lathered up, he'd almost convinced himself the night had never happened. But then he looked down at the traitorous piece of meat dangling between his legs and knew that he'd lost something he'd never regain.
Now Betty was always flirting with him, teasing him about that night, and jokingly threatening to tell Tamara. He had promised himself he'd never stray again, and, so far, he'd been as true as an encyclopedia. But sometimes he wondered if his little inner demon, as the rednecks liked to say about the South, was going to rise again.
But maybe it was all Tamara’s fault. If she hadn’t been going on about those damned Gloomies all the time, driving him nuts, not understanding the pressure he was under Yeah. Her fault. That works.
He blew smoke into the hallway as he made his way back to the studio. Through the monitor speakers, he heard Dennis heading into the break with a whimsical feature about the woolly worm's weather predictions. The official woolly worm had two dark rings at the end of its body, heralding two more weeks of snowy weather. Dennis told the audience that the woolly worm was eighty-three percent accurate, which beat the predictions of the National Weather Service all to hell.
They've even broken mountain folklore down to a scientific formula. Mysterious green lights and Gloomies, maybe everybody wants to believe in magic. So why the hell can’t I?
Robert looked through the large plate glass into the control room. Dennis held up two fingers. Two minutes left before the wrap-up. Time enough to check the entertainment wire.
Patterson was in the hall, blocking it with his chubby elbows angled out at his sides, the requisite scowl on his face.
Christ, why didn't he ditch those acrylic sweater vests? They make him look even more like one of Willy Wonka’s Oompah Loompahs than usual.
'You were late again, Robert,' Patterson said in the gravelly voice the old ladies in WRNC's audience swooned over. At least those who didn’t know him personally.
'Yeah. Couldn't find the car keys this morning. Won't happen again.'
'Better not. By the way, we've got a remote this weekend for Blossomfest, and I'm volunteering the on-air staff to emcee it. So don't make any plans.'
'Fine,' Robert said, aching for the cup of coffee that was waiting in the storeroom that passed for a lounge. 'You're the boss.'
He sidestepped to the right, and Patterson yielded, letting him pass. Patterson’s scowl drifted into a smug smile, an expression Robert wouldn't mind feeding to him with a shovel one day.
'One more thing,' Patterson said to his back. 'You've got to re-cut that Petty Pleasures spot. Dawn Petty called and said the voiceover wasn't exciting enough.'
How do you work up a good phlegm ball of enthusiasm over a craft and knickknack shop? What did she want, Glen Beck on uppers, telling the world what a 'special, special place' it was?
'Aye-aye, Commander. I'll get right on it.” Robert turned the corner and Betty was standing there, batting her thick waxy eyelashes.
'When you going to get right on this?' she whispered, jutting her chest at him.
'Not now, Betty,' he said. In fact, not ever again.
He hoped.
When Dennis turned the console back over to Robert, the mic smelled of cologne and breath mints. It was time to read the daily obituaries. Robert had a healthy respect for the dead, especially because he didn't want to be among their number. But for some reason, reading the daily obituaries always made him want to snicker.
Perhaps it was due to trying to maintain the appropriate blend of gravity and pep. Maybe it was because of the odd local names. It could be because of his off-beat sense of humor. Or maybe it was what Tamara called his 'inappropriate emotional response disorder.' Whatever it was, he sometimes had to flip the mic off for a second to cover his snickers.
He opened the folder and looked at the name of the first dearly departed. It was Dooley R. Klutz.
Robert felt as if he could really use a drink.
Sylvester Mull cradled his. 30–06 in the crook of his left elbow, his trigger hand gripping the wooden stock. He ducked under a low pine branch, one of the few scraps of greenery in the mountains this time of year. He was hunting out of season and wore brown camouflage coveralls, but still felt as exposed as a peacock in a turkey pen. The damned deer seemed to be getting smarter and smarter, or maybe he was just getting dumber.
