Leaving Blythe River: A Novel Read online

  “A good word?”

  “What do you take in your coffee?”

  “Oh. Um. Cream and sugar?” It came out as a genuine question. As if he wasn’t sure how he took his coffee and was counting on this man to say if he was right.

  The man disappeared into his run-down house. Ethan wandered over and leaned on the top rail of the big corral, watching horses mill and crowd each other away from a feeder full of hay, teeth bared as necessary. But when one of the mules came trotting in his direction, long ears laid back against his neck, Ethan jumped away fast, pulling Rufus back with him.

  “That’s the one you gotta watch out for.” The man’s voice startled him from behind. “That’s Rebar. That’s the one that’ll bite you or kick you quick as look at you. Usually a bad-tempered horse or a mule, they’ll bite or kick if you give ’em cause. But not this guy. He’ll seek you out for it.” He handed Ethan a steaming cup of coffee in a chipped, ancient mug. “Never met a creature on God’s green earth with a snarkier disposition. Unless it was Jone.” But still he got a dreamy look in his eyes on that last sentence.

  “So why do you want me to put in a good word for you?”

  “Did I not mention she’s beautiful?”

  “Oh. Right. But you also said she’s seventy.”

  “And that she doesn’t look a day over fifty?”

  “Right.”

  The biting, kicking mule retreated to the hay feeder again, so Ethan leaned on the fence rail beside the man and sipped his steaming coffee. It was so strong he felt for a moment that the kick of it might take off the back of his head.

  “Whoa,” Ethan said. “Strong.”

  “Yeah. Kicks like Rebar, huh? The only way to go. Man does not live by wimpy coffee. I’m Sam, by the way.”

  “Oh. Ethan.”

  “Well, you really saved my ass this morning, Ethan. I feel like I can’t say thank you enough times.”

  “How would I put in a good word for you?”

  “You mean with Jone?”

  “Yeah. If I ever met her.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Just say what you feel. Like ‘Gosh, that Sam is one hell of a fella. Nice guy.’”

  “I barely know you. Why don’t you tell her you’re a nice guy?”

  “Don’t think I haven’t tried. But what good does that do? Every guy’ll tell you he’s a great guy.”

  Ethan wondered briefly if his father thought of himself as a great guy. And would still tell you he was. Probably.

  “So what do you use all these horses and mules for?”

  “Pack.”

  The single word meant nothing to Ethan in that context. He waited, thinking Sam would say more.

  “Pack?”

  “Yeah. You know.”

  “I don’t think I do.”

  “I’m a pack guide. It’s how I make ends meet. People want to go up into those mountains. Want the full-on wilderness experience. But it’s hard hiking. Over thirteen thousand feet of elevation on some of those passes. Takes your breath away, literally. Lot of steep uphill. And not many people want to carry forty, fifty pounds of tents and sleeping bags and supplies up those steep passes, enough to live on out in the wilderness for days. And most don’t know what they’re doing enough to get into the mountains so deep. So I take ’em in on horseback with ponies and mules carrying the supplies. Hey, maybe that’s what I can do to repay the favor. I know it doesn’t seem like much, just standing in the way of those yearlings and waving your arms to stop ’em, but think about it. What were the chances you’d be there at just the right moment? I could go a month sometimes with nobody walking down the road across my driveway. And even that’s in the summer. And there you were. Like my own little miracle to start my day. Not so little, really. Ever been up on that Blythe River Range?”

  “No, sir. Sam.”

  “Prettiest place on God’s earth, and I’m not just saying that. I’ve seen a lot of places. I could take you up there. No charge, but you have to tell your friends about Friendly Sam’s Pack Service.”

  “I don’t have any friends,” Ethan said, effectively stopping the conversation.

  They leaned and sipped in silence, the clouds of steam they blew looking thicker and more dense after gulps of the hot liquid. The sun was up over the mountain now, so it would warm up soon. Might even get up into the fifties as the day wore on.

  “Now why would that be?” Sam asked at last.

