Scapegoat: A Patrick Flint Novel

by Hutchins, Pamela Fagan

  To his surprise, tears welled in his eyes. Yes, today had been a trial. Every moment of it. But this . . . this made it worth it. To see his kids enjoying their cousins and his brother so happy—he couldn’t have scripted a better moment, especially since he’d had no idea the “seven dwarves” would be here.

  Right now, I’d have to call them Splashy, Slippery, Shouty, Laughy, Squealy, Streaky, and Sleepy. Thank you, God, for my family and Your wilderness.

  “Hot dog time, everyone,” he shouted. He hated to break it up, but the light had started fading fast.

  Ten heads turned toward him.

  Bunny splashed water in the air, then held her arms up. “We’re gold minders, Uncle Patrick!”

  “That’s great, Bunny. But do gold miners ever cook hot dogs and s’mores over a fire in the woods?”

  “Yes!” she screamed.

  “Then you’d better get moving, very carefully, or Gramma Lana might eat them all before you get any.”

  Everyone started laughing and scrambling out of the water, but, when six of the dwarves got to the shore, the seventh hollered from back in the creek.

  “Wait!” It was Annie. Her big dark eyes looked panicked, her face stricken.

  “Come on, Annie Oakley,” Pete said. “You’re holding up the gang.”

  “I can’t. I’m stuck. My foot is stuck.”

  “What?”

  Tears started streaming down her cheeks. “Help me, Daddy! My foot is trapped in a hole.”

  On the bank, the rest of the kids had stopped chattering and were watching open-mouthed.

  Pete waded back out to his daughter. He reached under water, a look of concentration creasing his face. Then he smiled. “Got it. Your foot had slipped between some rocks.”

  Annie broke free, wiping away her tears. She hugged Pete, then picked her way to dry land.

  Patrick held up a hand. “And that is why you never, never, never get out of a canoe until it is all the way to shore. If that water had been over Annie’s head, what would have happened?”

  “She’d have drownded,” Stan said, his expression aghast.

  “Yes. Or gotten hypothermia.”

  “What’s hippo . . . hippo whatever you said?” Bert asked.

  “It’s when you’re in the cold so long that it makes you really sick. It can even kill you, like drowning.”

  “Could we have gotten it in the creek?” Barry said.

  “Only if most of your body had been under and you’d stayed there without moving a really, really long time. So, when we start canoeing, can you all promise to stay in them until we get all the way to the shore and tell you it’s time to unload?”

  “Yes, sir,” Brian said.

  “Yes, Dr. Uncle Patrick,” Danny said.

  “Just Uncle Patrick.” Patrick grinned. “Okay, troops. Let’s go get some dinner.”

  Pete pointed the way, and the kids took off up the trail at a run. Fifteen minutes later, the group finally made it back to camp, with Pete whistling and the kids again shouting at the top of their lungs. Dusk. Prime wildlife spotting time. Patrick felt a twinge of disappointment at the missed opportunity, but he was having fun anyway. They found Vera and Susanne tending the fire.

  “Where are Mom and the old man?” Pete asked, as he grabbed sweatshirts from a backpack and started pulling them over kids’ shivering bodies.

  Vera put a finger over her lips. “Shh, everyone. Grandpa Joe and Gramma Lana have gone to bed. It’s nearly eight o’clock back in Texas. Gotta love quiet time.”

  “And your dad has a cut the size of the Grand Canyon on his hand,” Susanne said.

  Patrick remembered the whittling. Figures. He put his hands on his hips and looked around him. A two-man tent had been erected in the center of the cleared area, and he’d beelined for the fire without even noticing it. He raised his eyebrows at Susanne, and she shook her head, but with an amused look on her face. Perry made a comical zipping motion over his lips. The kids did their best to be less loud, but from the grumbling sounds emanating from the tent, his father didn’t think it was quite good enough. The adults hustled the kids through wiener roasting, and, afterwards, s’mores.

  When everyone was gathered around the fire, sticky and quiet, Patrick decided it was time for the bear talk. “I need you guys to help me out with something. We’re going to gather up all our trash and put it away, then I’m going to walk to a tree far away and hang it high on a branch. Do you know why?”

