And that was the truth: he didn’t. What could he say? He didn’t. Instead he enjoyed killing animals. Fish, deer, grouse. He liked having a freezer full of meat. He liked to get laid as long as it wasn’t either too complicated or too simple, which meant he thought about it way more than he did it. He liked knowing he could beat the shit out of most other men. He liked to work and at the same time hated to work and wished he didn’t have to—but then what? Did the things he liked mean indeed he was twisted, as the boy at the prison had asserted? Tom didn’t think so, but he believed other people would. Any marriage counselor or psychiatrist would charge him plenty to call him twisted yet he considered himself normal and the men he knew were the same. Though he didn’t know many men these days. At a certain point he’d stopped wanting company. He liked things exactly the way he liked them and that meant accommodating no one. So of course Kruse was gone. Kruse probably wanted to hunt by himself too. It wasn’t any sort of falling-out. Eventually they would see each other and nothing, so what, as if they had never stopped hunting together, stopped carrying on their friendship. Because there was no friendship to carry on; women didn’t understand that.
Tom slept fitfully, in the throes of morose reveries. At four he thought he’d put a twilight hour into tracking blacktail and laced his boots, loaded a rifle, poured water into a canteen, polished the lenses of his binoculars, ate beef jerky, and all these preparations felt purifying. He worked down the unit to the bank of Ford Creek where he washed his face in the swirl of an eddy, laid out over a rock. No breeze. The water gave him a headache. He immersed his face twice. He boulder-hopped and hiked upstream staying out of the brush, his walking covered by stream noise, thinking this was one of the problems with Kruse, the guy was just too noisy on the move. Tom had said to him Just think about it Kruse, if I can hear you then they can hear you, but that didn’t change the way Kruse did things until finally they hunted separate canyons and just spent camp time together. He snuck up on Kruse once silently and broke a branch at twenty yards and when Kruse turned bringing his rifle up Tom called, See what I mean, Greg? You heard that, didn’t you. That was me stalking you like you were a buck and when you heard the branch, you were on to me. And they’ve got better ears than you do.
Fuck you, said Kruse. I almost shot you.
Tom wasn’t really hunting now. He was just out walking with a deer rifle for the hell of it. And looking for sign along the creek aimlessly. And staying out of the open places where there were long views a buck could use while descending toward feed and drink. Tom sat for a while doing nothing on a slope of mountain blueberry. He’d passed a lot of time like this watching does pull the horsehair lichen from tree branches and browse fir needles and twigs. Now the light was lower. The November twilight was tangibly brief. He lay back and let his rifle rest across his hips and stared up through the interstices of the blueberry into the dark branches of the trees. Eleanor, he said out loud. He recalled one of their blueberry expeditions, driving back into town for cream, eating the blueberries and cream in bed, eating them from her breasts at first, then from the triangle of hair between her legs, he felt a transitory urge to jerk off which he suppressed in favor of moving upstream again where he saw a red-legged frog on a rock and collected a handful of chanterelles. He hadn’t shaved in four days. He would need to shave before work tonight, which he could do in the rest room of the minimart in town. Things had come to that.
He didn’t worry about the dark. He wasn’t afraid. He had an unusual ability to see nocturnally. Where other people tripped and led with their hands, he saw well and easily. All it took was the last of the sun or a little moon or starlight and he was perfectly capable of finding his way to wherever he was going. He boulder-hopped and walked downstream to the lowest corner of Unit Two and stood on the first scorched stump inside the fireline with its fringe of dead fireweed and bracken. There’d been a tailblock somewhere down here and he looked for its telltale markings. Unit Two had cleared him, he recalled, something like four thousand dollars. If you didn’t count interest payments. For sixty acres of trees.
