Authors: Virginia Swift
She hung up the phone and looked down at the bed. Hawk was gazing up at her, seeing through her, holding her with his eyes. “I’m afraid to ask,” he said.
She told him what Brit had said. He took her hand, kept looking at her, said nothing.
“How in the world do the cops stand it?” she said, her voice rising. “You and I wandered into this hideousness completely by accident. All we wanted to do was take a walk in the mountains. It wasn’t like we were looking for trouble. But guys like Dickie and Scotty Atkins have to live with every horrible, awful thing humans are capable of doing and thinking and saying. All the time. It comes with the job.”
“Walk away,” Hawk said simply. “Let them do what we pay them to do.”
“That would be the sensible thing,” Sally conceded.
“We both suffer from the delusion that there’s something we know, or can do, or have to do, to help,” Hawk said. “For me it started with finding the body. That made this thing personal.” He pulled Sally down next to him, put his arm around her, wrapping her close. “You know, Dickie amazes me. I don’t know how he manages to stay on the wagon, living with what he’s seen.”
“Then again,” Sally pointed out, “however tough it is staying clean, he sure knows the alternative. Imagine what he must have gone through, all those years he was on the run and at the end of his rope. And after all that, he came back sober and applied to the police academy. He looks cuddly but he’s a tough mother.”
“And how about Scotty?” Hawk asked her, his eyes very steady on hers.
“Tough. Not cuddly,” said Sally shortly.
“Looks like his job cost him his marriage. Wonder what else it costs,” Hawk mused.
“Too much,” said Sally, kissing him and snuggling down into the curve of his arm.
Hawk’s other hand slipped under her shirt. She felt the warmth of his palm, moving on her stomach, circling higher.
“You know, I really ought to get up and go over to Edna’s, see if Sheldon’s still around,” Sally told Hawk, and then sighed as he unsnapped her bra.
“Be reasonable,” he said. “If Sheldon’s there, he’ll just make you mad. If he’s gone and left a mess, that’ll piss you off too. There’s no hurry about getting over there to clean it up.”
“But maybe we should talk to him about the problem with his land,” Sally insisted.
“We could tell Sheldon his hair was on fire,” Hawk said, nibbling her neck, “and if he didn’t feel like hearing it, he wouldn’t pay any attention even when his head was burning.”
His logic was persuasive. So was his hand, and his busy fingers, and the fact that he’d thrown a leg over one of hers and was pressed against her in a most intriguing and inviting way. She could feel the warmth spread from Hawk to her, and gave it back with a kiss, beginning slow and soft. She seduced his mouth with her mouth. She reveled in the sweet heat of kissing her lover.
After a time she wanted more. She wanted to look at him, and touch him, to enjoy him completely, in the golden light of the passing afternoon. Hawk seemed content with the lazy pace of the way she made love to him, encouraging her with his own gentle, persistent overtures. She could feel the hardness of him through his jeans. “You want to be inside me,” she whispered.
“I want whatever you want,” he murmured back, his breath warm in her ear, a finger rubbing over her lips. “Take your time. I’m loving this.”
If she could have, she’d have stroked and kissed him for hours. One part of desire wanted just that. The other had claws, and no patience. “I need to see more of you,” she told him. “Take off your shirt.”
He did. And smiled slowly. “Aren’t we supposed to be in the place where the women are strong, and the men are equal?” he teased. When he pulled her T-shirt over her head, peeled her out of her bra, pushed her back down on the pillows and bent his head to her breasts, nuzzling, suckling, she groaned and strained up against him.
“I know you’re supposed to be doing me,” he said softly, “but I’m having a hard time controlling my urges. You’ll understand, won’t you?” he asked, fingers working on the buttons of her jeans.
“I’ll be very understanding,” she said, her own hands shaking as he finished the job, and slid his fingers down.
“Conserving underwear,” he said a moment later, “very sensible.”
Sally was anything but sensible as she freed him from his jeans, as he dragged hers all the way off. She was too impatient to return the favor, but now she rolled on top of him, and had him where she wanted him. “I think you’re going to like this,” she said, kissing her way down his chest and belly, slow and deliberate.
“Oh man. Nice mouth,” was all he could say when she reached her goal.
