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Chapter One
Roadkill |
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Some mornings are not just wonderful but nearly miraculous. A
September morning in Montana can be like that. As far as Joe Service was concerned this
was one of them, a morning to remember. Driving east on the interstate between Deer Lodge
and Butte there was still a bite in the air at ten o'clock in the morning, and the air
tasted delicious, as after a thunderstorm. But there had been no storm and there were no
clouds, just a deep blue sky over the mountains and the broad valley floor, a degree bluer
than Joe could ever remember seeing. The blinding sun of summer had gone. September's sun
had declined to the south to create a mellower golden effect. The magpies swooped and
swung along through the yellowing alders lining the creek bottom, deer lifted their heads
out in the range, and high overhead the rough-legged hawk flexed his long primaries in the
thin air and scanned the sparse grass for rabbits and mice.
It was a
wonderful morning, a miracle, and Joe felt terrific. He was almost bouncing on the seat of
a brand new four-wheel drive pickup. He was on his way home to his cabin in the mountains
above Tinstar, a dusty little forgotten crossroads south of Butte. Helen would be there.
She ought to be glad to see him, he thought. He'd been away for a few days, on business,
and he knew she got bored and lonely in his absence. He had made some nice arrangements
for them to take a little "toot," as he called it. He had finally resigned
himself to the the fact that she was a city woman. The mountains didn't seem to interest
her for long. She liked the country, but it was just a place to visit, to enjoy for
awhile. Now, he figured, a trip to Hawaii would cheer her up. His business was doing fine,
she would be glad to know, although he really had no business except to "rinse
funds," as he joked, and then find places to invest it, which he did very
judiciously, very conservatively. She would be happy. Especially when she saw the truck, a
present for her, a toy, just like one she had admired a couple of weeks ago. And if all
that didn't cheer her up, to hell with her. He wasn't going to let it bother him, not on a
morning like this.
He wasn't so
much thinking about Helen as thinking around her. He was doing something he would have
liked to call mind juggling, except that he didn't like the word "juggling." He
liked the concept, the notion of many disparate things whirling around his head, being
touched and propelled, directed, released, then touched again. It was better than holding
something, clutching it and pondering it. That was too static for Joe Service. He much
preferred juggling ... if only the word weren't so dumb, so clumsy sounding. How did such
an oafish word become attached to such an airy art? He wanted something nimbler. Helen was
nimble. Like him she was small, lithe and quick.
On his left as he traveled toward Anaconda, he noticed again a huge berm, or mass of
freshly piled earth, with a number of yellow machines grooming it. He kept meaning to
enquire about this project; he was interested in everything that was going on around him.
But he hadn't pursued it. Some kind of superfund cleanup site, someone had said. It had
something to do with a century of mining in the Butte area, plus the residue of the
Anaconda smelter. The mining had stopped in the early eighties and only recently started
up again, on a reduced scale. The smelter was gone now, but both processes had apparently
left plenty of heavy metals and other problematic minerals in the river system that made
up the headwaters of the Clark Fork River. Joe made a note, mentally, to drive back here
soon and check it all out. He didn't like the thought of poison in this paradise.
The road
swung to the east now, headed toward Butte. The brown hills of September were dotted with
sage brush and then many strange looking evergreens that stood about in isolation, like
little green monuments -- they looked vaguely funereal. Ground juniper? He didn't think
so: they didn't spread out, but were quite vertical, like sentries. He'd have to ask
someone, or look it up in his little field guide to western trees.
The road rose
up, nearly empty of traffic, until beyond the near horizon he glimpsed the first jagged
tops of the continental divide beyond Butte. In a little notch on the ridge he could make
out a white figure. That was Our Lady of the Rockies, an immense statue of the Virgin that
was lit up at night. It was a little kinky, Joe thought, but ... what the heck. You could
pull anything in Butte, it was a real joint.
At
approximately the same moment he saw the hitchhikers, a quarter of a mile ahead. Two men,
one of them seated on a pile of duffle bags and the other standing with his arm
outstretched. Joe didn't ordinarily pick up hitchhikers. In fact, he'd just left a zone
around the town of Deer Lodge where stern highway signs advised motorists not to stop for
hitchhikers because of the nearby Montana State Prison. But it was a beautiful day, Joe
felt great and as he approached he got the impression that these guys were dead beat --
the seated one was slumped down like a man at the end of a long run, and the stander had
that hand-on-cocked hip look of someone who would prefer to be sitting.
