Back of Beyond (17 page)

The strange man, K. W. Wilson, rode behind them on a pale gray gelding. Although he wasn’t wearing a black hat or shirt, there was something dark about him. Brooding but at times kind of smiling to himself. Like he had a secret or found his thoughts amusing. The ghostly pallor of his horse only added to the image. He was thin and his face was made of sharp planes shoved together, as if he’d once had a normal face but somebody crumpled it in from the sides where it bent like sheet metal. His eyes were mounted close over the sharp bridge of a hatchetlike nose. He needed a shave and the trip had barely even started. He didn’t seem to laugh at the jokes of the Wall Streeters, not at all. Gracie was wary of him, and unlike Rachel Mina, had zero desire to get to know him at all.

Her dad rode behind Wilson, and Danielle was just ahead. Danielle rode well even though she didn’t have a clue as to what she was doing. Gracie wished
she
filled her saddle as well as Danielle, and wondered if and when her own butt wouldn’t be skinny and bony like a boy’s. Already it hurt. She could use some of Danielle’s padding, she thought.

*   *   *

“How’s that horse ridin’?”
Dakota Hill asked in a tone Gracie could hear but low enough the others couldn’t.

“Good,” Gracie said. “I really like her.”

“Strawberry’s a good little horse. You can depend on her. Just don’t get her too close to those horses up front if you can help it, especially that black one, Midnight. Midnight don’t like Strawberry.”

“That’s too bad,” Gracie said, again leaning forward and patting Strawberry’s neck, “’cause she’s such a sweet girl.”

“Yup.”

Gracie thought Dakota Hill looked like a natural cowgirl in a way that Jed didn’t look like a natural cowboy. She was the type of woman, Gracie thought, who would be almost beautiful if she wore makeup. But Dakota seemed determined to fight against type by playing at being gruff and no-nonsense. What kind of woman wanted to be known as a “mule-skinner”? Gracie was puzzled by her but oddly fascinated at the same time.

When she turned back around in the saddle with the smile still on her face, she was jarred by two sets of eyes directly on her. From the front, Jed McCarthy looked on in what seemed like disapproval. And from a few horses away, K. W. Wilson smirked.

*   *   *

They were walking their mounts
through the middle of a large green saddle slope rimmed by trees on all four sides. The air smelled slightly of sulfur. Jed had walked his string off the trail and let the others pass by. Gracie could see him talking to each rider in turn as they rode past him.

As she rode up next to him he asked, “You and that horse getting along?”

“Yes.”

“You sit a nice horse,” he said, nudging his horse into a walk until they rode side by side.

“I’ve been telling everyone to make sure to stay on the trail,” he said. “It’s more important here in Yellowstone than anywhere else.” He gestured toward a large white patch of ground to their right about a hundred feet away. “See that there?”

“Yes.”

“See anything unusual about it?”

“There’s no grass on it, I guess.”

“Look closer. Look at it about an inch above the ground.”

She squinted and noticed how the air seemed to undulate slightly, as if it were underwater. In the center of the white patch, a slight wisp of steam or smoke curled out of a hole the size of a quarter.

“What is it?”

“This is the thing about this place,” he said. “That’s a fumarole, or steam vent. The white is a dried mineral crust that’s covering a place where superheated water comes up out of the ground. The hole there releases some of the steam. Otherwise, it might build up too much pressure and erupt.”

“Wow,” she said, shaking her head.

“The crust is brittle,” he said. “If you walked over the top of it or took your horse over there you’d break right through. The water underneath would scald the hell out of you or your horse. Might even kill you if you got bucked off in it.”

“Really?”

“Really. It’s the reason we have to stay together on the trail and not ride off. Those things are everywhere, and some are much worse,” he said. “There’s a little canyon in the park where so much methane gas is produced naturally out of the ground that any living thing that wanders into it will die within minutes. The floor of the canyon is covered in elk and bison bones, and maybe even some old Indian bones.”

He’d softened his voice and she found it oddly rhythmic. She felt a chill ripple through her.

