C Box: Blue Heaven

Jess grew up feeling like a local hero. His grandfather and father had bequeathed the mantle of exceptionalism; that he was of the people, not better than them, but he had a special something because his name was Rawlins. The exceptionalism was a result of hard work, honest but tough business dealings, and high moral character.

The Rawlins Ranch was all the more admirable because North Idaho was not optimal cattle country. There were too many trees, not enough prairie and pasture. It rained too much. Unlike the vast ranches to the south or in bordering states Montana, Wyoming, and eastern Oregon, the Rawlins Ranch had to be carved out of the forest and managed carefully like a temperamental machine. They couldn’t just let cattle go to forage for themselves for months, like ranchers could do in more wide-open country. If they did, the cattle got lost in the timber. So they moved their herds from park to park, plateau to plateau, keeping careful count. The rain and lushness of the terrain invited hoof-rot and disease born of moisture, so the cattle needed to be inspected and handled more than usual. Jess’s grandfather had established the procedure for counting, moving, and inspecting his cattle. From Washington State he’d bought seed bulls who were bred for wet ground and heavy snow. The quality of Rawlins beef became widely praised, and the ranch prospered due to its management. The high price of beef helped, too.

Jess, like his father and grandfather, felt proprietary toward the valley, the community, and the ranch. After serving in the Army, he had no doubt, ever, that he would return. Which he did.

Jess often wondered if he had made the right choice, knowing what he knew now. He also wondered if he’d been the catalyst for things to come, for the decline. Had the spark of exceptionalism died in him? He’d been unable to pass along the sense of eminence he had always felt.

Maybe, he thought, it had just played out.

FIONA PRITZLE, behind the wheel of her little yellow Datsun pickup, had a stern, pinched look on her face until she saw him. The change in her demeanor was instantaneous, though for Jess her self-focused scowl remained as an afterimage, even when she stopped at his mailbox and climbed out and grinned at him. How did she know when he would be there, he wondered? He didn’t even know from day to day. Fiona had a wide, pockmarked face obscured by heavy makeup. A cloud of perfume was released into the air when she climbed out, and she leaned over the top of the hood, fanning his mail across it as if laying down a winning hand of cards, smiling at him with nice teeth, her best feature. He had, of course, noticed that in the last few months she had been dressing better, putting her hair up, adding lipstick to her mouth. Apparently, she now felt the need not just to deliver his mail but to oversee it.

“Catalogs,” she said, “three of ’em today. Two for women’s clothing, so you’re still on their list even though they don’t know…”

He looked at her grimly.

“And a property tax notice, again,” she said in her little-girl voice, eyeing him suspiciously. “I know I’ve delivered a couple of these to you already.”

He nodded, nothing more.

“Jess, I saw Herbert in town.”

“He moved to town,” Jess said.

“He waved, but he didn’t stop. Is something wrong?”

Damn , he thought. But he repeated, “Just moved to town.”

She looked at him suspiciously, then gathered up his mail in a stack and handed it to him.

“This road is getting busy,” she said. “I almost rear-ended a vehicle back there when I came around the corner.”

He raised his eyebrows, hoping his lack of response would signal her to go away. She had designs on him, he knew. He was over women, though.

“A Cadillac Escalade with three men in it. They were barely crawling down the road, looking into the trees.”

He shrugged.

“Brand-new Idaho plates. Probably more transplants.”

“There’s a lot of them moving up here,” he said.

“Most of them are retired cops from L.A.,” she said, lowering her voice conspiratorially. “I’ve heard that there’s more than two hundred of them overall, and about a dozen on my route alone.”

“How do you know that?”

She puffed up. “I put the pension checks in their mailboxes, and police newsletters, things like that. Some of them meet me every day, like you. A couple of real nice guys, real personable. But some of them are just like hermits or something. Like they don’t want to mix with somebody like me. If it wasn’t for their mail, I don’t know if they’d ever come out of their houses. They call North Idaho ‘Blue Heaven’ at the LAPD. Did you know that?”

Herbert had told him that, but he didn’t want to bring it up. Jess didn’t object to the idea of ex-policemen moving in. In fact, if he had to choose the kind of people to move into the valley-not that he had a choice-he would have opted for retired police officers. It seemed to him that ex-cops were similar to the original settlers, men like his grandfather. They had been workingmen in crowded cities with blue-collar backgrounds. After years of dealing with the dark underbelly of crowded conditions and the worst of civilization, they’d opted to move to fresh, green country where they could be left alone. Better ex-cops than actors or dot-com heirs , he thought. The kind who came in, took over, and transformed the place. There were some of them, for sure. Too many for Jess’s taste.

“Hundreds,” she said. “Buying up everything. But it sort of makes you feel safer, doesn’t it?”

Jess said nothing. She went on, “But I don’t like the way some of them keep to themselves, you know? Like they think they’re better than everybody else. Why did they move here if they just wanted to keep to themselves? They could have moved anywhere for that. You’d think they’d want to be friendlier, you know, since a lot of them are divorced and all. I mean: Here I am! ” She did a clumsy little twirl that made Jess cringe. “One of them might steal me away from you, Jess Rawlins, if they pulled their heads out of their butts long enough to, you know, look around…”

Enough , he thought. Seeing Karen had filled him with darkness. He didn’t want to talk with Fiona Pritzle, but he didn’t want to be rude, either.

“I better get back,” he said, gesturing toward his mail as if he couldn’t wait to read through it.

“You wouldn’t believe how many retirement checks and LAPD newsletters I deliver these days,” she said, repeating herself. “They’re all up and down this road.”

“Then you better get after it,” he said cheerfully.

She reacted as if he’d slapped her. “Just being neighborly,” she huffed. “I guess I caught you in one of your moods, Jess.”

He didn’t like it when she used his first name, or that she studied his mail before she gave it to him. She was too familiar with him, he thought. She should be more professional.

Her back tires spit gravel as she roared away. Maybe if I pick up my mail at night? he wondered.

He had turned back to his road when he heard another vehicle coming. She was right about the traffic. He looked over his shoulder and saw a red pickup with a male driver. Jess didn’t know him. As he passed, the driver appeared to be talking to someone or something in the passenger seat or on the floor, but Jess saw no passengers, and no dog. He waved at the driver, but the driver didn’t wave back. These new ones didn’t wave back.

As he walked down the hill toward his ranch house, he listened to the silence and the soft watery sound of a breeze in the treetops. He heard no more shots.

Friday, 4:45P.M.