High Hunt (19 page)

“Hey,
you
!” She was standing in the doorway. Her hair was still tucked on top of her head. Except for the hair ribbon she was stark naked. She pitched her damp towel back through the bathroom door and snapped her fingers at me. “Up!” she said. “On your feet, Buster!”

I got up. “Now, what—”

“March,” she said, pointing imperiously at the bedroom.

“I don't think you ought to get too overheated,” I started. “I mean, you got a bad chill and—”

“Bullshit! Nobody—and I mean
nobody
—is going to yank
my panties off like you did just now and then tip his hat and walk away. Now you get into that bedroom!”

I went into the bedroom.

After she finished her revenge, or whatever you want to call it, we talked some more. About ten o'clock that evening I kissed her good-bye and went out to my car. “Not in the
bathroom
!” For Christ's own private sake! I laughed all the way back across town.

I took a shower, dressed in my hunting clothes, and then clumped on up to Jack's trailer, wincing as the rain spotted my Army boots. I'd spent a lot of hours polishing them.

Jack was a little groggy from his nap, but he dressed quickly, and we drove on over to Sloane's house through the rain-swept streets. We didn't say much except to complain about the weather.

“Sure as hell hope it isn't rainin' on the other side of the mountains,” Jack said. I grunted agreement. We stopped by a liquor store and each bought a fifth of bourbon.

“God knows if we'd be able to find a store open later on,” Jack said.

We got to Sloane's place about a quarter to twelve and sat down and had a beer with Calvin after we'd stowed our gear in the car. Stan and Lou both showed up about five to twelve, and they loaded up. All of us had a good stiff belt of Cal's whiskey, and we took off.

We stopped at a roadhouse tavern just before we got to Seattle and laid in a supply of beer, about a case in each car. It was one of those overchromed joints, all fancy and new. The only guy in there besides the bartender was a drunk in the back booth, snoring for all he was worth. The bartender had a solitaire game laid out on the bar. Real swinging joint. We bought our beer, pried Lou away from the pinball machine, and took off again, blasting along in the wake of Sloane's Cadillac. We didn't get to Everett until almost two, and we stopped for gas. Once we got past Snohomish, we were about the only cars on the road. The flat farmland of the Snohomish River Valley stretched on back into the mist and darkness on either side of us, and the fences with the bottom strand of wire snarled in weeds sprayed out on either hand as we passed. Now and then we'd see a house and barn—all dark—near the road. Once in a while a car would pass, going the other way like a bat out of hell and spraying muddy water on the windshield.

Jack and I switched off, and I drove for a while. There's
something about driving late at night in the rain. It's almost as if the world has stopped. The rain sheets down in tatters, and the road unrolls out in front of your headlights. We went up through the small silent, mountain towns, always climbing. Each town seemed emptier than the last, with the rain washing the fronts of the dark old buildings, and the streetlights swinging in the wind. We kept the radio going, and neither one of us said much until we got on past Gold Bar, the last town before we really started to climb. Once we got up into the mountains, the radio faded, and after about ten miles of static, I switched it off.

“Bust me open another beer, Jack,” I said, breaking the silence.

“Sure.” He cracked one and handed it to me.

“Damn. I hope this weather breaks at the summit,” I said.

“Didn't you hear that last weather report?” he asked. “It's pretty much all on this side.”

“That's a break.”

“Yeah.” We lapsed into silence again, watching the headlights spear on out in front of the car and the windshield wipers flopping back and forth. I turned up the heater.

“God damn,” he said suddenly, “I wish to hell Mike could have made it. It's a damn shame, you know that? He's been tryin' to get away for the High Hunt for the last four years now, and some damn thing always comes up so he can't make it.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and Mike's a good head. He'd have been fun to have along.”

Jack nodded gloomily. “You want a belt?” he said suddenly.

I wasn't really sure I did, but I saw that he needed one. “Why not?”

