Necessary Evil (15 page)

The shadow that stalks you grew old when you were little.

—Tilok proverb

''
I
t helps a man to know himself,'' Grandfather had explained as he removed things from his pack in the narrow beam of an old flashlight. He lit two torches, one at either end of the pool, then sat cross-legged on the flat stone next to the water's edge. In the dancing light of the torches, the place took on an eerie, magical quality.

At first Kier expected a story, but Grandfather simply asked him to look in the pool. The most respected leader of the Tiloks sat straight as an iron pipe, seemingly lost in thought. Kier studied the lines that already had begun to wishbone around his grandfather's mouth. From his face he could discern nothing of what was to come.

Kier could not see the bottom of the oval pool; shadows blackened its surface, hid its rocky bottom from sight. The darkened water's seamless mirror reflected the torches.

"Get closer," Grandfather said, moving nearer the pool.

Kier did the same. At the edge, he found a perfect reflection.

"What do you see?"

"I see me."

"Is yours a good face?"

Kier studied himself, realizing that he hadn't thought about it. A broad, squared-off chin gave him a look of strength, even at age thirteen. He supposed he liked his face. Perhaps his eyelids drooped slightly because he had secrets. He did things that were forbidden. Although his mother did not know, he slipped out even on school nights to go into the forest. He wondered if Grandfather suspected. Kier looked away from the pond, nervous. Perhaps such things couldn't be hidden from his grandfather. Everybody said he knew everything—never missed a thing in the woods. It was said that even crickets were safe when Grandfather walked by, so sure was he of every step he took.

''What do you see in your eyes?''

Kier fidgeted. Now he knew Grandfather could read his face as plainly as if he'd admitted to sneaking out at night. What they said was true. Grandfather was a Spirit Walker. Kier still said nothing, his heart starting to hammer in his chest. Words wouldn't come.

Grandfather waited. Kier's eyes returned to the pool. He tried not to think of the secrets. His body felt smaller. With hunched shoulders, he looked again at Grandfather, who appeared to have hardened to stone. Silence stretched before him like a desert road shimmering to the horizon.

He's thinking about me. He knows about the secrets and he's just waiting.

Could Grandfather know about the trips to Lotta's? She lived a little way into the forest in a cabin. Kier sometimes went there at night. Kier's face got hot. Usually he went exploring,

looking for tracks. Occasionally though, he went to the cabin and watched Lotta's shadow against the shade as she brushed her hair.

When finally he looked up again, Grandfather's form seemed to reach the top of the cave. Something needed to be said, but he didn't know what to say. Tears wanted to spring from his eyes. With all his energy, he froze his countenance. To cry would be unthinkable.

"What is your fear?'' No longer did his grandfather's expression seem hard.

"I don't know. . .what makes me feel unhappy sometimes."

After a moment, Grandfather spoke. "So, tell me, if you could change one thing about your life, what would you change?"

That was easy. "Father."

"Tell me."

"He left us and got killed."

"And do you wonder why he left?"

"I don't know if I think about it."

''Why do you think your father left?'' Grandfather persisted.

Kier felt his shoulders fall, a sort of shrug in response to the question. His mind wandered. He felt tired all of a sudden, as though he wanted to sleep.

"Do you think about why your father left?"

Kier let his mind drift. He just wanted to go home.

"Your father did not accidentally shoot himself, nor was he shot by the man who struggled with him. A government man killed him thinking he was someone else. Your father never really left you."

Kier could not believe his ears. He knew his stinging eyes betrayed him.

"Your father was visiting friends in Arizona. When he walked out of your house, he intended to come back. He was just going away for a time, to think. The FBI was looking for an Indian man who looked something like your father. The man they were hunting had been in the house your father was visiting. When your father showed up, well . . . they had the wrong man."

Kier felt sick. "Why didn't someone tell me? How do you know he was coming back?"

"I talked to him after he left—"

''But Mother said . . . She said he might not ever have come back."

"It's probably what your mother believes. She warned him not to go. There was bitterness in her when he was killed. A bitterness that he didn't listen to her. You remember the day your father left, don't you?"

