded and he missed them then they were gone.

Wolf ’s pack of cigarettes was still on the seat and he crumpled it and threw it on the floor. He could tell he was only going to miss her more as time went on. He thought it was like getting the spins when you lie down drunk to sleep, how you might as well just get up and puke because it wasn’t going to stop until you did. But he couldn’t decide what the maneuver would be to get Wolf back with him. He could do it later, send for her

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like the old time cattlemen did in movies. Strange women in stagecoaches delivered to the big empty. I’m the big empty, Smitty thought. Come back to me.

The road ahead glowed in the faint moonlight like a fingernail scratch on dry skin. He could see the beginning of a curve up ahead. Through the cloud of dust behind him he saw that someone had turned onto the road. He didn’t want to tap his brakes because if it were a cop he’d see the lights and that would be it. He sees the dust anyway. He knows I’m up here. It’s already it. Then he realized where he was; that he was going to crash.

Cutter’s Pond was situated below a hairpin corner like it was intended to catch all those who drove fast and poorly.

As he left the road the clouds moved off of the low moon and on his way down he saw it reflected in the glass of the water. He let go of the wheel and ducked down on the seat and held onto the pistol like it might save him, like a timber in a flood.

The truck hit the water and Smitty banged around the cab and water poured in through the open windows. He crawled out the driver’s side window and treaded water and felt the truck slide by his leg as it sank. There was nothing to do but swim to the shore. He swam until he got close then tried to stand and touched the muddy bottom and tried to walk but slipped and dunked his head so he swam a little more and found the shore with his hand and squished his fingers into the mud and hauled himself up the bank. He squatted there in the shitty mud and the snakegrass and waited for the approaching headlights. He still held the pistol and he didn’t seem to be hurt. He thought maybe he should’ve grabbed the money and left the gun, but the money wasn’t going anywhere now and

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when you don’t have a gun is when you need it.

Ask anybody. Ask the NRA and Charlton Heston.

Ask someone being hunted by Grover McGee. He looked in the barrel and even in the weak light of the shrouded moon he could see that it was clogged and useless.

The lights arrived and continued on. It wasn’t a cop car. It was just some old beater pickup. Smitty watched it go. The night sky was starfilled and unmoving between the clouds then a satellite sped by and Smitty’s eye caught other ones after that. They were everywhere and the stars were shooting too.

They’d first met when she was sixteen. She was standing alone outside of a Masonic hall dance. Smitty pulled up and opened the door of his truck and beer cans fell out. He came right over like he knew her already. “ You some kind of punk rock Indian?” he said.

“No, I’m not any kind of Indian. I’m Filipino.”

“Pure bred?”

“My dad’s white.”

Smitty lit a cigarette. “ What do you think a punk rock Indian would call herself ?” He had tattoos of doves on the backs of his hands and he wore a straw cowboy hat low over his eyes. Oh, he was lovely, Anna thought. Movie pretty. His grey t–shirt said Grover McGee and the Damn Straights.

“How would I know?” she said. “ What would a tattooed redneck call himself ?”

Smitty smiled, said his name and offered his hand but Anna didn’t take it.

She liked being called a punk rock Indian. It seemed that most boys didn’t like her because she wasn’t white, but then again the boys talked to the Native girls. It didn’t make any sense. It made her angry to think about it. She thought about being different a lot. But tonight she had on her tightest pants and she’d streaked her black hair with blonde and red, and she knew she looked good. Even if the boys from her school wouldn’t talk to her. She’d cut out the neck and the bottom half of her Circle Jerks t–shirt and she caught Smitty looking at her chest and her leopard–print bra straps.

“I bet a punk rock Indian would call herself something like Elk Black or Dances With Herself or Hates Everything With Two Legs,” Smitty said.

“There was already a Black Elk,” she said. “And first, he was a man and second, he died.”

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Smitty scuffed his boots in the dirt like he was looking for something buried there then went and hung his arm on Anna’s shoulder. He smelled like he’d just finished mowing a yard, tart and musky with a hint of gasoline. “ You like the Damn Straights?” Anna asked.

“They’re my favorite band, and that ain’t just local pride. They’re smart and talented men,” he said seriously.

“They’re criminals.” “ Yes, sweetheart, they are.” He kissed Anna softly on the cheek. Some crappy Def Leopard song was drifting out of the dance hall. Anna turned and kissed him hard on the mouth and their teeth clicked against each other. “ Wolf Anything,” Smitty said when she pulled back. “That’s what I’ll call you.”

Anna didn’t say a word. She kissed him again.

She thought she’d probably marry him right now if he asked. He didn’t, of course, but what they had was real enough for her that it didn’t matter, not really. They went from there.

Now she was twenty–two and the nickname had adhered a little more firmly than she would’ve preferred. After she’d finished high school she got a job working part–time as a teacher’s assistant at the alternative school and even there they called her Wolf. People treated her like an outsider still, but she had Smitty and people knew who he was and who he worked for and they treated her with respect. She was OK with that.

She was comfortable.

Smitty’s real name wasn’t Smitty either; it was Derek Bruner, Jr. But Derek Bruner, Sr. was a state patrolman out of Red Lodge or Billings or somewhere and he and Smitty no longer spoke. Smitty’s mother had given him the nickname before she

died. He claimed it was something from a Jerry Lee Lewis song.

Wolf thought about this as she walked toward her aunt’s house. She walked, one step then another. Smitty, she thought of Smitty and what kind of person he was. He didn’t seem like a person; he seemed uniquely animal. Organism, Smitty was his own organism. That’s right. The asshole organism that left me on the side of the road. Asshole bacteria. She missed him already and knew she’d made a terrible mistake by not going with him.

She walked for hours.

Her aunt must have eventually heard her knocking because she came downstairs and unlocked the door.

“Smitty took off,” Wolf said to her. “I didn’t have anyplace to go.” “ You could’ve gone home,” the aunt said. Her name was Dawn, but as a child Anna mispronounced Aunt Dawn as Anton. So it was, she thought. Nobody I know goes by their birth name.

Anton had a desperate way about her, like an animal watching fast water. She was thin and worked as a nurse and was a good cook but hardly ever ate. She drank vodka and generic cola and called it the nectar of the gods. She had blonde highlights in her hair but she always wore it pulled back in a ponytail so you couldn’t really tell. She was Wolf ’s only family outside of her father, and to Wolf her father didn’t count.

“The cops are probably kicking down my door looking for Smitty,” Wolf said. “They saw his plates so they know it was him. It’ll go to me like it always does. I can’t afford to bail him out again.”

“Get in the house then,” Anton said.

Wolf noticed that Anton had her little yellow robe on that meant she had company. “ Who is it?”

“Nobody,” Anton said, smiled. They stood in the entryway and whispered in the dark. “Do I look like I’m over forty?” “ You are over forty.”

“Answer me,” she said. “ Tell me the truth.”

“It’s dark, Anton.”

Anton stepped in front of the wagon wheel window on the front door so the fog light on the garage could shine in on her face. She pursed her lips and turned her face from side to side. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth were marked by shadow in the sparse light.

“Not a day over thirty.”

“That’s what I thought but some people—” Anton pointed to the ceiling. “Some people say the meanest things.” “ Who?” Wolf hadn’t seen anyone’s car in the driveway.

“I’m not telling,” Anton said, grinning. “There’s blankets on the couch and there might be a beer in the fridge and some ravioli in the Tupperware.” “ You really aren’t going to tell me?”

“No.” Anton turned then and started up the stairs then stopped.

Wolf waited. Her legs were numb they were so tired.

“No, I can’t,” Anton said. “ You’ll probably see him tomorrow anyway. Night.”

“Night, Anton.”

Wolf slept late and the house was empty and quiet when she woke. Anton’s car wasn’t out front.

She called the school and told them she was sick and she’d see them on Friday, maybe. She was going to get fired. She knew it. Then what? Then nothing, she thought. Then I’m fucked. She folded her blanket and put it back on the couch then went into the kitchen. There was a note on the

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refrigerator. Bicycle, it said. In garage. Wipe off tile in shower if shower. Tired of scrubbing. Clothes in dresser. May be tight. May need to ride the bicycle first before fitting into jeans. To China. Hah! Love. Be careful. Anton.

She ate the ravioli and had a beer for breakfast then went upstairs and showered and dressed in her own clothes and locked up the house and rode Anton’s bike to her father’s to steal his car so she could go see Smitty in jail.

There were two police cars parked in the driveway of her father’s house. Her father sat on his rubber band lawn chair on the porch with a cup of coffee in his hand. He was supposed to be at work.

She put the bike on its kickstand in the middle of the lawn and the cops and her father all turned and looked at her.

“Miss,” one of the cops said. He had a face that belonged on a Swedish postcard. Wolf sneered at him.

“It seems something’s happened,” her father said.

Wolf ’s stomach hurt suddenly and she had the feeling that Smitty was dead. She thought briefly about running away then the cop from the driveway came up behind her and said, Miss, again and handcuffed her.

“Do you know any other words?” Wolf asked.

“Just being polite, ma’am.”

“Creepy people are always just being polite.”

“Duck your head, ma’am.”

She slid into the back of the cop car. It smelled slightly of vomit and strongly of citrus cleaner. Her father came down the steps and walked in his bowlegged way over to the car. His t–shirt was dirty and the neck was stretched out and his chest hair was showing, grey and wiry.

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“ You tell them what they want about Smitty,” he said through the crack in the window so only she could hear. “He’s already gone, but you’re still here.”

“Sir,” the cop said.

“A minute,” her father said. “I’ll come and get you out when I round up some money for bail.

Please, you can look at me when I’m talking.”

Wolf looked at her father then closed her eyes and looked away. “Don’t worry about me.”

Her father drummed his fingers on the roof of the car. “ You need to tell them what they want and we’ll get you on more of a path. You’re young still.”

“All right.”

“It’s all too wild with you.”

“Sir,” the cop said again. The other cop was already backing out of the driveway.

“I’ll be all right,” she said.

The polite cop got in the car and shut his door.

“Sorry about the smell, ma’am. I picked up a drunk last night and he got sick back there.”

“Jesus,” Wolf said. Her father stepped back from the car and watched her. He looked as if he might cry so she looked away.

“I cleaned it up,” the cop said. He put the car in gear and they drove. “ You want my kerchief to put over your face?”

“No. Just open your window.” “ Yes, ma’am.”

“Anna or Wolf, I don’t give a shit which.”

“Anna Fern.”

“Fine.”

