T. Boyle - When the Killing's Done

Frazier nods. “Just making a point,” he says. And adds, as a clarifier, “No worries.”

One of the dogs whines. The rain, which has slackened, begins to pick up again. A.P., still down on one knee, still clowning, says, “Nope, there’s no bringing this one back.” And Clive, hands hanging at his sides and a fountain spouting from the crease at the brim of his hat, says, “What I don’t understand, ecologically speaking, is why don’t we get out of this rain someplace?”

Lunch, shared round under the canopy of a bright blue plastic tarp Frazier weighted with rocks atop the ledge above them and strung across to the crown of an ironwood rising up from below, is heavy on jerky, PowerBars and dried fruit, though each of the men produces a foil-wrapped sandwich and Alma contributes half a dozen veggie cheese wraps she made up in her pre-dawn kitchen for just such an encounter as this. They’ve got a fire going and she’s grateful for that, shivering actually, the sweatshirt soaked through and propped up on a stick to dry or at least steam, and no, she’s not going to worry about the strict prohibition against open fires out here — not today, not in this mess. Frazier passes round his flask and she fits the cold metal rim to her lips and takes a burning hit like everybody else, feeling it work its way down her throat to ignite in the acid pool of her stomach, fire on fire. From there, it will be absorbed into her bloodstream where it will rise to massage the pleasure centers of her brain and plunge low to sweep through the embryo growing inside her, her daughter, and her daughter better learn to take it, to toughen up, that’s what she’s thinking. One hit. Half a shot. What harm can that do?

“What’re you thinking, Alma?” Frazier asks, leaning in to poke at the fire.

“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess.”

“Another hit?”

“No,” she says, waving away the proffered flask. Then she feels a grin coming on. “Or yes, hell yes — why not?” Another swallow, another burn. She’s feeling reckless, celebratory, proven — blooded, isn’t that what they call it? Shouldn’t Frazier be dabbing a handkerchief in boar’s blood and anointing her forehead?

“That’s the spirit, girl,” A.P. says, and she passes him the flask, conscious now not only of his eyes on her but of something else too, a deferential note to the foolery, as if he were forcing it, as if, despite her passing illusion of solidarity, he — and Clive and Frazier too — can’t forget that she’s the one paying the bills here.

The rain seems heavier now, if that’s possible. All four dogs, stinking and wet, have crowded in with them, tight quarters. The dead boar, a swollen shaggy heap sinking into its own fluids a stone’s throw away, is the only one not invited to the party, though in a way, he’s the guest of honor. It’s chilly. She edges closer to the fire.

For a long while no one says anything, each occupied with his own thoughts, listening to the rain, the fire, feeling the surge of life all around them — the life of the wild that progresses minute to minute, day to day, in this very spot, whether they’re here to record it or not. The brandy is in her brain. She shivers again and leans forward to reach for the sweatshirt.

“So what you think?” Clive asks in a kind of yodel that startles them all. “Should we call it a day? Not much sense in mucking about in this shit. You won’t see another pig today, I guarantee you that.”

A.P. looks first to her, then Frazier, to see how the proposition is going over, before rubbing his hands together, ducking his head and concurring. “No,” he says, “no way.”

Frazier, his legs tented before him, his grin in place, leaves it to her. “What do you say, Alma — seen enough?”

Before she has a chance to answer — and she can already see the fire going in the big paneled room of the field station, already feel the dry sustaining warmth of her own showered and talcumed body wrapped tightly in her sleeping bag — two things happen. The first involves the transient appearance, at the far edge of the rough table of dirt and rock on which they’re sitting, of a pair of labile snouts and four startled eyes, and the second, the eruption of the dogs in a moil of slashing limbs and frenzied outraged yelps. In an eyeblink, they’re gone, the whole business, transient pigs (there were two of them, weren’t there? Medium-sized: shoats?) and all four dogs. Frazier leaps to his feet, cursing.

“Aw, shit,” A.P. spits, but he never moves. Nor does Clive. “I told you”—to Clive—“we should’ve kept the dogs chained.”

“But who would’ve thought — I mean, the fucking pigs coming right up to us like we had a bucket of slops and it’s feeding time?”

“Aw, shit,” A.P. reiterates.

The barking — baying — is already fading away downslope when Frazier, who’s made no move to shoulder his pack or pluck up the rifle propped against it, begins to break down the fire, separating out the burning brands and kicking dirt over the coals. “Well,” he says, glaring first at Clive, then A.P., “aren’t you going to get up off your sorry asses and trail those dogs?”

Reluctantly, with exaggerated stiffness, they get to their feet. They look put-upon, angry, stung by the reproach — they don’t want to be out in this weather, nobody does, and they were only waiting for her to throw in and say Yeah, I’ve had enough, let’s go back . But that isn’t going to be possible now. Now they have to follow the dogs because the dogs are on the scent and they can’t just leave them out there on their own.

“Alma?” Frazier, who’s still poking at the remains of the fire in a shifting robe of smoke that clings to his legs, falls open and wraps itself round again, is watching her. “You up for this? I can take you back, if you want—”

And what’s she going to say? Is she going to say Take me back like some secretly pregnant pencil pusher, like a woman, or pull the damp sweatshirt over her head, wriggle into her clear plastic poncho and heft her pack like the others? “I’m fine,” she says, and then the tarp is rolled up and packed away and the fire stamped out and they’re following Clive and A.P. down into the throat of the canyon, rain overhead, mud underfoot.

She’s not really keeping track of the time — she’s too exhausted for that, too wiped even to lift her wrist and peel back the wet sleeve of her sweatshirt to glance at her watch — but it seems as if they’ve been walking for hours. Trudging down one slope and up the next, the world as wet as it must have been when the continents first emerged from the rolling waters and nothing in sight but more hills, more chaparral, more streams, runlets, rills and cascades, it becomes apparent to her that they won’t be finding the pigs, not today. They might not even find the dogs. Or the road. Or the truck, for that matter. The hunters are out there somewhere, Clive and A.P., moving like machines, like pistons, up and down, up and down. And she’s stuck here behind Frazier, who — and she’s acutely conscious of this — is hanging back for her sake, picking his way carefully across the landscape, silent now, grinless, thinking his own thoughts. They’re working along the ridge, lower down, much lower — so low she can see the looping brown upper reaches of Willows Creek and hear the deflected roar of it as it blasts its way to the sea, water piling atop water — when she spots something below. Movement. A flash of color. It can’t be A.P. or Clive. It can’t be the dogs. Or the pigs. Or any pig. Because the color — it’s moving, definitely moving — is all wrong. The color, and here she calls ahead to Frazier to stop while she drops her backpack at her feet to retrieve her binoculars from the side flap, is pink.