Coyote Wind Read online

  Coyote Wind

  Peter Bowen

  For Nancy Stringfellow

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  CHAPTER 1

  DU PRÉ STIRRED IN HIS sleep. His eyes fluttered, opened, he looked up at the ceiling. He squinted, raised his head, glanced toward the rising light in the east, out the window of Madelaine’s bedroom. Little spikes of frost reached out from the corners of the wavy old glass.

  A pebble rattled against the window.

  Du Pré decided it was not a dream. He slipped from the bed, a warm breath of air thick with the scent of their bodies rose from the bed. Madelaine’s lips bubbled softly, it was as close as she came to snoring.

  Du Pré looked out toward the street, saw a crooked shadow on the short white picket fence. White hair askelter as a forkful of hay. Old Benetsee, the fool, the drunken old breed, a singer, once a dancer, old enough to have been most anything outside of town.

  “Shit,” Du Pré whispered, annoyed at coming out of warm sleep for this. It passed. The old man always had a reason for bothering Du Pré, even if it sometimes took Du Pré years to see it. Benetsee. Du Pré could see him long, long ago, dancing in the deserts, his head one day smiling from a platter at while the king’s wife swirled in silks and scents. God damn. Loony prophets anyway.

  “Du Pré!” Madelaine, now up on an elbow, rubbing her eyes.

  “Benetsee,” whispered Du Pré. “I must go out, see what he wants.”

  “Take him a glass of wine,” said Madelaine. “Don’t tease him.”

  Du Pré shrugged into his clothes, pulled on his boots, one leather mule-ear pull came off with a final chuckling rip. His heel slid down. He walked to the stairs and placed his feet carefully going down, the resinous yellow pine steps creaked five times before his boot touched the worn woolen carpet at the bottom. He went to the kitchen, took a jug of cheap white wine from the icebox, poured a big glassful, lit a cigarette, went outside.

  The old man was shivering, leaned up against the Russian olive tree, his bright old eyes brilliant black in his brown creased face.

  Benetsee nodded, took the wine and gulped it down.

  Du Pré waited, respecting the old man. He had been a good friend of Du Pré’s grandparents, long dead now. Plastic flowers on their graves, dust ricking in the petals. Du Pré washed them with holy water on saints’ days that had been dear to them.

  “I dreamed of a coyote last night,” said Benetsee, “he went up a draw, sat and howled by some people’s bones.”

  Du Pré nodded. Benetsee’s damn riddles. He wished the old fart would come to the point, which was probably five dollars. So I just give him the five dollars and go back to bed? No, the old man was not just a pest.

  “Then you come and sat down on your heels and looked and looked,” the old man went on, in his slurred Coyote French, “but you never saw till the coyote come back and scratch the earth.”

  Now my days got skeletons in them, thought Du Pré, but if the old man go to the police they throw him in jail for drunk. Me, I look at burn marks on cow asses for part of my living. It’s cold out here.

  Benetsee cleared his throat, waved the empty glass, looked at Du Pré hopefully.

  “You have another drink you go to sleep,” said Du Pré.

  “Madelaine don’t mind,” said Benetsee. “She’s a saint, you could learn from her.”

  Du Pré snorted, shook his head, went back in the house and got the old man another belt. Someday I find him dead in the frozen mud where he pissed his pants and passed out and stuck there, but for now, he’s happy. He heard Madelaine on the stairs, she came into the kitchen, her wool robe clutched tight around her against the cold.

  “He can sleep in the shed,” Madelaine said. “You take him the old sleeping bag in the hall there. Also tell him good morning and when he wakes up I will make him eat something.”

  Du Pré smiled. Madelaine, she would feed all the earth, soothe its pains and hungers. She was as simple and straightforward and generous as the sunlight.

  And she knows what’s bothering me before I do, Du Pré thought. He smiled at his luck.

  Du Pré opened the door and pushed the storm door away with his foot, scooped up the sleeping bag. A slop of wine drooled down his hand, he smelled the alcohol.