“Anna Fern—you are under arrest for eluding a police officer. You have the right—” “I didn’t elude anybody.” “ You got out of the car, ma’am.”

“I was pushed out of the car. How is that eluding? You drove right by me and I just stood there.”

“It wasn’t me in pursuit.”

“I don’t care. I didn’t run from anybody.” “ You weren’t there when the officer returned.”

“I went to my aunt’s. Jesus, you really think I should have just fucking stood out there and waited?”

“It qualifies as eluding.” The cop shrugged and kind of wrinkled up his mouth like he was feeling sick. “I’m sorry. I am. You have the right to an attorney. Anything you say—” “ You don’t have to say the whole thing. I understand.” Wolf straightened out and took a breath.

“Can you tell me something?”

“Ma’am?”

“They didn’t catch him yet, did they? The officer didn’t catch him yet?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Shit.” She was relieved but also upset that she hadn’t stayed with him.

The cop drove with both hands on the wheel. He plucked his sunglasses from the visor and put them on. “They got a cell just for you since we don’t have any other women prisoners and Joan— Officer Van Norman, she’s a woman—she’ll be checking you in. Nobody’s gonna mess with you.”

“Thanks.”

“Sorry about the stinker of a car,” the cop said when he helped Wolf from the backseat. “I really scrubbed on it.”

“Hard to get clean,” she said. The cop opened a heavy steel door on the back of a windowless cinder block building.

“After you.” They stopped in front of a cage door and someone buzzed them in. “Air’ll probably do more than anything,” he said.

Wolf and the policeman passed through two more sets of doors then she was turned over to Officer Van Norman, a short, sturdy woman with thick, grey hair piled up on her head like a pelt.

“Air,” Wolf said. “ Yep.” “See ya.”

“Good luck, ma’am.”

Officer Van Norman had Wolf stay where she was until the policeman with no nametag made his way back out of the jail. Doors slammed, one after another. A buzzer sounded.

“All right,” Van Norman said. “This way.”

Six hours later Wolf was free to go.

“Record time,” Officer Van Norman said when she opened the cell door. “But with friends like that—” Wolf didn’t care where the bail money came from. She wanted out. Jail was like jail. Her father picked her up. He told her she should have told the cops where Smitty was.

“I don’t know where he is. I couldn’t tell them if I wanted to.”

“He’s a wormer,” her father said. “He’s gotten under your skin.”

“There’s nobody else for me,” Wolf said, and it felt like she was in a movie. Like she was the swollen–hearted, ignorant woman in a movie: a dumb, fat cow.

“I can tell a wormer from miles down the road,” her father said. “ You can hear them for the crying women.”

“I’m not crying.”

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“ You will be. If Smitty doesn’t square up with McGee, you’ll be standing over a grave.” He turned and looked at her, squinting a little. “ We could probably come out all right if you told McGee where he’s hiding.” “ You’ll never see me again if you help McGee.” “He helped you. He paid your bail. Why can’t we help him?”

“Smitty’s why. Don’t bring it up again. I didn’t ask anybody to bail me out.”

Her father watched the road and drove. He turned to her and looked as if he might speak but never did.

Wolf hadn’t eaten in jail so her father cooked spaghetti when they got to his house. He fixed her a plate and set it down in front of her at the table.

The food steamed. The overhead light in the kitchen was yellowed and cheap looking. She poked at her food. The table had a spot of what looked to be dried spaghetti sauce on it and she wondered how often he ate the same meal. He’s been alone too long, she thought. How long is too long? She thanked him for cooking and for picking her up.

He said it was nothing and fixed his own plate and sat down across from her. They hadn’t sat down to eat in years.

“I got an idea,” her father said.

Wolf stood up and got another beer out of the fridge. “ You forget about Smitty and come back and live here with me.”

“I told you already.”

“I’ll be working again soon, and you’re gone all the time anyway. We won’t be around each other enough to start fighting.”

She sat back down at the table. “I can’t forget about Smitty. He’s not someone I want to forget

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about.” She stared her father down to let him know that he was the kind of person she would like to forget about.

“This could lead to something bad. You’ve been going with Smitty a long time, I know that, but I’ll tell you, there was a guy down at the shop that got into trouble with McGee and he got hurt. McGee hurt him, and it wasn’t his goddamn feelings.”

Wolf went to speak and her father held up his hand and went on.

“Have you heard the stories about Max? That goddamn psychopath that runs with Grover?

I mean, Grover’s one thing but Max is plain dangerous.”

“I know Max.” “Anna, that scares the hell out of me. All that shit in their songs, it ain’t just talk. They’re no– fooling killers. They run this whole goddamn state and half of Wyoming. ‘Blood Syndicate, We’ll Die

By It,’ the song goes. Serious shit, darling. That, is serious shit.”

“I told you, I know who they are.” She tapped her beer can against the edge of her dinner plate.

“Smitty can take care of himself.” He can stand up to Max; he’d already proven that. But Felix and Brown and Grover, and there were more. Grover had people working for him all over the place. She looked at her father and she hated him still and the hate was stronger than logic.

“I can’t live with you. Don’t ask me again.”

They finished dinner and Wolf left without saying goodbye or even putting her plate in the sink.

Harold Fern put his hands in the soapy water and his reflection looked back at him in the darkened kitchen window. More than eight years had

passed since he’d betrayed his wife, eight years since she left. His daughter was still here, but then again she wasn’t. She didn’t need him, hadn’t needed him for years. He had an idea how he might change that. He picked up the phone and called his sister and they discussed his idea. He hung up the phone. He didn’t finish the dishes. He went to the living room and sat down in front of the TV but didn’t switch it on. There was one thing on and it was his reflection, and that was what he watched.

drinking what appeared to be her whiskey, all plaid shirts and polyester pants and mustaches, like walking jokes they’d played on themselves. She leaned Anton’s bike against the side of the house and went up.

Grover stood and smoothed his shirt over his slight paunch and bared his uneven, yellow teeth. He had a lantern jaw with a jagged white scar running down the side of his face from his eyebrow to beneath his ear. One eye was slightly bulgy and he cocked his head and aimed it at Wolf when he spoke. “I’ve always wanted to know why they call you Wolf Anything?” “ You’d have to ask Smitty.”

McGee studied Wolf until she looked away. “Rodney, get the woman a drink,” he said.

“Give her the stuff we brought,” Max said, “the good stuff, not that rotgut you found inside.” He gave Wolf a look that she didn’t like. He was a large man and she was afraid of him. When he rested his hand on the porch rail she felt very small. She took the drink that Rodney gave her and sat down on the steps.

To the group McGee said: “ Why don’t ya’ll go inside and put on some music? Find yourselves something to eat. You don’t mind do you?” he said to Wolf. McGee wasn’t a big man: a presence, is how she’d heard people describe him.

“I don’t mind.”

There was a general creaking of chairs and porch boards and flicking of cigarette butts into the yard as Grover McGee’s backing band went indoors. Max went in last and watched Wolf until the door shut.

18

Grover sat down next to her. “The boys don’t like Smitty, but I’m partial to him. We had a good time when he came with us on that last tour. What was it? Three years ago now? Time flies, don’t it?” He smiled at Wolf and it made her shiver. “I bet you didn’t want him to go on that trip, did you? I understand why. He’s got a weak character, your man does, a good heart but a weak character. That makes for trouble in the business that I’m in.” “ What business is that? The music business?”

He smiled again. “Don’t be coy. You know who I am. You’ve heard the stories. You been to the kennel. Hell, Smitty broke Max’s nose when you were there. Because you were there. That was a hell of a night. About as rare as Hailey’s Comet to see Big Max get knocked on his ass. All for a taste of you, a little kiss.” In his deep baritone Grover McGee began to sing his 1978 chart–topper, I’ll Bury You With Love: Stealing a kiss, baby/ Say hello to the eternal/ Meet me in the garden/sweet flowers, sweet woman/Every shovelful of dirt/ every drop of blood on the earth/ stealing a kiss/ stealing a kiss/ I’ll bury you/ and get free of the hurt.

He had a wonderful voice. Wolf thought his eyes were pretty when he was singing. Her mouth went dry and her hands began to shake. She nodded then took a long drink of the whiskey and Coke that Rodney had brought her. “I don’t know where he is.” The whiskey warmed her and she took a deep breath.

“I know. Let me top that off for you.” He leaned across Wolf and gripped her crotch firmly in one hand and plucked the whiskey bottle from the handrail with the other. She squirmed back against the step but Grover brought his arm down around her shoulders. “Hold out your cup.”

Wolf held out the cup. Grover rubbed his middle finger up and down the center seam in her jeans and poured her cup half full.

“Drink. Be a good girl.”

Wolf took a long drink of the good, warm whiskey and held it in her mouth and smiled. She spread her legs wider and Grover leaned into her.

He rubbed the whiskey bottle between her breasts then over them. She leaned back and Grover came in for a kiss. She spit the mouthful of whiskey in his face then snatched the bottle from his hand and hit him over the head with it. The bottle didn’t break; it made a sound like someone knocking on the glass of an aquarium. Grover stood up then slipped on the steps and fell back down. “Max,” he yelled.

Max came out and picked Grover up by the armpit. He looked at Wolf in the yard and nodded for her to go, to hurry.

She tossed the bottle into the bushes and got on her bike and pedaled as fast as she could. The trees formed an archway over the street. She smelled the Laundromat and pedaled faster toward it. She parked her bike and sat in the back by the giant fans and curled up on a pallet and basked in the smell of the tumbling dryers. It was a smell that had always calmed her, more than anything. Her heart stopped racing. It was like a drug. Max had let her go and now she owed him. The thought of this disgusted her.

After a while she went and called Anton from the payphone in the Haufbrau parking lot and asked her to come and pick her up. Anton said she didn’t get off work for another hour and to sit tight.

After she hung up she sat down in the phone booth and pushed her feet against the door so no one could get in. She listened to the cars go by and the

people going in and out of the bar. No one could see her as low as she was. The wind from the cars and the regular wind blew dust in under the door.

He could be dead. I could be dead with him or I could be alive without him. There was no right answer. How much do you really need someone else anyway? She realized then that it wasn’t being alone she was afraid of. In fact, she wasn’t afraid at all anymore. The streetlight flickered and dimmed then got bright again. She’d get through this.

Anton pulled into the dirt lot alongside the phone booth and honked her horn. Wolf opened the door and retrieved the bike from the bushes and loaded it into Anton’s trunk. “ You’re the talk of the town.” Anton was wearing her scrubs and smelled of rubbing alcohol.

