Death Canyon

by David Riley Bertsch

  Jake anchored the boat and tied the bowline to a dead cottonwood where the eddy’s current peeled away from the bank. This slack water was littered with debris from the spring runoff—sticks, leaves, and the occasional piece of litter. More interesting to Jake, it also harbored several large shadows, clever fish taking advantage of insects that had been flushed toward them from the main current.

  The perfect ratio; little work, big payoff.

  When he was sure the skiff was secure, Jake got back into the boat, pulled the fly rod from its sleeve in the gunwale, and stood at the bow’s fishing station. He decided to spend just a few moments working the eddy before quitting for the day.

  The pale morning duns, a mayfly of the Ephemerella genus, had begun their annual emergence early, and the resident fish had taken notice. Jake tied on a #16 comparadun, a close imitation of the frail body silhouette of the mayfly. He worked a chemical into the fly that would allow it to float longer and higher. Fly-agra. Always got a laugh from clients. With one false cast, Jake placed the dry fly three feet above the largest of the feeding fish, leaving just enough slack in the leader to allow the fly to float unimpeded into the trout’s feeding lane.

  The fly drifted toward the fish, which tipped upward and inhaled the fly. Jake laughed with delight. Early season fish are too easy. The fish surged, but Jake was able to keep the battle within the boundaries of the eddy, preventing the fish from using the strong current in the middle of the river to free itself from his line. When the trout was within reach, he slid his hand down the transparent leader and into the water, plucking the fly from the fish’s mouth. It was a nice fish. Seventeen inches with beautiful deep-red slashes streaking its throat.

  It would prove to be Jake’s last moment of unhampered happiness for a long time.

  After he finished setting up his sleeping quarters, Jake pulled the fire pan from the skiff and walked a short way down the island to prepare dinner, not daring to attract bears or other curious predators to his sleeping area with the scent of food. He seasoned the trout with a mixture of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and dill that he kept with his fishing equipment. He opened the bottle of beer he had brought along, and as evening settled further into the river canyon, the dusky ambiance and alcohol lightened Jake’s mood. He smiled when he thought of his earlier frustration with the council. Things moved slowly here, and he needed to be patient and persistent. Besides, he thought, I moved here to escape external pressures. I’m hard enough on myself.

  In reality, the reasons for Jake’s relocation to Wyoming changed with his mood. Sometimes it was the noise of the city or the bad air that he said had finally convinced him, and sometimes it was the fast-paced lifestyle.

  Eight years ago, Jake was a successful and well-known trial lawyer at Brown and Tallow, a large law firm in Philadelphia. Prior to that he had worked as a prosecutor for the United States Department of Justice in the Office of Special Investigations and then briefly in the City of Philadelphia Special Investigations Office. Jake had been the youngest head of the city’s special investigation unit in its history, a fact that once filled him with pride. He eventually left the unit to pursue better pay and security in private practice, but the new job never satisfied him. After a couple of years, he moved west.

  The second layer of truth was that he had come to Jackson for a woman. That is to say, he came to live out what he thought was a shared dream with a certain woman. That woman had changed her mind.

  Elspet, or Elle, as mostly everyone called her, was a defense attorney like Jake. They had met during a bar association golf outing. Neither hit the ball very well, and this commonality was the first of many that sparked a romance. As with Jake, the stresses of Elle’s occupation led her to desire a different life. Childhood visits to the Rockies had planted the seeds in their minds that this region would be an ideal solace from the death, maiming, lying, arguing, and posturing that was inherent to their industry. They dated for only a few months before making plans.

  Over late-night glasses of wine in the spring of 2002, the details were ironed out. Jake would make the move first, while Elle wound down her employment. He headed to Jackson in the early summer to look for houses and scout jobs. On impulse and without Elle’s knowledge, Jake committed to purchasing an ever-so-slightly run-down bed-and-breakfast on the West Bank of the Snake River, not far from the Idaho border. He figured the property would speak to her the same way it had spoken to him.

  Two buildings on the property were in good order, the main house and a smaller guesthouse. Brightly colored wildflowers reached for the sun, complementing the darker cedar structures and patchy snow left in the shadows. The day he first saw it was perfect. Deep-blue skies were broken up only occasionally by pure white puffs of cloud. Walking along the creek frontage, Jake shed his jacket, persuaded by the midday warmth. He wandered the property for over an hour, watching trout sip blue-winged olive mayflies from the glassy surface of the spring.

