The Dead Season (11 page)

I ignored her. “You’re supposed to be in charge,” I said to Jess. “You can go back to your tent and let everyone go cold and hungry tonight. Or you can use your brain and figure this out.”

“What?” he demanded irritably. “You going to teach us how to rub two sticks together or something?”

“You checked all the backpacks for matches, right?”

“I told you that.”

“
All
of them?”

He made a hissing sound of dismissal through his teeth and started to turn away again. Then understanding dawned. He looked at Pete. “They put all the matches in Lard-Ass’s pack.” He turned to Paul and demanded, “Didn’t you? You knew she’d be the last one here and you just wanted to see us suffer.”

“I didn’t know that,” Paul replied mildly. “I had no possible way of knowing that. If you had helped her keep up this afternoon, she would have arrived at the same time as everyone else, and you’d have a fire by now.”

“Son of a—” The way he cut himself off made me think he had already learned that the penalty for swearing was even worse than going to bed without supper.

Pete said miserably, “We might as well give up on getting anything hot to eat, then. By the time she gets here we’ll all be asleep—or frozen. I’m too tired to eat anyway.”

Jess said angrily, “I’m sick of you people and your stupid games.”

I held his gaze and said softly, “Wouldn’t you like to win one for a change?”

Jess glared at me, then at Paul. Without another word, he swung away from us both and started back down the trail.

“Where are you going?” Pete demanded.

“Where do you think?” he tossed back. “To find Lourdes!”

~

Cisco and I went with him, of course, and, after a moment’s discussion with Rachel, Paul caught up with us. What bothered me was the suspicion that, if I had not decided to follow Jess, Paul would have let him go alone.

No wonder they needed a survival expert on this expedition.

The shadows grew deeper and the wind grew colder the farther down the trail we went. Lourdes was only a fifteen minute walk down the trail, but for someone who was cold, tired and hungry, it was fifteen minutes too long. She was little more than a shadow among shadows, sitting beside her discarded pack with her head resting on her up-drawn knees. Cisco and I were in the lead, with Jess walking in silent anger beside me, and Paul only a few feet behind. When he saw her, Jess pushed ahead of me. Paul caught my arm before I could go with him.

I pulled my arm away. “Don’t worry,” I said, watching Jess, “I won’t interfere with your precious treatment program.”

“We’ve been doing this a long time. We know what works.”

I turned to look at him. “You’ve been doing this,” I replied distinctly, “precisely eight months. Why did you tell me you’d been in Hanover County three years?”

In the dim and fading light, his expression was difficult to read. But his tone did not change as he assured me easily, “I told you we had been in business for three years. We’ve been at our present location since May of last year.”

I was almost certain he had not said that at all. But I was tired and cold and most of my attention was on Jess and Lourdes, and there was just enough doubt to prevent me from arguing about it. Besides, this was not the time or the place.

Lourdes looked up as Jess approached and scrubbed at her face with both hands. Jess strode up to her, grabbed her pack from the ground, and began searching the pockets.

“What are you doing?” she demanded. But her voice lacked both the force and the petulance it had held earlier in the day. In fact, it sounded wet and weak and all but defeated.

Jess dropped her pack and turned triumphantly with a plastic baggie of matches in his hand. “Got it!” he declared. He started to walk away.

There was a note of panic in Lourdes’ voice as she said, “Where are you going?” She pushed herself to her feet. “Are you leaving?”

Jess kept walking.

I bent down and unclipped Cisco’s leash, whispering a command into his ear.

Cisco trotted down the trail past Jess, and Jess turned to watch as the golden retriever walked right up to Lourdes and took her sleeve in his mouth. Gently he began to tug, urging her forward.

It was a trick we performed to entertain school children when we did programs for libraries and classrooms on pet care and education. It always made the kids laugh. But Lourdes wasn’t laughing. After an astonished moment she took one step forward, and then another. I could hear a quavering in her voice as she said, “Good dog.” She awkwardly reached down to pet Cisco’s neck. “Good dog.”

