The Painter

I woke with the rain. Woke with the first halting tattoo on the metal roof tap tap taptap taptaptaptap tap fingerdrumming, tentative, a few scattered drops, pause, then a clatter like someone throwing a handful of seeds, speeding up until the beats ran together, then the onslaught. A rush, a dark flood that silenced all thought.

Inside the roar I spooned her. Cradled her breasts in my left arm, pressed my cheek into her hair, curled around her warmth and let the wind that came through the screen door wash me. Inside the roar and the dark and the currents of cool wind we floated.

I could die now. My one thought. Somehow complete. With the Ocean of Women back on the easel and the dead man in the creek and my friend in my arms and the rain at last reaching the ground and drenching the country.

I

Woke again with the knocking. Not tentative. I woke and I realized I was expecting it.

I untangled myself, slipped to the floor, pulled the Hudson’s Bay blanket that came with the house over Sofia, pulled on a pair of paint smattered khaki shorts that were hung over the rocker.

Two of them this time. The last time, when I shot Lauder Simms, it was just the sheriff. Well. He had been my friend. This time evidently they were not here to arrest me. He was very polite. He was a rangy thirtyish detective in a green soft wind jacket, the kind sporty outdoor people wear, I remember thinking it was a beautiful color, something between sage and grass, looked supple, thinking it would be perfect for fishing on a night like last night. Last night. The man was thin, with the drawn cheeks of a runner, with red spots flushing the cheekbones; gave him an impressionable sensitive look the way adolescents can’t quite control their emotions. Steady hazel eyes, a smile. A man you could trust.

To lock you up forever.

That’s what I thought. Of Rilke’s panther. In the first instant, opening the door, taking in the man and the uniformed deputy behind him I thought, Careful Boy, say the wrong thing and this man will put you away to die in the zoo like Rilke’s cat.

“Jim Stegner?”

“Yah.”

“Sorry, did we wake you?” Very polite. Held up a wallet badge. “Craig Gaskill, Delta County Sheriff’s Department.”

“Nah. I mean, yes, but it’s okay. The rain in the middle of the night. Slept better than I have in a month.”

Clear conscience. Something a stone cold murderer probably wouldn’t say. Much less feel. I was standing holding the carved door open with my right arm, kind of leaning into it, and smelled my fishing vest. It was hanging on a hook two feet from my head. I could smell it because often if I was just keeping dinner for myself, I would slip one or two trout into the zipper pocket high on the back. If it was a hot afternoon I would unshuck the vest and tear a bunch of grass and horsetails from the bank and wet the fistful in the creek and stuff it in the pocket with the fish to keep them cool. Made the vest smell fishy but I liked it better than carrying around a slung creel. The vest was two feet from my face, hanging on the wall right where the open door swung into it, and I could see that it was spattered with blood.

Icy grip in the guts. The sporty detective saw it. I know he did because he said, “Mr. Stegner, are you okay?”

“Yah,” I said fast. “Just haven’t had my coffee yet.”

And in the rush to cover for myself I heard myself saying, “You boys want some coffee too? I’ll just make a pot.”

And heard Sport say, “That is very hospitable. I certainly could use another cup, you, Dan?” And I heard Dan say he was just thinking they better get down to the Conoco out on the highway and get a refill. And I saw myself stepping back and opening the door wider and they came through the screen door with a clap and I heard Sofia call out, “Jim?” And I said, “It’s alright, honey, we have guests. Gonna make some coffee.” Honey? I must’ve been really frazzled. And I saw the men come to the long counter and pull up two stools and I went behind it and reached for the old pot and rinsed it in cold water and refilled it all the while talking about how bad we needed the rain and how fresh the country looked already like it had been rinsed in green, and saw myself clutching the little grinder to my chest like a secret and compressing the sprung top in my hands while the motor triggered and the blade bawled and shredded the beans that rattled then whined.

Heard the door to my bedroom which opened onto all of us slam and that snapped me out of it.

She had slammed the door. She didn’t want to talk to cops, to anyone this early. That was one lucky break the way I saw it. She was not social this early in the morning. She did not wrap herself in the blanket and come out stretching and purring and being polite to the nice policemen and go into the bathroom to pee and brush her teeth and throw on a wrap and join us for coffee the way some more finished hostesses might have done. Finished like finishing school, not her. She slammed the door. The two men raised their eyebrows, I shrugged, it was a male bonding moment, all good, but more important it let me pull myself up. Kind of reined me up short and put a loud period on my rambling.

I heard the slam and stopped stock still and thought Jesus, Jim, get a grip. You are a cooler cookie than this. Take a breath. I did. Went to the sink at the west end of the counter, put my back to them, and rinsed out some cups, covered myself, my loud thoughts, with the running water and the clatter of ceramic and thought, Slow down. You were here all night, sleeping the sleep of the dead, not the dead, Jesus, the newly rained on, the sleep of the new monsoon, and if your fishing vest is spattered with blood and hanging there right by the front door, well. No big deal. When you let them back out, lead them away from the vest to the French doors in the south wall, follow them around the house to their cars, you go out that way all the time, it is a natural motion to exit out toward the big view, the mountain, talking the whole while about how you haven’t seen the foothills this green since June. That’s what you will do.

I gave Sport the elk mug. A bull elk in the fall in a tawny field, yellow aspen losing leaves, overcast about to snow, he is lifting his head to bugle and from his muzzle a stream of fog in the icy air. Seemed right.

“You get the elk,” I said. I was going to say bull but I didn’t want to encourage him. To the deputy I said, the NASCAR cow or the loon? The NASCAR cow coffee cup said wISCONSIN and had the head of a happy looking Holstein framed by a border of what looked like black and white racing checks.

The deputy grinned. He was a beefy kid with a fade and flattop, probably played high school ball for Delta and was the luckiest man in the universe when he landed the job with the county. Could tell he was the type who appreciates what’s appreciatible, really loved his wife, etc., which I admire and like in a man, in fact liked them both and had the circumstances been different I would have relished pouring the two coffee and sitting down to bullshit.

“NASCAR cow every time,” said Dan the deputy.

There was no stool on this side of the counter so I stood, leaned back against the drawers next to the stove said,

“Anything in those? Sugar?”

Sport said, “If you have cream and honey, otherwise fine.” I smiled at him. Because it was clear that he was getting me in the habit of getting him what he asked, the more specific the better. Honey. Exactly what I took in my coffee. The kid shook his head. Polite. A blunt instrument. Hadn’t learned the use of subtle tools yet, probably never would, it would probably fuck up his general sense of gratitude. I am not at all a simple person but I like simple people, I admire them.

I put out the half and half and honey, took mine, alternating with Sport, our spoons tinking in happy duet, picked up my Ugly Mug and leaned back, crossed my arms. The mug by the way is a bad picture of an ocean liner, don’t ask me. I was awake now, felt ready. Sport sipped, nodded, smiled, said,

“You often fish in the middle of the night?”

This time I did not let myself get thrown. I did not babble. I took a long sip of strong coffee looking at the greening base of the mountain out the window and thought, Virga. Not last night. Last night the rain reached the ground with a will, furious. Furious and glad. The way I would be feeling right now if Sport didn’t scare me. Well. Don’t be scared. Be yourself. Be honest. About the things you can be honest about.

“Yes. Once in a while. My daughter and I used to do it pretty often. When there was a moon.”

“Where’s your daughter now?”

I put down the Ugly Mug.

“She was murdered.”

Sport’s mug stopped halfway to his mouth.

“I’m sorry.”

“She was fifteen.”

He nodded. He drank, didn’t say anything. We all looked into our mugs.

“There was a moon last night before the rain?”

“I guess there was.”

“Did you go fishing last night?”

I shook my head, sipped. “Last night I slept.”

“Your wading boots are puddling by the front door.”

I blinked.

“Rain,” I said. “Remember.”

“They’re in under the roof, in your vestibule. Nothing else wet.”

“That’s right,” I said. “After it poured I remembered I’d left my whole kit lying on the grass and over the stump. From the other day. Boots, waders, rod. Sometimes I just let it all dry out there. I thought fuck. In the middle of the night when I woke up to pee. So I went out and put them away. I mean it won’t hurt anything but it’s better to let everything air out.”

“Good coffee,” Sport said. “What is it?”

“Folgers. New whole bean.”

He raised an eyebrow, grinned.

“Tastes better when you take it out of a fancy jar.”

“I’ll have to try that. Huh. But you brought your vest in?”

That stopped me. Cocked my head, turned, slid the pot off the hot pad on the coffeemaker, gave us all a refill, the three cups, elk, cow, Titanic.

“The vest by the door that’s flecked with old blood,” he said.

Everybody stared at him. Everybody being me and Flattop.

He sipped, little smile. “Fish blood, I’m guessing.”

I turned, slipped the pot back onto the burner, mind jumbling. Turned off the pot’s red-lit power switch, flick, now brown and dead. Off. Same as blood. Red going on, then brown. Dell’s blood. DNA, all that. The picture of the man raising the club to strike the little roan for the third time probably to kill it. Hitching up the road fast as I could to take him down. Down into the ditch. I straightened, drew a breath, turned.

“That’s a man’s blood to tell you the truth. Recent.”

Flattop’s mouth actually opened.

I wanted to see. If I could make Sport stop in his tracks. Reciprocate. Make him tick into a facial expression he hadn’t planned on. Catch his breath. Drain some of that runner’s blush from his boy’s cheeks.

It worked. He had the mug coming down from his lips and he almost choked. Everybody knew what everybody was after, this wasn’t anybody’s first rodeo except maybe the kid deputy who, I noticed, had been watching the whole interview with a kind of awe.

“Man’s blood? You don’t say?”

“Yup. Outfitter named Dell Siminoe.”

Now the kid actually choked. Hid it in a big cough, took a white kerchief out of his back pocket and wiped his brow instead of his mouth, stared at me, then his mentor. Like he was watching a tennis match. I smiled at him. A big honest smile, the first one since the two arrived. I wanted to laugh, but, funny thing, I didn’t want to embarrass the kid in front of Sport. Instead I topped off his cup, leaned back against the far counter, against the drawers next to the stove. Through the French doors onto the ramada, which were open to screen, I noticed the sun breaking over the cottonwood leaves, the big trees up on the ditch, the morning was cool and fresh and soon it would start getting hot. I loved this. The morning. The smell of the damp ground coming through the screen doors after night rain. Even having visitors, these visitors. I felt happy. Which was fucked up, thinking about it now.

It was Sport’s turn to collect himself. He was too smart not to know what was coming. He just had to drink his coffee and watch it play out. I thought.

“Dell Siminoe?” he said.

“Yah. The reason you all are here. Because of the fight. Because I assaulted the man day before yesterday and gave him a bloody nose and I guess he’s just a big pussy and now he’s filing charges. Probably didn’t tell you he was in the middle of killing a little horse.”

They stared at me.

I thought he would say, Why don’t you start from the beginning. Thought now we could stop the foreplay and he would pull out a steno pad, one of those flip notebooks, all official now, and start writing. He didn’t. He said,

“Dell Siminoe isn’t filing any charges. Dell Siminoe is dead.”

Pause.

“Murdered in cold blood.”

Pause.

“Thirty steps from seven bow hunters and a campfire.”

Pause.

“In the middle of last night.”

Pause.

“Would you mind telling us where you were last night? All of last night.”

“RIP,” I said. I said: “Not really. Dead? Kinda hope he’s in the bad place. You think I killed him because I was mad enough to give the man a bloody nose?”

All the time I was thinking, I wasn’t wearing the fishing vest. When I tackled him, when we fought. I don’t dress until I get to the creek. Thinking, wondering if the cowboy Stinky would remember that, the one I knocked into the road. Probably not. I’d have to go with it anyway. That was a gamble. I was not averse to gambling when I didn’t have to, so it was no stretch at all to roll the dice, go all in when I had no choice.