“It’ll pass.” “ Where’s your stuff ?”

“My clothes and everything are at the house still. McGee’s over there waiting for Smitty to show up. I don’t have anything.”

“Let’s drive by and see if they’re still there,” Anton said. “ You’ll be all right. You can duck down.”

“I don’t want to go back.”

“It’ll take a minute. I’ll just drive by.”

Wolf slouched down in her seat. The kitchen light was on but there weren’t any cars in the driveway, there were some on the street but she couldn’t recognize any of them. Anton stopped the car. “ What’re you doing?” Wolf said.

“I’m gonna grab you some clothes. They can’t do anything to me.”

“They can too.”

“Give me your keys.” “ You’re nuts.”

“C’mon.”

19

Wolf dug her keys from her pocket and handed them over. “Get some underwear and the black pants on the bed, my makeup. I don’t care about the rest.”

“All right.”

“Thanks, Anton.”

Anton glanced at Wolf and smiled. “I’ll be right back.” She got out of the car. She was gone for ten minutes. When she returned she passed Wolf a duffel bag filled with her clothes and makeup. As they drove away, Wolf thought she saw a shadow in the kitchen window.

“They weren’t still there, were they?”

“All quiet,” Anton said. “Listen, I’m having company for dinner tonight.”

“OK. I guess you could leave me somewhere, so you could be alone.”

“No, I already talked to him. We want you to be there. You’re gonna like him.” Anton smiled. “He’s a sweetheart. Don’t judge though, not until you know him.”

“I won’t. I’m happy for you.” But the tone in her voice betrayed her sadness and Anton told her she was sorry again. That it would be all right.

It was the cop that had arrested Wolf that came to dinner, Jerry Berg, Officer Jerry Berg. The nice cop. He looked the same in street clothes as he did in uniform. He looked like a cop from the top of his military haircut down to his cheapo Nike knockoffs.

“Did you know that Anton was my aunt when you arrested me?” Wolf said.

“I did.”

“Did you treat me differently then? Is that why you were nice?”

“He’s always nice,” Anton said.

20

“No, I’m not.” He smiled knowingly. “Sometimes I’m distinctly not nice.”

Wolf wanted to ask him when that was but Anton interrupted her.

“Isn’t Smitty’s dad a cop in Red Lodge?” she said.

“So?” “So what do you know what a nice cop is and what a mean cop is?” Anton said.

Wolf looked at the cop across the table and she liked him; his sunburned ears and his crooked teeth, his pale hands and the way they held silverware. “I don’t know anything about cops and I don’t want to.” She pushed the tines of her fork into her baked potato. “Did you catch him?”

“I don’t think he can tell you that,” Anton said.

“I think they have rules. Don’t they have rules, Jerry?” “ We didn’t catch him,” Jerry said. “He disappeared up on the Gallatin somewhere. We will though. Everyone’s looking for him.”

Wolf nodded and stabbed her potato again. “ You think he’ll come back and try to find you?”

Anton said.

“He better,” Wolf said without thinking, then, “No, he’s gone. I hope he stays away. It’d be best.”

She looked at Anton for sympathy and caught her and Jerry Berg looking at each other like they shared a secret. “ You never know,” Anton said. “People do crazy things everyday.”

After several attempts to dive down and free the ammo can from under the seat Smitty finally succeeded. He squatted dripping on the shore and opened the box just to see it and there it sat: dry and ripe with the stink of cash. Pistol and a

box of money, no wheels. He climbed up the mud bank back to the road and slogged on a dusty and rutted farm road, his boots slimy against his sockless feet.

Later he found a good stick and sat down to clean his pistol. It wasn’t cold and he didn’t feel too poorly. He thought he might be able to walk through the night and cross the highway and steal a truck from the road crew doing the overpass work out toward Belgrade. Dirt–head road guys never locked up anything, so many Davis–Bacon rigs flying around nobody knows where anything’s at. He could’ve had one of those jobs, could’ve had a lot of jobs. He got the barrel fairly clean then waded through the ryegrass to the irrigation ditch and rinsed it off. He took off his shirt and polished the gun body then swung it around like a maniac until he’d centrifugally dried the barrel. He polished and dried the six shells he had and reloaded.

With the ammo can swinging from his fist and the gun in his waistband, Smitty loped in the night.

Double–time. He felt strong and perfectly self– contained. He looked both ways then crossed the highway; nobody was coming for miles. He crossed fields and ducked some fences, jumped others.

Ran across a lawn or two. Dogs barked at him but he didn’t care. He was already gone. The blisters on his feet hurt like hell and he didn’t think they could get any worse then they did. Then he didn’t feel his feet at all. Sometimes he laughed, he sang a few songs.

The jobsite was empty. Rebar was piled up three feet high and the reek of form oil was enough to make him gag. He went for the most beat up pickup he could find. The keys were on the visor.

He hit the blinker and turned onto the highway.

He gained speed and felt free in his belly. Then the

highway was suddenly jammed up with traffic. An accident up ahead. Ambulance and police lights.

People in other cars looked over at him; he sank lower in his seat. Fucking traffic jam in Montana, he thought. End of the world. Light it on fire and pave it. It’s done. It’s over. It’s been over. We’re all tame as rabbits.

He turned off of the highway onto a county road that in a roundabout way cut over to the northbound interstate. The road was washboard and potholed so he drove fast so he wouldn’t have to feel it. He remembered the road being better the last time he was out here. When was that, he wondered? It was springtime, all the grass was green and fat as carpet and the water was running high in the ditches. I was with Wolf and we were going somewhere for dinner. Aunt Dawn’s.

Anton. He smiled. She liked me, he thought. Wolf might be there, and if not, Anton could get a hold of her for me. We could leave together, like we’re supposed to.

He slowed down and searched the mailboxes for the right name and found it and turned down her driveway. All the lights were off in the house.

He parked a little way back on the road and walked in. A motion sensitive light on the garage snapped on when he was halfway across the driveway to the house. There was Anton’s car with a bike hanging out of the trunk and another car, a little rickety piece of shit with a sheriff ’s department sticker in the back window. He stopped and thought how what he was doing was how people ended up in Deer Lodge. You need to have discipline. He turned and started back toward the truck, glad to be making a smart decision for once. He was tiptoeing and when he realized it he stopped and walked normal. The porch light switched on then the front

21

door opened. Smitty reached for the gun in his belt just to make sure, but it was on the seat of the truck. He turned around expecting to see Anton and was surprised by the stout little guy in boxer shorts holding a pistol at his side.

“I’m looking for Dawn Fern’s place,” Smitty said.

“I don’t want any trouble.”

“Is your name Bruner?”

“No, I’m Adolph Fucking Custer. Who the hell are you?”

“I’m a friend of Dawn’s. A friend of Anna’s.”

“I know all of Wolf ’s friends and none of them look like you.” Smitty studied Officer Berg. “I’ve seen you. Where have I seen you?”

“I’m around town a lot. Driving around.”

Smitty knew him, had seen him: knew him. “In a fucking cruiser, huh? You’re that goddamn cop that busted up that fight at the R Bar, right? I saw you scrapping it out. They should have pressed charges on you.”

“They did.”

“Good.”

“Derek Bruner.”

“Don’t call me that name, cop.”

“Derek Bruner,” Officer Berg repeated, louder. “ You’re under arrest for eluding a police officer.

More importantly, we’d like to talk to you about your buddy Lewis that died up at Hyalite.”

Smitty paused. “I didn’t kill anyone.” “ You cut his damn throat.”

“The hell I did.”

The front door opened and Wolf stepped onto the porch behind Berg, sleepy–looking and half dressed with her hair all over the place.

“Go back inside,” Berg said. He didn’t turn to face her.

22

“Hey, good looking,” Smitty said. Wolf reached in the door and came out holding the beater bat Anton kept behind the door.

“I thought you left me, Smitt.”

“I couldn’t do that. We’re outta here tonight.

I promise you.”

“Anna get inside,” Berg said again. He took a few steps into the driveway toward Smitty. Wolf stepped up behind him and brought back the bat but Jerry must’ve seen the shadow cast from the porch light or just her movement in the corner of his eye, because he turned and lunged at Wolf and knocked her down. Smitty ran over to tackle Berg but he turned in time to get his pistol in line with Smitty’s head and Smitty stopped, leaning up on his toes like he might just fall on his face rather than take another step. Berg took the bat from Wolf and tossed it away. Wolf got up and ran to Smitty.

“Dawn,” Jerry yelled. “Dawn.”

Anton came outside with her robe tied tight around her. “I already called them,” she said.

“They’re on their way.”

Berg opened the trunk to his car and got a pair of handcuffs. Anton went to Wolf but she pushed her away. “ You called the cops? How could you do that?”

“Anna, your father and I talked about it. It’s for the best. You need to move on,” Anton said.

Berg cuffed Smitty in front and helped him to his feet. He sat him down on the bumper of his car. They all sat around and waited. Wolf and Smitty didn’t look away from each other then there were car lights on the road coming fast. “That isn’t a cop. Who’d you call?” Smitty said to Anton.

“She didn’t call the cops,” Berg said. “I’m already here.”

“ You called McGee? Wolf, they’re going to kill me. Your aunt just got me killed.” “ You got yourself killed,” Berg said. “ We just made ten thousand bucks.”

“I got fifty right now if you get me out of this. I’ll give you all of it. Come on, if you’re being greedy, I’m your man.”

Berg shook his head. “I’d rather have the easy ten than the hard fifty.” Grover McGees’ Lincoln pulled into the driveway and Max then Felony Felix then Grover got out.

“Smitty,” Grover said.

“Grover,” Smitty said.

“Rope just got tight, didn’t it?” Max said. He was watching Wolf.

“Don’t even look at her,” Smitty said.

Felix and Max took Smitty by the shoulders and shoved him into the back of Grover’s car. “ Wolf,” Smitty said. “It’s OK, Wolf.”

Wolf stood frozen.

“Dawn, take her inside,” Berg said.

Anton forced Wolf from where she stood and into the house. The door slammed behind them.

Berg went inside after them and it slammed again.

He returned a minute later dressed in jeans and a t–shirt. Grover glanced at Berg then sucked on his teeth and spit in the dirt.

“Is it there, Max?” he said.

They waited. “ Yeah, looks like it,” Max said. “I ain’t no speed– counter, but it looks right.” Max came up between Grover and Berg and tossed the ammo box onto the front seat of the car. He looked sideways at the cop.

