P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“Bald refers to the tops, then,” Cam said. White Eye shot him a patient sideways look, as if to say, Yeah, dummy, that’s why they call them balds. Cam kept looking as they started down the back side of the pass, checking the side mirror to see if that big cat was still out there. He didn’t see it for a moment, but then he did. It was trotting along as if it did this every night of the week, and he would have sworn that it was watching him via the side mirror, too.

“So tell me about cat dancers,” he said, settling back into his seat as the Bronco nosed down into some bumpy snow. The moonlight outside was bright enough to create glare from all the snow.

“They’s seven of ’em,” White Eye said. “No more’n that. Don’t know who they are. They call themselves Bob, Frank, Jim, and the like, but the way they look when they say them names? Them ain’t their real names.”

“Young men? Old men?”

“A mix; thirties, fifties, ain’t no kids, if that’s what you’re askin’.”

“And what do they do, exactly?”

“First one come to see me fifteen, maybe sixteen years ago now, said he wanted me to find him a mountain lion. Called himself Carl. Early thirties. Big guy, hard, but not pushy about it. Guy you wouldn’t mess with in a bar. Had that look about him. That’s Carl. Didn’t give no last name, and I wasn’t askin’, seein’s he was showin’ cash money. Anyways, I told him they wasn’t any panthers left. He allowed as to how he knew I had one. That there surprised me some.”

“That was a secret?”

“Oh hell yeah. Illegal in C’lina. Legal over in Tennessee, but you gotta pay high for licenses and such. They get ’em from out west somewheres.” He looked sideways at Cam again. “I don’t b’lieve in payin’-taxes, fees, licenses, any of it-you understand.”

“Nice if you can work it,” Cam said. “How’d he know you had a cat?”

“Damned if I know, but he surely did. Knew she was tame and that she went with me time to time. Knew her goddamned name even. Said what he really wanted to learn was how to track a big cat. Asked him what he’d do if’n he ever caught up with one. You know what he says? Take its picture, he says. Surprised the shit out of me. I told him the notion was crazy and dangerous. He pulls out this envelope with five thousand greenback dollars in it. Asked if I’d reconsider.” White Eye chuckled at the memory. “Yeah, that was the word. Reeconsider his proposition. Shit. Took me about two seconds.”

“So there are wild mountain lions out here?” Cam asked.

White Eye didn’t answer for a minute as he maneuvered the Bronco across a frozen creek, shifting down into grandma when the ice crust broke and the vehicle lurched alarmingly. Cam found himself reaching for a handhold.

“Here? Uh-uh. Not here. Out yonder,” he said, gesturing with his head at the distant mountains. “ Way out yonder. Told him that. No vee-hicles. Shank’s mare all the way. Twenty, thirty mile in and some more straight up. Expensive damn hike. Said he understood. Said there was more money where that came from. He had time, years if need be. Said he was in shape for it and okay in the mountains, even in winter. I told him that was good, ’cause the best time to track a big cat was in the winter. Summertime, fall? You need kills and scrapes. And even in winter, you playin’ with fire.”

“Tell me why.”

“Big cats got seven lives and six senses. They know when someone’s fuckin’ with them, specially a human, specially on they own ground. ’Bout the time you get a good track goin’ on one, they like to have one goin’ on you. Trick is to know when that shit’s started, ’cause if you don’t, cat’s gonna take your picture, you get my meanin’.”

“How the hell do you know where to even start? This park is what, fifty miles square?”

“Not that big; it’s more like eight hunnert square miles. Somethin’ like that.”

“That’s still a lot of territory.”

“I got me an advantage, comes to scarin’ up a panther,” White Eye said with a sly grin.

Cam looked at him and then understood. “Night-Night.”

White Eye nodded. “Night-Night. Big ole tom up there in them far hills see a human, he’s gonna lie down and watch, but he ain’t never gonna show his face less’n you piss him off. But a female panther? Tom’s gonna sniff that stuff out from miles away and he’s gonna talk about it.”

“Then what?”

“Once I find one, we get the hell out of there. Cat won’t usually leave its territory, so when it quits followin’, I know where its home ground starts. After that, we’d come back in, Carl’n me, and I show him how to cut sign, track, and stay alive doin’ all that, so’s he can get his damned picture. Then I get my second surprise. I figger he has hisself one of them telephoto jobs, you know?”

“He doesn’t?”

“Uh-uh. Shows me this little damned thing, fit in your coat pocket. One a them throwaway things from Wal-Mart.”

“Not much range with one of them,” Cam said.

“‘That’s the whole point,’ he says. ‘I have to get close to use this. Real close.’”

“This is the crazy part.”

“Damned straight. I tell him, ‘You go right the hell ahead.’”

“What did he want you to do?”

“Find him a den. Had to be a female with cubs, ’cause tom’s don’t den up. Just the momma cats, and then only for a coupla months. After that, they hide the cubs with their kills.”

“And he wanted you to take him right to a mountain lion’s den?”

“I told him, ‘I’ll set me up camp a coupla miles away and you get to go creepin’ on in there one night and take yer fuckin’ picture, you want to. But I hear you scream, I ain’t ridin’ to no rescue until all the picnic noises stop and it’s daylight.’”

“Can you actually get that close?”

“I took that boy into the woods off and on for two full years, every time he could get out here to the Smokies. Summertime, wintertime, everything in between. Taught him how to Injun-walk, how to be hid and stay hid. How to change human smell into animal smell. How to listen. How to look. How to be still in one place-for hours if need be. How to hunt. You know what I’m sayin’? And I’ll say this-he had the natural-born sense for it. I’d’a swore he done it all before.”

“Who are these guys? Do you know?” Cam asked.

The Bronco banged over a downed tree hidden under the snow, rattling Cam’s spine and precipitating a dust fall inside the vehicle. White Eye kept it going as if nothing had happened, and then shook his head. “Ain’t no tellin’,” he said. “Crazy bastards, that’s what they are, for damn sure. Deer hunters. Bored with life. Sportsmen, they call themselves. Sorta like you.”

“Not like me at all,” Cam said. “I mean, I’m a cop. We hunt bad guys, but we do it with teams of detectives, technology, and prosecutors. No way in hell would I mess with a mountain lion or any other large wild animal on its own ground. I’ve never been that bored.”

“That’s just the word,” White Eye said. “That’s why they do it, I think. They was bored. Wanted them some real excitement. They was hunters already, but this-this was different. Real different. Called it a challenge. Got fire in their eyes when they’d come out. Especially Carl. Kept sayin’ extreme all the time. And I believe it turned into something else once Carl brought out the third one.”

“What was that?”

“Took Carl three years to get his first picture, ’long with fifty damn stitches on his back. Goddamned cat came this close-he snapped his fingers-“to takin’ his fool head off. This was out to the Chop. He’d gone down one a them mountain-climbin’ wires to get hisself level with the den, then swung hisself in to shoot that cheap-ass little camera. Cat went right at him, jumped the damn wire. They both fell fifty feet into a creek. Cat screamin’, Carl screamin’. Said I wouldn’t, but I come a-runnin’ anyway, used a rifle to run the cat off, and there was goddamned Carl, flounderin’ around in that creek. Deep December it was, blood all over the ice, and all that crazy fucker cared about was findin’ his damn camera, his back all tore up-I’m talkin’ the whites of his ribs showin’. I mean, damn! Hurt me to look at it.”