I work for the Bureau of Land Management as an archaeological law enforcement ranger, with the only certified search-and-rescue dog in the county. Because I’m a ranger, I do a little bit of everything, especially during hunting season. My job falls under the Archaeological Resources Protection Act. I enforce the laws against archaeological looting. I survey for disturbance, walk sacred ground. I’m a guardian of sorts, a police for the past.
I’ve been a morning person for as long as I can remember, craving the solitude when I awake as much as a strong cup of coffee. Most mornings I will read. On days when I know I’ll be in the office and not in the field, I’ll take Kona on a run with me. That morning I watched the sky, listened to the river, thought about starting a load of laundry. I still had another hour or so before Joseph would be getting up for school. Joseph is a beautiful blue-eyed boy with hair the color of sun-bleached hay. “Pet me,” he used to say, when he was competing for attention with the border collie we used to have. And so I would stroke his hair and kiss his cheeks, salty from play and the outdoors. “How much does Mama love you?” I’d say. “Big much,” he’d say, holding his arms out wide. Then I would take him to me like a mother bear with her cub.
But these days Joseph is taller than I. He’s been driving for over a month now. I try to tell myself his getting his license is a good thing, that he is growing up. But still there’s something else. Something I can’t put a name on. Something that happened so fast, I never saw it coming.
An icy breeze ribboned through the air. I slid my bare toes underneath Kona’s belly and drank the rest of the coffee, the liquid having turned lukewarm. A dog barked in the distance. Kona raised his head, his ears alert. Then the crunching of large tires against loose stone. The truck’s beams soon rounded the house and lit up a pathway across the tall grass toward the riverbank.
I knew it was Colm. Knew the sound of his vehicle and the way he slammed his door.
“Morning,” I yelled through the screen.
Colm climbed the porch steps and lifted the screen door slightly to open it. The door needed new hinges, another item on my to-do list that I kept promising myself I’d get to.
Kona settled back down when he saw it was the sheriff.
“You’re up awfully early,” I said.
“No different than you.”
“Want some coffee?” I started to get up.
“Stay put. I know my way to the kitchen.”
I’ve known Colm since before my son was born. Colm would read the gas meter each month at a small rental house where I used to live. Like me, Colm isn’t from Rio Mesa. He moved here as a young man, somewhere in his early twenties, taking on a job with White River Natural Gas. Then when the only television tower was shut off, when residents in the county who wished to watch TV were forced to buy into satellite, Colm began installing dishes and network boxes. His work brought him into people’s homes, where he was offered coffee and beer and neighborly conversation, the kind of conversation that led to ideas. Colm became someone people got to know and like. He listened and had a way of letting people know he’d heard what they’d said, heard it and thought about it and thought about it some more. Maybe it was the way his green eyes would fasten intently on the eyes of another, or the way he’d nod contemplatively, or the way he’d wait calmly, his whole body still, for a person to finish speaking before he’d respond. I’m not sure who first introduced the notion that Colm should run for sheriff. But once the idea got around, it spread like a rumor in a small town, the kind of rumor people get accustomed to real quickly until it is simply the way things are, or in Colm’s case, the way things would be.
Colm appeared with a mug in his hand. “How was your weekend?” he asked.
“Not bad. Yours?”
“Can’t complain.” Colm sat in the cedar-backed chair beside me, his big knees squared out in front of him. “I saw Joseph the other day. Over by the school. He seems to be getting along all right.”
“Sometimes I worry about him,” I said.
Colm blew on the coffee before he took a loud swallow. “Course you do. You’re his mother.”
I smiled a little. And then that part of me that had curled itself deep down in my chest started to stir. That part of me that wanted to say, He’s all I have, but instead I said, “It’s five o’clock in the morning. My coffee isn’t that good to bring you out here.”
Colm took another swallow, pulled back his lips, and exhaled slowly. “A call came in last night. Missing hunter.”
“Where?”
“East Douglas. She came out here with a couple of guys from Evergreen. Took the truck out by herself sometime yesterday morning. The guys she’d traveled with called a little while ago. She still hasn’t shown.”
“Did she have her cell with her?”
“If she did, she’s not answering. Or can’t get a signal.”
“Where’s the camp?” I asked.
“A pull-off in Pintada Draw. One of her friends thought she might have headed east toward Big Ridge. Said he thought he heard a gun go off later that morning, but he wasn’t sure. Except she was hunting with a bow,” Colm said. “Her friends filled their tags with rifles a couple of days ago.”