Blood trail

13

IN HER third-hour social studies class at Saddlestring High School, Sheridan Pickett idly drew sketches of smiling faces, flowers, and falcons in the margin of her notebook while waiting for class to begin. Her teacher, Mrs. Whaling, an attractive, doe-eyed blonde from the Northeast who, to Sheridan, infused the mountain West where she now lived with too much Disneyfied romance, had announced earlier with breathless glee that there would be a "very special guest speaker" that morning. When she did, several boys including Jason Kiner and Sheridan's on-again-off-again boyfriend Jarrod Haynes (a dream to look at but a nightmare to have a conversation with) moaned with audible disdain and their reaction was met with an icy glare from their teacher. Sheridan kept her head down.

Mrs. Whaling was fond of guest speakers. She was also fond of showing movies during classtime that stretched over several days, silent reading, and hour-long forays into topics that had nothing to do with the curriculum. Sheridan found the class a waste of time, but couldn't transfer out because she needed the requirement. She did her best to feign interest, read the textbook even though she wasn't sure Mrs. Whaling had looked at it in years, and try not to laugh at Jarrod's mumbled stupid jokes. He could be funny in an irreverent, sophomoric way, she had to admit.

Today was worse than most days already, though, because of what had happened at home the night before and that morning. A sense of dread had enveloped her before she entered the building that morning and she had trouble shedding it or pushing it aside. She'd not been able to concentrate on anything at school because her head and heart were at home, with her mom, with her dad.

She almost didn't notice when Mrs. Whaling opened the door to the hallway. A big man with flowing blond hair and a barrel chest and a thousand-megawatt smile came in trailing a dark, pretty woman pushing a stroller.

"Kids," Mrs. Whaling said beaming, grasping her hands together in thrall in front of her bosom, "this is Klamath Moore."

"Save the wildlife!" Klamath Moore boomed, thrusting his arms into the air as if signaling a touchdown. SHERIDAN HAD been awakened by the telephone ringing at five-thirty that morning, a sound she normally would have slept right through. But it was the way her mother answered it out in the hall and talked-with such emotional earnestness and gravity-that connected with Sheridan's semiconsciousness in a primal mother-daughter way and jerked her awake. She lay there for a few moments in the darkness, hearing snatches of conversation as her mother paced up and down the hall the way she did when a situation was serious:

"Not Robey? Oh my God, Joe…"

"… hospital…"

"Three people shot and the other two dead…"

"Are you sure you're okay?…"

"How could this happen?"

"Why did this Lothar guy start shooting? Why didn't he identify himself? He put both of you in danger…"

"Another poker chip?"

"This is awful, Joe, just awful…"

Sheridan wrapped herself in her robe and found her mother sitting at the kitchen table looking pale, her eyes hollow and staring at nothing at all, her hands and the cordless phone on her lap as the coffeemaker percolated on the counter.

"Mom?"

Her mother jumped at the greeting, and quickly tried to assume her usual confident look of parental authority. Sheridan appreciated the attempt although it was a failure.

"Are you okay? Is Dad okay?"

"Okay is not the word for it," her mom said. "I just talked to him. He's at the hospital. Our friend Robey Hersig is in critical condition and not expected to last the morning." Her mom took a deep breath, fighting back tears of frustration, and when she did so Sheridan felt a sympathetic welling in her own eyes even though she didn't yet know what the situation was, only that it was affecting her mother so deeply that she was talking to her adult-to-adult, which was both thrilling and frightening at the same time.

"Robey was shot last night up in the mountains where your dad was. Two other men were killed, one by accident, one not by accident-"

Sheridan interrupted, "But Dad's all right?"

Her mom nodded and her face softened. "He's not hurt. But he's hurting, and I feel for him. He said the man who shot the hunter came back and killed Robey and another man I don't know. It's complicated. He says he feels guilty he's the only one who made it through unscathed, that it was pure luck."

"Thank God he's okay," Sheridan said.

"Yes, thank God for that. But poor Nancy Hersig and their two children. I can't even imagine…"

Sheridan pictured the Hersig kids. A boy who was a junior in high school and somewhat of a derelict, and a girl in junior high she'd last seen clutching a lunch sack and backpack on the school bus.

