Джозеф Хеллер - Maximum Impact

He was disappointed to find no messages in his mailbox or on his desk. Calls would have given him something to do, somewhere to make progress out of the mess he created.

“Hey, aren’t you going to welcome me home?” The question came from the desk next to his. Jack Tarshis was back at his post.

“Sorry, I didn’t see you, Jack. My mind was somewhere else.” Pace shrugged out of his coat. “Where have you been, anyway? You’ve been gone a month.”

“Only ten days,” Tarshis replied. “I was in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. A seminar on preserving the wilderness environment. Good stuff.”

Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The memories flooded back. A place where time doesn’t count, only the size of the trout at the end of your line. The little stream, the one winding like a snake through the National Elk Refuge — Flat Creek. No trees to hide me from the fish. Had to crawl through the high grass up to the bank on my knees, with the sun in my face so my shadow wouldn’t fall over the water and spook the devils. They can smell a fly rod at a hundred yards. Two great days on the Snake River on the prowl for cutthroat trout. Smartest fish ever created. Bastards can spit out an artificial lure faster than the hand of man can set the hook. Yellowstone National Park. So much to do; so little time. Stalking the rare grayling in the Firehole River, and when hunger calls, going for the big trout in Yellowstone Lake.

And then another memory. LeHardy Rapids. Five A.M., on an early June morning. The tourists weren’t even thinking about getting up yet. Parked the car off the side of the road and walked down a grassy hillside to the Yellowstone River, then waded a hundred feet upstream and nearly froze my legs off. Found a flat rock where I sat and listened to the birds exalt in the new day. A muskrat was swimming easily, half-submerged in the fast-moving water, the beginning of the end of spring runoff. It was chilly. Got down below freezing overnight, but as soon as the sun hit, felt like midsummer. The air’s so thin; the sun so intense.

I saw movement on the other bank. A grizzly sow, thin after a winter’s hibernation, but huge. Unmistakable hump above the shoulder blades. Tremendous muscle mass. And two cubs, cubs of the year, for sure. Born in the den while the mother slept. Born no bigger than kittens. Had to work their way up the sow’s body to find the nursing stations. She couldn’t help. If they missed, they died. But they lived. They grew. They were playing, wrestling on the opposite bank while the sow drank and kept an eye on a shallow backwater, alert for an unwary trout that would make breakfast. I shifted my legs. The sow’s head came up. She knew I was there. She saw me, or smelled me, or sensed me, I don’t know which, but she knew. She watched. I whispered, “I’m not going to hurt your babies.” And she lowered her head to the water again. The Yellowstone River, wide at LeHardy Rapids, separated us. I was no threat to her or to her cubs. She was no threat to me. Her decision to stay at the river bank was a gift to me, and I will be forever in her debt. When she and her cubs disappeared into the forest, I looked at my watch. It was 7:43. I had shared more than two hours with one of the rarest and most magnificent of creatures.

Wading back to the clearing, preparing to climb the bank to my car, I found two tourists standing at water’s edge wailing that the bears walked away just as they got ready to take pictures. Did you see him? one asked. Yes, I replied, but it was a her, with two cubs of the year. Of the what? the other asked. Of the year, I explained. This year. Oh, the first one said. Did you get pictures? I smiled. I didn’t need pictures. I had a vivid memory.

The memories flashed through Pace’s mind in seconds. The serene look in his eyes was completely opposite what Tarshis had seen moments earlier.

“Steve, you okay?” he asked tentatively.

Hearing his name brought Pace back. He felt a wave of jealousy for Tarshis’s freedom to explore nature.

“You have it made, you know that, Jack?” he said. “You flit around the beautiful places, and you come back and write serious stories like the point guard for some kind of environmental brigade. You spend your whole life on an expenses-paid vacation while the rest of us work our asses off around here and get castrated for our trouble.”

Tarshis went white. “Hey, I also go to places like Love Canal and Three-Mile Island.”

Pace dropped into his chair.

“Life’s a bitch,” he said.

Tarshis muttered something about a late lunch and disappeared, leaving Pace alone to deal with his anger. He attempted to read the newspapers, but he couldn’t concentrate. He straightened up his desk. He tried to make a list of angles to pursue on the Sexton story, but he couldn’t focus on that, either. He scanned the newsroom, hoping to find Glenn Brennan. He could talk to Brennan once he got past the Irish bullshit. But Brennan was out, apparently at the Pentagon. Pace recalled with a wince that he’d made plans for that night with Kathy. He wouldn’t be very good company. He called her anyway because he needed someone to talk to, and because he felt guilty about leaving her alone with her own pain.

The receptionist in Green’s office said Ms. McGovern was gone for the day, and that alarmed him. She wasn’t the type to leave work early. Concerned that she was distraught, or even ill, he called her home. She answered on the first ring.

“Where are you, Steve? I’ve been worried—”

“I’m at the office. Why are you home?”

“I’ve been worried—”

“I know.”

“No, I, uh, mean about you. I’ve been worried sick since I saw the paper. I’m so sorry about Mike. I can’t believe this is happening. It’s like a nightmare, and I can’t wake up.”

“A good way to describe it,” he said. “You’re not sick, are you?”

“Oh, no. Hugh ordered me out of the office to be with you. He thinks we can lean on each other. I wish you’d called me last night. I can’t even imagine what it was like for you.”

“Godawful,” he said softly, truthfully. “I came unhinged, unglued—”

“I can imagine—”

“—and I went home and got drunk and did some things I probably shouldn’t have. I don’t know… maybe I was wrong, maybe I was right. I can’t sort it all out right now.”

She didn’t press him. “Tonight?” she asked instead. “Maybe we could talk.”

“I’d like that. But I don’t feel like going out.”

“Then I’ll come to you. Your place. I’ll cook.”

“Yeah, right. I’m sure that’s just what you feel like doing.”

“I’ll keep it simple.”

He considered it. “I think I’d like that,” he said.

“Me, too. Call me here when you’re ready to leave the office. I’ll meet you.”

“You should have a key to my apartment,” he said with a slight laugh. It was a throwaway line, and her reaction surprised him.

“Maybe we’ll talk about that, too,” she said.

Paul Wister approached Pace at midafternoon, fully aware of the hiding the reporter had taken from Schaeffer and the reason behind it. Schaeffer had filled him in.

“Give him a chance to unwind and then wring some kind of follow-up story from him,” Schaeffer told Wister. “We can’t drop the kind of bomb we did this morning and not have something in the paper tomorrow.”

“Metro and suburban are probably working on follows,” Wister noted.

“I’m not talking about police-blotter bullshit,” Schaeffer thundered. He’d not worked out all his fury on Pace. “I want to know if there’s been progress tying these two murders together or proving they’re not connected.”