Theft (29 page)

Everything was a story. And the story he told became the only truth he knew. The farther he walked, the more the night chilled. His body shook with cold. There was no glory in this. He knew what it felt like now, this shivering, this craving stillness beneath his skin and no way to turn off the shaking. His bones felt more alive than his skin now, the way they chattered to hold onto life, the way they would not let him sink into the earth.

And then the cold seeped inside him, and he quit shaking. The skin of his feet looked charred, his toes completely numb now. It felt as if the inside of him was crystallizing, his heart
shattering off into facets, his blood slowing like mud. He felt warm, even hot. He stripped down to nothing but his boxers now. The lion was nowhere, at least not that he could see. His thoughts had turned to dreams. His thoughts became the images he'd seen, the ones he'd dreamed of for himself. His body lay on the snowy ground now, and dreams leeched his mind. It was not how he'd expected it to be, his last moment of life. It was not glorious. Or wild. It was something altogether different. He wanted to turn back. He had not expected that, but there was no undoing it now. His body was no longer his, and his thoughts had become ghosts. He had already become memory in the minds of those he had loved.

W
HAT HE LEFT BEHIND as he walked told the story of him letting things fall away. The imprint left by his footprints grew lighter and lighter, the weight of him lessened with each step until he turned too light to leave any spore at all. Polo guessed it was intentional and directed at him. “The sonofabitch's last defiance,” he said. “A fucking suicide mission, a fucking waste of my time.”

Willa didn't see it that way. By the time they found Zeb, later the following evening, his limbs were swollen and black as a lightning-struck tree, the rest of his body frozen and stiff, skin on his chest blue as new-fallen snow but muted and fleshy and horrifying in its utter objectness. If it had not been her brother, the sight might have sickened her. But she knelt by Zeb's side, and she cried. She looked at his body, then she lay down on the snowy earth and held him close to her. She sobbed, and it felt like oceans inside her, the uncertainty that Zeb had taught her, the constant way he'd made her question everything, all of it turning still now, turning permanently. She felt Polo standing above her, and she said her brother's name softly to herself: Zebulon Pike Robbins.

By the time she let him go, she knew Polo was wrong. Zeb wasn't defiant at all. He never had been. He'd been devoured by some story he'd never even read, some dream that had seeped into his bones without him being able to name it, the tracks of that story leaving an imprint on him that he could not name and could never trap or escape or revise to make it his own story. The beauty of the animal he had hunted and consumed, this time, had been himself.

B
Y EVENING, POLO AND Willa had made it back to camp. They didn't have too many words for each other. “So what's this all mean to you?” Willa asked, before they parted ways. “Why did Zeb matter so damn much to you?”

“Sonofabitch didn't have the guts to face me,” he said. “To come in to the office and do his confession there. To come in and face me and own up.”

Own up
. The words made Willa laugh. What was owned and what was lost. There was a thin line between the two notions, and each one canceled the other out. What remained was what could not be taken away, the final imprint of a life, a track blown away by wind, perceptible maybe by some trained eye somewhere. But even then, it was never certain.

W
ILLA WALKED INSIDE THE cabin, lifted a few of the rose petals from the dresser drawer into a nylon stuff sack. When she returned back outside, she asked for information about Brenda. Polo said he wished he could help, but he knew nothing.

“Tell her I was here,” Willa said. “Tell her I'd like to see her. If you see her, please give her my contact information.” She handed Polo a piece of paper.

Polo agreed, and she figured he'd honor his word. He had at least that much to prove to Zeb, even now. As she cleaned up her campsite and tossed the issued gear back to Polo, she thought of walking back through Zeb and Brenda's cabin one more time. But it felt meaningless. She had no idea when and if Brenda would be back to the cabin. What was in the house had little to do with Zeb. She'd had years with him, and they had left their mark on her, and she'd had a couple of hours with him before his death. That time, those hours: That's what she would keep.

As for the mules and the horse that remained, they were hers now, Polo said, next of kin because the marriage between Zeb and Brenda had never been legal. “Here's the name and address of the boy in town who's taking care of them,” Polo said. He handed her a sticky note.

She stood outside the cabin, looking at the closed doorway, and said her goodbyes. Then she climbed into her truck, and the engine hummed. The icy pathway pitched the wheels this way and that, and the gouged road reminded her of her home on the mesa. She wanted to be there. With Christina. With Magda and Cario, too. Instead, she followed the map Polo had drawn (not much to map in this town: a gas station, a gun shop, a bar) and pulled up to an old wooden house, tawny paint peeling off the sides like birch bark, just off the state highway, behind Gnarly's Tavern. She knocked on the door, and a tall, bony man with a long, hollow face and a crooked-toothed smile answered. “Help ya?” he said.

“I'm Willa Robbins,” she said. He stared. “Zeb Robbins's sister.”

He smiled, bent forward a little bit, and his lanky arms dangled for a moment before he palmed her on the back and invited her in. “What can I get you? Whiskey? Beer? You name it.”