“But when you look at that white patch,” he said, “I want you to imagine something else. Imagine most of Yellowstone Park itself is that white patch. There’s a real thin crust covering hell itself, which is trying to boil over. That
wants
to boil over. And someday, it will. It’s known as the Yellowstone Caldera. In fact, darlin’, when it blows it’ll take two million people with it. It’s blown a few times through history, and we’re sixty thousand years overdue.”

“Why are you telling me this?” she asked.

“To heighten your awareness,” he said. “I want every one of my clients to be awake.”

“I’m awake,” she said.

13

Although it once seemed like he
lived in one, Cody Hoyt had not been in a public library for years. And as soon as he entered the Bozeman Public Library on East Main Street, he felt like he was being hurled back in time to when he rode his bike to the Helena library after telling his buddies he was going home. He loved the library, although he kept it in absolute confidence. Only the librarians knew, and they gave him his space and not-so-secretly delighted in the fact that a Hoyt of the violent and rough-hewn Hoyts was actually in their sanctuary of civilization. Often, a librarian would give him a sandwich because he was obviously missing dinner and he’d eat it at his own private table in the back.

He read everything; newspapers, magazines, hunting and fishing books, crime novels, biographies of American presidents, anything he could find on World War Two. He read reference books and
Ripley’s Believe It or Not
and sex manuals that got him all worked up. Not once did he check out a book and take it with him, because he didn’t dare take a chance that his dad would see it and tease him. And as far as his father knew, he wasn’t home because he was at football or wrestling practice. Since his dad never went to any games anyway, he never found out Cody didn’t participate in the sports he claimed he did.

Lying to his friends about going home and lying to his dad about staying at school started a prominent pattern in his life, he realized later. Leading parallel lives and telling serial lies helped prepare him for the trials and rigors of full-blown alcoholism, which, in itself, was like a second full-time—although secret—career. He’d learned early how to multitask.

Cody learned nothing in school and everything he knew in the library. He still read widely and constantly, and was never without a book in his glove compartment (along with a pint of bourbon). For the past year, he’d been alternating among Jim Harrison’s novels, John McPhee’s nonfiction, Flannery O’Connor’s short stories, and the crime novels of John Sandford, Ken Bruen, and T. Jefferson Parker. His books were stacked like Greek columns in his living room and basement. Once he finally built those bookshelves, he could showcase an impressive collection. But he never got around to it.

He was mildly surprised by the banks of computers and the teens and twenty-somethings at each terminal. As he walked past, he noted a familiarity in what they were doing—updating their Facebook pages. He thought,
Some people used to go to libraries to gather information. Now they come to write about themselves.

He approached the information counter and a slim girl with bangs and a nose ring swiveled his direction and arched her eyebrows as if to say
Yes?

“Someone told me Bull Mitchell would be here,” he said. “Do you have any idea where to find him?”

She pointed across her body past the reference book aisle. There was an archway painted with Mother Goose and Dr. Seuss characters and a sign that read
children’s room
.

“No,” Cody said, “I’m looking for an old guy named Bull Mitchell.”

She said, “Yes, and I’m telling you where to find him.”

*   *   *

Cody checked his wristwatch
as he entered the children’s section, wondering how much time he was wasting when he should be coursing down the highway toward Yellowstone. But since he was here, he entered the room and walked toward the back where he could hear a gruff deep voice.

It’s me again, Hank the Cowdog.

I just got some terrible news. There’s been a murder on the ranch.…

“Jesus Christ,” Cody grumbled.

Two young mothers were standing in the aisle and they turned when they heard him, and one of them lifted a finger to her lips to shush him. She was wearing a track suit and her blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail. She was vaguely attractive but already angry with him, so he looked to the other one. She was tall and slim with auburn hair and kind brown eyes and a nice mouth. Her face was wide open. She was pretty in a natural, athletic way.

He shrugged his apology and sidled up to them. He noted other mothers gathered along the windows on the side of the room.

“I’m looking for Bull Mitchell,” he said. “Do you know him?”

“Of course,” the tall woman whispered.“That’s him reading.”

