C. Box - Endangered

Her eyes were blazing.

“I talked to your wife about it a while back. I was trying to get her on board because I think she’d have some influence, bein’ the head of the library and all. Maybe you can talk to her. Maybe you can let her know what a big deal that boy is back there. Sometimes I think people around here don’t appreciate what they’ve got. They see Eldon pumping out their septic tanks and they don’t think, ‘That man—he’s the father of a champion.’ They just think, ‘That man is pumping out my shit.’”

Her grip on his arm was surprisingly strong.

She leaned into him and said, “What do we have to do to get it through all the thick skulls around here that they’ve got a rodeo champion right here? Who grew up right here? What’s wrong with them?”

“Brenda,” Joe said, “I don’t know that I’m the right guy to ask.”

“That boy back there is special,” she said. “He’s one-in-a-million. Do you know how many people have asked me about how he’s doing? Less than ten, I’ll tell you that. The newspaper should have been out here. The mayor should have been out here.”

“I hear you,” Joe said. He meant that literally, not that he actually agreed. He thought, Too many locals know about Dallas’s role in the sexual assault when he was in high school. Too many locals had been beaten up or terrorized by Timber before he was sent to prison. Too many local hunters have been burned by Eldon or Bull while they’re out trying to get meat for the winter. Too many locals have been harangued by Brenda about building monuments to her son.

He said, “Have you thought about letting it be their idea instead of yours?”

Her face turned to stone. After a beat, she said, “It would never happen. They all look down on us. We know if we don’t take care of ourselves, no one else will.”

“That isn’t my experience,” Joe said. “People around here are pretty decent. Maybe you ought to give ’em a chance.”

She looked at him with contempt.

“Thanks for letting me see him,” he said, twisting away from her grip.

He clamped on his hat and reached for the doorknob. Behind him, Brenda Cates said, “Don’t forget what we talked about here, Joe Pickett.”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t.”

He couldn’t get out of the Cates home fast enough.

—

JOE FROWNED against the sound of the air compressor until he was back in his pickup. Daisy was happy to see him, but she threw nervous looks toward the house as if expecting the pack of dogs to come out at any second. As Joe backed up and pointed the nose of his pickup toward the gate, he noted that Brenda was watching him out the kitchen window and that Bull had cocked back the curtains in the living room.

As he squared the pickup to leave, he saw Dallas’s late-model four-wheel-drive pickup parked on the side of an equipment shed filled with a flatbed trailer with two snowmobiles on it. The pickup was a gleaming red Ford F-250 with a chrome cowcatcher and Texas plates. PRCA, PBR, and NFR stickers were on the windows. Anyone in the know would recognize the acronyms for the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, Professional Bull Riders, and National Finals Rodeo.

Eldon stood in the shadows inside the garage next to one of his pump trucks. Joe waved good-bye to him, but Eldon didn’t wave back. Joe could see the compressor vibrating at Eldon’s feet. Oddly, there didn’t seem to be a pneumatic hose attached.

—

SOMEBODY LET THE DOGS out of their run and they followed Joe’s pickup all the way to the county road. When he finally turned onto the graded road, he called Marybeth on his cell phone.

“I saw Dallas Cates,” he said. “He didn’t do it.”

“You saw him? Where?”

“At his house. I was checking out this sage grouse thing and the Cates place was within sight, so I stopped by to see if they’d seen anything.”

“How convenient ,” she said, deadpan.

He described Dallas’s condition.

She said, “There was still a small part of me that was suspicious. Now I guess we can move on.”

He agreed. “They’re an odd bunch, though. Brenda buttonholed me about the town doing more to recognize her son. She might have a point, but she’s a little scary when she gets going.”

“She does that to everyone,” Marybeth said.

“Oh, and I might have gotten a lead on who shot all those birds,” he said.

“Who?”

“I’ll tell you when I get back,” Joe said, knowing he was about to hit a long dead zone for cell phone coverage. Then: “I’ll have to tread real lightly on this one.”

His phone blinked out and he didn’t know if she’d heard that last part.

—

TEN MINUTES LATER, Liv heard the compressor shudder into silence. She knew what it meant and she fought back tears. Whoever had arrived was gone.

The footfalls came and she could tell there were two sets of them.

“Open that up,” a woman said from above. Liv recognized the voice as belonging to the person who’d claimed she was Kitty Wells.

Dirt sifted into the root cellar when the doors were thrown back. Liv covered her face and eyes with her hands until it settled.

“You can go,” the woman said to the man.

“Are you goin’ down there?” Bull asked his mother with alarm.

“No. I just need to have a private conversation with this young lady. Go over there and help your dad.”

Bull slunk away.

“I’m Brenda,” the woman said, standing over the opening with her hands on her ample hips.

Liv brushed grit from her face and opened her eyes.

“I heard you screamin’ down there. Luckily, nobody else did. Eldon can’t hear much these days and the game warden thought it was the compressor goin’ out.”

Liv didn’t know what to say. She’d screamed so hard she was still wet with sweat. She’d guessed her screams were drowned out by the motor. That was the reason, she was sure, they’d fired it up in the first place.

Brenda said, “If you ever do that again, I’ll send Eldon out here to fill up this hole.”

By the tone of her voice, Liv had no doubt she’d do it.

“I’m thinkin’ you might go without dinner tonight,” Brenda said.

Liv hugged herself but didn’t respond. Brenda stood there, looking down at her.

Finally, Liv asked, “Why are you doing this?”

“You know, I ain’t never had a daughter.”

“What?”

“I always wanted a little girl,” Brenda said wistfully, more to herself than to Liv. “I wanted a little girl so I could dress her up in dresses and brush her hair and sing songs with her, you know? Instead, I got boys. All they done was run wild, punch each other, and break things. Of course, my little girl would be a little paler than you.”

Liv stayed quiet.

Brenda said, “But at least them boys didn’t scream. I’ve gone my whole life without a screamin’ female in it. I don’t plan to start now.”

With that, Brenda turned and vanished from the opening. Liv heard her say, “Bull, go close that back up now.”

—

TWO HOURS LATER, more footfalls. Bull. Liv was wondering if the game warden had been Nate’s friend Joe Pickett, and she planned to try to get the name out of Bull. She dutifully threw off her blanket and relocated her chair to accommodate the ladder.

When the doors were open, Bull said, “We got meat loaf and apple pie tonight.”

“Really?” Liv asked.

“I guess she changed her mind.”

Bull leaned over and tied a knot in the handle of the feed bucket and lowered it down to Liv.

“Is Joe Pickett coming back?” she asked in a conversational tone.

“He better not,” Bull said. “If he does, I’ll put him down and let the dogs clean up the remains.”