Debris Read Free Page B

you all handling it?” Hoye said.
    â€œThey got a fella from up near Viking that makes his rounds a little further south. He don’t seem to mind. Shifts go long they’re givin’ us OT .”
    â€œWell, thank ’em for me will ya?”
    â€œSure,” the constable said. “Keep your radio nearby. Anything comes up I’ll squawk at ya.”
    Hoye nodded and drove on, turned onto the width of gravel in front of the house. The cruiser crept out and took off down the county road. Hoye parked and came around the car to help Jenny. He wore her many bags and bundles on his arms like he were a clothes maiden. Jenny took the boy up in her arms and swaddled him to her chest and neck. She turned him slow so that he could stare out goggle-eyed at the fields and fencewires and hovering birds.
    â€œWe get a new mailbox?” she said.
    Hoye stood there with the bags dangling. He nodded.
    â€œOld one sort of blew in. So I got another, pegged it down a little sturdier.”
    Jenny studied the box some more and then she kissed the baby on his pale and peach-fuzzed head and went down the walk to the house. Hoye kicked the car door shut with the toe of his shoe.
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    Hoye lay in the bed until they both slept. When he got up he went quiet as he could, clicking sound in his knees and his left ankle joint. He turned at the door and saw the dent in the mattress where he rested his bones of a night, his tiny son but inches from it, curled up and pinned to his wife. It hurt his heart just to look at her there, wild-haired as she was in sleep, snoring lightly, so much bigger than their boy. It flooded hollows in him. Cold travelled along his spine and shortribs. He didn’t want to leave but he did. He’d found cargo shorts in the laundry hamper and put them on, along with a clean undershirt. He went through the dark house and he knew it less by touch than he should have.
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    *
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    Out on the driveway he sat , garage door open to a tiny nightlight and a fridge of cold beer. Crickets had gotten into the garage and they trilled from their hiding spots. He had an old poker table set up with cans of beer in every cup holder, a bottle of Irish whiskey standing quarter-empty on the felt. The Remington pump lay on a wooden crate beside his chair, five cartridges in the magazine. Chinook wind blew warm across the prairie, slowly spun a crooked weathervane that had been long ago fixed atop the high front gable of the house. Hoye had his Kevlar on over his cottons and the shirtcloth clung to his stomach and lower back. He heard distant reports of riflefire. High whine of small engines. Coyotes whooping at each other in a nearby field. Hoye sat there and watched either end of the long, country road. His portable CB radio sat on the table, silent except for sparse chatter between the dispatch and the constables as they roamed the territories.

 
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    THE ROPE
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    H e took the car over buckled macadam and followed the forest lane until it was just clay and crabgrass. Sunlight got stuck in the treecover and played weird shapes through the windshield. Soon Matthew hit a clearing and across it sat the log bungalow with thin smoke spiralling heavenward by a metal chimney pipe. He crossed to a gravel lot and just sort of stopped crooked in the middle of it, called that his parking job and got out and stretched his lower back. He left the door open with his things on the seats and walked the clearing to the house.
    She was out cold on the big chesterfield with her legs bent up and her hands pegged together between her knees. She snored soft and her left eye stayed open a little bit and stared blind to God knows where. Matthew crossed the cabin room. Clean as could be. Ghost of a bleaching not long past and it scented the air. Bookshelves and shelves of knickknacks all organized and orderly. He went into the kitchen and looked