Coyote, p.18
Coyote, page 18
“What do you mean?” By the time she caught up, he was unspooling the fuse.
“Get back.” He took out a pocketknife, cut the fuse, and then lit it. A spark sizzled along the wire on its journey to its final destination.
“Come on, let’s go!” Leon grabbed her good hand and pulled her away from the explosives.
“Let go of me! I can out run you.”
But like so many other men, he didn’t listen. Pulling her along, Leon tripped over some rebar and fell hard onto the ground. She tried to lift him to his feet, but he was too heavy.
“Run!” Leon shouted. “It’s going to blow.”
“I’m not leaving you here,” she said, tugging at his outstretched arms.
Chapter 36
Bill drove straight to Glacier Bank to get there before closing and had the teller make out a cashier’s check to Knight Industries for $100,000. He tucked the check into his inside jacket pocket and dialed Richard Knight’s private number. Knight said he was just finishing up eighteen holes and would meet him for a late lunch at the Whitefish Lake Golf Club restaurant in an hour. Shit! Not another three-hour meal.
The Whitefish Golf Club was on the edge of town at the southernmost tip of Whitefish Lake. When Bill arrived, Knight was waiting for him, sipping wine at a table on the patio. What should have been a stunning view across the smooth emerald fairway onto the rugged snow-tipped mountains was hidden behind a hazy mask.
“Thanks for meeting with me on such short notice.” Bill extended his hand. Knight stood up, shook it, and motioned for him to sit.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Knight said. “I ordered for us.”
“Fine.” Bill shifted in his chair, troubling the napkin between his thumb and forefinger. “But, Mr. Knight, you see—”
Knight interrupted. “Call me Richard, please.”
“You see, Richard, I can’t accept your check after all. I mean it’s very generous and everything, but I really can’t take it.” Bill couldn’t look him in the eye, so he was addressing the tablecloth.
“But why not, William? I thought we had it all settled.” Knight motioned for the waiter. “Please bring a glass of champagne for my friend, the next governor of Montana.”
Bill blushed and shook his head, then reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out the check, and slid it across the tablecloth. Knight put his large dry hand on top of Bill’s. Again, he had the sense they’d met before—something about the rich man’s mannerisms, something in his sonorous voice, his light touch.
“Lunch first, business later.” Knight held up his glass and peered into the golden bubbly wine. “Did you know this champagne is named after the widow of Francois Clicquot? She inherited the company when he died under suspicious circumstances.” Knight chortled. “Its chalky minerality reflects its terroir, don’t you think?”
“Its terror?” Bill was feeling some terror himself.
“Terroir, how the soil affects the taste. Like people, wine is the product of where it’s raised. Regardless, some of us ripen into fine wine while others turn to vinegar.” Knight lifted his glass again. “You, my friend, promise to become a fine wine. A toast to our partnership!”
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” Bill said, pointing to the check in the middle of the table, the one Knight was ignoring.
“See, we’re already fast friends. Don’t worry. You’ve made the right decision, Cannon.”
“What did you say?”
“You’ve made the right decision.”
“No after that. What did you call me?”
“William, of course. Or do you prefer Bill?” Knight dabbed at his mouth with the corner of his napkin.
“No, you called me Cannon. Only my friends from junior high call me that.” In a flash, it came to him. He knew why Knight was so familiar. His face went white. The voice. He was sure of it.
Stunned, Bill could hardly speak. “What the hell?” he whispered half to himself, then asked, “Do you know Arnold Specht?”
“No, why do you ask?” Knight shifted in his chair.
“He was my best friend when I was in high school. We were on the wrestling team together.” Bill’s voice was barely audible. “He was in the accident—”
Knight interrupted him. “Yes, I know. Sad story. But you survived. We’re survivors, William, you and I.”
Bill stared into Knight’s face looking for clues. Everyone believed Arnold had died in The Accident. They never found his body. It wasn’t until the snow melted that some hiker found his engraved silver watch. A reporter from the Whitefish Pilot speculated that some animal had dragged off his body and that eventually another unsuspecting hiker would stumble onto his bones somewhere in the woods. No one ever did.
