“You better be careful. I might run off with you. If my daughter had grown up, I bet she’d be like you.”
“You lost your daughter?”
“It was a long time ago. You have a sweet face, just like she did.”
She blushed and was about to reply when another customer came through the front door and tapped on the counter for his order to go. “Excuse me,” she said. “I better get back to work.”
As she walked away, she did not see the change of expression in the face of the man who called himself the Reverend Geta Noonen. He set down his fork and looked at it with deliberation, then picked up his coffee and drank from it and stared at his reflection. By the time he set the cup back in the saucer, his expression was once again benign and ordinary, his attention focused on his meal, his eyes drifting back to the scene behind the motel, where the mother was pushing her daughter back and forth on the swing.
He put a two-dollar tip on the counter and waited until the waitress was in the vicinity of the cash register before he got up to pay his check.
“I forgot to ask if you wanted any pie,” she said. “We have peach cobbler that’s good. The cherry pie isn’t bad, either.”
“I never pass up cherry pie. What time do you close?”
“Ten. I usually don’t work this late. I’m filling in for somebody else. In the morning I have to come in early and open up. I don’t mind, though.”
“You belong to a church?”
“I go at Christmas and Easter.”
“I’ll wager they know you’re there, too.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I didn’t mean to be too personal a moment ago. But I need to tell you something. You have an aura. Certain people have it. I think you’re one of them.”
Her eyes filmed, and there was a visible lump in her throat when she looked back at him.
He walked out of the café into the night, the stars like a spray of white diamonds from one horizon to the other, the highway that led to Lookout Pass climbing higher and higher into the mountains, where the headlights of the great trucks driving into Idaho tunneled up into the darkness, then dipped down on the far side of the grade and seemed to disappear into a bowl of ink.
Reverend Noonen walked onto the lawn where the mother had been swinging her little girl. The swing was empty, the chains clinking slightly in the breeze. The man glanced at his wristwatch and looked back at the lighted windows of the café, inside which the young waitress was wiping off the counter, bending over it, scrubbing the rag hard on the surface where some of his spilled food had dried. He worked a toothpick between his teeth while he watched her, then heard voices from the parking lot and realized the mother and her child were moving their suitcases from a battered van into a room at the back of the motel, in an unlighted area where no other guests seemed to be staying.
The woman was struggling with a suitcase while the little girl was climbing through the side door of the van, trying to pull out a sack of groceries that had already started to split apart, her rear end pointed out. The man removed the toothpick from his mouth and let it drop from his hand onto the grass, then walked into the parking lot. “My heavens, let me help you with that,” he said.
“Thank goodness,” the mother said. “I’ve had enough problems today without this. Our room is just over there. This is very kind of you.”
IN THE MORNING he rose with the sun and showered again and put on fresh clothes and ordered a big breakfast in the café. The owner was doing double duty, running the cash register and carrying plates from the serving window to the counter and the tables.
“Where’s the little lady who was working here last night?” said the man who called himself Reverend Geta Noonen.
“That’s Rhonda.”
“Where might she be?”
“She didn’t show up this morning.”
“She has a glow about her. Sorry, what was that you said?”
“She didn’t come in. It’s not like her.” The owner looked out the window at the highway, where the sun was shining on a rock slide. The rocks were jagged and sharp-edged, and some had bounced out on the shoulder of the asphalt. The owner frowned as he looked at the broken rock on the roadside.
“Maybe she’s sick,” said the man sitting at the counter.
“She didn’t answer her phone,” the owner said.
“Does she have folks here’bouts?”
“Not really. She lives way up a dirt road by Lookout Pass. I’ve always told her she should move into town.”
“I bet she had car trouble. Her cell phone wouldn’t work out here, would it?”
“I called the sheriff. He’s sending a cruiser. You want more coffee?” the owner said.
“Maybe a piece of that cherry pie to go. I guess every man should be allowed one vice.”
“What’s that you say?”
“I’ve got an addiction to desserts. I can’t get enough. Especially cherry pie.”
“I know what you mean.”
“I doubt it.”
“Come again?” the owner said.
“Nobody likes pie and cobbler and chocolate cake and jelly roll doughnuts as much as me. I don’t gain weight, but I can sure put it down. I hope the lady is all right. She seemed like a sweet thing.”
The owner turned around and looked at the shelf where he kept his pastries. “Sorry, the cherry pie is all gone.”
“I’ll have some the next time I’m by. I like it here. You’ve got a nice class of people.”
The owner began picking up the dirty dishes from the counter and didn’t look up again until the man had left. He dialed the number of his missing employee and let the phone ring for two minutes before he hung up. Because he didn’t know what else to do, he went outside into the harshness of the sunlight and looked up and down the highway, waiting for her car or a sheriff’s cruiser to appear. Then he crossed the four-lane and began kicking the fallen rock off the edge of the road back onto the shoulder.
Geta Noonen loaded his suitcase into the used SUV he had just purchased and drove slowly out onto the highway, the gravel that was impacted in his tire treads clicking as loudly as studs on the asphalt. He passed the owner and tapped on the horn and stuck his arm out the window to wave good-bye. The owner waved back and continued to clean the broken rock out of the traffic lane, lest someone run over it and have an accident.
