read. The ranch had Waco written all over it. Bunny Cleaver was the perfect employer for Nolan Mikesel.
Like Bunny himself, Nolan believed that God had put man in charge and the world was here for our benefit. He fancied himself a “real man,” in contrast to, as he put it, “those wolf-loving eco-pussies.” He relished the company of other real men like Bunny Cleaver and his boys. While riding with his cowboy homies, Nolan could shuck his reputation for failure as the inevitable result of his oppression by the evil federal government. He was not a loser, he was a victim. A noble victim. A righteous martyr.
Beyond the hall of mirrors that was the Bunny Cleaver ranch, what was real about Nolan Mikesel was open to question. Even Nolan’s noble pioneer genealogy didn’t hold up under scrutiny. Yes, his great-great-granddad was a fine man who fled debt and servitude in a mill town in New England and took a big chance on a better life. He came to the desert and made something out of nothing. His ranch was modest by today’s standards but back then it was viable, sometimes prosperous. It afforded independence and opportunity that his great-great-grandfather couldn’t achieve in the class-bound industrial mills of his day. As far as the record shows, he never killed an Indian though no doubt his neighbors did with his approval.
That original Mikesel rancher had three sons that lived. They divided the ranch up; their parcels were hardly big enough to make a living individually so the Mikesel boys took up trades. One was remembered as a skilled carpenter and another could doctor sick cows and horses better than anyone in those parts. Nolan’s great-grandfather was known for his ability to brand cows and cut off their testicles. Rocky Mountain oysters, they’re called. He was a good man to help you on that aspect of ranching when it had to be done. He went by the nickname Nuts.
Nuts Mikesel had four sons. The one who was Nolan’s grandfather lived through the Depression and went to war along with his Mikesel brothers. He valiantly fought the Japanese in the South Pacific. The Depression made him hungry and mean; combat hardened him. After he returned he often suffered depression and couldn’t sleep. He drank too much and gambled. He lived just long enough to sire Nolan’s dad and uncle before he fell off his horse and broke his neck.
Nolan’s uncle got out of ranching early, earned a degree at the state college, and built a prosperous life in cities in California and Texas. Nolan’s father stayed behind because he dropped out of high school and, like his own dad, he had a drinking problem. Even after he gave up the bottle he could never get his act together. He tried his hand at sales of this and that, did construction jobs when they were available, and collected unemployment over and over from a government he professed to hate. He got food stamps, too. He reconciled this conflict between his behavior and his beliefs by calling it “bleeding the beast.” No, it wasn’t welfare, it was revenge.
Nolan likened himself to John Wayne or Clint Eastwood and his other independent cowboy heroes. Mention welfare and he became defensive in an offensive way. Racism was always lurking in the background, ready for him to use when his dependence on the government was exposed or even suggested. According to Nole, it’s those lazy black bastards and their slut mommas that are a burden on America. That and wetbacks. He knew it was a deflection that usually worked well because, apparently, it was grounded in widely shared beliefs.
Like the generation before them, Nolan had brothers and sisters who left for college and became successful in careers far away from the ranch where they were raised. As his family’s lowest denominator dynamic played its last hand, Nolan became the sole heir of the Mikesel Ranch, which by then was composed of a hundred acres of dried-up pasture, two house trailers, a half-dozen dilapidated outbuildings, four abandoned trucks, and a rusty refrigerator that stood doorless next to a pile of broken bottles and squashed cans. There was a corral with one emaciated horse but no other signs of ranching activity. A large pit bull on a chain stood guard over the forlorn remains of the Mikesel legacy.
The loss of the dignity he believed he deserved made him angry. In his mind’s eye he was a manly bull rider like the ones he watched on television, even though his most personal experience with cattle was more libidinous than brave. He’d spent most of seventh grade worrying that a calf would be born that looked just like him. No, he was a man, the real deal. That bitch who didn’t understand him and the kid, they were what held him down. He complained that he was wronged by teachers, employers, and neighbors his whole damn life. He fumed when the guy at the unemployment office wrote “unskilled” on those papers he was filing.
But Nolan did hone a unique skill and found the means to make it pay. Nolan could kill anything. And would. He grew up hunting deer and elk out of season. Poaching taught him how to stalk and cover his tracks. He was practiced in the art of lethal stealth. He learned how to kill and get away.
A few years back, a construction supervisor who recognized Nolan’s lethal potential introduced him to his boss, a real-estate developer who had a problem. A prairie dog colony was in the way of a housing development he wanted to build. Nolan took out thirty-seven dogs and pups in a single night. He used a laser beam on a rifle with a sound compressor and night scope. The little animals would be drawn to the light by curiosity and then paralyzed by the beam when it hit their eyes. Nobody in the nearby neighborhood heard a sound. After that, Nolan’s reputation for “wildernessfixing,” as he called it, was secure.
Another job required him to destroy an ancient kiva on land slated to become a golf course for a gated resort community. The ruin was un-listed and was discovered by a surveyor who had been paid to keep his mouth shut. Nolan used dynamite. Sometimes his job was more fun than challenging.
Nolan’s bosses on such jobs paid cash. He could live well enough and never pay taxes. And his formally declared income was so low he qualified for an assistance grant for his so-called ranch. Changing tires was a cover. Riding for Bunny Cleaver was his first love. He could play cowboy with real guns and feel like a patriot to boot but extermination was his bread and butter.
The best thing about Nolan, according to those who hired him, was that he could keep his destructive adventures secret. It wasn’t that hard to do since he’d run out of friends several fistfights and betrayals ago. So it was not characteristic when he stopped at the Lazy-O bar, ordered a beer, and told the bartender that he stunk because he’d spent the whole damn weekend hunting beavers.
“Aren’t you supposed to trap them?” said the bartender. “I thought they were protected or something.”
“Was nobody protecting them little fuckers yesterday,” Nolan boasted and then laughed a little too loud. He lowered his hat closer to his eyes, chugged the rest of his beer, and muttered, “If it ain’t legal to shoot them fuckin’ water rats then you can take it up with the fuckin’ irrigation company that fuckin’ paid me. I just do whatever the fuck I get paid for.”
He chugged one more for the road and walked to his truck. His cell phone was ringing. It said the caller ID was unavailable but he recognized the numbers. Orin Bender hadn’t called him since that last job when some damn tortoise got in the way of a pipeline that Bender’s company was laying.
He listened and his face tightened and his lips pursed. “I don’t know, Mr. Bender, I don’t do people. I mean I haven’t done anything like that before. Animals in the way, sure, but a person?”
He stared at the ground in front of the truck tire, spit, and pushed his hat up. “How much?”
He whistled and took his hat off.
Chapter 7
Upon their release from jail, Hip Hop Hopi and Luna Waxwing retreated to a favorite campsite in Cistern Canyon to find out if they were sexually compatible. They tried every position their small tent would allow and then ventured outside for more athletic congress.
