In Plain Sight

He wished it weren’t so far down the slope to the little creek. He’d need to make a few more trips with those buckets. He had a mess to clean up. The bed of his pickup was wet and sticky with blood and clumps of hair.

MORE THAN ONCE since he’d been in the Bighorns, he thought about that cowboy in the Shirley Basin, the one he’d shot. When he recalled that morning, he shook his head and looked at the ground, not out of remorse but because an act like that was such a bold and reckless chance to take. A smile would break across his face and he had to make sure no one was looking, because he was infused with the kind of raw dark joy that he’d felt only once before in his life, with that hunter from Atlanta and his wife.

But that cowboy, well, maybe that had not been the smartest thing. There was a highway within view, and someone could have seen him. Hell, there could have been someone in the cowboy’s truck, waiting for him. Keeley hadn’t checked out that possibility at the time.

That he had just raised the rifle and shot the way he did, as easy as it was, as slick as it was, man . . .

Maybe it was smart after all, he figured. Anyone investigating the shooting would look at the cowboy’s friends and family, try to figure out who didn’t like him, whom he owed money to, that sort of thing. The randomness of the act accomplished a couple of things. It reminded Keeley that he had ultimate power over those who fucked with him. Anybody could get angry, or let himself be insulted. But it took someone with big brass balls to do anything about it. Recalling that morning made him think harder about what he was doing, and what he was about to do. He couldn’t be impulsive again, for one thing. No more lashing out, no outbursts. He had to be cool and smart.

That was the difference, after all, between him and those assholes in Rawlins, even the late Wacey Hedeman. Damn, he wished he’d been there to see that, when Wacey took his last chew. It wasn’t quite the same thrill when it happened offstage, even though in the end the result was the same.

LUCK WAS HIS lady, though. Luck and cool and a purpose. They’d all come together, like whiskey, ice, and water to form something perfect. For five long hot years at Parchman Farm, Mississippi’s only maximum security prison, he’d had to just fucking sit there and stew. The more the rage built inside, the colder he got on the outside. He’d learned about what happened to his brother Ote through a letter from their mother. Two years later, after Mama died, he found out about Jeannie and April from his shit-for-brains lawyer. While he cooled his heels at Parchman Farm, what remained of his family was being taken from him one by one and there was nothing he could do about it. His frustration and anger was white-hot, and in some ways it was the purest emotion he’d ever felt. But he channeled it, tucked it inside himself. And waited. His reward for holding his emotion in, he felt, was coming now. Events were finally breaking in his favor. Getting hired by Hank Scarlett within a day of hitting town, what was the likelihood of that? Plus, Keeley knew how this small-town stuff worked. Normally, he would have attracted a little bit of attention, being so different and all. But two things were happening. One, the coal-bed methane companies were hiring just about any warm body they could find, so there were lots of new faces in town. Hard men, like himself. Many were from the South, like him. Second, the feud between Hank and Arlen took center stage in Twelve Sleep County, and the new men Hank was hiring were lumped into the category of thugs. No one cared about the individual makeup of Hank’s private little army, just the fact that the army existed.

Keeley couldn’t imagine any other scenario in which he could have been hired as a ranch hand with practically no ranching experience. The closest he’d ever come to cows, he thought, was eating a cheeseburger. But Hank had looked him over the way a coach evaluates on-field talent, said the word sinewy, then asked his name.

“Bill Monroe,” Keeley had said, thinking of the first name that popped into his head.

“Bill Monroe,” Hank repeated, “you’ve got yourself a job.”

One of these days, Keeley thought, somebody was going to be a bluegrass fan and ask him twice about his name. But so far it hadn’t happened.

THERE HAD BEEN that morning two weeks ago, Keeley recalled, when he watched Joe Pickett through the scope of his rifle and nearly pulled the trigger. Hank had sent him out to drive the fence line and check the locks. The game warden was out counting deer when Keeley saw the familiar green pickup. Hunkering down in a tangle of brush, Keeley placed the crosshairs of the rifle scope on Joe Pickett’s nose.

The game warden seemed to sense he was being watched, the way he looked around. But he never saw Keeley.