“Go ahead, Max,” Grover said. Max pulled a blackjack from his back pocket and hit Berg over the head and knocked him unconscious. Felix

handcuffed Berg and took his gun and hoisted him into the back seat with Smitty.

“Let’s get,” Grover said. “ What about the women?” Felix said.

“Fuck em,” Grover said.

Felix looked at him like he might mean to actually do it then they all got in the car. They sat three abreast and Felix drove. Later Max turned around in his seat and without warning punched Smitty in the mouth. Berg was out cold.

“He ain’t dead, is he?” Max said.

“He better not be,” Grover said. “I’m not killing a cop. At least not until I get my full use out of him.”

Felix drove back to town and parked the car in the back of a large warehouse. The corrugated metal was rusted and several of the windows had been broken out. Although he’d never been inside before, Smitty knew where they were; it was the Copper Penny recording studios. Grover kept the place private, for the band and for emergencies.

I’m an emergency now, Smitty thought. His two favorite Grover McGee and the Damn Straights’ albums had been recorded here: The Killer In Me Won’t Die, and The Gun and the Shovel. The Forgotten Ballads for Unmarked Graves album was recorded in Nashville. The Knife in Your Bootleg was recorded in Canada somewhere.

The car doors opened and Felix shouldered Berg while Max hauled Smitty along by the handcuffs. McGee opened the warehouse door and everyone followed him inside. It was dark and cavernous. Smitty was sure he was going to die.

Max hauled him along. The place smelled bad and Smitty said so.

“Joncy–boy, the engineer, he never cleans,” McGee said. “He’s a dirty German, which isn’t a

23

normal thing for a German to be. They’re like cats, as a rule, very clean.”

“Some cats are shit dirty,” Felix said. “ We got some under the barn that smell so bad they’d make you puke. Tried to shoot em but they’re too quick.” “ Try poison,” Max said.

“Burn the barn down,” McGee said. The pace of the group hitched for a moment then continued.

They passed the control booth where a bearded man was eating french fries off of a paper plate. An emaciated woman with no shirt on was asleep on the couch beside him.

“That’s him,” McGee said. “Scummy fucking kraut. No eating in the booth,” he yelled at the soundproof glass.

Jonce lifted his hand to McGee and smirked.

The woman on the couch opened one eye and saw them and covered her face.

They waded through stacks of instruments and amplifiers clogging the hallway and came to a large steel door. McGee opened it and threw a light switch the size of a bear trap and row after row of fluorescent lights staggered to life overhead.

“Smells a little better back here, huh?” McGee said. Smitty nodded. He’d heard Copper Penny used to be a candy factory. It smelled like chocolate and mint. There was a large wooden desk set up in the middle of the warehouse with a dozen or so chairs strewn about, other than that the place was empty, big and wide open. Max pushed Smitty into a chair and Grover McGee sat down behind the desk. Felix dropped Berg into a chair next to Smitty and he finally woke up. Max put a hand on his shoulder and everyone watched his face as he slowly realized what had happened.

“Hang on a minute,” Berg said.

24

“Shut up,” said Max. McGee turned from Berg to Smitty. He ran the edge of his thumb along his nostril then pinched his nose shut and closed his mouth and blew out in an effort to pop his ears. It was something he did often; he had ear problems. Touchy subject.

He stretched his jaw and looked again to Smitty.

“Nobody’s getting killed. How about that?”

Smitty nodded, but hardly felt relieved.

McGee smiled.

“I didn’t kill Lewis. He was alive when I left him.”

Smitty went to stand up and Max pushed him back down. “I ran him off the road, I’ll admit to that.

And I took the money, I’ll admit to that too, but I didn’t kill him.”

“I know. Max did it. We went looking for him when he didn’t show up. Found him walking on the road. Max took care of him.”

“He was a lousy guitarist,” Max said. “He strummed with the side of his pick, like a scraping sound. It made me crazy to listen to him.” “ Your prints are probably on that car, aren’t they? The paint from your rig?” McGee said.

Smitty was having a little trouble breathing.

“The deal is this: you’re going to Deer Lodge,” McGee said. “ We’re sending you up.”

“I didn’t kill anybody,” Smitty said.

“This isn’t what we agreed to,” Berg said. “I don’t need to be here for this. I called you, you caught him. That’s it.”

“Maybe I made a mistake when I said nobody was getting killed,” McGee said to Max. To Smitty: “ You owe us. You owe me. But don’t worry, after you’re done—after you kill who I need killed in the hoosegow,” he nodded to Berg, “this little piggy’s gonna convince the judge that you’re innocent,

that he made a mistake. We’ll dig up somebody to pin it on.” “ You’re fucking crazy. You’re outta your goddamn mind. I trust that cop less than I trust you.

I’m not doing shit.”

“I don’t care who you trust. You took money from me and for that I’ll be goddamn repaid,” McGee said. He held up his hands. “And what about Wolf ? What if something happened to her? Did you think of that?”

“Leave her alone,” Smitty said.

Grover ignored Smitty and turned to Berg. “And what about your new girlfriend, bacon boy? What if Dawn gets a little squeeze?”

“Don’t do it,” Berg said.

“I’ll do what I like, and you’ll do what I say.”

“I’ll keep Wolf safe for you,” Max said to Smitty.

“Next time I won’t break your nose, next time I’ll kill you.”

“Next time,” Max said. “That’s rich.”

McGee cleared his throat. “It’s irksome, Smitty, you’ve always acted like you’re the real deal. Now you won’t have a choice. Acting is going to be the real deal. What’s that what people say?”

“I been locked up before,” Smitty said.

“I know what you’ve done and I know who you really are. You better watch who you pretend to be because in the end that’s who you are, that’s what people say. That’s concrete data there. That’s the real Stonehenge shit. You can keep acting all the way until you do it then there isn’t anymore acting. Nope. You steal from me—you shoulda read up. I’ll cut you off at the fucking root. You’ll wish you could pretend your way out of it, but you’ll own it then. No bar stool preaching, whiskey bragging—you’ll have to walk up to this asshole in Deer Lodge with your trembling fucking hands and

you’ll have to kill him. Think about that. Think how you’re going to do it. With your hands. You know it now, don’t you? If you don’t do it, I’ll ruin your girl.

I’ll ruin her.”

Max made sounds of disapproval and McGee snapped around and told him to quit his grousing then leaned into Smitty. “ You know this is going to make a man out of you. Make you real. Or kill you.

It might kill you. Smitty? Hey, Smitty. If it doesn’t kill you, I still might. I still goddamn might.” McGee laughed loud and meanly. “And remember, if you end up switching teams inside, don’t think of it as being gay, think of it as jacking off with another man’s ass.” He turned to Max. “ What did Bimmer the Fag used to say, I’m not gay I just like the way it smells?”

“He said that about cocaine,” Max said.

“He said cocaine wasn’t gay?” Felix said.

“No, he said he didn’t like coke, but he liked the way it smelled,” Max said.

“Fucking goon–ass retards,” Smitty said to Max, Felix. “Leave Wolf alone or I’m not doing anything.

You can kill me right here.”

Max cocked back and hit Smitty in the forehead. “ Wolf ’s too good for you. She always will be.” He hit him again with a vicious right hook that knocked him unconscious.

In the morning, after the long night, it was agreed. Smitty was going away and Wolf and Dawn would be protected.

Before they left Copper Penny, Felix laid down a few drum tracks for Jonce. The chain on his snare drum was messed up so they didn’t think they could use them, or they were perfect. Sometimes it was hard to tell.

Jerry Berg brought Smitty into the police station where he was charged with the murder of Lewis

25

McClure. They both looked poorly used and unwilling. The police didn’t even mention the eluding charge. The case against him built quickly with Berg’s help and evidence from Hyalite. In a month’s time Smitty was locked in a holding cell at the Montana State penitentiary in Deer Lodge while his paperwork was being processed.

Cold concrete under his ass, felony fliers on his feet. Wolf ’s going to leave me. No, she won’t. Yes, she will. She didn’t come to my sentencing hearing. Berg showed up. Ice–Berg. Shithead cop.

Greedy and self–righteous and I hate him. Oh, I hate him. The holding cell smelled like a piss– soaked gym sock, but at least he was alone. This might be the last time then it’s celly, celly, cellmate time. Shit. Maybe hate is too mild a word for Berg and McGee and Max. Fucking Max. Hate has a ceiling on it. The goddamn walls of this place. Once you move beyond hate, you have to do something.

You have to hurt someone. Kill someone. Then Smitty thought of why he was there and what Grover McGee expected him to do. The guard came and he was led inside. Everything was grey.

After the first month, Smitty was sure that McGee didn’t actually need him inside. It was all punishment all the time. And to make it worse, the guy he was supposed to kill, Parker, he wasn’t even there; he’d been transferred out at almost the same time that Smitty was brought in. Wolf finally came to visit in the middle of his third month. “ Where are you sleeping?” Smitty said.

She looked away from him. “I couldn’t afford the house anymore,” she said. “Grover offered me a place and I took it.” Her eyes were puffy. Oh, she had some fun last night, Smitty thought. “ You could stay somewhere else.”

26

“I don’t have any friends. I don’t have any family I trust. I had you. You did this to us. To me,” she said. “I’m just taking some free rent. It’s not anything more than that. I’m here, aren’t I?” “Are you seeing Max?” “No, Christ no. Don’t even say that.”

“How often do you see him? How often do you see Grover?”

“I’m in the apartment above the Cut n’ Run. I see them a lot. I had to rent a car to come here. It took time to save up or I would’ve come sooner.” “ You could take the bus.” “ You could. I hate the bus.”

“I didn’t kill Lewis.”

“Like it matters. Look where you are.”

He could feel Wolf slipping away from him. “I didn’t think I was being selfish when I took that money. I was doing it for you. I always tried to think of you first.”

“None of that matters.”

“The hell it doesn’t. Someday I’m getting out of here. It goddamn does matter. You need to get away from them. Please, you gotta get as far away from Grover and them as you can.”

“Smitty.”

“This whole thing, the way they strung me up.

It’s worse than you think. I get it all day. There’s no end to it. I don’t know where I’m at half the time. I feel like I’m dead.” He was close to tears and he blinked them back. “ You’re not dead. It’ll pass. It’ll get better before it gets worse.”

Maybe she wasn’t hungover. Maybe she was tired. What’d all this do to her, he wondered. What did it do to her to rely on Grover? How could she do that?

She traced a shape with her finger on the countertop. “It was selfish what you did,” she said. “ You didn’t tell me anything then I’m standing on the side of the road watching your taillights. I always trusted you to be there for me and not do anything to push me away. Then you did. Things are different now. It doesn’t matter if you did it for the right reasons or the wrong ones.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know.”