“I don’t think anything,” Sport said. “We’d just like to eliminate you as a suspect.”

“Huh,” I said. “I’ll bet.” Everybody’s gloves off now.

“Why don’t you just tell us what you were doing starting, say, Thursday morning.”

This is going to be fun, I thought. And wished Sofia wasn’t in the next room, just beyond that door, about to hear everything I was going to say.

I was getting good at telling the story, this my third telling in two days, and I told it. A good morning painting. The girl leaving.

Knocking the man into the dirt with my door and running as best I could up the road before the big man could kill the mare. Rolling in the ditch, Siminoe’s nose bleeding— He stopped me.

“You say you were grappling and rolling when you felt his nose break?”

I knew what he was after. The blood on the vest. It was flecked, spattered. Just like if you hit someone on the head, say, with a rock. A bloody nose rolling in a ditch would probably streak and smear, blotch. Well, you do the best you can. What if there were brain matter flecked there too? Well, I’d probably get good at learning how to order grease pencils and watercolor paper from Cañon City or Walsenburg, if they let you do that from max security. There wasn’t, wouldn’t be brains. Right Jim? Right. I’d hit him once with the flat side of a rock, hadn’t like smashed his head in, he probably died of drowning. Same as thwacking a trout: sometimes there’s a spray of blood, but never any brain. Probably because their brain is the size of a pea. Well.

“Yes,” I said.

Sport nodded, writing it down, taking me at my word, nobody lying yet except about when exactly we went fishing.

“The girl?” he said suddenly shifting tack. “In the bedroom? She’s the model you mentioned you were painting Thursday morning before you went fishing? Let’s see.” Began flipping back the pages of his pad.

“Sofia.”

“Sofia, right. Last name?”

“I don’t know.”

He raised an eyebrow, wrote.

“You said she left these premises some time around midday on Thursday, she was modeling for a painting and left, and when did she return?”

“Yesterday morning.”

“You called her?”

“No.”

“She came uninvited?”

“Yes.”

“Is that the painting?”

“Yes.”

“Can I take a look at it?”

“Sure.”

He got up. The young deputy got up. I moved around the counter fast, not sure why, to overtake them. Got to the easel first. Stood beside it like a kid at a judged show waiting for my ribbon. Sport smiled, genuine. His eyes moved over the canvas and I watched the picture overcome him, exactly the way the light that trails a cloud shadow overtakes a hillside. For a moment he was off the job, he was a spectator, an appreciator, he looked years younger. He smiled, said,

“Have a name yet?”

“An Ocean of Women.”

Smile to a big grin.

An Ocean of Women was maybe a great painting. It took the viewer to a lot of different places at once which a great painting can do. The first impulse on seeing the painting was to laugh, but at the same time a queasy feeling rose out of the depths, rose with the big sharks, swimming up to the surface: a tinge of fear: would the man make it? He looked pretty happy swimming but he also looked lost. He looked very far from anything like a boat or a shore, he looked a little like a man taking his very last swim.

The kid stood uneasily before the easel, his hand on his holstered gun, blinking. I could tell he wanted to laugh, maybe the first time he’d seen an original painting ever, one that wasn’t painted by an aunt that had taken a How to Paint a Western Landscape by the Numbers class and hung it in the den next to the flat screen, he glanced at his mentor and relaxed, twitched a smile, studied the painting, dove into it, couldn’t help himself, his eyes roved from woman to woman wondering maybe how many the swimmer could fuck and still tread water. A good picture should do all of that. Invite the viewer in from just wherever he stood, lead him on a different journey than the person standing beside him. I loved that, watching different people watch a painting at the same time. Because that’s what it turned into: in front of a fine painting a viewer stopped looking and started watching, watching is more specific, watching is a hunt for something, a search, the way we watch for a loved one’s boat on the horizon, or an elk in the trees. Before a good painting they started watching for clues to their own life.

Abruptly Sport straightened, sort of shook himself off, took two steps behind me to the wall, bent down and lifted the turned-back canvas. Flipped it around and held it arm extended, nostrils flaring at the fresh paint. The man hunched and digging a grave, four vultures or ravens watching.

“Wow,” he said. “Diverse. When’d you paint this?”

The stark and surprising shock of being violated, as swift and sudden as a hawk stooping out of the sky and strike.

I let go the breath. As if Sport had been gently gyring, wings extended the whole time, lazy circles and siiiiiiiiiiiii—WHAM. A dangerous man. Far more dangerous than I’d thought or given him credit for. No point in lying.

“Yesterday,” I said.

“About what time?”

“Maybe it’s time I get a lawyer.”

He cocked his head and looked at me. The first time level. No BS, squared off, measuring. “That’s your right. Is that something you want to do?”

“I don’t want to do any of this.”

We looked at each other. He nodded.

“Understood,” he said. “Could you ask Sofia to come out and talk to us for a second?”

“No.”

He nodded.

“I think you two better leave,” I said.

He nodded. Took one more long look at the painting, glanced at me again, this one honest and bleak, like: I have just looked into the heart of a murder and it raises the hair on the back of my neck, still—as many of these as I work I still can’t get used to it. Then he set the painting back down, carefully flipped it backside-out, fastidious, the way you do something distasteful and guilty, leaned it so the paint wouldn’t smear.

“I wanted to be an artist growing up,” he said. “Then I got married.”

He said it like he thought maybe he had made the right choice after all.

“Thanks for the coffee,” he said, and went through the door. The big kid followed him, ducked his head at me, didn’t say a word, didn’t know what to say, looked like he’d been hit on the head with a cow.

Sofia flew out of the bedroom. The second they left. It’s a small house. The bedroom is just off the main room with the long counter, the kitchen, their stools weren’t twenty feet from her listening head. The door flew open and she burst out naked.

Most women would have dressed, armored themselves somehow with clothes. She felt stronger I think without them. She came out of the bedroom like a whirlwind, all tossing dark hair, all curves, all huge eyes flashing the five colors, and scents and something like a hum, a breathed song, a sigh, like someone singing to herself.

She wasn’t singing to herself, she was finding her rhythm. She did that when she modeled, very low, didn’t distract me, and she did it now with an urgency. I was rooted to my spot between the painting and the front door.

“You killed that sonofabitch? Last night?”

She stood just more than an arm’s length away.

“When you got up in the middle of the night? I felt you, I went back to sleep. Thought you were peeing. Heard the truck, thought you were gone a long time, too sleepy to wonder about it, figured you might be an insomniac, next thing I felt your arms around me.”

She stopped, cocked her head the way she does, listening for something it seemed inside her. She was more beautiful right then than maybe any woman I had ever seen.

“You killed him?”

Not really saying it to me. To herself. Listening inside for how she felt about it. Then eyes on me. The eyes different colors, the colors shifting, the way pebbles on the bottom of a stream, the way the fast water is constantly moving the lances of sunlight.

She said: “He didn’t say how. I guess he wouldn’t. That’d be giving a suspect inside information. Fuck. With a knife?”

She shook her head. Like trying to clear her ear of water. She looked straight into me. Not only with her eyes, with all of her—her eyes, her breasts, hips, the sparse thatch of dark hair.

“Well you better have a good fuck.” She said it exasperated, as if she didn’t know whether to laugh or scream. “You better store them up, who knows how long it will be when they get serious about you.”

I stood there. Kind of transfixed. Watched her turn and walk bare-ass into the bedroom.

Falling. Falling into her. Like stepping off a cliff and spreading arms and flying downwards. Didn’t matter to where. Because she would swoop up under me and carry me down. With Irmina maybe once or twice like this. Maybe not. Because she was always trying somehow to heal me, to make me better. Not now. Sofia let me fall. Met and wrapped and covered me and we went down together and I cracked open, not like hitting the bottom but like a chrysalis maybe, shuddered open all light and weightless and winged, blown skyward, hearing her with me with me—a cry—whose? No names no words, lost and falling upwards with her in blinding light. Like that.

When it was over she touched her nose to mine.

“You didn’t kill him did you?”

I didn’t move.

“You got up to pee once. And to get the gear from the truck, out of the rain. To hang it up. I heard you say that.”

I didn’t move.

“You were here in my arms all night, weren’t you? I don’t remember much about it do I? Do I?”

I shook my head. Barely.

“Because we were sleeping.”

“We were sleeping.”

II

The search warrant was executed that afternoon. The bloody vest was enough for any judge and I knew it was coming. But I was careful not to touch it. Before they came I stood next to the hanging vest that smelled like fish and studied it from inches away, didn’t look like any pieces of brain. Like I said, I was pretty confident that the one blow hadn’t gone that far into the Simian’s brainpan. The blood? Where did all the blood come from? Must have hit and broke that vein that throbs on the temple.

A squad car, a white van, and a plain white Crown Vic with Sport driving alone. Seemed like a lonely man, to me. Twice as smart probably as anybody in the sheriff’s office, twice as sensitive. Wanted to be an artist. Well.

They didn’t take much. The vest, my rod, boots, waders. The light nylon sack with shoulder straps I sometimes use to carry lunch, a water bottle, extra pack of the cigars if I am going all day which I hardly ever do. They took photographs of the two paintings, first separately then side by side which I thought was pretty sophisticated. Evidence of a sudden shift in state of mind would be my guess. Premeditation. Sport asked us politely to stand outside, formal now, friendly still but making no effort to hide that this was a contest, a match and we were on opposite sides and he, beg your pardon, had every intention of winning. Watched him direct the tech to sample the clay under the truck in the frame, take an imprint of the treads on the tires, all four.

Took maybe twenty minutes, the whole thing. When it was done he walked up to us where we were standing in the shade of a young cottonwood on the west side of the house. Not wearing the green shell anymore, too hot, had on a short sleeved button shirt but not business, more like what a surfer or climber would wear at a barbecue, but tucked in, a wide checked pattern olive and soft yellow, and brown loafers, all very casual. He walked up, nodded to Sofia, to me, a frank not unfriendly look as if we had been friends for a long time and didn’t have to pretend anything, said,

“All done. They were very careful. Didn’t toss the place.”

I said, “Am I under arrest?”

“No.”

“Can I go fishing then? Up where I fought with Dell?”

“Sure. But I wouldn’t recommend it. Five of the hunters stayed on. Said they’d paid for nine days of hunting, they were going to hunt nine days. Dell’s brother is flying in from Tucson this afternoon. Grew up here too, knows the country better than his brother. I’d rather not have any more fights.”

I took the mostly unsmoked cheroot I’d just had time to light when they showed up, took it from behind my ear, lit it, inhaled. For a second the three of us stood in the shade and looked at the mountain, the sage hills beneath it flushing pale green with last night’s downpour.

“How about New Mexico?” I said.

His head came up sharply.

“You planning on going there?”

“I have a commission in Santa Fe. A portrait.”

He chewed that over. Let out a breath.

“I can’t keep you from going anywhere. But do me a favor: call me and tell me where you are. I’ve got your cell too. Better if we can get this whole business cleared up and I can keep you posted.”

“Right,” I said.

He handed us both a card. Turned to Sofia who was expressionless.

“Would you come down to the office and make a statement? Say tomorrow morning?”

She turned her face up square on to his.

“No,” she said.

He recoiled, as if struck and trying not to show it.

“No?”

“Unh unh. He was with me all night and that’s all I’ve got to say. We fucked twice. Once pretty fast, slept. Spooned. You know?”

He blinked at her.

“Then we both woke up and fucked once really slow and long. I had two orgasms. I mean two more. That hasn’t happened in a while. Then we were exhausted, wrung out, just drugged kind of, the way the sweat, the musk of sex, the fatigue it just takes you out. All tangled up in each other’s arms. Then we woke up because some assholes were knocking on the door. That’s my statement.”

She handed back his card and walked back into the house.

