by Mark Allen
As the sign flashed by on the right, he said, “I’ve made peace with what happened to your mother.”
Kevin shook the flask. The booze sloshing around inside sounded like the devil’s accusation. “Yeah, I can see that you are really at peace.” Scorn roughened his voice.
Keeping his left hand on the steering wheel, Jack reached out with his right to snatch the flask out of Kevin’s hand.
“Hey, what the hell?”
Jack rolled down his window and threw out the flask. Glancing in his rearview mirror, he saw it tumble to a stop at the foot of a sign that announced “You Are Now Leaving Vesper Falls.” No exclamation points and this sign was much smaller and more simplistic than the one at the other end of town.
“Really?” Kevin said. “What the hell was that all about?”
Something I should have done a long time ago. “I’m done drinking,” Jack said. He tried to ignore the panic shredding his guts at the sobering thought of having to spend several days in the woods with his angry, distant son without any alcohol to help him get through.
“Just like that?” Kevin asked.
“Just like that.”
Kevin’s laugh was tauntingly sarcastic. “Bullshit … but whatever. Now, care to tell me where the hell we’re going?”
Jack was grateful for the change of subject. “Scar Lake,” he said.
“That shithole? What are we going there for?”
“To get away. Do a little deer hunting. Thought you might like to celebrate your release by putting a bullet in a whitetail.”
“I’ve been locked up and haven’t seen a girl for three years, other than prison staff,” Kevin said. “So yeah, I’d like to put something in some white tail, if you know what I mean.”
Jack shot him a wry glance. “It’s deer camp, not a brothel.”
“Deer camp.” Kevin spat the words as if they left a bad taste in his mouth. “What a stupid idea. In case your observational skills have been compromised by that supposedly final bender you went on last night, the only clothes I have with me are the ones I'm wearing. So if you want to go traipsing through the ass end of God's backyard in pursuit of the elusive whitetail, I'm going to need more appropriate attire.” His voice dripped with sarcasm as he added, “Oh yeah, and a gun.”
Jack jerked a thumb toward the rear of the Jeep. “I packed you a bag,” he said. “And that long box back there is for you.”
Kevin glanced over his shoulder. “What’s in it?”
“Open it and see.”
Kevin reached behind him and pulled the box into the front seat. The length made it awkward, but he managed. He opened the box to find the Stoeger shotgun inside. The masculine scents of gunmetal and cleaning oil filled the Jeep with their testosteronic aroma.
“Got it from Big Bad Bill,” Jack said. “Brand new, never been shot. Figured if we had to rely on your good looks to charm the deer into the freezer, we’d go hungry.”
He hoped his son’s abrasive, resentful shell would crack, at least a little bit, but no such luck. “A Stoeger?” Kevin said mockingly. “Isn’t that like the Wal-Mart of shotguns? What’s the matter, dad, spend too much money on booze so you couldn’t afford a real gun like a Winchester or Remington?”
Kevin’s tone abruptly shifted from mocking to venomous. “I can see right through your little plan, dad.” He sneered the endearment into a twisted obscenity. “You thought giving me this shotgun would patch things up between us, make things all right, bridge the gap, heal the wound, that sort of crap.” The lines on his face were hard and rigid, the muscles tight and tense. “But let me tell you something, it’s gonna take a whole lot more than a new gun to make me forgive you for what you did to mom.”
The words stabbed into Jack’s heart. He turned his head to the left, not wanting Kevin to see that his eyes had welled up. Hot shame and equally hot rage seesawed through him at the same time and he blinked back tears as he white-knuckled the steering wheel and struggled to gain control of his wavering emotions.
When he could speak again, Jack said, “I know I failed you, Kevin. I failed all of us. Your mom most of all. But I’m not the same person I was back then.” He had a hard time forcing the words out around the lump in his throat.
“Right,” said Kevin mercilessly. “Before you were just a coward. Now you’re a drunk coward. I guess that’s an evolution.” He snorted dismissively. “Save your words, dad. They’re just as cheap as this shotgun you bought me.”
Jack could take no more and lapsed into silence, keeping his eyes on the road as his embers of hope for a fresh start with his son were extinguished by Kevin’s cold anger. Not that he could blame him. Kevin had every right to hate his father. Hell, he hated himself most of the time.
