Leaving Blythe River: A Novel Page 11

“What happened? You come up on her and surprise her?”

  Ethan shook his head. It still felt wobbly.

  “The dog went after her,” he said. “And vice versa.”

  “Oh, crap. You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “Well, I had this shotgun,” Ethan said.

  But he held up both hands, and he did not have the shotgun. He had no idea where it had gone.

  “How close she get to you?”

  “She had one fang broken off. And really bad breath. And her fur stank like mold. That close.”

  “Damn.”

  Then no one said anything for a long time.

  “Well, that explains a lot about your condition,” Sam said, and started to walk again.

  Dora followed.

  As Ethan attempted to lean back in his tight lashings—because they were headed so steeply downhill—Sam shot one last sentence over his shoulder.

  “Anything else about the experience you care to share?”

  “Maybe later,” Ethan replied.

  Sam walked the rest of the way to the rented A-frame in a respectful silence. Dora followed like a faithful old dog.

  Ethan sat on the couch, his knees pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them and drawing them even closer. He kept his eyes on Sam, who was rummaging around in the cupboards of the A-frame’s tiny kitchen.

  “What are you looking for?” Ethan asked at last.

  “Looking to see if your dad has any booze around the house.”

  Ethan snorted. It was a sound vaguely related to laughter. “I would think I was the one who needed a drink.”

  “Who do you think I want it for?”

  That brought its own moment of silence.

  Sam broke it.

  “I know what you’re thinking. You’re underage. But whatever age you are, if you’re out in the freezing weather or you’re in shock, one or the other, I’ve found a good snort is useful. Think of it as medicinal. If nothing else, it might help stop the shaking.”

  Ethan looked down at himself, surprised to hear that he was shaking. Sam had been right about that. Ethan wondered how he could have been so unaware of something happening so close to home, so directly in the core of what should have been his being. Right in the spot where he was meant to live, but so often couldn’t.

  Meanwhile Sam was still talking.

  “Hell, I was a lot younger than seventeen when I had my first snort. My daddy gave it to me. For snakebite.”

  “What does liquor do for snakebite?”

  Sam stopped rummaging briefly. Looked up above his own head, as if considering the question for the first time. As if the answer must be on the ceiling. “Ah, hell. I don’t know. Not much, I guess. Keeps the patient calm.”

  “Under the sink,” Ethan told him.

  What felt like thirty seconds later, a short, squat glass appeared in front of his face. In the bottom of it sat about two fingers of a thick-looking brownish liquid.

  “Slug it down all at once if you can bring yourself to do it.”

  Ethan took the glass, watching it quake in his grip. Watching the liquid slosh up the sides of the glass and then coat it brown for an instant longer than he might have expected. He counted to three, tipped it back, and drained its contents all in one big swallow.

  It exploded in his throat like fire and made his eyes water, but Ethan staunchly resisted the urge to cough. He wanted to drink like a grown-up. Like a man, not a little boy. Even if it was only one snort given as medicine for shock.

  When the burn subsided, Ethan held as still as possible and felt the warmth of it move through his belly, and down the muscles at the core of his arms and legs.

  “Now,” Sam said. “What were you doing out there?”

  “Oh,” Ethan said. “Didn’t you ask me that already?”

  “Yeah. But I never got much in the way of an answer.”

  Silence.

  “It would sound incredibly stupid,” Ethan said.

  “You were looking for your dad.”

  “Yeah.”

  Sam sighed and plunked down on the couch next to Ethan.

  “That doesn’t sound stupid,” he said. “It sounds like a plan without much chance of success. But I figured that must be it. I can understand why you would want to do that. I mean, he’s your dad. You love him.”

  “I hate him,” Ethan said, marveling at how the shaking really was beginning to subside.

  “Then why go look for him?”

  Ethan kept his gaze firmly trained down to the rug. “Maybe I love him and hate him. Both. Is that possible?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Sam said, laughing something rueful out with the words. “It’s more than possible. It happens all the time. Trust me. I’ve got two ex-wives. I know.”

