Blood Trail

“Who deserved it?” she asked, sitting across from him at the table. “What are you reading?”

“Files on Klamath Moore,” Joe said.

Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t like him. He’s a bully.”

“You’ve met him?”

Joe was astounded by both the coincidence and the fact that a teacher had arranged for an in-school program by a man on the FBI’s domestic terror watch list.

She told him the story from her class the day before.

“This was your teacher’s idea?” Joe said, astounded.

“Mrs. Whaling’s kind of, well, passionate about some things. I don’t think she knew what kind of jerk he is. But I didn’t call him a jerk. I called him an asshole.”

Joe flinched.

“I liked his wife, though,” she said. “She was kind to me.”

“Shannon?”

“I didn’t get her name. He didn’t introduce her, which was just not cool. So,” she said, tapping the file, “what does it say about him?”

“I really can’t get into the specifics,” Joe said. “Sorry.”

“Do you think he has something to do with the murders?”

“I’m not sure,” Joe said, “but he may know something about them. But please, keep this between us. I can’t believe I’m even discussing this with you.”

“I’m interested in this kind of stuff,” Sheridan said, rolling her eyes. “I’ve been around it all my life, you know.”

“I wish you hadn’t,” Joe said, stung.

She shrugged. “It is what it is.”

“My, you’re philosophical these days.”

He could tell she had something on her mind, so he waited her out.

“What about what Klamath Moore says?” she asked. “I mean, he’s a jerk and all, but . . .”

“But what?”

“Do people really need to hunt? I mean, there’re easier ways to get food. Like go to the store.”

“Do you really think that?” he asked.

She shrugged. “I’m not sure. On the one hand I do. But on the other...” She reached for a banana from a bowl of fruit on the table and began to peel it. “In order to eat this I need to literally pull the skin off. That’s pretty gross if you think of it that way. And in order to get milk, some guy has to yank on the private parts of a poor old cow. I mean, yuck.”

Joe smiled.

She took a bite of the banana. “It’s too bad we can’t figure out a way to live without making other creatures give up their lives, is what I’m saying. Or something like it.”

“It’s a dilemma,” Joe said. “But let me ask you something. As people build more and more homes in places where wildlife lives, there are more and more encounters. Add to that the fact that the population of many species—deer, bears, mountain lions, elk—are increasing beyond carrying capacities. Is it better for that excess wildlife to starve to death, to be slaughtered by sharpshooters or hit by cars, or is it better for the animals to be harvested by hunters, who thank them for their meat and their lives? And you can’t not choose one of them. People can’t just say how much they love animals and turn their heads away and not have some kind of responsibility. My job as a game warden is to make that last choice—hunting—as efficient, biologically responsible, and sporting as possible.”

Sheridan nodded slowly.

“I talked too much,” Joe said, looking down.

“No, I appreciate what you said,” Sheridan mused. “And there’s another thing I think about. If I were given a choice to live in a world where some people still know how to hunt and survive in the wilderness or a world where it’s all been forgotten, I want to live in that first world. I remember watching television after nine/eleven when all the news people started praising those police and firemen like they didn’t even know those men were still around, like they’d sort of looked down on them for years and years. But all of a sudden, when people needed rescuing and somebody had to be physically brave, they were really glad those men were still around after all. It’s sort of like that.”

She said, “If something big happens and the electricity and Internet go out and we run out of gasoline and groceries, I’m not going to ask Ed Nedny next door or some computer game geek or Emo at school for help. I’m coming straight to you, Dad, because I know you know how to keep us alive.”

Joe grinned, embarrassed but proud.

“One thing I do know, though,” she said, chewing, “is that when somebody is as hateful as Klamath Moore is —even if it is sort of for a good cause—I don’t like them. It’s too much.”

Joe nodded. “You are philosophical. And maybe even wise.”

She grinned at the compliment. “When people want to control other people . . . it’s like those fascists, you know?”