The Weight of Night

by Christine Carbo

  Jeremy’s parents had become panicky about the amount of time he’d been gone, the smoke, and the lowering sun. I didn’t like it one bit either, and I could tell by Ken’s expression that he felt the same. Linda bit her nails, looking frantic, her eyes rimmed in pink, either from crying or the smoke. She paced and seemed half crazed, her short hair escaping her ponytail and clinging to the side of her sun-freckled face.

  “Please sit,” Ron said, attempting a smile. He motioned to the picnic table, and the four of us sat down.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Corey.” I set my hands on the table, then realized they were trembling slightly, so I put them back in my lap. I still felt grimy from the dig and was starting to become irritated at how long it was taking us to find this boy. “I know Officer Greeley has been over everything with you, but I’d just like to ask you a few more questions. The more of us out there looking for your son, the better.”

  “Of course, of course.” Ron nodded, clearly very anxious too, though he didn’t show it the same way as his wife. He sat still, slumping over the picnic table as if a heavy cloak was weighing him down, a hopeful, searching look in his eyes. I thought of how when they left the campsite midmorning for their stroll around the lake, their faces were probably fresh, unlined, and rested from three peaceful days spent in the park. Even in this climate, camping in Glacier held its joy: a chance to be away from cell phones and TVs, to be among babbling streams, fluttering birds, scurrying chipmunks, and other excited and happy campers. Now both their faces looked aged, gripped by fear.

  “People do go missing in Glacier frequently, and most often, we find them. There’s just a lot of countryside out here”—I gestured to the mountains to my north, as if I figured that’s the way he’d gone, although I had no idea—“and a wrong turn on a trail can get people turned around quite easily, especially if he tried to take a shortcut. If your son thought he was hiking back toward the campsite, but instead was heading a completely different direction, it could have led him hours away. If he’s out on those trails,” I said, “we intend to find him.”

  The Coreys nodded, taking in my every word for some new angle, some fresh bit of information that would change the status quo, but I was certain I hadn’t provided it. Linda searched my eyes for any sign that she could trust me to bring her boy back to safety.

  “I’m sure Officer Greeley has also informed you that we’ve got ­rangers still sweeping all the trails accessible from this area. We’ve pulled in extra men to take care of the questioning. We’ve been asking other hikers and nearby campers if they’ve seen Jeremy. We’re searching the waterways and—”

  “Oh, God.” Linda slapped her hand to her mouth.

  I held up mine. “We have no reason to believe he’s fallen into water. Just following standard procedure, that’s all.” I didn’t want to say it, but it was actually quite common for a tourist, especially a teenage boy, to be tempted to walk out onto the big, colorful bluish-green and red boulders to steal a peek at the water crashing down from McDonald Creek. And sometimes the boulders and cliff edges were slick. We usually had at least one drowning a year from a tourist slipping off an edge and getting swept by the stream’s sheer force down the rapids, into an undertow, and beneath a tangle of logs that held the person under; someone could also smash into the boulders and be knocked unconscious, the frigid water filling their lungs. I shook the image away.

  “We’re also checking all of our security cameras at any entrance points to see if he’s walked out or . . .” I paused, and Linda’s body went rigid as she bolted upright.

  “Say it,” she said.

  I hesitated because I didn’t want to make things any worse than I already had by just mentioning the water, knowing full well the roaring, powerful streams would have come to mind. “I don’t mean to alarm you any more than you already are. Again, it’s just standard procedure I’m talking about here. I know you want us to cover all avenues, and one of those is to look at the footage in case, like I said, he walked out or got a ride out or, heaven forbid, was picked up unwillingly. But, let me be firm about this: that option is highly unlikely, and not what we’re suspecting at all.”

  “Jeremy wouldn’t walk out and he certainly wouldn’t hitchhike somewhere with a stranger. Oh, God,” she said. “Do you really think someone could have taken him?”

  “Like I said, we have no reason to think so. We’re following standard procedure, that’s all.”