“Oh Christ, I’m so sorry.” He was tired and hurt and the quarter inch of Plexiglass between them could’ve been a wall of fire. He got to his feet without looking at Wolf again and the guard led him away. He didn’t look over his shoulder at her but it took everything he had not to.

She never came back. It was a long drive and he understood. She wrote him letters and the address of the apartment was on the envelope. He knew the building and that Grover had kept his girlfriends there before.

Outside the walls and the dirty windows the days were darkened by winter storms. All through February it snowed. Supply shipments were late and guards were trapped at work. It hadn’t ever snowed like this. Men stood in front of wire–grated windows and watched it fall and talked about the last ice age and mastodons, saber tooth tigers. The fuel truck that came to fill the furnace couldn’t make it the last hundred yards to the tank so the warden handed out shovels to some of the inmates watching the storm and sent them out to dig a road. Smitty didn’t want to go freeze his ass off in a snowstorm so after he was picked to go outside, he traded his spot on the shovel detail to a guy named Ortiz from Three Forks for his spot on the cafeteria serving line, a permanent position for a

temporary reprieve. Ortiz said he just wanted to stand in the snow and feel some weather and he didn’t care what it cost him.

Another month passed and Smitty traded his serving job with an Arab dishwasher named Ferdoz. Ferdoz wanted to steal food and Smitty wanted to be in the back of the kitchen.

In May Smitty climbed onto the edge of the sink and slid out one of the ceiling tiles and hoisted himself up then replaced the tile and lay still for three days, going to the bathroom in plastic mayonnaise containers he’d thrown up into the space over the weeks before. He had water and an extra set of clothes too and after the three days were up and everyone was looking for him everywhere but where he was, he dropped out of the ceiling and snuck onto the second Thursday (S.T.) delivery truck. The S.T. truck delivered fifty–five–gallon drums of industrial strength cleaners for the kitchen and detergent for the laundry and took away the acquired vats of grease from cooking and all the unusable flammable substances from the machine shop. The drums were heavy and took hours to unload and reload. There were only two guards assigned to supervise the deliverymen and they stayed in the mess hall and watched a small portable television and drank coffee from a thermos.

Smitty walked down the loading dock and into the truck, all the way to the back behind a leaking drum of recycled paint thinner. It was dark then the rear doors were slammed to and locked down and the engine started and it was so dark that Smitty felt like a spirit without a body. The truck stopped at the gate. The driver turned off the engine and Smitty stood up and braced himself against the drum he’d hidden behind and made

27

sure he had his lighter in his pocket. If that door opens, I’ll burn every man that enters. He heard voices outside then the truck started again. They were moving. Smitty sat back down. He laughed for a moment then covered his eyes against the darkness and cried.

She got in the back seat of the Lincoln with Grover. She’d just finished a six–hour shift at the receptionist’s desk in the salon and she smelled like hair treatment and cigarettes. It had been all over the news about Smitty: statewide manhunt, escaped felon, armed and dangerous. Grover leaned over and told Wolf he had a surprise for her later. “After the barbecue, I’m taking you somewhere special.”

Wolf told Grover she didn’t want to go to any dogfights and that he’d already told her that’s where they were going last night when he was drunk. Max was watching her in the rearview. The wind slammed into the Lincoln’s windows hard enough to make Max swerve a little. It was bright and sunny in the evening light. Dust and chaff blew across the road. Wolf ’s nose was dry from the weather. She had a sinus headache from the dry air, a bit of a hangover. You let yourself get in these places, she thought.

Don’t blame Smitty for this. This one’s yours.

Brown’s house was pale blue with a covered porch and a shingle roof, outbuildings all around. Max parked the car behind the house and Brown and some other men that Wolf didn’t know came outside.

Brown told Grover that the police hadn’t caught Smitty yet. Dogs barked in the outbuildings and the smell of dog shit was in the air.

“Go inside and wait in the kitchen,” Grover said to Wolf.

“Fuck off.”

“Go inside goddamnit.”

Wolf went into the kitchen and watched Grover from the window. There was coffee in the pot but it smelled burnt. Grover pointed to Max and to the Lincoln and into the kitchen with his thumb then they all laughed. Wolf went into the living room.

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Brown’s parents had died and left him the house and he hadn’t changed anything; it was an old couple’s house. The only thing he’d done was to hang the Damn Straight’s three gold albums on the wall above the television. It was almost sad, a bunch of has–beens. Wolf studied the dusty and smudged plaques, one of them was askew and when she went to straighten it she found the wall safe and it was open. She looked inside and smiled at what she saw. She went back to the kitchen and looked outside. Grover and his friends had all settled into lawn chairs around the barbecue. The evening light was red and fading. Wolf returned to the living room with her purse slung on her shoulder and took all the cash. Behind it she found the master copies of the three gold albums. She smiled and took her lighter from her pocket and opened the metal containers and held the flame over the thin tape until it warped but stopped before it actually caught fire.

She went back to the kitchen and sat down at the table. She opened her purse and thumbed through the cash. It was closer to ten grand than five. If Smitty comes back, it would be enough to get started.

Grover came into the kitchen and startled her, and sat down at the table.

“If you hurt Smitty,” Wolf said, “you aren’t getting anything from me, neither is Max.” Grover smiled. “I’ve never wanted anything in this life that I couldn’t take by force. If I want you, I’ll have you.” He got up and held out his hand.

“C’mon. We’re leaving.”

Max brought the Lincoln from behind the house and picked them up in front. A truck followed them with the dogs in the back.

Wolf could smell a storm was coming and there were no stars or moon. Max passed a semi and Wolf saw the chains dangling from the undercarriage and they made her think of jail, of dungeons, of Smitty. Grover traced his finger over Wolf ’s kneecap and she pushed his hand away. Max watched them in the rearview, cleared his throat and drove faster.

They passed the sign for the Bridger Bowl ski area and followed the winding highway higher still and through a narrow pass and down into another valley that Wolf knew was there but couldn’t see for the darkness. They drove on for another ten minutes or so.

“Here,” Grover said. “ Turn right here.”

Max drove slowly on the single–track. The forest closed in around them. They came to a fork in the road and Max stopped.

“Left,” Grover said.

Max turned left. Wolf didn’t know where she was; the general location, yes, but she didn’t know how to get home, what road to take, who would take her. She figured it didn’t matter where she was. She was in the wrong place and it was probably the wrong time and that was enough.

A pole fence started from the trees and followed the road and ended in a closed steel post and wire gate across the road. Max stopped the car and got out and opened the gate then pulled the car through. They drove another half mile up a slight hill and came to a wayward A–frame hidden in the trees. The house was backlit and Wolf could hear the commotion coming from behind it before they’d even stopped. Cars and pickups lined the road. Max parked the car in a spot between two lodgepoles marked with police tape. A paper plate was spiked to a tree trunk that said, McGee, on it.

“This must be for us,” Max said.

“Must be,” Grover said. “Have the boys warm up Ajax and the rest and feed em then meet us back at the pit. And give Ajax a shot of something to spark him up. He was lazing around earlier like he was sick.” “ We’ll do,” Max said. “ Time for the big show,” Grover said to Wolf.

They got out of the car and went around the side of the house and Grover put his hand on Wolf ’s back and they walked into the light. Wolf was the only woman there. It was all men and boys. The men looked away from the dog pit and each other and stared at her, at Grover. There were bare light bulbs strung across the yard and benches and tables where men were sitting and standing. Dogs were tied to trees and locked in kennels and they were all barking. Music was playing inside the house. Somebody tossed a beer bottle into a large pile of beer bottles and Wolf turned to see who’d thrown it then everyone began talking again.

A fat man in overalls with a straw cowboy hat placed high on his head came toward them. “ Well,” he said.

“The boys are bringing ‘em around,” Grover said. “Eric Bolger, this here is Wolf Anything.” The man took Wolf ’s hand and gently shook it. He had yellow eyes and jaundiced skin and his hand was sweaty. “ You brought a wolf to a dog fight,” Eric Bolger said. He smiled and his teeth were also yellow.

Wolf pulled her hand away and wiped it on her jeans. “ Wait till you see my boy, Ajax,” Grover said. “ You might as well pay me now.” “ You still owe me from last time you were here.

I wouldn’t even joke about me owing you.”

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“I don’t owe you a fucking cent, fat man. I’m doing you a goddamn favor coming out here. Don’t forget that. You’re operating because I let you operate. You hear me?” Grover was talking loud over a lot of loud–talking men and they turned to stare or looked at him sideways as if they were impressed by his strength of voice instead of annoyed at the interruption.

The fat man’s face flushed and he stepped toward Grover then quickly stepped back as Max approached. “Max,” he said. “How are you?”

Max ignored the fat man. “ What do we have?”

Max said to Grover.

“Nothing. Bolger’s blowing off steam. I think Wolf ’s the first female he’s touched in a while.”

“I’m married,” Eric Bolger said.

“The hell you are. Mail order don’t count and neither does blow up.” Max and Grover laughed.

The fat man looked over his shoulder at a shirtless boy raking the fighting ground.

Wolf left the three men to bicker and wandered over to the ring. Three dogs were chained up near the cage door. They sat calmly and watched her approach. Their faces were scarred but they had kind, openhearted eyes, smiling mouths. They didn’t look like killers but Wolf wasn’t naïve enough to think they weren’t capable. She cast a shadow across the dirt and the boy raking turned. He smiled at Wolf and he had nice, square, white teeth and Wolf smiled back at him. He seemed familiar; he reminded her of Smitty, but he was only twelve or thirteen years old. His wrists were smaller than hers.

“I’ve never seen them fight like this before,” she said. “Not in a ring, not for money.”

“They don’t get paid one way or the other.” The boy smiled then became serious. “It’s about like

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you’d expect.” He went back to his raking. “They go for each other and go like hell. All the other dogs get excited at the sounds and the smell of blood. By the time it’s their turn—get out the way.

It can get real bloody sometimes.” He set the rake against the fence, looked at her again. “Sometimes it’s almost sad.” “ Why’s that?”

“If they don’t want to fight and they have to, or if they want to keep fighting but their too hurt and they can’t. Then it’s sad.”

“Maybe they’d be better off as pets, as normal dogs. You ever think of that?”

“No, most of em live for this. They live to fight.

Sometimes they just forget.” He nodded at the dogs chained up to the hogwire fence. “ You watch, the winner’ll be happy. One dog’ll be dead and the other dog will be happy, like proud.”