THE MORNING WAS bright and cool when Geta Noonen drove into Missoula and went into a hardware and farm-supply store and came out with four hundred dollars in boxed and bagged purchases. After he had covered them with a tarp in the backseat of the SUV, he drove downtown and found a parking spot under the Higgins Street Bridge, one hour in advance of the Out to Lunch concert held weekly in the park by the Clark Fork. He slipped on a pair of aviator glasses and bought an ice cream cone from a vendor and strolled along the river walkway, pausing on an observation deck that allowed him an unobstructed view of the children riding the hand-carved wooden horses on the carousel and the kayakers practicing their maneuvers in the rapids by the bank.
As the sun rose into the center of the sky, he took up a position by a concrete abutment in the shade of the bridge and watched the cars filling the lot. When he sighted a rusted compact with two teenage girls in it, he folded his arms over his chest and gazed at the riverbank and the crowd filing under the bridge to the concert. The two girls locked their vehicle and walked through the man’s line of vision without noticing that he was watching their every move.
He strolled close to their car, then placed his hands on his hips and looked up at the sky and the mountains that ringed the city, like a tourist on his first day inside the state. He stooped over as though picking up a coin from the asphalt and sliced the air valve off one tire, then another. After the tires collapsed on the rims, he inserted the knife blade into the soft folds of rubber and sawed through the cord so they could not be repaired. He folded the knife in his palm and dropped it in his pants pocket and watched the concert from the back
of the crowd, his eyes fastened on the two teenage girls.
At 1:05 P.M. the girls returned to their rusted compact and stared in shock at the slashed tires.
“I saw a couple of bad-looking kids hanging around your car,” the man said. “When I walked over, they took off. I got here too late, I guess.”
The girls were obviously sisters, perhaps two years apart, with blue eyes and blond hair that was almost gold. The older girl had lost her baby fat and was at least three inches taller than her sister. “Why would anyone do this to us?” she said.
“Guess it’s the way a lot of kids are being raised up today,” the man said. “I’d offer to change your tire, but you’ve got two flats and probably only one spare. Is there somebody you can call?”
“Nobody’s home,” the younger girl said.
“Where are your folks?”
“Our mother works at the Goodwill,” the older girl said. “Our father drives part-time for a trucking company. He’s in Spokane today. He’ll be home tonight. He’s a minister. We have assembly at our house on Wednesday nights.”
“I’m Reverend Geta Noonen. Call your mother and ask if it’s all right if I drive you two home,” the man said.
“There’s no point in worrying her.”
“I tell you what. I’ll put your spare on, and we’ll take the other rim to the tire store and get the tire replaced. Then we’ll come back here and put it on, and you’ll be on your way.”
“I have to be at work at the Dairy Queen at three-thirty. I can’t think. I don’t have any money, either,” the older girl said.
“I’ll pay for it, and you can pay me back later.”
“What does a tire cost?” she asked.
When he told her, she looked as though she were about to cry.
“Look, don’t worry about it,” he said. “Take my cell phone and tell your mother what’s happened. We’ll drop the rim at the tire store, and I’ll drive both of you home. I’ll take you to work, if need be, or I’ll take you to pick up your new tire. We’ll handle it together. There’s no problem that can’t be solved. Whereabouts do you live?”
“Out Highway 12, west of Lolo.”
“You’ll have to give me directions. Now call your mother and tell her everything is okay.”
“I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You don’t owe me anything. You’re giving me a chance to practice a little of what I preach,” he said.
Forty-five minutes later, he turned off Highway 12 onto a dirt road and headed up a gulch between wooded hills that were scarred by logging roads from the days of the clear-cuts. “It’s sure pretty out this way. Do you know if there are any rentals hereabouts?” he said.
“We rent out a room sometimes,” the older girl said.
“I just need a place to come and go, and a small storage area,” he said. “I’m a traveling minister, kind of like the old-time saddle preachers, except I don’t have a saddle.”
“You want me to ask my mother?”
“I’d appreciate it. I wouldn’t be any trouble. Say, that’s a big ranch up there.”
“That’s Mr. Hollister’s place. He’s a writer. Three of his books have been made into movies.”
The man pushed the sun visor across the driver’s window as he drove past the archway over Albert Hollister’s driveway and did not look at the rock-and-log house up on the bench or glance in the direction of the barn or the horses in the north pasture.
“Imagine that, a man who makes movies tucked away here in the backcountry. This life is sure full of surprises,” he said. “Is that your house in that green hollow at the end of the road? If you ask me, you have yourselves a regular paradise up here. It’d suit me to a T.”
I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED and welcomed the rain, even though sometimes the spirits of the dead visit me inside it. During the summer, when I was a child, no matter how hot the weather was, there was a shower almost every afternoon at three o’clock. The southern horizon would be piled with storm clouds that resembled overripe plums, and within minutes you would feel the barometer plunge and see the oak trees become a deeper green and the light become the color of brass. You could smell the salt in the wind and an odor that was like watermelon that had burst open on a hot sidewalk. Suddenly, the wind would shift and the oak trees would come to life, leaves swirling and Spanish moss straightening on the limbs. Just before the first raindrops fell, Bayou Teche would be dimpled by bream rising to feed on the surface. No more than a minute later, the rain would pour down in buckets, and the surface of the Teche would dance with a hazy yellow glow that looked more like mist than rain.
