Steps (16 page)

Chapter 28

Prints in the Stream   
(Gentry)

G
entry dreamed of home. He smelled fresh-cut hay. His neck burned from summer sun, sweaty, itchy. He adjusted his hat to cover his neck. Kelsey waited at the gate with her momma, and he let her drive the tractor and work the P.T.O. running out to the baler. His dad and his mother and all of them laughed and drank in the shop by the barn boiling shrimp, and he tasted the Cajun spice and came awake.

The taste transformed to mud, the smell to cinder, and the sun became a blue-gray bruise filtered through a cloud-smoke of the lingering forest fire. He wondered how long he had slept, because it felt like weeks, and his eyes didn’t burn like they had last night, or however many days ago it was that he fell asleep.

He heard screams, and it was as if his ears had become unplugged, like the water rolling out of them after a swim. Perry called out, locked in the inexplicable rage of the bug. Nobody noticed but Gentry, and he shook Billings. His body felt sand-filled, and he did not move, and Gentry shook him harder until Billings’ arm came up and he said, “Damn, man, stop hitting me. What the hell!”

“Wake up,” Gentry said.

“I’m awake, I’m awake. What?” Billings sucked in a breath, shook his head, stared at the lake for a moment, and then glanced at Perry as he continued to scream. He said, “Oh. God.” He put a hand to his head and rubbed his temples. “How long was I racked out?”

“Who knows. Come on, let’s hush him up.”

Nobody else stirred as they worked to calm Perry. Perry’s skin burned so hot that Gentry expected it to be the red of a purple plum. He gnashed as they tried to shush him, but none of what they did helped. They checked his bindings and poured lake water on his face hoping he would drink, and left him next to his father. A spasm gripped him, and the boy’s face stiffened, slackened, and he lay quiet.

“Who’s been fishing?” Billings said. He pointed to a pair of peeled fish hanging by a stick sunk in the mud, next to the fire.

Gentry was about to say,
No idea
, when he saw the huge prints around Perry and his father. “Our buddy from the road, maybe?”

Billings touched one of the prints and nodded. “Maybe. You should have seen him, Genny. He was like, I don’t know, a smattering of humanity, like one of them computerized pictures of a hundred faces kludged into one.”

Gentry fingered another print, still oversized but smaller than the big one. “You think this is Moore’s creek woman?”

“Maybe.” Billings thumbed at the fish. “I don’t think they’re here to hurt us. They’d’ve done that if it was their thing, bro. I mean, me and Fletcher didn’t feel scared at all. Startled, but not scared. And the big guy is sure big enough to do any harm he wants.”

Gentry marked the time of day as late afternoon. He felt hungry, and so he and Billings set about waking the camp. He knelt over Moore, squeezed her shoulder and gave her a gentle shake. She mumbled, and after a few more shakes her eyes dribbled open and she blinked wide, held it, yawned, and sat up on one elbow and said, “Hey, where’s Shelly Lynn?”

Gentry straightened. He did not see the girl. He pocketed his first thought and hollered to Billings instead. “You see Shelly Lynn?”

Billings leaned over Fletcher and stopped, swiveled his head, and said, “No. You?”

Moore stood and yelled, “Shelly Lynn!”

Silence answered them, and Billings shook Fletcher until the man batted him away and sat up cursing. “Mother fucker, what the—”

“On your feet sunshine. Wakey wakey. We need to find the little girl.”

“Huh? The little one? Where is she?”

“Ain’t that the million dollar question. We found prints around camp, and they left us a gift.” Billings pointed to the fish.

Fletcher took it in and straightened to his full height, towering even above Billings. Billings roused Arroyo, and finally he said, “Genny, you don’t think the big guy took her again, do you?”

Gentry withdrew his thought from his pocket and said, “That’s my first guess.”

“Mine, too,” Billings said. “She don’t strike me as the sort to wander too far away from her momma, and this here is her momma, now.” He pointed at Moore. “No offense, but that kid put a tick-latch on you. I don’t think she’d scuttle off. Do you?”

“No,” Moore said. “She wouldn’t let go of me last night. What time is it, anyway? How long were we out?”

Billings glanced at his wrist and said, “Fifteen thirty hours. Fifteen twenty-six to be exact.”

“She could have been gone for what, eight or twelve hours?”

“Maybe. We found fresh prints, though, and they look really fresh, as in they’re still wet. If the big guy and his woman took her again, they aren’t long gone. That’s my take. Genny, you smell any brain farts?”

“Nope,” Gentry said. Fletcher nodded, and Arroyo for his part said nothing.