  Head shakes and round mouths were the only answer he got from the younger kids. Trish and Perry probably knew the talk by heart, but they kept quiet.

  Patrick tried for solemn but not scary. “Because bears like to steal people food, and we don’t want them visiting our campsite.”

  “And we don’t want them to steal our food,” Stan said, nodding. “I like Frito’s.”

  “And s’mores,” Danny added.

  “Right. So, can everyone be sure not to leave any food out tonight? It needs to go in the trash bag or in the backpack. No food on the ground or in the tents or your pockets.”

  Vigorous nods and even bigger eyes answered him.

  “Good. Then your Uncle Pete and I will put the tents up while you guys gather up food and trash. Then you can get ready to go to sleep. Perry, can you help us with tents?”

  Perry stood. “Yes, sir.”

  “Okay, then, troops. Let’s do it. Aunt Susanne will lead trash duty and clean up. We’ve got an early day of fun tomorrow.”

  “Yes, sir, Uncle Patrick,” Brian said, parroting Perry.

  Patrick had noticed Brian had a growing case of hero worship going with Perry. Perry seemed to notice, too, and he was eating it up. The two had never spent any time together before this trip. It made Patrick smile, remembering himself and his brother as kids so close in age.

  Brian’s siblings repeated after him in singsong. Trish and Perry looked amused but joined in, a little sarcastically.

  “Follow me, guys,” Susanne said, raising a hand over her head and walking a few steps away from the fire.

  Patrick, Pete, and Perry tackled erecting the tents. By then it was nearly dark, and they had a four-man and a seven-man to put up. Patrick laid them out while Pete and Perry hammered stakes.

  After a few moments of pounding, Pete rocked back on his heels. “This ground. Man alive.”

  “They don’t call these the Rocky Mountains for nothing,” Patrick replied.

  Perry groaned. “He always says that.”

  Pete laughed. He stood and arched his back to stretch it. “Sounds like a smart answer to me.”

  “Me and Burt Reynolds. Smart and good-looking,” Patrick said.

  “Together, you’ve got ‘em both covered, anyway.” Pete socked Patrick’s arm.

  Perry just rolled his eyes, but Patrick saw the lift at the corners of his mouth.

  Patrick gestured at the seven-man. “You guys are going to be packed in this tent like sardines. Nine people. Better you than me.”

  “It’ll be seven. Vera and I are going to sleep under the stars.”

  Patrick’s eyebrows lifted. “Bold move.”

  Pete grinned. “Self-preservation.”

  It was pitch black out when they finished with the tents, except for the brilliant stars overhead. Patrick didn’t know much about them, but he was a big fan of looking at them. An owl hooted. A chill in the air was nipping at his nose. The air smelled fresher somehow. He loved camping. The cares of the day started slipping away. He drew in a deep breath, then called for the kids. He led them to watch him hang the food backpacks in a tree. Afterward, he added logs to the fire. Susanne emerged from a tent where she’d been arranging bedding. Smiling, she handed Patrick his worn paperback copy of Larry McMurtry’s Horseman, Pass By, which she knew he would read if he was the last man standing at the end of the evening. The whole group, except for his parents, settled around the flames. The kids were close but not touching, laying around the fire like a pack of hound dogs under a porch. Eyes were start
ing to close, except for Brian’s. Vera and Trish sat on a log on either side of the kids. Perry perched on a stump close to where Patrick and Susanne were holding hands, Patrick seated on the ground cross-legged, his book by his knee.

  “I wish Pete had his guitar so he could play for us. We could sing campfire songs.” Vera rubbed her hands together like they were cold. “Gotta love singalongs.”

  Susanne said, “That’s a great idea.”

  In the distance, something howled. The hair on Patrick’s neck stood up. He had a healthy respect for predators. He’d prepared the camp as best he could, though, and he felt reasonably sure they were safe. Safer than camping in a city park with human predators, he’d bet.

  “Maybe tomorrow night. The kids look like they’re beat.” Pete stood with his hands over the flames. He turned his head to speak to Patrick. “Were those wolves?”

  “Coyotes. The last wolves were hunted out of this area fifty years ago. Or so they say.”