  “I have friends back home,” he said. “Just not around here.”

  “How long you been here?”

  “About three weeks.”

  “You go to school in Avery?”

  “Yes, sir. Sam.”

  “I guess three weeks isn’t much time to make new friends.”

  Ethan snorted out a great cloud of steam. “You could give me three years and I couldn’t turn any of those guys into friends.”

  He waited. But Sam said nothing. So Ethan took a great gulp of the dreadful coffee and jumped back into talking, still holding the dog’s collar so Rufus couldn’t duck through the rails of the corral and be trampled to death by a bad-tempered mule named Rebar.

  “They think I’m a joke,” Ethan said. Another silence. “They laugh at me because I’m skinny and pale. Because I’ve lived in the city all my life. Not right to my face. They laugh behind my back, but it’s not like I don’t know. These kids . . . they drive tractors. They break horses. Even the girls. They ride in the roundups and help castrate calves and brand them. They drive their parents’ pickup trucks and mend fences and sling hay around. And they look at me like I’m absolutely useless. And like it’s really funny. You know. That anybody should be so useless. Even just the concept that there are people like me who don’t do all that cowboy stuff is hilarious to them.”

  Ethan ran out of steam and waited again, in case Sam wanted to jump in. Sam didn’t jump in. It struck Ethan that he’d been wanting to talk about this. To someone. He couldn’t talk to anybody at school, because they were the problem. Even the teachers seemed to find him amusing. He couldn’t talk to his father because he couldn’t talk to his father about anything. He couldn’t call his mother and tell her because he would only risk disappointing her again by not being too tough to care.

  He’d told Rufus, but it hadn’t helped enough.

  Ethan briefly wondered if that was the real reason he’d followed this strange Santa-man with the runaway horses onto his property. Just to know somebody. Somebody who wasn’t back in New York. And who wasn’t his father.

  “Sounds like a trip into those mountains would be just the thing for you,” Sam said. But he sounded unsure. As though Ethan had more problems than Sam could trust himself to fix.

  “Maybe,” Ethan said, but it was a lie. He knew he wouldn’t go. “Thanks for the offer, anyway.”

  He drained the rest of the dreadful coffee and handed the mug back to Sam.

  “Stop by anytime,” Sam called as he was leaving.

  “I will,” Ethan said. But he didn’t figure he would.

  He was careful to latch the gate well behind him and his dog.

  On the way home a gigantic long-haired orange tabby cat began to walk along with them as if he were a dog just aching for a good outing.

  Rufus tried to sniff the cat, then tried to get him to play, and was rewarded for his efforts by a claw to the soft black tissue of his nose. The dog yelped pathetically, probably more hurt on the inside, and walked ten paces behind the cat from that point on.

  When Ethan arrived home, the cat was still following. So Ethan figured the stray must be hungry. He slipped inside and snuck out with a slice of the meat loaf his father had made for the previous night’s dinner.

  The cat seemed happy to scarf it down. Which was fine with Ethan, who figured that just meant less of the awful leftover stuff he would have to eat himself.

  Chapter Seven: Snark

  Two weeks before his father disappeared

  Ethan arrived home from school to find that big stray cat mewing around
on the porch steps of the A-frame. Again. For the sixth or seventh time in as many days. He could see the cat pacing near the door before he’d even stepped down off the big yellow bus.

  The cat was huge, maybe twenty pounds. Or probably close enough to it, anyway. His long coat looked a bit matted here and there. He seemed fat, but Ethan worried that was just the cat’s coat—that maybe his ribs would show if he were wet, or shaved. Because he always meowed so plaintively for food. Why would he do that if not really in need?

  Ethan opened the door of the A-frame with his key, and the cat wound around his legs all the way through the door. Rufus ran to greet Ethan, but retreated to a spot behind the coffee table when he saw the cat.

  “Dad?” Ethan called out.

  No answer. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Come on into the kitchen,” he said to the cat. “I’ll try to find you something.”

  Ethan was wondering in a disconnected way if his father would tolerate Ethan’s taking the cat in permanently when he saw the note on the table.

