Leaving Blythe River: A Novel (15 page)

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.”

“Oh. Right. That. I don’t have bear spray.”

“Lots of people walk from one house to another without it,” Jone said, as if it should go without saying.

“Maybe not if they’d been charged by a grizzly bear that very day.”

A long silence. Ethan was surprised by it. He thought a charging grizzly sounded like a pretty good opening for further conversation.

Just as he became convinced she would not address his comment in any way, Jone asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” he said. Then he added, “On the outside at least.”

But Ethan didn’t figure Jone would want to talk about the inside of him. And he was right.

“What did you want to talk to me about?” she asked, still stroking the dog’s ridiculous ears.

“You first. You go first with what you came here to say.”

Jone sighed. She looked only at the face of Rufus. Not at Ethan.

“I think their decision to call off the search was wrong,” she said. “In fact . . . I think it sucks.”

Ethan waited. To see if that was a complete thought. If it was all she’d come to say.

“Thank you,” he said.

“I know all the details they factored in. I heard it all. Yeah, it’s questionable. I get that. But let’s say there’s a ninety-nine percent chance he took off. That means there’s a one percent chance he was out in those mountains. Then let’s say there’s a ninety-nine percent chance he was out there, but now he’s not still alive. Sorry to be blunt, but I’m sure I’m not telling you anything you haven’t thought of on your own these past few days. So then, worst case, that adds up to a one percent of one percent chance he needs finding. In my book, given that situation, you search.”

“Well . . . in fairness to them . . . they searched.”

“Guess I mean given that situation you search and you don’t stop.”

“I don’t suppose we’d ever get them to see it that way,” Ethan said, his heart calming. It was strangely comforting to have this human hurricane on his side.

“No,” Jone said. “I don’t suppose so, either.”

Then neither said anything for a strangely long time. It might even have been a full minute.

Ethan opened his mouth to ask his enormous favor. He never got the chance.

“I was thinking maybe we form our own search party,” Jone said.

Ethan was surprised. By, well . . . everything. By the idea that some monumental task could be so much easier and less stressful than expected. By his inability to answer—to even know where or how to begin addressing what she’d said.

He found one tiny flaw in the fabric of his stunned confusion. One curiosity that could be addressed. For starters.

“Who’s we?” he asked her.

“I’d love to say you and me. That would be my preference for a number of different reasons. But it’s a lot of ground to cover on foot. So I’m thinking we have to ask Sam to take us up there on his horses, and with a pack mule or two. Save a lot of wear and tear on us, and it’ll allow us to get around faster. Time being of the essence in a situation like this. But I didn’t want to ask him until I talked to you. Until I asked if you were up to the task.”

“You don’t have to ask him,” Ethan said. “You don’t have to ask either one of us. Sam already agreed to take me up there. We’re leaving at first light tomorrow. I was supposed to ask if you’d go.” Ethan noticed, in his peripheral vision, Jone’s eyes coming up to seek out his face. “Because more people are better in a search party, he says. And because you’re good with bears. Legendary good.”

Jone snorted. Maybe a laugh. Maybe just a derisive snort. Or some sort of hybrid.

“I expect the bears would disagree,” she said. “The bears would be more inclined to say I’m bad with bears. I don’t like to kill anything. Specially if I don’t have to. But if I have to . . . well, let’s just say I made my peace with it. Apologized to the spirit of the bear, the way the Native Americans do. Though I must say the spirit of that bear has yet to apologize to me for charging my great-grandkids.”

“You’re not Native American?”

“No,” she said.

“I thought you were.”

“Why would you think that?”

“Oh. Right. Why did I? Something Sam said. Oh. I know. He said you had family on the Blythe River Reservation, over on the other side of the foothills.”

Jone’s eyes narrowed, and Rufus pulled his head back from her lap and slunk away.

“Thought he didn’t tell you anything about me.”

“Oh. Well, that was just today he told me that,” Ethan said. Even though it was only half true.

“My late husband was a member of the Blythe River Tribe. He was one hundred percent native. I’m zero percent.”

“Oh,” Ethan said. “I’m sorry he’s gone.”

“Thanks.”

“How long?”

“Long time. Too long.”

Then the conversation seemed to die a hard and painful death.

An awkward span of time passed.