  He rose to his feet, took the empty glass from Ethan, and carried it to the sink.

  “I went by your house first,” Ethan said. “I wanted to ask you to take me up there. But you were gone. I thought you had a paid customer. I thought you might be gone for days.”

  “No,” Sam said.

  Ethan waited for him to say more, but he never did. He felt the liquor warm him up inside. Sand off the rough edges. It made it easier to talk. It made it feel possible to exist.

  “So why were you up there with Dora, then?”

  “Same reason you were,” Sam said, washing the glass under steaming water and carefully avoiding Ethan’s eyes.

  “I want to form our own search party,” Ethan said.

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Why would I kid about a thing like that?”

  “After the experience you just had?”

  Ethan felt himself internally retreat again at the mention of the bear encounter. Even though the word “bear” was never uttered. For a moment he thought he was watching the scene more from the ceiling and less from his own body.

  “If he’s out there,” Ethan said with the alcohol as fuel, “he’s going to die really soon. I mean . . .” He stalled for a long time. “I guess I really mean if he’s out there, there’s like a ninety-something percent chance he’s already . . . But if he’s not . . .”

  “Yeah, I get it,” Sam said. “You’re right about that. Time’s running out for him. But . . .”

  But then he never said but what.

  “You don’t think he is, either.”

  “Hard to know,” Sam said.

  “Part of you must have thought he was. You rode up there today.”

  “Yeah. Well. You kind of have to make your mistakes on the side of a person dying in the wilderness.”

  “Here’s the thing,” Ethan said, and it felt interesting to hear himself say it, because he was sure he didn’t know what the thing was, and was curious to listen to himself and find out. “Nobody around here knows my dad. Except me. He’s not the world’s greatest guy. He’s done a lot of really crappy things. He’s hurt my mom and he’s hurt me. But all the things he’s done . . . they all kind of fit into one category. He does them to feel better about himself. To make himself feel more . . . well, I guess . . . like he’s winning. To keep thinking he has the world on a string. But to take money out of the bank and walk out of the house without saying a word to me and just leave me here to wonder where he is and if he’s ever coming back . . . there’s no sense to that. There’s nothing in it for him. All he had to do was call my mom and tell her to arrange my transportation back to New York. All he had to do was leave a note. There’s nothing for him to gain by not leaving a note.”

  Sam came back and sat on the couch near Ethan, looking worried and more than a little bit sad. Ethan hated it when people were sad on his behalf. Even though that was most of the time these days.

  “So what you’re saying is . . .” But then Sam couldn’t seem to finish the sentence.

  “He’s out there. I just know it. And if I’m wrong . . .” Then it was Ethan who couldn’t wrap up a thought.

  “If you’re wrong,” Sam interjected, “at least you get the most incredible expe
rience of your life. You get to go out into that mind-blowing wilderness. You get a full tour of the Blythe River Range. That’s no small thing, you know. That’s kind of its own reward.”

  Ethan wasn’t at all sure he agreed, but he forced such thoughts away again.

  “The thing is . . . ,” he said, and then he paused for a long time. Wondering if he even knew. “. . . I don’t think I’m wrong.”

  “You sure you’re going to be okay here on your own?” Sam asked. He was lingering by the door but not looking much inclined to use it.

  “So long as I don’t have to go outside.”

  “Got food?”

  “Yeah, I still have some of that chicken stew with dumplings that Jone brought me. It’s good.”

  The mention of Jone’s name seemed to knock something loose in Sam. Before the older man even spoke, Ethan knew Sam had been sitting on something for a while, something he’d wanted to say but wasn’t saying. In fact, Ethan realized he’d known it all along.

  “Now that you mention Jone . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “A big search party is better than a small one. Bigger is better.”

  “You want to ask Jone if she’ll come with us?”