He fished his bottle out from under the seat and cracked the seal. He took a long pull and handed it to me. I took a short blast and handed it back.

“I guess we'd better go easy on this stuff,” he said. “We show up drunk and Miller's liable to send us back down the mountain.” He put the jug away.

“Right.”

“You know, Dan,” he said after a while. “I'm damn glad we got the chance to do this together. We never got to know each other much when we were kids, what with one damn thing and another—the Old Lady and all. Maybe it's time we got acquainted.”

“I've had a pretty good time the last few weeks,” I said.

“I'm not sorry I got in touch with you.” It was more or less true.

“It'd all be great if it wasn't for that son-of-a-bitchin' McKlearey,” he said bitterly.

“Yeah. What the hell's got him off on the prod so bad, anyway?”

“Aw shit! He was the big-ass gunnery sergeant in the Corps—you know, a hundred guys jumped every time he farted. He was a big shot. Now he's low man on the totem pole at Sloane's used-car lot—a big plate of fried ratshit. He's not in charge anymore. Some guys just can't hack that.”

“Institutional mentality,” I said.

“What the hell's that?”

“It's like the ex-con who gets busted for sticking up a police station two days after he gets out of the pen. He really wants to go back. They take care of him, do his thinking for him. He's safe inside. Guys in the military get the same way.”

“Maybe that's it, Jack said. “When I knew him in the service, he was a different guy. Now he's drunk all the time and shacked-up with a half dozen women and a real first-class prick. I wouldn't be surprised if he's been throwin' the wood to Marg every time my back's turned.”

I was suddenly very wide awake. Christ, had he been so drunk that night he couldn't remember what he'd said? “Oh?” I said carefully.

“It wouldn't be the first time she's played around. Maybe I've given her reason enough. She was pretty young and simple when I married her, and I'm not one to pass up some occasional strange stuff. Maybe she figures she's entitled. I don't give a shit. Me and her are about ready to split the sheets anyway.” He slumped lower in the seat and lit a cigarette.

“Sorry to hear that,” I said. I meant it.

“I've been through it a couple of times already. I know the signs. I don't really give a rat's ass; I'm about ready to go the single route myself anyway. Marriage is fine for a while—steady ass and home cookin'—but it gets to be a drag.”

“I'm still sorry to hear it.”

“But no matter what, I'm a blue-balls son of a bitch if I want to get cut out by that fuckin' McKlearey while I'm still payin' the bills. That's one of the reasons I'm gonna outhunt that motherfucker if it kills me. Maybe if I rub his nose in it hard enough, he'll get the idea and move on.” Jack's voice was harsh.

“I don't know,” I said. “As stupid as he is, getting an idea through his head might take some doing.”

“I suppose I could always shoot the bastard.”

“Not worth it.” I was about half-afraid he meant it.

“I suppose not, but he could sure use shootin'.”

“You know it, buddy.”

“Another beer?”

“Sure.”

The moon was slipping in and out of the clouds as we climbed higher, and the drops that hit the windshield were getting smaller. The rain was slacking off. The big fir trees at the side of the road caught briefly in our headlights had their trunks wreathed in tendrils of mist. I leaned forward and looked up through the windshield at the slowly emerging stars.

“Looks like it's going to quit,” I said.

“That's what I told you,” he said.

S
LOANE'S
Cadillac was still leading, and at the summit he signaled for a left.

“Where the hell's he going?” I asked. “Off into the timber?”

“Naw. He probably wants to use the can. McKlearey's been droppin' back for the last ten miles anyway, so we better let the son of a bitch catch up.”

I turned Jack's car into the lot at the summit behind Sloane, stopping beside his car and switching off the engine.

Sloane stuck his head out the window on the driver's side and yelled, “Piss call!” The echoes bounced off down the gorge we'd just come up.

“Christ, Sloane,” Jack hissed, “keep it down. There's people livin' over in the lodge there.”