III

That evening I tried a new fishing spot, the one I’d heard about for years, the stretch where the Gunnison emerges from its gorge. I was agitated and I wanted to fish and I had to buy new gear anyway, a whole new set, thanks to Sport. And down there, right at the confluence of the North Fork and the main river, there’s an outfitter’s base with a full fly shop. It’s called Pleasure Park which sounds like an adult theme-o-rama. I drove through Hotchkiss, just a row of false fronted shops and a cowboy bar lining the county highway, crossed a deeply shaded creek, climbed a couple of switchbacks up onto the prettiest mesa, a high bench of orchards and green fields overlooking the West Elks and away south the hazy and high snow peaks of the San Juans. Say what you want about Santa Fe and Taos and the clean light, they didn’t have this. Kind of washed the dirt off me, just seeing it. I don’t know if truth is beauty or not but I have always put my stock in beauty every time, the real thing, the one that comes with cold rain and hard stories, and I had never seen a place like this.

And then the road dropped down to the railroad tracks thump thump and it was all desert out ahead, a hundred miles of rolling saltbush westward, and I took the turnoff on my left, south, and wound down to the river.

It was a real hole, a burst of lime-green old cottonwoods with high rock walls sheltering a run of dark smooth water. The water reflected the tall reeds and cattails, the willows and box elders along the banks. On the other side of a big gravel parking lot was a low building with blue river rafts stacked on trailers.

I parked and pushed open the glass door. A bell on the door tinkled. It was dim and cool inside. Polished wood bar with high stools, fishing shop behind. They had their priorities. A Discovery Channel fishing show was on the two TVs, a handsome guide directing the casts of a pretty celebrity into a wide blue river. The sound was up and I got from the guide’s accent and the helicopter on the gravel bar that this was New Zealand. I thought that was funny: this was Gold Medal water, fishermen came from all over the country to fish here, and they had New Zealand on the TV. Behind the bar a guide with a gray waxed handlebar mustache, and a cap stuck with flies, dunked two tumblers in rinse water and gave them two shakes and placed them in a row of others. His eyes were on one of the TVs while he did it. He finally turned to me.

“She sure can fill a pair of waders, huh?” He took a tug from a sweating green beer bottle, put it back down on a cardboard coaster. The coaster was stamped with BELGIAN CREAM ALE and a picture of a cow. His eyes were blurry. Well. It was after five and it was hot out.

“Your shop open?”

“Sure. What can we do you? Need some flies?” He let himself out a low stall door on the shop side and came around. Stuck out his hand. “Ben.”

“Jim.”

“Jim Hemingway? You look like Hemingway, anybody ever tell you that? Really. The eyes, the beard.”

“Thanks. You have rods?”

“Sure.”

Judging by his breath that wasn’t the first or second beer of the day. Well. He stepped back, gave me a quick once-over. Touched his stiff mustache. He seemed to perk up. A rod was a big sale. I wasn’t just some dude coming in to ask what was hitting and buy a dozen two dollar flies.

“Leroy’s not here,” he said. “But I can sure sell you a rod. Follow me.”

“Great. You have light waders?”

He stopped. Turned around with some effort, reminded me of a boat moving in uncertain currents. “Waders, too?”

“Yah. And boots and vest, flies, tippet, forceps, Gink, lead, strike indicators, leaders. Oh yeah, and a reel and backing and maybe let’s try some of that snakeskin fly line.”

“Sharkskin? You mean Sharkskin? Scientific Anglers.” He swayed a little where he stood, and now he reminded me of a tree.

“I guess that’s it. Yeah. Or maybe it makes too much noise. I’ve heard it makes a real zing as it goes out.”

He studied me, his biggest catch of the week.

“Maybe,” he said. “Yeah, some people say that.” He squinted his eyes at me and thought about it. “Can cast a lot longer though.”

He said it like he was confessing something.

“Distance,” he said and lifted one hand, palm up. “Noise.” Lifting the other, making a balance in the air. Stood there, balanced himself in the middle of this conundrum. He seemed to forget we were on our way to the rod section.

“You all have time to wind the reel? Like to go fishing tonight if I can.”

“Oh sure sure, we can do that. Take just a few minutes. Jake is back there. Jake can do it. He’s just a kid.”

“They still name kids Jake?”

He was walking ahead of me, walking like into a stiff wind, he put his chin back over his shoulder, barked, “Ha!”

I tore through the store like a contestant in one of those shopping game shows. Pretty quick it was Ben who was following me, murmuring, “Sure, sure, Good choice, That’s a good one, Pretty much the best you got right there, Hemingway knows what the hell he’s doing, Nope this ain’t Hemingway’s first rodeo no it isn’t,” trying to keep up with me, carrying one of the shopping baskets he decided at one point to haul out of the back. I really really wanted to go fishing. The more time I spent in the dim store that smelled of beer, with the running commentary of the fishing show blatting in the background the more the pressure mounted inside my chest to blow the fuck out of there and get on the dark flowing river.

I bought a Winston rod, a five weight. I’d always wanted one. I hefted a nine footer, gave it three false casts careful not to tangle with a steel beam above, and handed it to Ben who raised his eyebrows, said, “That right there is the best there is, no doubt about it.” Then he muttered, “I think Leroy has that at eight hundred dollars, lemme check. Ah, how were you thinking of paying for all this Mr. Hemingway?”

Trotting after me as I tore through the vests, fly boxes, flies, me thinking: I’m paying for it with a painting of a fish gobbling up houses and another of two little girls in polka dots and probably a chicken, how else?

And then we got to the waders and sticky rubber soled boots and I had to stop the flow of picking and gathering which had really become like some harvest dance and sit and try them on, the boots. I pried off my sneakers and was pushing my big bony foot into the unlaced top when Ben spilled my gear into a pile on the floor and sat on the wood bench beside me with a bleary sigh and said, “This is just like Christmas. Should call you Santa Claus instead of Hemingway, ha. Wait, I should get that reel started so’s you don’t have to wait.”

He got up again, fished the reel out of the pile and a box of expensive yellow fly line and disappeared into the back. Came out again a minute later and sat down, this time holding a new green bottle of sweating beer. It looked very good to me, could taste my own mouth watering. Good sign to get into the river pronto.

He said, “You hear they killed a man up on the Sulphur last night?”

I wedged in my foot.

“I think someone mentioned it.”

“Cold blood. With a rock is what I heard. Went to piss in the creek and someone crushed his head in.” Ben shuddered dramatically and took a long pull from the bottle.

“Dellwood Siminoe. The outfitter. Hate to say this, but not a lot of folks will be crying.”

“Don’t say.”

“Nope. Even his daughter-in-law has a restraining order.” He shook his head. Pulled from the beer, gave a meditative twist to the end of the waxed mustache.

“Anyways, they say they know who did it.”

“Don’t say.” I shucked the boot, said, “These’ll work.” Stood, said, “Can’t think of anything I’m forgetting.”

Ben was tugging at the leg of my khakis. He wanted to tell me something. I wanted to swat his hand away.

“It was a fisherman,” he said real solemn. “A fly fisherman. Got in a big fight with Dell just Thursday right at the creek.”

“Yeah, really?”

“Yup. Big guy, I heard. Newcomer from New Mexico. Big guy with a white beard, a painter they say. Paints naked ladies. Now that’s a great job, don’t you think? That’s a job I’d like. Think I’ll try that one.”

He grinned lopsided, took a long drink from the bottle, then his eyes seemed to settle and focus on the colored spatters on my pants. I could almost hear the gears clicking in the wash of beer inside his brain. He looked up at me. He blinked. His mouth opened just a little under the mustache. For a second I could see a little kid, the kid he had been, trying to make sense of all the things that overwhelmed his understanding.

“You paying with a credit card?”

“Yup.”

“You got ID?”

“Sure.”

“Is it from New Mexico?”

“Yup.”

He was sitting on the bench and he looked up at me. This time he swallowed hard with no beer. He blinked. Then he shook his head.

“Gimme a minute,” he said.

“Take your time.”

He drank from the beer, leaned forward, stared straight ahead. Put his hands on his knees. He was adjusting to the new information, taking his time. He was a fisherman.

“Dell was scum,” he said finally.

“Sounds like it.”

He nodded to himself, glanced up at me again just once, said, “Well let’s ring you up. I bet you want to get the fuck out of here and go fishing.”

I smiled.

“I’ll check on the reel.”

At the register he wouldn’t meet my eye. His hand trembled as he picked up the little matchbook of twist weights, the dropper bottle of silicone, ran the scanner over the bar codes. I looked past him and in back, hanging just back of the doorway to what must have been the shop, I saw a young man in a baseball cap watching us. Jake. Ben said, “Back in Hotchkiss they got a fly shop, too. If you need flies. Raymond’s.”

“This one is pretty good,” I said.

“Well.” He scanned a pair of forceps with handles speckled like a brookie. “Well,” he said again.

“Like I might scare away the other customers?”

He wouldn’t look at me.

“I don’t see any other customers,” I said.

“It gets real busy sometimes,” he snapped defensively, and started putting my gear into a flimsy plastic bag.

IV

The sun had gone over the canyon, the top of the red wall upstream was lit to a strip of fire. The hole gathered the cool dusk. I smelled tamarisk, sweet, heard the ripple of the current against grass banks, the descending slow notes of a canyon wren somewhere across the river.

Behind me the clunk of two car doors closing, chafe of a starter, tires on gravel, all muffled by distance and the thick cottonwoods along the bank. Here, the wide run of slow water reflected the green banks, and all across it, silvering the dark surface, and silent, spread the faint rings of trout rising.

I counted four other fishermen staggered in the mile above me, two on the far side, could see their blue raft nosed into the willows. Plenty of room to be alone with the evening.

I stepped into the water, tested it, thigh deep here and black along the grassy undercut, waded out, soft sand bottom, waded until it firmed to gravel and got shallower, a covered bar. I wanted to cast back from here and fish the edge of the bank.

Before I unhooked the little pheasant tail from the keeper above the cork grip, before I pulled a few feet of line straight off the new reel with a well oiled zing—before I did anything I stood knee deep in the cold water and closed my eyes.

In the silence of the evening I could hear the tiny blips and gulps of fish rising. One behind me, then one to my left, close. A chortle of current. The breeze was lazy upstream and carried somebody’s charcoal. Another fainter tick, this in air. Bats. I knew that when I opened my eyes I would see a bat flitting the dusk over the water. Rising fluttery, the antic turns like a leaf getting blown about. The leathery wings ticking. Bats and trout, everybody having dinner, everybody going after the same bugs. Nobody leaving any wake.

Do you leave a wake?

No. Maybe.

Do you leave anything important? Worthwhile?

A few paintings.

Huh.

I was a father.

But now you’re not.

I still am. I just. She would be here tonight. She would love it.

You are a killer. Now the wake you are leaving is absence and pain.

I stood stock still. I listened to that, the accusation, the way I had been listening to the bats and the fish.

I don’t feel like a killer. I feel pretty good. Now I do. I didn’t like what Ben said at the end, but now I am just standing here listening.

You are a killer twice over. First time you escaped by a few inches. Happenstance. You missed. But. You have the heart of a killer.

I do?

Answer that yourself.

You are myself.

Silence.

I stood knee deep in the cold water, eyes closed, and listened to the end of day over the river. Then I opened my eyes and pulled the line and began making long casts upstream just off the bank. The new rod was light and alive in my hand, it was beautiful, and the line sang out fast and smooth with a whisper like scratching a guitar string. I didn’t mind the sound at all.

V

In cop shows they always talk about motive and murder weapon and hard evidence and eyewitnesses. I mean, to build a case beyond a reasonable doubt you need to assemble some facts. Facts that are beyond dispute. Like bits of a man’s brains on another man’s clothes. That’s the thing I worried about most. But. I kept telling myself no way. I didn’t puncture Dell’s skull, I cracked it. Didn’t beat it to a pulp. I hit him once, KO, and he fell into the creek and drowned. Crack.

