What We Take For Truth

by Deborah Nedelman

  “Mary! What’s wrong?” Grace had never seen Kev’s mother so pale. “Come in, sit down. Are you OK?”

  Mary was a large woman, encompassed in pillowy fat. It took a lot out of her to move fast and she’d obviously been running. Her face was flushed, her breathing labored. She grabbed hold of Grace’s hands. “When did you last see Kev?”

  “I… um… I don’t know.” Grace pulled her hands out of Mary’s sweaty grip. Mary had gotten hysterical about her son before. “What’s wrong?”

  “He wasn’t in his bed when I got up. I thought he’d gone to the café, so I didn’t worry about it. But it’s afternoon now and no one’s seen him.”

  Grace’s exhausted brain could not process this. “What do you mean?”

  “He said you invited him to the cabin yesterday, but when he knocked on your door, you weren’t there.”

  “Oh my god.” Grace slapped her forehead. Kev. “I did invite him. I totally forgot.”

  “He was pretty upset, but I told him he must have gotten the day wrong. Then he went on and on about how you were hiking in the woods, but you hadn’t come back down, and maybe you were lost or something. Were you?” Mary braced herself against the doorframe and stared hard into Grace’s eyes as if she might be able to read something there that Grace wouldn’t say.

  Mary’s own eyes were red-rimmed, dots of sweat stippled her forehead, and her breath smelled of stale coffee and something sharp and metallic. “What are you saying?” Grace said. “Kev’s missing?”

  Mary nodded, bending forward and bracing her hands on her knees.

  “Come inside. Sit down.” Grace put her hand under Mary’s arm and guided her to the couch.

  Mary made a frantic survey of the cabin; nothing but Kev’s absence seemed to register. She swallowed hard and her words rushed out. “Things have been so crazy with this night job Kevin’s been doing for the mill. I don’t like it and it makes Kev nervous. He knows something’s not right. And he’s all worried about you. You weren’t at the café the last few days and he wouldn’t stop talking about it. ‘Parrot didn’t give me my pie.’ Over and over.” Her fingers tugged desperately at the hem of her flannel shirt as if to keep herself anchored on the ground. “Last night after Kevin left, Kev ate his dinner and went to his room. I looked in before I went to bed and he was asleep, at least I thought so. But this morning he was gone. His orange sweatshirt wasn’t on the coat rack where he always puts it. I thought he went to the café, but he’d be back by now. No one’s seen him. I’m going a little crazy.”

  Grace began racking her brain. Had she seen him since she’d come back from Seattle? When was that? “What day is it?”

  “Sunday.”

  “I asked him to come to the cabin on Saturday, but I forgot about that. I wasn’t here most of the day. Damn it.” She balled her hands into fists and knocked them against her skull. “Oh, god, Mary. I don’t think... I didn’t see him. Not yesterday and I haven’t been anywhere yet today.” Grace felt the panic now. “I’ve been so distracted! What can I do?”

  Mary took a deep breath. “His dad is rounding up some guys to search the woods. They’re over at the mill now. You didn’t go hiking this morning? So he couldn’t have followed you?”

  “Not today. But yesterday I went up the mountain early. But I went around the mill, not by your place. Kev did see me when I went your way a few times. He told me.” Everything that had filled her mind for the last seventy-two hours now seemed trivial.

  Mary was pacing, her hands running through her hair. “He told me you weren’t where you were supposed to be. I told him you were fine. Oh, god!” She stopped dead. “Where did you go? Were you up where the guys are cutting Jake’s trees?”

  Grace’s jaw dropped. “What?”

  “You must know about it. It’s been going on a while.”

  The shock that flushed across Grace’s face made it clear she had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Rose told them to take what they needed to fill that last order. They’ve been logging in Jake’s preserve.”

  “Oh, my god.” Grace’s head was spinning. Nothing was in focus.

  “Weren’t you up there, too? Taking the guys food? Kev probably followed you.”

