Bearskin by James A McLaughlin

Author:James A McLaughlin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-05-02T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-Five

Rice found the blister pack of same-key padlocks and opened the last one with his key. The second lock was way up on the mountain, protected by wasps inside that steel box on the Forest Service gate. Later this week he would hump a half roll of barbed wire up there and repair the fence he was sure the Stillers had cut on their way in.

He laced his boots, poured a whole pot of coffee into a big plastic convenience store mug, and walked down the driveway. A leisurely hike, he hoped, would help clear his head. The day was quiet except for a weak breeze that rose occasionally to a gust, shuffling branches. His boots crunching in the gravel. The ubiquitous crickets; crows cawing in the distance. A few dead leaves came off and blew overhead, translucent, backlit and glowing briefly in the sun.

Many Others Mountain. Boger had to be making that shit up.

At the entrance, the gate was shut—probably the Stillers had left it swung wide but Boger couldn’t bring himself to drive away from an open gate, no matter how mad he was. Rice opened the mailbox, thinking maybe the Stillers had come back and put a live rattlesnake inside, but it was so full of junk mail there wouldn’t have been room anyway. Must’ve been a while since he’d last emptied it: mass mailings, free local newspapers, nonprofit solicitations for Sara that didn’t get forwarded, thick booklets of coupons for shit he didn’t want. He left it, promised himself he’d clean it out soon. Nothing in there would be addressed to him. Any mail sent to his old address in Tucson had been forwarded to P.O. boxes he didn’t intend to visit again.

A red pickup with a lift kit and straight pipes roared around the turn just past the driveway. Rice stepped back onto the shoulder as the driver nearly clipped the mailbox and gunned it down the straightaway, headed toward Stumpf. The passenger turned to look out the back window, laughing, white teeth in a sparse black beard. No one Rice recognized. A translucent sticker across the top of the window read FEAR THIS in bold letters, a twist on the NO FEAR stickers the local teenagers seemed to like. Rice wondered if those boys could know anything about fear. He wondered if they had any idea what their stupid stickers were saying.

He pulled the gate shut behind him and locked the chain with the new laminated steel padlock. After some searching, he found the old lock in the weeds, its shank cut. It wasn’t a small lock, but now its twin, or triplet, looked flimsy hanging there against the latchpost. The chain that had felt so reassuring every time he’d wrapped it around the end of the gate seemed insubstantial as well. He could buy some better hardware, a new lock and chain, though if he did he would have to mail keys to a list of folks who were supposed to have access:

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