  She swallowed hard and tried to take my words in, but she looked confused, like she couldn’t believe the day was turning to night without a ranger or policeman driving up with her smiling, hungry boy ready for some dinner. She stood up and began to pace again.

  I continued. “A press release has been sent to the local media outlets, and people will be on the lookout. In fact, if there were TVs out here, you’d see it now on the news bulletins. The picture you provided from yesterday is perfect.”

  They both stared at me, and Ken looked down at his hands, which he’d laid flat on the smooth slats of the picnic table.

  “And even though you’ve been through this all afternoon,” I continued, “I do need to ask you some more questions.” I pulled out a small MP3 recorder and placed it on the table. “I’m going to record you now, just like Officer Greeley and the chief did earlier. Is that all right?”

  “Yes,” Ron said, and Linda sat back down.

  “So, Mr. Corey, I understand you’re a musician?”

  “Yes, I play guitar and sing. I’m mostly a one-man show these days. I used to be with a group, but we broke up, and now I hire out my services to local bars, restaurants, a few larger venues around Ohio, some radio shows, that sort of thing.”

  “And we hear you’ve done pretty well lately—a hit single and all.”

  “Yeah, that was fortunate. One of my songs hit the charts this year. It’s helped a lot. I mean, we’re not rolling in money or anything. But more than enough to get by.”

  “Take a trip to Glacier on.” I smiled.

  He nodded, and Linda got up and began pacing again. The small talk was driving her crazy, and I couldn’t blame her. But I had to do it, had to try to get a clear picture of these folks. Some troubles followed families, even on vacation. For example, was there debt? Was there tension between dad and son? Was there a secret gambling or addiction problem that was somehow causing conflict in the family? Was the boy angry, or did he perhaps have a drug problem himself ? It all counted.

  “And Jeremy, was he rebellious?”

  “No, for God’s sake,” Linda chimed in. “We’ve been over this. We’ve already given him”—she motioned to Ken—“information about where he was born, who his doctor is, even his goddamn dentist’s name.” She was right. It was standard procedure to gather as much information as possible on a missing child, initially to verify that he actually exists in the first place. You’d be surprised what parents were capable of inventing for all sorts of insane reasons, and we did not take lightly the manpower and resources necessary to search for a missing child, not to mention that if we did find the child and he was unidentifiable, we needed to have dental and medical records available to try to make an identification. “He’s a sweet kid,” she continued. “No issues at all. Sure, he’s beginning to want a little independence, sometimes gets a little tired of hanging out with his younger siblings, which is why we let him stay here for a few hours to play his 3DS. There’s no service here, so he hasn’t been able to use his smartphone, which he got this Christmas for pulling straight As at school, but we figured a little time on his old DS would be fine. In fact, I was glad to see it. Reminded me of the old days when that was a big deal for him, before all the ridiculous Droids and iPhones and Snapchatting . . . .”

  “And the game? Is it here?”

  “No, no, it’s not. We can’t find it, so he must have taken it with him. But, like we said earlier, his initials are on it. JRC. Jeremy Richard Corey.”
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  I jotted that down. I liked to take my own notes in addition to the recording. I knew Ken had already gotten the Droid, which the boy had left behind since it had no service and was useless to him. We were having it searched to see if it could provide any clues, like if the boy had made or taken any calls to or from someone in Montana.

  “Did Jeremy have money on him?”

  “Just a little. Maybe a few dollars from before the trip. We didn’t leave him money or anything because we weren’t gone that long.”

  “And were you all getting along before you left? Any fights in the past few days, or this morning?”

  “No, nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe a little whining about something one of us asked the kids to do, that kind of thing, but nothing major. Look, Mr.—or Officer Harris, is it?”

  I nodded.

  “There is nothing strange here on our end. Our son has somehow wandered off or disappeared and we’re waiting for you to help us find him.” She began to circle around the table where the three of us sat, until her husband asked her to sit down, which hit a nerve.

