by Skye Warren
A crack rang out and one of the men fell over my body. There was shuffling and shouting, then another crack and a thud beside me.
Hunter, Hunter, is that you?
Someone came to stand over me, blocking the stars. Not Hunter, I realized. Never Hunter because I’d left him. Just an ordinary man, and I understood what had sent the girl out into the canoe. Why did you catch me from falling? I wanted to die.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
At the current rate of erosion, scientists predict the Niagara Falls will be gone in around 50,000 years.
I woke up bound to a bed, my arms held immobile beside me, my whole body weighted down and sweating. No, not again. I fought, kicking and punching my way out of the restraints. A man appeared over me and held me down, shouting something I couldn’t make out.
“Hunter!” I screamed his name, though I didn’t know whether it was in anger or a call for help. My heart beat against my chest like a drum. God, he’d made me this way. If he was going to domesticate me, he had to damn well keep me from running away.
Resigned, I slumped down on the bed, sobbing quietly. I was the crazy one.
“It’s okay, you’re okay,” a voice said.
He sounded relieved, I thought.
I opened my eyes to see an older man blink at me with worried eyes. “It’s going to be okay.”
With a sigh, I said, “Just do what you’re going to do.”
“I’m not going to hurt you.”
Oh sure, like I’d believe that. Then again, Hunter had never really lied about his intentions. That was just the warped way he saw the world.
This man didn’t seem like he would hurt me. I had to doubt my ability to read people considering my lack of experience and my general state of confusion where Hunter was concerned, but I didn’t feel threatened.
He was old, with wrinkles falling over rheumy gray eyes and more hair in his eyebrows than on his head. His plaid shirt was faded and worn but clean, buttoned all the way up.
“Who are you?” I croaked.
“You don’t remember?”
I closed my eyes. The memories were slowly coming back, even though I didn’t really want them to. Running through the woods, meeting those boys. Fighting them off.
I met his gaze. “You shot them.”
He nodded. “They brought it on themselves.”
I looked down and saw that the sheets had been tucked around me—not tying me down but keeping me warm. My skin was clammy. I struggled to sit, and the old man kept his distance, probably having learned his lesson after struggling with me earlier.
“You asked me not to call the police, so I brought you back here to heal. The fever broke last night, I think.”
“How long?”
He looked up, a little uncertain. “Oh, maybe three days. Sorry, not entirely sure. Time passes a little different when you’re used to being alone.”
Yeah, I could sympathize with that.
I finally glanced around the cabin, taking in the small bookcase with pulp thriller novels, the open shelf with blackened pots and pans, the small, ancient-looking television.
And only one bed.
He caught my line of thought. “I slept on a roll in the corner.”
I’d put him out of his bed. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t you worry. It was just like camping again. But now that you’re awake, maybe you want to reconsider calling the police. Or at least let me take you to a hospital. They can check you out better than I can.”
I shook my head. “No cops.”
My heart had gone from twisted to torn right in half when I’d run from Hunter. But however much I might rage against him on the inside, I didn’t want him behind bars.
Unfortunately, waking up didn’t mean I was fully healed. Though I had no broken bones that we could tell, there were enough bruises that my body wanted to rest all day long. The man’s name turned out to be Jeremiah, and he was generous with his space, his food, and his stories.
True to his word, he never laid a finger on me. In fact, he was exceedingly careful of my personal space in such cramped quarters. He knew what had happened to me from how he’d found me. He told me the first day I woke up that “those boys” wouldn’t bother me again, and I couldn’t summon enough compassion to ask if they had lived or died.
Instead Jeremiah shared with me stories of a young man in the Wyoming wilderness, tales of hunting bear and running from geese that I wasn’t sure whether to believe but I enjoyed all the same.
Three days after I’d arrived, I was sitting at his kitchen table eating scrambled eggs and hotcakes for breakfast. He began telling me a story of how he and his friends had gone up to “the falls” for a buddy’s bachelor party. There was something about smuggling a stripper over the Canadian border, but I had to interrupt.
“Niagara Falls?”
“One in the same, darlin’. You ever been?”
“No, but I want to.”
“Oh, it’ll blow you away. Right beautiful it is. ’Course nothing’s as beautiful as what Candy had to show us—”
“How far away is it?”
He scratched his forehead. “About five hours or thereabouts.”
My spirits sank. That was a long way away for someone with no transportation. Or money. I toyed with my eggs, but I could feel Jeremiah’s curious gaze on me.
“You know,” he said. “There was a time I had dreams about those falls, even if I knew they wouldn’t come to nothing.”
“Really?”
I figured he was just saying that to make me feel better. How many other people hung their hopes on a waterfall? But I appreciated the gesture.
“Well, if you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a hermit. But even us hermits, we have people we look up to. Something to work toward. And ain’t no hermit better than the Niagara Falls hermit.”