He pulled
over on the shoulder and backed up to save them the effort of lugging their bags. There
really wasn't room for both guys in the cab of the pickup, but he figured one of them
could ride on the bags in the back.
The thumber
was a lean fellow with long black hair flowing out from under a new-looking cowboy hat
with a tall crown. All of his western garb looked brand new -- the hat, a leather vest, a
fancy fringed leather jacket, jeans and tooled cowboy boots. He stepped up on the
passenger side and looked in the lowered window. "How far you going?" he asked,
smiling.
"The
other side of Butte," Joe said, "over the pass. Where you going?"
"That'd
be great," the man said. His face was narrow and dark, he needed a shave, but he
looked okay, just a long-haired cowboy wannabe -- not an unfamiliar sight in these parts.
Joe himself was rigged out in a variation of this wardrobe, only more working class. This
guy didn't look crazy or criminal, just temporarily afoot. Joe hadn't noticed any vehicle
broken down, but the east- and westbound lanes were widely separated out here; possibly
the man's car was westbound and hidden behind one of the rises of land that sometimes
shielded the lanes from one another.
Joe started
to ask the fellow if he'd had car trouble, when the man said, "I need a little help
with my buddy. He's not feeling too good."
Joe
suppressed a sigh of annoyance. It was always like this, he told himself. You go to do
someone a simple favor and it turns out to be more complicated. Chances were he'd end up
taking these guys into Butte, maybe even to the hospital. But, it was too nice a day to
complain. He turned off the ignition and set the parking brake before getting out and
coming around the pickup to where the other man sat, still slumped on the duffel bags.
"What's
the trouble?" Joe asked. A quiet breeze whisked roadside dust. Joe put his hand on
the crown of his own western hat. He looked at the seated man. He was bigger, heavier than
the thumber and not so well dressed. He had a sweat-stained cowboy hat pulled down over
his brow and he was bearded. He wore an old military overcoat that could have used a
cleaning, a year ago.
"I don't
know," the thumber said, "he won't tell me. Won't talk at all."
Joe squatted
down and peered up into the seated man's face. The mouth hung open. Joe reached up and
lifted the man's hat brim slightly. The man's eyes were closed. Joe glanced down at the
man's hands, folded in his lap. Joe looked up. The thumber was smiling slightly.
"The
problem is," Joe said, "this man is dead."
"No
shit," the man said. He held a .32 caliber automatic in his right hand and he
motioned with the barrel toward the corpse. "Better give me a hand with this
dude."
Joe glanced
around him briefly. There wasn't a single vehicle in sight, except for a distant semi, at
least three, possibly four miles back, glittering silver in the sun, laboring up the
grade. Joe estimated it would take at least four minutes to reach them.
The sun was
shining brightly, the magpies were yakking in the fields, but the delicious Montana air
had a metallic taste to it now. Joe sighed and stood up. He tried to hoist the dead man by
his armpits, but he was very heavy. The other man lowered the tailgate of the new truck.
There was a black vinyl cover over the box, fastened with snaps. The man wrenched it back,
still covering Joe with the .32, then came to help him. He glanced down the highway. The
truck was no longer in sight. It had apparently dipped down into an intervening
depression.
"Move
it," the man ordered, taking one of the dead man's arms. Between the two of them they
managed to flop the heavy man onto the extended tailgate and Joe shoved him into the bed
of the truck, under the unsnapped portion of the vinyl cover.
"Throw
that stuff in there," the man ordered. Joe piled the bags in behind and around the
corpse and the other man flipped the vinyl cover back as the truck rumbled by them in a a
little flurry of dust. The gunman smiled, standing on the far side of the pickup as the
semi passed, the .32 held down along his leg. Joe grasped the tailgate with both hands and
slammed it upward to close it. He looked over at the gunman while he snapped the vinyl
cover down securely.
"Let's
go," the man said. "You drive." He moved along the ditch side of the
pickup, watching carefully as Joe moved along the road side. When the gunman reached the
passenger door he opened it with his left hand, which meant he had to turn awkwardly to
his right. Joe opened the driver's door and brought up his own snub-nosed .38 with his
right hand.
"No," the man shouted, and his automatic erupted with a flat bark, firing across
the bucket seats of the pickup cab. |
