“Leave me the hell alone.”
Sayers jerks his thumb in Jericho’s direction. “That’s what two weeks on the captain’s graveyard shift does to a man.”
“Not to mention ten years of hard drinking,” Reynolds adds.
Sayers downshifts as the grade becomes steeper. A stream runs alongside the road, clear water tumbling over rocks as old as the earth itself. Above the bank of the stream, a porcupine gnaws at the trunk of a pine tree. Across the road is a seemingly endless chain-link fence topped by razor wire. “No Trespassing” signs emblazoned with the Air Force insignia dot the fence every several hundred yards.
“Uh-oh,” Sayers says, looking toward the sky and slowing down.
“What is it, Spike?” Reynolds asks.
Sayers’ first name is Timothy, but with his round glasses and narrow face, his buddies back in Brooklyn thought he looked like Spike Lee. Before he joined the Air Force, Sayers sometimes cadged free drinks and impressed aspiring models and actresses by claiming he was scouting the neighborhood for a movie location. He still tries the scam occasionally while on leave, but less successfully. At a bar in Laramie, he discovered, the locals didn’t know Spike Lee from Robert E. Lee.
“Buzzards dead ahead,” Sayers says.
Jericho stirs and sits up, sliding back his helmet, squinting into the morning sun. He’s unshaven and his eyes are puffy. He pulls a warm can of beer from a rucksack, pops the top and puts it to his lips. He gargles noisily, spits into the road, then opens the wrapper on a Twinkie and gobbles it in two bites.
“Disgusting,” Reynolds says. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Back home, I’d have hominy grits, black coffee and molasses bread every morning.”
“Hey Reynolds,” Jericho says, his voice thick from a case of the dry tongue. “If I gotta hear one more time about your momma’s eggs still warm from the chicken’s ass, I’m gonna puke.”
Sayers laughs. “Hell, Jack. You’re liable to puke, anyway.”
“I was just being friendly,” Reynolds says, pouting. “Besides, eggs don’t come out a chicken’s ass.”
Jericho ignores both of them and watches half-a-dozen turkey vultures drift in slow circles overhead. A year of perimeter maintenance duty with these two, and he still marvels at the weirdness of their conversations. Within a few minutes, they start up again.
“Hey Sayers, how many folks are there in Wyoming like you?”
“You mean handsome and manly?”
“I mean black.”
“Not many, man. Three thousand or so, not counting me.”
“That’s why there’s no graffiti.”
“There’s no graffiti ‘cause there’s nothing in this hayseed heaven to put it on ‘cept trees and rocks. Graffiti goes on underpasses and buildings in the projects, and if you got the balls, the po-lice station.”
“Yeah, well it ain’t so bad out here,” Reynolds says. “Even Jericho likes it when he’s sober.”
Now, Sayers stops the Jeep alongside the fence, then shoots a concerned look into the backseat. “More nightmares last night, Jack?”
Jericho’s grunt could be a yes, could be a no.
The buzzards are directly overhead, circling lazily in the wind currents, waiting. Now, the men see what the birds are after. A large elk with a full crown of antlers is caught in the fence, its hide bloodied from the struggle to get free.
“Never told me this Wild Kingdom shit in the recruitment office,” Reynolds complains.
“All I ever heard,” Sayers says, “was that wild blue yonder jive.” He jams on the hand brake, and the three men get out and cautiously approach the elk.
When they are ten feet away, Sayers pulls a .45 from a side holster, but Jericho seizes his wrist. “No need for that, Spike.”
Reynolds lets out a low whistle in Jericho’s direction. “It lives! It talks, it walks, it brushes its teeth with Budweiser.”
Jericho grabs a saw-toothed survival knife from a sheath on his leg. “You two cowboys back off. I’ll handle this.”
Amused, Reynolds slouches against a wooden fence post and lights a cigarette. “Here we go again. Daniel Friggin’ Boone.”
Three feet from the trapped elk, Jericho stops, the frightened animal watching him through eyes the size of half-dollars. “Hoo boy,” Jericho coos. “You are a beauty.”
Blood oozing from its wounds, the animal bucks and stomps, lifting its head until it can no longer see Jericho. With startling quickness, Jericho leaps forward, grasps its antlers, and raises his knife to the elk’s neck.
“Jeez, Jack, we coulda shot him!” Sayers calls out.
But Jericho doesn’t cut the animal. Instead, he swiftly slices away the fence wire, then gently pulls it from the elk’s hide. He reaches into his pocket and brings out a handful of tiny red berries.
“Yo, Jack!” Sayers sounds alarmed. “That ain’t Bambi.”
“Mountain ash,” Jericho says. “For pain and healing.” He crushes the berries in his fist and lets the red syrup flow into the animal’s wound. The elk stiffens but doesn’t bolt, and Jericho gently strokes the tufted hide behind its ear.
“You learn that Tarzan shit back in Stinkhole, West Virginny?” Sayers asks.
“Sinkhole. Asshole.”
The elk, which had been paralyzed with fear, seems to relax as Jericho strokes its back.
“Hey Sayers,” Reynolds calls out. “You know what a West Virginian calls a deer caught in a fence?”
“What, man?”
“His first fuck.”
The two airmen laugh.
“He’s an elk,” Jericho says.
Reynolds shrugs. “Elk, moose, Rotarian, whatever.”
“Yo, Jack,” Sayers says. “How come you didn’t stay home and marry a coal miner’s daughter?”
Jericho steps back, and the elk bounds away, heading for the woods.
“Or your sister?” Reynolds chimes in.
It happens with electric speed.
Jericho whirls, and the knife flies from his hand toward Reynolds’ head. With a solid thwomp, it sticks in the fence post just inches above Reynolds’ crew cut.
Speechless, Reynolds reaches up to feel his scalp as the knife, buried deep in the wood, vibrates like a tuning fork.
“Shit man!” Sayers yells. “You’re crazier than the boys in the ‘hood.”
Jericho walks to the fence post and pulls out the knife. “My sister’s the only family I’ve got left.”
Then he walks away, watching the elk disappear into the woods, admiring its majesty, envying its freedom.
Sayers and Reynolds exchange baffled looks. From their hours of endless banter, they know Jericho is a loner. Until now, he had never said a word about his family or his life before the Air Force. Then the same thought occurs to each of them. They really don’t know Jack Jericho at all.
-6-
Baptism of Beer
A few miles from the ranch where Brother David’s warriors of God live and train is the town of Coyote Creek. A tavern, a general store, a gas station, a rod and gun shop, a few dozen weathered wooden houses. Little to do, other than the annual rodeo.
Inside the Old Wrangler Tavern, an elk’s head is mounted on the knotty pine wall above a scarred mahogany bar, the antlers serving as a rack for cowboy hats, hunting caps, and even a jock strap. A bartender with a walrus mustache and an enormous stomach draws beer from a tap whose handle is the plastic form of a naked woman.
Half a dozen ranch hands and loggers stand at the bar, hands wrapped around mugs of beer. They are a scruffy, bearded lot, in soiled jeans and red plaid shirts, a few of the younger guys with bandannas on their heads instead of cowboy hats.
Above the bar, a TV is tuned to CNN where a blond female reporter stands in front of a gutted building breathlessly jabbering into a microphone. “The FBI reports no leads in the latest porn shop bombing. Tuesday’s explosion in New York killed five and injured thirteen. Like the earlier blasts, no group has claimed credit for the attacks.”