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 - continued
"We admire your guts," said one of the others. "So to speak."
"I don't know why they call it field dressing," said Coil. "Seems like the opposite to me. Think how much work it would take to put this elk back together, if it was possible to reassemble a dead animal. Say, for instance, if it was a kit you might buy in a hobby shop."
"An odd thought," said Vic. "But I think I know what you mean."
"A surgeon could stitch it all back together, but the pieces wouldn't bring life, wouldn't mean you could kick-start the heart or refuel the brain." She was getting curious looks from her audience as she worked around the ribs, still cleaning. "If you see enough of these, it's something you start to ponder," she said. But she had begun pondering it almost as soon as she had survived the crash of the jetliner. Prior to that day, death was just a word repeated endlessly on the nightly news.
Neither of the bystanders seemed as eager to help reach in and scrape, to get their hands bloody. This made Coil wonder why they could come all this way, spend all this money on a guided hunt, and not want to see the inside of an elk. But then again, it was probably just a game. Death was a talking head on CNN.
She helped them fill water jugs in the nearby creek, wash out the carcass, and cut off the legs. She showed Vic how to scalp the antlers and leave enough nub to show evidence that the kill was male, in case the boy-men were stopped on the way home by a forest ranger.
They quartered the animal, strapped the hindquarters to Bear, her Appaloosa, and walked back to camp. She and Vic hoisted the pieces up with rope, so the meat dangled from a branch well off the ground. Dangling meat attracted all kinds of wild creatures-raccoons, mountain lions, and flies. Coil peppered the meat to discourage the flies.
As they worked side by side to complete this last step, Coil decidedthat Vic fit all of the criteria that she looked for in a man. He stirred her up, no question about it. She wondered exactly which organ fluttered inside her chest at such moments. It was a heart-lung combination that went light and limp and left her a bit breathless. What did the space in her chest cavity do the rest of the time? What did she look like inside? How close had an ambulance crew come to learning that after the plane wreck? There were other bodies floating inthe water for them to study that day, ejected and discarded. What themedics did see was her superficial exterior. She was short and slender,a hundred and ten pounds after a big meal. She had cropped, functional,straight brown hair that was easily covered, quickly cleaned, and more manageable than it had been during her city days back East, when a stylist took care of the externals. Her face was narrow and small, withreddish-brown eyes, a solid nose, high cheekbones and bright whiteteeth, the product of a milk-fed youth combined with strong Midwestern genes. As Coil cleaned her knife with a jug of water and paper towels, Vic sidled over and started asking questions, making his move. She could read him like spoor. He asked how long she had been a guide, how long she had lived in Colorado, asked if all the "guy stuff" and macho posturing bothered her. These were questions that he did not really want answered, she knew. She had heard it all before, but what woman hadn't? Anthropologists had a phrase for it: mating ritual.
Vic told her about the three of them, even though she had not asked. They were co-workers from an advertising firm. Of all things, Coil thought. Her former career when she had lived in the East, prior to the accident. Vic quizzed her about how her life was set up, how long she had been out of the city. She offered vague answers, and did not give any indication that she was nailed down to a relationship, because she wasn't. Not officially.
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