"Yeah."

"You thought he was angry with you."

"He yelled. He pounded my wrists on the sink."

''So you thought maybe you were part of the reason he went away."

''I don't know." So much had changed in just a few seconds. "Why didn't someone tell me?"

"You were young. Your mother didn't want you bitter with hate."

"But my mother said he left."

''Your mother is a good woman, but stubborn, hotheaded. Your father would have come back. They would have talked. Everything would have been fine. He went away once before in the spring of the year. Sometimes you know how your mother gets."

"Yes. But I asked her—"

"And she told you all the time that he went off mad and got himself killed."

"But I didn't know . . . I mean . . . I thought. . ."

"You thought you were the reason he left, that maybe you had done something. And he was never coming back. I promise you that your father loved you and never would have left you."

Kier thought about what Grandfather said. The kids at school, always wanting to know why he didn't have a dad, said things. This was all such a relief. Or at least it seemed so at the moment. If only someone would have told him sooner.

"What happened?"

"FBI man got anxious. He thought your father was someone else. Two Indian men started fighting, and the FBI man shot in the night. He killed your father, who was trying to stop the fighting, trying to calm the situation."

"What happened to this FBI man?"

''Nothing. And nothing will ever be done. They claimed that one of the Indians your father was trying to stop had a gun. There was an investigation. . . testimony. . . but in the end they said the bullet was lost before it could be tested. The government people swore no one from their group fired a shot.''

Kier sat and stared at the pool, at his own eyes, promising himself that he would never make his father's mistake. He would never trust the white man's police.

As the years passed, Grandfather's explanation seemed to raise more questions than it answered. And the words never answered the need of his psyche to know
why.
Not why his father had died, nor why the FBI man was never punished, but why he could never touch his father's heart.

When young lovers make their lodge together, they must build fires in the rain.

—Tilok proverb

"
Y
ou can see why I might have a problem with the FBI." Kier poked the fire and tossed on another log. "It's why when I turned eighteen I became a gun-toting, paramilitary radical."

"But you became a vet, an educated man. How . . . ?"

"Let's not argue. You asked me. I told you."

"True enough. We'll come back to it later." She would bide her time.

After they were warmed by the fire and rested, Kier rose. "Now for the hard part. Getting our little house together. Pick up the small end and help me carry this thing down the canyon. We'll leave the supporting tripod here for another trip. It'll be heavy even without that."

Jessie let her amazement show as Kier began to separate the tripod from the rest of the structure.

"You're going to leave this fire?"

"A lot of people know about this cave. Tillman's guys may trick somebody with some story or other, and ask where I might go. They probably won't come tomorrow or the next day even, but I still want a margin of safety when we sleep."

She stared incredulously out into the night.

Around the face of the bluff and about one hundred yards down the hill, there was a dense stand of young fir. They walked in the beam of a flashlight. Kier had tramped a clear trail in the snow past the stand, but instead of staying on the trail, he lifted the skeleton of their shelter into the trees and directed Jessie to jump off the trail to the base of a young fir. She did as directed, landing in a large hollow in the snow created by the sapling's overhanging branches. After Kier had also jumped, they pushed their way into a thicket of intertwining limbs, then proceeded, with great effort, to carry the skeleton down through the trees two hundred yards to another overhanging rock face, where the forest looked more open. They proceeded down the rock face for a half mile. There, Kier uncovered a small cave largely concealed by snow. Clearing out the drifts, they placed the makeshift tent under the rock and out of the weather.

After returning with the tripod and backpack, they repaired the structure from damage suffered during the move. Then they cut boughs from nearby trees, lashing them onto the structure until a foot-thick green coat covered the outer framework and the inside floor. Digging down in other spots, Kier began scraping up fir and pine needles, leaves, sticks, and vines. Soon he began piling the fluffy mixture over the exterior boughs. Jessie, her fingers freezing even in her mitts, tried to emulate Kier, who worked like a man possessed. loosing all track of time, she only stopped flinging debris when she felt Kier's hand on her back.