The other stuff seemed under control. Murder weapon? None. One rock in a million like any other in the bed of a stream, already probably gathering algae or the pupa shells of caddisflies. Motive, sure. It sounded like lots of people might have some motive. The mother of his grandkids for one. Hard evidence aside from brains? Sulphur Creek road dust on my truck, patches I hadn’t washed off? My tire treads along the creek, just downstream of the camp?

I fished there almost every day. I had never needed to wash off the dust in the first place. That was an adrenaline move, something you do in the middle of the night when you’re so pumped and you don’t realize it and you do unnecessary and stupid things.

Blood on the vest? What if Stinky said I wasn’t wearing the vest during the fight? Then Dell’s blood came at another time. What if the pattern of spots was deemed in no way consistent with a bloody nose? Stinky could fuck me.

Alibi. I had one. Rock solid, right? What if she got mad at me? What if she turned on me the way she did on the big dumb hippy boyfriend? Maybe that was her MO. Or the other way, what if I left? I was never going to be hostage to an alibi. A spurned woman can do crazy things. What if. What if.

But I didn’t hear from Sport. I figured I’d wait two weeks, not be in too much of a hurry, then drive down to Santa Fe and do Steve’s stupid commission. I figured they’d run the tests on the vest pretty fast since it was a hot case with a suspect at risk of flight, etc. And they had probably interviewed Stinky already, so. I figured if they had any kind of a case they wouldn’t fuck around, they’d nail me. I don’t know why, I felt confident. It’s not like they had to carefully construct a case. They would have only so much material with which to build a prosecution and I figured either they had it or they didn’t.

Sofia went back to the orchard house she shared with Dugar and kicked him out. She told him his poems were moronic and it was time he went to California and became the sea mammal she always knew he could be. He objected with a string of b-buts she said sounded like a machine gun. When she asked about the orchard girl he’d been screwing for months, playing her, Sofia, like a fool, he got sheepish and shut up for a minute.

We were drinking coffee at the counter again, she on a stool, me on the kitchen side, and I was happy that we had fallen back into our old ease. She had brought a baguette, a jar of peach marmalade, a wedge of triple cream Brie, and we were devouring them. She smiled, her eyes all the colors you see on the bottom of some clear creeks, and she said, to me, “You know I hold your nut sack in my strong little fist?”

“I know I know.”

“I don’t want your nuts.” She opened her fist and shook her palm in air. “No matter what you ever do or say to me your nuts are your nuts. I will never change my story.”

I looked at her and I believed her. As much as I could believe anything.

“What did Dugar say? At the end?”

“He said he thought we were the perfect couple. Not that he loved me more than marine wildlife or poetry, but that we were perfect together. ‘I, Dugar, have a strong back and a huge heart,’ he said, ‘and you are smart and great with people.’ Can you believe that? He carefully rolled us each a Drum cigarette and said we should start an organic farm. Then he took the little feather out of his left ear, the one he’s had since he apprenticed with the Arapahoe, and he gave it to me. Tried.”

“He apprenticed with the Arapahoe?”

She slid her mug across the butcher block, allowed me to refill it.

“Maybe it was the Cheyenne. Or the Shoshone. I can’t remember. He was like nineteen. He lived on the rez in a willow stick thing covered in blankets and he was boffing the shaman’s wife so they kicked him out. Put a curse on him. Come to think of it, that explains a lot.”

She drank from the full and steaming mug and looked at me past the tilted rim. She put it down lightly on the counter.

“Do you want to paint today? It’s been a while.”

“No. Maybe. I don’t think it will have a woman in it.”

“No?” She leaned forward. She was wearing one of her signature spaghetti strap tops. She squeezed her biceps into the sides of her chest and her breasts did that thing where they dominated the universe for a minute. I held up a four and a half fingered hand.

“Not this morning.”

She relented.

“I can’t tell if you need me to help you get your mind off of things or if that’s exactly what you need, to focus.”

“Tell you the truth I’m not sure either. Think I need to be alone this morning.”

She pursed her lips at me. Her eyes were serious. Shadows of big trout swimming along the bright pebble bottom. “I bet you do,” she said. “Call me later if you want to swim with beautiful naked girls.”

She came around the counter and tugged my beard, kissed my temple and strolled back out the front door.

Roar of Tops, then silence. Me and two crickets, and the morning air already hot, breathing at the screens.

I walked over to the west end of the house and picked a twenty-four thirty-six out of the stack of pre-stretched canvases leaning against the wall. Put it on the easel, squeezed ten measures of pigment onto a piece of plastic covered fiberboard, lifted a medium stiff brush out of a glass of spirits and began.

I painted a road. Cracked tarmac running over the desert hills west of here. Burnt brush, cracked clay, washes of white alkaline in the low places. The road climbed a hill, there were piñons at the top of it, a ridge, the road disappearing into them. It curved left into the shadows of the pines. Hot. Hot on the road, not much relief in the shade. Along the road grew flowers. Small asters on the shoulder, purple and blue, breathing out the last colors, the last moisture in the whole country. My hand moved from the spirit jars holding the brushes to the palette, to the canvas, the palette knife, a rag. Moving, it seemed, faster, without pause. The loaded brush carving a single living cloud in the washed sky. Then a big bush by the pavement, rabbitbrush, fading its green, and in the laced shadow of the bush a shape.

Brush to palette to canvas: an arm sticking out from under. On the arm, bracelets. A girl’s arm. A girl’s body at the base of the bush.

And then. On the rock, in the trees, on the hill, the four birds. Not together now, perched and watching from their separate distances. Black and huge. On rock, on tree, on another branch. Saw them appear with a dread. Could not make them not come. Not not come, they were already there like the road and the sky and the dead girl. They had been there always, with the unrelieved heat, the relentless sky.

Phone rang. Jarred me out of the place. How many hours? Wasn’t sure, it was hot in the house, already afternoon. Rang four times stopped. Began ringing again.

Okay okay. Too much going on probably not to answer. Put down the brush, board, rag, lurched over to the counter. Stiff, wrung out, like I’d been shoveling all morning, swinging a pick.

“Yah.”

“Stegner?” Static on the line, wind. Voice scratchy, deep. Familiar.

“Yah.”

“I want my horse.”

Pause. Hair on my forearm standing up.

“Whoever this is, it’s not your horse.”

“Why? Because you think you killed me dead? In the creek?”

Static.

“With a rock? While I was taking a leak? Cracked my skull and left me for dead?”

Neck prickled, goosebumps: “Who the fuck?”

“Well you did. Good job. Dead as the rock you used and tossed into the creek.”

Heart hammering, could feel my pulse racing in the thumb I was using to grip the phone.

“Who the fuck is this?”

“Tough guy. Using lots of grownup cusswords. Nice.” Gravel laugh.

Then: “You wanna know Who? The fuck? Well it sure as shit ain’t old Dellwood is it? Thanks to you.”

“I’m hanging up.”

“No. No you won’t. You hang up you’ll be dead. Promise. Cross my heart. Be joining Dell.”

I hung up.

Immediately the phone rang four more times, I let it ring. Nothing on the caller ID. Blocked number. Ring ring… silence.

I hobbled over to the armoire in the corner—felt like I’d run some race, knee sore, legs stiff and tired. Hobbled over trying to unkink my lower back and opened the fragrant pine door, reached under a stack of wool sweaters and pulled out my .41 mag. An ugly, heavy, black Smith & Wesson revolver I’d had since I was a teenager, the one I’d shot Simms with, the one the state let me keep because I pled down to misdemeanor assault, the DA allowing it because they wanted Simms the fucker behind bars more than they wanted me. I took out the gun and thumbed the cylinder twice around. Loaded. Good.

I lay it on the counter next to the tubes of paint. Walked to the little guest room on the other side of the woodstove. Pushed open the blue painted door. Small room with a quilted bed, one window with a view west to the uplift of the Black Mesa. On the bed lay a pile each of khakis, jeans, flannel shirts. My walk in closet. In the corner behind the door was a soft camo gun case. Lifted it onto the bed on top of the shirts and tugged the heavy zipper. Wrapped the grained wood stock with my right hand and pulled. Out of the flannel lined sheath slid a shiny stainless short barreled shotgun. A twelve gauge pump, triple plated Winchester. The Marine. Made for boats. I’d never had a boat, but I liked the idea you could drop it in the swamp.

What else? Check if it’s loaded. I turned it side down toward the bed and worked the pump six times, kicking the shells out onto the quilt. The sixth pump empty. I gathered the cool plastic buckshot shells under my palm and thumbed them one at a time back into the sprung door of the magazine on the underside of the receiver. Five. I racked the pump once more to chamber a shell, leaving space for one more. Where? On the rough painted bed table was a box of Fiocchi dove loads. Well. At close range it would ruin someone’s day just as bad as buckshot. Tore the cardboard top and fished one out, loaded the sixth. What else?

I lay the shotgun on the counter next to the handgun, picked up the iPhone that still lay there, punched in Sofia’s number.

“Hullo!”

“I was just threatened. On the phone. I don’t want you to come by today.”

“Wha—?”

“In fact, you have any friends in Telluride or Aspen?”

“Crested Butte.”

“Go there. For a couple of days. I mean it.”

“Jim what the fuck? What did he say? Who was it?”

“Dunno. It was bad. Just go to Crested Butte. Soon as you can. I’ll call you.”

“Did you call the police? I mean, like the detective what’s his name? The one you call Sport?”

I didn’t answer.

“Yeah, I guess that’s a dumb question. Jim?”

“You gonna go? You gonna promise me?”

“Okay okay. Be nice to get up there anyway, it’s so frigging hot down here. Okay.”

“Okay, go.”

“Okay okay. Jim—”

I hung up.

What else? I wish I had a dog. I needed a damn dog. I wasn’t going to let whoever it was run me off, that’s just not me. But I’d be vulnerable tonight. So would Willy. I pressed on the phone again, hit his number.

“Hyell-o.”

“It’s Jim. I think I better come get the horse.”

“You too? Everybody wants that poor little horse today.”

“He called you too?”

“Yep. Just now. Said he was coming over to take the mare.”

“Who?”

“Dellwood Siminoe’s brother Grant. I told him his brother, RIP, lost all rights to the horse when he tried to use it for batting practice. He said he had the papers and that all their horses were owned jointly and he was coming over. I told him I already called the sheriff and let them know the mare’s condition and that I had her until it was sorted out. I said if he set foot on my place I would take it as a physical threat and put a new buttonhole in his shirt. He didn’t like that too much. He said I would dearly regret my attitude. I’ve been regretting my attitude my whole life. I keep wishing I’d thought to tell him that.”

Pause.

Willy said, “Somebody killed your pal Dellwood Friday night up on the creek. I guess you heard.”

There was a new tone in Willy’s voice. It was not gruff and hearty. It was like the words would be whatever they would be but the tone underneath was speaking a truth no one could alter.

“I heard that.”

“I didn’t hear your truck start up in the middle of the night. Didn’t hear it rattle back down your drive about three hours later.”

Pause.

I said, “What do you do awake in the middle of the night aside from not hear things?”

Willy said, “Draw pictures. Horses and such. Campfire scenes.”

Willy wasn’t being cute, he was dead serious.

I said, “They sound nice. Did you show the pictures to Sport? The detective. He seems to be very curious about art.”

“Nope. Gaskill came by to talk to me. I didn’t much like his attitude, to tell the truth. For him I was sound asleep all night. What’d you call him? Sport? Ha. He’s curious about fishing too. He kept asking me if you were wearing your fishing gear when I rolled up with the trailer. Waders, vest.”

I cleared my throat. “And?”

“I thought a minute,” Willy said. “Seemed to me if they were so concerned with them they must be some kind of evidence. Where I come from clothes that are used as evidence in a murder have blood on them. I chewed it over and I said Yes, pretty sure he was. And that vest had blood all over it from where he gave Dell a bloody nose. That shut him up. He got kinda pissy after that. I told him to be sure to write that down, because come to think of it the blood on the vest made a deep and vivid impression on me and I would be sure to mention it in court.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“Jim?”

