Endangered

15

The sound of the compressor muted as Joe stepped inside the house and the door was closed behind him. He removed his hat and held the brim with two hands.

“He’s in the back,” Brenda said.

Cora Lee was sprawled on a couch with one leg cocked over the arm. She was watching television, and she refused to look at Joe. That was okay with him. The show that blared from the flat-screen was something about spring break in Florida. Lots of bikinis and abs.

The house was small, cluttered, and close. It smelled of baked goods from the kitchen. The furnishings were familiar to Joe from so many visits to area homes: a unique combination of hunting memorabilia crossed with Wild West kitsch. An elk mount dominated the wall over a fireplace, and the fabric of the couch and chair was a motif of bucking horses and lariats. The low-hanging chandelier was a reproduction of a wagon wheel, with dusty little bulbs on each spoke. The adjacent wall, which melded into the hallway, was covered with cheaply framed photographs of rodeo action shots. Dallas riding a bull, Dallas on a saddle bronc, Dallas flying his hat like a Frisbee in an outdoor arena after a particularly good ride.

“That one is my favorite,” Brenda said as Joe leaned in to the picture. “It was taken three years ago at Cheyenne Frontier Days when Dallas won it. The ‘Daddy of ’Em All,’” she said.

A china hutch in the corner contained nothing but silver and gold buckles Dallas had won across the nation. There were four sparkling shelves of them.

As Joe passed by the wall, he searched for photos of the rest of the family and found one: an old shot of Bull, Timber, and Dallas with their arms around one another. It looked like it had been taken on a camping trip more than a decade ago. Bull’s mouth was agape and he looked simple. Timber was wiry and lean, and his eyes were closed as he smiled. Both brothers towered over Dallas, who stared straight at the camera with a kind of alarming confidence for a boy that small. By the looks of the photo, Dallas would have been nine or ten at the time, Joe thought. That was it as far as photos of his brothers went. The rest of the front room was a shrine to Dallas Cates. A stranger entering the house could have reasonably assumed Dallas was an only child.

Joe inadvertently glanced at Bull, who stood glowering by the door. As if Bull could read Joe’s mind, he winced and looked away. Joe almost—but not quite—felt sorry for him.

—

DALLAS RECLINED in an overstuffed chair in what appeared to be his old bedroom, judging by the yellowed rodeo posters on the walls and the photos of him playing football, wrestling, and running track as a Saddlestring High School Wrangler. He was watching a small television between his sock-clad feet. When Joe entered the room, Dallas turned his head stiffly and his eyes registered surprise when he recognized Joe. He lifted the remote and clicked off the set.

“Mr. Pickett,” Dallas said.

“Dallas.”

It wasn’t a ruse, Joe quickly determined. Dallas had been seriously injured. His face was still puffy and his left eye was swollen shut. The bruises on his face and neck were entering the gruesome blue, green, and yellow phase. His left arm was in a sling.

“I thought I heard Mom talkin’ to someone out there.” Dallas’s voice was muted and airier than Joe remembered. He attributed it to a throat injury.

Joe said, “Yup.”

Dallas winced as he shifted his weight in the recliner to face Joe. Even in his condition, Dallas radiated a kind of raw physical power, Joe thought. Muscles danced and his tendons popped beneath his skin as he moved. Sinew corded in his neck.

“Nothin’ hurts like busted ribs,” Dallas said, and he lifted the front of his baggy sweatshirt. His midsection was wrapped, but Joe could see the bruised discoloration on Dallas’s skin above and below the bandage.

“I broke my ribs once,” Joe said. “I know how it hurts.”

“It’s not so bad,” Dallas said with one of the big boxy grins he was famous for. “It only hurts when I breathe. Or talk. Or eat. Or try to move.”

Joe nodded sympathetically.

“Dr. Jalbani at the clinic in town says the only thing I can do is rest and let the ribs heal on their own. There’s nothing they can do to speed up the recovery. Did you know that?”

“I did.”

