He said all this without conviction, simply as a matter of fact, sounding like a public service announcement. All the while he examined the wire, his eyes following it from post to post as he walked alongside it for several steps. He kept one hand out, palm facing her, warning her to wait as he checked.
“We lost five thousand acres in ’94. Lightning,” he said, his eyes following the wire. “Amazing how quickly fire can sweep through the grass out here. Luckily it burned only two hundred acres of pine. That might not mean much somewhere else, but this is the largest hand-planted forest in the world. Twenty thousand of the ninety thousand acres are covered in pine, all in defiance of nature.”
Maggie found herself glancing back over her shoulder. Almost a mile away she could see the distinct line where sandhill dunes, covered by patches of tall grass, abruptly ended and the lush green pine forest began. After driving for hours and seeing few trees, it only now occurred to her how odd it was that a national forest even existed here.
He found something on one of the posts and squatted down until he was eye level with it.
“Most forest services say fire can be good for the land because it rejuvenates the forest,” he continued without looking at her, “but here, anything destroyed would need to be replanted. That’s why the forest even has its own nursery.”
For a man of few words he now seemed to be expending them, but maybe he thought it was important. Maggie didn’t mind. He had a gentle, soothing manner and a rich, deep voice that could narrate War and Peace and keep you hanging on his every word.
At first introductions, he had insisted she call him Donny and she almost laughed. In her mind the name implied a boy. His bulk and weathered face implied just the opposite. His smile did have a boyish quality accompanied by dimples, but the crinkles at his eyes and the gray-peppered hair telegraphed a more seasoned investigator. But then all he had to do was take off his hat—like he did now so the tip of his Stetson didn’t touch the wire—and the cowlick sticking straight up at the beginning of a perfectly combed part brought back the boyish image.
“Ranchers hate fire.” Donny paused to take a closer look at the wood post immediately in front of him. He tilted his head and craned his neck, careful not to touch the fence or the post. “The ranchers shake their heads at rejuvenation. The way they look at it, why destroy and waste all that valuable feedstock.”
Finally he straightened up, put his hat back on, and announced, “We’re okay. It’s not hot.” But then he tapped the wire with his fingertips like you check a burner to make sure it’s been turned off.
Satisfied, his huge hands grasped between the barbs, one on each strand of the middle two, separating a space for her.
“Go ahead,” she told him.
She had to wait for him to shift from a gentleman to a fellow law enforcement officer. It took a few minutes for his blank stare of protest to disappear. Then he finally nodded and readjusted his grip to the top two strands instead of the middle two so he could accommodate his longer legs.
Maggie watched closely how he zigzagged his bulk between the wires without catching a single barb. Then she mimicked his moves and followed through, holding her breath and wincing when she felt a razor-sharp barb snag her hair.
On the other side of the fence they continued walking through the knee-high prairie grass. The sun had started to slip below the horizon, turning the sky a gorgeous purple-pink that seeped into the twilight’s deep blue. Out here in the open field, Maggie wanted to stop and watch the kaleidoscope effect.
She caught herself tucking away details to share later with Benjamin Platt, only she’d relate them in cinematic terms. “Think of John Wayne in Red River,” she would tell him when she described the landscape. It was a game they played with each other. Both of them were classic-movie buffs. In less than a year what started as a doctor-patient relationship had turned into a friendship. Except recently Maggie found herself thinking about Ben as more than a friend.
She stumbled over the uneven ground and realized the grass was getting thicker and taller. She struggled to keep up with Donny.
He was a giant of a man, wide neck and barrel chest. Maggie thought he looked like he was wearing a Kevlar vest under his button-down shirt, only there was no vest, just solid, lean muscle. He had to be at least six feet five inches tall, maybe more because he seemed to bend forward slightly at the waist, shoulders slumped as if walking against a wind, or perhaps he was uncomfortable with his height.