Jess scowled at me and then at the matches in his hand. I returned a calm and steady gaze because I knew that, somewhere deep inside, he wasn’t as bad as he pretended to be. He pushed past me angrily, pretending not to notice. Cisco and I walked silently back to camp with Lourdes, Paul bringing up the rear. I couldn’t help noticing that Jess never got too far ahead, and he would glance back every few minutes just to make sure we were still there.

~

The kids built an impressive bonfire that warmed the ground for yards around and it cast a happy glow into the woods beyond as the sun began to set. It was, unfortunately, too large and too hot for cooking, but they had worked so hard and so enthusiastically making trip after trip into the deadfall to bring back armloads of fuel that, when Rachel pointed out their folly, I couldn’t stand to see their expressions fall once again.

“Why don’t you just build a separate cooking fire?” I suggested. “You’ve got plenty of wood, and you don’t have to dig another pit. Just line it with some of those flat rocks, and be sure to bury the embers when you’re done.”

Lourdes and Pete, whose names had come up first in meal prep rotation, looked pleased with that solution, and everyone else was relieved that their meal would not be delayed until the big fire died down enough to cook on.

But Rachel’s eyes flared with impatience and her tone was tight as she said, “Consequences, Miss Stockton.”

I was really getting a little tired of that. It occurred to me that if one of the goals of this program was to build confidence, it probably wouldn’t hurt to let the kids succeed at something once in a while. So I replied simply, “Dinner, Mrs. Evans.”

She turned away without replying, but if looks could really speak, her words would have all had four letters.

~

The kids ate some kind of lukewarm, pre-packaged goulash that even Cisco sniffed and ignored and gathered around the bonfire as the sun died for an evaluation of the day’s performance. I unfolded a space blanket for Cisco and sat beside him, brushing the burrs out of his coat while he cuddled with his stuffed rabbit. One by one, the kids reviewed the day: the best part, the worst part, the things they could have done better. For Jess, the best part of the day was that it was over, the worst part was dinner, and as for what he could have done better—not a damn thing. That, of course, set the tone, and no one took the exercise seriously after that. It seemed to me that Rachel would have known better than to let Jess start.

I had finished brushing Cisco and was into a gentle game of tug with his rabbit when Paul said, “Miss Stockton, would you like to comment on what we can all learn from our first day on the trail?”

Oh, there was plenty I could have said, but I decided it would probably be best to confine my comments to my own area of expertise. So I released Cisco’s toy to him and said, “Okay, sure. There are a lot of things you should have learned today.” I looked around the fire-lit faces of the weary, miserable and disinterested teenagers and said, “The first one is that there is always more than one way around an obstacle on the trail. Think about the animals, the deer and raccoon and bears. They don’t build bridges across streams. They look for the path of least resistance. You should too.”

The kids seemed to like that—probably because they knew I had been reprimanded for suggesting that they go downstream to cross, instead of building a bridge over the stream. They thought they had gotten away with something, but I wasn’t the one who had made them feel that way; Paul had. They paid a bit more attention now.

“Secondly…” I fixed a meaningful look on Jess and Pete. “Always pack your own backpack. You boys had everything you own scattered on the ground this morning, you had every opportunity to check the contents of your pack, and neither one of you noticed you didn’t have any matches. What happened was your own fault.” Angel suppressed a giggle and tried to be subtle about elbowing Tiffanie, but both of the boys noticed and scowled.

Their good mood was gone, but I wasn’t finished. “As for leaving a team member behind…” Now my gaze went to each and every one of them, including Rachel and Paul, who certainly got no latitude from me on this point. “That’s not only mean, but dangerous and stupid. If even one of you so much as sprains an ankle, all of you could freeze to death. Do you get that?” Well, okay, so I exaggerated a little—we weren’t on Mt. Everest, after all—but that got their attention. The girls looked uneasily toward Lourdes, who stared fixedly at the fire, and the boys hunched their shoulders and shifted their gazes, the way boys do when they’re ashamed and defensive. “And finally,” I concluded, feeling I’d earned my wages for the day, “just so you know—don’t ever, and I mean
ever
…”
This time I looked right at Paul. “Have one person carry all of an essential survival supply. What if Lourdes had slipped in the stream this afternoon and gotten the matches wet? What if she had lost her backpack somehow? Just take a minute and think about what you’d all be doing now.”

