The Wild Inside (29 page)

“Headed to my sister’s in Whitefish for dinner now.”

“Good boy.” Monty nodded.

“It was definitely past time.” I leaned on the railing as well and looked up the river to the mouth of McDonald Lake. The yellow larch framed the opening of the lake from both sides.

“Beautiful,” Monty said. “Never ceases to amaze me how incredible this place is.”

“Yeah,” I offered. “My family used to come here for picnics after we first moved to Montana.”

“When did you move here?”

“In the early eighties.” I pointed into the now dark gray water. “Bet there’s some trout down there,” I said, then added, “You were probably an infant then.”

“Actually . . .” Monty smiled. “Thanks for the compliment, but not quite. I was born in ’77.” Monty lifted his chin to the bank where the two divers surfaced, slick and black. “Looks like they’re done, and”—he glanced at his watch—“you better get to dinner.”

I was about to ignore his comment, ask him about how he got into law enforcement, but something inside me made me stop. The damp smell of the cool breeze piggybacking over the cold river water and its wet banks swept up and onto the bridge and filled my nose, wild and full of the park’s ancient layers as if it was casting spells. I shook off the urge to keep talking and realized that he was right. I did have to get to Natalie’s, and I was beginning to get very hungry.

15

S
ECOND-GUESSING EVERYTHING DOESN’T
always make you the kind of guy people want to hang out with, and sometimes you end up not even liking your own company. I don’t consider myself irrational, but when you’re always in the critical zone, a good dose of superstition, whether you want it or not, comes along for the ride. Also with questioning comes a ton of self-analysis, the kind that, after enough years of doing it, shows in your eyes like thin venetian blinds pulled down over the pupils, dulling the brightness.

My sister Natalie didn’t have eyes muted from self-analysis. Hers were childlike and joyful in spite of our childhood tragedy, and I considered it some kind of genetic trait that she got such a happy demeanor. When she opened the door at her house in Whitefish, she immediately enfolded me in a vigorous hug, reminding me of how she also possessed that enthusiastic no-holding-back quality that didn’t seem to come from the family I remembered being a part of. Kathryn, Ma, and what I recall of my dad, and I all had that amicable, semidistant politeness that showed itself in awkward moments like around greetings and compliments. There was always a pause before a hug hello, good-bye, or before an
I love you
. Not with Natalie.

“Come, come.” She ushered me in, taking the flowers and bottle of wine I’d brought with a big cheerleader smile, her cheeks bunching up into doughy balls. “You must be exhausted, getting into town like this and going right to work.”

“I’m used to it. That’s what I do: fly in and get right to work. I’m sorry I didn’t call earlier.”

She waved her hand in front of her as if shooing off a fly. “Here, give me your coat. Mom’s up with the boys.” I could hear the sound of kids upstairs, the patter of feet running down a hall and some louder thumping. “What can I get you?”

I smiled. “I’ll have a beer if you’ve got one.”

“Of course I have one.” She walked down the hall and I followed her. As she passed the base of the stairwell, she yelled up, “Ian, Ryan, your uncle’s here”—then turned back to me—“Budweiser okay?”

“Great with me.”

“They’re bottles, not cans.”

“Doesn’t matter to me.”

“Luke’s not here?” I asked.

“He’s working.”

“As I should be.”

“Well, you have to eat.”

“So does Luke.”

“Trust me.” She laughed. “He eats plenty. You, on the other hand”—she opened the refrigerator door and paused before it, scanning me up and down—“could use a good home-cooked meal.”

“You’re wasting energy.” I lifted my chin to the open fridge.

She turned back and reached for a bottle. “Plus he’ll be here in about an hour.” Luke owned and managed a glass company in Whitefish that he’d bought about five years before.

“Boys,” Natalie yelled again. “Your uncle’s here. Mom.”

They both came crashing down the stairs, and, as always, I genuinely showed my amazement at how much they’d grown as I gave them each a hug. The older, Ian, was nine in September, if I remembered correctly, and the younger, Ryan, turned six in February. Ian had gotten taller and a bit lanky, his shoulders bonier than I remembered, like
mine when I was his age, and Ryan still looked completely proportionate as far as kids go, like a nimble little gymnast.

“Uncle Ted, Uncle Ted,” Ryan said loudly, “you want to come play Mario Cart with us?”

“Are you kidding?” I smiled. “Do I ever. But let me say hello to your Nanny Mary first.”

