In Plain Sight

As he walked across the parking lot toward the store, he breathed in deeply and looked around him. It was high and desolate, this country, as if the prairie had been pushed from below the earth way up in the air. He thought of seeing the sign just an hour ago that read CONTINENTAL DIVIDE, thinking, That’s it? Not a single damned tree. The smell in the air was of diesel fumes from the trucks lined up on the far side of the lot and something sweet that he guessed was sagebrush. Even with the interstate highway humming behind him, there was an immense blanket of quiet off the road. The air was light and thin, and the terrain wide open as far as he could see. He felt exposed, like everybody who could see him would know why he was there, what he was up to. He thought of the herds of pronghorn antelope he had seen in the distance as the sun came up. Hundreds of them out there, red-brown and white, glowing when the sun hit them and lit them up. Unlike the animals he was used to at home who survived by hiding in the dark timber and the swamp, and moved only at night, these antelope stood out there in the wide-open plains, bold as you please, using the openness and long-range visibility as a defense measure. If you could see them, he thought, they could see you. Hide in plain sight, that was the way out here. He would learn something from that.

In the bathroom, he stripped off his greasy sweatshirt, balled it up, and tossed it in a garbage can. He filled the sink with water, splashed his face and rubbed it under his arms, across his chest, and dried off with paper towels. He stared at his reflection in the mirror, liking what he saw. Liking it a lot.

His blue eyes burned back from shadowed sockets. There were hollows under his sharp cheekbones, and his three-day growth of beard added an edge to his gaunt features that had once been described by the wife of his last hunting client as “haunted.” He didn’t know if that was good or bad, but he didn’t forget the word. He tilted his chin up and surveyed his pectorals, and liked the clean definition of them, and the blue, green, and red tattoo of a striking water moccasin that stretched from one nipple to the other. The way the head of the snake turned out with an open mouth and dead black eyes always gave him a little thrill. It scared some women, another thing that was all right with him.

He pulled the rubber band out of his long brown hair, combed it back with his fingers, and then snapped it back on. With his hair pulled back so tight, it looked as though he wore a skull cap, and his eyes appeared even more piercing. He liked that too.

Teeth bared into a half grin, he made his eyes go dead. This was his most fearsome look. He had showed it to the lady who said he seemed haunted, and it had the desired effect. She was terrified, her eyes so wide they looked about to pop out, her mouth forming a perfect little hole. That felt good, to have that kind of power over a rich, stupid lady who shouldn’t have been in his hunting camp in the first place.

The bathroom door wheezed open and a trucker came in. He was big through the shoulders but had a fleshy face and a big belly. When the trucker saw him standing there at the sink he started to say something smart-ass, something like “Doing a little primping, eh?” or “Did you forget your hair spray?” but when their eyes met in the mirror it was as if the fat man suddenly choked on a piece of meat. All the man did was nod, turn away, and pass behind him for the shelter of a stall.

He winked at himself in the mirror, pleased with the effect he had on a man outweighing him by at least ninety pounds, then pulled his new shirt on and walked out of the bathroom.

As he passed the counter, which was stacked with displays for all-natural amphetamines and cigarette lighters in the shape of cell phones and hand grenades, he asked the bored, washed-out clerk, “Is this the right road to get to the Wyoming State Pen?”

“The pay-un?” the clerk said, mocking his accent. He was so surprised by her insolence that he didn’t know what to say. His first instinct was to reach over the box of beef jerky and pull her tongue out by the roots.

“Yeah,” she continued, either too empty-headed or jaded to care about how he felt, “this is the exit. Just get back on the road and go over the hill and you’ll see it.” She gestured vaguely over her head, to the south. “You visiting or checking in?”

Again, she insulted him! He could feel the rush of blood to his face, feel his fists involuntarily clench. If only she knew what he was capable of, he thought. If only that clerk knew about what had happened to that hunter and his wife back in Mississippi, she wouldn’t be doing this. That couple should never have left Atlanta to go hunting in their green SUV.

THE SIGHT OF the prison complex, a bunch of low-slung gray buildings sprawled across a sagebrush-choked valley, cooled him down a little. As he passed the sign that read NO TRESPASSING: ALL VEHICLES AND INDIVIDUALS ARE SUBJECT TO SEARCH BEYOND THIS POINT, his mind focused again, his anger venting out like the kack-kack-kack of a pressure cooker releasing steam, the reason for his arrival coming back into prominence.

Not that he didn’t think about that woman behind the counter, how he could come back later and wait for her in the employee parking lot so that he could break her face—and that mouth!—open with an iron bar. But he had work to do, information to get, and it had been long in planning. He couldn’t let her insolence set him back, add an unnecessary complication. That clerk would never know how close she had come to . . . what? He wasn’t sure. He would have just let his rage take over, seen where it took him. One thing he was sure of: she was the luckiest woman in Rawlins, Wyoming. Too bad she didn’t know it.

The prison was close to the interstate, but a high rocky ridge separated the two. Every day, thousands of travelers took that interstate going either east or west, and few if any of them knew how close they were to a maximum-security prison just over the hill, a place filled with murderers, rapists, kidnappers, and other scum of the earth. He had known plenty of ex-cons. Some he’d grown up with, some he’d hired, some he’d gone drink for drink with at a bar. In fact, technically, he was an ex-con, although he didn’t feel like one. Five years in his state pen down South for aggravated assault. He’d spent most of his time observing the makeup of the general population. To a man, they were stupid. Even the ones with some intelligence had a stupid blind spot that later tripped them up. They deserved to go to prison. They didn’t think, they just did. They were nature’s mistakes, human bowel movements. Prison was too good for most of them. And he’d told a couple of them that right to their faces, because he didn’t care what they thought of him.

He cruised through the parking lot, looking at the cars. Half of the plates were from Wyoming, the rest from all over. He saw a flash of brake lights from a yellow ten-year-old Ford pickup with a camper shell and Wyoming plates. The truck had just pulled in. He parked the SUV two rows behind it. While he waited, he emptied all the metal from his pockets into a dirty sock and put it in the glove compartment. The occupants of the truck, an older man wearing red suspenders and a pear-shaped woman with tight gray curls, finally got out to go inside. They were no doubt the parents or grandparents of some stupid convict, and in a way it was kind of a sweet, sad thing to see. Were they wondering what they could have done differently? Did they ask themselves where they had gone wrong, to turn out a son like this, a human bowel movement? But, he said to himself, at least they have family.

He took a quick look in the mirror, smiled at his reflection, and followed. The old couple walked so slowly he overtook them at the entrance to the building. The man flinched a bit when he darted in front of them and grabbed the handle to the door.

The old man snorted, said, “What in the . . . ?”