Endangered

25

At the same time, Liv heard footfalls approaching and she quickly stopped digging around the rock. Most of the rock was exposed now, but it was still stuck fast. Liv’s fear that the stone was simply a spur of a much larger boulder had grown throughout the day but had recently been put to rest. The contours of the smooth ancient river rock were starting to round out at the back. It was, in fact, approximately the size and shape of a football. She’d cleaned enough of the packed clay from around it that she could now reach in and grab the top and bottom of the stone with both hands, although she couldn’t get enough leverage yet to work it free. It would take more time and effort.

The doors opened and large flakes of snow floated down into the root cellar. The sky was cream-colored, the sun muted behind heavy clouds.

Brenda said, “I wanted to see if you liked pork chops.”

“You’re asking me what I want for dinner?” Liv asked, surprised.

“Not if it’s something exotic the men won’t eat. But what about pork chops?”

“I like pork chops.”

“Then it’s settled,” Brenda said.

But instead of leaving, Brenda sat down on the lip of the doorframe. She was wearing an oversized barn coat over her housedress and her feet dangled down. Liv could see the woman’s thick ankles and her heavy, old-fashioned shoes. She wore support hose and there was a bulge of white fat above the top of the hose.

“There’s supposed to be a big winter storm coming,” Brenda said. “By midnight tonight, we’re supposed to really get hit. Is that heater working okay?”

“Yes.”

“You got enough sleeping bags and all?”

“I think so. They don’t smell so good, though.”

“They smell like the guys,” Brenda said. “Beggars can’t be choosers, you know.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Liv said, wondering if Brenda was going to go away.

After a long beat, Brenda said, “I brought this,” and held something out in her hand. It was a hairbrush.

“I appreciate that,” Liv said. “Are you going to drop it down to me?”

“I was actually thinking I’d come down there and brush your hair. It’s something I’ve been thinking about. Would you be okay with that?”

Liv felt an equal mix of panic and revulsion. Brenda behind her, brushing her hair? The idea of it almost made her physically sick. But if she could actually get her down here . . .

Liv glanced at the stone in the wall. Maybe with enough adrenaline rushing through her she’d be able to jerk it out and brain Brenda.

“I’d love it,” Liv said.

Brenda said over her shoulder, “Bull, lower that ladder.”

Liv’s heart sank. She hadn’t realized Bull was right there with her, but out of view.

“Keep close and have that pistol handy,” Brenda said to Bull. “Pop her if she tries anything.”

“Okay, Ma.”

Brenda said to Liv, “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

Liv closed her eyes, fighting away tears. “No.”

“You want your hair brushed?”

“Yes.”

—

LIV SAT with her back to the stone in the dirt wall so that when Brenda brushed her hair she wouldn’t glance up and notice it. Liv wished she’d had more warning they were coming so she could have packed more loose dirt around the rock than she had.

The teeth of the brush actually felt good coursing down through her hair, although Brenda was a little rough at first, pulling it hard through tangles.

“Your hair is nice,” Brenda said. “Is it always like this or do you treat it somehow?”

“I get it straightened.”

“What would it be like otherwise?”

“It would be natural.”

“You mean like an Afro?”

“Yes.”

Brenda clucked her tongue. She said, “I can’t even imagine.”

Up at the compound, an engine started up with a high whine. Then it revved up fast.

Brenda called to Bull, “Did Dallas get that snowmobile started?”

“Sounds like he did.”

Brenda chuckled. “That boy—he’s a go-getter. There’s nothing he loves more than getting up into the mountains on his snowmobile. When I told him about this storm moving in, he just lit up.”

“Didn’t he get injured at a rodeo?” Liv asked, making small talk.

“Yeah, sort of.”

The answer perplexed Liv for what it didn’t say.

Brenda said, “I’ve never seen a human recover so quick. He’ll be back in the game in a few days at this rate. I wish I could come back after getting hurt like he does. But he’s always been fast in whatever it is he chooses to do. He’s an exceptional person, and I ain’t just sayin’ that because he’s my boy. I just wish the folks around this county would give him his due.”

“They should,” Liv agreed, trying anything to establish common ground. “How did Dallas get injured? Was it a bull?”

“Yeah, in Houston. But he didn’t get hurt that bad. Dallas got thrown in front of a big crowd of people and that probably hurt him more than anything else,” Brenda said. “It wasn’t until he got back here that he got those busted ribs and got his shoulder pulled out of the socket.”

Liv was confused. Brenda must have sensed it.

“I had to have Eldon and Bull do it. Dallas agreed, but it isn’t any fun to watch your husband and your oldest son beat the crap out of your youngest. Pulled his arm out of the socket and busted in his ribs. I had to turn my head when they done it.”

“Why?”

“Oh, it’s a long story,” Brenda said. “Dallas did something he shouldn’t have done. I had to figure out a way to keep him out of it. See, I’m the only one who does any thinking around here.”

