Notches by Peter Bowen Page B

sunk in the deer’s back near the neck and the eagle was flapping its wings and the deer, tongue lolling from exhaustion, was trying to run to safety but there was none.
    The eagle let go and lifted and the deer stood quivering, and then the eagle’s mate stooped and grasped and the deer leaped forward again.
    Du Pré and his father went on. When they came back hours later, pulling the gutted carcass of a dry cow elk, the eagles were feasting on the deer.
    “Them do that,” said Catfoot. “Eagle, him smart bird, the gold ones. Them balds not so smart. They just steal from smaller birds.”
    Du Pré looked down at his feet. They seemed far away. There was a sprig of sagebrush caught in the cracked sole of his boot.
    Du Pré tried to fly up with the bird, to think what this land looked like from high in the air. He could have got someone to fly him but he wasn’t sure what he was looking for.
    Du Pré closed his eyes.
    Old house was here. Had a well, must be there, where the water ran underground.
    The tracks of the tires come in here, ranchers, hunters, they go from the road off into the sagebrush past this old house that is gone, taken by the wind, to the place where there is a little saddle. Rock on either side of it is in shelves six feet high, so that is the way that you have to go to get on out into the prairie.
    High plains.
    Desert.
    All the prophets came from the desert.
    It is the place of clarity.
    I have spent too much time with that Bart and his books.
    This is all Red River.
    The road went west, the snaking ribbon of green that followed the fractured invisible rock beneath went north. They crossed right here.
    The two bodies crossed one on another were over there. Under the left arm of the cross.
    Christ’s right hand was on the left arm of the cross.
    Du Pré shook his head.
    He walked a spiraling path around the spot where the first body was found. The spiral was tight. He could see clearly ten feet or so on a side. Twenty feet wide, the ribbon of earth in his eyes unspooled.
    There.
    Du Pré saw some tiny leaves, little plants which had just taken root in the turned earth. Not very much turned earth. That much could be cut open here with a knife. A little trench scraped.
    Filled and patted and tamped.
    But the seeds knew the air and water there were enough.
    They sprouted, and then …
    There wasn’t enough water.
    The plant was dwarfed.
    Not dead, dormant. Take a few years here, where a single season would be enough if there was enough water.
    Du Pré pulled the folding tool from his belt and he opened it and selected a long file with a square tip and he locked it in place and he shut the handle.
    He dug at the earth beneath the little plant.
    Nothing anywhere here like that little plant.
    Du Pré felt it. He wiggled the tip of the file and clods of earth broke apart.
    Stainless steel gleamed.
    Du Pré dug the knife out.
    Short, triangular blade, black plastic handle with the brand marker scraped off.
    Gleam of metal.
    Gold.
    Du Pré lifted out an engagement ring. Small diamond, but the gold was good, probably eighteen-carat.
    Hopeful ring. We don’t got much money starting out here, but some time, I get you a better one.
    Du Pré pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and he dropped the knife and ring into it and snapped it shut, punched a little hole in the side of the bag with the file and squeezed out the air and put the bag in the pocket of his canvas jacket.
    He dug around the spot, as far as the earth was disturbed.
    Little piece of duct tape.
    Little agate ring, silver mounting.
    Two gold post earrings.
    Du Pré felt the root of the sagebrush. End of the little trench.
    Fucker might buy them damn knives by the gross, Du Pré thought. Hah. He buy one here, one there.
    But I bet that he got a lot of them to hand. Neatly laid out in nice rows.
    Duct tape.
    Right hand of Christ.
    I am getting something here.
    Du Pré turned and he looked back through the sagebrush to the place where the woman’s