They were both shaking a little when she finally got his pants off, slid back up his body, and took him in. She remembered her resolution to go slow and gentle. Her intentions were noble, but soon it seemed that nothing could get in the way of a burgeoning desire to see if she could make him scream.
“There’s a lot to be said for sexual escapism,” Hawk said, after a while.
“Works for me,” Sally agreed.
“I’ve been thinking about Sheldon,” he allowed.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” she told him.
“Not for long,” he said, “just the past second or so.”
“And what are you thinking?” she asked.
Hawk rolled onto his side and leaned on one arm, looking at her. “I should probably go over to Edna’s with you, and if he’s there, try to talk to him about the ground-water problem. The worst he can do is blow us off.”
“Only a little while ago you thought Sheldon could wait.” Sally smiled.
“Changed my mind,” said Hawk.
She gave him a half smile. “A lot of women who’d just screwed a man halfway comatose would be insulted at the thought that he could switch from senselessness to contemplating the fate of the earth, in the space of just that second or so. But not me. I admire that kind of obsessive-compulsive move.”
“You’re my role model,” he said, hauling himself out of bed and giving her a smacking kiss. “You’ve got great moves.”
The good news: Sheldon was sitting in a lawn chair by the picnic table in Edna and Tom’s backyard, staring up into the crown of the sheltering cottonwood. On the ground next to him was a packed duffel bag.
The bad news: He was guzzling wine out of a Mason jar, and Sally recognized the label on the bottle. Edna had a friend who ran a boutique winery in Napa Valley, a man who had made a quasi-religion of the mysterious California zinfandel grape. Edna had put down a bottle of the angelic inaugural 1989 vintage for a fitting occasion—say, the Second Coming. Not only had Sheldon cracked it open—he’d managed to shove the cork down in the bottle, and the jar he was just refilling had small, blasphemous pieces of cork floating a quarter of an inch below the screw-top.
Now
that
would be hard to find on the Net.
“I know you’re eager to get me out of here, and as you can see, I’m packed and ready to go,” Sheldon told Sally. “You’ll be glad to hear that I’ve found a place to stay tonight. Dwayne and Nattie have kindly offered to put me up.”
“Isn’t that nice?” Sally said, too sweetly. “I thought you’d turned in your report to Carhart today. How come you’re sticking around?”
Sheldon took a gulp of the zin, and then looked up with a weak smile. “Don’t want to miss the big party of the week.”
“Now which party would that be?” Sally asked. “The one for the benefit of the women’s shelter, or the one you and your partners are going to throw in celebration of cheating an elderly woman out of her home?”
“Sal . . .” said Hawk, putting a hand on her arm.
“Lay off, Hawk. I want to know, right now, what the hell you’re up to, Sheldon. We’ve found out some things that make us think you’re not just here playing with yourself.”
“There’s no need for you to question the legitimacy of my ethnographic research project,” Sheldon said, affront in every word.
“That’s enough!” Hawk spat. “I refuse to listen to even one minute of horseshit. Just answer one question, Stover—yes or no, do you own the land up at Happy Jack that the investors’ group is proposing to swap for Molly Wood’s place in Centennial Valley?”
Sheldon ran his finger around the edge of his Mason jar. “For the moment,” he finally answered.
Sally was ready to explode, but Hawk cut her off. “By that I take it to mean that the deal hasn’t been finalized.”
“In a world of uncertainty such as ours, nothing can truly be finalized,” Sheldon pronounced.
“I said no horseshit.” Hawk spoke slowly and quietly. “Facts here, Stover. You believe that the swap will go through, sometime soon, leaving you part owner of the ranch. And Molly comes out of the deal with the Happy Jack property and several millions of dollars in cash. Correct?”
Sheldon put a finger in his wine, chased a chunk of cork around, fished it out, and flicked it on the ground. “Understanding that knowledge is fractured and fragmented, and susceptible of reception according to innumerable contingencies, I see no reason why I should share any information on this matter with the two of you,” he said, raising the jar to his lips.
Hawk’s hand lashed out, slapping the jar out of Sheldon’s hand and sending it flying, smashing against the trunk of the tree, dark purple wine and bits of glass cascading down. The next thing Sally knew, Hawk had him by the neck of his T-shirt, half out of his chair, and Sheldon appeared to be choking.