For me, the rain was always a friend. I think that is true of almost all children. They seem to understand its baptismal nature, the fashion in which it absolves and cleanses and restores the earth. The most wonderful aspect of the rain was its cessation. After no longer than a half hour, the sun would come out, the air would be cool and fresh, the four o’clocks would be opening in the shade, and that evening there would be a baseball game in City Park. The rain was part of a testimony that assured us the summer was somehow eternal, that even the coming of the darkness could be held back by the heat lightning that flickered through the heavens after sunset.
The rain also brought me visitors who convinced me the dead never let go of this world. After my father, Big Aldous, died out on the salt, I would see him inside the rain, standing up to his knees in the surf, his hard hat tilted sideways on his head. When he saw the alarm in my face, he would give me a thumbs-up to indicate that death wasn’t a big challenge. I saw members of my platoon crossing a stream in the monsoon season, the rain bouncing on their steel pots and sliding off their ponchos, the mortal wounds they had sustained glowing as brightly as Communion wafers.
The person who contacted me most often in the rain was my murdered wife, Annie, who usually called during an electric storm to assure me she was all right, always apologizing for the heavy static on the line. Don’t ever let anyone tell you this is all there is. They’re lying. The dead are out there. Anyone who swears otherwise has never stayed up late in a summer storm and listened to their voices.
The rain drummed on Albert’s fireproof roof through Wednesday night and into the early-morning hours until it quit at dawn and left the pastures pooled with water and the trees smoking with fog. When I looked out our bedroom window on the third floor, I saw an animal emerge from the woods on the north end of the property and step through the wire back fence and enter the pasture. I thought it was a coyote, one of several that came onto the property in the early hours to dig pocket gophers out of their burrows. Then I realized the color was wrong. Its fur was black, flecked with silver, its shoulders heavy, its step quick and assured, its muzzle pointed straight ahead and not at the ground. The horses in the pasture were going crazy. I realized I was looking at a wolf, perhaps the leader of a pack that had come in from the Idaho wilderness west of Albert’s ranch.
I put on my coat and half-topped boots and went downstairs and removed Albert’s scoped ’03 Springfield from his gun cabinet. I also scooped up a handful of .30-06 cartridges and dropped them in my coat pocket. Albert was drinking coffee in the kitchen, dressed in pajamas and slippers and a robe. “Where are you going with my rifle?” he said.
“There’s a wolf in the north pasture,” I said. “It’s after your horses.”
“We’ve never had wolves.”
“You do now.”
“Don’t shoot it.”
“You want to take care of it?” I said, offering him the rifle.
“I’ll be down in a minute.”
I could hear the horses whinnying and their hooves thudding on the sod and splashing through water. I went through the mudroom and out the garage door and ran toward the pedestrian gate in the north pasture. The horses were in full panic, running in circles, corkscrewing, kicking blindly behind them. The wolf was moving through the grass in a half crouch, increasing its speed, its jaw hanging loose. I pressed five rounds into the Spring
field’s magazine and locked down the bolt. Inside the gate, I passed the barn and, on the far side, saw the wolf splash through a pool of water, drops of mud splattering its muzzle and forequarters. I twisted my left arm through the leather sling on the rifle and threw the stock to my shoulder and swung the crosshairs of the telescopic sight on the wolf’s rib cage.
The wolf seemed to sense that a new factor had entered the equation. I saw it look directly at me, its nose black and wet and filled with tiny lines, the nostrils dilating. I moved the sight four feet in front of the wolf and squeezed off a round. Fire jumped from the muzzle, and the loud carrack echoed off the hillsides. I saw a jet of mud and water fly in the air.
The wolf went back under the fence, the wire twanging on the steel stakes, a fence clip popping loose. I thought the wolf would keep moving, but I was mistaken. It went up the slope and disappeared behind a boulder, then reappeared next to a cedar tree and stared at me. I put the sight right on its face. There was a gray scar below one eye and another scar on its chest. On the front right paw was an area almost entirely clean of fur, as though the animal had stripped off its skin in a trap.
I ejected the spent cartridge and pushed another forward in the chamber and locked down the bolt. I moved the crosshairs to the base of the boulder and fired. The round was a soft-nose, and it flattened into the rock and powdered the air with a dirty mix of lichen and rock dust.
The wolf bounded through the trees and up the hill. I worked the bolt again and fired one more round for good measure and heard it strike a hard surface and whine across an arroyo with a diminishing sound like the tremolo in a banjo string.
“Did you hurt it?” Albert said behind me. He had pulled his trousers on over his pajamas and was wearing rubber boots and a flop-brim Australian hat.
“No. I didn’t try to.”
“I’m glad. They’re protected, unless you or your livestock are in danger.”
“Your livestock are in danger.”
“I’m glad you didn’t shoot it, regardless. Come inside and have some coffee.”