P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

He wandered around, pretending to look at all the Indian souvenir junk, with Frack keeping station by his left hip. He finally went up to the counter and said good morning to the three-hundred-pound woman tending the register. She smiled at him, which positively transformed her face, returned his greeting, and then said hello to Frack, who just looked at her. She didn’t seem to be in the least bit disturbed by the huge black shepherd. He asked if he could get a cup of coffee, and she said, “Sure, honey,” and waddled over to start a fresh pot. She was wearing Indian garb of some kind that could have done double duty as an RV cover. The pine floor creaked wherever she went.

“It’ll be a couple of minutes,” she announced while making up the coffeepot. “Where you guys from?”

“Triboro area,” he said. “I’m a lieutenant with the Manceford County Sheriff’s Office.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured you for a cop,” she said pleasantly. “My husband’s a sergeant with the reservation police force. Great-looking dog. He police-trained?”

“After a fashion,” Cam said. “Frack here’s more of a thinker than a fighter. The real deal is out in my truck.”

“Two are best,” she said. “Most bad actors give it up when they see one German shepherd. I don’t know why all cops aren’t issued a dog from day one.”

“Not enough dogs,” he said.

She checked to make sure the pot was going and then came back over to the counter. “So you’re up here out of season, which means business. Anything we can help you with?”

He was a little bit surprised at her overt friendliness, but then, her husband was a cop. He decided to play it straight and told her what he was after.

“Cat dancers,” she said. “Yeah, I’ve heard some stories, but they’re kinda out there, if you know what I mean.”

“I’d appreciate anything you could tell me, because right now I am in the mushroom mode.”

She laughed at that. “In the dark and everyone’s feeding you shit, right?” she said. “Haven’t heard that one since I worked for the state. Well, cat dancers. The way the story goes, there’s supposedly this secretive group of men who go up into the Smokies and track mountain lions.”

“I thought they were all extinct in up here.”

“That’s the official line at the Park Service, and they do have a point: No one has taken a picture of one for a long, long time. Lots of bar stories, tales of encounters-but not one instance of proof.”

“You’d think with all the electronics people carry around today, someone would have a video or a picture.”

“Exactly what the park rangers keep saying: ‘Bring us a picture that proves you saw it up here, and we’ll change our tune.’ Hasn’t happened. Anyway, these cat dancer guys supposedly draw lots and then one of them goes out and tracks a mountain lion to its hideout, while the others follow behind to see what happens.”

“Track how?”

“The old-fashioned way-on foot, nose to the ground. No dog packs. And then comes the hard part. The tracker has to get close enough to get a picture of the cat’s face, and then live to tell the tale.”

“A picture?”

“Right. Supposedly, that’s the whole point: The guy has to be a good-enough tracker to find a cat, find its hidey-hole, and then get a close-up picture of it without harming the cat and while living through the experience. Call it extreme wildlife photography.”

Cam shook his head. “Sounds absolutely nuts to me,” he said.

She shrugged. “So are those guys who scale the threethousand-foot vertical rock faces up in these mountains-without ropes, without a partner up top to catch their asses when something goes wrong. Or the guys who go snowboarding in the avalanche zone, you know? Nutcases, all of them. Thrill seekers. And most of ’em Yuppies from your part of the state-no offense-bored with making money and having to drive a Beamer.”

“Has anyone ever seen one of these pictures?” he asked.

She laughed. “No. Which is why most of us think this is total BS. Especially because a mountain lion is notorious for sensing when it’s being tracked, and turning the game around.”

“Damn. Well, how about that, then? Any incidents of people getting torn up by a big cat recently?”

She went over to check the coffee and poured out a cup, even though it wasn’t quite finished perking. The smell of charred coffee immediately filled the air from the metal burner. “Well,” she said, “not exactly. There have been some disappearances in the Smokies over the past ten years. Sometimes it’s a hiker who just doesn’t come back from some of the more remote wilderness areas. I’ve got some flyers over there next to the hat rack. We had two rangers get killed by some meth freaks, and we had that one unsolved rape and murder up on the Appalachian Trail five years ago. College girl, and they never caught anyone. Either way, none of that was tied to a big cat.”

“But if there are people doing this stuff with mountain lions, it would figure that somebody would get hurt.”

“If they’re alone-and that supposedly is the game-they wouldn’t just get ‘hurt,’” she said with a meaningful smile.

Cam thought about that for a moment and then nodded. Right, he thought. They’d get eaten. It was happening out west with increasing frequency-urban bicyclers, children straying from camp, pets, hikers.

“But then you’d have a disappearance. People coming around asking if anyone had seen Joe.”

She shrugged, nodded at the board with the flyers on it, poured herself a cup of coffee, and joined him back at the counter. “We get that, although the Park Service people are who you need to talk to. They handle disappearances in the park. But I’ll bet they don’t get folks coming up here asking after guys who said they were going to chase a mountain lion.”

“If there even are mountain lions up here,” he said. “You know a part-Indian guy named Mitchell?”

“White Eye? Sure. I’m not convinced he’s really part Indian, at least not Cherokee like me. But he seems harmless enough. Does some guiding. Supposedly a good tracker. Comes and goes. Doesn’t say much. The people who use him seem to know about him in advance.”

“What kind of people would that be?”

“White guys, your age. Come into places like this and say they need to get ahold of White Eye. I assume he finds them. But look, you should go over to the Twenty Mile Ranger Station for this part of the Smokies. It’s on Route Twenty-eight. You single?”

He was surprised by her question but said yes.

“Great. Ask for Mary Ellen Goode. She’s the official naturalist, and she’s a also quite a looker.”

“Well, that clinches it,” he said with a grin. Then he frowned and asked if Mary Ellen Goode had a large boyfriend or, worse, a husband. She shook her head. “Not anymore,” she said, a strange look on her face.

Cam had been shown back to Ranger Goode’s office after he checked in with the lobby desk, and Mary Ellen Goode was indeed a looker, as pretty as his previous interlocutor had been anything but. Five six or seven, bouncy short black hair, bright blue eyes, a figure that challenged the official severity of her Park Service uniform, and a roombrightening smile. She was obviously a woman who knew she was good-looking and had long since grown comfortable in her skin. He noticed that she also had a Dr. in front of her name on her Park Service name tag, which he’d discovered while making other observations. Her title was park ecologist. He introduced himself, showed ID, and then asked about mountain lions in the Smokies.

“Officially?” she said. “No gotchee. Panthers are considered to have been extirpated from the ecosystem in the Smokies. No confirmed sightings since 1920.”