“Oooops,” Sloane said. He and Jack hotfooted it over to the rest room while Stan and I stood out in the sprinkling rain waiting to flag down McKlearey. It was so quiet you could hear the pattering drops back in the timber.

“Pretty chilly up here,” Stan said. His voice was hushed, and his breath steamed. He had his hands jammed down into the pockets of his new bright-orange hunting jacket. The jacket clashed horribly with his old red duck-hunting cap.

“It's damned high,” I said.

“What time is it?”

“About three thirty,” I said.

“You think Lou's car has broken down?”

“About right now I wouldn't give a damn if that bastard had driven off into the gorge somewhere. I've had a gutful of him, and a steering post through the belly might civilize him some.”

“I've met people I've liked a lot more,” Stan agreed. That's Stan for you. Never say what you mean.

“How are you and Sloane getting along?”

“Just fine. He's a strange one, you know? He plays the fool, but he's really very serious. He was telling me that he hates
that pawnshop and all the sad little people who come in wanting just a couple of dollars for a piece of worthless trash—they know it's not worth anything, but it's all they have—but he can't get his money back out of the place right now, so he has to stay there.”

“Yeah,” I said, “Sloane's a really odd duck.”

“And he's really very intelligent—well-read, aware of what's going on in the world—all of this foolishness is just an act.”

“I wouldn't want to try to outsmart him,” I agreed.

Cal and Jack came back. “Hasn't that shithead made it yet?” Jack demanded. “Oh, hell, yes,” he imitated McKlearey's voice, “I'm gonna drive
my
car. It's a real goin' machine. Cost me sixty-five bucks. I'd feel perfectly safe drivin' from here to the end of the block in that car.”

“I think that's his car now,” Stan said. He pointed far off down the mountain we'd just climbed. We saw a flash of headlights sweeping out across the gorge, flaring out in a sudden bright swipe through the mist.

Stan and I went to the rest room, came back, and joined the others watching Lou's old car labor up the highway.

“Is this the fuckin' top?” he demanded as he pulled up alongside, his radiator hissing ominously.

“This is her,” Sloane said. “Car heat up on you?”

“Aw, this cripple,” Lou said in disgust. “Is there any water here?”

“Over by the latrine,” I said, pointing.

He pulled over to the side of the rest-room building and popped the hood. He got out and threw a beer bottle off into the trees. The bandage on his left hand gleamed whitely in the darkness. He eased off the radiator cap, and the steam boiled out, drifting pale and low downwind. He poured water into the radiator, and pretty soon it stopped steaming. Then he fished out a can of oil from the trunk and punched holes in the top with an old beer opener. He dumped the oil into the engine and then threw the can after the beer bottle. He slammed the hood, unzipped his pants, and pissed on the front tire.

“Christ, McKlearey!” Jack said, “there's the latrine right there.”

“Fuck it!” Lou said. “What time is it?”

“Nearly four,” I told him.

“Let's go huntin', men,” he said and climbed back in his car. The rest of us went to our cars, and we started down the other side.

Jack was driving again, and I slumped down in the seat. The sky was clear on this side, and the stars were very bright. I picked one out and watched it as we drifted down the mountain.

What in the goddamn hell was I doing here anyway? I was running off into the high mountains with a bunch of guys I didn't really know, to do something I didn't really know all that much about, despite what I'd told Clydine. Maybe I was still running and this was just someplace else to run to. But I had a strange feeling that whatever I'd been running after—or away from—was going to be up there. Maybe Stan was right. When you strip it all away, and it's just you and the big lonely out there, you can get down to what counts.