I made a face. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“Nuh-uh. He was a real guy back in the eighteen hundreds. Francis something-or-other. He lived on an island right in the falls. He’d climb over some wooden planks and sit on the end like he was on a dock somewhere. People would scream, thinking he was going to fall.”
Despite myself, I was intrigued. This hadn’t been in my book.
“Did he fall?”
“Nope. Lived there happy as you please for years. Then one day he was gone into a shallow portion to take a bath like he always did. Went under and never came back up. Just goes to show.”
“Uh. What does it go to show?”
“Goes to show people think what they want to think. The man was highly-educated, well-traveled. Been to all these countries. Famous for his music. But he goes to live in the falls and everyone assumed he was crazy.”
“But you don’t think so.”
“Nah, he just knew a good thing when he found it. The falls is beautiful, so why should he leave?”
I couldn’t stop thinking about that man. The hermit. He knew a good thing when he found it. Was that Hunter, living isolated in his truck? Or was I trying to romanticize something so it would sit easier with me? It didn’t really matter. In the end, Hunter did what he did. And like Jeremiah said, people would think what they wanted to think.
In two more days I was strong enough to go outside. I took short walks but kept close to the cabin. I’d need to leave here soon, and that meant I needed money.
I asked Jeremiah about it when he came to stand on the porch to smoke his pipe.
“I know this is a long shot, but you wouldn’t know anyone around here who needs graphic design work, would you?” I sighed. “That’s pretty much the only marketable skill I have.”
He seemed thoughtful. “Nope, can’t say that I do. I barely know what to do with those computer things, but I have one if you want to look around for a job or something.”
I raised my eyebrow, doubtful. “You have a computer?”
He grinned, showing off his missing tooth in the front. “Bet you thought I was just an old stupid hillbilly, didn’t you?
Well, I am. But my daughter keeps trying to get me hooked into that stuff, so she got me set up. It’s in the kitchen cabinet underneath the sink.”
Excited, I ran to the door. On a whim, I stopped and gave him a kiss on his cheek.
“You’re not old or stupid.”
His eyes danced. “But I am a hillbilly.”
I laughed on my way inside. “And I love you for it.”
I pulled out the laptop and cables, which were pretty new as far as I could tell, and thankfully not messed up from being in a damp, enclosed space for so long. There was a little router that pulled up a signal, though it was slow all the way out in the woods.
The cursor waited patiently for me to type some search terms about a job nearby. Or maybe there would be some kind of assistance program for homeless people—which I basically was at this point. Or if I were really desperate, I could try to get in touch with my mother.
Instead I typed in Hunter’s full name. Apparently there was a B-list actor of the same name so I had to scroll through a few pages of search results until I found the one I was looking for. A news site reporting on a conviction for aggravated assault.
Nineteen year old parishioner…
Spiritual advisor and close friend of the family…
Abused his position of authority…
Guilty and sentenced to five years in a medium security prison…
A priest?
Jesus Christ, Hunter had been a priest. No wonder Laura had been so sure of him. And yet, what I’d told her had been true. How had he come to this? Why had he done it?
I went back to the search results and found a new article dated one year later.
U.S. Federal Appeals court tossed out the conviction on Friday…
New evidence brought forward by the victim’s friend…
Had fabricated the story over a series of emails…
Released on bond pending official exoneration…
The conviction was overturned.
My palms felt sweaty on the keyboard. A girl had lied about him. Lied to get attention or for whatever reasons, and he’d gone to jail for that. Where Hunter had gotten raped. The article didn’t say but I knew it with a certainty bone-deep. A priest who had raped a teenage girl would be exactly the kind of person targeted for assault by the other inmates. He wouldn’t have stood a chance against those men.
The first article had a picture of him. I returned and studied it.
The same features. The same man.
But the younger Hunter had a smooth face and guileless eyes whereas the Hunter I knew always wore a certain level of scruff. And his eyes were haunted. The pain he held was more marked now that I had seen him before.
Even though the picture had been taken from the shoulders up, I could see the changes in his whole body. His cheeks were more gaunt now, his shoulders broader and thicker. He’d gotten leaner while bulking up on muscle. He even held himself differently, more proud before, now defiant.
I had once wondered who had broken him, and now I knew the answer. That girl had when she lied about him. The judge and jury had when they convicted and sentenced him. His fellow priests had turned against him. The inmates had attacked him.
The whole world had turned against him and in a way, he had cracked. He wasn’t entirely right in the head. Even knowing this about him, caring for him, I had to admit that his actions at that motel had been inexcusable.
But in another way, he wasn’t broken. He lived, he felt, he suffered like any person.
More than other people.
A clink sounded on the kitchen table beside the laptop. Car keys.
I looked up at Jeremiah. “No way.”
“Don’t give me a hard time about this, missy. I know what I’m doing.”
“I can’t take your car.”
“You take it and go where you want to go. Then if you still need a place to stay, you come back here. Ain’t no use for a man as old as me to be alive if he can’t help someone who needs it.”