“When did Saddlestring get a Pakistani doctor?” Dallas asked. “It seems kind of funky.”

“He’s been here for two years.”

“Well,” Dallas said, “that just shows you how much I’ve been around, I guess.”

Dallas suddenly got serious, and said, “How’s April doing, Mr. Pickett?”

Joe realized Brenda was standing in the door right behind him. Dallas had glanced over to her before he asked the question. Joe wondered if Brenda had silently prompted it.

“She’s in bad shape,” Joe said. “She’s in a coma in a hospital in Billings.”

“Man,” Dallas said, “that’s bad news.” Then: “Is she going to make it?”

“We’re optimistic,” Joe lied.

Dallas nodded. And kept nodding. Then another quick glance to Brenda behind Joe’s shoulder.

“Has she been able to communicate?” Dallas asked.

“No.”

“Man, that’s rough. Will she ever be able to talk?”

“We hope so.”

Yet another glance. Joe considered whipping his head around so he could catch Brenda coaching her son, but he didn’t.

“Well, if she recovers, I hope you’ll tell her how sorry I am this happened to her,” Dallas said. “I mean, we had our problems and all, especially at the end. But she means a lot to me. I can’t stand to think of her stuck in some hospital room like that. So tell her I’m thinkin’ about her, will you?”

Joe nodded.

“Maybe I’ll be up and around soon,” Dallas said. “Billings ain’t that far.”

He paused, then said, “If that’s okay with you and Marybeth, I mean.”

Joe didn’t want to say, There’s nothing to see. And he didn’t like Dallas using his wife’s name so casually. He said, “I’ll let you know when she’s better. Maybe we can work something out.”

“That’d be great, Mr. Pickett.”

He seemed almost sincere, almost eager. Joe thought perhaps he had always judged Dallas too harshly. He’d been put off by his mannerisms, his history, his too-eager-to-please persona.

But maybe, Joe conceded, it had as much to do with the fact that April had left with him while Joe and Marybeth were away. That it had been Dallas’s fault as much as April’s why she had left.

Joe asked, “How long have you been back, Dallas?”

“Since March tenth,” he answered quickly.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Brenda said from behind Joe.

“Not the thirteenth?” Joe pressed.

“Hell no,” Dallas said, letting some heat show through, although the grin was still frozen on his face. “I see what you’re doin’ here.”

“Just had to check,” Joe said. “I’m sorry.”

“You ought to be,” Brenda said.

Joe looked back at her. She wasn’t as angry as he’d expected. Oddly, she looked relieved.

“Well,” Joe said to Dallas, “I hope you’re up and around soon.”

Dallas’s grin turned into a bigger box. “The only good thing about it is, I couldn’t have gotten busted up at a better time. I lost my entry fees on the Rodeo All-Star gig in Dallas, of course, but the big fun doesn’t really start until June. By then, it’ll be a rodeo a day, and sometimes two, through the rest of the summer. That’ll be one paycheck after another. I plan to turn this setback right around and light up the PRCA all the way to the national finals. I ain’t the first cowboy to get hurt, you know.”

Joe agreed.

“You and Marybeth ought to come see me at the Daddy, last week of July,” Dallas said, meaning Cheyenne. “I can get you some passes for the east-side stands.”

“Maybe,” Joe said.

“And you let me know how April’s doin’, okay?”

“Yup,” Joe said.

—

“SO,” BRENDA SAID as they went down the hall toward the living room, “are you finally satisfied?”

Joe said, “I have to say I am.”

There was no way Dallas could have administered such a serious beating to April in his condition. The broken ribs alone would have prevented it, Joe knew. He remembered the searing pain he had experienced simply lacing up his boots. And how Dallas had managed to drive from Houston to Saddlestring in his condition was both foolish and heroic, Joe thought.

Brenda shook her head and said, “You’re a hardheaded man.”

“I just needed to be sure,” Joe said. “I guess it still stings that April ran off.”

Brenda reached out and grasped his elbow before he entered the front room, and he turned.

