The Dog Stars (22 page)

I let him puzzle it out, maybe discuss it. Then I took the paper, stuck it on the point of a four foot broken limb and pushed it over the edge:
I. BANG!
Swish. Complete miss. Ha! Not going for the paper going for my head, where it would be if I was just a little tiny bit closer.

Silence. I hung the paper on the stick vertically so he could read it. He could. They were really fucking close. I mean if I wanted to be really mean I could maybe just shove a boulder over the edge. Or spit.

I pulled the stick back. If I was chuckling it was the first time in maybe nine years. Chuckling—that word. It’s not a word for the End of Times. I unpeeled the paper off the crayon with my teeth and wrote on the second paper again vertically,
AM
.

Why didn’t I just shout down there? Well, conversations can get so crosswise so quick. What I’ve found. First time I met Melissa was in a coffee shop and I was too shy to speak so I wooed her with a note. Works. One wrong tone of voice and that’s it. Nah, this was better. Plus the creek was pouring, plus wind, plus there was no way on earth I was going to stick my mouth over that edge.

Stuck
AM
on the stick hung it over. Now no shot. Silence. Sonofabitch was getting the hang of it.
I AM
. Existential enough. Shit, I could stop right there, just let them chew on that a while. Picked
up the crayon, wrote
NOT
. Pulled in my stick, stuck it on. Let that flap in the wind.

The philosophical implications of going from the penultimate assertion to the last were profound. I mean Hamlet had nothing on this. The unfolding dialectic. Dang.

Then
A
. I wrote
A
covering one whole page stuck it out.
A. A
. Flap, rustle.

Then I sharpened the crayon on the rock turned the page sideways and wrote as big as I could fit:
PHEASANT
.

Hung it out there. Weighted the stick down with another rock and lay back face to the sun, arms crossed under my poor abused head, and let the warmth cover me and the sun work on the cuts.

They weren’t going anywhere, neither was I.

If this were a Western I would now put my hat on a stick. I was wearing a hat. A sweatstained fraybrimmed baseball cap that said Cherry Hills Golf Club. I took it off a visitor one night and I liked it maybe because it carried a message of consolation: the End of Everything meant the End maybe for all time, maybe in all the universe, of Golf.

I had nothing against golf.

Anyway there were probably Scotsmen in Scotland who somehow survived the pandemic and after and were now strolling over the heath playing the old game—no irrigation but mist and rain, no
lawnmowers but herds of wild sheep. Thwacking their drives into the fog. That was a nice idea.

Maybe Gramps hated golf. Doubt if he could read lettering that small but if he had say a ten power scope, well, he might. I put it on the stick anyway, for fun, shoved it out there to the edge. Nothing. The old crust wasn’t buying it. He was gonna wait til he saw an eye, an ear. Hmph. Now what? I could just stand up, walk to the edge and shout. Hey! I come in peace! In friendship! And. If they subscribed to the First Principles of Bruce Bangley I was a dead man. Curiously, for the first time it seemed in a while I wasn’t ready to die. Not just this minute. I mean I had more than a casual interest in staying alive. For some reason.

Okay. I had an idea.

I walked back to the Beast got another stack of paper. Had all the time in the world: none of us seemed to be going anywhere. Unless they bolted for the tree ladder which they wouldn’t as I could pot them as easy as the German officers in that awful Hemingway vignette that I loved.
It was absolutely topping. They tried to get over it, and we potted them from forty yards. They rushed it, and officers came out alone and worked on it. It was an absolutely perfect obstacle
. I mean if that’s what I had been here to do.

I hunkered down by my rock in the sun, well behind it, and wrote out more words. Put them on the stick one after the other and held them over the lip as before. Deep silence while the fish on the other end thought about it.

I-COULD-BLOW-YOU-TO-SMITHER-EENS-BUT-I-WON’T—PEACE

Lucky I had half a ream of paper.

Then I took an Egg of Death out of my pocket pulled the pin which was pretty stiff and tossed it over the edge.

