Lonesome Animals Read Online Free PDF Page B

demonstrating doubt, nor hacks from anger, just work done well. The rest was lunacy or a sense of humor. The incisions were where the genius was. His killer had shucked himself of emotion for practicality.
    â€œHell of a mess,” Truax said, behind him again.
    Strawl nodded.
    â€œNot your problem, though.”
    â€œNope.”
    â€œWho’ll take care of it, then?”
    â€œNo one.”
    The skin between Truax’s eyebrows pressed together. He rubbed his forehead, folding his thumb and index finger over each temple. “Ain’t nothing you can do?”
    â€œTribe’s got its police. Maybe they’ll get lucky. That’s what it’ll take.”

    â€œRedskins hunting a redskin,” Truax said.
    â€œWhat makes you so sure it’s an Indian committed this crime?” Strawl asked him.
    â€œThey’re the only ones with time to do it up fancy,” Truax told him. “Rest of us got jobs.”
    Outside, the day’s light blinded him, then a clanking engine and the whir of wings and flaps split the air. Strawl lifted his face toward the plane and spread his arms, thinking he might himself take flight if he took a notion, but he remained anchored to the earth, looking crucified by the plane’s hurtling shadow.
    Strawl’s hearing was as constant as a hound on the scent and sounds to him were clear and separate as smells. He could recognize a footstep two miles off, and likely what made it, and he could do it in a rainstorm. Moreover, his head divided sounds until he had them situated as well as if he could see what was making them. But such a clatter melted his talent into a chaos of noise and undid his nerves.
    He reclined upon a shaded bleacher seat until the plane lopped over them, then suspended above the hard dirt like it required a moment to become simple and machine again, then rattled to the ground, stopping near the tiny horse track’s grandstand, which held twenty Indians and rounders, as well as Strawl, ready to replace one gawker with another.
    The girl finishing her ride reported she recognized nothing from above, not her house, not the town. The river turned a drizzle.
    â€œA wonder the birds don’t get lost,” Strawl said.
    Their faces turned toward him. The crowd parted as he approached the airplane and its pilot, whom he showed his badge.
    â€œPolice business,” Strawl said. It was a big place with few people and lots of cover if you could manage on your own, and many could. He had decided a look from above might be of use.

    He labored over the wing and into the plane’s cockpit. The pilot handed Strawl a set of smeared goggles that Strawl declined. The plane’s pistons began to whir. The connecting rods ticked and the cam whined and the carburetor twisted air and gasoline to accept the plug’s spark. The tires bounced on the hard dirt while the wings bucked the wind and gravity until the plane shuddered and with a tug, began to rise. They climbed slowly over the rooftops, checkerboard spaces between the dusty streets like the tartan wool in the mackinaw the pilot wore. The trees were upended cones and then circles that contained differing degrees of green.
    The pilot banked over the town and the fairgrounds and the upturned faces. Strawl pointed him south and west. The pilot nodded and they traced the river’s channel. Cataracts boiled in its black current. Later, in a smooth pool near Washington Flats, a flock of mudhens rose as one. They could have been a school of fish misplaced, like Strawl himself flying, but he likened them more to a symphony climbing the opening notes of the overture, the instruments synchronized in a way both natural and not.
    The dam was before them, then, a scar marking the river’s course, but a minor wound from this high, an injury one survives, one that adds to one’s courage, or the myth of that courage.
    Strawl directed the pilot to the other side, and they floated over the