  “I was thinking it might be better if you did. You know. Given our history. Or lack of it. Given the fact that she knows I wish we had a history. Or a current . . . Let me start over. She’d probably think I was just making an excuse to get to know her better.”

  “Are you?” Ethan asked, surprised to hear himself ask a brave question. Especially at a time like this, when he felt even smaller and less confrontational than usual.

  “No,” Sam said firmly. “Not just. More really is better in a search party. I’m not making that up.”

  “What can an extra person do?”

  “All kinds of things. Stay with the horses if a couple of us go off on foot. Hold a rope if we need to go up or down a cliff.”

  Ethan’s stomach tipped sickeningly at the first descriptions of what they might be required to do out there. Sam seemed to notice that, or sense it.

  “And she’s not afraid of bears,” he said.

  “How can anybody not be afraid of bears?”

  “Don’t know what to tell you, buddy. She’s not afraid of anything. I’d almost go so far as to say bears are afraid of her. If there was a showdown between Jone and a bear, I’d put my money on Jone. In fact, I’d feel sorry for the bear. I’d try to call the fight because the poor bear was overmatched.”

  “Are you exaggerating?” Ethan asked. “It sounds like you’re exaggerating. She can’t exactly beat them in a fight with her bare hands.”

  “No. Not with her hands. With a rifle. She’s good with a rifle. Like, legendary good. One day a couple years ago she was over on the reservation on the other side of the foothills. Seeing her great-grandchildren. She was walking in the woods with them, picking mushrooms. This big grizzly charged them. They charge fast when they charge. You don’t get much time. She had probably something like five or six seconds to fix it, or somebody was going to get hurt, if not worse. Just right in those few seconds she fired a shot into the dirt in front of the bear, and when it kept coming she chambered another round and dropped it in its tracks. Most people hesitate at that moment because they’d rather get out without killing the bear. But she didn’t have time for any hesitation. She knew what she had to do and she did it.”

  “Okay,” Ethan said, finding comfort in the thought of such a person as an ally. He didn’t want a bear to die, either. But if it came right down to a choice of the bear or him . . . If he’d had such a sharpshooter with him earlier that day he’d sure as hell have called for her to pull the trigger. “I’ll ask her. When do we leave?”

  “First light in the morning.”

  “What do I bring?”

  “Not as much as you’d think. Just your personal items. Toothbrush. Change of underwear and socks. A hat. Sunscreen. Good sturdy boots or shoes. I’ve got dehydrated meals and water filters. Tents, sleeping bags, rain gear, you leave all that to me. You just bring what you’d pack to go away for a couple or three days, only less. You know. Just the bare bones. Just what you can’t live without.”

  He swung the door open. Ethan got up off the couch and walked to the door as if to politely see him out. The late afternoon sun blasted into Ethan’s eyes. In the glare he saw Dora waiting patiently, head down, tied to nothing. Her reins were simply lying in the dirt a foot in front of her nose and two feet below it.

  “This’s a good thing you’re doing,” Sam said.

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you. Who else?”

  “You’re the one who’s taking me up there just to be nice.”

  “Look. What I’m saying is . . . I want to say this the right way so’s not to insult you. It doesn’t escape my notice that you’re not the most steely-nerved little guy on the planet. And getting false-charged by a grizzly can rattle the steadiest nerves ever built. I just feel like the fact that you’re willing to get up and get out there again tomorrow . . . I just think it says a lot about you as a person.”

  Only because we’re bringing someone who’s legendary good with a gun and doesn’t mind dropping a bear in its tracks, Ethan thought. But then he realized that wasn’t entirely true, because he’d been willing to go before he knew about Jone and her rifle. Hell, that morning he’d been willing to go alone. But he didn’t feel the slightest bit brave, and he didn’t know what to do with the compliment, so he just looked down at the threshold.

  Sam walked away across the A-frame’s porch, the heels of his cowboy boots banging on the wood planks.

