“Consider it done,” he said, and plopped down on the floor with a blanket.
Portis blew the flame from the lamp and we all lay there in the dark. The shanty was rippling with dry stove heat and I watched the orange ember of Portis’s cigarette burn. I watched the smoke trail off into the black.
I held Jenna’s little hand and listened as Portis began to sing quietly to himself. His voice was gravelly and low and he sang something about shame and the moon. Something about blaming it on midnight. I closed my eyes and fell asleep to the sound of his voice and the firewood crackling.
Chapter Eight
Shelton returned home and watched the storm through the bay window while he worked the nitrous tank. He was going to town to see about Little Hector, but not until the morning barrage let up a little.
In the meantime, he was glad for Kayla’s ability to sleep through a crash. You heard stories on the news about people sleeping for three straight days when they came off, but you didn’t think it was possible until you saw it firsthand. Well, he had seen it now. Kayla was lying there like a dead person, hour after hour. It was amazing, Shelton thought, what the human body was capable of.
He remembered Krebs then. He’d dispatched him last night, but it occurred to him now he hadn’t seen anybody else out on the trails. He called Krebs and could tell by the sound of his voice that he’d just woken up.
“Shit,” Shelton said. “You didn’t even go out, did you?”
“Man, I’m sorry,” said Krebs. “I sat down here on the couch and must have fell out.”
“Goddamnit,” Shelton said. “I was out there looking all night.”
“Did you find her?”
“No, I didn’t find her. Why would I be calling you if I found her?”
“I don’t know,” Krebs said. “Maybe to tell me to stop looking.”
“You weren’t looking in the first place!”
“It’s an academic point,” Krebs said. “I admit.”
“You got to get out there,” Shelton said.
“I’ll do it,” Krebs said. “Just as soon as this storm settles down. I’m going to call Arrow and see if he wants in. Maybe Clemens too.”
“I can see Clemens,” Shelton said. “But what do you want with that crazy fucker Arrow?”
“I owe him for this other thing,” Krebs said. “I figure this is a good way to square us. He’ll appreciate me cutting him in.”
“Well, that five thousand is a lump sum. It don’t go to every one of you, individually.”
“I know,” Krebs said.
“You’ll have to figure that out amongst yourselves. In terms of the split.”
“We’ll handle the technicalities,” Krebs said. “You heading back out?”
“I’m going to wait this storm out myself,” Shelton said. “Then maybe head into town in the truck.”
“You got a lead?”
“Too early to tell,” Shelton said, and cut his phone off.
Shelton thought it wise to keep Krebs ill informed. He might be in cahoots with the Mexicans for all Shelton knew, and even if he wasn’t it was a better deployment of his resources to keep him in the hills. Krebs wouldn’t do him a damn bit of good in town, and if they did find Jenna with Hector, as Shelton suspected they would, why would he want Krebs riding his coattails for the reward money that didn’t actually exist?
He looked over at Kayla on the floor and she was so lovely and still. He got down on his knees beside her and ran his fingers through her hair and then rested his head next to hers on the carpet.
The Talking Heads were still on the stereo, which came as a surprise to Shelton. How had he not noticed it before? He’d been sitting in the house for twenty minutes, probably heard the song five times, and was just now realizing it was there? Shelton supposed it was the nitrous and the general stresses of the situation. His mind was elsewhere, literally.
And what was there to do about it now, with him so comfortable on the floor and the stereo so far away? Shelton closed his eyes and vaguely understood that he was about to fall asleep.
Chapter Nine
I don’t know how long we slept in that shanty, but the storm had eased and I felt rested when I woke. I drank some water and Portis forced me to eat a plug of jerky, which I hoped was venison but tasted like a smaller game I did not need specifics on. We packed up and were gone.
There was some gray light above the hills as we left the ice—Portis in the lead and me trailing behind with Jenna babbling in her papoose. The snow was piled high on the pine boughs and the woods were still beneath the fresh powder as we walked back into the trees. I was glad to see Portis had wrapped an old T-shirt around his wound, though I doubted he’d bothered to clean it with the whiskey. Baby steps, I thought.
“It’s pretty,” I said. “But I swear I am never coming back up on this hill.”
“This hill is cursed,” said Portis. “There isn’t a doubt.”
“You’re the one that lives here.”
“I don’t so much live as I do exist.”
“That’s deep.”