  The old man sniffed the wine happily, drank it in a single long draught.

  “Madelaine says you got to eat, you wake up,” said Du Pré.

  “I do what Madelaine say,” said Benetsee, taking the sleeping bag and walking off toward the shed. There was an old army cot in it, on the duckboards. Flowerpots and bags of fertilizer, garden tools on nails, sanctuary.

  Du Pré watched him go, smiled, went back in the house.

  CHAPTER 2

  DU PRÉ SIGNED OFF ON the two truckloads of steers. The brands were good and the destinations usual. Feedlots in Nebraska, then to pot roasts in Chicago or St. Louis. The drivers pulled away, the long double-deck trailers stinking, green shit running down here and there from airholes, ammonia and bawling. The buyer’s check had been handed over to the Oleson brothers, Dee and Earl, in their sixties now and bent as any other old cowboys, a life of fractures and strange strains of work which bowed the bones and made the hands grow huge. They knew horses, wore farmer shoes and tractor-driver hats, claimed it was so that folks wouldn’t think they were just truck drivers.

  “Some fine day,” said Ike, wiping sweat from his forehead with a hand gnarled as old roots. “Earl busted his ankle again chowsing them cows outa the brush. I was too old for this forty years ago, thought I’d maybe do something else, but here I gone and done it anyway.”

  Du. Pré chuckled. What was this place, Montana? Breeds, and squareheads from Scandahoovia, other families from the common American ruck. The land was tough and poor and so were the people. Old cars and old shacks fell into the earth, people starved out in the twenties, left the dried out dust-eaten little ranches with their homes in their hands. Too poor then to buy grease for the axles of their wagons. The wooden wagon beds could be found beside hundreds of the little trails, gone silver from the sun, parts of them charred from the wheels catching fire where they rubbed the axles to flame.

  “When you going to fiddle again?” Du Pré said, looking at Ike Oleson. The old cowboy, never married, a Hardänger fiddler, two extra drone strings on his sawbox. Du Pré fiddled, too, but just the old four-string kind, like his ancestors, the voyageurs, with their red sashes and little tobacco pipes, tasseled caps and the beaded moccasins.

  “Sunday afternoon,” said Oleson, “at the bar in Toussaint. Good Sw
ede music, men we let you play to clear the hall.”

  Du Pré heard the squak squak squak of his two-way radio, the dispatcher’s stripped voice. What’s this? Well, sometimes I get to play lawman, when me Sheriffs deputies are all tangled up. I even have a gun somewhere in that car, I think the trunk. Maybe under the front seat.

  Du Pré walked to his old Plymouth, actually bought from the cops, shorn of lights and siren, but still with clips on the door for a rifle and one small bullet hole in the rear window.

  “Du Pré.” he said, pressing down the red button on the mike.

  “Gabe!” boomed the Sheriff’s voice, big loud man, everyone liked him even though he sometimes hurt their ears.

  “Yes.”

  “We got a bad wreck on the highway near the Res—and Toomey is off with that busted arm. Them rich drunks own that big house in the foothills of the Wolf Mountains, you know the place?”

  “Yah,” said Du Pré. Everyone knew the place, ten thousand square feet of house, bigger than the high school in Pomeroy, for Chrissakes, looked like it dropped from space. The people in it came from East Coast money, lots of it, enough to hire help for everything.

  “One of their hands claims he found a plane wreck and some skeletons or something up in a dry draw, up high, he was looking around, he said. Probably chasing a deer he shouldn’t have shot. Wonder if you’d go look?”

  “Don’t the FAA handle that?”

  “I called them,” said the Sheriff. “They got no record of any missing plane could be where the cowboy says it is, so they want proof it is one ‘fore they get off their asses.”

  “Can I get a horse there?” said Du Pré.

  “Talk to this guy found it, name’s Bodie, I’d think so.”