Well, you know me. I’m no dummy. There’s a thin line between heroism and stupidity, and I try to stay on the south side of it.…

“That’s Bull Mitchell?” Cody asked. “I can’t see him.”

“Here,” the tall woman said, stepping aside.

Cody nodded his thanks.

There, in the middle of twelve or thirteen kids gathered on the floor, was a big man sitting in a comically undersized chair wearing a heavy wool work shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. His head was a cinder block mounted on wide powerful shoulders and his huge hands held
The Original Adventures of Hank the Cowdog
indelicately, like a grizzly cradling a candy cane. He had silver-white hair but jet-black crazy eyebrows that looked like smudges of soot. He was an unpracticed and halting reader, Cody thought, but when his voice boomed for exclamations like
Good dog!
and
Will you please shut up?
the walls seemed to shake and he likely scared the bejesus out of the kids.

That’s when he noticed a tiny white-haired woman in a wheelchair next to the seated children. She had a wool Pendleton trapper’s blanket over her lap and she leaned forward to listen with a gauzy smile of pure enchantment.

“What’s with the old lady?” Cody asked the tall woman. “What’s she doing here?”

She reacted as if he’d slapped her. The blond woman rolled her eyes and snorted in contempt.

“What?” Cody said, genuinely surprised and puzzled.

Oh Hank, there’s been a killing right here on the ranch and we slept through it!…

The tall woman said, “He’s my father and ‘the old lady’ is my mother. She’s in the advanced stages of Alzheimer’s, and this is the only way he can connect with her these days, by reading children’s stories.”

Cody slumped and sighed. “I’m such an asshole,” he said.

“Yes, you are,” the tall woman said. “But I can see you didn’t know.”

The blond mother shushed them both.

Cody said to the tall woman, “When he’s done will you introduce me to him?”

She almost smiled. “How can I introduce you when I don’t know your name?”

“Cody Hoyt,” he said. “I’m a cop.”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Is this official business? You don’t seem to have a badge.”

Cody said, “It’s more important than that. Give me a few minutes and I’ll lay it out.”

“Angela Mitchell,” she said, extending her hand. “I’m the proud daughter.”

Cody thought,
In other circumstances I would like to get to know this woman
.

The blond mother leaned toward them hissing,
“Shhhhhh.”

And Bull Mitchell read:

… Being Head of Ranch Security is learning to ignore that kind of emotion. I mean, to hold down this job, you have to be cold and hard.…

*   *   *

Cody hovered behind Angela and Bull
Mitchell as Bull pushed his wife through the aisles in her wheelchair to the van to return her to the nursing home. The children had joined up with their mothers or nannies and dispersed. Bull said to Angela in a flat, declaratory tone not unlike his reading, “So who’s the guy?”

“He says his name is Cody Hoyt. He wants to meet you.”

“Hoyt?” Bull barked.

“Yes.”

“I knew a couple guys named Hoyt. One was a drunk and the other one was a criminal. Why does he want to meet me?”

“Hey,” Cody said, “I’m right here. I can speak for myself.”

Bull paused and twisted slightly to a quarter profile, as if he wasn’t sure turning around to talk to Cody was worth more than that. He looked Cody up and down, said nothing, and said to his daughter, “Tell him not to interrupt my stories, goddammit.”

“I apologize,” Cody said. “I just wasn’t expecting a guy named Bull in the children’s room.”

Bull kept his back to him and guided his wife’s wheelchair out the front doors of the library. The attendant in the van climbed out to help position her chair on the lift. Cody saw she was still smiling and her eyes were wistful. She was small and reed thin and her body seemed to be drawing inward as if to fold up on itself. Her back was hunched, which made her head stick out forward rather than up. A baby bird, Cody thought, she’s turning into a baby bird in the nest, stretching out on a long neck. He felt sorry for her, for Bull, for Angela, and for him being there at that moment.

In a wavery voice as light as mist she said to her husband, “That was a wonderful story, Mr. Bull. One of my favorites. I wish I could have read it to my daughter Angela, you know.”