“Genny, wake up the girl’s father. Fletch, you and me make a quick run up the lakeshore and see what’s what. Arroyo, you keep sitting there doing lots of nothing. Give us fifteen.”

Gentry roused Edwin, and he rose with his axe and inspected his son. Perry’s head twisted in sharp owl-angles and locked into place with spasms. The boy’s eyes flew wide, red and bleeding along with his nose and mouth, and Gentry’s only thankfulness was the lack of screams. Someone had unbound the boy’s mouth, and he and Billings had not thought earlier to replace the gag.

Edwin’s face showed a blank expression, as if he no longer understood English. For a moment, Gentry thought he might be going red, but then he said, “I love you, son.”

Edwin’s eyes swept the camp, and before Gentry could speak, he said, “Where’s Shelly Lynn? Moore, where’d you put my daughter?”

“We can’t find her, Ed,” Gentry said.

“What does that mean?” Edwin scanned the lake. “You didn’t let her go in the water, did you?”

“It wasn’t that,” Gentry said. “We don’t think she’d wander off.”

“She wouldn’t.”

Gentry pointed at the prints around Edwin and his son. He traced the trail between them and Moore and around the fire, huge prints pressed into the small prints of their own boots, deep and large and readily visible amidst the chaos of the well-trodden camp.

Edwin seemed to understand without further explanation, and Gentry said, “Fletcher and Billings will be back in a few minutes. They’re checking the trail around the lake.”

There was nothing to do but wait, but Edwin jogged around the camp in an ever-widening arc calling out Shelly Lynn’s name. Gentry joined him out of pity. He did not believe the girl lingered near camp, and his yells went as unanswered as Edwin’s, but at least they were not sitting idle in the camp while Billings and Fletcher ran their reconnaissance.

Their screams set off Perry, who matched both of them amplified by five, shrieks which bounced off the water and echoed into the far hills across the lake. Moore moved to comfort the boy, but he gnashed at her. He tugged at his bindings hard enough to tear his shoulder out of the socket and wrench it into a sick dislocation. She cried at her helplessness and hovered over the boy, and Gentry knelt next to her and said, “Come on, let him be. There’s nothing we can do.”

“Nothing but watch,” Moore said. “I wish I had some—”

“Stop it.”

Edwin yelled up the base of the cliff. Nobody answered, and Edwin glanced at Gentry, shouldered the axe, and said, “They went that-away?” Edwin pointed around the fire.

“Yeah,” Gentry said. “They said they’d be back in a few minutes. We need to stay put.”

Edwin ignored his last remark and limped down the lake. Gentry said to Moore, “You and Arroyo stay here at camp. Maybe she’ll come back or something. If nothing else you need to watch Perry, and Arroyo’s leg is too busted up to help. I gotta go.”

Gentry hugged her, pecked her cheek and did not glance back as he ran around the fire behind Edwin. The man jogged with a soft limp, favoring his ankle but soldiering through what must be a great deal of pain.

Fletcher and Billings met them when he and Edwin ascended the bank and emerged near the decrepit house. The forest fire died to smoldering ashes and bits of red-hot embers, which flew up with each landing of the boot in a flurry of sparks and soot.

“Looks like the big guy checked out the house back there,” Billings said. “I saw your handiwork with that axe. You okay, Ed?”

“I’m fine,” Edwin said.

“You sure? We can handle this if you want to stay back at camp with your boy. We can probably make better time if we don’t have you hobbling along behind us.”

“Look who’s talking.” Edwin pointed his axe at Billings’ exposed metal leg.

“Touché. Come on, then. Everyone keep an eye out for their trail. I ain’t a tracker, and neither are you all.”

The trail led through the trees, easy to follow in the fresh ash as it would be in fresh snow, but then the prints disappeared into the stream. It must lead upward, and they followed the stream until it dipped under the road. Here on the road sat the blue minivan they had seen earlier, but the scene seemed otherwise unfamiliar. Gone were most of the trees, stickly things black and barren, all if it reduced to charred ruins with gray patches exposed by the scorch of the forest fire.

Billings knelt and touched a print. “Look at the strides.” He stepped it off. “Two-and-a-half for us is one for him. We won’t catch him, that’s for sure. We’d need horses to keep up, and even then I’m not so sure. You two didn’t see him move, but me and Fletch did. Probably a lion is the best way to put it, right Fletch?”

“He slunk,” Fletcher said. “You didn’t hear him or nothing, even though he has to be eight hundred pounds. Big as he is, he moves like a sack of feathers.”

