The red church by Scott Nicholson Page A

o'clock in the morning now."
    Lester was a hunter. Littlefield wasn't, these days. "When's the last time you saw one?" the sheriff asked.
    "Nineteen sixty-three. I remember because every-body was just getting over the Kennedy mess. I took up yonder to Buckhorn"—he waved a gnarled hand at the darkening mountain—"because somebody said they'd seen a six-point buck. I set up a little stand at a crossing trail and waited. My stand was twenty feet up a tree, covered with canvas and cut branches. Moon come out, so I decided to stay some after dark, even though it was colder than a witch's heart.
    "I heard a twig snap and got my rifle shouldered as smooth as you please. We didn't mess with scopes and such back in them days. Just pointed and shot. So I was looking down the barrel when something big stepped in the sights. Even in the bad light, I could see its gold fur. And two shiny green eyes was looking right back up the barrel at me."
    Lester drained his excess juice off the side of the porch. The old man paused for dramatic effect. Peo-ple still passed down stories in these parts. The front porch was Lester's stage, and they both knew his audience was duty-bound to stay.
    The sheriff obliged. "You shot him," he said, even though he knew that wouldn't have made a satisfac-tory ending to the tale.
    Lester waited another ten seconds, five seconds longer than the ritual called for. "About did. I knew what he was right off, even though his fur was about the same color as a deer's. It was the eyes, see?
    Deer eyes don't glow. They just sop up light like a scratch biscuit draws gravy."
    "What happened next?"
    "He just kind of stared back at me. Damnedest thing I ever saw. Looking at me like I was an equal, or maybe not even that. Like I was a mosquito buzz-ing around his head. He drew his mouth open like he was going to snarl, and his whiskers flashed in the moonlight. And I couldn't pull the trigger."
    "Scared?" Littlefield asked, hoping Lester wasn't insulted. But Lester seemed to have forgotten the sheriff as he stared off at the mountain.
    "In a way I was, but that's not the reason I didn't pull the trigger. There was something about him, something in the eyes, that was more than animal. You might think I'm crazy, and you probably wouldn't be too far wrong, but that cat knew what I was thinking. It knew I wouldn't pull the trigger. After maybe half a minute of us staring each other down, he slipped into the woods, his long tail twitching like he was laughing to hisself. Like I was a big ball of yarn he'd played with and gotten tired of." The sun had slipped behind the horizon now, and Littlefield couldn't read Lester's expression in the darkness. All he could see was the crooked shape of the farmer's face.
    "I was frozen, and not just from the chill, either," Lester continued. "When I finally let out a breath, it made a mist in front of my face. I was sweating like I was baling hay and racing a rainstorm. I strained my ears for any little sound, even though I knew the cat was gone."
    Littlefield had been standing more or less at pa-rade rest, a habit he had when he was on official business, even around people he knew. Now he let his shoulders droop slightly and leaned against the porch rail. As a youngster, he'd hunted at night him-self. He could easily imagine Lester in the tree, muscles taut, ears picking up the slight scurry of a chip-munk or the whispering wings of a nighthawk. Like any good storyteller, Lester had put the sheriff in another place and time.
    "You're probably wondering why I'm going on so about this mountain lion," Lester said. "You're ask-ing yourself what that's got to do with Boonie Houck's death."
    "That mountain lion would have died a natural death long ago."
    Lester said nothing. There was a clattering inside the house, then the rusty skree of the storm door opening. Lester's wife Vivian came out on the porch. Her hair was in a bun, tied up with a scarf. She had a slight hump in her back, a counterpart to