“Yeah.”

“Dell was a snake.”

“You knew him then? You said you didn’t.”

“Yeah, I know him. I caught him and a client poaching a Pope and Young bull pre-season once. He threatened Dorothy, my wife, and I let it go, didn’t call the warden. Didn’t seem worth it then. Her safety. That was a mistake.”

“Hunh.”

“Probably makes me a suspect as much as you.”

Pause.

“Jim?”

“Yah.”

“Take a vacation. Go bonefishing in the Keys. What I hear, Grant is a meaner snake than Dell. The police don’t have anything on you. They did, you’d be in county right now.”

I didn’t take a vacation. I pulled out another canvas. I cut two pieces of the baguette Sofia had brought, it was stale but I didn’t care, and I sliced a thick wedge of the sharp soft cheese and moaned as the smooth cream hit my palate and crumbs from the crust broke onto the counter. I ate another, drank a tall glass of cold water, poured my ugly mug half full with tarry bitter old coffee from the morning, and began again.

Another canvas, another road, this one coming toward me over the shoulder of the mountain, my mountain, Lamborn. How do you know if a road is coming to you or going away? I knew. A summer evening like this one. Coming out of the oak brush and junipers and dropping into the sage meadows. No black birds in this one, but a single horned owl perched in a long branch of Russian olive by the pond. The pond with fish, swirling here and there with the quiet feeding. Russian olive fragrant in its rags of dusty leaves. On the road a horse, small, reddish, the little mare trotting along the shoulder, coming almost jaunty, head high. Next to it another, a little bigger, spotted, the big antic eye patch of an Appaloosa, an Indian horse, spirited. Evening, like now, shadows thrown eastward in the long light, toward the mountain, the ponies’ steps in tandem, matching gait, the rhythm of their coming, the thudding of the hooves and the play of the late light all as if set to music, and the closeness of their flanks like a dance and then I see why they come together: across their withers bundled, balanced, is the body of a girl. I seize. Brush halfway to canvas: breathe. And then I paint through it. Paint the young girl bundled and joggled on their backs, not even tied to the ones who are carrying her, balanced in the swift loping, balanced I see now only by the complete attention of the horses, by love.

That a painting could bring her this close.

A week before she died I was painting in the many-windowed shed that was my studio. She hung in the doorway and watched me for a while saying nothing, the way she had done since she was a little girl. Except now she was stooped over her own lankiness, her hair hanging in her face. Tentative, brooding, the way she never was. She had been suspended from school three days before for smoking in the girls’ room, her grades were failing in three subjects. I was not pleased. Plus Cristine and I had been fighting for days and I was sleeping in the studio. Alce watched, I painted, drank from a can of PBR, finally she said, “It’s good, Pop. I like the clouds that look like birds.”

I grunted, didn’t answer.

“I know you’re mad.”

I painted.

“Jeremiah lives ten miles out of town. I don’t know, Pop. I really like him. He’s into some stuff, I get confused sometimes, but he’s a good person. Boys are weird. You know?” I turned. She pushed her hair out of her face and with great effort looked up at me. She had changed. She was no longer my little girl. I saw that like a stroke of bad lightning and it conjured a rage that shocked me.

“I’m trying to figure stuff out,” she said.

I turned back to the canvas, the loaded brush, forced myself to paint.

I heard her huff out her breath behind me. Heard her summon her strength, her stubbornness.

“I wondered if I could have a phone? You know, so I can coordinate with him.”

Could feel my breath quickening, hear the palette knife like sandpaper enacting its coarse rhythm. Finally, turned:

“You have got to be fucking kidding me. How old are you? Is this the guy who gave you ecstasy? Are you even using birth control? Have you remembered that school involves studying? Jesus fucking Christ.”

She wouldn’t look at me. I had never spoken to her that way. She really loved him, the boy Jeremiah, that’s what she had told her mom. She trembled where she stood in the doorway, then left. She wouldn’t look at me all the next week, or speak.

Then she was gone.

That day when she left the studio I went to the cupboard and found the bottle behind cans of turpentine and downed half a pint of Jack and threw the knife that was still in my hand against the wall.

When I finished the painting of the horses on the road it was almost dark. Dusk gathered in the quiet room. I heard in the distance dogs barking and I smelled smoke.

Smoke. A horn blare long and urgent. Yelling. Dogs barking.

I tossed the brush the tools on the counter, stepped outside. A plume of white smoke billowed from behind the hedgerow between me and Willy’s. Twined in the gusting pillar were blowing strands and boils of black.

Oh, fuck. The sonofabitch. The fucker.

I hustle to the truck, overcrank the starter in my hurry, wince at the loud rasp, back up too fast, slide in a damp patch on the gravel, throw the shifter into first and peel out.

It’s a minute to his ranch: I bounce up the steep drive to the county dirt road, sharp right at the top and two hundred yards to his gate which is open. Now I can see it: his bigger barn, the one flush against the line of old elms, is burning. The south side of it. The flames are consuming the tack room. It’s a lower extension of the barn proper, and they are licking at the eaves of the main roof. As I skid to a stop I see Willy, hatless, framed in the main doorway and fighting the haltered head of a huge gelding, a chestnut, who is rearing, eyes rolling back. Willy is hauling with all his weight, taking the hard jerks with his bent right arm.

He gets the horse clear of the door and unclips the lead rope with one thrusting motion under his chin, yells “Yah!” The horse bucks once, throws both rear legs out in a tremendous kick, and bolts for the dirt track to another open gate and the sage hills. Willy whirls, a wild dervish, and disappears back into the maw of the burning barn. I am running. As best I can. I nearly collide with him in the door. He is leading the little mare. She is whinnying, different now than the cries of her beating, this is terror, not the piteous wail at a merciless universe but a cry for help. It breaks my heart open.

“Here!” Willy yells. “Here! Take her!” He thrusts the jerking rope into my hand and spins and dives back in. I back up. Transfixed by the mare who is bellowing now almost like a donkey, transfixed by the flames that are eating the far wall, backing, pulling the rope, and suddenly she lunges for the opening and I am clinging, hanging on, arm about ripped out of its socket, somehow catching up with her and unclipping the lead and watching her bound, unhampered, soundly gaited, watching her with huge relief run for the fields and the still galloping chestnut. Oh God, go. Nothing broken, running like a horse should run.

I wheel around and plunge back into the barn. Willy is in the back, too close to the flames, struggling with the latch on a stall door. The black smoke gusts and rolls upward from the far wall, half obscures him. I can hear the thuds of hooves, breaking barnwood, the terrified kicks. I slide beside him into the searing smoke and grab the door and yank and we almost fall back together into the rushing sparks as the door frees and swings. No thought of safety, of bones, Willy dives into the stall. He yells, thud, a swat I can hear over the roar, and another big brown with a starred forehead bolts, jumps clean over me no shit and I can hear the clatter on concrete and she is out the big door and gone. “That’s it! That’s it! Others already out! Go! Go! Go!” I feel his grip on my upper arm, tearing at my shirt, tugging me after him and we are running. Running down the aisle between stalls as something behind us cracks and thwomp! collapses, running in a blizzard of sparks and sudden heat on polished concrete and my right foot comes down on a thatch of hay, hay slipping on the smooth floor and I am down. Willy’s hands now—can’t see him in the black smoke which is pouring toward the wide opening, sucked toward open air, can’t see him but feel his hands clawing into my armpits, hauling, pulling me again to my feet, a great shove in my lower back and I am spilling, tumbling out into the dirt yard and the night and the heat and wind is at my back and I land flat out on the stones and clods and look straight up into a sky luminous and clear as a spring, into a rash of rising sparks freeing themselves from the smoke and losing themselves in the paler stars.

Two red pumpers, sirens wailing, screamed up the road, jounced into the yard. The volunteers in yellow slicker suits and helmets, six to a truck, were out and swarming the hoses. There within ten minutes of me and two minutes later they had four heavy streams shooting into the flames, the roof of the barn, the part unburned. Willy had his hydrant going and was spraying down the side of his wood and tool sheds with a garden hose. The pillar of smoke on the south side of the barn went black to gray to a violent steaming white that exploded and rolled. It flowered inside out in the blossoming of its own death. A crack of timber like a shot and the roof collapsed on the south end, showering orange sparks straight up into the dark. Within an hour they had it all out. Half the barn stood unharmed. The other half steamed in a blackened ruin that burned the nostrils with acrid and sodden char. Willy stood in the yard. He held the triggered end of a garden hose as if he’d forgotten he held it. He watched the firemen spray down the hot spots, the backup man pulling and hauling the heavy cloth hoses over the yard, the nozzle man bracing and working the bale trigger in bursts, the rush and billow of steam.

I limped over to Willy. My lower back spasmed with shooting pain, trick knee screamed. I had to stop sprinting and rolling in the dirt every other day.

He was standing holding the little hose, his thin hair sprung out, a lick of it sweatstuck to his forehead, his face smirched, shirt torn. He stared at the remains of his barn. I stood next to him.

“I lost my hat,” he said.

I clapped it against my leg and handed it to him. A fraying palm-straw wide brim Resistol stained by sweat and rain.

“It was by the door.”

He looked at me first, straight into my eyes and I shuddered. There was a cold emptiness there I had never seen. Then he shifted down to the hat, no change in expression. He dropped the hose to the dirt and reached out and slowly took the Resistol. Deliberate and slow he set it on his head and snugged it down.

“Thanks.” Then he smiled. It was like the man I had recently come to know had just reinhabited his body.

“I’d say Grant Siminoe chose to mess with the wrong people,” he said. He spat. A spit that hawked up and ejected an entire swatch of the universe.

“But then smarts were never the Siminoes’ most obvious charm.”

As he said it headlights swung across his face. A pulsing blue followed. In that light he looked ill. A squad car pulled in, and the white Crown Vic, unmarked. Sport got out of it. He was wearing the soft shell wind jacket, hiking boots. Before he closed his door he took in the smoldering barn, the firemen, me and Willy. It didn’t seem to surprise him. He looked like a man coming to an event he had on his calendar. Out of the patrol car stood a broad shouldered, white haired officer in a badged green jacket. His face had the bitter not unhappy set of an old war general: the sheriff himself. Must be. He reached back into the car for his hat. Surprised me when I saw in the moving lights it was a hunterorange baseball cap. The sheriff walked over to an unhelmeted and bearded fireman who was talking into a cell phone. Must be the chief. Sport came to us.

Willy looked at him with undisguised distaste.

“Gentlemen.”

Sport turned his body to watch the mop-up, the clouds of steam. Three spectators in a line. “Any ideas, Mr. Kesler?” he said.

“You know, Craig, the Mr. really bothers me. My barn just burned down so I guess I shouldn’t sweat the small stuff, but I do.”

“Willy.”

“Nope. No ideas. No guesses. I know.”

Sport took out his flip notebook.

“Grant Siminoe called this afternoon, said he wanted his horse. When I told him it wasn’t his horse anymore he threatened me.”

“Can you recall the exact conversation?”

“Sure.”

Willy told him. When he finished he said, “Jim got a call just after me. It was a little less polite.”

Sport took it all down, the approximate times. When I told him that the caller said I’d be dead he stopped writing. He said, Just a sec. He walked over to the sheriff and the fire chief, pulled the sheriff aside, talked to him for a minute, came back. Asked about suspicious activity before the fire, headlights, etc. Nothing. The sheriff walked up. He scanned our faces.

“You lose any horses, Willy?”

“No. Almost lost Jim, though.”

Sheriff worked his jaw. “Got a dip?”

Willy hooked a finger into his breast pocket, took out the round tin.

“Thanks. Swore to Lee I wouldn’t buy another can. Turned me into a beggar. Christ.”

