The Dogs of Winter (34 page)

•  •  •

In time, Kendra and the Hupa made their own descent into the fog. The man had cut a hole in the blanket she’d slept in and given it to her to wear. She wore it like a poncho, a figure from a western movie. He’d made shoes for her as well. At least they worked like shoes, though, in fact, they were no more than bundles of grass bound with strips of cloth, and she could not say what movie these were from, for, until now, she had seen nothing like them.

They ate as they went. Blackberries they had picked near the cabins, and dried sticks of salmon. They came to the beach and followed this to the small estuary where Temple Creek found its way to the sea. They crossed the water on an old log, then picked up the trail that led to the road.

In a short time, they had put the fog behind them once more, and the valley lay naked to their eyes. Though it was the thing which had originally drawn her to it, Kendra found she had forgotten the
intimate beauty of the place. Or perhaps she saw it more clearly now. It was a narrow little valley. The foothills which rolled away from it were covered in trees, some still showing leaves of autumnal hue. The banks of the creek were thick with all manner of berry and vine, and these were woven through with poison oak, which, like many of the trees, had begun to color with the season. All in all, she thought, it made for a happy little display. All reds and greens—the stuff of holidays and good cheer.

They passed among groves of Douglas fir, together with a few cedar, their limbs bearded with a gray-green moss. There were other trees too, which Kendra could not name. Many had already lost their leaves and their naked white limbs were forked and woven into the sky as if any movement thereof might wrest their roots from the muddy soil.

The Hupa had hidden the packs in the grass near their camp but he carried the rifle, unsheathed, slung over his shoulder by a black nylon strap. He walked more or less at Kendra’s side, but stayed just a step off her pace. She supposed they would have made for an odd sight—the girl dressed in the old blanket, her feet wrapped in rags, her hair short and ragged, the Indian coming just behind, with his erect carriage, his long, braided hair, and his big rifle. He wore hiking boots, jeans, and a plaid flannel shirt, and she wondered what someone would make of them, if there were any there to see it—the risen Magus, perhaps, in the company of the whore of Tyre. But then she supposed it would take a mind like her father’s to make that out of it and he was a long time gone.

In time, they came to a small path that did not look like much more than a deer trail, and Kendra made for it.

“This is the place?” she heard the man say. They had not spoken in what seemed like hours. But now she only nodded and pushed ahead. “Rose keeps dogs,” she called back to him. “But don’t worry. They know me.”

It seemed to her as if he made some response to this remark but she did not stop to take note of it. They had come to a small bridge and she could see the trailer. It was all just as she remembered. It rested in a clearing among the trees, its aluminum siding scorched half black, and, as if on cue, she saw the dogs as well, though it
seemed to her as if they had added to their number, for now there were three instead of two. The animals came headlong, the day made terrible with their cries. Kendra ran as if to greet them, for it was her intention to play her hand to the very end.

F
letcher was betting heavily on the authors of
Surfing the Golden State.
They had described a trail leading down to a boulder field. Fletcher believed he and his companions had traversed such a field. Though it had been too foggy to look closely at the cliffs, he had taken note of their presence, monolithic shapes looming in the half light. The authors had further described the trail as leading overland to the campground Drew had spoken of at Neah Heads. The trail was said to be well-defined but arduous, crossing streams, climbing a mountain. Still, the authors had done it in a day and Fletcher was banking on that, for he had taken little with him. Not that he’d had much choice. Without the opportunity to stock up, he’d come in the clothes he’d slept in, together with a single Pop-Tart and one small bottle of water which he had managed to slip into his sleeping bag before retiring. After that, it was only a question of waiting them out. When he was sure that the others were asleep, he’d made his move.

The fog swallowed him at once. He’d gone along the shoreline, where the water might erase his tracks. He went stone blind, stumbling among slimy beds of kelp, tripping now and again on the odd rock, his feet numb with cold. Still, the plan worked. By daybreak, or what passed for it in this climate, he was seated on a boulder at the beginnings of the rock field.