  GONE RUNNING

  That was all it said. Just those two words in big block letters.

  “‘It’s very important to tell someone where you’ve gone,’” Ethan said, more or less in the cat’s direction. He tried to imitate his father’s voice. “‘Because you could get lost.’ Great. I can see it all now. Dad gets lost. And Ranger Dave asks, ‘Do you know where he was going?’ And I say, ‘Yeah. Running.’ Way to practice what you preach, Dad.”

  He stared into the fridge until his eyes fixed on the half-and-half his father used in his coffee. He pulled it out, took a shallow soup bowl down from the cupboard, and poured. There wasn’t much in the carton, and he all but used it up serving the stray. Ethan didn’t care. His father could drink his coffee black, or drive into town, giving Ethan more alone time. Nobody here had serious problems with food supplies except the poor cat.

  Ethan warmed the half-and-half in the microwave for thirty seconds or so, then set it down on the floor. The cat started in on it immediately. Rufus wagged in the direction of the kitchen, obviously jealous and hurt, but did not dare come in.

  “You don’t miss too many meals,” Ethan told him.

  A knock on the door nearly stopped his heart. Because it was a huge knock.

  Actually more of an insistent pounding, like someone was standing on the porch using the back of his fist, and swinging his arm full force.

  Like somebody was already mad.

  Ethan’s heart began to hammer, and the trembling began in a spot behind his belt buckle.

  “Who’s there?” he called, without moving even one step closer to the door.

  “Why are you trying to steal my cat?” It was a woman’s voice. Big and deep. And unafraid.

  Ethan took a long, steadying breath and walked to the door. He stood a moment with his shaking hand on the knob.

  Then, because he could think of no way out of doing so, he opened the door.

  The woman on the porch had snow-white hair, long and thick and done in a braid that trailed over her left shoulder. Her dark eyes narrowed at him. She wore overalls with a flannel shirt underneath. Cowboy boots. She looked about the same age as Sam. She looked like someone Ethan wouldn’t want to cross. Halfway to grizzly bear territory.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Is that your cat?”

  “It is,” she said, all lumber and steel in her voice. Sure, and right. “And I don’t appreciate your trying to win her away.”

  “I wasn’t. Really. I thought he was a stray.”

  “She. Her name is Mirabelle, and she’s a she.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “You thought that overweight cat was a stray? How do you figure a cat with no home gets to be that size?”

  “I thought maybe it was all matted fur.”

  “Don’t know much about cats, do you?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  They stood awkwardly for a moment, each on his and her own side of the open door. Ethan knew he should invite her in. But he didn’t want her in. That was the problem.

  “So you’re my neighbor?” he asked, as though the answer might be dangerous. Deadly, even. Then, before she could even answer, it hit him. “Oh. You must be Jone.”

  It was an easy deduction. The neighbors were Sam, Marcus, and Jone. And she was neither Sam nor Marcus.

  Ethan took her in all over again, trying to imagine someone calling her beautiful. It didn’t quite work. Then again, maybe if he were fifty . . . He tried again, as if through Sam’s eyes, but still didn’t quite see it. But maybe thirty-plus years of growth was simply impossible to imagine.

  She narrowed her eyes further. “How’d you know that?”

  “Sam the pack service guy told me about you.”

  “What’d he tell you?”

  “Oh. Nothing.”

  The woman sighed. Then she marched past Ethan uninvited. He had to jump out of the way. It struck him that two young, untrained horses had stopped in their tracks when he stood in front of them. But not Jone.

  She stopped in the middle of his living room, looking into the kitchen where Mirabelle lapped at the half-and-half. Then she burned her gaze back onto Ethan, who still felt a mild tremor in his hands and throat.

  “That’s a good trick,” she said. “He told you about me but he told you nothing. How’s that work exactly?”

  “He just asked if I’d met you. That’s all.” He squirmed under her gaze for a brief moment of silence. “He seems like a nice man.”

  Jone snorted. “He tell you to say that?”

