Big Picture: Stories (5 page)

The Infirmary was at the edge of town, rustic and old-looking in spite of its newness. Lawrence nursed his second beer, sitting across a booth table from Kemp and Hank Fussey. Fussey was a large man, taking up more than half of the seat, pushing Kemp up against the wall. Lawrence thought to offer Kemp a seat on his side so that he might have some breathing room, but he knew the man would decline. Kemp wanted to see Lawrence Miller’s face, to see the man’s eyes.

“I ain’t never been so scared in all my life,” Fussey said, shaking his big head. “I thought you were a dead man. Sure as I’m sitting here.”

“It was truly something,” Kemp said.

Lawrence shook his head and drank from his mug of beer. He saw Connie Flitner come through the door. He smiled and nodded to her. She came over and said hello. Lawrence got up and asked her if she wanted to sit with them. She slid across the green vinyl seat. Lawrence looked to find Kemp smiling and offering a covert nod.

Lawrence caught a passing barmaid and ordered a beer for Connie. He sat down and cleared his throat. “Lots of excitement today,” he said.

“He’s a brave man,” Kemp said.

“Kemp, the bull didn’t do shit.” Lawrence glanced over at Connie. “Excuse me.”

“I’ve heard the word shit before, Lawrence Miller. Been known to use it on occasion.”

Lawrence studied his beer, tracing his finger about the rim of the mug. He stopped when he saw Fussey mimicking his action.

“Truly something,” Fussey said.

The barmaid brought Connie’s beer and left. Connie thanked Lawrence and took a sip. Her right hand was on the seat and had moved across the vinyl to Lawrence’s hand. The backs of their fingers touched gently. Lawrence didn’t take her hand, but he didn’t move his away. He smiled at her.

Dean Phillips walked by and leaned over the table. “How are you gentlemen?” he asked.

“Doin’ good,” Kemp said.

Phillips slapped a hand on Lawrence’s shoulder and looked at him. “How about you?”

Lawrence nodded.

Phillips gave his shoulder a squeeze and walked away to the table in the back where some of the older guys sat.

The booth was quiet for a while. Lawrence guessed that Connie, Fussey, and Kemp were thinking about Phillips’s son. Lawrence was wondering why the man had a sudden interest in his well-being.

“Everybody’s saying it’s the damnedest thing they ever saw,” Fussey said, his eyes locked on Lawrence. His pupils were covered with the shine of a few beers.

“Are you going to eat me or something?” Lawrence asked Fussey. “I mean, stop looking at me like that.”

“What was it like?” Fussey asked.

“I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Come on, Lawrence,” Fussey pleaded.

“How did it feel?” Kemp asked, his voice low, his face leaning over the table.

Lawrence looked at the two men across from him and then at Connie at his side. She too was eager for some kind of answer. He drained his mug and set it down with a heavy fist for effect and leaned back into the seat. He looked at the people near the door and at the bar. Some were staring at him. All were aware of him. As always. “I felt …” He stopped.

“Yeah,” said Fussey.

“I felt horny.”

Kemp coughed out a laugh.

“Get outta here,” Fussey said.

“No, really,” Lawrence said. He was holding Connie’s hand now.

Fussey was open-mouthed and wide-eyed. “You felt horny. You mean like …”

“Why do you think it took me so long to jump off, Hank?” Fussey was shaking his head. Kemp was beginning to believe the story.

Lawrence was looking right at Fussey’s eyes. “Really,” he said.

Lawrence left the Infirmary alone after telling Connie he needed to drive and think. He was surprised at how stiff his body felt; the muscles of his thighs still felt cramped from having squeezed the bull so tight for so long. He fell in behind the wheel of his pickup and drove out of the dirt parking lot and back toward the arena. Connie had really wanted to be with him, but he wasn’t ready.

He brought his truck to a stop at the stock pens and got out. The bulls lowed a bit, the broncs nayed and whinnied, and the calves bawled. The sounds were quiet sounds that belonged there. Music. He walked between pens and the horses stamped the ground nervously. The he saw the red bull, almost glowing under the moonlight. No, the animal did not have dull bovine eyes, but eyes almost like a cat’s. He leaned on the fence and studied the bull.

“What is it with you?” Lawrence asked.

The bull stared at him, unmoving.

“I could have ridden you.”

The bull took a step backward.

