The Eleventh Man - Ivan Doig [112]
In that fatal instant he saw the dog sniff at the explosive device tangled beneath and put a paw to it.
12
"Will you lay off that damn hymn? You're driving me ape."
Jake Eisman's humming snapped off, but not his dolorous expression as he looked sidewise at Ben behind the steering wheel. "I for sure don't want to be trapped in a moving vehicle with a pencil-pusher gone apeshit, do I." He mopped at his neck with his hand. "Man, I hope sweating is good for the health. How about cranking the windshield open?"
"Now there's an original idea," Ben changed his own tune. "Let's give it a whirl, until we get grasshoppers in the teeth."
The pair of them were in a ragtop jeep, all that Jones had been able to snag for them out of the East Base motor pool, heading down the height of bluff south from Shelby toward the brief green ribbon of trees in the Marias River bottomland. Each man had shed the jacket of full-dress uniform, and the cloth doors of the jeep were tied back to let air in both sides, and still it was like traveling in an oversize oven. The fields along the shimmering highway the next couple of hours to Great Falls, they well knew, would be the cooked results of summerlong sun, the waiting grain baked golden, the mown hayfields crisp and tan, the distant dun sidehills further tinted with broad scatters of sheep. Behind them were a good many miles of the same. They had buried Angelides the day before five counties away, Prokosch that morning in the remote little railroad burg of his upbringing.
Jake rested a foot the size of a shoe box against the dashboard and slouched back in the confines of his seat. He yanked at his tie again even though it was already loosened. Honor-guard pallbearer was not a role he was suited to. "At the rate we're putting people in the ground," he brooded to Ben, "you'd think the Japs had invaded Montana."
"I've noticed."
It was hard to say which funeral troubled the tired pair more, but Angelides' at Fort Peck yesterday had been the stark one. Only the bushy mustached uncle, off shift from the powerhouse at the monumental earthen dam, to see the casket into the clay. Towering among the five other pallbearers rounded up by the funeral home, Jake throughout looked upset and angry over the scant farewell in the scarcely populated cemetery among some Missouri River badlands. Ben knew the feeling. He said now, "You've had more than your share of lifting coffins lately, Ice. Any chance you can spring a weekend pass for yourself?" At some level they were aware they were making talk so as not to be alone with their thoughts.
"Hah. It's back to chauffeuring bombers to the Russkies again tomorrow," came the glum reply. "I have to make up for all this inspiring funeral duty, don't I. Aw, shit, what am I saying? Sig and Animal would've done it for me." Jake's gaze went distant, then came back. "Anyway, Benjamin, it was good to see your folks there this morning, huh? Your mother is a real pussycat."
Ben looked across. Jake did not appear to be kidding.
"Your dad didn't miss a lick of what was going on," the one -sided conversation from the passenger side of things persisted. "Figure he'll be writing about the funeral?"
"I'd bet my bottom dollar on it."
The Packard crested the long pull up from the Two Medicine River and slowed as if made shy by the sudden cliff-faced mountains—Jericho Reef, Phantom Woman Peak, Roman Reef—that stood up into view in the direction of Gros Ventre. It was considerably more car than Bill Reinking was accustomed to, and he drove in a skittish way that had Cloyce itching to take over. Montana men did not believe that a woman's grasp in life included