things, like a guy jabbing on and on at a slot machine, unable to leave it alone until the lights flashed and the prize came pouring out. Cal objected to that comparison, given the amount of hard work and skill he put into fixing things, but that just made Donna throw up her hands and make an explosive noise like a pissed-off cat.
Probably Donna was right, or a little bit right, anyway. The restless feeling is gone.
Mart is leaning on Cal’s gate, staring out across the fields and smoking one of his hand-rolled cigarettes. When he hears the crunch of Cal’s boots on the road, he whips round and greets him with a whoop and a fist pump. “Get up, ya boy ya!”
“Huh?” Cal says.
“I heard you were over at Lena’s place the other day. How’d you get on? Did you get the ride?”
“Jesus, Mart.”
“Did you?”
Cal shakes his head, grinning against his will.
Mart’s screwed-up eyes are alight with mischief. “Don’t be letting me down, bucko. Did you get a kiss and a cuddle, at least?”
“I got to cuddle a puppy,” Cal says. “Does that count?”
“Ah, for Christ’s sake,” Mart says, disgusted. More philosophically, he adds, “Well, it’s a step, anyhow. The women do love a man that likes puppies. You’ll be in like Flynn before you know it. Are you taking her out?”
“Nope,” Cal says. “Might take the puppy, though.”
“If it’s outa that beagle of hers, you might as well. That’s a fine dog. Is that where you’ve been the day? Cuddling puppies?”
“Nah. Went for a walk up the mountain. Stood in a patch of bog, though, so I came home.” Cal holds up his wet boot.
“Watch yourself around them bogs, now,” Mart says, inspecting the boot. Today he’s wearing a dirty orange baseball cap that says BOAT HAIR DON’T CARE. “You don’t know their ways. Step in the wrong patch and you’ll never step out again. They’re fulla tourists; eat ’em like sweeties, so they do.” He shoots Cal a wicked slantwise look.
“Gee,” Cal says. “I didn’t realize I was taking my life in my hands.”
“And that’s before you start on the mountainy men. They’re all stone mad, up there; split your head open as soon as look at you.”
“Tourist board wouldn’t like you,” Cal says.
“Tourist board hasn’t been up them mountains. You stay down here, where we’re civilized.”
“I might do that,” Cal says, reaching to open his gate. And, when Mart doesn’t move: “I haven’t been to town, man. Sorry ’bout that.”
The mischief falls off Mart’s face instantly and completely, leaving it grim. “I’m not here looking for biscuits,” he says. He takes one more hard draw on his cigarette and throws it into a puddle. “Come on up to my back field. I’ve something to show you.”
Mart’s sheep are clumped together in the near field. They’re edgy, jostling and picking up their feet nervously, not grazing. The far field is empty, or almost. In the middle of the green grass is a rough pale heap, not immediately identifiable.
“One of my best ewes,” Mart says, swinging the gate open. His voice has a flat tone so far from its usual snappy lilt that Cal finds it a little bit unsettling. “Found her this morning.”
Cal walks round the ewe the way he would walk a crime scene, keeping his distance and taking his time. Clusters of big black flies are busy among the white wool. When he moves closer he waves an arm to make them rise, looping and buzzing angrily, so he can get a clear view.
Something bad has got at the sheep. Its throat is a mess of clotted blood; so is the inside of its mouth, lolling too wide open. Its eyes are gone. A rectangular patch on its side, two hand-spans across, is flayed to the ribs. Under its tail is a great red hole.
“Well,” Cal says. “This isn’t good.”
“Same as Bobby Feeney’s,” Mart says. His face is hard.
Cal is examining the grass, but it’s too springy to hold prints. “I looked,” Mart says. “In the muck out by the road, as well. There’s nothing to see.”
“Kojak pick up any trail?”
“He’s a herd dog, not a tracking dog.” Mart tilts his chin at the ewe. “He didn’t like this at all, at all. He went pure mental. Didn’t know whether to attack it or run for his life.”
“Poor guy,” Cal says. He squats to look more closely, still keeping some distance—the rich smell of rot is already starting to seep from the ewe. The edges