“Did you see their faces?” Lawrence laughed softly, shaking his head. “They were more scared than I was.” Lawrence looked west at the field behind the pens and the stand of cottonwoods at the edge, the hills cut against the sky beyond it all. He walked the perimeter of the pen to the gate at back that opened to the west and the expanse of pasture. He swung out the gate. “Well, go on, crazy. Beat it. Hightail it! Hiya, get outta here!” Lawrence came around the gate and into the open.

The bull stepped back.

“The gate’s open. Go.” Lawrence stood in front of the bull, thinking he wished he were drunk just to have a decent excuse for standing there like a fool. He walked along the inside of the pen and tried to urge him out. “Get! Hiyah!”

The bull charged. Lawrence dove to the ground and rolled out of the way, and the bull ran on past and out into the field where he slowed to a walk.

Wolf at the Door

The last pink wash of daylight through the den window was no longer enough. Hiram Finch pulled the beaded chain on the green-shaded lamp beside the table and continued writing. His pen had moved fluidly from a rather controlled script to a loose scrawl that was allowing him only a few words per line. He paused, sipped his tea, then filled his cup again from the fat blue pot that had been a gift from an Australian couple who had come through with a sick horse a couple of years ago. He got up, opened the woodstove, and laid the page down on the red-and-orange-glowing coals. He watched it catch flame and then closed the door. He heard the quiet steps of his wife approaching from the stairs.

“You need another log in the stove,” Carolyn said, sitting down in the overstuffed chair and blowing on a mug of coffee. The aperture of her lips was perfect for playing her flute, which for so many years had lain idle in a drawer somewhere in the house. “I think it’s colder in here than it is outside.”

Hiram put a couple of small alder logs into the stove and poked at them with the iron, loosening the bark to allow the flames to lick through to the wood.

“I think you should just let it go,” Carolyn said.

Hiram nodded and sat back at the table by the window, picked up the pen and tapped it against his corduroy leg. “I suppose that would be the wise and prudent thing to do.”

“I suppose.”

“This table is getting wobbly,” Hiram said, grabbing it by the edge and giving it a small shake.

“You’re just going to get all riled up and then they’re going to do what they’re going to do anyway.” She blew on her coffee. “Just follow the path of least resistance for once.”

“Just leave me alone. Please.”

“Sure thing.” Carolyn sipped from her mug.

“Listen, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.”

“Okay.”

Hiram sighed. “Christ, I just apologized.”

“And I said ‘okay.’ Okay?” Carolyn stood and looked about the room as if trying to remember some undone task. “I’m going upstairs to read for a while.”

“All right.”

Hiram watched her leave the room. He tossed the pen onto the table and looked out at the lavender-approaching-violet sky. He’d seen a falcon knife through the night out this window earlier, right across the moon like a ghost, and he wanted to see one now. Carolyn was probably right, he should just let it go. He couldn’t stop them. The lion was indeed dangerous; any animal like that which wasn’t terrified of people was dangerous. It apparently was not the least bit shy like other big cats. It came down to kill a lamb or a couple of chickens every couple of weeks and had nearly scared to death a teenage boy who was tending a fence. Although it was unclear whether the animal was actually interested in him, because in the boy’s words it walked by “just as casual as anything.” So they were going to kill him or her; no one knew the sex of the cat. They only knew that it killed and was large and wasn’t much impressed by human presence. Hiram’s irate and raging letter to the county commission wasn’t going to stop them from putting a bounty on the lion’s head. The crazy veterinarian who lived on the hill might be fine for looking into bovine eyes and studying the stool samples of sheep and horses and dogs, but what did he know about lions?

Hiram heard Carolyn upstairs in the study and felt bad for talking to her the way he had. He got up and climbed the stairs, leaned against the doorjamb, and watched her scanning the books in the case.

“I’m sorry about the way I acted,” he said.

“That’s okay,” she said without looking up from the books.

“You’re right about letting it go, you know.”

“Whatever.”

Hiram watched as she took a book and sat down on the love seat. “I’m going to check the horses.” If she did offer a response, Hiram didn’t hear her. He went back downstairs and left the house. He crossed the yard to the stables, finding as he entered that the horses were somewhat agitated, stepping back and forth and complaining a little.