"Will Mr. Hersig make it, do you think?"

"Joe said the doctors doubt it. But we can pray for him."

Sheridan shook her head. She didn't want all the horrible details but she was confused as to what had happened. She wasn't sure her mom even knew everything.

"Come here," her mom said, extending her arms.

Sheridan did, and let her mother pull her close and squeeze her the way she hadn't, it seemed, in years. Sheridan squeezed back.

"Your poor father," her mom said. "He's sick about this."

"I'm just glad he's not hurt."

"Me too, darling," her mom said. "Me too. But like him, I feel a little guilty for being so happy he is the only one who made it through the night."

"What's going on?" Lucy asked from the doorway.

Sheridan and her mother quickly released each other, her mom becoming a mother again. Sheridan morphed into the role of older sister.

As her mom sat Lucy down to tell her everything was all right, that there'd been an accident but her dad was okay, the telephone rang. Sheridan answered, hoping it would be her father.

"Hello, little lady," the voice said. "May I please speak with Joe?"

"Who is calling?"

"My name's Spencer Rulon. I'm the governor of Wyoming."

At the name, Sheridan narrowed her eyes, pursed her lips, said, "Quit trying to get my dad killed."

"Honey… I…" he stammered.

Her mom wrenched the phone away from her before she could say more. KLAMATH MOORE paced the front of the classroom like a big cat in a cage, his shoulders thrust forward, his hands grasped behind his back, moving as if propelled by internal demons that would not let him rest.

Mrs. Whaling said, "By point of introduction, I've been following Mr. Moore and his cause for quite some time, long before I moved here from Vermont. I read his blog daily and I've seen him talk and debate on CNN and other networks. He's very controversial but very interesting, and he has some important things to say. When I heard he was here in our little community, I just had to invite him to school. Please welcome Mr. Klamath Moore…" She stepped back and clapped, which at first was a dry, hollow sound in the room until the class got the message and joined in.

He said, "When your teacher called me this morning to ask if I could come talk to you before my press conference this afternoon, I jumped at the chance. Because any opportunity I have to address our nation's youth is vitally important. I appreciate it very much, and I thank you, Mrs. Whaling." He nodded to her as he said her name, and she blushed.

"Life without hunting is not only possible, it's important," Moore boomed. "Think about it. There was a time when it was a matter of life or death for human beings to hunt animals in order for people to survive. If the caveman didn't go out and kill a mastodon, his babies didn't eat. And even a hundred years ago there were still places in these United States where people hunted for subsistence because they had no choice."

Klamath Moore suddenly stopped and swept his eyes across the room, pausing for great effect, before whispering, "That time has passed."

He made it a point to find and hold sets of eyes until the viewer had no quarter and was forced to look away, conceding Moore's superior focus and passion. His voice was deep and raspy, his words dramatic, if well rehearsed, Sheridan thought. She recognized much of the exact wording from his website.

"I'm not saying there aren't still a few places on this earth where hunting is necessary, for remote tribes in remote places. But in this day and age, where technology has made it possible to feed us all without our having to go out and get our hands bloody, hunting is an anachronism. Can anyone in this room tell me why there are men in the richest country on the face of the earth who find it necessary to take a gun they shouldn't be allowed to have in the first place and go out into our nature-that's right, it belongs to all of us-and kill an innocent animal with a high-powered rifle simply for the twisted fun of it? How would you like it if somebody killed your pet dogs and cats, or your little sisters or brothers… simply because they loved doing it? It's the same thing, believe me."

Sheridan stopped sketching, realizing she had been idly working on a scene of a falcon dropping from the sky to hit a rabbit. Trying not to draw attention to herself, she moved her arm over the drawing so no one could see it.