''Now I understand your strategy. We work our asses off to keep from freezing to death,'' she said.

"We need more sticks and boughs and any heavy chunks we can find. Let's look for a windfall," Kier said, guiding her back into the forest.

"Quantico was like Disneyland compared to this," she muttered.

She studied the terrain in the faint beam of the small flashlight. The snow was still falling but, thankfully, the wind had died. Weird shapes appeared like surreal sculptures, the snow molded over the skeletal remains of downed trees, plants, and boulders.

Suddenly, she realized she was totally disoriented. Barely able to stand, she looked for Kier's light, saw it disappearing over her left shoulder. She felt a stab of panic shoot through her belly. Struggling to move through a tangle of trees, brush, and vines, she cursed herself for being weak. Knocked loose like some ghostly dust in a horror film, snow showered from the trees around her. Surely, if she was calm, she could find her way back without Kier. But even as she thought it, she continued chasing the receding light. Unconsciously, she began running.

By the time she forced herself to walk, the light was coming back toward her. Kier had turned around. In seconds, he had seemingly floated over the forest floor in a few large bounds. Then his face was near hers. His hand on her moss-padded shoulder felt good.

"We're almost done," he said with a rare smile. "I'm sorry I got so far away from you."

"Oh, no big deal. You actually like this place . . . this . . . ?" She waved her arms.

''More than a few people have the same attitude toward New York."

She said nothing more.

Kier led the way back to a big blowdown—a tangle of old branches and wood hunks where two large trees had fallen in the forest. Several backbreaking trips, dragging large branches and bark chips, were required before they had the materials to armor their hut. When they were finished, three to four feet of fluffy debris were sandwiched between two layers of boughs, all covered over with heavy branches and sheets of bark.

"Only one thing remains." He took her by the arm and led her back up the mountain.

"Yeah. You gotta bury me."

After they had returned a couple of hundred yards toward the cave, they headed off at an angle down the mountainside, following rock formations familiar to Kier and to generations of Tilok before him. Occasionally he would stop and shine the light on the rocks, verify his location, observe Jessie, and then continue on. Now she was shaking from the cold, and he was starting to worry about her getting so chilled that he would never get her warm. Ever since his childhood, he had enjoyed a great tolerance for the elements, but she had spent almost her entire life indoors. Eventually, after what seemed at least fifteen minutes, they came to the base of some trees with ruffled, reddish, paper-thin bark.

"Madrone," Kier said, casting about until he found some car-sized granite formations. Once they'd scooped the snow from the rock ledges, they could see crevices, and in those crevices, leaves. These they gathered onto two of the blankets. In two trips, they were able to build a large leaf pile at the hut's entrance. After packing in one third of the leaves, Kier tapped Jessie on the shoulder.

"Crawl in and roll around," he said.

Shining the light at his face, Jessie didn't move and said nothing. Finally he reached out and turned the light so that it shone partially on her face, revealing a frozen mask of discontent.

"It will break down the insulation, make it effective," he said. "More importantly, it will keep you warm and start to unthaw you."

Groaning, she got down on her knees. "Is this a squaw thing to do?" Then she began rolling.

"Not that kind of unthaw," he said. "Are things starting to tingle?"

"I can feel needlelike hot points in my feet and legs."

After a few minutes, Kier crammed in more leaves. "Roll again. We've got to hurry this up."

"If I were a male FBI agent, would it work this way?'' Once more she shined her light on him, only this time from inside the hut. "Well, would it?"

"We're thawing you out so we don't have to cut things off you, like toes and fingers. All right?"

"Thank you. I appreciate the sentiment," she said. "See—we're a team.'' She gave him a mocking smile in the dim light. "We share. After thoughtful discussion and explanation, we work together."

Kier began fashioning a plug for the entrance using unidentifiable debris.

"Sometimes when people are dying there's no time for discussion," he said.

"But there's plenty of time to pound little pieces of wood in the trapdoor so your partner will be stuck in a hole."