“Maybe I did hear something. Wasn’t there something about an engraved silver watch: To Arnold Jr., Love Arnold Sr.” Knight nervously wiped his mouth with his napkin.
Bill looked at him in astonishment, and his stomach plunged into his loafers. “What the hell is going on? Arnold, why are you pretending to be Richard Knight? Why did you run away?” Bill’s voice had risen, and he was now yelling, poking the air with his index finger. “Look, I know it’s you, Arnold. So stop this stupid charade.”
“Calm down, Cannon. You’re making a scene. Calm down,” Knight commanded. “Be quiet for a minute and I’ll tell you. It’s a long story.”
Bill stared across the table, waiting.
He fought off a wave of nausea when Knight finally whispered, “I’ve missed you and our special wrestling moves.”
Bill remembered what he’d learned in a psychology class at college: most children’s first sexual experiences were homosexual. As hormone filled teenagers, sweaty bodies sliding against each other, one thing led to another, and wrestling matches became desperate touching and lustful fondling, but never outright sex. He’d often wondered if his tousles with Arnold meant that he was gay.
Bill blushed. “That was a long time ago. A lot has changed.”
Chapter 37
Jessica pointed toward the weathered barn. “I haven’t seen it this smoky since West Glacier burned up five years ago.” On their third round of vodka tonics, she and Lolita were sitting around her childhood table, trying to catch up with her mom, who had most likely been drinking all day.
“It’s so dry the bushes are following the dogs around.” Jessica drained her glass, slammed it on the rickety table with a bit too much force, and the table legs wobbled.
“Remember when you hit your head on this table and I had to take you to the emergency room for stitches?” her mom asked with a smile.
“Yeah, because you threw that spoon at me and I ducked.”
“You flung it at me first, you little beast.”
That chipped rubicund Formica table had witnessed her entire childhood, and its metal legs bowed under the weight of it, with every ding and scratch on it telling the story of her youth.
She thought of all the oversleezy eggs and mushy French toast she’d been forced to eat sitting there. At that table, she’d licked her first beater when her mom made whipped cream for Thanksgiving pumpkin pies; she’d done her math homework with her dad watching over her shoulder; she’d sewn badges for camping and horseback riding onto her Girl Scout sash; and on that ill-fated blustery day in November, she’d heard the heart-wrenching news from her aunt, who was sitting at that little red table.
Jessica contemplated her mom, glassy eyed from a steady diet of vodka Collins, thin, leathery, and unbreakable.
“I heard on the news there are fires all around,” her mom said. “This darned drought. Every time we have dry lightning, something catches fire.” She looked at her glass. “Wannaanother? I’m going to have one. I need one to cut through this darned smoke and clear my throat.” Her mom mixed them another round of vodka Collins in her best cobalt cut-glass goblets, adding a slice of lime to each, and then lit another cigarette. “You girls want something to eat?” She opened a bag of BBQ potato chips and set them in the middle of the table.
Lolita lifted her glass. “A toast: Let the tables break from abundance and the beds break from love.”
Jessica dug into the chips and then sucked the paprika and salt off her fingers one by one. When her mom gave her a disapproving look, she chugged her drink and held out her empty glass. “Another, bartender. I’ve had a traumatic day and I’m lucky to be alive.”
“A toast,” said Lolita. “To the survival of my Montana friend, Jessica James, cowgirl philosopher extraordinaire.” They all raised their glasses and laughed.
Jessica surveyed the old doublewide, where she’d grown up caught between boisterous loggers with their practical jokes and horseplay in the living room and whispering homemakers squirreling away tasty bits of gossip in the kitchen. Drawn to both, but unwilling to commit to either, she used to stand in the hallway and watch.
Years later, when she’d come home from college for Christmas vacation, it was painfully obvious she no longer fit in with her high school friends, girls who’d stayed behind to have babies and cook for their husbands, and ex-boyfriends who’d gone to work at the lumber mill. Although she went to college in Missoula, just down the road by Montana standards, she felt light years away.