  When Jake returned and told Elle the news, he was met with disbelief. The Jackson Hole dream was a tangible aspiration only to him. To Elle, the notion of “leaving it all behind” was a fantasy, a mental escape.

  How would we make enough money? How could we raise kids there, alone in the middle of nowhere? How would we make friends? Why would you do this without asking me?

  Before Jake knew it, he was driving across the dusty Midwest alone, turning the stereo up too loud and smoking the cigarettes he hadn’t touched since law school.

  For the first few months in Jackson, Jake did not operate the bed-and-breakfast. He didn’t work at all, for that matter. He was in a slump and surviving only on savings.

  Fishing every day, he spent his nights alone in the guesthouse. The hobby kept him content—entertained, perhaps, if not blissful. After all, fly-fishing was ingrained in him. Ever since he’d learned the sport in the halcyon limestone creeks of central Pennsylvania. It was something he took for granted to some extent, yet relied on with an equal or greater weight. It was the most unchanging part of him.

  Jake had aspired to become a guide for many years, and his now uncertain future provided the ideal opportunity for a man to chase his dreams. As he familiarized himself with the area’s rivers, he began to feel better with each passing day.

  Although part of him was recovering quickly from heartbreak, Jake remained in the guesthouse. Optimistically speaking, he felt that sleeping in the main house should wait until Elle joined him—if she ever did. They talked from time to time; she was always in a halfhearted relationship, yearning for something more exciting. Even worse, she would tease Jake with the possibility of a reunion. Eventually he stopped taking her calls.

  Fortunately there were distractions. The busy years of his legal career had left Jake comparatively rusty, unfamiliar with the vagaries that allowed an accomplished angler to outproduce the average angler. Trout Run, the creek on his property, reestablished his prowess and, perhaps more important, kept Jake from sitting alone and thinking too much about the past. In a few short months, Jake became a fish bum.

  Jake’s ambition and his finances necessitated a change. He started working on the river. A small white-water outfit in town had decided to expand and its owner was willing to hire inexperienced guides, if only for their affordability. Jake took the owner, Steve, and retail shop manager, Brent, out on a float trip, and luckily the fishing had been excellent. He was hired halfway through the trip. He knew it was the hungry fish as much as it was his skills at the oars, but no matter.

  Jake learned quickly. Within three seasons, he was one of the most sought-after guides in the valley, not only because of his unnatural ability to get his clients onto fish but also because of his growing knowledge of the area.

  Whereas many guides gave little thought to anything beyond fishing, Jake became a student of geology, biology, and philosophy. During the slow times in the midafternoon or at lunch, he shared the little-known details of how the volcano that constituted Yellowstone National Park had smeared belo
w the Snake River Valley—or, more accurately, how the tectonic plate on which the Snake River Valley rested had slid above the volcanic hot spot that now sat beneath Yellowstone. In some incomprehensible length of time, the geothermic features that composed Yellowstone would sit somewhere to the north in Canada. That is, if the world’s largest volcano had not already erupted and destroyed the entire continent. Jake often left out the latter part, particularly if there were children in the boat.

  Jake liked to say his new career had saved his life. During his second season, he grew more ambitious and hired a new friend, J.P., to polish up and operate the old bed-and-breakfast. A consummate Renaissance man, J.P. was an experienced chef and handyman, if a bit rough around the edges. Most important, Jake could afford him. As the majority of his compensation package, J.P. rested his pop-up camper near the firewood pile on the property’s southern boundary. He slept in the camper on all but the coldest winter nights, when he would borrow an unoccupied guest room or crash on Jake’s small couch in the rare event that the main house was full of guests. He never slept in the beds of the guest rooms because he was too lazy to refresh the linens. He simply brought in his sleeping bag and pad and lay down next to the bed.

  The arrangement worked. Jake could afford the mortgage and J.P.’s wages. The business stayed afloat. Jake’s accountant handled the financials and doled out a check when there was profit, but it was never much.

  In addition to starting up a new business, he’d become involved in conservation causes around town. To that end, he began his modest foray into politics by way of the town council.