  “No, Mary. I wasn’t taking food to the guys stealing trees from the preserve. I was taking food to the kids trying to save the old growth in the national forest.” Would the jumble of lies and betrayals ever stop mounting?

  “Those protestors? Oh, my god. Why?” It was Mary’s turn to be shocked.

  “Hell, Mary! I was trying to survive!” She grabbed her jacket. “But it doesn’t matter now. If Kev did follow me, I know where he might be. You can tell those guys at the mill I’m heading up to the protestors’ camp.” Grace opened the door.

  “Wait!” Mary pulled something from her pocket and held it out. “I found this on the floor of his room. He must have worn those stupid jeans with the hole in the pocket. He never goes anywhere without it.”

  Grace reached out and took the metal whistle in both her hands. “We’ll find him. I promise.”

  Chapter 20

  “Nathan.” Walt held his hand over the receiver and whispered to Charlie, “You want me to say you ain’t here?”

  Charlie grabbed the phone. “Dad? Tell me where Annie is.”

  Walt leaned against the back of his kitchen chair and shook his head.

  “No, I’m not asking, I’m demanding. Now.” Walt’s eyebrows rose and he stared at his nephew.

  “Where’s that?” Charlie opened the drawer next to the phone and picked out a pencil. He began writing on the wall. “And you just left her there? Jesus, Dad.” Charlie shook his head. “OK. OK. But she’s still there, right? You got a doctor’s name?” He wrote something more on the wall. “Got it. Yep.” He hung up the phone.

  “You’ll want to check out the pickup and make sure she’s ready for a trip to SeaTac.” Charlie called over his shoulder to his uncle as he strode out the door and down the porch steps.

  Back at the cabin, he got no answer to his knock; he tried the knob and found the door unlocked. “Grace?” Charlie stepped in and called her name into the empty space. Puzzled, he stepped back outside and saw a pickup pull into the mill yard. Paul, the other log truck driver who was working on the operation, got out and ran into the office. Then he noticed five other pickups parked at chaotic angles around the mill office.

  Charlie walked over and climbed the office steps.

  “Hey, Charlie.” Henry looked up from the trail map spread across the desk.

  “Good. We could use another pair of eyes.”

  “For what?”

  “We got a lost kid.”

  Charlie looked around the small office. Pat leaned against the back wall, bleary-eyed, with his arms folded over his chest. Paul, Mel Parker, Burt Samson. Even the guy with no thumbs who hung around the millyard, Clett. Familiar faces—all these men were thieves too.

  “I don’t think he could have made it over the ridge. He’s a pretty slow walker,” said a fellow Charlie recognized as one of the choke setters. He’d never gotten the man’s name.

  “Right. Let’s go. We can fan out, cover all the trails,” Henry said.

  “Anybody know where Parrot’s been hiking?” the choke setter asked. “Mary says Kev’s been talking about Parrot going hiking in the mornings. Mary thinks he tried to follow her.”

  Before Charlie could get a word out, Pat spoke up. “She could of taken any of the trails out of town. I can run over to the cabin and check with her.”

  Charlie cleared his throat. “She’s not there. I was just there looking for her. But a couple of days ago I ran into her on the trail above the junction where four trails converge. She was headed downhill. I think she stayed to the north, on the trail that ends right out here.” He pointed across the mill toward the trailhead.

  Pat raised an eyebrow and pushed himself off the wall. “You know Parrot?”

  Charlie grinned. “She was taking a piss wh
en I walked by. Made for a quick introduction.”

  The choke setter Charlie didn’t know turned to him. “Thanks for helping. It’s my son that’s missing. He’s disabled, but he’s not stupid, and he’d do anything for Parrot.” He held out his hand. “I’m Kevin Bigley.”

  Charlie reached out and shook Kevin’s hand and nodded. “Charlie Roberge.”

  Before Kevin’s look of stunned recognition formed itself into words, Henry straightened up from his concentration over the map and said, “OK, let’s move it.” He pointed to each of the men and directed them to the three main trailheads that all led out of town and up. “You,” he said to Charlie, “take me to where you saw Grace.”