She nodded at the Cheyenne photo of Dallas flinging his hat and said, “You know, this community don’t appreciate what we’ve got here.”

Joe was momentarily puzzled.

“Dallas,” she said. “He’s a champion. He’s our world-class athlete, and he comes from right here in Twelve Sleep County. There should be signs outside the town telling everyone they’re entering the home of Dallas Cates. There should be parades every summer. We ought to name the high school after him, or at least the rodeo arena.”

Her eyes were blazing.

“I talked to your wife about it a while back. I was trying to get her on board because I think she’d have some influence, bein’ the head of the library and all. Maybe you can talk to her. Maybe you can let her know what a big deal that boy is back there. Sometimes I think people around here don’t appreciate what they’ve got. They see Eldon pumping out their septic tanks and they don’t think, ‘That man—he’s the father of a champion.’ They just think, ‘That man is pumping out my shit.’”

Her grip on his arm was surprisingly strong.

She leaned into him and said, “What do we have to do to get it through all the thick skulls around here that they’ve got a rodeo champion right here? Who grew up right here? What’s wrong with them?”

“Brenda,” Joe said, “I don’t know that I’m the right guy to ask.”

“That boy back there is special,” she said. “He’s one-in-a-million. Do you know how many people have asked me about how he’s doing? Less than ten, I’ll tell you that. The newspaper should have been out here. The mayor should have been out here.”

“I hear you,” Joe said. He meant that literally, not that he actually agreed. He thought, Too many locals know about Dallas’s role in the sexual assault when he was in high school. Too many locals had been beaten up or terrorized by Timber before he was sent to prison. Too many local hunters have been burned by Eldon or Bull while they’re out trying to get meat for the winter. Too many locals have been harangued by Brenda about building monuments to her son.

He said, “Have you thought about letting it be their idea instead of yours?”

Her face turned to stone. After a beat, she said, “It would never happen. They all look down on us. We know if we don’t take care of ourselves, no one else will.”

“That isn’t my experience,” Joe said. “People around here are pretty decent. Maybe you ought to give ’em a chance.”

She looked at him with contempt.

“Thanks for letting me see him,” he said, twisting away from her grip.

He clamped on his hat and reached for the doorknob. Behind him, Brenda Cates said, “Don’t forget what we talked about here, Joe Pickett.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t.”

He couldn’t get out of the Cates home fast enough.

—

JOE FROWNED against the sound of the air compressor until he was back in his pickup. Daisy was happy to see him, but she threw nervous looks toward the house as if expecting the pack of dogs to come out at any second. As Joe backed up and pointed the nose of his pickup toward the gate, he noted that Brenda was watching him out the kitchen window and that Bull had cocked back the curtains in the living room.

As he squared the pickup to leave, he saw Dallas’s late-model four-wheel-drive pickup parked on the side of an equipment shed filled with a flatbed trailer with two snowmobiles on it. The pickup was a gleaming red Ford F-250 with a chrome cowcatcher and Texas plates. PRCA, PBR, and NFR stickers were on the windows. Anyone in the know would recognize the acronyms for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, Professional Bull Riders, and National Finals Rodeo.

Eldon stood in the shadows inside the garage next to one of his pump trucks. Joe waved good-bye to him, but Eldon didn’t wave back. Joe could see the compressor vibrating at Eldon’s feet. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be a pneumatic hose attached.

—

SOMEBODY LET THE DOGS out of their run and they followed Joe’s pickup all the way to the county road. When he finally turned onto the graded road, he called Marybeth on his cell phone.

“I saw Dallas Cates,” he said. “He didn’t do it.”

“You saw him? Where?”

“At his house. I was checking out this sage grouse thing and the Cates place was within sight, so I stopped by to see if they’d seen anything.”

“How convenient,” she said, deadpan.

He described Dallas’s condition.

She said, “There was still a small part of me that was suspicious. Now I guess we can move on.”

He agreed. “They’re an odd bunch, though. Brenda buttonholed me about the town doing more to recognize her son. She might have a point, but she’s a little scary when she gets going.”