Now, getting her PhD in philosophy “back East” in Chicago, she was practically an alien from another planet. Intelligent life, indeed. But she wasn’t at home in graduate school either.
When she’d gotten off the long stuffy plane ride almost a year ago, the Ivy League boys who drank without getting drunk and talked incessantly about Heidegger had been a stinging slap in her freckled face. With their fancy pedigrees, silver spoons, and smooth talk, the prep-school yuppies had been groomed for grad school since kindergarten. She hadn’t been groomed at all, not unless a few good thrashings on the playground counted.
“I never told anyone, but I was pregnant when your dad died.” Her mom’s confession jolted her from her reveries, and she stared into those familiar bloodshot eyes, now filled with tears, wondering if she’d heard right.
“What?” Jessica asked. “When dad died…” She couldn’t get the words out. Her mom’s shoulders were shaking with sobs and she let out a squeak, just like that dreadful day eleven years ago when Jessica had come home from school early.
She’d been making a snow angel in the front yard when she heard a crippling sound. Scared stiff, she stopped mid-angel. The horrible noise was her mother screaming from inside the house.
Jessica had never heard her mother wail before and the screeching terrified her. Instead of going inside to see what had happened, she scurried into the barn and hid in one of the stalls, where she stayed until it was pitch dark. Eventually hunger drove her into the house. Her heart was galloping as she turned the corner into the kitchen. By then, her mother’s sobs had turned to whimpers.
Her aunt, Mike’s mom, was holding her mother’s hand from across the table. Jessica studied a crack in the linoleum as her aunt explained that her dad had given hitchhikers a ride all the way across Marias Pass when his truck jackknifed on an icy patch and was hit head-on by a bus.
For some reason, at that moment, Jessica had remembered she’d left her book bag in the barn. She turned to go back out, but her aunt stopped her with the brutal words “he’s dead.” Her aunt’s embrace felt colder than the icicles on Mayhem’s coat. She struggled to get free, slammed the trailer door on the way out, and ran back to the barn, tears freezing on her wind-burned face. Jessica felt abandoned and alone.
Now her mom was telling her she might have had a baby sister to keep her company all those years growing up without a father and a mother too emotionally damaged to count.
Her mom wiped away a tear with her shirt cuff. “Yeah. I was pregnant and he didn’t even know. I hadn’t told him yet….” She put her head into the crook of an elbow and leaned on the table. Her thin shoulders rattled and heaved as she quietly wept.
“Mom, what happened? I always wanted a little sister.”
“Jessica, I think you’re tipsy,” Lolita said, giving her a dirty look. “There, there, Mrs. James. It’s okay.” Lolita put her hand on the nearest sharp shoulder blade.
“Mrs. James was my mother-in-law. Call me Irene.” She sniffled into her shirtsleeve.
Lolita nodded toward the small form folded over the kitchen table, and Jessica took the hint.
“Well, we drank an entire fifth of vodka.” Jessica tipped the bottle into her mouth to get the last few drops. “We’d better go get another one. Not much else we can do but drink, smoked-in like this.” She got up from the table, stumbled, and laughed. “Maybe you’re right. I’m a little drunk.” She exhaled a wistful sigh. “I coulda had a little sister or brother.” Her mother’s sobs were getting louder.
“Is it my imagination, or is the smoke getting thicker?” Lolita asked. “I can smell it.” She gave her friend a dry look.
“Sure that’s not just my cigarette?” Her mom had stopped crying but was still sniffling. “Jesse always did complain the place smelled like an ashtray.”
“Can I bum a cigarette?” Lolita asked. “I’ll join you, if you don’t mind.” Without lifting her head, Jessica’s mom slid her pack of Marlboros across the table.
“Thanks.” As Lolita took the pack and tapped out a cigarette, the lighter slid across the table and whizzed by onto the floor. Lolita stuck her motorcycle boot out to stop it from skating along the linoleum and picked it up. “Fight fire with fire!” Lolita said as she lit her cigarette.
Jessica coughed. “Mom already smokes like a chimney. Don’t encourage her.”