“Point is,” Billings said, “I think we’re beating the hell out of a dead horse. Wherever he’s going it wasn’t close, and we aren’t gonna catch him if we’re a pace-and-a-half more behind him with every step. He’s in the stream, though, and let’s think about that for a minute. First off, it’s easier going if you don’t want to use the road. So they’ll stick to the bank heading up. It’s also a water source, so I bet wherever he nests he keeps near it, same as us. So he’s got to be near the water, we just don’t know where he dumped off. Anyone see shit in my fudge?”

Nobody spoke, and Billings continued. He pointed at Edwin. “All right, then. Ed, you got to go back to camp. Listen, hush, listen to me. You got your boy to tend to, and by God your foot really is injured. I know you think you can go on, and you probably can for a while, but at some point it’ll give out and that’s that. Trust me, I know. Your body
will
betray you. Fletch here has a busted arm, but he can still function without it. I got my leg, but I understand my limits, and this ain’t my limits. Busted foot’s a different thing. Go back. Tell Moore and Arroyo we’re going to follow the river up the mountain a ways. We got a few rations because we’re always ready, ain’t we boys?” Billings patted his pocket, and patted Gentry’s and Fletcher’s for emphasis, all of them stuffed with dry-packs. “And we got water, so we can be gone for a while. Hole up and wait. We’ll be back in a few days. “

Gentry said, “Ed, he’s right. Head back to camp. Tend to your boy and firm up the camp. No matter what, we’ll send word back in a couple of days, okay? Deal?”

Edwin rotated the axe-head hanging near his ankle almost dragging in the water. After some thought, he nodded. “Don’t come back without her. She’s all I got left. I can’t go on without her.”

“Suck it up, fat-boy,” Billings said. “I got no pity for the pitiful, my friend. We all lost something, and we all don’t got nothing left. Look around, Ed.” Billings held his arms wide and spun a circle with his feet crunching the gravel of the stream. “Nothing at all left. You think your little girl ain’t mine and Genny’s, and even this cold-hearted bastard Fletcher’s? Who you think she belongs to? Her momma’s gone, her brother’s sick, and her pop is a fucking basket-case. She slept with Moore last night because she feels safer there. Genny here is the one found her last time she got lost. She’s the camp kid, my friend, and there ain’t one of us wouldn’t die for her quick as you. Why you think we’re here? Only reason I’m sending you back is because you are not physically fit for duty. I don’t give a damn about your mind or your head or whether you can
go on without her
. You are Marine meat, now, and you will do the work of the Marine meat. And when that fails, you’ll fall back on your training. And when that fails, you will refer to your handbook.”

“I don’t have training,” Edwin said.

“I don’t give a damn. I trained your boy in forty-five minutes. You get back to camp, you do something for me. You drop and you do push-ups until you throw up. Then you do sit-ups until you throw up. Then you do squats and you leave it all on the ground, or God in heaven help me I’ll shove my titanium foot up your ass, and that ain’t a metaphor. I mean I will literally, physically stick this metal toe into your colon until you scream like the little whiny bitch you sound like. Fletch here likes that sort of thing, don’t you Fletch?”

“Mightily.”

“Train yourself, by God. Suck it up. If you fall apart, you become dead Marine meat, and dead Marines don’t get paid, you copy?”

“Yeah,” Edwin said.

“Sir, yes sir,” Billings said. “All of you. Sir, yes sir.”

“Sir, yes sir,” Edwin said. Gentry said it with him and Fletcher, and Billings made them say it again.

“Louder.”

“Sir, yes sir!”

“Louder.”

“
Sir, yes sir
!”

“Better,” Billings said. “Hump it back to camp and throw up as ordered. You stop without vomit, and you get a metal toe colonoscopy. You copy?”

“Sir, yes sir,” Edwin said.

“You’re almost as smart as that boy of yours. I’m your goddamned
CMFO
, all of you. I’ll get your asses through this, but you got to run for me, and keep it together. Move out.”

The last Gentry saw of Edwin was a glance over his shoulder as he, Billings and Fletcher double-timed it up the creek bank. Edwin jog-limped down the creek, toward the camp, swinging his axe as he ran.

They dodged beneath a culvert, through the woods, another culvert, as the stream led ever upward into the mountains. This was a shorter way than the road, slicing up the hill with its natural cut-backs and swerves with no regard for the meandering, manmade road.

They stopped for water and checked for prints, the three of them fanning out on each side of the stream until they found signs of the big guy’s passing. When Billings found some, they gathered around and inspected them. Billings said, “How far up you think they go?”