I threw it well upstream into what in my mind’s eye I saw as the top of the meadow—well away from the cows and the cobwebbed sonofabitch and his girl.

The explosion was deeply satisfying. Thank you Bangley. I had the other pages ready and while they were still rattled and pinching their limbs to see if they weren’t dead I pushed them out:

SEE?-NEXT-ONE-MIGHT-HURT

Long pause.

DON’T-MAKE-ME-RUN-OUT-OF-PAPER

Pause.

STAND-UP

I can admit I was really enjoying myself. For the first time in what seemed years my head seemed clear. Not like the thoughts were standing out in a meadow like those shaggy Norwegian horses and wondering what they were doing here. Not like one might wander off into the trees.

Just for good measure I crept the cap out to the edge again. Nothing. Maybe we were coming to an understanding. I crawled to the edge and peered over. They were both standing up in the cattails holding their guns out to the side. He was tall, fit, not that old, maybe early sixties, in a ratty fawn cowboy hat. She was taller than he and I’d have to say handsome. Skinny but strong jawed, high
cheeked, dark eyebrows, long dark hair twisted into a braid. Can’t say why but she looked smart from three hundred feet. I reached back for the AR and put the scope on them. If a man can spark he was sparking: mouth compressed in rage and his eyes which were gray were throwing off glints of fury. His face had the deep lines of a man who had earned them out in the elements. Her eyes were wideset and what? Violet? Something between blue and black. Her cheeks were inflamed scarlet and she looked scared but also something else: mildly amused. Was that it? She looked to be about thirty five.

Can you fall in love through a rifle scope? Damn. I pulled my head away and looked down with naked eye. Well proportioned, wide hipped, tall. Maybe too skinny. I brought my eye to the gun again and nudged the barrel and let the scope travel down. I admit. Her legs were scratched and inflamed and maybe too thin but they were long and tapered.

Breathe Hig. Say 10-4
. Ten four.

Came up to one knee, still aiming, both eyes open. I yelled.

Hi!

He blinked. I nudged the scope over to her face and they both looked like they might be crazy or maybe in a bad dream.

Hi!

Kept the scope on her. She smiled. Actually smiled. It was subtle, small, but at ten power I could see the damn thing.

How should we do this? Yelling.

Silence.

Gramps! Relax! If I wanted to kill and rape and plunder you’d be dead by now!

Pause while he took that in.

I forgive you! I yelled.

I mean for trying to kill me more than twice! Nearly wrecking my plane. Nothing personal. I know. Would’ve done the same thing myself.

My shouts trailed off on the breeze. But I could see that they could hear me. I mean something was registering. I could also see when I lifted my head back and looked downcanyon that all the cows and a few sheep were huddling terrified against a tall woven brush fence across the bottom of the box.

Sorry for scaring your cows!

They stood there, arms out. I played the scope over both of them. He was chewing his cheek trying to make out what the hell was going on. And her. I wasn’t sure. I could see gears turning and I thought something not unpleasant was dawning on her. That was my fantasy. I knew, I
knew
that I was addled somehow, but also that I was as clear as I had been in my adult life.

Okay you can keep your guns. I’m coming down.

Okay?

Okay?

He nodded. Finally. Pulled the gun back in to his body and stood again like a man in command of his world. I’ll say this: there was something about the codger that was dignified and proud. He was a fucking good shot, I knew that. I got the feeling that everything the prickly bastard did he did with that amount of confidence. Just an impression from the bleachers.

If you decide to kill me you’ll feel really bad later! I promise you’ll deprive yourself of the best part of your day!

She smiled. Oh man. I was gone. I thought Maybe, maybe he is her dad. What a fool.

In purgatory there is really nothing else to be. I lowered the gun, stepped back fast and walked back to the Beast.

Just for luck and respect I put another grenade in my jacket pocket to make two and grabbed some venison jerky for a peace offering, then I slung the AR over my shoulder and trotted across the sage meadow. I worked myself upcanyon through the piñons until the cleft shallowed out and I found a game trail down to the creek.