  She snapped at him. “How can you just sit there like a bump on a log, talking about your music?”

  “What am I supposed to do? Pace with you? Go out walking into the thousands of acres nearby?”

  “Listen—” I interrupted before we had a marital fight on our hands. It wasn’t uncommon given the level of stress. It was probably insignificant, although it was worth noting. “In not much longer, Two Bear Air, a local search and rescue service, is going to search the area with their thermal night-vision technology. I’m sure it’s been explained to you that helicopters weren’t dispatched until now because they wouldn’t have been able to see anything. It would be like looking for needles in a haystack in the heavily wooded forests around this particular part of the park. But now as it gets darker, we’ll actually be able to see more because of the thermal sensory equipment and infrared camera systems.” This last update settled Linda down for a moment. She stopped, came over, and scooted into the table next to Ron.

  Cassie crawled in next to her on the bench and hugged her dirt-stained knees into her chest. A gleam of hope flashed in Linda’s eyes, and Ron sat up a little taller.

  “So they’ll be able to spot any human out there?” Ron asked.

  “That’s right, anything with a heat imprint. It’s easy to tell humans from wildlife—deer, bear, moose, and the like. We should be able to spot him unless he’s crawled under something that would obscure the view.”

  “Mom.” Garret came over and was standing next to Linda, trying to get her attention, but she wasn’t answering, just staring at me.

  “Mom,” he patiently said again, but she still didn’t respond.

  “Mom,” he said a little louder.

  “Yes?” She finally turned to him.

  “Can I go down to the lake to skip some rocks?”

  Suddenly fear lit her eyes. “No, honey, absolutely not.”

  “Why not? It’s still light out.”

  For a moment, it didn’t look like she knew the answer.

  Ron intervened. “It’s getting too late,” he said.

  Linda nodded ferociously in agreement. “You need to stay here with us, okay, don’t go anywhere, you understand? Anywhere,” she said with force. I noted her protective nature, and took it as a good sign. But the steely look of fear on her face froze Garret, froze us all, and made me anxious. I kept my eyes on them rather than letting them catch me checking my watch again to check how long it’d been. The reality of how much time had passed, combined with the sheer panic on Linda’s face, suggested we had a long road ahead of us, one I knew would feel endless and desolate to these desperate parents.

  5

  * * *

  Gretchen

  RAY AND I drove west toward Kalispell, where the lab is located. Back at the camp, Ray had insisted on driving, probably sensing my shakiness. The wind began to push southeast, and the valley started to clear. As we exited the mouth of the canyon and entered the open fields, I could make out a hazy silhouette of the Salish Mountains with their tree- and meadow-covered summits for the first time in days. We both let out a sigh of relief to be able to see even that much of the ­horizon.

  “Man, you don’t realize how much we take clean air for granted until you get robbed of it.” Ray motioned with his chin to the skyline. It was the first thing either of us had said since we’d left the fire camp. Adrenaline’s aftereffects made me feel light-headed, and the increasingly visible sky buoyed me, even though it actually meant the wind was pushing the fire southeast, right to the fuel break line, right toward Essex. I said as much to Ray and he agreed. We drove in silence for a moment before he asked, “You okay?”

  “I’m fine,” I said. I didn’t try to find out why he was asking. “You?”

  “Hungry.” He smiled. “Very hungry.”

  “I bet.” I looked at the clock on the dash. It was almost eight thirty. “I just need your help unloading, that’s it. I can do the rest.”

  Ray nodded, and we didn’t say another word as we made it down Highway 2 and cut over to Highway 93. He slowed and stopped at an intersection north of Kalispell where a host of box stores had gone up in the past decade: Target, Lowe’s, “Super” Walmart, Pier 1, Petco, Cabela’s. Chain restaurants were sprinkled in between them. It seemed never-ending and I wondered about Norway, about Europe in general, and if it had been affected by such aggressive enterprise. I did have to admit that I missed some of the charm from home: the quaint cobblestone streets, the local restaurants and pubs, the ancient buildings and hotels, the colorful wooden houses dotting the coastlines. I used to ask myself how something so terrible could have happened to me—to my brother—in those picturesque streets with the candy and chocolate bars for sale at the local kiosks, the scent of the sea wafting in on the cool breezes and washing everything clean.