There were no deer. He hadn’t expected any. There were no stars; thick cloud cover. Tom shouldered his rifle and fired at the clouds. The sound of it rippled over the hills. The sound of it ripped a hole in the heavens, albeit a small hole. But a hole nonetheless. Joy nonetheless. His thunderstick was powerful. He loved the magic of it. A man making a loud noise and wielding death from a distance was surely more than nothing. Or could pretend to be. To himself and to the world, but not to God of course, because God knew the difference. In spite of that he fired again, a shot nearly as gratifying. The only thing he knew as pleasurable was felling a large tree perfectly. Back when Cross Logging was a viable entity he’d sought perfection as a matter of course, as if there were no alternative. He’d made his back cuts and his finish cuts with art, as if his saw were a scalpel. One delicate row of fiber at a time. As much holding wood as physics would allow. There would come a point of no return and he would shut his saw down, beat his retreat, crane his neck, and tilt his hard hat while the tree creaked, poised, a slow death. He could raze a whole forest for that satisfaction and never have enough of so doing. He’d liked it all, the ride to earth, the litterfall, the new shaft of sunlight riddled with gnats, the tree on the forest floor. He’d liked directing the fall of trees, guiding them into their resting places. It was what he knew and it was useless now.
He drove toward town on Forest Service roads sinuous and hypnotic in his high beams. The rain had slowed to the merest steam, a mild carbonated mist. It seemed rather to condense on his windshield than to fall out of the sky. There was no right speed for the windshield wipers, which demanded sporadic attention. Tom pulled over when he came to the South Fork to stand by the river with a cigarette in hand and watch the rain strike the current. The fishing would not have improved yet, he thought. The rivers were all high, out of shape.
At the highway he turned north and pulled in at the minimart, where he stood in line for coffee and two hot dogs. All of the burritos, fried chicken, bundles of kindling, gallon cans of white gas, toilet paper, and motor oil had been sold. There was mud on the floor and a line at the rest room, lines of cars at the gas bays, and a line of campers at the propane tank. The clerk at the cash register, Suzanne Rhoades, said I guess all this craziness is good for business but Tom what’s it doing to my peace of mind? and handed him his change without touching his fingers or looking him in the eye. Tom ate sitting at the wheel of his truck and decided to come back at eleven to shave because right now shaving in the minimart rest room was a selfish proposition. By eleven—maybe—things would be different. So that gave him evening hours to kill. He drove down Main behind a throng of cars, splashed into a mud-puddle parking spot at Gip’s that opened fortuitously while he’d circled for parking, and checked his post office box. Health insurance bill, therapy bill, lab bill, electric bill, collection agency threatening letter—the one piece of mail he felt compelled to open—bank statement, and three advertising circulars. Tom stuffed all of it back in the box as if to make it disappear that way and walked with his plastic garbage bag of laundry and his nearly empty carton of Borax toward the Korean laundromat. Its name had been changed under the current proprietors from North Fork Laundry to Kim’s. Why? What was wrong with North Fork Laundry? What private sentiment or business principle had inspired Kim to make the change, which after all must have cost money? Was it pride and defiance, like the Jews? Anyway the place was cleaner, he’d have to give Kim that. The grime was gone from the windowsills and the lineoleum floor had been waxed. Tom had seen Kim himself only once, a small neat man collecting his coins before sweeping the place with a push broom. Tom had pretended to read a magazine while noting Kim’s high-strung Asian efficiency when it came to sweeping a floor. The little man had shuffled near wearing his squinty-eyed poker face until finally they traded expressionless glances and then both looked away rapidly. Otherwise Kim was invisible. He might have lived in Timbu
ktu. An absentee profiteer, probably busy with a chain of laundromats. Or maybe, Tom thought, he and Mrs. Kim and Pin and Jabari played mah-jongg together on Friday nights and discussed new ways to appropriate the town while drinking ginseng tea and smoking opium from a hookah. Who knew? Maybe they all got naked together and did the positions in the Kama Sutra, The Pancake Flip, The Foul Ball, Camel With Three Humps, Around The World, Tiger About To Pounce. . . .
