The Lost Get-Back Boogie

We turned on the rock road that wound along Lost Horse Creek and started up the long grade through the timber in second gear. As we veered on the corner of the switchbacks and the creek dropped farther below us like a cold blue flash through the tree trunks, I felt the air begin to thin, and the smell of the pines grew heavy in my head. On up the road I could see the first mountain start to crest, and then others rose higher and bluer behind it until they disappeared in the wet mist and the torn edges of snow clouds. We turned up another switchback, and again I looked down below at the creek. It was small and flecked with white water, and the remaining leaves on the cottonwoods looked like pieces of stamped Byzantine bronze. Rocks spilled off the edge of the road and dropped a hundred feet before they struck a treetop.

“We’ll pick up the creek again farther on. The height doesn’t bother you, does it?”

Hell no, I always light one cigarette off another like this, I thought.

“I just wonder what you might do if you blow out a tire on one of these turns,” I said.

“We probably just wouldn’t have to worry about putting the nutrias in a beaver pond today.”

The grade evened off, and the road began to straighten with thick pines on each side of it, and then I saw the creek again, this time no more than fifty yards away through the front window, a white roar of water breaking in a shower between smooth gray rocks that were as big as small houses. Mr. Riordan pulled the pickup off the road at an angle into the pines and rolled a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, licked it, seamed it down, twisted both ends, clicked a match on his thumbnail, and had it smoking in less than a minute, and there weren’t three grains of tobacco on his flat palm. He opened the door and laid his sheep-lined jacket on the seat. His bib overalls and buttoned-down, red-check shirt made me think of a southern farmer. We could hear a logging truck up the road as it shifted into low gear for the slow descent down the grade.

“Are you courting Buddy’s wife?” he said, the cigarette wet in the corner of his mouth.

I got out the passenger’s door and walked around to the tailgate and pulled loose the chain hook. The nutrias had been frightened by the ride over the rock road and the rattle of the chain, and they started to chew against the wire cages with their yellow teeth.

He leaned with one stiff arm against the truck bed and held the cigarette between his thick fingers as he looked away at the fallen trees across the creek.

“Are you courting his wife?” he said. “Which means, are you sleeping with her?”

“Yes, I am.”

“Have you thought about what he’ll do if he decides to stop looking in the other direction?” “I haven’t gotten that far yet.”

“Because frankly I don’t know what he’ll do. I just know I don’t want my boy back in prison again. I think you can understand that.”

“He’s not the type to do what you’re thinking about,” I said.

“You’re pretty damn sure of that, are you? Let me tell you a lesson, son. The man who kills you will be the one at your throat before you ever expect it.”

The wind felt cold on my neck. The thought of Buddy as a murderous enemy seemed as incongruous and awful as a daytime nightmare.

“I won’t try to explain any of it to you,” I said, “but sometimes things just happen of their own accord and it’s not easy to revise them.”

“I didn’t ask you for an apology. I just want you to think about consequences. For everybody.”

“Is that why we took this ride?”

“No. I figure you already knew what I had to say. And it’s probably not going to make any difference anyway.”

“You want me to pull out?”

“You’re his guest. That’s between you and him. I don’t hold anything against you. Beth marked him off a long time ago, but he hasn’t come to accept that yet. I’d just hoped that with some time he could come to see things as they are. He’s not up to having another big hole dug for him.”

“Maybe he’s tougher than you think.”

“It doesn’t take “tough’ to go to jail and do all five years because you can’t stay out of trouble.”

“I don’t think you know what kind of special feeling the hacks had for him in there. He was different. He didn’t take them seriously, and that bothered them right down in their scrotums.”

“That’s blather. Buddy was looking for that jail for years, but there’s no point in arguing about it. Let’s get these cages down to the pond.” He rubbed out the fire on his cigarette between his fingers and scattered the tobacco in the wind.

We heard the gears of the log truck wind down on the switchback, the air brakes hissing. Then the cab bent around the edge of the mountain with the huge flatbed behind it, and the great snow-covered ponderosa trunks boomed down with chains that cut whitely into the bark. The driver was bent over the wheel, his arm and shoulder working on the gear stick as the weight shifted on the bed; then the brakes hissed again, and he slowed to a stop where the grade evened off. He pulled off his leather gloves and picked up a cigar stub from the dashboard.

“Hey, Riordan,” he said. “You turning more of them rats loose?”

“What the hell does it look like?”

“Goddamn, if they ain’t beautiful,” the driver said, and laughed with the cigar in his teeth. “I guess if one of them tops a beaver, we’ll see animals running around with yellow teeth and porcupine quills growing out their asshole.”