“Jeremiah. I don’t have a license. If I get caught—”
He cackled. “Lord, girl. I don’t have a title for that car neither. You just don’t get caught.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Did you steal it?”
“Grand theft auto, is that what you’re trying to charge me with?” He sat down opposite me and grew serious. “About four years ago I was wandering the country, hitching rides and doing what I had to in truck stations to earn money for food, if you know what I mean.”
My heart clenched. “Oh, Jeremiah.”
“Now, don’t go feeling sorry for me. I made my bed, and I never really regretted it neither. But this one day a guy met up with me in the stalls. We did our business and he handed me the money—along with the keys. I figured it was some kind of setup, but I took it anyway.
“Drove straight to my daughter’s house even though I hadn’t spoken to her in a decade. She was real good to me. Put me up for a while, helped me access my VA benefits, and I finally could afford this house. Kept the car, though. Now it’s yours.”
My heart felt overfull. “Okay. I’ll use it but I’ll bring it back.”
He shook his head vehemently. “I don’t need it. I’m an old man with nowhere to go. I get groceries delivered twice a month. I figure that man at the truck stop saw that I needed the car more than he did, and that’s why I’m giving it to you. Just get where you need to go. That’s all that matters.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Rainbows appear almost every day as sunlight reflects off the mist from the falls.
As I pulled the old blue Toyota next to a parking meter a mile away from the Niagara Falls State Park entrance, it occurred to me that there may be nothing here for me.
Groups of people bustled by laden with strollers and diaper bags. Concessions were sold from street vendors. Signs announced that the Maiden of the Mist—this being the name of the ship—gave tours. Even the skyline was populated erratically with tall business buildings. It was all far more modern and commercial than any of the pictures in my book had been.
But the falls fulfilled their prophecy and took my breath away on sight. Or rather, on sighting one of them, because the expanse of the three falls together was far more than I could have visualized before. It felt enormous—and considering it divided two large countries, I supposed that made sense. There were multiple rainbows arching over the falls, closer than I’d ever seen one but also see-through…rather ghostly, really.
I went to an exhibit where I heard some of the same facts from the book, about the daredevils who went down the falls in barrels, about the tightrope walker. There was even a short segment on the Hermit of Niagara Falls, which I found gratifying in the extreme. After all, if Jeremiah hadn’t been stretching the truth about that, maybe all the other stories were true too. I hoped so. It was a full life. Some good, some bad, but the man knew how to have adventures.
I did go on the large boat to get up close and personal with the falls, getting drenched despite the poncho they gave us. There was an option to go into the tunnels behind the falls, though I found cave-dwelling far less interesting without Hunter there to float with me.
By the time I had seen all there was to see, the day was waning. I counted the money Jeremiah had loaned me, feeling guilty all the while. Get where you need to go, he’d said. But I was here, and I still hadn’t found what I was looking for. It was becoming less clear what that really was.
I fed the parking meter and walked over to the hostel that I’d found online before coming here. Thirty bucks got me a clean bed, even if I did have to share a room. The girl barely looked up from her book when I came in. I glanced at the cover and did a double take.
Everything You Wanted to Know About Niagara Falls.
“I read that,” I exclaimed.
I knew I sounded like a moron, but I couldn’t help it. Alone in the world, it was nice to find common ground in even the smallest ways.
“You going to work on the Maiden too?” At my puzzl
ed look, she continued. “The Maiden of the Mist. I’m studying to pass the test so I can be one of their tour guides.” She rolled her eyes. “Sorry. Adventure guides.”
“No. At least, I hadn’t planned to.”
But there was a thought. I had most of the information memorized already. At least then I could earn back the money I’d borrowed from Jeremiah while I formulated a new plan. Still, I felt ambivalent about the falls. It wasn’t their fault I’d pinned so much on them. They couldn’t deliver me what I wanted, I knew that now. I’d probably always known.
The girl shut the book and groaned. “The first person to map the Niagara Falls was a French priest in 1678.” She considered. “Well, except for the Native Americans. So I guess the book is wrong.”
“Yeah,” I said wryly. “I’ve heard that.”
She tossed it onto the bed. “Sometimes I think history isn’t really what happened. It’s how you look at it.”
I grinned. “You and me are going to get along fine.”
“You got a name?”
“Evie. And you?”
“Sarah. I moved here with my dumbass boyfriend. Well, I didn’t think he was a dumbass at the time. But we broke up because he is, in fact, a dumbass. And a cheater. Figure I might as well make some money while I sort this shit out.”
“That sucks, and I understand completely.”
“Wanna grab some dinner?”
“Let’s.”
We left the hostel room and returned to the darkened streets. The crowd seemed to have swelled as night hovered over the earth. It appeared the locals came here for the concessions and games along the strand.
A tall Ferris wheel blinked bright in the sky. On the ground, everything felt mildly damp and chilly. It would only be worse at the top, and that decided me.
“Have you been on that?”
Sarah looked up, blinking against the mist. “Not yet, but I’m game.”