Kim’s was crowded. Everyone there doing laundry was a stranger. The locals had retreated into their rat holes. There were no good-looking women present. Tom liked glimpses of damp bras moiled up among other laundry as it was moved from washer to dryer. He liked to hear the catches of bras clanking against dryer drums. He associated the smell of newly washed laundry with the promise of sexual activity because Eleanor had habitually showered at night and come to bed in a clean nightie, smelling washed. Back in the old days, in the olden times, when there was plenty of that married good stuff. But every woman in the laundromat now was fundamentally unappealing. There was no one he could even work himself up to. Tom found a machine, poured in quarters, and started a load of whites. Kim’s getting rich tonight, he thought. Then he checked his watch and walked down Main to the Big Bottom.
He could have one or two. Three at the outside. He had to be straight for work at midnight. Tom thought the Big Bottom might be a haven but even it was full of strangers. Mother Mary’s followers, apparently, needed drinks as much as anyone. And Monday Night Football. Was that a sin? The Raiders led the Broncos by two touchdowns and a field goal. Some of the Mother Mary people were cheering after tackles but locals held down both the pool tables, a minor depressing triumph. Tom took a chair and waited for Tammy Buckwalter with lascivious anticipation. For some reason, he was needy tonight. He would not have predicted feeling this way but you could never predict such a thing, he’d found, it happened whenever it happened. He watched Tammy working the tables, plump and delectable inside her jeans, attractively disheveled and out of shape. She ignored him, he saw, intentionally, pulling beers and laying them down, wiping tables and collecting money as if she didn’t know he was there. Which was telling. It meant she did know. A sense of professionalism must have finally kicked in because at last she showed up with a tray in hand and an expression of exaggerated disdain. He noted her midriff hanging over the waist of her jeans which he had to admit was sexy. Carnal memories have their own kinetic energy, their own internal impetus, and he felt he wanted to do Tammy again, but this time more languorously, really go with it. Tammy, he said. I’m a loser, baby. You heard that song? My daughter listens to it. She gets in the truck and puts it on. I’m a loser baby so why don’t you kill me.
Okay.
Go ahead and do it. Kill me.
On second thought it’s too much trouble.
I’ll make it easy for you this time, Tammy.
We already tried that.
We can try again.
I vote no. Definitely. Now what kind of beer do you want?
Tom said, Whatever’s on tap. You think it over, Tammy.
She tucked the tray beneath her armpit. If I think it over I’ll puke, she said. Your tap beer is on the way.
Tom watched football and scrutinized strangers. He was back at the Big Bottom drinking beer and couldn’t explain the fact. A recurring dream. His beer arrived with no pleasantries attached except Tammy’s ass in flight. The Broncos kicked a field goal. Tom suddenly missed his daughter. It occurred to him that the strangers in the tavern had been dragged to North Fork by their wives. By women for whom Virgin Mary apparitions were a hobby like bird-watching. The sort of men who went along for the ride in order to minimize conflict. The sort of men who knew how to stay married by getting with the program. When the pressure grew, they went for a beer and commiserated halfheartedly. Tom could hear two of them bullshitting nearby, men of his own age in raincoats. Raincoats, tennis shoes, and soft indoor faces. They didn’t seem to know they were over their heads in showing up at the Big Bottom, where they could easily get their asses kicked. Tom tuned in to their conversation: No, north of Santa Fe, one was saying. Like you were going up to Los Alamos. You kind of head north at the Los Alamos turnoff instead of heading west.
The other man nodded an ambivalent affirmation, as if to suggest how obvious it was that without a map in front of them these directions were absurd and pointless. It’s like taking the back road to Taos, said the first man. Do you think you’re going to go there?
Maybe. Sometime. Sure.
They call it the Lourdes of America. Or so Paige informs me. But it didn’t look like much to me, an adobe church and a dirt parking lot, you can do it quickly between Santa Fe and Taos without any extra pain. Chimayo. Something like that. There’s a good place to get burritos right by it—a hole-in-the-wall kind of place out there which I always think are the best kind of places, in fact the burrito I had there for lunch was probably at least two hundred times better than the spendy dinner we had in Taos.
We don’t do much Mexican food. Sharon can’t eat tomatoes.
I’m allergic to milk lately. All of a sudden. Lactose intolerant. It’s terrible.
They gulped their beers, babies clutching flagons. Well I wouldn’t mind New Mexico, said the one who didn’t eat Mexican food. New Mexico and Arizona both. My brother is in Arizona.