“I believe it,” Liv said. “So why was injuring Dallas a good thing for him?”

“Wasn’t just him. It was for the whole family. I look after my whole family and keep ’em on the right path. I don’t let anyone get in our way. Anyone. I saw when they sent Timber away to Rawlins what happens when I don’t stay on top of ’em. Timber’s my middle son. He’s the wildest of them all and he got out of prison this morning.”

There was a pause. Brenda pulled the brush through and Liv mewed. It was a false emotion, but to Brenda it sounded genuine.

“You like that, huh?” she asked softly.

“I do,” Liv said. Then: “It’s too bad you didn’t have daughters.”

“Yeah,” Brenda said wistfully. “Boys is all I know. It was the same growing up. I had two brothers and I was the only girl. I don’t even know how to talk to other women—they always seem too soft and emotional to me. Most women, it seems to me, should get the crap kicked out of them by a couple of brothers like I did to toughen ’em up.”

Liv lied and said, “My brother did the same thing to me growing up.” In fact, she had no brothers.

Brenda said, “My dad bounced around between being a miner and a logger in the Ozarks. That’s where my people are from: Jasper County, Missouri. A lot of the time he didn’t work at all. But I was the apple of his eye.”

“I thought I heard a little of the South in your accent,” Liv said.

“Yeah, and I’ve never been back. I left when I was sixteen. I came to Wyoming to see Yellowstone Park with my uncle Harold. I’m still surprised my folks let him bring me out here, but they did. Uncle Harold raped me a few times and left me in one of those cabins they’ve got in the park. That’s where I met Eldon. He was driving through Yellowstone to go hunting on the other side. He picked me up on the road. We caught up with Uncle Harold in Cody, and Eldon beat him half to death with a rifle butt near Heart Mountain. We’ve been together ever since.”

Brenda’s tone was calm. Liv swallowed hard.

“But back to my dad. When he was home, we’d listen to records together.”

“Is that where you heard Kitty Wells?”

“Oh, that,” Brenda laughed. “I must have been a sight back then, singing that song about cheating when I was just a little girl.”

Liv hummed the tune, and to her surprise Brenda joined in.

“What the hell is going on down there?” Bull said from above.

Liv faked a laugh. “My mom used to sing it around the house.”

“Did you have a daddy?” Brenda asked. She sounded curious.

“He worked on shrimping boats,” Liv said. “He died when I was five.”

“Mmmmm.”

“I don’t remember much about him.”

“Better that,” Brenda said, her voice hardening, “than him showing up whenever he felt like it. My brothers were animals, and they needed a man around to set them straight. He wasn’t there when he should have been. He was mean when he got drunk and he knocked Mama around. Then he’d feel bad about it, but instead of making it up to everyone, he’d take off again.

“I swore back then that if I found a man, I’d make him stay close to me and his kids. I thought I could tame Eldon of his wild hairs, but over the years I’ve learned how to handle him instead. I’m close with my boys, and Eldon is . . . there. I wish he’d take more interest in them, but he’s not much for ambition in any department except hunting and fishing. So I wore him down, which is the next best thing to having a good man in the first place. He doesn’t even know how to think for himself anymore, which is a good thing, because I do it for him and I do it better. I know that sounds harsh, but it’s the best for the family.”

Liv thought: She’s proud of her boys?

And she realized right then that Brenda was even crazier than she’d realized.

—

“MEN ARE SUCH SIMPLE CREATURES,” Brenda said, keeping her voice down so that Bull couldn’t overhear. “You and me, we have a thousand things going on in our minds at all times. It gets noisy in there. But men are different. They can’t hold more than one thought in their brain at a time. It’s ‘I’m hungry,’ or ‘I’m horny,’ or ‘I need to fix the transmission or this truck won’t run.’ If they could ever get inside our brains, the hullabaloo going on would probably kill ’em in a few minutes. And if we could ever get inside theirs, I suspect we’d get bored real fast with all the peace and quiet.

“But you probably know that, because you’re pretty and they fall all over themselves to get next to you. But when you’re plain and you look like me and don’t know fashion from cow plop, you learn to appeal to other base instincts, like food.

“If you look like me, you learn to cook. You find out what they like and you give it to ’em—and plenty of it. If you do that, they’ll do anything you want. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, chicken-fried steaks, pot roast—whatever. Waffles and fried chicken will be enough to convince them to go into a barn and gun down Nate Romanowski. It’s simple, girl. Do you cook?”

“A little.”

“Of course, you have other ways, don’t you?”

“Like what?” Liv asked.

Brenda bent closer. “Like luring Bull down here.”

“He did that himself.”

“Sure he did.”

—

“SO WHY DID BULL and Eldon beat up Dallas?” Liv asked. “I don’t understand.”