Jack glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. His face looked older, more wrinkled, than it had an hour ago, and sadness veiled his eyes. He struggled to fight back the internal darkness that wanted to descend. He could not give in. He would not give in. He would not give up on his son.
But refusing to acknowledge defeat and knowing what to say to achieve victory is not the same thing, so the embargo of silence remained firmly in place for the rest of the trip. Kevin would not give an inch and Jack felt like he had no more inches to give.
They stopped at the convenience store in Redford to grab some snacks—Jack lingered longingly in front of the beer cooler, but managed to pull himself away—before continuing down the highway, each of them with a Slim Jim protruding from their mouth. They eventually turned off State Route 3 onto side roads that devolved into gravel roads that devolved into dirt roads. Finally, over two hours after leaving the Detention Center, Jack pulled the Jeep into a small parking lot and killed the engine. There were only two other vehicles in the lot—a Ford F150 with New York vanity plates that read “Rickson,” and a Chevy Blazer with New Jersey tags. The Blazer had a sticker on the rear window that proclaimed in thick bold letters, MEAT IS MURDER.
Jack shook his head. “Vegans. I’ll bet you ten bucks the stinking hypocrites are wearing leather boots while they hike.”
He took the key out of the ignition and exited the vehicle. He stretched to relieve the aches of the road, muscles murmuring in relief. He breathed in the mountain air and felt his spirits start to revive, pushing back some of the darkness that had settled over him. He hoped the beautifully rugged surroundings were having a similar effect on Kevin. He turned and looked at his son as he climbed out of the Jeep.
Kevin slowly and deliberately made a point of looking in all directions, not missing a single compass point, then said, “I don’t see any lodge.”
Jack walked to the back of the Jeep and began grabbing their gear. “It’s back a ways. About three miles.”
“Three miles!” Kevin sounded as if he had just been told they were walking to Argentina. “Are you shitting me?”
Grinning, Jack tossed a pack to Kevin. “I shit you not. Ice up, son.”
“Did you just quote Steve Smith?” Kevin asked with something close to an amused smile on his face as he slipped his arms through the pack’s shoulder straps.
Happy to see something other than sullen bitterness from his son, Jack walked over to a sign-in station next to a large pine tree at the head of the trail. As he jotted their names down on the ledger, he saw that the Ricksons had already checked in. The only other names listed were Vicky and Wayne Parker, presumably the same people who equated eating a hamburger to homicide.
As he shifted his pack to better distribute the weight, Kevin looked at the Blazer’s out-of-state tags and shook his head. “What kind of morons drive all the way from New Jersey to come to this godforsaken backcountry?”
“I don’t know if they’re morons, but their names are Vicky and Wayne Parker,” said Jack.
“Morons or not, they should have stuck to safer turf,” said Kevin. “This far back in the ass-crack of nowhere, there are at least fifty ways to die and none of them are pleasant.”
Jack shrugged. “Hey, they
’re from Jersey … how smart can they be? Come on, let’s get moving.”
They followed the narrow trail through the thick forest of pine, maple, birch and oak. The late afternoon sun speared through the foliage in golden shafts. Multicolored leaves cascaded around them, weaving a tapestry of subdued colors before their eyes. Jack thought it was stunningly beautiful, Mother Nature painting on the canvas God created.
A couple hundred yards up the path, they came to a gulch spanned by a makeshift rope-and-log bridge that looked like it might have been constructed right around the end of the Civil War. Jack debated just going down into the gulch, but the sides were steep and jagged boulders protruded from the earthen walls like the discarded teeth of some giant monster. It was just too dangerous.
So is that bridge, his inner voice reminded.
There really was no choice. They either took their chances with the rickety bridge or they turned back, and turning back wasn’t an option for Jack. Besides, the Ricksons and Parkers had obviously made it across; if they had not, their busted up bodies would be lying at the bottom of the gulch.
