C Box - Three Weeks to Say Goodbye

I turned to see that Angelina was awake and grinning at me through the window. Melissa held her tightly. That smile filled me with such unabashed joy that I knew I was doing the right thing. I rapped at the window so she’d open it.

“Smell that,” I said.

“It smells, um, woody,” she said.

“If only these little places had jobs for international tourism specialists,” I said, reaching inside the Jeep so Angelina could grab my finger. “What a great place to live, to raise little kids.”

“Where her neighbor could be the Unabomber,” Melissa said, and we both laughed. Angelina squealed with delight simply because her parents were laughing. We hadn’t done enough of that lately, I decided.

Cody came out of the bar with a Coors Light in his hand and a cigarette.

“Some old high-school buddies in there,” he said. “D’you remember the Browning brothers or Chad Kerr? They asked about you and Brian.”

“They did?”

“Yeah,” Cody said. “So much for coming up here incognito, eh? I forgot how everybody knows everybody’s business in Montana.”

“What about Uncle Jeter?”

“He’s waiting for us out at his place. He said he’d disarm the trip wires so we could drive right up to his house.”

“ What? ”

“I’m joking, ” Cody said, tossing his cigarette aside into the mud.

UNCLE JETER’S CABIN WAS tucked away in an alcove of pine and aspen trees and accessed via an ascending two-track road with potholes filled to the top with chocolate-milk-colored water. Cody said, “I think I still remember how to get there…”

We passed under an ancient sagging lodgepole-pine archway that was dark gray with moisture and crawling with bright green and white lichen. On one support pole was a tiny wood-burned sign that said HOYT OUTFITTING SER VICES. On the other was a rusted metallic sign that said NO WHINERS. Inside the archway, Uncle Jeter’s cabin was shambling and low-slung, looking like a scene from 1880 except for the satellite dish mounted on a pole and aimed at a southern gap of cloudy sky to the south. I saw two four-wheel-drive vehicles-a Dodge Power Wagon from the 1960s and a new-model but beat-up Ford pickup-parked butt end first in an open garage. A cross pole high in the trees supported the hanging carcasses of an elk and what looked like a heavily muscled man.

I started to point when Cody said, “Bear. Skinned bears look like if you hung a linebacker. It always creeped me out. Melissa, if I were you, I’d not let Angelina see that.”

“Luckily,” Melissa said from the back, “she’s looking out the other window at the horses.” Three horses, two mules, and a couple of goats watched us from a corral.

“Quite a place,” Melissa said, deadpan.

“About what I’d always expected,” I said.

Uncle Jeter greeted us at the front door with a cheese plate: dozens of overlarge squares of Velveeta hastily cut up on a chipped dinner plate with Ritz crackers piled up in a couple of columns and colored toothpicks bunched together by a rubber band. It struck me as incongruous and sweet that this man, after receiving Cody’s call, set about chopping little squares of cheese with a hunting knife for a snack.

Uncle Jeter was tall but not as tall as I remembered him, broad but not as wide as I recalled. In fact, he looked distressingly normal, except for the long beard striped with gray and the ponytail that fanned down half of his back. His eyes were the same, though-light blue-gray and piercing, set in hollows that were slightly red-tinged. His nose was large and beaky, complicated with hairlike blue veins. His hands were outsize and looked like mitts. He wore a heavy flannel shirt and a wool Filson vest so old it was shiny, tight Wranglers, and lace-up outfitter boots with heels for riding.

It was dark inside, the walls covered with tanned bear and elk hides. The antlers of mounted deer and elk served as gun racks for a dozen long rifles and shotguns. The place smelled of smoke, grease, and gun-cleaning solvent. Melissa, Angelina, and I sat on an ancient leather couch with three-quarter wagon wheels on the ends for armrests. Melissa had a tough time keeping our daughter on the couch and not scrambling to the floor. Jeter set the cheese plate next to a six-pack of Molson beer on a coffee table.

“I’m sorry,” Uncle Jeter said in a gravelly voice to Melissa and Angelina as we entered. “This ain’t no place for a lady and a baby.”

“It’s fine,” Melissa said, flashing a tight-mouthed smile.

“No,” he said, “no it ain’t. Is there anything I can get the little one? Some milk or something?”

Melissa gestured to her overlarge baby bag, and said, “Not necessary-we came prepared.”

To our surprise, Angelina seemed to be charming him. She’d give him her silly demure look, bat her eyelashes, then cover her face with her hands. It wouldn’t be long before she’d spread her fingers and gaze at him through them, then giggle. I noticed that he had a tough time devoting his attention fully to Cody, who outlined our problem. Despite what Cody had said to us in the car, he didn’t indicate any doubt at all as he told his uncle Hoyt how Garrett and Luis had fouled our house and shot me with paintballs, how Garrett said he owned us now. When Cody told him about Harry, I saw Hoyt’s eyes turn hard.

When Cody was done, Uncle Jeter sat back and raked his fingers through his beard.

“So,” he said, “you’ve got a boy who needs scared, and you came to me to do it. Why?”

Cody deferred to me.

“Because you scared us .”

“That was twenty years ago, Jack.”

Cody leaned forward and handed his uncle the envelope of reports and photos Torkleson had given us. Jeter took it and fanned through the photos of Garrett, while Cody said, “Because you’re not known in Denver, Uncle Jeter. You’ve got no priors down there. I know how things work with the police-where they’d look if something went bad. They wouldn’t look to Lincoln, Montana, unless you did something stupid like dropped your wallet.”

Or if the Browning Brothers and Chad Kerr in Lincoln were questioned, I thought.

Uncle Jeter shot him a look that made me fear for Cody.

“Not that I’m saying something like that would happen,” Cody said, backtracking. “Or even that Garrett would go to the police. The point is for him not to go to the police. The point is for you to persuade him to sign his custody rights away.”

Hoyt raked his beard again, as if considering all of the odds. “I ain’t done too many things like this in the last few years,” he said. “I might be a little rusty. But you say this Garrett likes to associate with Mexicans, that it makes him feel like a big shot?”

Cody nodded. “Specifically, a gang called Sur-13.”

Uncle Jeter turned to Melissa. “I’m sorry, ma’am, would you want to take a few minutes and show the baby the horses outside? I got some horses and two fine mules out there. And a goat, a good goat. He don’t bite. Do you think that little angel might want to see them?”

Melissa looked at me, and I nodded.

As soon as the front door shut, Uncle Jeter said, “I got a problem with this illegal immigration. I got a big problem with the way them Mexicans are taking over our cities and flying the Mexican flag and all. A big problem, you understand me?”

Cody nodded.

Jeter said, “I called my bank in Helena a couple of weeks ago because they fouled up a deposit I made from a hunting client. They don’t know what to do with cash anymore, it makes their eyes get all buggy. Well, when I called them, I got this recorded message that said press one for English and two for Espanõl . This was Helena, Montana, fellows! I got so goddamned mad I drove down there and took all my money out. When the bank manager asked why I was doing it, I said, ‘Press one for English and two for Espanõl, you little prick!’