  A moment later he stopped. Turned to face Ethan again. Ethan would have liked to see the look on the older man’s face, but the late sun was still glaring into his eyes.

  “Thing is,” Sam said, “I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I encouraged you too much. You know. Gave you false hopes. I can take you all over that mountain range without your getting hungry or thirsty or lost. And Jone can keep you safe from bears and wolves and mountain lions. But we’re not professional searchers. I don’t really know what we can do that they didn’t do better already.”

  “I know,” Ethan said.

  “Our chances of finding him . . . even if he’s out there . . .”

  “I know,” Ethan said again.

  “You just want to feel like you tried,” Sam said. It wasn’t a question.

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay. We can do that. We can try.”

  Then he walked back to his mule. He gathered up Dora’s reins and mounted smoothly, neck-reining her head around toward home.

  A minute or two later Ethan would look back on their conversation and consider it strange that Sam’s mention of bears and his own thoughts about them hadn’t tipped him to what he was forgetting. But for whatever reason—probably owing to exhaustion and upset—they hadn’t.

  It wasn’t until Sam and Dora were just a dot on the road, halfway between the A-frame and their own home, that it hit Ethan. He still had no bear spray.

  “Sam!” he shouted.

  No response.

  He ran out into the front yard, Rufus trotting behind, and screamed the name three more times. But Sam was too far away to hear.

  Ethan looked down at his dog.

  “Well, that’s it,” he said. Rufus cocked his head, listening without comprehending. “No way I’m going down to Jone’s with no bear spray. I’m just not doing it. When Sam comes by in the morning, he’ll have to take me down there to ask.”

  They’d be less likely to get a yes in the morning, on short notice. Ethan knew that. But he couldn’t imagine how to fix it. And even if she said yes, they’d get off to a late start. But all those details seemed hopelessly out of Ethan’s control.

  He walked back inside, calling Rufus to follow, determined to heat up some stew and leave this day behind for good. It was all he still felt able to do.

  Just as he was putting his bowl to soak in the
sink, Ethan heard a strong rapping on the door. His heart jumped, and he felt immediately panicked and unsteady, as if the grizzly sow had found her way to his front door to take up the argument just where they’d left off.

  Rufus woofed once, deep in his throat, which Ethan thought was interesting. Because the dog never had before. Maybe Rufus hadn’t left the events of the day behind as completely as Ethan had thought.

  As he walked to answer the door, he told himself it was likely only Sam. Just Sam coming to tell him one more thing to bring along.

  He swung the door wide and looked up into the face of his neighbor Jone. She was wearing a loose pullover jacket-shirt that looked to be made of some kind of thin, soft suede. Deerskin, maybe. It had fringe. She wore her hair down, framing her face and shoulders in white, like a sudden overwhelming snowfall.

  “Oh,” Ethan said. “That’s good. That you’re here. I needed to talk to you.”

  “Mind if I come in?”

  Her voice sounded softer than usual. Less combative and urgent. Ethan briefly wondered—more on a feeling level than as thoughts in his head—if she had really dropped a bear in its tracks with a rifle, or if that was just one of those local legends. The kind that gets bigger and more dramatic every time someone retells it.

  “Sure,” Ethan said, even though her presence made his heart drum and his voice squeak in his throat. “Please do.”

  She walked into the A-frame’s tiny living room and looked around as though she’d never looked around the place before. Then she sat down on the couch, emitting a cross between a grunt and a sigh.

  Rufus wiggled over and set his head in her lap. A little cautiously, Ethan thought. With a dash of subservience. The way anyone in his right mind would approach Jone. Ethan expected her to roughly push the dog away again. Instead she placed her calloused hands on both sides of the dog’s head and stroked back, in keeping with the direction of the fur. Rufus relaxed and half closed his eyes.

  “Thanks again for the chicken stew,” Ethan said. “I just had another helping. It’s good.”

  “Why didn’t you come down to my house?”

  “When?”

  “Just now. You said you needed to talk to me.”