He had come to the moment of choice. At this point, he could still go back. To go on was to risk everything. The trouble was that to go back meant going on as well. At least in this direction, he was his own boss. Stuffed into his parka was the roll of film he’d shot on Thunder Bay. It was not great stuff, but it would do. There was Drew Harmon and R.J. trading double overhead waves before the steel gray cliffs of the Devil’s Hoof. He had left them the camera, just in case they found anything worthy of their efforts. It was Fletcher’s belief that what they were most likely to find was more regret.

•  •  •

In fact, the trail was not so elusive as he had imagined. For a time, he had worked his way along the base of the cliffs. This was the hard part, for he was filled with misgivings. His visibility was made poor by the fog. The cliffs seemed unending. His passage was slow and, in time, he was aware of the white water making inroads upon the beach, telling him that the tide had begun to turn. It was his darkest moment. Soon after, however, he came to a place where the cliffs dropped down into long, rounded shoulders and the beach bent inland between them, drawing with it the sea, and so forming a narrow estuary, at the heart of which a good-sized stream ran from among the rocks and brush to join its waters with that of the Pacific.

He was some time in scouting this location, following carefully the path of the water, where, eventually, he came upon a log placed crosswise over the stream. Its purpose seemed unmistakable. Drawing closer, he could see the top worn smooth where boots had passed over it. He went this way himself, climbing into the rocks just south of the log where, in five minutes’ time, he came upon a patch of grass cut by hard-packed dirt.

The trail was narrow at first, overgrown in places and yet with
each switchback, each gain in elevation, it seemed to grow a little more defined. In time, the fog had begun to burn away as well and he was able to make some sense of his surroundings.

The water he had seen on the beach ran from the bottom of a narrow little valley, a steep V cut between the shoulders of the coastal range. The trail kept within sight of the water, but it seemed to be moving in the right direction. Fletcher felt that he should break into song, so certain was he that he had found the path—a little something from his days at Y camp—a few strains of “When Those Caissons Go Rolling Along,” perhaps, for certainly there was no one here to listen, and the sun had broken from the treetops and he was thinking that, by nightfall, he would have found a room somewhere, a hot shower, a phone. He would have begun to put the trip behind him.

•  •  •

By noon, Fletcher’s optimism had given way to an exhaustion laced with dread. He was seated once more, this time upon a fallen log. The water was still visible, a silver thread among the autumnal trees, though by now he was some distance above it as his road had begun to climb. It had also, much to his dismay, begun to run in a southerly direction, and he was beginning to have doubts about it taking him to the Heads. He had begun to worry that it was a logging road, and he remembered all too well the labyrinth of such roads Drew had driven on the night they’d hiked to the beach. The sun would set early behind the range to his west and the valley would go cold quickly. He was without provisions or direction. Such were the anxieties which beset him when he heard the sound of gunfire issuing from the valley below. Instinctively, he moved off the log and into the trees.

The shooting went on for some time. There was no mistaking the sound. He believed there were multiple weapons. It was difficult, surrounded by trees and mountains, to pinpoint the direction from which the sounds came, but he believed them to be coming from the west, the direction of the sea. Was it possible, he wondered, that Drew and Robbie had come after him, that they had crossed paths with the man he had seen on the cliff? He did not suppose the man
had come alone. There would be others. Scenes of carnage filled his head. His first impulse was to press on, in the hopes of at least outdistancing the shooting. In the end, however, it seemed to him as if some investigation was required.

There were, he decided, two possibilities. Drew and Robbie were in trouble. Or there were hunters about. The latter scenario appealed to him a good deal more than the first. For if the former were true, he doubted there would be much he could do, save witness it. The latter held the possibility of help. He went so far as to imagine himself seated in a pickup truck, a tall cold one in his hand, as the woods receded behind him. A last shot came to him through the trees and he went in pursuit of it.