“Well,” she said, placing her hands on her knees and levering to her feet. “This’s a good time to get a few belongings packed and get ourselves to bed early. Since we’re leaving at first light. You know Marcus?”

“No, ma’am. Jone.”

“He lives next door to me. Doesn’t get out much, and when he does he heads to town. He moved here to be close to those mountains. But he must like the idea of them better than the actual reality of the thing. Because he doesn’t go up there much, if he goes at all. But Sam’s right about the safety in numbers. You know. With a thing like this. So I’ll see if I can talk him into going. Not sure how much use he’ll be, but I guess I just feel the way Sam does—ha! How often does that happen? Mark this day on your calendar. I just feel like another body is good. More is good. If I show up with Marcus at first light, it worked. If not, not so much. We’ll just have to work with what we got.”

She moved off in the direction of the door.

“Thank you,” Ethan said.

It wasn’t a tossed-off comment. It wasn’t a perfunctory thank you. It was genuine. Big. Fully felt.

She turned and looked into his eyes again. His gaze quickly flickered away.

“No worries,” she said. “He’s your father.”

“He is,” Ethan said, careful to weed out any commentary, express or implied, as to whether that was good news in his mind.

“You love him,” she said. Not a question.

“I do and I don’t.”

“What part of you doesn’t?”

“The part of me that hates him, I guess.”

“Right,” Jone said, as if Ethan had said nothing surprising. “Parents can be like that. But if he’s out there, we want him back. Anyway. Right? Right. Not that we’re all that likely to work magic out there. But we can try. And if he’s not out there, or we don’t find him . . . or we don’t find him in time . . . well, anyway, at least we tried.” On that note, she opened the door. “Get some sleep,” she said. “You’ll need it.”

Then she was gone.

Ethan never got any sleep. He might have dozed for half an hour sometime between two and three a.m. Or maybe he was only half asleep during that brief time.

He knew what Jone had said was true—that he would need the good night’s sleep. In fact, he knew it too well. The more pressure he put on himself regarding the importance of sleep, the more that very pressure kept him awake.

And those were only the pressures that had nothing whatsoever to do with the possibility of more angry bears. And hadn’t somebody mentioned mountain lions and wolves? And scaling cliffs while somebody holds you on a rope?

Every twenty minutes or so Rufus, who was up on the bed with Ethan, slipped into what appeared to be the same disturbing dream. His paws twitched, his nose twitched. He made yipping noises, muffled deep in his throat. His hackles rose, and he growled faintly.

It wasn’t hard for Ethan to imagine what he was dreaming. To know that even dogs—much as they live in the present and leave the past behind—can’t just turn their backs on an experience like the one Ethan and Rufus had survived earlier that day.

Chapter Twelve: Not Forgiving

Four days after his father disappeared

Sam showed up in the dark, about an hour before sunrise. Ethan knew he was coming by the sound of a small herd of hooves, and the flicker of a flashlight or a headlamp along the road. Ethan was sitting at the kitchen table eating cereal with no milk. He’d run out of milk. He put the cereal on the floor for Rufus—who had already been fed—to finish. He ran to the door.

He stepped out onto the porch to see Sam riding down his dirt driveway on a big horse he’d never seen before, or never noticed. He couldn’t see the horse’s color in the dark. Behind Sam and his horse he saw Dora the mule, then another horse he didn’t recognize, only slightly smaller than Sam’s, then the dreaded Rebar, laden with canvas packs. Ethan wasn’t sure if the animals were all tied to each other like a train, but he thought they were, because all of them except Sam’s big horse made the same lifting, straining movements with their heads, as though something tugged at them on every step.

Sam reined his horse to a halt in the middle of Ethan’s yard, and the horse and mule train bunched up behind them and then stopped.

“You sleep?” he asked Ethan.

“Not so much, no.”

“You’ll regret that as the day wears on. But nothing we can do about it now. You have a good big breakfast?”

“Yes,” Ethan said, though it wasn’t true. He’d had maybe ten bites of cereal before feeding the rest to the dog.

“Good. You’ll need it. We’ll ride straight till lunch and that’s a long way from now. You talk to Jone?”

“Yeah.”

“She coming?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

He dismounted. Both of his hands were free, Ethan saw. The light was a headlamp protruding from just under the rim of Sam’s cowboy hat. Ethan walked to him in his bare feet. Reached out to pet his horse’s nose. It was velvety soft.