Kier said nothing while she matted the leaves and he greatly narrowed the entrance so the plug would be effective.

"Now we're ready for the blankets," he finally said. "For this, you need to get your wet clothes off."

He knew that by now the warmth of the hut would have made her clothing sodden. Removing her clothes and eliminating the moisture was the only way to get her really warm. Kier dropped to his knees and helped her out of her coat.

"I'll do the rest," she said sharply.

''As long as you don't fall asleep during the Tilok sex ritual.''

After Kier disappeared, to give her privacy she supposed, Jessie took off her boots and pants, wishing that her panties were more like military briefs, cursing that they were damp. It was a struggle that took far longer than normal, manipulating the soggy material in the cramped front portion of the hut. "It’s still freezing in here," she said aloud, wondering if he had returned. It was silent. Now the cold was piercing. Rubbing her arms helped almost not at all.

"I'm freezing," she called again.

"That'll change."

She wondered about her shirt, realizing that it, too, was damp, then decided to ignore it. "Bring in the blankets," she said through chattering teeth.

When Kier reappeared, he was completely naked—astonishingly so. He fingered the fabric of her shirt. "You can take that off later."

She gave him an unappreciative look in the dull light.

"If you don't, you'll feel a chill. Unfortunately it's not wool or one of the new moisture-wicking synthetics."

"I took survival," was all she said, trying not to look at his contoured body.
He's beautiful,
she thought.

They proceeded to line the leaves with the first layer of blankets.

By now their shelter looked like a tiny hole in a mound of debris stuck in the face of the rock. After shuffling leaves to get a thick layer above the blankets as well as below, the hut was ready for the final touch.

"Now I'll wait outside while you get out of the rest of your wet clothes."

"Why?" She sighed. "It's freezing out there. Just turn out the flashlight." When it was dark, she removed her shirt. The bra and panties would stay, damp or no damp, she decided.

As if reading her mind, he said, ''Please, no wet clothes. You can wrap yourself in a blanket, so our skin definitely won't touch."

"Damn straight it won't."

"I didn't plan the crash so we could be naked together."

"So why don't you find some way to holster your pistol before we go night-night."

"Are you afraid it'll grow on you?"

"Don't flatter yourself."

"Take this blanket," he said.

She saw nothing, but felt it against her shoulder. When, after some struggle, she had wrapped it high on her nude body, under her arms, she felt better.

"We'll be very warm," Kier said, snapping on the light.

The roof of the hut had over three feet of insulation, not counting a foot of woody boughs. Inside, there would be a foot or more of leaves covering the double blankets over them, and at least that much under them.

Working quickly on his belly, his head under the blankets, Kier pushed through the leaves at the foot of the hut, then proceeded to put one more blanket down. Watching the ripple of his muscles as he worked, the taut skin on his ribs, she marveled at his lanky frame.

After smoothing the blankets on his side, they switched places. In an awkward moment, she slipped over the top of him.

He was circumcised and large, she observed, with a shudder of disdain for her curiosity. She didn't equate penis size or shape with anything of significance, but she wondered if other men would envy this one. Men were that way. She imagined describing it to her friend Gail and smiled involuntarily. Her eyes went to Kier's, hoping he hadn't caught her staring.

"Don't mind me," she said. "I'm just hysterical. I was daydreaming about a cup of hot chocolate and drifting off to sleep."

"Does hot chocolate interest you that much?" He asked it so smoothly, with just enough—she didn't know what, maybe with knowing amusement, something under the surface—to let her know he had noticed her looking.

The bastard was thinking she was attracted. How male.

She yawned hugely to underscore her lack of interest. ''This hut is so small. Well, you know, in emergencies you think about things in certain ways . . . get cravings, like for chocolate. You're not normal. . . like being pregnant. . ."
Oh God, why did I say pregnant? What's that got to do with hot chocolate?
"I'm just tired, and I'm rattling on."

She closed her eyes to make sure she didn't stare again.

"I'll be back," she thought she heard him say. A moment later she was sure she felt his hand smoothing her hair. Then again maybe it was only a dream.