Their faces, in the orange firelight, look sober—all except Paul’s, which looked quietly furious. Well, I couldn’t blame him. He’d look like a fool if he disagreed with me, but if he didn’t disagree, he would look like a fool for hiring me. Still, he had been wrong. And I wasn’t quite as anxious to impress either him or his wife as I had been before I’d started this job.

I said, “Before you turn in tonight, I suggest each one of you check your gear. Make sure you have everything in your backpack you’ll need to survive in case you get separated from the group. That includes matches. And oh, by the way, you’d better hope you
don’t
get separated from the group.”

I saw Paul open his mouth to speak, and—possibly because I can be a little petty, possibly because I really did still have the floor—I said, “One more thing. Drink plenty of water. Keep a bottle in your sleeping bag tonight, but don’t refill your pouches until the morning. Otherwise, your water will freeze.”

I tried to watch Paul’s face, but I was distracted by a groan from Tiffanie and a giggle from Angel.

“The world’s smallest bladder,” Angel said, pointing to Tiffanie.

“And I’m not getting up to go in the middle of the night,” Tiffanie said. “There are animals and stuff in the woods, and besides, it’s cold.”

“Gonna get colder if you pee your sleeping bag,” Pete jeered, and Tiffanie found a small pebble to toss across the fire at him. He ducked, of course.

I said, “Get up. Go. There are no animals in the woods this time of year that are interested in you. Just take your flashlight.”

The kids started to stir in preparation for rising, and Paul said, “One more thing before you go. You need to elect a leader for tomorrow’s hike.”

I’m sure that this was an important part of the therapy program, and most likely teachable moments occurred every night over the campfire while the team members debated the merits of their leader’s performance that day. In the summertime, I’m sure that was the case. But it was full dark at six o’clock, the fire was dying down and the wind was blowing in from the northern mountain peaks and all the kids wanted to do was get in their sleeping bags. The silence that followed resonated.

At last Lourdes said sourly, “If you ask me, the only one of you worth keeping is that dog.”

Cisco looked up alertly from his dedicated grooming of the rabbit, which made a few of them smile. Somebody must have clucked his tongue, because Cisco got up then, his stuffed rabbit in his mouth and his trail swishing proudly, and started going around the circle from person to person, as though campaigning for votes. I let his leash drop and chuckled with the others as tensions eased. This is why they call them therapy dogs.

“All right, enough,” Rachel said sharply. “You know the rules. No one goes to bed before you decide on tomorrow’s hike leader.”

And the fun was over. I extended my hand to Cisco and whistled softly. He came back to the space blanket and flopped down, grinning up at me.

Tiffanie said impatiently, “Whatever. Jess didn’t kill anybody today, let him do it. Who cares?”

“Yeah, who cares?’ said someone else, and another added, “Whatever.”

“The people have spoken,” Jess said, yawning broadly as he stood. “Whatever.”

I could see that Rachel wanted to argue, or at least issue another command, but she was the one who had insisted they vote. And, as Jess said, the people had spoken.

It took barely half an hour for the kids to clean up the remnants of dinner and disperse. By seven o’clock, we were all in our tents, and by seven thirty, voices had quieted and lanterns had been extinguished. I ran the camp stove for a few minutes, just to take the bite out of the air, then dived in my sleeping bag and settled Cisco on the space blanket right next to me. I was lucky. Between the two of us, we would generate enough heat to keep the tent almost cozy all night. The others, even with their expensive camping gear, could very likely look forward to a miserable expanse of hours before morning.