Taking a deep breath, Jack put one tentative foot in front of the other and gingerly crossed the bridge. He only looked down once; seeing the trout stream snaking along the bottom of the gulch far below in liquid-silver flashes made the world spin and he grabbed the thick rope that substituted as a handrail in order to regain his equilibrium. Then he fixed his eyes on the opposite side and finished crossing as quickly as he could. He breathed an audible sigh of relief when his feet touched solid ground again.
He watched anxiously as Kevin trekked across the bridge, but his son seemed to take it all in stride. He even looked down through the gaps in the logs most of the time and showed no signs of vertigo.
That’s my boy, Jack thought. One tough kid. Aloud he said, “Pretty nerve-wracking, huh?”
Kevin brushed past him with a curt reply. “Only if you’re a pussy.” He headed into the thick brush alongside the trail. “Be right back. Gotta take a piss.”
As he waited for Kevin to answer the call of nature, Jack noticed a pine tree just off the trail with a trunk that forked into a perfect Y about twenty feet up. A vine-covered log had fallen into the crotch and was perfectly balanced, the forked tree acting as the fulcrum to form a giant teeter-totter. The log was angled down, one end disappearing into the thicket while the other end jutted upwards at a forty-five degree angle over the trail.
“Hey,” Jack called to Kevin. “Hurry up, will you?”
“I’m coming.”
“Really? I thought you were just taking a piss.” Jack grinned at his own joke.
“You’re hysterical,” Kevin said from the bushes.
A salamander caught Jack’s eye, scurrying along the trail. He almost missed it, the little lizard’s brown and black coloration the perfect camouflage to blend into the dirt and leaves. Jack stepped forward and leaned over for a closer look.
The end of the teeter-totter log that had been jutting out over the trail suddenly dropped down like an executioner’s axe, smashing the ground just inches in front of his face and crushing the salamander into amphibious paste. Jack jumped back so quickly that he tripped and landed on his back. His pack cushioned the fall but left him sprawled in the middle of the trail like a turned-over turtle.
Kevin peered at him from behind a thorn bush.
Jack rolled onto his knees and yelled, “You almost killed me!”
Kevin at least had the courtesy to look a little sheepish. “Uh, yeah,” he said. “My bad.”
Jack climbed to his feet and dusted off his pants while glaring at his son. “You nearly busted my head with a humongous log and all you can say is ‘my bad’?”
Kevin reached up and pulled on a vine dangling from the log. The rope-like vegetation was as thick as his forearm. He wrenched it and his end of the log swung down while the opposite end rose back into the air, dripping salamander guts, until it was once again angled above the trail. He then pushed through the brush and rejoined his father on the path.
“Could always be worse,” he said, taking the lead as they resumed their hike.
“Yeah? How so?” Jack asked.
Kevin looked back over his shoulder and replied, “I could’ve said, ‘Shit, I missed.’”
Jack frowned at him. “You’re not funny.”
“Have a drink,” Kevin shot back. “Maybe you’ll find me more amusing.”
A defensive response quickly rose to Jack’s lips, but at the last second he decided to let it go. It just wasn’t worth it and nothing he said would change Kevin’s mind.
They hiked in silence until they came to a sharp bend that led up into a pine grove that was thick with shadows, the sun barely penetrating the twisted, interlocked canopy of needle-laden branches overhead. Kevin halted so abruptly that Jack nearly ran into him.
“Why are you stopping?” he asked.
“Isn’t this where…” Kevin’s voice trailed off before he finished the question.
Jack finished it for him. “Where Pastor Wainwright’s daughter Holly died? Yeah, this is the place.”
“I remember reading it in the paper and seeing it on the news. A cougar, right?”
Jack nodded. “Ripped her throat out before Larry even realized what was happening.”
“That had to suck.”
“Watching someone you love get killed right before your eyes? Yeah, that kind of sucks big time.”
Kevin stared at him with piercing eyes. Jack held his gaze for just the briefest of moments and then looked away, letting his son have the moment. He started walking again and even though he didn’t really believe in ghosts, he still felt a little strange traipsing over ground where someone had died.
As they walked, he finished the story. “Anyway, Larry went right at the thing with just his walking stick and got busted up pretty bad for it. He had to leave Holly's body behind and go for help. Hurt like he was, it took him almost a whole day—you saw how far we are from the nearest town. By the time anyone got back here, the cougar was long gone and all that was left of Holly was a lot of blood and one finger. It still had her class ring on it.” He paused for a moment and shook his head. “I can't even imagine.”