• • •

Ma likes to talk about my work. A lot. Almost too much for my liking. She wants specifics, but I prefer to speak about it in the most general of terms. So after our hugs and kisses and
you’re looking great
s, the boys went back upstairs to play Mario Cart on the Wii, and Ma began to finely chop a garlic clove and slice some tomatoes. Natalie motioned for me to take a seat at the counter. Once Ma found her chopping rhythm, she dove right in. “So your first murder case in Glacier after all these years?”

“First and only,” I said. Natalie grated cheese into a pot filled with what looked like a creamy mixture of green beans and mushrooms. “Go figure. Not a lot of homicides in Glacier in the last decade. A lot of accidents: drowning, climbing incidents, disappearances.” I left out maulings, but it would be on all of our minds without me saying. “And some potential suicides, but not much in the way of foul play until now.”

“So?” Ma said sharply. “What’s the case about? Some kid from up the Line was kidnapped?”

“Something like that.”

“Then mauled?”

“I hate to admit that I don’t really understand what happened yet.”

“That can’t be good. It’s been a few days already.”

“What? You been watching the same crime shows as Nat?”

She pointed her knife at me for a second and made a funny face in a mock scold, then tossed the stem of the tomato in the sink. “How many of these you want cut?”

“Two’s enough.” Natalie looked over her shoulder.

Thinking Ma might drop the subject and focus on her slicing, I asked about her golf buddies.

“They’re fine.” She waved her hand before her face. “Up to all the usual boring stuff. You’ve got anything to go on?”

“I’ve got some good leads.”

“Which are?”

I shrugged. “The usual—friends, family. Need help cutting some of those veggies?”

“Of course not.” She looked at me like I was crazy for asking, her brow crinkled and her chin pulled in. She paused for a moment. I could feel some tension subtly insert itself into the room like a change in the lighting or the air pressure. “You’ve seen that Ford yet?”

I considered saying
not yet
—just to keep it simple. “Yeah, I’ve seen him.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Still the same creep?”

“Don’t really know him,” I said. “I’d never met him before.” I took a sip of beer. Ma set aside the tomatoes, pushed a clump of thick graying hair behind her ear with the back of her hand, and began chopping cucumbers, more vigorously than she had the tomatoes, the blade hitting the cutting board too hard, no coincidence after mentioning Ford’s name.

“I don’t know him either, but I can read people and it doesn’t take a genius to see that that guy’s no good.”

“Someone likes him, or at least thinks he does a good job up there,” Natalie offered. “Otherwise he wouldn’t be around for so many years . . . decades.”

“Well, I . . . I just never liked that man,” she said.

“No kidding?” Natalie said dryly, then smiled.

“What? It’s not a joke,” Ma said. “How he portrayed things with your father and all.”

“That was a long time ago.” Natalie looked at me, her eyes wide. I couldn’t tell if she was looking for backup from me or just curious about my reaction.

“He know who you are?” Ma asked carefully, gently. Suddenly, perhaps because of the unexpected softness in her voice, I felt something fragile welling up.

“I don’t think so. Like Nat said, it was a long time ago.”

She looked up, her eyes serious. I fidgeted in my stool. “How could he not if he knows your name?” The edge back in her voice. Time, apparently, had not taken care of it.

I shrugged. “Doesn’t recall the name, I guess. Can’t say I’m hurt.”

Natalie smiled, large as always.

Ma threw the butt of the cucumber in the garbage disposal and turned it on, the loud grind speaking for her.

She was complicated. She didn’t escape the weltschmerz Kathryn and I had, but she always had a way of buoying herself above it and keeping a sense of humor, or at least a large dose of sarcasm. When Dad died, she lost her playfulness for a number of years, but she pretty much regained her old self after a decade or two, if you can ever fully do that. Losing a loved one changes people. Period.

“I don’t care how long it’s been. If you’re a park superintendent, you shouldn’t forget the names of . . .” She looked down and I sat quietly while Natalie opened her pot again and poked at the beans. She had just finished stirring a moment earlier, so I knew she was only doing this to escape whatever discomfort was occurring. “You shouldn’t forget significant events that happen in your own damn park,” she finished.