He pinched about a quarter of the can and stuffed it in his jaw.

“Cluster fuck,” he said.

“Well, yeah.”

The sheriff spat. A black stream that splatted over the dirt like wet cow shit.

“You all are giving me a headache. Willy?”

“Sheriff?”

“Grant’s at the camp. I went up there as soon as I heard the fire call come in. Him and five hunters swear on their wives’ coochies he was there all day.”

“And?”

“And you and I know he’s done this before. He didn’t go ahead and drop his driver’s license next to a gas can. We won’t find a thing.” Spat again.

“I want this to stop,” he said. “Now. I don’t want any more bodies.”

He turned his head and looked straight at me. His eyes were black and dark blue in the flashing lights and they were empty of kindness. “You fish the Forks today?”

I think I must’ve shaken my head to clear it.

“No?” he said.

I nodded.

“How was it?”

I stared at him.

“Good,” I said. “It was good. Pretty.”

“Windy though, huh? And hot. Catch anything?”

“Pretty big brown.”

“On what?”

Now I felt like I was in a dream, a weird dream.

“Bead head prince on the bottom. That’s what he hit. Had a royal coachman on top.”

The sheriff nodded, spat.

“Hit it on the swing did he?”

I must have been looking at him like he was speaking a foreign language. Hearing the words but trying hard to understand the meaning, the intent.

He pretended not to notice. He said, “I fished down there this morning early. Used a streamer just because I felt like it. Didn’t catch shit. Couple of little rainbows. I blamed it on the moon.” He smiled without mirth. “Always good to have a big fat moon to blame it on. You gonna do any creek fishing in the next few weeks?”

“Sure. If—”

“If you’re not in jail? We’re trying our hardest. Tell you the truth, the quality of witnesses isn’t what they used to be.” He glanced at Willy.

He spat a clean jet onto the gravel. “If you’re fishing the mountain creeks I’d get one of these.” He patted his neon orange cap. “Don’t want some asshole from Alabama thinking you’re a muley.”

I didn’t know what to say so I said, “Thanks.”

“I’m posting a deputy at your house tonight for your protection. Another will come tomorrow. And I’m taking the horse.”

Willy started as if someone had touched him with a lit match. “Mark—”

“Until we get this sorted out that horse is going into the witness protection program. She’ll be well cared for.”

“Marly’s—?”

“No not Marly’s for chrissakes. You know about Marly. So does Grant. Don’t concern yourself. Why don’t you go get her. Keep her back in the corral if you want. Just a few minutes. I just called Eckly, he’s on his way with a trailer.”

“She needs a vet’s attention. He clubbed her, nearly killed her.”

“She’ll get it, you have my word.”

“I don’t want a deputy,” I said.

“I can’t post one on your property without your permission.”

“Then don’t,” I said.

He studied me. “Okay.” He nodded to all three of us, lumbered back to his car. Leaned against it and began talking on a phone.

Willy called in his big gelding and hopped on him and hazed the other horses back into the corral. When Eckly arrived, Willy led the little roan slowly from the corral and she was unsure and trembling, and she shied when she neared the barn and there was a sudden hiss of steam. She was frightened by the sliding snake of a hose getting rolled in, but she never balked as he led her. He walked her right up the ramp of the sheriff department trailer, talking to her low and gentle the whole time.

I lay on top of the quilt naked and I cried. For the horse. Who was being moved to another strange place, into the tenuous care of more strangers. For myself, who couldn’t seem to stop spreading trouble wherever I went. How the violence seemed to follow me, and it was wildly undiscerning and it hurt the things around me: horses, friends, neighbors. I cried. Jesus, Jim, Irmina was right, you need to get calm, make some peace around you, not mayhem. For everyone’s sake. How did you get like this?

The three quarter moon rose over the shoulder of the mountain. At some point I heard the diesel pumper trucks roar, the air brakes, the fading growl as they went back down the road. At some point I stopped feeling sorry for myself, for everyone. The horse was in much better hands than she was a few days ago. Willy’s barn burned, but not all of it, he hadn’t lost any animals, and he told me before I left not to lose any sleep over that—he was heavily insured. He said the tack room was getting way too small anyway and that he had insured the building for so damn much he was sure they would think he burned it down himself. I got up and went to one of the poetry shelves set into the wall at the end of the bed. I flicked on a light switch there that lit only the books. Picked out a thick volume of Derek Walcott’s collected poetry and scanned the titles. The Schooner Flight caught my eye.

It’s an old style sea tale. Reminded me of the Ancient Mariner and Moby-Dick and “The Secret Sharer,” all those poems and stories I’d read in school. It lulled me. I thought: Maybe that’s what I need to do, go back to the coast, go past it, get washed by salt fog. Or. I had no idea what I needed to do. I reminded myself that I never had.

The next morning I loaded the new paintings and my dovetail jointed paint boxes and my new fishing gear and drove to Santa Fe.

On my way through town I stopped in at Bob’s to fill up. He came out of the station slowly, snapping his jacket at the waist and hunching his shoulders like a man going out to do a chore he didn’t much like. He unspun the gas cap and hit the lever on the pump without asking me how much, and as he cleaned the windshield he didn’t look at me. I leaned out the window and opened my mouth to ask him how his cows were doing, then shut it. I’d never asked him that before. Fuck. I got it. He stopped at forty zero zero, no need for change, no extra conversation, and cradled the pump handle with the same remoteness. I held out two crumpled twenties. I felt nauseous. He took the bills, turned away. Stopped. He took a deep breath, turned back.

“Jim, if anyone deserved an early demise it was that sonofabitch. But you know, we can’t just go around killing each other. Just saying.

“Be good,” he said again, the way he does.

A partial reprieve. It was fifty miles of state highway before I could breathe normally again.

VI

I have never painted in plein air. Never set up on some hillside, on some shore, in a big hat. But I did on the road south of Saguache. I made the right turn off the state highway onto a smaller paved road that went over a swell of grass hills and dropped down to a little creek limned with willows that ran off through open hills and pinewoods. The stream along the road ran dark and clear. It ruffled to white then smoothed almost black again. I slowed the truck, leaned out the window. I watched the creek, the purple stemmed willowbrush, the redwing blackbirds rising out of it, and I had two urges: to fish and to paint. Also, I wanted to shake off the scene with Bob.

As I studied the trout stream, the painting won out.

I turned a corner around a ruddy rock outcrop and saw the creek fan into a plain of willows, beaver dams, tannin dark pools. The pools stepped down the valley and cloud shadows tugged across them and the still water was touched with the quiet rings of feeding trout. In almost every one was a stick lodge. The beaver lodges were covered with a spotty packing of dirt, as if the animals had tossed shovelfuls of mud onto the roofs of their houses. How did they do that? Where did they carry it? I pulled over in a widening of trammeled tire tracks. The bank looked over the braids and pools, the thick low brush. A worn trail cut down to the water. For the first time in maybe my life I didn’t take it. Kinda blinked at myself. Gee, Jim, are you growing up? Or old? Art over life?

I could paint, then fish. There was plenty of daylight and I was in no hurry. Nobody would bother me out here.

But just in case, I set up the easel, swung down and latched the narrow shelf for brushes and stuck the .41 magnum in a hole meant for a jar.

The sheriff hadn’t been taking any chances, either. When I pulled out of my driveway this morning there was the young flattopped deputy who had admired my nudes. He must have been there all night. His beefy face in the open window was blotched with lack of sleep. He waved, very friendly, I waved back, then he started up and followed me down the county road. He followed me through Hotchkiss, past the turnoff to the Pleasure Park, all the way through Delta. We passed the little airport and the salvage yard Black Jacks where I had stopped a month ago to get a side mirror and the proprietress had fed her big Rottweiler watermelon gum-balls. We passed the propane yard, and a mile after that he blasted his siren, one long two shorts, and I crossed the county line. The sign said,

I looked in the mirror and he was pulled over and his arm was out the window and he was waving. I waved back.

Now above the open creek I unwrapped the brushes from their rag, flipped open my folding knife and scored then broke off a rough square of fiberboard. I pulled out a for sale sign and taped it white side up onto the board. I’d use a similar palette to Ocean of Women. A tremor of anxiety and I realized I was thinking about Sofia. She was safe, right? I dug my phone out of my khaki pocket, no reception of course. Grant Siminoe wasn’t going to go after an innocent woman, a bystander. Nah. Well. He did try to burn up a couple of horses. Panic like reflux rose in my throat. She said she was going to Crested Butte. She wouldn’t have thought of it, but the road to the old mining town went right by the Sulphur, the steep turnoff where the bow hunters had their camp. Well. She was going to go in the morning, they’d all be in the woods hunting. Right? Grant didn’t even know I had a girlfriend. Right?

I almost packed up everything right then, almost got back in the truck and turned around. Whoa. Cool off Jim. The sheriff would be all over Siminoe. If he was watching me he was sure as shit staking out the Sulphur road and keeping an eye on who was coming and going. He sure as shit didn’t want Grant burning down any more buildings. Or assaulting girlfriends. Is that what she was? Calm down. Breathe.

Hey, Pop?

Yeah?

Don’t get so excited about everything. That’s what always gets you in so much trouble. Just leaping all the time. Like a chicken. A rooster. Right?

Right.

Always striking at a bug, another rooster, chasing a hen. How do those little hearts handle all that all the time?

Hunh.

Try just sitting still for a sec. Want to?

Okay. You sound like Irmina.

I like Irmina. Okay, meditate.

Sure.

Pop?

Yes, Alce.

You have three speeds, huh? Like that antique station wagon we used to have. With the shifter on the wheel? Remember?

Sure.

That’s you, right? Kinda: crawl, fast, stop. Right?

Right. Laugh.

Maybe you should stop now. For a sec. Paint the picture. Everything will work out.

It will?

Sure.

I stood by the empty easel looking over all those mirrored beaver ponds and thought, That is some advice coming from my girl. My girl who one morning didn’t have a chance. I stood and breathed and then I pulled the jars out of the jointed box and filled them with turps and walked down the steep trail to water’s edge and splashed my face with tea colored water.

I had put five small canvases in the back of the truck with the new paintings. The unused canvases were wrapped and tied in an old piece of rubber tarp. I pulled out a twenty-thirty and set it on the easel and began. I painted what I saw. The braided stream threading the green and red willows like a little delta, the blackbirds flying. Three black birds of life. Not the deathly watchers. Could hear them as I painted, the peculiar exuberant buzzing call like an electric cable. I painted the Cooper’s hawk that circled high, the clouds above him on their own compelled heading. I painted fish jumping out of the water though they weren’t really jumping they were sipping the surface but fuck it, let’s not be too literal, and I refrained from putting in a chicken or any death anywhere. Funny, but it was very freeing just sticking to the landscape. You’d think it would be the opposite. A certain kind of pressure was lifted, one I realized now that I’d always felt in the limitless blank outer space of total freedom. Which is a vacuum of sorts and has its own imploding force.

I thought it was ironic that now, with my assignment in front of me—paint the creek, the whole creek and nothing but the creek—now I felt released. My spirit flew. I painted like a child, without thought, one color to the next, one bush to one pool to the next to the birds to fish to a June bug about as big as a hummingbird who landed on my cap. Fun to paint like this. I mean it wasn’t much different than painting an ocean of women except that I had forbidden myself that kind of license and I hummed and sang and my imagination rested, not frightened at all of any sharks coming up from the deep or any malevolent birds.

I was happy painting and suddenly envied my friends who built houses and cut down trees, the gypo loggers like Pop, the ones in Mora County who were Irmina’s friends, Bob at the station: fix the transmission, change the oil. Or build a foundation, cut down the tree and the one next to it. What Irmina had said: Jim you burn so hot. What felt good was to cool. To paint simply and to feel a cooling, the calmness of craft, of being a journeyman who focuses on the simple task: pin this one corner together and make it fit in an expanding universe.