  “What else is out here that could eat us?”

  “Well, the bears of course.”

  “Grizzlies?”

  “Yep. And black bears, although they don’t attack humans unless provoked, usually over cubs. Also, mountain lions.”

  Patrick had a complicated relationship with cougars, especially after an ambush by one on Dome Mountain in Cloud Peak Wilderness had nearly killed his horse Reno. The poor animal was only just now fit to carry riders again, more than six months later. But he admired the lions, and he related to them. When Barb Lamkin had murdered the county judge’s wife a few months before and then come after the Flints, Patrick had repeated lion encounters, which he believed with all his heart were visits to warn him about the danger. To him, they were a sort of spirit animal.

  He wondered whether the Sheep Eaters believed in spirit animals. A helpful librarian in Buffalo had found articles about the Tukudika for him in back issues of The Annals of Wyoming. From his reading, he’d learned that the Shoshone believed all matter, animate or not, had a spirit, and that the greatest power resided with those they considered “sky people.” Like eagles, or the greatest of the sky people—the sun. Because the Sheep Eaters had lived high in the mountains, some of the other Shoshone believed they had great medicine themselves, because they resided closer to the most powerful spirits. Here in these mountains now himself, the thought gave Patrick goose flesh. The articles hadn’t mentioned spirit animals, but Patrick liked to think they believed in them like he did.

  Pete bared his teeth like he was scared. “Cougars are the ones I don’t like.”

  Perry nodded. “Me or dad either.”

  Patrick grinned. “Are you sure you and Vera want to sleep outside?

  “We’ll be fine. Predators are better than seven kids. Especially when a few are bound to wet the sleeping bags.” Pete shrugged. “But, just in case, what does a mountain lion sound like?”

  “Most of the time, you don’t hear them at all. But sometimes they make a sound like a child screaming.”

  “That’s disturbing, all the way around.”

  Patrick grinned. “Isn’t it? Just one of the many reasons to keep our group together, for safety. So, don’t go wandering off too far when you answer the call of nature in the dark.”

  “I’m thinking about two steps will be as far as I go.”

  Perry yawned. Brian’s eyes had closed, as had Vera’s. A silence settled over them, until, clear as if whoever was speaking was just across the campsite from them, Patrick heard a man’s voice.

  “Andale, Hector. Andale!”

  Susanne put a hand on her chest. “Who was that? Where are they?”

  Pete’s thin, blond eyebrows shot up. “Am I dreaming, or did we just teleport back to Texas? I could have sworn I just heard Spanish.”

  Trish jumped to her feet. “A man was telling someone named Hector to hurry up.”

  “Don’t worry.” Patrick smiled. “Sound carries out here. They’re probably miles away.”

  There was a loud splash, then laughter.

  Susanne wrapped her arms around her torso. “But Sylvie said no one had been up here yet this year.”

  “She said she and Klaus hadn’t been up here. It’s just some campers, like us.” Patrick stood, trying to project complete confidence, but even he found himself staring into the darkness, looking for human shapes that weren’t there.

  Chapter Six: Abstain

  East of Trout Creek, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming

  Friday, June 24, 1977, 7:00 a.m.

  Susanne

  “Get out of here. Shoo!” Susanne flung her arms up to scare the gray jays away, but the birds, better known as “camp robbers” in Wyoming, didn’t budge. Flapjacks for fifteen people in the wilderness attracted plenty of hungry animals. Chipmunks, squirrels, and, on the fringe of the camping area in the rocks, a marmot. They had plenty to feast on, too, thanks to the children who had ignored instructions not to feed the critters and tossed pancakes far and wide. Dollars to doughnuts, the kids would all be starving by mid-morning, too, now. Susanne just hoped the small animals did a good job cleaning up, so the scraps didn’t attract something bigger.

  “Who’s up for some fishing and panning for gold this morning?” Patrick’s voice boomed. He’d woken with the sunrise before five a.m. and scouted up Trout Creek for promising spots.

  An excited cacophony of “me’s” rang out.