  These men had all been through this before. Scouring the woods for a missing buddy or a stranger—it was never a good thing, but there had been a few searches that had ended with a rescue.

  “If you find anything, stay where you are and use your whistle.”

  “Why don’t they call in the search and rescue team?” Charlie asked as he and Henry hurried to the trailhead at the far side of the mill yard.

  “Kevin’s not willing to risk someone finding out about the operation in the preserve.”

  “Shit. That’s crazy.”

  “It’s the man’s son. I figure he gets to decide.”

  “Jesus.” The thought of any father making such a choice set Charlie’s brain spinning disastrous possibilities. A disabled kid lost in the woods and bears feasting on the wild huckleberries that grew upslope. The kid could have stumbled on an animal, startled it into charging. Or just a slip near the edge of the trail; he could have broken a leg, hit his head. It was August, but the nights never really warmed in the mountains. Hypothermia. If he got hungry he could mistake a poisonous mushroom for something edible. But the primary storyline, the one that felt most likely and most tragic, was that he had wandered off the trail and would simply never be found.

  As they reached the trailhead, Henry looked over his shoulder to watch the other men move out of sight. “There’s Mary. Looks like she’s barely hanging on.”

  Charlie watched Kevin hold Mary in his arms a moment, nodding as she spoke, and pointed up the mountain.

  “Goddamned curse.” Henry muttered under his breath.

  ***

  Without a pack Grace was able to bolt up the steep two miles to the camp. She was gasping for air when she got to the clearing and could barely get out a single “Guys!”

  Jason was perched on a stump at the far side of the camp strumming his guitar.

  “Where is everybody?

  He looked up. “They all decided to hike over the ridge.” He played a few descending chords. “My turn to guard the trees. Why?”

  “I need your help.”

  Jason’s hands dropped from the strings and looked at her. “Yeah?”

  “There’s a kid lost on the mountain somewhere. He might have tried to follow me up here. He’s not a good walker, probably got off the trail somewhere down below.”

  “Don’t think he’s been around here. If anybody had seen someone wandering around here they would have said.”

  “Well, there’s a lot of mountain to cover. His father and some of the others will probably head up from the trailheads in Prosperity, so if we can start from up here and work our way down…”

  “We?”

  “I was hoping everybody would be here, but it’s just you, so let’s get going.”

  Jason held up his hands. “Look, I’m sorry about this, but I gotta stay here with the trees.”

  “Jesus! This is a disabled kid lost in the woods, he could be hurt. Forget the damn trees!” She leaped over the distance between them and grabbed his guitar and threw it onto the tarp. “What’s wrong with you?”

  “What the fuck? How am I supposed to know this isn’t some trick to get me to abandon my post, so those chain saws can get in here?”

  Grace shook her head. This was a waste of precious time. “Kev!” she yelled as she scanned the woods around her—there were too many shadows, too much undergrowth. She stepped close to Jason and gripped him by the shoulders and screamed in his face.

  “Dammit, Jason, listen to yourself! If Kev dies because we don’t find him in time, I will personally cut these trees down and make you watch!”

  She pushed him backward. He fell off the stump and landed with his feet in the air. Grace began retracing her steps out of the campsite, shouting, “Kev!”

  She concentrated on the dirt as she moved downhill where a complicated story of foot and paw prints played out. Kev’s contorted gait would have created a distinctive track in the dirt. He dragged the toe of his right foot with each step.

  When her son was younger Mary had torn her hair out as he wore through the top of each right shoe before coming close to outgrowing them. She’d hit on the solution of having a shoemaker down in Everett cover the toes of his shoes with a thick piece of rubber. Kev loved the look. “I got boots like Dad’s,” he crowed.

  Grace crouched down and looked closely at the marks in the dirt. Could he have made it up this far? He would have tried to come this way if he thought she had. Once the trail began to climb, the roots of overhanging firs and hemlock crossed it like thick veins on the back of a hard-working hand, uplifting the surface. Able-bodied hikers frequently hobbled down to town with twisted ankles and bunged knees. For Kev, this would have been a nightmare.