Younger or older?
Younger brother.
What’s he doing?
Plays a lot of golf. And bicycling. I guess he bicycles competitively or something. He works for the Prudential.
It’d be worth it to go up to this place Chimayo because the drive is beautiful and Sharon would enjoy it as long as she doesn’t eat the food but it’s an interesting little hole-in-the-wall place there.
What’s this about the dirt now exactly? You were saying about the dirt?
That people take dirt from there in plastic bags like I described to you before. From a little well. A hole in the ground. Like they take the water from Lourdes I guess they take this dirt from this place Chimayo and hold it or pour it on their hands or something and hope for a miracle. For miracle healings. And like I said, Paige got some for her Manhattan uncle who was far down the road with emphysema.
And?
It didn’t work. He passed away and she felt bad about it because she’d made all these claims. About the dirt. Or implied them. She didn’t really claim anything.
What’s to feel bad? She just tried to help.
I know that but she doesn’t look at it that way.
She’s a good person.
I tell her that constantly.
I’ll tell her too.
That would be nice if it helped and it might if she hears it from more than just me. She could use more reinforcement.
So they must have a sizable hole in the ground there.
They don’t though. I asked about that. I asked around because I wondered about that. Just like you. Same thought entered my head. I wondered why it wasn’t all dug out with so many people taking the dirt. And I guess this guy comes around every day and puts new dirt in the place.
What?
He brings in dirt, the priest prays over it, it’s ready to go in the bags, I guess, even if it came from a dairy farm. I don’t know. These things are… what can you say? They’re funny, sort of. It’s all kind of funny. I’m not sure what you think of these Virgin events but to me, they’re ridiculous. What can I tell you? I don’t know what else to make of it all. I mean, what are we doing here if we can’t laugh, okay? What are you going to do?
Laugh or cry.
My point exactly.
She and I could visit my brother and then hop over there.
If it works out maybe that would convince her and you could get in eighteen holes.
Are you going to have another beer, Wally?
I’m definitely having another beer.
Excellent, said Wally’s friend. I’m with you.
Tom thought that maybe he himself would go ahead and kick their as
ses. It would be impersonal and cathartic at the same time. Just take it out on two assholes without any strings attached. But instead he knocked back the rest of his beer and resolved to escape this quagmire. A tensile restlessness had a hold of him tonight. He wanted to throw Tammy Buckwalter across the bar and show her what he was capable of, use the goatish power in his loins to put her in thrall to him. I’m a loser, he thought. So why don’t you kill me? On the way out he said, I’ll be back, Tammy. Soon as I can. You take your time, she answered snidely. And pay up for the one you drunk already.
At the laundromat he stuffed his whites into a dryer and checked all his pockets for change. There was none and furthermore the change machine was out of order or rather emptied by pilgrims. So where was Kim when you needed him? Tangled up doing Spin The Cobra or Reeds In The Wind with Jabari? Bring some god damn change already you little Korean kike! And Kim wanted a buck an hour to dry, up from seventy-five cents. Greed and inflation. Maybe the Koreans had learned that from the Jews. Maybe the Punjabis took Jew lessons too. What could you do except reach into your pocket and shell out to all of them bitterly? And who was willing to admit to the world that he kept track of quarters? Tom walked across the street to HK’s, where everybody was sullen and white. HK’s was gloomier and smaller than the Big Bottom, with an exceedingly crusty and grim drinking crowd, dried-up boozers intimately acquainted with the world of delirium tremens. It was locally famous for a brawl that occurred there on the Fourth of July in ’79 between bearded bikers from out of town and loggers affronted by the presumptuous way the bikers had parked on Main Street. The angles had been too jaunty, maybe. And the bikers were lighting M-80s in the street. So there was major carnage contained by logging trucks blocking all points of exit. Since then HK’s had gone into decline, but there was still a Polaroid of the battle damage taped to the back of the cash register, a couple of choppers laid on their sides, a felt-penned caption reading OLD FASHIONED ASS WHUPPING, you could also make out some broken glass already swept into the gutter.