As Klamath Moore went on, Sheridan found herself looking at the woman with him, who she assumed was his wife. The woman sat on a chair next to Mrs. Whaling's desk with her hands in her lap, her eyes on Moore. She was beautiful, with high cheekbones, obsidian eyes, and long dark hair parted in the middle. She wore jeans and a loose chambray shirt over a white top and little makeup because it wasn't necessary. Sheridan guessed she was Native, and she had a kind of calm serenity about her that was soothing to behold. She'd not said a word, but her presence seemed to bolster Moore's message in a way that was hard to explain. As her man spoke, she would occasionally look down into the stroller next to her and brush her sleeping baby's apple-red cheeks with the back of her fingers. Sheridan resented Klamath more-and her teacher-for not introducing the woman and baby as well.

"Hunting is a dying activity in the United States, I'm happy to say," Moore said, "but it isn't dying fast enough. Most studies say less than five percent of Americans hunt. That's around fifteen million hunters. Around here, I'd guess the percentage is much higher, maybe thirty percent? Fifty percent? Too damned many, that's for sure. But whatever the number, these so-called sportsmen kill over two hundred million birds and animals every year. Two hundred million! That includes four million deer, two hundred thousand elk, twenty million pheasants, and over twenty-five thousand bears. Think about this kind of slaughter on a mass scale-it's horrendous! My mission in this life is to hasten the overdue death of blood sports and to raise awareness about what it really is, what it really does. I firmly believe that every time a rich man pulls the trigger and an animal dies, we as human beings die just a little bit as well. In nature, predators kill only the sick and weak. But hunters kill the biggest, healthiest, and strongest in the herd, which plays hell with the balance of nature. We will never achieve moral greatness until this practice is abolished."

From behind Sheridan, a male voice mumbled, "What bullshit." It was Jason Kiner. Jason's father, like Sheridan's, was a game warden. Sheridan had fought with Jason the year before but they'd mended fences, just like their fathers had. Sheridan still wasn't sure she liked him, but she felt a growing kinship with him as Moore went on because he, like her, felt their fathers were being attacked here in their classroom.

"Ah," Moore said, stopping and raising a stubby finger in the air. "I hear some dissent. That's okay, that's okay. I encourage it. It's the American way and I'm all for the American way. And I expect it, here in the heart of what I like to call the Barbaric States. Do you know what a barbarian is?"

No one raised a hand.

"The definition I like is thus: lacking refinement, learning, or artistic culture. That pretty much describes a hunter, I'd say. Think of him out there," he said, gesturing out the windows toward the Bighorns, "swilling beer, farting, trying to keep his pants up because he's so fat, using high-tech weapons to kill Bambi and Thumper so he can cut their heads off and stick them on his wall. Do you know how the word barbarian came to be?"

Again, no hands.

"The ancient Romans came up with it to describe the hordes of slimeballs who were trying to take them down. They spoke a different language which, to the Roman ear, sounded like 'Bar-bar-bar-bar.'" He said it in a stupid, drooling way that made several kids laugh. "That's what I hear when so-called hunters tell me why they do it. They get all high and mighty and say they're honoring the animal they killed, or they're getting right with nature, or some other kind of nonsense. But when they go on and on all I can hear is-" He stopped, made his face slack and his eyes vacant, opened his mouth to appear like an idiot, and said, "Bar-bar-bar-bar-bar."

Sheridan noticed how his wife did a well-practiced smile, and how several kids laughed, getting into it. Mrs. Whaling seemed a little uncomfortable with the way things were going, Sheridan thought. Her teacher's eyes darted around the room more than usual.

"Do you know what hunters actually do?" he asked. "Do you know what takes place? I've got no doubt some of your relatives probably hunt, this being the Barbaric States. But how many of you have actually been there?"

He paused. The silence started to roar.

Finally, Jason Kiner raised his hand. Moore nodded at him, as if approving. "Any more?" he asked.

Two boys in the back cautiously raised their hands as well. One was Trent Millions, a Native who split his time between his father's house on the reservation and his mother's house in town. Trent appeared puzzled by the question, since hunting on the reservation was done without controversy and was a matter of course.

Taking a deep breath, Sheridan raised her hand.

"Four of you?" Moore said. "Just four? I would have thought more. I guess hunting is dying out even in the bloody heart of the Barbaric States."

Then he looked at the kids one by one with their hands up and said, "You're all murderers."