  “Am I gettin’ paid for this,” Du Pré wondered loudly, knowing the answer.

  “You know we ain’t got that kind of money,” said the Sheriff.

  “For my gas, at least?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Bullshit bullshit.

  Du Pré wondered if the cowboy had got kicked in the head or something, was seeing things, like Benetsee.

  “OK, I’ll do it,” said Du Pré. “You call Madelaine, tell her I be late, hear?”

  “SURE!” boomed the Sheriff. Du Pré winced.

  “What’s that all about?” said Ike Oleson.

  “I dunno,” said Du Pré, “some shit about a plane crash in the mountains. I got to go look at it.”

  “Up past them rich shits, in the Wolfs?”

  Du Pré nodded.

  “Hell,” Ike said, “I bet them people see things like that all the time. I saw Mrs. Fascelli out there once, she sashayed buck naked across the lawn wavin’ an umbrella, singin’ she was Mary Poppins or some damn thing.”

  “No shit.” said Du Pré. “Well, they drink a lot, I guess.”

  “Glad I don’t have money,” said Oleson. Du Pré nodded, and got into his car.

  CHAPTER 3

  “YOU DON’T LOOK LIKE no cop,” said the young cowboy, Bodie. He looked very stupid. Ragged dirty shirt, stained old wool vest, brand-new jeans with the price tags still on them.

  “Auxiliary,” said Du Pré.

  “What’s that?” said Bodie, his little eyes narrowing. Too many syllables, Du Pré was making fun of him.

  “Part-time,” said Du Pré.

  Bodie considered the hyphenate, spat in the dust.

  “I need a horse.” said Du Pré, “and you guide me up where you found this wreck.” You stupid son of a bitch.

  “You think I’m lyin’?” hissed Bodie. “It’s a plane, propeller and everything, lotta bones, couple skulls.”

  “No, I don’t think you lyin’,” said Du Pré. I think you’re so fucking dumb you probably found an old campfire and two white rocks or something. And I pick out the horse I want, they must all hate you a lot.

  “Hey!” A shout from the huge stone and glass and redwood house, a fat red face hanging out a window.

  “Who the fuck are you?” said the face. Someone inside pulled, the face disappeared.

  “Don’t mind him,” said Bodie. “He’s about ready to go off to the dry-out place again.”

  Bodie walked away, Du Pré followed. He had stopped at a little grocery and beer place on the way, bought jerky and candy bars and a couple butane lighters, case he had to stay out overnight. Late as it was, he would.

  Bodie threw Du Pré a catch-rope, pointed to a small cavvy of horses, began hauling saddles, blankets, and tack out of the shed. Clouds were stacking up over the wolf country, high, stuck on the peaks. Du Pré saw an eagle floating motionless. Good. Never mind he had to hold the road map out as far as his arms could stretch to make out the names of the larger towns. Glasses had a way of getting lost and broken.

  The trail went straight up through a big fenced pasture, overgrazed, though the fences were so new and well done they could only belong to an owner who needed more to lose money than to make money in the cow business. Bodie rode ahead, fighting a little with the movements of his horse. One of those lousy riders who will never get any better. The horse kept swinging his head side to side, obviously pissed off.

  Du Pré looked up at the island mountain range, the nine peaks, robed round with bluffs and foothills. They rose up strangely from the high dry plains, catching enough water from the eastering clouds to make them green with trees and shrubs. The sight of them against the northern sky was as familiar to Du Pré as the house he was raised in and lived in still. Strangers to the country remarked on their beauty. Du Pré was uncomfortable in lands that didn’t look like this. It simply was meant to look like this. Home.

  Bodie’s horse shied, a rattlesnake had sunned upon a flat warm spot on the trail. The bad young cowboy flew hot in rage, beat on the horse until the animal reared and fell over on its side. Du Pré thought he heard Bodie’s leg snap. He hoped he had.

  “Goddamn it to fucking hell,” the boy screamed, hands clasped to thigh.