Not a single car passed in not sure how much time. A katydid pulsed out of the grass on the shoulder. The blackbirds buzzed and shrieked in happy territorial arguments. The sun climbed over the low ridge behind me and threw my shadow down to water’s edge. After a while the beaver in the closest pond emerged and cut a faint wake across the still water. Came back. Some woodless errand. I could hear too the slow current pouring over the closest dam, sifting and burbling in the pool below. I painted. Painted the pace of it, the sounds as much as anything. The calm. It calmed me. That thing happened where I disappear. Except this time it was not into the poised energy of a woman, or into some watery interior landscape, but into instead the quiet creek in front of me, into the raucous commerce of corvids, the inscrutable transit of a beaver, the slow breathing of the morning. It was different and soothing and freeing and I didn’t even know that I’d disappeared until I heard the higher vibration of an approaching car, still a ways off.

It wasn’t a car it was a truck. A tall long-nosed blue semi with a shiny V grille like a cowcatcher and a high load of hay. Downshifted as it came around the last bend into view, the loud stuttered growl and cough and pitch into a higher octave.

The hay was in square bales and stacked tight and green. He passed at maybe 40 mph, blasting me with a sweet grass-smelling wind and then I heard the air brakes hiss, the double downshift and he stopped along the shoulder. Grind of gears and he backed up, neatly slotting into what was left of the pullout ahead of me as if it had been made for him. The high door clucked open and he swung down, the idle of the big diesel somehow growling benignly, fitting nicely with the other sounds of the morning.

I thought of “Phantom 309” the way Tom Waits sang it, I loved that song. At the wheel sat a big man / and I’d have to say he must’ve weighed two ten / As he stuck out a big hand and he said with a grin / “Big Joe’s the name…”

He was—big. Not sure about two-ten but he was like six feet, heavy in the shoulders. Wore a camo cap and a full beard like me, but dark. Aviator shades, Wranglers, brown leather shitkickers. His boots scuffed the ridged dirt as he walked the length of his rig, unconsciously checking the straps and the load as he came. He moved with the loose jointed rhythm of an athlete. Hand came up in a wave, still twenty yards off. Country. I noticed that most country people hail you from a decent distance, city people wait till they’re right up in your face. Then he stopped at the end of the trailer, looked up at the high stack of bales, put a hand up on the wall of hay, patted it. Fished a tin of chew out of his breast pocket, twisted off the lid and put a plug in his upper lip. Extra polite. I smiled. I raised my chin: c’mon. He came.

“Morning.”

He stood off twice the length of an extended arm. Somehow I knew right then that he was a hunter.

“Hey.”

“Dip?” he said.

Shook my head. “Took me five years to quit.”

He nodded, spat. “Don’t want to interrupt.”

“Not at all.”

“Sure?”

“Yup.”

“You a painter?”

He broke into a wide smile at his own question, showed white teeth, surprisingly white for a guy who chewed.

“I mean as opposed to a hobbyist. I mean you sure as shit look like you know what you’re doing.”

“Well I don’t know how to do much else if that’s what you mean.”

“ ’Cept fish?”

That surprised me.

“You got two rods leaning against the cap of your truck. I noticed as I passed. I thought fisherman-painter, this guy’s got the life.”

He took off his shades, folded them and hung them off the same pocket the chew came out of. He glanced at the canvas, shyly, as if he were sneaking a look at something very personal which I guess it was.

“Nice,” he said.

“Thanks.”

“I like the fish.”

He looked past the bank at the stepped and spreading ponds.

“The way you made ’em jump even though they ain’t jumping. That takes something. Maybe balls isn’t the word. Spirit.”

“Huh.”

He was looking at the creek but addressing the painting, politely.

“The thing moves. The picture. I like that. The birds, the fish, the beaver, the clouds, the water. Sorta like looking at music. You know if it had colors. Nice.”

Nodded to himself.

“Jason,” he said.

“Jim.”

“Pleasure.”

“Likewise.”

“I fished this stretch before. Why I stopped, partly. Brookies a course, but last time, it was fall, I got a cutthroat about as big as a tuna. Surprised the shit out of me. Didn’t even know they were in here.”

He glanced over. “You expecting company?”

I put the brush I was still holding back in the murky spirit jar, set my own cap back, rubbed my forehead.

“No. Don’t think so.”

I looked at him puzzled.

“You got a .41 magnum stuck in your easel.”

“Oh shit.” My hand went instinctively to the gun, stopped halfway. I shrugged.

“Maybe for bear,” he said politely.

I didn’t know what to say. Suddenly my whole predicament, the one I’d happily forgotten for a few hours, came tumbling down. He must’ve seen it.

“Or lion,” he said more helpfully. “Lotta lion coming back into these hills.”

I rubbed my face. We both looked down at the creek, at the molten rings of the sipping trout touching the black surface with the delayed rhythm of a very slow rain.

“You like to fish the Sulphur, huh?”

“What?”

“Me, too. I fished it just the other day. Hay delivery. I never fished it in the middle of the night, though. That must be interesting. With a moon and all.”

He was looking down at the creek, very casual. My hand went to the shelf of the easel, rested there.

“Amazing that’s legal when you think about it. I mean fishing and hunting, they’re pretty much the same. Going out to stalk something in the dark like that. Maybe kill it.”

He patted the tin of snuff in the breast pocket of his snap shirt, thought about doubling the size of his plug, decided against it. Maybe trying to cut down. A phone rang, his. The ring was coyotes yapping. He pulled it out of his jeans, glanced at the ID, at me, and silenced the ringer. Put it back.

My hand did not move from the easel. Inches from the gun. I was very still.

“You must have Verizon,” I said.

“What? Oh. Yeah, only way to go around here. If you don’t have it you need it.” He spat, hit a clod with a neat jet. He said, “Not good to be out in the middle of nowhere with no way to, you know, get in touch.”

Turned his head, looked at me full on, expressionless. “I was thinking of fishing this, take a break for an hour. Take a chill pill. You?”

I didn’t answer. Chill pill. I’d heard that expression recently and then I remembered where: at Dell’s camp, two minutes before I’d killed him.

Sometimes in a bar fight, just before it erupts, you feel the way things are going, they can’t go any other way, and you strike. Preempt. Maybe you don’t even want to, but you’ve been here before and you know how it will go if you don’t. Now I didn’t. It teetered. I watched him.

“You deliver hay to a hunting camp? Half a dozen guys?”

“Eight guys. Well. Seven. Now it’d be seven, wouldn’t it?” Spat. “Yeah, one on the slab makes seven. I never was too good at math.”

“Maybe the fishing isn’t too good here right now.”

“Maybe not. I got things I got to do anyway just down the road.” He turned his head, worked the plug in his cheek with his tongue, looked at me, steady. His hair was very dark, almost black, but his eyes were mineral blue. They were mineral hard and the calmness in them tightened my wires more than any anger.

“Dell is family,” he said.

I didn’t move.

“Well, we don’t choose ’em, do we?” he said. “Too bad.” Spat. “Whoever fucks with them. The law might not take care of it, but one of us always does.”

He looked down at the creek.

“Second thought, I think I will fish,” he said. “Could use a stretch. You? An hour?”

It was a bald challenge.

“Sure,” I said. It was the only answer. I said, “Hold on.”

I took the canvas off the easel with both hands, then thought better and put it back on the stand. Picked out a smaller brush and dabbed it in black on the palette. Scrawled in the lower right corner: Just Before Fishing with Jason—Jim Stegner.

“Here,” I said.

“You want me to hold it? On the edges?”

“It’s for you.”

“Me?”

“It’s for you.”

He stepped forward and his hands closed around the sides. Strong and scarred. He stood there with the painting held straight out and too gingerly the way a man who is unused to it holds an infant. His eyes went from me to the picture and back. A flicker of confusion. He wasn’t exactly back on his heels, but it was where I wanted him.

“Do you have a place you can lay it flat for a few days? While it sets up?”

“Oh yeah sure. I can lay it in the sleeper.”

“Might wanna crack your windows. You know for the fumes.”

“Well shit. No one ever gave me anything like this.” He just stood there. Finally he turned his wrist so he could read his watch.

“I got an hour, better get after it.”

He grinned and suddenly he looked like a kid. He held the painting out in front of him with both hands and trotted back along his load of hay.

We fished. He snugged together the four pieces of his rod and strung it and hopped down the steep trail of the bank with a natural’s grace, his eyes sweeping the braids and picking his spot as he fell into the brush.

I put on hip waders and took the gun out of the easel and shoved it into my belt on the inside of my pants, just back of the hip the way I used to wear it, took up my rod and pushed through the scratchy trees. A redwing flew up from the willows and whistled and buzzed and made a commotion. Landed in a Russian olive that overhung the beaver pond. I knew he would supervise the rest of my session with a restless disapproval. The sandbar was yellow in the murky tea water and welcoming, maybe a foot deep where it extended into the pool and through the short watergrass I saw minnows darting. I could smell the perfume of the olive tree and feel the cold of the water through my waders. Sometimes you just fish a spot because it makes you welcome. Under different circumstances I would have felt happy. I can say that. Even the territorial blackbird clicking and hopping: as agitated as he was, he would have seemed auspicious. But there was zero traffic on the road and now as I fished I was aware of the weight on my hip and I kept one eye on the trucker who was casting into a braid maybe sixty yards downstream. Fished his own braid and thought his own thoughts.

We fished for over an hour. Don’t know how long. Long enough that a tamarisk on the far bank was throwing its shadow across the pool. Long enough that I had released a mess of little brookies not a whole lot bigger than the streamer fly itself, which always made me laugh—the bravery!—and landed a two pound cutthroat that surprised the shit out of me and which I also let go. I’d usually cook that one, and sometimes carried a camp stove and a pan in the truck with me, but this time I didn’t, and didn’t care to build a fire. I was happy to watch him fin with what looked to me like great dignity back into the tea colored murk. At first it wasn’t fun. I was watching Jason. There was a cold grip in my gut and I was aware of how vulnerable I’d made myself. We were in the middle of nowhere and now we were off the road. It came down to proximity and angles and the knowledge that I had a gun and that he might or might not. Well. After a while I relaxed a little and just fished, fishing has a way of taking care of things, and I kept one eye downstream and found I could pretty well do the two things at once. Jason was more than forty yards downstream, he’d been working up. I was sight casting after a rise and I’d let myself get lost in thought when I looked up and he was gone. Nowhere. Panic sounds like tearing paper. I remember thinking that as I backed further out into the water and scanned the willows. He might have circled upstream. I would have. If I wanted to surprise me I’d get to the bank and circle fast. I turned, stepped in up to my knees and searched the bend above the little pond. Fuck. Scrape. Whisk of branches, the knick of stone, and I spun around.

He was right there. Out of the brush, on the shallow edge of the pool. He was less than fifteen feet from me and he had something in his hand.

I stepped back careful of my footing and shifted the rod fast into my left hand and let my right drop to the gun in my belt. “Whoa!” I said.

He stopped, took it in, measured the distance.

“Whoa, Pops.” His eyes were dancing. “I just caught three in a row on this thing, ugly little fucker, I tie ’em myself. Thought you might wanna try it.”

He held out something that looked like a big ant, but wasn’t, with a half dozen rubber legs. Ugly.

The proffered fly, the hand out, down here off the road in the brush. I cleared my throat.

“Think I’m done,” I said.

Was that a smile? Not sure. He could be amused, I wasn’t. If the ugly fly had looked less like an ant and a little bit more like, say, a Glock, I might have plugged him. I backed up two more steps and retrieved the line and swung the fly back in and hooked it to the keeper. I kept my eyes on him the whole time. I wanted him to wait because I wanted him to go ahead of me up the steep trail, but not too far ahead to where he could ambush me. He had sussed it, too, and he got it. He waited for me, very civil, and then he turned and led me back up to the road.