  Patrick laughed. “Well then, I guess that means I’ll have a lot of help getting us ready.” He walked over to the backpacks, a pied piper to a devoted following of short people. Trish, Pete, and Joe came close behind the kids with Perry in the rear of the procession.

  Vera and Lana appeared on the trail from the creek, each carrying a web bag of washed dishes. Everyone was wearing the same clothes as the day before, but Lana still managed a total change-up in her look. She’d put a t-shirt under her safari blouse and left it unbuttoned like a jacket. A leopard print scarf hanging loose around her neck completed her transformation. Vera looked rumpled. And tired.

  Susanne was tired herself. She’d been awakened over and over by the voices of children crying to be taken to the bathroom. And by Pete and Vera moving into the tent in the wee hours. She couldn’t imagine Vera had gotten any sleep at all. Susanne had tried to talk Patrick into more kids. Four would have been the perfect number in her mind. Busy but still manageable. Seven was . . . well, seven was just almost too much for her to comprehend.

  “Just set them by the fire. The rinsing water is about to boil.” Susanne pushed her bandana back from where it had slipped down on her forehead. It was three times as hard to manage a camp of fifteen with seven kids than it would have been to manage a camp of only eight adults. With a morning of hard work added to her lack of sleep, she was already wiped out.

  Perry turned back from following his dad. “Aren’t you coming, Mom?”

  Susanne imagined an hour—two if she was lucky—of peace and quiet. Everyone else but Lana was going on the excursion. No one would be needing food, a drink, dry socks, or a scolding. Just Lana and her with the blanket of wildflowers, the breeze, the sunshine, and the distant burbling creek. “I think I’m going to sit this one out with Gramma Lana.”

  Lana smiled. “Good. I get you all to myself. Have fun, Perry-winkle.”

  Perry laughed, but he looked at the other kids, like he was hoping they didn’t hear the nickname his grandmother had used on him back when he was a little kid in Texas.

  Susanne said, “And be careful, Perry. You know you can be reckless at times. Be a good example for the younger kids.”

  He blew her a kiss. She caught it against her cheek, then blew one back at him.

  Chapter Seven: Pile

  North of the campsite, Trout Creek, Bridger-Teton National Forest, Wyoming

  Friday, June 24, 1977, 8:00 a.m.

  Trish

  The day had started out fun enough, but that hadn’t lasted long with four kids to watch. Perry’s charges, too, whenever he wasn’t paying a
ttention, which was most of the time. They were constantly picking on each other, throwing sticks and rocks and pinecones into the water, shouting, and falling behind. Then, Bunny got tired of hiking after only half an hour of not going very fast to begin with. Trish had held her hand and pulled her along, but the little girl started whining. When that wasn’t enough to get Patrick and her parents to stop, she had escalated it to crying, then wailing, and finally, after throwing herself to the ground on her tummy, a full-blown flailing, screaming tantrum.

  It gave Trish a headache. She gritted her teeth and closed her eyes for a second.

  Her dad halted the group and marched back to them. His lips were moving with no sound coming out long before he reached them. “What’s the matter, Bunny?”

  Bunny didn’t answer. She didn’t even take a breath.

  Trish crossed her arms. “She’s tired of hiking.”

  “We’ve barely started.”

  Vera joined them. “Do you want to go back to camp, my Bunny honey?”

  Bunny nodded, then rolled to her side and stuck her thumb in her mouth, right in the opening where she had no teeth. From her years of babysitting experience, Trish thought she was a little old for thumb sucking and a little young to have lost her front teeth, but she’d never been a mom, so what did she know, really?

  Her dad’s jaw bulged. After a few seconds of silence, he said, “Are you going to take her back to camp, Vera?”

  “I was really hoping to pan for gold.” Aunt Vera widened her big brown eyes. They were her best feature, in Trish’s opinion. “Trish, would you mind walking her back? She really loves her big cousin.” She bit her lip and half-shook her head. “Gotta love little girls.”

  Trish’s heart sank. She’d hoped to find some gold to help pay for a car. She sent a silent plea to her dad. He always had her back. She was his girl. He’d understand. He had to. Besides, Bunny wasn’t hers. She was Aunt Vera’s. It should be Aunt Vera’s job to take her to camp.