  Du Pré swung down, dropped the reins. His horse stood there, knew Du Pré’s hand, knew him. Bodie’s horse trotted away, once stepping on a rein and jerking his head. Du Pré knelt by the cowboy, felt the leg. Not broken, but the muscles torn and swelling.

  “I’ll shoot that fucking horse!” Bodie snarled through his pain.

  “No you won’t,” said Du Pré. “You’re not bad hurt. Now, I go catch him for you and you ride on back and you be good to that damn horse. I get back and see his mouth’s torn or you hurt him, then I kick your stupid teeth down your throat.”

  The cowboy gaped at Du Pré.

  “It ain’t broken?” he said.

  Du Pré spat, walked back to his horse. He swung up, went off after Bodie’s rangy gelding. Idiot. Shoveling life’s shit with a broken handle.

  The pony stood waiting, looking back at Du Pré. He grabbed the reins and led him back.

  “He’ll take you,” said Du Pré. “Now where you find this wreck?”

  “Little dry draw third shoulder over,” said Bodie.

  “You just let that horse carry you back,” said Du Pré. “I hope he dumps you and kicks you to death. He does, I buy him, feed him oats and carrots every day, molasses. You’re too stupid to live.”

  “My leg … ” Bodie whimpered.

  “Fuck your leg,” said Du Pré. He rode on. Before the trail turned he looked back. The cowboy was struggling to mount, the horse’s ears were back.

  More in the world like him than not, Du Pré thought. God damn it, be like that. Shit.

  CHAPTER 4

  HE FOUND IT RIGHT where Bodie had said it was. A mess, yes, but a very old one. A juniper had grown up through the metal frame of a seat. Rusted engine half-buried in the yellow earth of the draw. Bones were scattered around, the coyotes and skunks and badgers would have come along and supped. When this had happened the draw had burned, maybe it had been a rainy night, but it had been a long time ago. The plane had been a light, flimsy one, the marks it would have made when it hit so long ago had been erased.

&nbs
p; Du Pré stamped his feet. It was cold, maybe ten above. He had spent the night crouched over a little fire, a saddle blanket on his shoulders.

  Candy bars and stale water for breakfast. Madelaine was in bed. Missing him. He hoped.

  The light rose. Du Pré cast around, quartered back and forth. He looked down at the place where the sagebrush trunk went into the ground. A jawbone, human. The skull then rolls downhill. So he walked straight down, like water would run. The draw was pretty steep, not much water had moved through it.

  The skull was nestled under a flat rock which crossed the little streambed. The spring melts were running through the gravels underneath the slab. Lucky the skull was still whole.

  Du Pré knelt, looked, crossed himself. Some days he didn’t believe in God, but he did believe in crossing himself.

  “Maybe this let you sleep now,” said Du Pré. He picked up the white skull, the color of the giant puffball mushrooms that came up in pastures in the wet years. The mushrooms were bigger, and startling in the green.

  “Now I got someone’s head in my hands, I thinking on frying mushrooms,” Du Pré said aloud. “Dumb bastard.”

  Du Pré turned the skull in his hands. A neat hole in the forehead of it. Something rattled inside. A thin bone at the back, near where the spine joined, had been chewed through by a coyote, so the brains could be licked out. A slug fell out of the hole, landed on a bed of broken lime between stones. Dull gray, dull green. Copper jacket then. Du Pré stared at it.

  He looked again at the hole in the skull, punched when the bone was living, dished, like an awl hole through tin.

  Du Pré put the slug in his pocket, snapped the flap shut. He looked up toward the place where the rusting engine stained the earth. The sun was up enough now to begin making clouds, little misty wisps, from the flanks of the mountains where the frost had bloomed the night before. They would gather above the peaks, be thick by afternoon.

  He put the skull and jawbone in a saddlebag, picked again over the ground, found another jawbone. Older, drier, the teeth had slipped from the sockets. If there had been teeth in them. Well.