“Who do I ride?” he asked Sam.

“You’re on Dora.”

“Why am I the only one on a mule? Why can’t I ride a horse?”

“I did that special for you. Dora’s the calmest ride I got. You’re better off on a mule on a mountain trail. They don’t spook much. If something does spook ’em, they’re more likely to stand their ground than run. And they’re more sure-footed than a horse. What do they use to take people and supplies down to the bottom of the Grand Canyon? A horse train? Or a mule train?”

Ethan stood a moment, shifting slightly from foot to foot because the dirt was cold.

“Mules, I guess.”

“Damn right mules. Because horses are more likely to spook right off the edge of a cliff.”

“Uh-oh. But if we’re all tied together . . .” Ethan paused, picturing Sam’s horse spooking off a cliff and dragging Dora right off with him.

“We won’t be. Not up there. I’ll have Rebar on a breakaway. The rest of you’ll have to ride for yourselves. For just that reason. You never want a situation where a whole team gets pulled over. Some two-thousand-foot drop-offs up there with a trail just about wide enough for four hooves. Trust me. Dora’s a good bet.”

Ethan felt a strange and unpleasant feeling in his stomach, as if he might be about to see his scant breakfast again.

“This is starting to sound . . .”

Sam tried to look him square in the face, but it caused the light of his headlamp to glare into Ethan’s eyes, blinding him. Sam quickly put one hand over the light, then fumbled with the switch and turned it off. He dropped his hands to his sides again, and they stood together in the pitch-dark, predawn morning.

As his ability to see gradually returned, in his peripheral vision Ethan was aware of stars. A staggering, stunning array of stars.

The older man seemed to be taking time to gather his words carefully.

“It’s the wilderness,” Sam said. Sober and deep voiced. “I know the area, and Jone knows it. And that’s good. That’ll help keep you safe. But I’m not gonna lie to you, Ethan. It’s not Disneyland up there. The ride is not on a track. Never any guarantees in the wilderness. You up for this? Think carefully and only say yes if you mean it. I need you to keep your head on straight up there. We’ll be there to help you, but you need to work with us. So what do you say?”

“Let me just go put some shoes on,” he said.

Then, halfway back to the porch, he stopped and looked back at Sam again.

“If mules are better than horses on a mountain trail, why do you have mostly horses and just a couple of mules? Why don’t you have all mules?”

“Because everybody feels just the way you do,” Sam said. “Everybody wants to ride a horse.”

It was maybe ten minutes later when Ethan heard sharp voices outside, in the A-frame’s front yard. Not yelling exactly, but a serious discussion.

He had his shoes on, and his teeth brushed, and was stuffing his baseball cap into his little bookbag-style backpack, because it felt silly to wear it in the dark.

He stepped out onto the porch to see what was going on.

He saw three figures standing near the stock train in the dark. Which must have meant Marcus had said yes, and was coming with them. Ethan figured that was a good thing. Sam seemed to have other ideas.

“You said more was better,” Jone’s distinctive voice said. “I think more is better. Everybody knows more is better.”

“Depends on the team,” Sam said, just at the edge of raising his voice. “Depends on the person. Their wilderness experience. What’s another person going to add to the team if he’s got no wilderness experience?”

Meanwhile the dark figure who must have been Marcus said nothing in his own defense.

“Ethan’s got no wilderness experience,” Jone said, raising her voice to match Sam’s. “And we’re taking
him
.”

“Well, of course Ethan. It’s his father.”

A new voice spoke in the dark.

“Okay, screw this. I know when I’m not wanted. Forget it. I was doing this as a favor. You don’t want me, fine. I’m better off at home.”

The dark figure of Marcus tramped down the driveway.

Jone’s head followed his retreat, then turned back to Sam.

“You going after him, or what?”

“Why? We’re better off without him. He’s an actor. And a surfer. Not exactly the skill set we need on the trail.”

“You said a bigger team was better. Did you mean that? Or did you just want me to come along because it’s me?”

Ethan could just barely see Sam tip his cowboy hat back and scratch his bare scalp. He couldn’t see the scalp, but he knew the details from memory.

“I’d have to tack up another horse. I’d have to repack the big mule with extra food and another sleeping bag.”

“So don’t just stand there,” she said.