“Sure you can,” said Kevin.
Now it was Jack’s turn to fire off a piercing glare.
Kevin raised his hands in mock surrender. “Just saying.”
“How about you don’t say another damn word and instead of picking a fight, you pick up the pace,” Jack replied. “I’d like to be at the lodge before dark if that’s okay with you.”
With that, an unspoken truce seemed to be reached and they hiked the final miles without saying another word to each other. By focusing on their pace instead of their hostility, they managed to arrive at the lodge just as the sun was setting. Jack breathed a sigh of relief as the building appeared through the trees. He had not been looking forward to hiking in the dark.
Walking up to the front of the lodge, they stopped and studied it. If Jack was being honest, the place wasn’t much to look at. Four walls constructed from rough planks, a tarpaper roof through which poked a leaning-to-the-left chimney chugging smoke, and your basic three-step front porch. Unless the inside looked better than the outside, calling it a lodge was an exercise in wishful thinking. This was a hunter’s cabin, pure and simple.
It was obvious that Kevin had taken an instant dislike to the rustic accommodations. The disgust was written on his face as he stared at the outhouse with a half-moon carved in the door, squatting about forty yards away from the cabin on the opposite side of the trail.
“This place doesn’t even have plumbing?” he asked in rhetorical disbelief. “Are you kidding me?”
“We’re three miles from the nearest road,” Jack said, “and that road was eight miles from the nearest town. What did you expect, a Holiday Inn?”
“No, but I didn't expect to play Little House on the Prairie and shit outside either.”
“People have been
doing their business outside since Adam and Eve, so what's your problem?”
“Spiders,” Kevin said matter-of-factly, as if that single word explained everything.
“Spiders?”
“Yeah, spiders,” Kevin repeated. “They hide down in the hole and then when you sit down to take a crap, they jump up and bite you on the ass.” It was clear from his tone that he was dead serious.
Jack stared at him and then shook his head. “Okay, then. I don’t quite know what to say to that, so let’s just go meet our roommates.”
At that moment, the front door of the cabin flew open and a teenager Jack presumed was Tom Rickson jumped down the steps with a hearty, welcoming smile on his face. It wasn’t hard to see why he had gone to rehab for anorexia; Jack had seen more meat on a deer carcass stripped by coyotes. The young man’s long—well, compared to Kevin’s prison crew-cut, anyway—red hair flopped around his shoulders as he walked up to Jack, hand outstretched, and said, “Hi, I’m Tom. You must be Mr. Colter.”
Jack shook Tom’s hand. The teenager’s grip was weak and fragile, but that was to be expected. “Nice to meet you, Tom,” he said. “And call me Jack.” He quickly let go of Tom’s hand, fearful that he would accidentally crush the bones to powder. Gesturing behind him, he said, “The quiet guy behind me is my son Kevin.” He leaned in closer and said in a loud conspiratorial whisper, “He’s not quiet all the time, though. At night he snores like a snot-clogged pig.”
Tom laughed.
“Real nice, dad.” Kevin stepped forward and shook Tom’s hand. “Guess it’s just us and the geezers for the next few days.”
“Looks like it,” Tom replied. “But I wouldn’t say ‘geezer’ in front of my dad. He hates that word.”
“Speaking of that,” Jack said. “Where is your father?”
Before Tom could answer, the outhouse door squeaked open on rusty hinges and a man emerged, tightening his belt. He had the same reddish hair and a neatly cropped beard, with lumberjack arms and a stout chest. If Tom Rickson was the definition of frailty, then his father was the epitome of masculine strength. When he saw the group, his face split into a grin that was a mirror image of his son. He strode up to them and announced in a loud, booming voice, “I highly recommend you let that air out for a while, guys.” He waved toward the outhouse. “I’d shake your hands but I should probably wash them first.” His eyes sparkled with a good-natured twinkle. “By the way, I’m Paul Rickson, and I see you’ve met my boy Tom. You must be the Colters.”