“What’s wrong, girls?” he said, turning on the lights and looking through the center of the barn and out the back. “What’s got you all jittery?” He took the flashlight from the wall by the door and walked across the dirt floor, shining his beam into the corners of the stalls, and petting the noses of his horses. “No food now, silly,” he said to his too-fat Appaloosa. He walked out the other side of the barn and shined the light into the corral, sweeping the baked hard ground for any sign, although he knew this was a wasted effort given the condition of the earth and his ineptitude as a tracker.

•   •   •

Hiram recalled when he was seventeen and his father’s flock had been attacked by what was thought to be a wolf. Two lambs and two ewes had been torn to pieces and were strewn about the pasture nearest the house. That was the amazing part, that the carnage had been so close. Hiram’s father was upset with eight-year-old Carla because she had the sheepdog sleeping with her in the house.

“At least, he would have barked and I would have known something was going on,” Hiram’s father said. He stood at the fence just outside the back door and looked out across the pasture. “Damn wolf.”

“Zöe could have been killed, too,” Carla said.

Hiram’s father didn’t respond. Hiram had been walking about the pasture. The sheep ran from him every time he drew near, still anxious, still bleating crazily. He was on the other side of the fence.

“Dad, I don’t think it was wolves,” Hiram said.

“And why do you say that?”

“A wolf wouldn’t have killed so many animals.”

“Wolves, then.”

“Wolves don’t kill like that. They would kill only the lambs and eat them; they wouldn’t leave most of them lying all over the place. I think it was dogs. I think somebody’s dogs got loose and went wild.”

“You know as well as I do that there’s a wolf around. You saw him with your own eyes up on the mountain.”

“I think it’s dogs.” Hiram looked down at Carla and then at the border collie who was scratching her ear with a hind foot. “And I think they would have killed ol’ ugly right there if she had been out.”

“Zöe’s not ugly,” Carla said and she knelt to hug the animal around the neck.

Hiram’s father was not much taken with the theory. He just muttered something about getting his rifle.

The following day, a fine rain fell and most of the mountain seemed unusually quiet. Hiram sat astride his horse, Jack, a twelve-year-old gelding who behaved as if he were three. He held his father’s Weatherby rifle across his lap while he watched his father, who had dismounted and was poking through a pile of animal scat with a stick.

“Looks like dog,” Hiram said.

Hiram’s father nodded and climbed back into his saddle. “I don’t know. Got hair in it.”

They rode on up the mountain and Hiram recalled all the stories the Indians told about the wolf and its power and he wanted to believe that the animals were a part of the place, wanted to believe that he was a part of the place. His father and mother always laughed at him when he talked about such things, called him “youthful.” Hiram didn’t know any Indians but he had read a lot about them, especially the Plains Indians, and although he knew that his sources might be questionable, he still wanted to believe them.

“Dad,” Hiram said as they topped a ridge. “Can’t we just scare the wolf away?”

Hiram’s father laughed. “You mean like reason with him?”

“What about getting one of those tranquilizer guns and relocating him?”

Hiram’s father shook his head. “Where would we get one of them guns? Besides, we can’t afford it. Nah. Anyway, a wolf ain’t nothing but a big, evil dog.”

•   •   •

The caked blood was still flowing slowly from the cuts across the backs of the palomino’s hind feet. Hiram let go of the leg and stood away, perspiration dripping from his face. The woman holding the horse’s halter stroked his nose and settled him down, making soothing sounds, the kind of sounds one reserves for animals. The horse had gotten tangled in some barbed wire.

“I could just shoot myself,” the woman said.

Hiram shrugged. “Accidents happen to animals, too.”

“It’s my fault though.”

“The wounds aren’t too bad,” Hiram said, coughing into a fist. “The worst part is across his fetlocks. I’m going to give him a shot of antibiotics and leave an iodine solution with you. Just dab it on twice a day. Might sting him a little.”

“He’s such a big baby,” the woman said.

“Yeah, I know. It’s because he’s a male.” Hiram reached into his bag for the antibiotic and syringe. “You can’t blame yourself,” he said. “What good does that do?” He filled the syringe, stood, and quickly stuck the horse’s flank, pressing the plunger in. He saw the woman flinch. “Better him than you.” Hiram had known Marjorie Stoval since she and her husband moved down from Colorado Springs six years before. He was used to seeing mainly her during his calls. The last few times Mr. Stoval had been conspicuously absent; the toy sports car that never seemed to go anywhere was now gone. He looked past the horse at the rolling pasture and the steep foothills behind it, ochre and red in the heat of early summer.