The going was slow. He was moving downhill now, toward the V of the valley. He followed what he took to be a deer path. The grass was bent beneath his feet and a way had been made among the brush. A narrow, twisting way, and yet a way nonetheless. At times, the tree limbs blocked him and he was forced to go on all fours to stay his course.

Eventually, however, he came within sight of the valley floor. He paused here. A dead silence hung upon the fall air. The trees in the valley showed color and he could make out the silver water of the little stream as it snaked among them. It seemed to him, however, that there was something else there as well, something besides the water that was reflecting the light, and he moved a bit further down the hillside, straining to see through this play of light and shadow. There was a structure of some sort there, he thought, and he went on.

Eventually, he came to a muddy bank made slick with fallen leaves. He was across the river and still some distance away, but he could see now that he was approaching a small settlement. He saw an old house trailer half-blackened as though by fire. He saw a shack in need of paint from whose roof a thin trail of gray smoke wafted into the air.

A short distance downriver from where he stood, he could see that someone had built a narrow, moss-covered bridge it would be necessary to cross to reach the trailer. He approached with caution, mindful that he was alone and unarmed in a neighborhood where trespassers were likely to be shot; wondering, too, if this could have
been the scene of all the shooting. In truth, he was hoping that he had been wrong, that the gunplay had come from some other quarter, for he would gladly swap his hunters for the generous, if reclusive, citizen. He was still harboring such fantasies when he reached the bridge and came upon the first of the bodies.

He was treated first to the sound of buzzing flies and then saw the man. He took him at once for the Indian he had seen on the cliff. His hair was long and braided. He was dressed in denim and plaid and a long-barreled rifle with a large scope lay beside him. The man was shot through the chest with what looked to be a large-caliber bullet. His mouth was open and his eyes had rolled back into his head.

The bridge transcribed a little arch as it spanned the creek and appeared to be a work of some craftsmanship. The Indian seemed to have been shot near the apex of this arch, then fallen backward so that he lay now on Fletcher’s side of the water.

The sight of the body stopped him cold and he was some time crouched in the mud at the side of the stream. He had the idea that if he moved he was likely to be shot himself, though he could not have said by whom. Nor could he have told you how long he waited.

Nothing happened. There were no further shots and no voices. The day had fallen silent once more, save for the buzzing of the insects and the rush of water across a rocky bed. In time, he rose, his legs stiff from the position he had held. He stepped over the man, moving upward along the bridge that he might at least get a look at the clearing on the far bank. From this elevation, he could see that quite a number of things had been shot. Namely, three dogs, two men, and a chicken. The devastation appeared, at first glance, quite complete. It was only upon further examination that he saw the second chicken and the girl.

The girl was bare-legged, dressed only in a gaily colored blanket. She was seated on the ground, her back to a tree, and she was cradling the chicken in her arms. The bird’s head bobbed up and down, and from time to time, the girl would raise her hand to stroke the side of the chicken’s neck with the backs of her fingers. The last thing he noticed about her was that she was Kendra Harmon.

F
letcher crossed the bridge and entered the clearing. There was a dead man by the water, a tall, skinny man dressed in red long-johns. The man had a gun belt around his waist and there was a garden hose at his side. The hose was still spouting water. As a result, a tiny, unnamed tributary trickled along the muddy bank to join the stream. Another man clad only in soiled boxer shorts and a bloody T-shirt lay nearby, his face in the dirt, an automatic rifle pinned beneath his belly. The dogs were scattered more or less between the two men.

Fletcher walked among the carnage. He was making for the tree and Kendra Harmon. At his approach, the girl turned to look at him. She stroked the side of the chicken’s neck. “I named him Lucky,” she said.

“Are you all-right?” Fletcher asked.

“Me and Lucky,” the girl said. “We came out okay.”

Fletcher stood before her. He looked around. The place was a veritable swamp of bodily fluids. It was quite unlike anything he had
seen before. “Christ,” he said. He felt a little weak in the knees. “What happened here?”