  “No! Not at all. Why would he tell me to say that?”

  “Because he tells everybody else to say that.” She unmoored her feet suddenly and marched into the kitchen. Picked up the carton of half-and-half and held it up like an accusation. “Half-and-half? And you still mean to tell me you’re not trying to steal my cat?”

  “No! Not at all. I just thought he was hungry.”

  “She.”

  “Right. Sorry. She.” Silence. Ethan swallowed hard. “It was all I had.”

  “I knew she’d been going somewhere. Coming back fatter than ever. Today I decided to follow her. See who had the gall to be feeding her.”

  “I just thought . . .”

  “You thought what?”

  “I thought if he said he needed food, he needed food.”

  “Wow, you really don’t know cats.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “What do you know? Anything?”

  Ethan felt his mouth drop open. He didn’t—couldn’t—respond.

  “Oh . . . I’m sorry,” she said. “That was over the line, I suppose. I just get a little ticky regarding my animals. Don’t like anybody to get between me and what’s mine. But, hell. You’re just a kid.”

  “I’m seventeen,” he said.

  “You don’t look anything like seventeen.”

  “And you don’t look anything like seventy.”

  It had been intended as a defiant comment. A way of standing up to her. And that was exactly how it came across. But the moment it came out of Ethan’s mouth he wanted to grab hold of it and drag it back in.

  Don’t poke the bear.

  He waited, watching her face and shaking.

  A huge sound burst out of her, and it startled Ethan. It took him a second or two to realize she was laughing.

  “So I been told,” she said. “So here’s the best I can say to make you feel better: When you get to be as old as I am, looking younger than your age is not such a raw deal.”

  She strode three steps through the tiny kitchen and picked up Mirabelle, who strained to get down again and finish her treat. Rufus bolted in to clean the bowl.

  “If my cat comes around here again,” Jone said, leveling him with that withering gaze, “you tell her she’s too fat as it is, that she eats fine at home, and to get her butt back where it belongs. And next time you talk to our neighbor who you think is so very nice, you tell him the answer is still no.”
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  She stomped out of the house, slamming the door behind her.

  Ethan looked at Rufus, who looked back. The dog was licking stray half-and-half off his nose.

  “Whoa,” Ethan said. “Sam was right. She’s worse than Rebar. I wonder why he thinks she’s so beautiful and wonderful, then?”

  Still, if anybody understood how love could do strange things to a poor guy, it was Ethan.

  Chapter Eight: Alone

  The day his father disappeared

  Ethan’s eyes flickered open.

  There had been a moment—an all-too-brief moment—every morning upon waking for the last three months. This was one of those moments. Ethan had been studying the art of making it last, but it was a lost cause. As soon as you acknowledge you’re in the moment, you’re out of it.

  When in it, his heart was not shattered, nor were his nerves. There was nothing haunting him from behind, nothing dark and shadowy down the road. No betrayals in the past or grizzly bear possibilities in the future. If not for the fact that it lasted less than a second, there would be nothing to be said against that moment. It was perfect. Except it was too short.

  Then it passed, and the truth of his life settled into his stomach like a clamp. It always felt like something had grabbed his stomach and was holding it too tightly. Painfully tightly. He pictured the sensation as one of those claw-foot traps people use to catch bears. But maybe he just had bears on the brain.

  Because it wasn’t really a trap holding his belly, because it was him doing the holding, it always made him feel tired.

  It was the first day of summer vacation. He allowed that thought to come in and join all the others.

  Ethan sat up and looked out the window. There were no shades or curtains on the window, because none were needed. There was no one out behind the house. Ever. Unless you think it’s important to maintain your privacy from coyotes, elk, and the occasional black bear or grizzly.

  A fresh fall of light, powdery snow had fallen in the night. Yes, still. In early June. Where Ethan came from, such a thing would not happen. Where he found himself now, it did. Snow still clung to the rocky towers of the mountain range outside his window. It was beautiful, Ethan thought, but in the abstract. Really no different from a painting on the wall.