“She does that to everyone,” Marybeth said.

“Oh, and I might have gotten a lead on who shot all those birds,” he said.

“Who?”

“I’ll tell you when I get back,” Joe said, knowing he was about to hit a long dead zone for cell phone coverage. Then: “I’ll have to tread real lightly on this one.”

His phone blinked out and he didn’t know if she’d heard that last part.

—

TEN MINUTES LATER, Liv heard the compressor shudder into silence. She knew what it meant and she fought back tears. Whoever had arrived was gone.

The footfalls came and she could tell there were two sets of them.

“Open that up,” a woman said from above. Liv recognized the voice as belonging to the person who’d claimed she was Kitty Wells.

Dirt sifted into the root cellar when the doors were thrown back. Liv covered her face and eyes with her hands until it settled.

“You can go,” the woman said to the man.

“Are you goin’ down there?” Bull asked his mother with alarm.

“No. I just need to have a private conversation with this young lady. Go over there and help your dad.”

Bull slunk away.

“I’m Brenda,” the woman said, standing over the opening with her hands on her ample hips.

Liv brushed grit from her face and opened her eyes.

“I heard you screamin’ down there. Luckily, nobody else did. Eldon can’t hear much these days and the game warden thought it was the compressor goin’ out.”

Liv didn’t know what to say. She’d screamed so hard she was still wet with sweat. She’d guessed her screams were drowned out by the motor. That was the reason, she was sure, they’d fired it up in the first place.

Brenda said, “If you ever do that again, I’ll send Eldon out here to fill up this hole.”

By the tone of her voice, Liv had no doubt she’d do it.

“I’m thinkin’ you might go without dinner tonight,” Brenda said.

Liv hugged herself but didn’t respond. Brenda stood there, looking down at her.

Finally, Liv asked, “Why are you doing this?”

“You know, I ain’t never had a daughter.”

“What?”

“I always wanted a little girl,” Brenda said wistfully, more to herself than to Liv. “I wanted a little girl so I could dress her up in dresses and brush her hair and sing songs with her, you know? Instead, I got boys. All they done was run wild, punch each other, and break things. Of course, my little girl would be a little paler than you.”

Liv stayed quiet.

Brenda said, “But at least them boys didn’t scream. I’ve gone my whole life without a screamin’ female in it. I don’t plan to start now.”

With that, Brenda turned and vanished from the opening. Liv heard her say, “Bull, go close that back up now.”

—

TWO HOURS LATER, more footfalls. Bull. Liv was wondering if the game warden had been Nate’s friend Joe Pickett, and she planned to try to get the name out of Bull. She dutifully threw off her blanket and relocated her chair to accommodate the ladder.

When the doors were open, Bull said, “We got meat loaf and apple pie tonight.”

“Really?” Liv asked.

“I guess she changed her mind.”

Bull leaned over and tied a knot in the handle of the feed bucket and lowered it down to Liv.

“Is Joe Pickett coming back?” she asked in a conversational tone.

“He better not,” Bull said. “If he does, I’ll put him down and let the dogs clean up the remains.”

Liv nodded. “Aren’t you coming down?”

“Naw,” Bull said sullenly. “I ain’t supposed to anymore. Cora Lee, she . . .” He let his point trail off. But it had been made.

Liv reached up and grasped the bottom of the bucket with both hands. The plastic was warm to the touch.

“Besides,” Bull said, “what do you care if I come down there or not?”

Liv pretended she was thinking long and hard about what she was about to say. Then she said it.

“Because it gets kind of lonely down here.”

Bull was silent. She looked up. He seemed to be frozen there. She couldn’t see his face well because the sun was behind him, but she thought he might be blushing.

He closed the doors, locked them, turned, and went back toward the house.

Liv ate, but not because she was hungry. She ate because she needed fuel to survive.

As she did, those words came back.

I ain’t never had a daughter before. It chilled Liv to the bone.

But the trap was set.