Wolf couldn’t help but smile at the boy’s frailty, his gentle manner and the way it clashed with what he was saying.

Grover came and caught Wolf by the elbow. The boy stepped back and looked at Grover. “I got a dog coming around that’s ready,” Grover said to the boy. “Get everything in line and let’s get this thing going. All right? You know what you’re doing?” “ Yes, sir.”

Grover let go of Wolf and walked a few steps away then turned and faced the boy again. “How can your old man be so fat and unlikable when you’re so skinny and well goddamned behaved?”

The boy didn’t answer. He stared coolly at Grover.

“I’m not really asking you. I know why you’re skinny and your old man’s fat, and I know why

you’re worth a shit and he ain’t.” Grover turned and smiled at Wolf and she looked at the ground. “ You know a lot,” the boy said.

“I’m fucking omniscient,” Grover said loudly.

“Fucking omnipotent.”

“Impotent,” Wolf said under her breath. “ Try me,” Grover said.

Wolf walked away and Grover didn’t follow her.

Ajax was killed by a clip–eared pitbull that could’ve been his twin except for the different colorings; Ajax was white while the winner was brindled. At times it was like watching a lone dog fight a mirror.

Max went into the ring and hauled the dead dog out by the scruff of its neck and its tail and pitched it off into the trees, ropes of blood trailing from its torn throat. Men exchanged money. Grover was red–faced; he drank deeply from his bottle of whiskey.

Two more dogs were brought into the ring. Their handlers didn’t have to get them riled for all the blood in the dirt and in the air. They were slathering and electric. The handlers unhitched them and jumped from the ring. The dogs careened off one another then joined and curled like snakes, dust roiled and blood matted in their fur; tight and powerful, their jaws snapped shut with the sound of falling trees. Closer and closer they joined until one went weak and the snarl went to a yelp and it cried, its leg twitching. The fight was over.

The boy and a few other men went into the ring and cleared it.

The fat man came and stood next to Grover. “ You’re taking that thing with you,” the fat man said of Ajax’s corpse.

“No, I’ll leave him there.” He held the bottle in his right hand, swaying slightly. He reached be-

hind his back and into his belt and grabbed his pistol and held it up and looked at it. He took a drink of the whiskey then dropped the bottle and put the pistol in his right hand. He pointed it at the fat man from the hip and leaned toward him.

“I don’t like you. I never have.”

Max came up beside Grover and spoke quietly to him but loud enough that Wolf could hear. “Most of the boys went back to Brown’s,” Max said. “ We could lose a fight here if you start one.”

“It ain’t a fight,” Grover said. “He ain’t armed.

It’s a massacre.”

Wolf made her way quietly away from Grover and Max and the pit. She stood in the shadow of the trees next to the house. Grover put the gun to the fat man’s chest and pushed it into his flesh until he stepped back then Grover lowered the gun and smiled.

Everyone had been watching the ring and the next two dogs that were set to fight then someone noticed Grover had a gun, then everybody did and it got very quiet and still. The whimpering and barking of the dogs was the only sound. Then there was the sound of running footsteps and Grover raised the gun again. Somebody fired from the darkness and Max twisted around then straightened out and checked himself and there was a hole in his jacket but he was fine. He took his pistol from his waistband. The fat man came at Grover and Grover stumbled back and shot him. The fat man pressed his hands to his chest and made a gurgling sound and tipped over. Someone, the boy, the fat man’s son, screamed then there were a lot of gunshots back and forth between Grover and the boy and Max and the boy. Men parted and one fell to the ground hit by a stray bullet. Others ran

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away to the trees. The wounded man got up and limped into the trees.

It ended abruptly and there was no more shooting. Grover was bleeding from his cheek where a bullet had grazed him. Max came up behind him and put his hand on his shoulder and looked at the cut. Grover pushed him away and told him to get the fuck off a me. Cars and trucks sped from the house and the air was thick with dust. Nobody had taken their dogs with them when they ran and one of them was shot in the hip and it whined and barked, and the other dogs barked at its whining.

The boy was hidden in shadows. He called out to Grover to go ahead and kill him and Grover told the boy he was empty. “I’m outta shells, kid. You got me.”

The boy told Grover to reload. Max palmed Grover a loaded cylinder for his .38. Grover told the boy he didn’t have anything to reload with and nonchalantly reloaded. The boy said he didn’t care and came forward into the light, his cheeks streaked with tears and a neat, black hole in his stomach barely bleeding at all. “ Warren,” the fat man said. Max, startled by the fat man’s voice, stepped away at an off angle toward the boy. “ Warren,” the fat man repeated. The boy called out that he was right here. “Go. Get outta here,” the fat man said to his son. “Go on. Go in the house.”

Wolf had her back to the tree. Grover and Max were watching the fat man then the boy, back and forth. She could feel her feet inside of her shoes and her pants on her legs, but she was frozen. Take one step then you’ll be fine. Just one step. She knew what she had to do. It was like jumping off a cliff but she did it and like anything it got easier and she walked carefully and as quietly as she

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could and snuck up behind Grover and tried to jerk the pistol out of his hand but he held onto it.

He looked at her with a look of profound sadness then snatched her by the hair and twisted her down, and trained the gun on her face.

Max had his back to Grover and didn’t see what was happening. He said something to the boy about taking it easy. The boy stepped to the side a little and he must’ve seen Wolf on the ground and Grover above her with his gun drawn because he raised his gun and Max easily shot the boy dead.

Max turned and saw what Grover was doing. The two men met eyes.

“No,” Grover said.

Max hesitated then lowered his gun.

Grover looked at the boy then back at Wolf. She felt as if her blood was already pouring from her body. She saw the muscles in Grover’s forearm tense.

Max raised his gun and shot Grover twice and he twisted to the ground and tried to get up and Max shot him again and he was still. The dogs barked and whined. Max took Wolf by the arm and shoved her in the direction of the car. She looked back and she could see the bottoms of the dead boy’s shoes. She began to cry then she ran. Max chased her. She ran until she came to the fence and Max caught her and threw her down in the grass. He stood over her.

“I’ll do anything,” he said. “I just did. I killed my best friend. I’ve known him longer than I’ve known anyone in my whole life. He gave me everything I got.”

She was going to be sick. “The boy. You killed the boy.” “ We shouldn’t be here. Get up. We need to leave.”

Wolf stood and threw up and Max waited then he marched her back to the car and shoved her in.

He got in the driver’s seat and started the car and turned on the headlights. The paper plate that said McGee on it was still nailed to the tree.

“I didn’t want to do that. I shouldn’t have.” Max had his head down. It was the first time that he’d ever seemed small to her. She was crying and couldn’t stop. Her hands were shaking too badly to roll down the window. She couldn’t breathe. She scratched at the door trying to find the switch for the window then found it. She drank in the air. It started to rain. One drop then another then it broke loose and washed all the dust from the windshield. Max turned on the wipers. The car still hadn’t moved. “ Why’d he have his gun on you?” Max said.

She couldn’t speak and there was nothing to say.

Max eventually put the car in gear and drove.

The roar of forklifts and other trucks and the various voices of men came into the open door wholesale and indecipherable. Smitty still didn’t have his legs under him. He’d thrown up the water he drank and the fumes from the barrels were making him feel like he might do it again. Nobody came to unload the truck.

He waited. He was starving. There was a lull in the noise that he took rightly for a shift change and hopped down out of the truck onto the loading dock and tried to figure out where he was. There were some mountains in the distance, some trees. He knew he was still in Montana but that was about it. The air smelled good and sweet outside of the truck and it cooled the burning in his lungs. He went to the side door of the warehouse and peeked inside. It was empty. The door was unlocked and he ducked into the warehouse and went into the first door he came to inside and there found rows upon rows of lockers and down the hall, showers and a laundry room. Smitty smiled at his luck and shrugged off his jumpsuit and pulled on a pair of filthy coveralls and a pair of boots from on top of someone’s locker.

He had his foot up on the bench tying his boot when three men came into the locker room and one of them said he’d missed the safety meeting and Smitty nodded like he knew already and didn’t care. The men took off their shoes and opened their lockers and brought out their work clothes and coveralls and work boots.

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“Fuck safety,” Smitty said to them after a while and the men laughed. “ You’re gonna last a long time with an attitude like that,” the older of the three men said.

“Fuck lasting,” Smitty said, and the men all laughed harder.

The men introduced themselves and Smitty told them his name was Bill and it was his first day.

“How’d you get so dirty when you haven’t even worked yet?” the older man asked, still smiling, open–faced and easy.

“How do you ever get laid being so ugly?” Smitty said.

The men quit smiling then one of them laughed but it was a mean laugh.

“I’m joking, fellas,” Smitty said. “See ya out there.” He went out the door and down the ramp.

One of the company pickups parked in front of the job trailer had the keys still in it and Smitty stole it and drove out the unattended gates. He kept the setting sun to his right, heading south and fast.

At the first big interstate gas station he came to he left the warehouse truck behind a giant propane tank and went inside and asked the clerk where he was and she told him without any emotion at all and Smitty left her and went and shoplifted a sandwich and went to the bathroom and ate it. He came out and walked everyplace like he was late for work. He fit in, everyone in the truck stop looked late getting somewhere, or at least in a hurry to get away from this particular place.

The trucker that Smitty talked into giving him a ride was from North Dakota and he didn’t say much else than that. Smitty slept in the cab beside him and dreamed of his father and woke up angry.

He looked at the trucker. I could be him, he thought.

I could have his fat stomach and his loneliness.

“ What’re you staring at?”

“Nothing, friend. Nothing to speak of.”

Smitty was dropped off outside of Red Lodge and walked the rest of the way into town. Cars passed him and he kept his head down. There wasn’t much traffic, it was late, cold.

The police station was downtown and it was easy for Smitty to act like he was looking in on the restaurants and bars, maybe considering having a drink or a late meal while he kept an eye on the cops coming and going. He didn’t see his father.

He could’ve been transferred already. No wife, no kids; they’d move a cop wherever they wanted if he didn’t have family. He could’ve remarried. After what the old lady did to him, Smitty doubted it.

The son of a bitch might turn me in. Shoot me and call it self–defense.

A state patrol car pulled into the lot and his father got out. Smitty hopped down from the boardwalk and over a rotting pole fence and waded through the grass toward him. He wanted to call out to him before he made it to the door but his mouth was dry. He couldn’t speak. The grass seeds jabbed his forearms and stuck to his clothes.