“I don’t think she needs any encouragement, right, Mrs. James? Right, Irene? Anyway, talk about kettles and pot, you smoke as much dope—”
Jessica gave her a stern look and put her finger to her lips.
“Don’t start on my smoking,” her mom said. “I can quit any time.”
“A toast.” Jessica raised her glass. “To cigarettes: fire on one end and a foul mouth on the other!”
“Giving me shit about smoking may be hazardous to your damned health!” her mom said and crushed her cigarette butt into the overflowing ashtray. “Should we go out for more booze and dinner, girls? My treat.”
“Let’s go to The Bulldog.” Jessica zipped up her sweatshirt, pulled on her cowboy boots, and grabbed her mom’s car keys. “Saddle up. I’ll drive.” But as she staggered toward the door, she tripped over the cat and crashed to the floor. Laughing, she said, “Oh shit. I’m sorry, Stoli. Come back, little guy. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to step on you.” She was crawling on all fours after the cat when Stoli darted into the living room and hid under the coffee table.
“It’s my car and I’ll drive it.” Her mom picked up the keys. “For Christ’s sake, Jesse, get off the floor.”
Jessica did a downward-facing-dog to get up off the floor. She was the last one out the door, but she stopped short when she spotted her mom and Lolita standing stiff as statues on the front porch. Sirens wailing in the distance, Lolita was pointing toward the hay field to the north. A strong southerly wind carried an ominous crackling sound, and a deadly orange glow on the horizon could only mean one thing.
Chapter 38
A cool breeze was blowing down the valley across the golf course, so Bill put his jacket back on. Shrouded in a milky haze, the resort had fallen into a gloomy funk. He wished the wind would switch directions so the forest fire smoke would clear out. He looked across the table at his unrecognizable lunch companion and still couldn’t believe the CEO of Knight Industries was really his high school buddy, Arnold.
“The lies we tell our friends are nothing compared to the lies we tell ourselves,” Knight said.
“You seem to be an expert on both.” Bill lobbed his napkin onto the table. “Maybe instead of learning to love my enemies, I need to learn to hate my friends,” he said under his breath.
“Now, now, Cannon, hate is a pretty strong word.” Knight shook his head. “When did you figure it out?”
“I’ve had an odd feeling ever since our lunch at Café Kandahar. I couldn’t put my finger on it.” Bill narrowed his brows and pursed his lips. “It wasn’t until just now when you called me Cannon that I recognized you.”
He sighed and slumped in his chair. “Should I call you Arnold or Richard? This is all really confusing. Why did you run off after the accident? And, why did you come back? Tell me, what the hell is going on?” The forest fire smoke was thickening, his eyes were burning and so was his throat. He took a long drink of water and wiped his face on his napkin.
“I’m sorry if I put you on the spot all those years ago, but you’ve been a true friend. You kept your promise and everyone thinks Arnold Specht Junior died in a bus accident eleven years ago. And in a way, he did.”
“They looked for your body for months, but with all the snow, eventually they gave up. It wasn’t until the snow melted and that hiker found your watch that folks thought coyotes must have eaten… sorry.” Bill took an uneasy sip of wine.
“As I said, you’re a true friend, Cannon.” He reached across the table and patted Bill’s hand. “I really appreciate it. I had to get away.” Bill jerked his hand away.
“My father was a complete bastard,” Arnold continued. “Especially when he was drunk, which was most of the time. He treated the dog better than he did me, and my mom just watched. When the bus exploded, something clicked and I knew I couldn’t go back. The accident seemed the perfect escape, and my death the perfect punishment for my mom’s betrayal.”
“Betrayal? Do you really hate your mom so much?” Bill asked. “She was such a mess at your funeral. I almost told her the truth so she’d stop wailing. Where the hell did you go anyway?”
“I hid behind the Snow Slip Inn and called my dad, my real father in Texas. He hired a taxi from Kalispell to pick me up, and paid the driver to take care of me and keep quiet. I nearly froze my ass off waiting for Snow Slip to close and that taxi to arrive. I was probably in Dallas before anyone missed me.”