Before he got back in his rig he said, “You did pretty good.” It wasn’t a question. Then: “Thanks for the painting. I’m sure I’ll see you down the road. Can pretty much guarantee it.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Wait a sec,” he said. He trotted back to the cab, threw in the pieces of the rod, swung up, and a minute later jumped down in his jeans, and stuck something in his mouth as he came.

“Here,” he said. “One of my ranchers gave it to me a week ago. He and his wife went on a cruise last winter.”

It was a cigar, a Montecristo Number Two, a classic, a great Cuban. Steve had given me a box once after I sold the entire Dung Beetle Series.

“It’s pretty good I guess,” he said. “Never had anything to compare it to, so what do I know.” He pulled out a lighter and lit my smoke. As he did his blue eyes met mine. I shuddered. They were warm with more than mischief. You aren’t the only one who can play at this, they seemed to say.

“We might as well enjoy ourselves,” he said. “One of us for sure is going down.”

He turned in a wreathing of gray smoke, walked back to his cab and climbed up. I put my rod in the bed of my truck. I glanced up once, and in his big driver side mirror I saw him talking on his cell, looking back at me and talking. Then the grind of a low gear, the loud rev and he pulled out.

Threats are threats, violence is violence. In my experience the two don’t go together more than half the time.

I shook myself off and drove slowly. I was in no hurry to get to Santa Fe. I was driving down the prettiest rolling road with the window down smoking a Cuban cigar. What the hell. It didn’t get better, not in my book. I mean if you weren’t looking too hard at what had just happened or who might be down the road or at some of the other stuff. Maybe living well is the art of not looking at that, at the other stuff, when you don’t have to. Or being okay with it. What the fuck do I know. I wasn’t sure that I was okay with much in my life at the moment, and I felt shaky, like when you haven’t eaten in a while, but I felt almost happy.

In no hurry. I wasn’t looking forward to the painting, the portrait commission. Not because the little girls I had met seemed mostly bewildered by the extravagant world of their father: I remembered them moving tentatively and always hand in hand, as if they were orphans brought into the great house straight from heatless dormitories—I wasn’t looking forward to it because I had gotten excited by painting outside. I had painted a lot of landscapes, had stood before many while they burned their remote beauty into my skin, but had never done both at the same time. Don’t know why. I was comfortable painting indoors and I liked best to retrieve those images from memory where they might be stained by awe and jumbled together with other things I loved. Now that I had tried the other, I wanted to do more. And I liked being on the road. The important thing was to be moving. As it had been so many times before. So after fishing with Jason I decided to take it slow, spend the night on the highway. Probably only four more hours to Santa Fe, but it was late afternoon by the time I got going again, and I figured I’d stop at some little town along the way. Also, it wouldn’t hurt to throw an unexpected stutter into my schedule in case some blue eyed trucker was waiting up ahead.

I drove down along the bulwark of the Sangre de Cristos with the sun riding the ridge, past the turnoff to Creede and out into the flat expanse of the San Luis Valley. I didn’t drive fast. The big pivot sprinklers were sending their jets out into the fields of garlic and peppers and the mile long rows strummed my vision as I passed and the sidelit plants throbbed green and the arcs of spray misted with rainbows. Almost stopped to paint again, look at me go, but I was too tired. Too pleasantly exhausted.

When I was young, just in grade school, growing up on the Oregon coast, I used to surf with my friends. I wasn’t the greatest surfer but I was unstoppable. I didn’t mind getting hammered. In fact, I actually loved getting tumbled and drubbed. Something about being lifted and slammed and wash cycled by such a force, such a force that was so powerful yet soft. I mean it wasn’t a rockslide. I loved it. We used to put on short wet suits—they should have been long and thicker than they were, but we were tough and turning blue seemed to be a badge of honor—and we’d go out before school. My friends called me Knotty. I guess I wiped out more than I rode. Knotty was the name of Lane’s retriever’s favorite toy, a long knot of rags the dog shook and shook until we thought he would dislocate his neck. That’s what the waves did to me. The name followed me to college and stuck until I dropped out, and friends there assumed it had to do with my muscles, or maybe some attribute of my private anatomy. The way nicknames are. Why did I start off about surfing? Oh, because one of the best things I remember about it was the pleasant exhaustion that could stick with me all day. Not pleasant, more than that. A muscle fatigue, a relaxation, a post-adrenaline wash that hummed in the body. Like an easy smile that ran through every cell. Often, if it wasn’t too windy, and even sometimes when it was, we would go out again in the afternoon, and then that physical well-being thrummed me to sleep. Now, driving down the wide green valley smoking the stogie with the warm air pouring through the open windows, having painted well, having fished, having met a man who could have been my friend, I felt almost like that. Almost as good as that tired teenager, but without the nibbling anxiety of wondering if Jenna Larson would go out with a fool like me, or what kind of music I would face for not doing any of my English homework. Instead I wondered if Jason or Grant were going to try to kill me in the next few days. What we give up, what we gain. For some reason, maybe the afternoon fishing, I didn’t feel consumed with dread.

Somehow the towns don’t make a big impression on me and I went through Alamosa almost without realizing it. Steeped in images of the fields and in a daze of memory. Thinking about surfing and my friends whom I left in eleventh grade for California, and Jenna who was the first girl I ever slept with. Which took three attempts, no shit, to figure out what went where and how to get everything there before it was over. There was a stupid joke going around then: What’s the secret to comedy? And before your straight man could get out an answer you interrupted: Timing! It was stupid and funny. Guess you had to be there. Anyway, after that first time making love she passed me a note in geometry that said Timing! And smiled with me as I read it, a goofy smile that I came to love more than anything on the planet.

She was a great girl with a big belly laugh, and what started as a crush became a real friendship and for me my first love. Timing! was our code for anything that didn’t quite work out. We would say it under our breath, a catchphrase for anyone who meant well and couldn’t help fucking up. Seemed to sum up most of the world. When I ran away to Santa Rosa, I swore I would sustain us and marry her once we got to the same college, and the night I was seventeen and called her from a pay phone in Monterey where I’d been surfing and Jenna broke up with me—it was the worst night of my life, till then.

Till then.

If we all knew what was coming, maybe we wouldn’t even stick around for it. Time present and time future.

The afternoon I heard Alce died, I was feeding her pig Mittens. He didn’t have mittens, he had a big dark stain on his side that I told Alce looked like Gondwanaland. She was about five when she first got him and he wasn’t much bigger than what she could cup in her two hands. He was a rescue pig. His mom had died of some hemorrhage induced by labor, had lived a couple of weeks very sick, enough to give her piglets a start, and then we adopted the little guy with the grayish saddle that seemed always to be slipping off his side, and Alce bottle fed him five times a day for a month.

“Why do you want to call him Mittens?” I said. “There is nothing on him that looks remotely like a mitten. He looks like a tiny ancient continent floating on a little ancient pinkish sea.”

Alce moved her mouth around the way she does and said that one of her friends had a huge fat red cat named Mittens and another had a horse called Socks. Well. That made enough sense to me. She bottle fed him in the beginning, and for a year I bought him feed, but once she was in first grade she stopped on the way home from school—we lived in town, on a dirt street with horses in the yards—and picked up slop from two restaurants. The girls at Chayo’s especially loved Alce, and they would sit on the back steps of the kitchen off the alley and smoke and gather around Alce and her bucket and show her all the special things they had saved for Mittens that day, like stuffed sopapilla and posole. The big girls with their dangling earrings and smokes huddled and squatting around the little girl with her bucket almost as big as she was, and Alce looked as excited at each bit of food as if she were going to eat it herself. It was at a time between lunch and dinner when it was very slow and almost always one of the girls helped her carry the bucket home and accompanied her to the back to meet Mittens where he would be waiting at the fence with an expression of delirious anticipation, I swear, snorting and squeaking, leaning into the wire fence, his big ears unable to stand and flopping in his eyes. We scolded her but Alce let him out often anyway and he followed her down to the creek behind the yard where they would both swim. She would swim, he would lie happily in a shallow pool in the gravel and snap at minnows. On several occasions it was suggested that it was time for Mittens to meet the fate he was bred for, he was getting really huge, but Alce always said she would kill anyone who harmed him and I knew she meant it. She would try. So Mittens became family, the only one of us who could use his flat nose in the dirt like an excavator and loved mud and would follow Alce anywhere.

That week she hadn’t been home for two days, she had been suspended and she was very mad at me, me and her mom both, and I noticed Mittens was forlorn and agitated, and it occurred to me that no one had fed him. I went to the shed for a bucket of backup feed we kept in a trash can and when I came to the fence he saw it and surprised me by barely getting up from his wallow in back of the pen.

“C’mon, Mits, dinner time. C’mon.”

With great effort and grunting he finally roused himself and came to the fence head down like it took all his will, and when I lifted the bucket he looked up at me and I swear his beady black eyes looked like they were crying. There were no tears, but that’s how they looked. I dumped it and he looked up at me again and nosed the food and barely ate. I was turning back to the shed when I heard the tires on the gravel and the cruiser pulled in. It was Finn, the sheriff who had arrested me once before. He looked ashen, stricken, and he took off his hat and stood like a man who had been hit by lightning and was just coming out of it. I thought he might need help.

He really loved Alce. He was the one who had picked her up when she was caught shoplifting a few months before, and he was the one who told me that her boyfriend was distributing X and other pills to his friends, if not exactly dealing, he was worried about her. Everybody in town loved Alce. She loved to laugh with you and listen to what got you excited and then she got excited, too. She protected kids in school who got picked on. She gave away trout she caught to the old Chinese woman who lived alone down the block and couldn’t speak more than five words of English and looked forward to Alce’s fresh fish more than anything in her day or week. Alce was good to the bone.

He stood there in the yard and I asked him if he was okay and he said No, Alce is gone, and I said What do you mean gone? And he said she had been knifed to death trying to buy pot in the lot on Mission and I stood there then and couldn’t move. He put his hand on my shoulder, he tried to lead me inside but I was stone and he finally touched my beard, reached out and touched it the way a parent would and got in his car and left me in the yard. The next day I went out to feed Mittens, I wasn’t going to forget her best friend in my blind grief and he was lying out in the middle of the sunbaked pen, the part without shade where he never rested. Hey Mits, I said. Just the sight of him, her friend since she was little, was too much. I unlatched the gate and went over. He barely lifted his head off the dirt and he looked at me again, straight into my eyes, his eyes like wet black pebbles, like he was trying to speak to me, speak out of his animal muteness of something too big for his heart to bear and then he lay his head down again with a huff and he hardly moved the next day or the next, and two weeks later he died.

In Antonito there was a billboard for a railway trip along the Toltec Gorge, a painter’s rendition of a steam engine coming around a piney bend above a narrow rock canyon and it woke me up. Hey, hey, you are driving, it’s getting late, it’s dusk.

I had fished the Rio de los Pinos before. It’s the little creek that runs through the gorge. How those little streams make such a big impression. I had driven the long washboarded dirt road down off the plateau and parked at a little bridge. I had walked up into the walled canyon. I had fished with a peregrine gliding the wall just over my head, and later with the sun slanting down and backlighting the biggest hatch of mayflies I had ever seen, the light coming through a candescent mist of wings, and I caught more fish in an hour than I ever had before.

Some creeks you simply loved, and seeing the railroad sign with the craggy gorge reminded me that we can proceed in our lives just as easily from love to love as from loss to loss. A good thing to remember in the middle of the night when you’re not sure how you will get through the next three breaths.

I pulled off at the road I remembered and switchbacked down to the bridge and unrolled my sleeping bag just on the other side in some ferns. I fell into a dreamless sleep under a cloudy sky that smelled like rain. It sprinkled before dawn, barely wetting the bag. I folded the ground tarp over me and went back to sleep. Didn’t fish at daybreak. Threw my gear back in the truck and under a sky cleaned of clouds I drove to Santa Fe.