The old man’s hair had gone gray and he had a potbelly. Smitty jogged the last few yards out of the grass and climbed over another low, hogwire fence. Derek Bruner Sr. turned when he heard the fence wires stretch. The parking lot was well lit.

They were alone.

“It’s me,” Smitty said.

“I know who it is.” His father checked over his shoulder and pointed toward a rusty metal shed in a vacant lot beyond the police station. “Come on,” he said. Smitty and his father walked abreast to the shed and once they were in the back and the old man had had a good look at his son he pushed

him in the chest and knocked him down and pinned his head against a railroad tie buried in the grass.

“Remember the last time I saw you?” the old man said, and settled his weight down on Smitty’s face. “ You hit me with a snow shovel. My own son.”

Smitty couldn’t get his air and he couldn’t nod.

The old man let off and he rolled flat onto his back and used the railroad tie for a pillow. He was too tired to fight.

“I didn’t want to come here.” “ Well, you aren’t completely stupid, I guess.”

“Not completely.”

Derek Bruner Sr. got up and stood back and waited for Smitty to get to his feet. He didn’t offer to help. “ You’re a felon on the loose and I’m a cop, Derek.”

“I didn’t kill that guy in Hyalite. So you know.”

“Maybe you should’ve put up more of a fight when they charged you then.” “ What do you know what I should’ve?” “ You’re my son and people know it. They’d have told me even if I didn’t bother to read the papers.”

“It was McGee that put me up to it. He had that cop in his pocket. I got railroaded, or I railroaded myself.” “ Why in the name of all that’s holy would you do that?”

“It’s complicated. They were gonna hurt Wolf.

They said the cop was gonna turn or something after I was locked up for awhile and they’d let me out. I don’t know what they would’ve done to her.

What was I supposed to do?”

“Did she set you up?”

“No, it wasn’t her.”

“Did she help you out with your little jailbreak?”

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“No,” Smitty said. Another cop car pulled into the parking lot and Smitty’s father took him by the elbow and pushed him against the back wall of the shed. “Quiet,” his father said. Smitty could smell his old man. He remembered their house in Bozeman and the old man coming out of the bathroom after a shower, tearing through the steam. The car doors slammed in the parking lot then the back door of the police station squealed as it opened and closed and Smitty’s father let him go. “ Who helped you break out?”

“Nobody. I did it myself.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m not stupid.”

“A lot of smart men have been locked up in that prison. None a them got out.”

“It doesn’t make me smarter, Pop. It was my whole life. I was looking at my whole life in there.”

“I guess that’d make you try something.”

“Damn right.”

“Damn Straight.”

“Shit.” “ Yeah, listen, I need to get in there and check out for the night. Wait for me under the water tower at the top of the hill.” Smitty’s father pointed to the rising moon and the silhouette of the tower against it. “I’ll pick you up.” “ You aren’t gonna sick your boys on me are you?”

The old man put his hand on Smitty’s shoulder.

“I don’t hate you half as much as you hate me. I never have. You’re my son.” There was a long awkward silence and Smitty could hardly stand it. He couldn’t look at the old man, couldn’t drag up whatever he’d pushed down for so long to look at him. He turned and waded through the fields of deep grass then gained the road that wound up

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the hill and walked toward the swelling moon. His feet were heavy and he was hungry.

Beneath the water tower there was a dirty couch and large pile of beer cans. Smitty tested the couch for moisture, sniffed at it, and sat down. He surprised himself and fell asleep. His father woke him up and gave him a jacket and they walked back to his pickup and got in. The old man turned up the heater. Smitty held his hands over it. His hands were stiff. He felt like a child again and taken care of and it was a relief.

“I’m sorry I was so long,” the old man said. “I was on the phone with some folks I still talk to in Bozeman. They’re bringing in the suits to look for you.”

“Christ, I’m cold.”

“Sorry.”

“I wasn’t blaming you.” “ You heard me, though? About the FBI.” “I heard you.”

“They’ll come to my place.”

“I won’t be staying. I just need to get my head right and I’ll be moving on.”

“I’ll do whatever I can, Derek. Whatever you need.”

Smitty sat back against the seat and looked at his father. “Can you give me a pistol?”

“Derek.”

“I’m going to find Wolf. I’ll be up against McGee and all of em.”

“I don’t want you dead.” “ You can count on it if I’m not armed.”

The night went by outside in the flash of cutbank hills and pale fence posts. They passed an abandoned car on the side of the road with no one around it. Smitty’s father slowed like he might stop then looked at his son and sped up again. The

ground beyond the reach of the headlights was blue in the moon and starlight. The road was rough for being paved and the two men jostled around in the cab. After a while they turned onto a narrow dirt road and drove for a couple of miles and crossed over a cattle guard and parked in front door of a sorry, tilting shack with a large, blue jackrabbit painted on the front. There was a rusted woodstove in the yard being swallowed up by the soft earth and a derelict motorcycle tipped on its side. The old man turned off the truck. “ What’s this place?” Smitty said.

“I married again. I have a wife at home. I couldn’t take you to my house. Esther works at the department with me.”

“All right,” Smitty said. “I don’t think I want to know more than that.”

“Fine. Fine. Jesus. No one’s gonna bother you out here. The guy that owns the place, Marmot they call him, he wrapped his truck around a bridge abutment trying to outrun me. He’s in the hospital with a half–inch crack in his forehead. He kept an apartment in town. Nobody knows about this place.”

“No friends?”

“None that’ll bother coming out here. He had two buddies with him and they’re locked up.”

“Let’s have a look.”

They got out of the truck and Smitty opened the front door and a bare wire shocked him when he flipped the light switch. He rubbed his hand against his leg. “Hell,” Smitty said. “Nice place.”

“Don’t be ungrateful,” his father said, the old anger.

“I’m not. I’m just saying, a guy named Marmot with a jackrabbit painted on his house. Ya know?”

The old man smiled. “I know.”

There wasn’t much for food, some beans and suspect bacon, a few eggs, but there was whiskey so they had a drink then Smitty’s father told him goodnight and that he’d come back in the morning and left. Smitty poured himself another drink and started a fire in the new–looking woodstove and it smelled of dust and first–burned metal. He had another drink then started digging through Marmot’s things.

By morning he’d found enough cash to travel and a cheap Makarov 9mm with a couple of shells.

He dressed in Marmot’s clothes and cut his hair with Marmot’s scissors. He hid the things he’d found and waited for his father to arrive, too hungry to sleep, too lazy to cook. He rubbed his stomach and felt the muscles, felt his ribs.

His father didn’t show up with the sun and Smitty fell asleep in a chair in the kitchen. He woke up to the sound of a car door slamming. He stood and looked out the window. It was a cop car and it scared him but his father was walking toward the shack alone. Smitty opened the door and his father handed him a paper bag with a burger and fries in it.

“Sorry I’m late. I got stuck working an accident.”

“Duty first.” They went inside and Smitty sat at the table and ate. “ You find enough to get you out of town?” his father asked. Smitty chewed and looked at his father. The old man took out his wallet. “Did he have cash or do you need some?”

“He had cash.”

“Guns?” “ Yeah.”

“Leave it here and I’ll let you take the bike.”

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“I don’t want the bike.” Smitty went to the kitchen and brought the gun and the money he’d found and put it on the table. “That was all of it.” “ You should take the bike.”

“I’ll take the bus. I don’t need to be on a motorcycle that looks like that. I’d get pulled over in the first five minutes.”

“They’ll recognize you on the bus. Your picture’s been everywhere.”

“I’ll chance it.” “ When are you leaving?”

Smitty scraped the last of the fries together and ate them in one big bite. His father watched him.

“I’ll stay one more night.”

“I’ll take you to the bus station.”

“I’ll walk.”

“I’ll take you.”

“Thanks.”

“I can’t have you sitting in town all day waiting for a bus.” His father poured himself a splash of whiskey into the same glass he’d drank from the night before. He held the bottle out for Smitty and Smitty took it and drank and put the bottle down in front of his father.

“Thanks, Pop,” Smitty said after a while. “ Yep.” The old man poured himself another.

“Still on duty, aren’t you?”

“Being drunk might make a good defense.”

“I don’t want to get you in trouble.” “ You won’t.”

“I didn’t have any place else to go.”

“I’m glad you came.”

“Nah.” “I am.” He swirled his drink in his glass and looked into it. “They’ll put you back in Deer Lodge.”

“If they catch me.”

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“And if you kill McGee they won’t ever let you out.”

“They should give me a medal.”

“Maybe.”

“McGee’s gonna be sorry he ever met me.”

“There are three other directions you could take and not ever go back there.”

“Not without Wolf.”

“Then call her when you get settled and she can meet you.”

“That’s chickenshit and you know it.” Smitty took up the bottle.

His father rubbed his hand over his jaw like it was hurt. “I have to get back to work.”

“OK.” The old man stood and picked up the gun and went to the door.

“Leave me the gun, Pop.” “I can’t do that.” His uniform fit poorly and he moved with a certain discomfort. “Think about going the other way. Think about doing something else.”

“I already did.” “ Well, do it again.”

“All right.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See ya.”

After he’d gone Smitty fed the fire and shut the damper then lay down on the couch and slept. He woke up after it was dark and turned on the kitchen light with the revelation of calling Wolf but there was no phone and no phone jack anywhere on the walls. He found a phone book in one of the cupboards and threw it down on the floor and kicked the cabinet door shut and broke the door and kicked it again and splintered it. He shut off the light again and went back to the couch and

tried to go back to sleep but couldn’t. He wondered what he should do about Berg. It wasn’t like he had a choice either. Grover had threatened Dawn. He did it for money and probably didn’t get a dime. If I was grown up about this I’d just let him slip. Grover too, he thought. Not that grown up. Why would you have a phone book and no phone? He got back up and went to the kitchen again and got a drink of water then went outside in his bare feet and pissed on the motorcycle in the yard.

In the morning he put on his boots and waited.

He did some pushups and some sit–ups and hung from a doorjamb to stretch his back. He went out the back door and the sky was clear and settled, the wind hadn’t started yet. He kicked around the tall grass looking at the dozens of empty shell casings left there and found a trail and followed it with nothing better to do up the hill then down into a dry creek bed beyond.

Upstream a little ways he found a jumbled rock and mud and wood dam with a tepid pool of water behind it swarming with bugs of all kinds. A rope tied to a tree on the bank disappeared into the murk. Smitty pulled it out and found a deflated inner tube on the other end. He didn’t bother pulling it on to the bank and it sank back down and disappeared. His hands were muddy from the rope. A neat pile of beer bottles was stacked in a crack in the rocks and Smitty imagined this was where Marmot came to relax. He couldn’t help but smile thinking about it. He went upstream a little ways but didn’t want to miss his father if he showed up so he went back to the house.