Sam sighed. Then he fumbled with something near the saddle of his big horse. He came up with a loose rope and handed it to Jone.

“Here, hold this,” he said. “I’ll go after him.” He didn’t sound the least bit happy.

He swung into the saddle and rode away down the driveway, urging his horse into a trot on the hard ground.

Jone watched him leave for a few seconds. Then she led the stock train over to Ethan’s porch. She stopped in a glow of light from the A-frame’s front windows and tied the rope to the porch railing.

She sat next to Ethan’s legs with a sigh. Ethan dropped into a sitting position nearly shoulder to shoulder with her. Except her shoulders were higher. Everybody’s shoulders were higher.

“Hell of a start to get off to,” she said.

“I’m not sure what Sam’s upset about.”

“Everybody’s got an agenda,” she said. “I know you’re more than a little gun-shy around wild animals, but they’re pretty straightforward, let me tell you that right now. Compared to us. We’re the ones you got to look out for. The least predictable animal in any wilderness setting is us. People.”

Ethan wasn’t sure what to make of that. So he just sat. For a time neither spoke. Ethan watched one edge of the sky lighten, turning a steely color and fading the stars at the horizon.

“Oh,” Ethan said. “I have to go get Rufus.”

“I wouldn’t,” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“I wouldn’t bring him on this. He’s a city dog. Right? You don’t want him going off hunting and getting lost. You don’t want him getting under the horses’ hooves. And we’ll be covering a lot of miles. The horses and mules are used to it. They’re in shape. They also have hard feet. How many miles can that dog walk before he gets footsore? I’d leave him home if I were you.”

Ethan’s face and gut tingled, and he wondered how many more of these awakenings lay in store for him. It seemed as though every time someone spoke he learned something new about this trip. Something that made him feel like a fool for ever thinking he should go.

“I have to take him, though. Who’ll take care of him while I’m gone? There’s nobody.”

“Couldn’t you just leave him a really big bowl each of food and water?”

“But he has to get out. And I can’t leave him out. He’ll get eaten by something. Coyotes or something.”

“Hmm,” Jone said. “Right. I guess I’m spoiled by having a litter box to fall back on. Well . . . I suppose we could try bringing him. Have a feeling he’ll be trouble, though. Does Sam know he’s coming?”

“I think so. I mean . . . I didn’t say so. I thought it went without saying.”

“We’ll see what he says when he gets back.”

Ethan made up his mind in that moment. If Rufus couldn’t go, then Ethan couldn’t go. And the moment he made the decision, it became a lifeline to him. If Sam said Rufus couldn’t go, then Ethan was off the hook. He’d have a different reason not to go. A reason that was not fear.

He bit his thumbnail and said nothing. And Jone said nothing. They just sat on the porch together and watched dawn gather itself to make its scheduled appearance.

It was still predawn and not completely light when Sam and Marcus came riding back. Marcus looked about thirty, with shaggy hair that extended well into the collar of his shirt, and a pretty-boy face. He rode a horse that looked a little too small for him. He wasn’t a big guy, maybe five nine or five ten and wiry thin, but the horse—a light-gray Appaloosa with spots—looked more like a big pony. He was built heavy and solid, though. Ethan figured it was okay. Ethan figured Sam wouldn’t have put Marcus on the pony-horse if it wasn’t okay.

Sam’s horse was a big bay. Huge, really. Almost as though he had a little bit of draft horse mixed in.

The two rode into the yard several dozen feet apart, not looking at each other or speaking.

“Well, come on,” Sam said. “On your feet, everybody. We’re behind schedule.”

Jone stood. “Don’t you have to repack that mule?”

“Nah,” Sam said. “I gave Marcus saddlebags with some extra stuff.”

“Did you apologize to him? For not being very neighborly about accepting his offer to come along?”

Sam glanced over at Marcus but said nothing. Then he looked away. Down at his own saddle horn. Ethan took it as a “no.”

Jone walked over to Sam’s big bay and said a few words. Ethan couldn’t hear most of them, but he thought he made out the word “dog.” He trotted over to be closer to the life-altering conversation.

“I don’t see what it’ll hurt,” Sam said. “Might hurt the dog. Won’t hurt us any. He’ll just have to buck up and learn as he goes. Get in shape as he goes. He’s young, right?”