Drop City

“What do you mean, wolves?”
    Sky Dog, his eyes drawn down to blood-flecked slits, tugged at the collar of the once-white wool sweater one of the Drop City chicks had knitted for him in happier days. “You mean those big friendly dogs out there howling in the hills every night, morning and afternoon?”
    “I mean bounty money, that's what I mean. You pick them out against the snow, they've got nowhere to hide. It's like swatting flies.”
    “I thought you were a trapper, man? What happened to trapping?”
    Joe gave a shrug. It must have been about forty degrees in the cabin, but he was stripped down to a thermal T-shirt and the tattoos that twisted round his forearms like battle scars--or maybe destination scars would be more accurate (_Got this one in the Philippines, this one in Saigon, and this one, this one I got in a place so bad you don't want to even know the name of it__). “You have any _idea__ the kind of work it takes to run a trapline? It's nuts. Crazy. You have to be some kind of caveman like Cecil B. Hardon to want to do that, some kind of terminal loser with his head about fifty feet up his ass. I just said fuck it and left my traps out there last winter, bones in them now, I guess, and they can just rust away to shit for all I care. No, I got smart. Took to the air. I mean, what's the sense of investing in your personal aircraft if you're not going to use it, right? Sixty-three wolves, in every shade of color from pure black to pure white, that's what I took out of the country last winter, and every one of them run right into the ground--at thirty-five bucks, per, for the bounty, that is, plus what the pelts'll bring. Who needs to pan for gold when it's out there running on four paws?”
    Sky Dog snapped his head back as if he'd been slapped. “That isn't right, man, that is just not right, I don't care. If you shoot all the wolves, you've got no predators, and if you've got no predators the whole ecology is out of whack. I mean the moose and the caribou and whatnot, the rabbits, they'll eat up the forest till there's nothing left. I'm out, by the way.” He folded his hand and shoved it into the middle of the table.
    “Hah. That's what you say now--that's what you say when you get back to your hippie reservation in Malibu where all you have to worry about is does she have to wear that many clothes or not, but if you had to live up here you'd change your tune pretty quick.” Joe leaned back in the chair and the chair creaked at the joints. He took up the quart of beer and then set it down again, leaned forward and poured himself a shot from the bottle of vodka he kept on the floor where it would chill, because if it was forty degrees at seat level it was probably about ten below down on the floor. “Wolves are nothing but trash. They'll tear the anus out of a moose and lap up its guts while it's still standing there, they'll kill anything in sight, whether they're hungry or not--just for the pure pleasure of it. No,” he said, pausing to throw back the vodka, “I'd kill the last pregnant wolf right here on the cabin floor in front of the governor and his cabinet if I had the chance, and you know what, the governor'd probably give me a medal.”
    “Who is the governor, anyway?” Dale Murray wondered aloud. Sky Dog scratched at his collar, then reached across the table for the bottle, helped himself to a shot. One minute, one of a million--a billion--ticked by.
    “Fuck if I know,” Joe said.
    Pan, from the bed by the stove, the book spread across his chest: “Hey, people, I hate to interrupt, but do you know what day today is? It's Halloween.”
    All three of them just stared. The stove heaved and sucked air. It was as dry in that cabin as it must have been out in the middle of the Atacama Desert. Finally, Joe Bosky leaned over to spit on the floor. “So what do you want me to do,” he said, “put on a wig and dress up like a hippie? Or maybe a woman--would that work?”
    But Ronnie didn't reply--he was off someplace else, suddenly transported back to last Halloween, to Peterskill, on the banks of the housebroken Hudson, a place where there were stores and bars and clubs and head shops and where you could get any variety of dope you wanted, day or night, clothes, records, steaks, Chinese, Italian, Dunkin' Donuts, Kentucky Fried, the place where he'd wrecked his first car, the place where his parents lived. And his friends. His buddies. The people he'd grown up with. He felt so