Last year, he'd only bagged a couple of bucks, a four-pointer and a six-pointer. Not even worth hanging those scraggly-assed sets of horns on the wall down at the Moose Lodge. But he didn't hunt for the glory of it, like a lot of those beer-bellied Moosers did. He liked to put meat on the table cheap, or free if possible. Of course, they weren’t exactly giving away ammunition these days, what with them damn liberals putting the pressure on the gun industry.
But hunting was only half the reason he lurked in the woods. The joy was in getting away out here on the back side of Bear Claw, where the car exhaust didn't burn your eyes and the only noise was the northwest wind tangling with the treetops.
Blow on, wind. Just push the ass end of winter right on out of these parts.
The last snows had been late and deep. It might only be his imagination, but he couldn't remember the weather ever being so bad. Seemed to have gotten worse over the last few years. And them damned geniuses on the news kept on about global warming when any fool could plainly tell it was getting colder.
Used to be, by this time of the year, red buds would be hanging on the tips of the oak and hickory trees and the briars would have little sprigs of bright green leaves up and down their spines. But today, everything was the color of mud and barn stalls, dreary from the rainstorm that had hit the mountains last night. The wind had pushed the storm away, though another sprinkle had started around noon. The first stubborn flowers had poked through the dead leaves, bloodroot, trout lilies, and slim, pale stalks of chickweed. In the protected hollows, mist hung like gun smoke over a battlefield. The mist was easy to hide in, and maybe, if he was lucky, a buck or doe might just pass right under his nose.
Sylvester had built this stand last fall, when the hunting season had about petered out. Dead pine branches stacked against each other, a few logs strung together with twine to hold the mess up, and a little leaf-covered tarp tied overhead to keep him dry. With his brown clothes and hair, he blended with the environment. And he ought to, as many years as he'd hoofed through these woods trying to rustle up some meat. He didn't wear one of those flaming orange hats that they sold in the sporting goods section down at the Kmart.
That was one of the dumbest things Sylvester had ever heard of. Might as well carry a neon sign that said, Hey, deer, come over here and get blown to hell. Prevented accidents, they said. Well, if a fellow couldn't tell a man from an animal, he had no business in the woods with a gun anyway.
Sylvester crouched in the stand, his feet hot in his boots, and listened to the forest. Nothing but wind and the soft splash of the rain, but that was okay. Plenty of time to think. Because hunting was timeless, the past pretty much like the present, whether in season or out. He could just as easily have been a brainless caveman waiting to spear a hairy elephant or a space alien with a zapper ray-gun, like in the movies. The hunter and the hunted, that’s what it all came down to.
A bad day of hunting beat the hell out of the best day of work. He'd called in sick down at Bryson's Feed where he drove a delivery truck, and it wasn't the first time he'd skipped to go after deer or pheasant or squirrels.
Hell, he had been sick, in a way. Sick of that yackitty-assed wife of his, Peggy, and those snot-nosed brats she'd laid on him, who sat on their sorry asses all day staring bug eyed at them video games. All crowded in the nasty trailer that Peggy was too lazy to clean. Who wouldn’t want to escape from that?
He didn't escape in beer the way most of his fellow Moosers did, even though the thought was mighty tempting. He only had to look around on a Friday night at those sad-eyed middle-aged losers to remind himself how fast it all went away. Their last good years were draining through their livers, the alcohol fogging their fat heads and blurring their eyesight. He wasn't even sure why he had joined the Lodge. Probably because you had to own a necktie to get into the Lion's Club.
Most of his friends belonged to the Lodge. Billy Ray Silas, for one. They'd gone hunting and fishing together for the last twenty years, and once every six months they packed up and headed to the top of Blackstone Mountain for a week-long camping trip. Of course, they spent three days of pump’n’pay at a whorehouse in Titusville before they even unloaded the truck. But Sylvester always brought something back, a good twenty-inch rainbow trout or a