Maybe it was more than that, too. Up until Dad died, I'd heard hunting stories—about him and Uncle Charles, about Granddad and Great-Uncle Beale—all of them. And I'd started going out as soon as I was old enough—alone most of the time. It was something where you couldn't work the angles or unload a quick snow job or any of the crap I'd somehow gotten so good at in the last few years. There was no way to fake it; it had to be real. If you didn't kill the damned deer, he wouldn't fall down. You couldn't talk to him and tell him that he was statistically dead and convince him to take a dive. He had too much integrity. He knew what it was all about, and if you didn't really nail him down, he'd go over the nearest mountain before you could get off a second shot. He knew he was real. It was up to you to find out if you were.

“Hey, Jack,” I said.

“Yeah?”

“You remember Dad?”

“Sure.”

“He liked to hunt, didn't he?”

“Whenever he could. The Old Lady was pretty much down on it. About all he could do by the time you were growin' up was to go out for ducks now and then. He used to sneak out of the house in the morning before she woke up. She wouldn't let him go out for deer anymore.”

“Whatever happened to that old .45-70 Granddad left him?”

“She sold it. Spent the money on booze.”

“Shit! You know, I've got a hunch we'd have been raised better by a bitch wolf.”

“You're just bitter,” he said.

“You're goddamn right I am,” I said. “I wouldn't walk across the street for her if she was dying.”

“She calls once in a while,” he said. “I try to keep her away from the kids. You never know when she's gonna show up drunk.”

“How's she paying her way?”

“Who knows? Workin' in a whorehouse for all I know.”

“I wonder why the Old Man didn't kick her ass out into the street.”

“You and me, that's why,” my brother said.

“Yeah, there's that, too, I suppose.”

We passed through Cashmere about five and swung north toward Lake Chelan. The sky began to get pale off to the east.

“God damn, that's nice, isn't it?” Jack said, pointing at the sky.

“Dawn the rosy-fingered,” I said, misquoting Homer, “caressing the hair of night.”

“Say, that's pretty good. You make it up?”

I shook my head.

“You read too goddamn much, you know that? When I say something, you can be pretty goddamn sure it's right out of my own head.” He belched.

We drove on, watching the sky grow lighter and lighter. As the light grew stronger, the poplar leaves began to emerge in all their brilliant yellow along the river bottoms. The pines swelled black behind them.

“Pretty country,” Jack said.

“Hey,” I said, “look at that.”

A doe with twin fawns was standing hock-deep in a clear stream, drinking, the ripples sliding downstream from where she stood. She raised her head, her ears flicking nervously as we passed.

“Pretty, isn't she?” he said.

We got to Twisp about eight and hauled into a gas station. Sloane went in and called Miller while we got our gas tanks filled.

“He's got everything all ready,” he said when he came back out. “He told me how to get there.”

“How far is it?” Lou asked. “This bucket is gettin' pretty fuckin' tuckered.” He slapped the fender of his car with his bandaged hand.

“About fifteen miles,” Sloane said. “Road's good all the way.”

We paid for the gas and drove on out of town. Twisp is one of those places with one paved street and the rest dirt. It squats in the valley with the mountains hulking over it threateningly, green-black rising to blue-black, and then the looming white summits.

The road out to Miller's wasn't the best, but we managed. The sun was up now, and the poplar leaves gleamed pure gold. The morning air was so clear that every rock and limb and leaf stood out. The fences were straight lines along the road and on out across the mowed hayfields. The mountains swelled up out of the poplar-gold bottoms. It was so pretty it made your throat ache. I felt good, really good, maybe for the first time in years.

Sloane slowed up, then went on, then slowed again. He was reading mailboxes. Finaly he signaled, the blinker on his Caddy looking very ostentatious out here.

We wheeled into a long driveway and drove on up toward a group of white painted buildings and log fences. A young colt galloped along beside us as we drove to the house. He was all sleek, and his muscles rolled under his skin as he ran. He acted like he was running just for the fun of it.

“Little bastard's going to outrun us,” Jack said, laughing.

We pulled up in the yard in front of the barn and parked where a stumpy little old guy with white hair and a two-week stubble directed us to. He was wearing cowboy boots and a beat-up old cowboy hat, and he walked like his legs had been broken a half dozen times. If that was Miller, I was damn sure going to be disappointed.