I took a sip of my beer and felt the familiar clench gather below my breastbone. I turned and tried to peer through my sister’s sliding glass doors. It was going on eight, so it was dark out, and I could see our
reflection: Natalie before the stove, her dark hair in shoulder-length waves, Ma now at the sink washing the cutting board. She had gained a little more weight around her center since the last time I saw her. And myself, sitting languidly but inside, wound up. I looked thin, tired, and the reflection made my face seem more elongated than usual. I turned back to Natalie. “Can I set the table?”

“No, no, I’ve got it. You better go up and play a game or two of Mario before dinner or the boys will be upset.”

“My pleasure.” I grinned and headed upstairs.

• • •

We had a baked chicken dish with Parmesan cheese and rice along with the green beans. Luke had arrived after we started eating and quickly washed up to join us. I’d always liked Luke, an easygoing and avid fly fisherman. We caught up on the best fishing holes around the valley and up toward Eureka, near the Canadian border. We discussed proposed measures to control the lake trout that were squeezing out bull trout and new legislation on reopening cyanide mining techniques in Montana that could potentially harm streams and rivers. The boys got bored listening to us, and after they cleared the table, went back upstairs to get their PJs on before they could have the apple pie Ma had brought.

Against Natalie’s and Luke’s protests, I insisted on Luke staying seated and helped Natalie rinse the dishes and put them in the dishwasher. Ma stayed at the table and chatted with Luke. “Ma baked this with the fruit from that apple tree in her backyard.” Natalie worked at the plastic wrapping from underneath the pie plate.

“Excellent,” I said.

“Oh, and guess who I ran into the other day?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“Shelly. At a grocery store in Kalispell.”

I lifted an eyebrow. “That so? How is she?”

“She’s good. She recently got divorced.”

“That’s too bad.” Nobody had brought Shelly’s name up to me in years, and I had had no reason to mention it myself. Just the sound of it made me feel oddly shy. “She has a couple kids now, doesn’t she?”

“Two girls. I think ’bout seven and nine.”

I shook my head. I wasn’t sure how it made me feel, other than sad for her, for her kids. Some pang of nostalgia shot through me, and I wondered if her second husband communicated with her. When Shelly had gotten pregnant, it was unexpected, and I found myself reeling with fear that I’d make a terrible parent and that the world was too unstable a place to bring a child into. But as several weeks passed, I’d wrapped my head around the idea—even became excited. Shelly was giddy, but wanted to wait a few weeks before telling her parents or my mother. When we finally did, as if on cue, the miscarriage hit us, a tornado railing into our marriage at full speed and crumbling the already weakened pillars and walls we’d managed to construct.

Two months after the miscarriage, I discovered calls on our cell phone bill (one Shelly usually paid and I rarely looked at) indicating that she was talking into the late hours of the night with some overmuscled bozo from the local gym. When we fought over whether the baby had even been mine, she’d yelled, “I didn’t even begin talking to him until you clammed up and ignored me.” Through choked cries, she said she only confided in him because she needed someone, anyone, who could talk to her, whose sentences didn’t trail away in midair like mine, whose eyes didn’t glaze over and not see her, whose silences made being with someone a lonelier prospect than being by herself. And guilty I was. I thought if I could just walk away from it, not look directly at the pain and tears in her eyes—just go to work, set my mind on other things, that it would all pass. Time. It helped me get over my father; time would heal her wounds as well. I couldn’t do it for her.

“Just thought I’d let you know,” Natalie said. “You should give her a call while you’re here.” From a drawer beside me, Natalie grabbed a silver pie knife, the kitchen light glinting off its shiny surface.

“Oh, you think so?” She looked at me with her signature smile, and I laughed. “I take it that means you really do think so.”

Natalie nodded.

“You’re something’ else.” I pinched her arm lightly. “Come on, cut that pie before everyone starts yelling.”

• • •

Natalie was getting some whipped cream out of the fridge and bringing it to the table when the boys came down, Ian in flannel and Ryan in some blue cotton PJs with a picture of two crisscrossed baseball bats and a ball on the chest. I felt another twinge of something achy sift through me when I looked at them—a type of longing or homesickness for something forever lost. Both were younger than the age I was on the fateful day I went camping with my dad. At the risk of sounding trite, I couldn’t help but recognize the innocence shining in both sets of eyes. When Ryan climbed onto Luke’s lap, his body looking taut like a Gumby doll, but cuddly at the same time as Luke’s big arms held him in a warm bundle, I tried to remember my father’s lap but couldn’t.