The question was met with silence. When Brenda spoke, her tone was flat.

“He had to look like a bull tore him up. He couldn’t just fake it.”

“But why?”

“I told you,” Brenda said with annoyance. “Dallas could have gotten in trouble. This way, he got hurt a little, but he didn’t get arrested or nothing. He’s still with us and he’s just about recovered.”

Liv asked, “Why did Eldon and Bull ambush Nate? Did they have something against him?”

“Not at all,” Brenda said. “In fact, I think they kind of liked him.”

“Then why did they do it?”

Brenda scoffed. She said, “Anyone around this county knows that when the game warden gets in a situation, Nate Romanowski shows up to help him out. No one wants Nate around on the other side. That guy is crazy.”

“I’m not following you,” Liv confessed.

“I told you. Dallas did something stupid. It involved the game warden’s daughter. We were able to handle the game warden—he’s by the book and not that bright. He even came out here and saw Dallas, and he seen for himself that the boy was injured after all.”

Liv recalled the item she’d read in the Casper newspaper about Joe’s middle daughter being found beaten on the side of a road. Liv’s stomach suddenly turned, but she tried hard not to show any reaction.

Brenda continued. “But Joe Pickett doesn’t let things go. I’ve watched him over the years and I know that about him. If he told his buddy Nate that he suspected Dallas, even though he couldn’t prove it, well, Nate may come a-calling. I didn’t want Nate after my boy. So we put the word out there and lured you up and took him out before he could get together with his friend Joe Pickett and hear the story. It was a precautionary thing. We bought ourselves insurance, is all. Any mother would do the same thing for their boy if they thought they had to do it to keep him alive.”

“So it was all a preliminary strike,” Liv said. “You killed Nate just in case.”

“Pretty much,” Brenda said. “And it wasn’t easy. I had to look my husband and son in the eye and say, ‘Get in that barn and get ready. He’s just a man. There’s nothing special about him.’ Finally, they went in there and got set up. I wasn’t sure they’d go through with it until I heard the shots.”

Liv boiled inside, but she tried not to show it.

“I didn’t know you’d be with him,” Brenda said. “You were sort of a kink in my plans.”

“What happened to the van?”

“Eldon’s good for something,” Brenda said. “He knows every inch of this country out here because he guides hunters in the fall. He knows where to hide a vehicle where no one can find it.”

“Why are you telling me all this now?”

Brenda went back to brushing Liv’s hair. “Might as well.”

Those words weren’t chosen at random, Liv thought.

“You said you had a plan for me. Can you tell me what it is?”

“I’m not sure you want to know.”

Liv said, “You could let me out of here. I could help you around the house. I could be the daughter you never had. Or I could leave and never say a word to anyone.”

“You know neither one of those is a good choice,” Brenda said. “If you stayed, somebody would see you and wonder why a black girl was living with us. They’d wonder where you came from and somebody would figure it out. And there’s no way you can convince me you’d keep this all to yourself. Women aren’t made that way.”

“I am.”

“Oh,” Brenda said, bending forward again and whispering a few inches from Liv’s ear, “if only that were true.”

Liv closed her eyes. She thought about wheeling in her chair and plunging her thumbs into Brenda’s throat. If Bull wasn’t up there, she would have done it.

“I want to know,” Liv said.

“I’m waiting on Eldon,” Brenda said. “He’s got to go get his tank filled up. Then instead of dumping it at the treatment plant, he’s going to bring it back here.”

It took a moment for Liv to realize what she’d just heard.

“He’s going to dump sewage in the cellar?”

“Pretty much,” Brenda said in a conversational tone. “Then he can fire up the Bobcat and fill the rest of the hole with dirt. If anybody ever gets a notion to dig it up, they’ll realize this hole is full of sewage. There’s no way they’d keep digging and eventually find a body. We’ll just tell ’em our septic tank must have leaked.”

Liv closed her eyes.

“So you were asking me about pork chops. Is that because it’s my last meal?”

Brenda snorted, stopped brushing, and backed away.

She said, “Bull, cover me. I’m coming up.”

Dirt sifted into the cellar from the edge as Bull bent over and peered in. Liv saw that he was holding her handgun.

She turned her head to see Brenda clumsily mount the ladder and start to climb. She grunted on each rung.

Liv stood and approached the clay wall and grasped the stone and pulled. It didn’t budge.

As Brenda awkwardly climbed the ladder out of striking distance, she said, “Oh, I don’t know about it being your last meal. I might bring you some breakfast, so put all those containers and the silverware back in the bucket tonight so I can pull it up.”

When Brenda was out of the cellar, she said, “Thanks for letting me brush your hair. Maybe if it was different circumstances, we could have actually been friends, you know?”

Then to Bull: “Close it.”

Liv waited until the footfalls faded away, then turned back to the stone.

It shredded her to know that she might have missed the only chance she’d ever have.