She shook her head. “Thanks, no, I'm on the road and—”

“What the hell's happening up there with Zeb?” He ignored her words and folded in the middle like a suitcase as he plopped into a sunken La-Z-Boy chair. He leaned forward, chin on his hand, squinting and engaged. “That goddamn crazy Zeb,” he
said, before she could answer. He shook his head and laughed. “Must've been something growing up with him as a brother.”

“It was something.”

He stretched out his arm, but from where he sat, she couldn't get there fast enough to shake it before he absently recoiled it and resumed shaking his head. “I'm Frank,” he said, still rambling on. “Yeah, that goddamn crazy Zeb, he's the only news we get around here, you know. Don't see much of him. But we sure hear a lot.”

She nodded.

“You know, they put parking meters along the highway here once. Like a half a dozen meters is all. So Zeb come down here one night and sawed the tops off 'em.” He laughed. “Didn't leave a trace, but there those meters were, just naked posts with their heads chopped off. They'll never catch him,” he said. “No way, not unless he wants to be caught. Well, hell, you know that. You're his sister, probably got some of his ways in you too, right? You sure I can't get you a drink?” He stood up now and poured himself a Crown Royale, showed the bottle to her. “Special occasion, right?” He poured her a shot over a single ice cube, and she took it and sat it on the side table made of an electrical cable spool. Finally, he sat back down again, and he listened.

“I'm looking for Tommy,” she said.

Frank craned his veiny neck over the top of the chair and hollered his son's name. A teenager with a Mohawk that swept down his back like a skinny black river came in from outdoors. He wore muddied boots and had a tree tattooed on the side of his head, the roots of the tree crawling down his neck and spreading like fingers gripping his throat under the collar of his black thermal shirt. He didn't say anything, just stood there, a tabby cat curled up in his arms.

“The mules and the horses you been taking care of for Zeb and Brenda. You got a place to keep them?” Willa asked Tommy.

“They already got a place,” the kid said. His voice was like a hiccup, restrained and way back in this throat, choppy and hiding its own kindness.

“You like those animals?” Willa asked.

“Chey, that horse. Best horse I ever rode. Zeb favors Lita. Me, I always liked Chey.”

Willa looked at Frank. “I'll send you money to care for them.” She looked back at the kid. “If Brenda doesn't come back in a couple of weeks, they're yours. You take care of them.”

The kid's eyes widened. He looked at his dad.

“That's Zeb's property, Ma'am,” Frank said. “Can't be giving his shit away.”

“Zeb won't be needing them.”

Frank leaned in toward Willa. “Dad,” Tommy said. He tried not to sound desperate or excited. But he needed to know. “Can I?”

Frank's long body sunk back into his chair. He stared off. “They caught him? They finally caught Zeb?”

“My brother's dead,” Willa said. She felt the words in herself, and they numbed her and split her open at the same time. She didn't hide the few tears that started up, but sat straight and looked at Frank, who buckled over in his chair now, not sad, but angry. “Did you know my brother well?”

Frank looked up, his face red. “As good as anyone knew him, I guess. Liked him. Liked him a lot.”

Willa looked hard at Frank as if trying to see some of Zeb in him. “You know the woman living with him?”

“Brenda.” Frank laughed. “Oh, hell yeah, everyone knows Brenda.”

“Think she'll be coming back for those animals?” She looked at Tommy. He looked like Zeb at his age, living on an edge sharp enough that it toughened his own skin but left his insides shredded and vulnerable and tired because of all the effort he put toward refusing everything.

“Brenda? Hell. No telling what she'll do,” Frank said. “She wouldn't knowingly hurt them animals or leave them out there all alone. But she might not be back. You just never know about her. She's got her own code.”

Willa stood up and handed Frank a hundred dollars. “That'll take care of them until we know if she's coming back. And if she comes back, I'm counting on you to tell her I want to see her. I'll
write you a bill of sale for the animals in case she doesn't show.” She looked at Tommy. “I'm leaving them to you, you know, not to your dad. I'm sure he's a fine man, but I am leaving Zeb's animals to you, Tommy.”

Frank agreed. Tommy said nothing to the people in the room, but he whispered something to the cat, and he glanced at Willa and then stepped over and shook her hand. If he'd talked, she was sure he would have never quit talking, never quit saying thanks to her for this small gesture. But he stayed quiet. “I'll send money regularly for their care,” Willa said.

“Like hell you will,” Frank said. “I got Gnarly's over there. I pull down a good wage. We don't need no money being sent in from outside.” Willa wasn't in the mood to push it. She thanked him and then headed toward the door. “That's it?” Frank said.

“What else is there?” She stopped with her hand resting on the doorknob.

“No ceremony? No service for your own kin?”

“I have some business to take care of back home, then I'm coming up to arrange it.”

“No,” Frank said.

Again, Willa was not in the mood. She opened the door and started out.

“Where is he?”

Willa tried to hide her clenching jaw, her reddening eyes. She stepped back inside. “My brother?”

“Where's Zeb?”

She squinted to understand what she thought was one rude and dim-witted question. “Like I said. He's passed. I imagine he's right where they left him.”

“That mountain lion take him after all?”

“No.”

“Well then there's something left of him somewhere.”