It wasn't.

Miller came out of the house, and I swear he had a face like a hunk of rock. With that big, old-fashioned white mustache, he looked just a little bit like God himself. He wore cowboy boots and had a big hat like the little white-haired man, and neither of them looked out of place in that kind of gear. Some guides dress up for the customers, but you could tell that these two were for real. I took a good look at Miller and decided that I'd go way out of my way to keep from crossing him. He was far and away the meanest-looking man I've ever seen in my life. I understood what Mike had meant about him.

We turned off the motors, and the silence seemed suddenly very solid. We got out, and he looked at us—hard—sizing each one of us up.

“Men,” he said. It was a sort of greeting, I guess—or maybe
a question. His voice was deep and very quiet—no louder than it absolutely had to be.

Even Sloane's exuberance was a little dampened. He stepped forward. “Mr. Miller,” he said, “I'm Cal Sloane.” They shook hands.

“I'll get to know the rest of you in good time,” he said. “Right now breakfast's ready. Give Clint there your personal gear and sleepin' bags, and we'll go in and eat.” I never learned Clint's last name or Miller's first one.

We unloaded the cars and then followed Miller on up to the house. He led us through a linoleumed kitchen with small windows and an old-fashioned sink and wood stove, and on into the dining room, where we sat down at the table. The room had dark wood paneling and the china was very old, white with a fine-line blue Japanese print on it. The room smelled musty, and I suspected it wasn't used much. There was a wood-burning heating stove in the corner that popped now and then. Miller came back out of the kitchen with a huge enameled coffee pot and filled all our cups.

The coffee was hot and black and strong enough to eat the fillings out of your teeth. The stumpy little guy came in and started carting food out of the kitchen. First he brought out a platter of steaks.

“Venison,” Miller said. “Figured we'd better clean up what's left over from last winter.”

Then there were biscuits and honey, then eggs and fried potatoes. There were several pitchers of milk on the table. We all ate everything Miller ate; I think we were afraid not to.

But when the little guy hauled out a couple of pies, I had to call a halt.

“Sorry,” I said. “I'll have to admit that you guys can outeat me.” I pushed myself back from the table.

“The Kid just can't keep up.” Jack laughed.

“Well, you don't have to eat it all,” Miller said. “We just figured you might be a little hungry.”

“Hungry, yes,” I said, grinning, “but I couldn't eat all that if I was starving.”

“Better eat,” the man Miller had called Clint growled. “Be four hours in the saddle before you feed again.”

“I think I'm good for twelve,” I said. I lit a cigarette and poured myself another cup of coffee.

“After a few hours in the high country,” Clint warned, “your
belly's gonna think your th'oat's been cut.” He sounded like he meant it.

The others finished eating, and Clint poured more coffee all around. Miller fished out a sheet of paper from one of his shirt pockets and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses out of another.

“Guess we might as well get all this settled right now,” he said, putting on the glasses. “That way we won't have it hangin' fire.”

We all took out our wallets. Clint went out and came back with a beat-up old green metal box. Miller opened it and took out a receipt book.

“Ten days,” Miller said, “fifty dollars a man.” We all started counting money out on the table. He looked around and nodded in approval. He started filling out receipts laboriously, licking the stub of the pencil now and then. He asked each of us our names and filled them in on the receipts. Clint took our money and put it away in the tin box.

“Now,” Miller said, squinting at the paper, “the grub come to a hundred and fifty dollars. I got a list here and the price of ever-thing if you want to check it. I already took off for me and Clint. Your share come to a hundred and fifty and a few odd dollars, but call it a hundred and fifty. I figured it out, and it's thirty dollars a man. You can check my figures if you want. I kept it down as much as I could. We won't eat fancy, but it'll stick with us.” He looked around, offering the paper. We all shook our heads.