“Stop strangling him, Hawk,” she said, batting at Hawk’s fist, clenched tight in the fabric of the T-shirt. “No more postmodern fancy dancing here, Sheldon—in case you’ve missed the news, you live in a real world of real things, like land and water and beavers. And dioxin.”
Sally watched his eyes. If Sheldon was surprised at her last word, it didn’t show. “I don’t deny the existence of real things, Sally.” Hawk had released his hold only enough to permit Sheldon to breathe, and here he was lecturing. Priceless, in a way. “Only a fool would do that. I do, however, maintain that many of the things that have the appearance or the shadow or the trace or the imprint of the real are susceptible of interpretation, to an almost infinite degree. Most of what appears natural to us is, indeed, natural
ized,
conjecture masquerading as certainty.”
“I know where this is going,” Hawk hissed, teeth gritted, as he shoved Sheldon back into his chair. “Let me see if I can summarize. You do own the land, you’re aware that the groundwater is polluted from the old tie plant up-aquifer, and you’re fully willing to toss the potato, hot as it is, to the next poor slob in the game. Am I getting this straight?”
Sheldon shifted in his lawn chair, tugged his T-shirt back into place, settled his shoulders, rested his elbows on the arms of the chair, and steepled his fingers. “I’ll attempt to be as precise as possible. In 1976 I received a bequest from a great-aunt I’d never met. I learned of my inheritance that summer, as I was traveling across the country, and I happened to be passing through this area. I saw the ‘For Sale’ sign while camping with friends, and the price was exactly the same as the amount I’d just inherited. At the time I was, like so many people, interested in the supernatural, the spiritual, the occult, and I had a little of the got-to-get-back-to-the-garden bug. It seemed more than coincidence.”
Sally had heard much weirder stories. And like not a few people at the time, he’d probably been stoned to the eyeballs. “Okay. So you bought the property. What did you plan to do with it?”
“Nothing,” said Sheldon equably. “Leave it to nature, for the time being, and if the occasion ever arose that I’d want to live on the land, I had my piece of the planet.”
“But the occasion never came,” Hawk said.
“Graduate school, postdocs, teaching positions, fellowships—the usual accoutrements of academic life. I got busy. Oh, I thought from time to time about retiring to a cabin in the wilderness somewhere, just to read and think, maybe do a little writing. It’s everybody’s fantasy, no?”
Guiltily, Sally and Hawk looked at each other. Of course it was their fantasy, or one of them, on days when they weren’t too busy to fantasize.
“But after a while I stopped believing there was such a thing as wilderness, a place apart from human actions and intents, protected from global interpenetration. And, of course, I realized that I had no desire to live in Wyoming. Marsh called me up a couple of months ago and asked me if I still owned the property, and offered to bring me in on this deal. He said that the other partners had money to invest, but that the woman who owned the ranch insisted that there be some land involved. I found it intriguing, both financially and intellectually.”
“Oh brother,” groaned Hawk.
“Intriguing is a nice word,” Sally said. “But I think juicy is more descriptive.”
“I won’t pretend to be immune to the profit motive,” said Sheldon. “It is, after all, the dominant ideology of our time, pervading the entire world. But it must be equally clear that I am interested in a number of things here. This is more than just a land and money exchange—it is precisely the sort of cultural transaction I’ve studied for many years.”
Hawk sighed. “What about the toxic plume, Sheldon?”
Sheldon turned his head, looking longingly at the spilled wine staining the cottonwood trunk. The bottle beside him was half full, but he didn’t dare risk picking it up and swigging directly from it. “I’m aware that state scientists believe that they have identified certain problems. Marsh Carhart assures me that their computer models are flawed. I see no evidence to prove their contentions. Since I’ve owned that tract of land in the Laramies, there’s been no industrial, commercial, or residential development anywhere in the vicinity. Ecologically speaking, my property gives every appearance of thriving—you’ve seen it for yourself, Green.”
“And I’ve seen the state reports on the groundwater, Stover. That tie plant did its dirty work long before you showed up with your camping buddies. The effects of some of the compounds they were using could last hundreds of years. The state’s hydrologists have mapped the polluted groundwater, and your property is on that map. If you
had
gone back to your little Eden, and dug yourself a well, chances are you’d be drinking a nice nasty chemical stew.”