That night, they ate big steaks and drank beer after beer at a guest lodge in the foothills of the mountains. Old-timers at the bar had heard the story and sent over rounds of drinks for the game wardens. They, like Trey, admired old 304. But the bear had to go. A fed bear was a dead bear.
Joe left Trey at the bar and found a pay phone outside. It was cold as he shoved quarters in, and he could see his breath as he said, "Hello, darling," to Marybeth.
"Where are you?" she asked. Even colder.
He leaned back and looked at the sign out near the highway. "Someplace called the T Bar."
"In Jackson?"
"No," he said. "By Cody."
"Cody.Joe, why are you there? Why aren't you in Jackson? Why didn't you call like you said you would?"
Joe said, "Didn't you get the second message from dispatch?"
"What message?"
He told her the whole story, but he could tell by her tone she was still furious with him. As he told her how scared he had been when he walked up on the grizzly, she said, "Sheridan has been an absolute beast. I can't even talk to that girl anymore."
Joe paused. "Marybeth, are you listening?"
"For three days I've been worried about you. Do you know what that's like?"
"No," Joe said, looking out at the highway. "I guess I don't."
He didn't know if he was angry, guilt-stricken, or both.
"I'll give you a call tomorrow," he said, and hung up the phone.
Trey was watching him as he reclaimed his stool at the bar. "Everything okay?"
"Marybeth didn't get the second dispatch message. She didn't know where I've been."
"Uh-oh." Trey shook his head. "I wonder if my missus got it?"
"You better call her," Joe said.
"So I can look as miserable as you?" Trey said. "I think I'll have another beer."
The next morning, as he crossed the Shoshone River out of Cody, Joe felt ashamed of himself. He had not slept well in his motel room, despite a few too many beers. He tried to reassess where he was in time and place in regard to his new assignment. He was four days behind schedule, and he had not yet had a chance to really talk everything over with Marybeth, without distractions. He had frozen when he should have fired. He convinced himself that if the bear had gone after Trey, he would have reacted well and started blasting. Of course he would have, he thought. He had pulled his weapon and fired in anger before. Once, he had hit a man from a long distance, but he hadn't known it at the time. But he had never faced someone, or something like a bear, looking him straight in the eye.
Later, he felt the shroud lifting. The guilt he had felt earlier about leaving Marybeth and the girls was still there, but the challenge of what he was about to face surged hot and steady. He already missed his family, but the residue of the telephone call with Marybeth remained. It had not been a good conversation.
Sure, she had a right to be worried and angry. But he had wanted to talk with her, tell her how tough it had been to go face-to-face with that bear, and what he had done. Instead, it had all been about her. She made him feel guilty. She always made him feel guilty. He knew the last five years had been tough on her. She'd gone through more than anyone deserved. But would there ever be a time when he didn't have to walk around on eggshells? When she didn't seem to blame him for what their life had become?
He was being unfair. Despite everything, he loved her. Without her he would spin off the planet. He needed her to ground him.
But he looked forward to the change. He looked forward to his new district.
Had the pressures in Saddlestring, and in the house, really gotten to him to this degree, he wondered, that the prospect of riding up alone on armed men in a hunting camp seemed like a boy's holiday? He tried to shake that thought out of his head. He tried to make an argument that it was good to have a mission, good to have a tough assignment. It was good to be trusted by Trey, to have been chosen out of the other fifty-five game wardens for the hottest, most high-profile district.
As he drove up the canyon, he watched the signal on his cell phone recede to nothing, followed by a digital NO SERVICE prompt.
Here we go,he thought. Here we go.
SEVEN
Even though he should have been prepared for them, even though he had seen them dozens of times in photos, paintings, movies, on postage stamps, and in person, Joe still felt his heart skip a beat when the timber opened up on the road south of Yellowstone Park and the Tetons filled up the late afternoon vista. Mount Moran in particular, with its comma-shaped glacier of snow, burned bright in the cloudless sky. The dark, rounded shoulders of the Bighorns, hismountains, had been replaced by the glittering silver-white Tetons, which thrust upward like razor-edged sabers trying to slice open the sky. He felt like he was switching his comfortable horizon with a new, dazzling, high-tech model.
He wondered if he would ever get used to seeing those mountains without feeling a flutter in his stomach each time he looked. It was hard, Joe thought, not to be intimidated by the Tetons. There were no other mountains like them in the world; so new, sharp, and lethal that foothills hadn't yet had the courage to approach them. He wondered if Will Jensen had ever gotten used to them. How could something that dramatic ever really provide the comfort of familiar scenery?
Traffic south to Jackson through Grand Teton National Park was heavy, and Joe became part of a long parade of vehicles. The highway was choked with huge recreational vehicles helmed by older drivers who apparently thought the fifty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit was a challenge they wouldn't dare confront. He settled in, unable to pass because the exodus of tourist traffic in the oncoming lane was just as dense. Driving cautiously, he knew that the sighting of a moose, elk, or bear from the highway would instantly cause visitors to hit their brakes and, without pulling over to the shoulder, pour out of their vehicles with cameras and camcorders. On his left the ground rose in a gentle swell toward the Gros Ventre Mountains. On the raised flats, barely visible from the road, were old dude ranches. The movie Shanehad been filmed on one of them, Joe remembered. It was the only movie he and his father had ever agreed on, maybe the only thingthey had ever agreed on. Then he realized something that both scared and exhilarated him: This was his new district.As far as he could see in every direction, from the Tetons to the west, Gros Ventres to the east, Yellowstone Park to the north, to the town of Jackson ahead of him to the south, was his new responsibility.
Jackson was just a couple of hundred miles from Saddlestring, Joe thought, but it was a world apart.
The big new two-story state building had a parking lot in front for visitors and a private lot in back for employees of various agencies. Joe cruised through the staff lot, looking for a parking space, but they all appeared to be designated. The only open one he saw was marked for W. JENSEN. Even though there wasn't anywhere else available behind the building, he chose not to use it. Not yet. Instead, he wheeled around the front, parked between two RVs, and entered the building through the double doors.
In the lobby, tourists stood and rifled through a rack of brochures offering horseback rides, an aerial tram ride to the top of the Tetons, chuck wagon cookouts, white-water rafting, and other excursions, as well as accommodations.