In the afternoon he was sitting on the front steps and he heard the approaching car long before he saw it and went inside and gathered up his things and waited at the table. His father waved him out-

side and Smitty climbed in the backseat. When they got closer to town he lay down. “ We aren’t going to be able to say anything when I drop you off so this is goodbye.”

“All right,” Smitty said. “Thanks.”

His father pulled the car to the side of the road, turned stiffly in his seat. “ You take care.”

“I will.”

His father drove on for another ten minutes or so then stopped. Smitty opened the door to get out.

“Hang on.” “ What?” “ You don’t even know where you are.” “ Well, where am I?” “ Two blocks west of the bus depot. It’s not a station; it’s just a store. Rowdy’s, it’s called.” He passed Smitty Marmot’s pistol wrapped in a blue bandana.

“Thanks, Pops. It means a lot, you helping me.

I’ll see ya.” Smitty got out of the car. His father pulled away as soon as the door shut.

Smitty walked slowly, casually with his head down and his hands in his pockets, the pistol in one of them. At the convenience store he bought a ticket to Bozeman and waited on the side of the building for the bus to arrive. Nobody talked to him or even looked at him. He watched a white cat near the dumpster catch a bright green grasshopper and after much nipping and batting and flipping it in the air, settle down on its haunches and daintily eat it. The bus arrived with a great disturbing roar and hiss of brakes. Smitty gave the driver his ticket and got on.

Derek Bruner Sr. drove to the police station and parked in the back lot. He sat in his car. He thought of his son as a small boy. He had a terrible feeling that his boy was going to be killed. He wanted to go

43

back and get him but he couldn’t. The police station

loomed, the radio crackled and he switched it off.

He got out of the car and straightened his belt. He was looking down the barrel of a ten–hour shift.

The building was four stories tall and made of brick. The beauty parlor was on the ground floor and had windows that faced Main Street. Wolf ’s apartment was on the top floor and her windows faced east. She could see the mountains from the fire escape.

“I don’t want you to come inside,” she said. “I want to be alone.”

“It’s too late for that. You’re with me now.” Max got out and came around and opened the door and took Wolf by the arm. “Let’s go.”

Wolf told him she didn’t have her keys; that she must’ve lost them. She acted like she was looking through her purse. Max tried to take it from her so he could look but she snatched it away and ran. He followed her at a slow walk. She tried all the doors then told Max she could break in. “ What time do they open the beauty shop?” he said. “ Ten, maybe a little earlier.”

“How do you break in?”

“It’s easy.” “ Well do it then. I don’t want to stand out here.”

Wolf slung her purse across her chest and had Max give her a boost on top of the dumpster and from there she could just barely jump out and catch the hanging fire escape ladder. She climbed up and made it to the first landing and pulled the ladder up after her.

“I’m not letting you in,” Wolf said.

“If I have to wait for Cindy to open up, I’ll come up those stairs like a train.” “ Why don’t you yell a little louder?”

“I can call Felix and have him bring me the keys.”

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“Call him.”

“I could kick the door in.”

“Do your best, asshole,” Wolf said, suddenly feeling brave and free. She turned and climbed the rest of the way up the fire escape to her apartment window and opened it and went inside. It was a dark clean place with some mildew in the bathroom that made the apartment smell a little. She sat down in her chair by the window and looked out to the alley but couldn’t see the ground from where she was; she assumed Max was still there.

So this is what it’s come to. Some backward Rapunzel fairy tale with Max like a shark–filled moat keeping me in and Smitty out. Where art thou, Smitt? Broke out of prison, my love. The dead boy.

She was crying. The awful dead boy. The sun had risen above the mountains and it shown through the dirty window glass and made shapes on the wall. Cindy would come in to open the shop and Max would come up the stairs. Wolf had knives and she stood up and went to the kitchen and found the largest, not necessarily the sharpest, but the biggest, scariest one she had.

The dresser was heavy but she managed to slide it in front of the door and the bed after it. She sat down with her feet on the bed and watched the door but she was impatient and went to the window and looked out to see if Max was still there and he wasn’t. She went back to the bed and took the money from her purse and looked at it. The fear she felt looking at it was the same fear Smitty had felt. It made him seem very close. She put the money away and picked up the phone and called Anton. She didn’t have anyone else.

The sun was full up and she knew the hair shop would open soon. Traffic noise came in waves, voices in the alley. She stayed on the bed, ready to

go out the window if Max came to the door but he never did. Instead there was a loud clank and the fire escape rattled and Wolf went to the window and Boise Brown was there in the alley climbing an extension ladder with Felix on the ground holding on to it so it wouldn’t tip. There was a pickup parked behind them and Wolf recognized it to be one of Max’s. She shut the window and locked it and pushed the bed out of the way and couldn’t get the dresser to slide so she pushed it over and opened the door. She still had the knife in her hand and the hallway was dark compared to the sunlit window and someone was there and it had to be Max right there in front of her and she stabbed her big knife right into the center of him all the way to the handle and let go. She was knocked back into the apartment and tripped over the dresser and fell onto the floor. It was Smitty on top of her, holding her with a look of joy and a look of terror all across his face.

“I’m not dead,” he said first, and Wolf screamed and kept screaming while Smitty rolled off and the knife came out of him and fell to the floor. “Ah, Wolf,” he said.

Brown was at the window then yelling for Felix to get up here—you got to see this. Hurry up. He didn’t even try to open the window. He squatted down and grinned. Wolf picked up the bloody knife and threw it at him but missed the window and it hit the wall and bounced and landed on the floor. She pulled Smitty to his feet and pushed on the knife hole and the blood squished out and ran over her hand like she’d squeezed a paint–filled sponge. He leaned on her. “ Wolf,” he said.

She grabbed her purse and they went down the stairs miraculously taking the steps in twos and threes and in full stumbling pitches that ended in

a wall. They walked into the beauty parlor and the women stared then screamed at the blood, screamed when it dripped and mixed with the cut hair on the floor. Smitty smiled, nodded. “Morning, ladies.” On the street the day was bright and shimmering, sun on the mountains and sunflashes on windshields. Max and Felix were waiting by the front door.

“Keep walking,” Smitty whispered in Wolf ’s ear.

He tried to pull away but she pulled him close and wouldn’t let go. He took out Marmot’s pistol and held it at his side.

“Boy, she gutted ya, didn’t she?” Felix said.

“It’s not her fault,” Smitty said.

“Drop him,” Max said to Wolf. “Drop him and come with me. He’s a dead end. He’s always been a dead end. He’ll never learn.”

Wolf shook her head and didn’t speak. Smitty pointed his gun at Max as they walked by. Max watched them coldly but didn’t say anything else. “ You’ll be dead in half an hour,” Felix said. “ You’re dying, Smitty.”

Smitty stopped and pointed the gun at Felix. “I know what I’m doing, you fucking halfwit.”

Felix shrugged his shoulders.

They walked on. The women came from the beauty parlor and watched them go. It seemed to take a very long time to get around the corner and away from everybody. After a while he turned and no one was behind them. He looked down at his stomach. “ You couldn’t find a bigger knife?”

“Don’t say that. I thought you were Max. I couldn’t see you.”

“I’m not mad, baby. I hardly feel it. Where’s Grover?”

She told him what Max had done, about the boy.

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Smitty was relieved. He couldn’t believe it. But what boy? Max killed Grover McGee. Grover was dead. He shoved the gun in his belt, pulled his shirt over it. He was clear. He was bleeding to death, but he was clear.

They walked in step toward the river, in the general direction of the hospital, but that was a long way away. People drove by and stared. A woman in a van with kids stopped and asked the only question. “Are you OK?” “Can you give us a ride?” Wolf said. “ We’re fine,” Smitty said to the woman. “ We’re not,” Wolf said.

The woman rolled up her window. The two children in the back watched them and didn’t blink or shut their mouths or move. The van drove away.

“I called Anton,” Wolf said. “She said she was going to call Berg.” “ What good could from that?”

“I didn’t know what Max would do. I needed help. I needed protection. Maybe Berg could help us. He could get you to the hospital at least.”

“I’m not going.”

“I have some money. I stole it from Grover.”

Smitty smiled. “Let’s sit down over there. Let’s just sit,” he said. There was a park across the street with a large covered building in the center as big as an airplane hangar with a concrete floor that had once been used for roller–skating but no longer was. There was a picnic table inside and Smitty sat down there in the shade. Wolf tried to pull him to his feet but he wouldn’t get up. She took off his shirt and pressed it on his stomach.

The puncture wasn’t bleeding fast but it was steady.

She turned him sideways on the bench and got behind him and hugged the shirt to him as hard as she could. A police car pulled brazenly onto the

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park grass and drove over to them. It was Berg and he helped Smitty into the back and Wolf got in beside him.

“I can’t go to the hospital,” Smitty said.

“Sure you can,” Berg said.

“They’ll send me back. I can’t.” “ You’ll die if you don’t,” Berg said.

“Then I’ll die.”

They were going fast now and Smitty felt a familiar fading sensation, he felt emptied out and lost. It will be Wolf ’s fault if he died. It can’t be Wolf ’s fault. He uncurled his hand from Wolf ’s and reached behind his back and rested his hand on the door lever. He braced his foot on the floor so he could push himself free.

“I’m not going to the hospital,” Smitty said. “ Yes, you are. We’re going together. We’re almost there.”

“Don’t cry.”

“I can’t,” she said. “Drive faster,” she screamed at Berg.

“I’m going,” Smitty said, and pulled the door handle and kicked as hard as he could and slammed into the door but the door didn’t give. “ What’re you doing?” Wolf said. “ Were you gonna jump out? Why?” “Door’s locked,” Smitty said. He’d hurt his shoulder.

“It’s a cop car, you dumbass,” Berg said. “ You can’t just open the back door. I got a lock up here.”

Smitty laughed at himself, at the immensity of the pain in his stomach and now his shoulder. He leaned his head against Wolf and she held him.

They passed the sign for the emergency room. She was telling him about burning the masters, about destroying Grover McGee’s music, and Smitty smiled like he might smile at a nice sunset. He

vowed that this would be the last time he’d ever ride in a cop car. Wolf was talking. What was she saying? He couldn’t hear her. He studied her lips and made sense of the words. “ We can go to the ocean now, baby. We can go to the ocean.”

—eH