  I was conflicted about Montana. On the one hand, this type of sprawl was so quintessentially American that it comforted me to know I was in a land far away from a place I didn’t belong. But on the other hand, the box stores were ugly. They blocked the gorgeous views of the meadows and mountains and destroyed large fields for their parking lots, even though those fields were precisely what made the area special.

  I no longer felt like a Norsk, and didn’t really feel like an American or a Montanan either. But I came to this land, to the vast jutting and bruised shape of it, partly to lose myself to it and to make the best of things. I did like the Flathead Valley and the towns it held. I loved the nearby town of Whitefish on the northern end of it. I liked the way it nestled against the Whitefish Range and how the runs of the ski resort fanned down toward it like arteries giving the town sustenance. And there were things about it that reminded me of Sandefjord in a vague, distant way: the local ice cream shop and the shiny green bench on the street corner where you could sit on a pleasant summer night to eat your locally made huckleberry ice cream, watch residents walk their dogs on leashes, and see tourists laughing and smiling with their children.

  I enjoyed the jewelry and art studios with colorful canvases and interesting pottery that wasn’t always typical western flare, and the Snowghost Bar and Café where you could get decent lox and bagels. I loved hearing the kids chatting and laughing when they passed my house on weekday mornings on their way to the only public elementary school in town. How the mist rose off the valley’s lakes as it did in the Sandefjord Bay, and how, in even the coldest winters, the deeper parts of Flathead Lake—the largest freshwater lake west of the ­Mississippi—still wouldn’t freeze and remained dark and mysterious like a fjord. How when the snow fell, it smelled just like home, a metallic, ozone scent, like fresh warm water pouring over cold stones.

  Whether in Montana or Norway, each season ultimately suggested the same solitary, ephemeral nature of everything. There was a small amount of comfort in knowing that what
I’d done would all fade away at some point, like the needles of the larch falling to the ground, so vital, but so temporary. I thought of my brother’s honey-colored locks, then quickly pushed the image away.

  Thoughts of my father came in its place. I recalled how when I was six or seven he took Per and me to see some of the Viking burial sites just outside Sandefjord. We stood by the side of ancient stones erected in the shape of a ship as he explained to us that they were put down in AD 400 to 600 and that objects found nearby revealed Viking settlements since the Stone and Bronze Ages. He had told us stories about the Vikings since we were tiny—about how they were fierce, strong, and fast. We learned that they were excellent explorers, afraid of nothing, not even the cold, sometimes vicious North Sea. They would set out across it to unknown lands: Iceland, Greenland, Britain, ­Newfoundland.

  He told us about how they’d go out to take what they needed, sometimes by force, but that was common for the times. In reality, if they could make more through trading instead of raiding, they would, but not because they considered marauding shameful. It was simply about survival, and riches brought that. If a nobleman paid them well for their military skills, they served loyally and were men of honor. “­Although,” my father said, “there were always exceptions—always are exceptions—in any group of people.”

  After seeing the burial site, I later came to connect it with all the stories he’d told us over the years. Sometimes I still wonder about them because I think the history and energy of the place where you grow up never completely leave you. They continue to move through you like deep ocean undercurrents. For me, I think of how the proud, opportunistic Vikings built Sandefjord on whaling profits. I imagine how they did whatever it took, ethical or not, to survive in a stark, cold land, and I sense that Montanans did the same: they trapped for fur, mined for gold, and fought the Indians using whatever tactics they could. I can sometimes feel the desperation and grit from those ancestors and the Natives riding on the mountain winds into the valley just as I could feel the echo of the pain from my people and the whales they killed gusting off the North Sea into Sandefjord Bay.