Which startled Mrs. Whaling and made her turn white. "Mr. Moore, maybe-"

He ignored her.

"If you kill an animal for the joy of killing, you're a murderer," he said. Sheridan felt the eyes of most of the room on her now, but she kept her hand up. She felt her face begin to burn with anger and, surprisingly, a little shame. "Okay," he said, "you can put your hands down now if you want."

He shook his head sadly, said, "Blessed are the young for they know not what they do."

Sheridan kept her hand up.

"Right now as I speak to you," Moore said, pointing out the window, "there is a man up there in those mountains who is killing hunters. Unlike the innocent animals hunters kill, this man seeks and destroys other men who are armed and capable of fighting back. But this man who does to hunters what hunters do to innocent wild animals is considered a sicko, a mad dog, and that's why I'm here. I'm here to support him in his noble quest to raise awareness of what is happening over two hundred million times a year in this country. If we condemn him and say his methods are brutal and deviant, how can we turn around and say what hunters do is not? This man, whoever he is, should be celebrated as a hero! He's fighting for the animals who can't fight back themselves, and I, for one, hope he's just getting started."

Sheridan shot a look at Mrs. Whaling, who was now as white as a porcelain bowl.

"Not that I condone murder, of course," Moore said, quickly backtracking. "I condemn it when it's done to animals, and I condemn it when it happens to human beings, who are just animals themselves-but animals who should know better.

"For those of you who haven't murdered an animal, let me tell you how it's done," Moore said. "And those of you proud murderers feel free to correct me if I get any part of this wrong.

"Once the animal is down, after it's been shot, the first thing you do is take your knife out and slit its throat, right? So it will bleed out into the ground. Many times, the animal isn't even dead yet. Then you turn it on its back and slit it up the middle, right? So you can reach inside and pull its guts out into a pile, right?"

There were several gasps, and at least one girl put her face in her hands. Another plugged her ears with her fingers. Sheridan kept her hand up, glaring back at Moore.

"When that's all done and you're covered with blood and your hands stink of guts, you cut the head off the innocent animal and take it to a taxidermist. Then you proudly put it up on the wall as your trophy, as proof of what a big man you are."

He turned his eyes directly on Sheridan. "Or in your case, what a big girl you are. So tell me, how did it make you feel?"

"You're asking me?" Sheridan said. She noticed that the woman was looking at her as well, with a surprising nod of sympathy. In fact, the woman turned from Sheridan and glared at her husband.

"I'm asking you," Moore said. "Did you like it? Did you like taking the life of an innocent animal? Did it please you in some way?"

Sheridan's face was burning, and her throat ached.

"Klamath," the woman whispered, "leave her alone."

"Did you like the warm blood on your hands?" he goaded.

"I've never killed anything," Sheridan said.

Moore was perplexed. "Then why did you raise your hand?"

"I just wanted to show I oppose you," she said, her voice firm. "I'm an apprentice falconer. I've watched falcons hunt. They don't just kill the sick and weak, so I know you're lying. Plus, I see a big difference between hunting animals and killing a man. And I think you're an asshole and you should stop trying to intimidate us."

"Sheridan!" Mrs. Whaling gasped.

Sheridan thought she detected a slight smile in the woman's eyes.

The bell rang, saving the day.

Jason Kiner whooped. Jarrod Haynes said, "This is why I love that girl."

Klamath Moore stepped back to let the classroom empty, but Sheridan could feel his eyes burning through her. She kept her head down and clutched her books to her chest. She could hear Mrs. Whaling apologizing to Klamath Moore's back about Sheridan's language.

As she passed the woman, Sheridan felt a hand on her arm. She looked over to see the woman's large dark eyes on her. Then the woman reached up and stroked Sheridan's cheek with the back of her fingers, the same way she'd stroked her sleeping baby.

Sheridan didn't jerk back, but was shocked by the intimacy of the gesture.

"You're the daughter of the game warden, aren't you?"

Sheridan nodded her head.

"You're terribly misguided, but I hope your father knows what a brave daughter he has," she said, and looked at Sheridan with a sudden sadness that, for some reason, made Sheridan want to cry for the second time that morning.