Annie Proulx: Bad Dirt: Wyoming Stories 2

ANNIE PROULX

Bad Dirt

WYOMING STORIES

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk

This paperback edition published by Fourth Estate 2009

First published in paperback by Harper Perennial in 2005, reprinted 4 times.

First published in Great Britain in 2004 by Fourth Estate

Originally published in the USA in 2004 by Scribner

Copyright © Dead Line, Ltd. 2004

Annie Proulx asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

‘The Trickle Down Effect’, ‘What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?’, ‘Man Crawling Out of Trees’ and ‘Summer of the Hot Tubs’ previously appeared in The New Yorker, ‘The Old Badger Game’ in Playboy; ‘The Contest’ in The Virginia Quarterly Review; and ‘The Wamsutter Wolf’ in The Paris Review.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

This short story collection is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Source ISBN 9780007198870

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007290130

Version 2016-06-15

For Muffy, Jon, Gail, Gillis, and Morgan

Cover

Title Page ANNIE PROULX Bad Dirt WYOMING STORIES

Copyright

The Hellhole

The Indian Wars Refought

The Trickle Down Effect

What Kind of Furniture Would Jesus Pick?

The Old Badger Game

Man Crawling Out of Trees

The Contest

The Wamsutter Wolf

Summer of the Hot Tubs

Dump Junk

Florida Rental

Acknowledgments

Praise for Bad Dirt:

About the Author

Also by Annie Proulx

About the Publisher

Notes

They say this is a wonderful world to live in, but I don’t believe I ever did really live in a wonderful world.

—CHARLIE STARKWEATHER

in his 1958 confession

ON A NOVEMBER DAY WYOMING GAME & FISH WARDEN Creel Zmundzinski was making his way down the Pinch-butt drainage through the thickening light of late afternoon. The last pieces of sunlight lathered his red-whiskered face with splashes of fire. The terrain was steep with lodgepole pine giving way on the lower slope to sagebrush and a few grassy meadows favored by elk on their winter migration to the southeast. Occasionally, when the sight lines were clear, he caught the distant glint of his truck and horse trailer in the gravel pullout far below. He rode very slowly, singing of the great Joe Bob, who was “… the pride of the backfield, the hero of his day”* in front of him walked the malefactor without hunting license who had been burying the guts of a cow moose when Creel came upon him. The man’s ATV was loaded with the hindquarters. The rest of the carcass had been left to rot.

“This is a protected no-hunt area,” said Creel. “Let’s see your hunting license.”

The ruby-complected senior slapped the many pockets in his hunting jacket. The jacket was new, with the price tag still affixed to the back hem. It was the flashing of the price tag that had caught Creel’s eye through the trees. Now the man pulled out his wallet and foraged.

While he waited Creel Zmundzinski listened for a sound he did not want to hear.

After a long search the man handed Creel a cardboard rectangle. It was a business card, and its information contained, along with phone numbers and a greatly reduced illustration of Chartres Cathedral, the words

Reverend Jefford J. Pecker

Persia Ministry

“Where is that, Persia?” asked Creel, thinking of Iran, as the 323 area code was unfamiliar to him. He thought he heard the dreaded sound in the distance.

“Per-SEE-uh, California,” said the reverend, correcting his pronunciation in a loud, nasal voice.

“That your church?” asked Creel, studying the illustration. Yes, down in the clump of willows at the base of the meadow he heard the wretched bawl of an orphan moose calf.

“It’s quite similar.”

“But it’s sure a long way from a hunting license.” His voice had become very cold. The minister did not know it, but of the fifty-three game wardens in Wyoming he had connected with the one who most hated moose cow killers who left orphan calves to figure things out for themselves in a world of predators and severe weather. For Creel Zmundzinski was an orphan himself who, after his parents were gone, lived with his aunt and uncle on their ranch in Encampment. But truancy, bad friends, and eventually, breaking and entering got him into the St. Francis Boys’ Home. Smoldering with anger at the injustice of life and full of self-pity, he continued to cause trouble whenever a chance came. He might have graduated from St. Francis to the state pen in Rawlins but for Orion Horncrackle, an aging Game & Fish warden.

Warden Orion Horncrackle had enjoyed the finest kind of boy’s life. He and his three older brothers had been brought up in the Buffalo Forks country of the Snake River, astride the continent, camping, riding, and hunting the Beartooth and the Buffalo Plateau wilderness in the 1930s and ‘40s. After World War II his surviving brothers took over the family ranch, and Orion became the first Horncrackle to attend the university in Laramie. He graduated with a degree in biology, entered the Game & Fish Department a week later, and stayed there the rest of his working life.

He was almost sixty and Creel Zmundzinski fourteen when they met. Orion was climbing the courthouse steps, and Creel, in company with two youth service officers, was lagging down, his face in a sour knot. As they drew abreast Creel kicked the warden in the ankle and smirked. The two men with him gave him a jerk that lifted him off his feet and hustled him to an old bread truck that had the words ST. FRANCIS BOYS’ HOME painted on the side.

“Who’s the pissed-off kid?” Orion asked the sheriff’s deputy who was taking the fresh air at the top of the steps.

“One a the St. Francis bunch. They got some mean little bastards out there.”

Half an hour later, his poacher a “failure to obey citation,” Orion drove out into the country looking for the St. Francis Boys’ Home. It was a dismal stone building standing solitary on the prairie. He could see a rough baseball diamond and a drooping basketball hoop without a net near an outbuilding with the crooked sign LAUNDRY over the door. There were no corrals, no stockyard, no barn, no garden, no mountains in view.