  While Grace was fighting with Jason, a cloud had crept in among the trees. The shadows had vanished; all around her was gray and mist.

  “Kev!” she cried again. But the forest had withdrawn its cooperative silence and no longer allowed her voice to carry farther than she could see. Instead, a cacophony of drips and splashes filled the air as water fell through the many shapes of fronds and needles to the resonant ground. The dirt began to soften and turn muddy.

  All she had now was her instinct. And her memory. Could she trust any of that? She stood still, took a deep breath, and in her mind began tracing the route she’d hiked so many times. To her right off the trail about ten yards, a boundary marker indicated the end of national forest land and the start of Jake’s preserve. Peering through the veil of fog into the untended darkness of the preserve, Grace could barely make out the pale form of that marker. Just beyond it, she knew, lay the trunk of a huge tree that had long before fallen across the steep valley running parallel to the trail. She took a few steps toward where she thought that valley began; her boots sank slightly into the soggy layers of soil. She shielded her face with her hands. Stinging nettles hid in the mist, appearing only when they were close enough to brush against her skin. She’d never challenged her father or any of the men in town, but she’d felt a secret gratitude that Jake Oliver had set this area off limits. It had been her haven. Today, though, she saw only the traps and dangers it harbored, and she wished the loggers had gotten in here and made space for the light.

  Far on the other side of these woods was where the spotted owl had made her nest. A sharp bitterness filled Grace’s mouth and she spat to rid herself of the taste and the memory of that slap. Had her father been angry and dangerous, or strong and kind? And what kind of person was her mother, really? She blinked away tears and shook her head to rid it of the sensation that she was just as lost as the boy she searched for.

  “Kev!” she called.

  ***

  Charlie scanned the woods as he and Henry headed up the trail from the back of the mill. Henry kept a close eye on the ground..

  “I don’t think he came this way.” Henry spoke softly. “It’s pretty far from his house. But this trail meets the others after that next turn.”

  “Right.” Charlie said, and took this as direction to hustle up ahead to the junction.

  He quickly reached the point where four trails converged into a single track switchbacking up toward the ridge. When he’d hiked up a week ago he’d met Grace above the junction. She could have gotten there via any of the trails that led out of Prosperity.

  Char
lie tried to reconstruct the rest of that hike. Where had he turned to get to the ridge? How had he come down?

  “Hey, Henry,” Charlie called down. The trees were thick along the sides of the trail and the switchbacks hid Henry from sight. “How big is this kid?”

  “Kinda small and scrawny. He’s probably ten or so, but seems younger.”

  “I got an idea. I’ll whistle if I find anything.”

  Charlie sprinted up the mountain along the single trail. He was breathing hard; images of an injured boy sent adrenalin pumping through his body. He needed to reach the ridge so he could backtrack slowly, looking downhill.

  Chapter 21

  As Grace made her way through the undergrowth, the forest closed in on her and fingers of panic ran up and down her spine. She reached the downed tree and braced herself against its moss-coated bark. She tipped her head back and let the mist wet her face; she had to clear her head and think. She pushed herself off from the trunk and took a few steps down where the contour of the land began to slope into the valley. The fog was thicker here and there were no familiar landmarks.

  If you hurt her, I will kill you. Believe me. Grace edited her mother’s warning and directed it toward the wildness around her. If you hurt him, I will...

  “Kev! Kev! Where are you?”

  What was she doing? This made no sense. Kev couldn’t maneuver on this soft ground. Unless he’d fallen and slid down, he would have stayed on the trail or much closer to it.

  A picture began to form in her mind. He would have gotten to that first bend, where the trail that ran from the end of his street into the preserve went from a gradual slope to a steep climb. At that point what would he have done? Followed an animal track off the trail? Gotten down on all fours and dragged himself up the mountain?

  Grace strained against the panic. Think like Kev would. He’s practical. He thinks I’m lost. He’s looking for me. She cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted into the woods.

  “Kev! Kev! It’s Parrot!”