IV

My heart was booming like a bongo but not from the effort. The ground was rough, yes, the way into the creek steep and strewn with boulders. I placed a hand on their warm shoulders as I hopped and pivoted around them, slid on loose dirt following the path of deer. Their droppings lay among the long brown needles of ponderosas and the sun mixed the scents which were strangely close to the musky scent of a living deer close by in pines. So that the hunter in me was roused. But that wasn’t it either. My heart was hammering because I felt like I was heading to my first date.

That one, Hig’s actual first date—I was so nervous it was a disaster. We went to see
Avatar
in 3D. I kept having to duck away and pee. Every time I brought back more popcorn or candy. She must have thought I was some sort of diabetic or bulimic or something. I didn’t kiss her at the end nor try and she was clearly flushed and upset, and I’ll never know if it was because she thought I was a geek and couldn’t wait to get rid of me or—this only occurred to me months later—maybe she was as nervous as I and kinda liked me but didn’t know how to ask and felt rejected when I left so abruptly. My first realization that someone else might be anxious for
my
approval, that they could be scared of
me
. Before the end of the world that was a profound insight. Now I pretty much took it for granted: everybody was scared of me.

Which is a weird way to head out on a date. Poor Hig, poor Frankenstein.

Not her. She smiled. She smiled.

I’d charmed em hadn’t I? Charmed em right out of Kill Mode. Right out of their knickers. Hadn’t I?

I stopped dead. Squinted down to the creek, took one more careful step into the shade of a pine. Maybe not.

The cute thing with the quilt. Codger had no patience. He placed a high value on his time his attention. While I was lying back in the sun enjoying myself, letting them think about things, he was forced to hunker down in the wet cattails, his blood boiling, fearing too—for life, for his gal—thinking, I’m gonna kill that smug sonofabitch. First chance. Thinks he’s so goddamn cute, how cute will it be when I make him watch his own balls roasting on the fire.

Like that.

I went on. Nevertheless. With the hair kinda standing up on my neck.

When I got to the stream I turned down it and followed an easy trail along the bank. Tall grass here, tiny white asters like daisies, Indian paintbrush. Wild strawberry, penstemon. Huge ponderosas, the smell of cold wet stone and vanilla. White moths circling each other over a gravel bar. Mating. The first date thing: that was history. My heart was still racing but not for that. I saw the moths flitting, three then two, in and out of sunlight, and thought: Hig, mating is probably not in the cards not this round. Not ever probably.

When you get to the short cliff at the top of the meadow, the one with the waterfall, when you swing down onto that tree ladder and put your back to Gramps, he is gonna shoot you dead with a delicious grunt. So there. Think this is a game, punk? You-are-not-a-pheasant-Correct:-you-are-a-dead-man. Write that on your little sheets. Bang. You just wouldn’t leave us alone. Bang. Stop twitching will ya? Bang.

Bangley:
I-told-you-Hig:-never-ever—fuck-you-know-damn-well-what.-R.I.P
.

Hmph. Whatever quandary I was in before I was just as much in now. That’s what I saw as I moved fast down the stream. Another thing: he, they, could’ve climbed up the tree ladder into the upper creek in two minutes flat and could now be waiting for me in the willows behind any tree and ambush me at leisure. I froze.

Did not want to die. Not now.

I could be in his sights as we speak. Goosebumps again this time not from the chill.

Scanned down the creek. A box elder at water’s edge, leaves the color of limes. A few cottonwoods below. When the wind pulsed, their leaves turned back, brightening like the palm of a hand held up in sunlight. Stop. They could be crouched behind those thick shaggy trunks.

Stop, Hig, Stop. Reconsider the folly of mere human connection. Listen to a tree.

When you fished, that’s what you were seeking huh? Connection. Think of the cost to the fish. The fish did not want your connection
and if a trout could have killed you with one gulp he would have. Gramps is that fish. He can swallow you.