  Before he knew it, eight years had passed.

  * * *

  Jake finished his beer, extinguished the fire, and cleaned up his camp kitchen. The air was getting chilly, so he changed his clothes quickly and stuffed himself inside the thick sleeping bag. Sleep came more easily for Jake when he was in the wilderness. There was no television, radio, or other distractions to keep him up. Going to bed early meant waking up early and that made him feel healthy and productive. Yep, Jake thought as he drifted off to sleep, a simple life is a better life. The escape to the river was just what he needed to cope with the headache of taking on the Jackson Town Council.

  At some point during the night Jake awoke to a large mammal huffing and bustling in the willows outside the tent. He instinctively grabbed the small knife that he kept on his belt, but as his brain cleared away the fog of slumber, he realized that this was a useless defense. In the event that a bear had become interested in him, his one-and-a-half-inch blade would irritate the beast about as much as acupuncture therapy. He breathed a sigh of relief when the animal revealed itself by moonlight silhouette as a bull moose. A moment later, the animal moved off into the night.

  2

  JACKSON. THE SAME EVENING.

  Twenty miles upriver, an unusual mix of chaos and grief had settled into the valley. Rumors had been circulating all day that two people had died in the wilderness. A third was in critical condition at St. John’s hospital. By midafternoon, the chief of police had confirmed the deaths to the media. One victim dead from an avalanche, one dead and one in critical condition from a bear attack. The news spread like wildfire.

  Both incidents took place in the Teton mountains, a rugged and beautiful range that attracted tourists and adventurers from all corners of the world. Like many sites of extreme natural beauty, the range could be deadly. Its rocky cliffs, cold water, predators, and ever-changing weather had claimed dozens of lives since the national park was established there in 1929. And this was just when the park started keeping formal records. Prior to 1929, the massif was said to have claimed the lives of scores of settlers and frontiersmen.

  Stories of old accidents still circulated in local folklore. Some were verifiable; some not. Signal Mountain, a popular tourist outlook in the central part of the park, took its name from one such incident. According to the tale, in 1887 a hunting party had split up and searched for the body—dead or alive—of a compatriot. Before they set out, the group agreed to start a fire on the peak when the missing person was found so that the remaining members of the search party would know their search had been completed. The signal fire was eventually lit when a lifeless body was discovered pinned against a deadfall in the Snake River, his appearance nearly unrecognizable from the wear of the water. The mountain was his only lasting monument.

  * * *

  On this June day, Park Ranger Noelle Klimpton had found the body. Hours later, she was driving her green government-issued pickup down highway 89 toward Jackson to give a statement to the police on her grim discovery. The National Park Service had already taken her statement. Now it was the cops’ turn. Her mind skipped through her jumbled recollections, and when it settled on the most ghastly images from that morning, she shuddered. It was warm outside, but she had to close the windows to keep from getting the chills.

  Noelle would’ve liked to stop thinking about it, but she knew it was important to be able to recount the details to the authorities. Keep it fresh. To that end, she recited the known facts: a bear, most likely a black bear, had attacked a couple just below the receding snow line up near Gosling Lake. There was blood, and lots of it. That part was easy to remember. The time her watch showed when she found the body wouldn’t be so easy. Maybe 10:23 a.m.? Nor would it be easy to recall the description of the men who led her to the scene. These were the sorts of things that she figured the police would want to know. Medium build, both with down vests. Young. No, I didn’t get their contact information. It was stupid, I know.

  Noelle, an athletic and slender five foot six, didn’t have a hint of excess weight to be found. Her body and her dark eyes and hair complemented a wide, white smile. The contrast was striking in the summer when her skin was bronzed by the sun.

  But Noelle’s stunning physique belied a solitary nature. She spent much of her time alone. Her routines were solitary: solo skiing in the winter and trail running in the summer. At thirty-four, she had all but given up on the pretty notion of sharing her life with someone. Instead, she filled her time with work and sport, two things that had never let her down. She was good at both—well respected within the park service and known throughout the valley as an accomplished athlete. Noelle’s social separation was not a result of any personal shortcoming. People loved to be around her, and men found her irresistible. Her isolation was pure preference.

  What appeared to some as standoffishness wasn’t motivated by arrogance or ego. Her trouble was trusting others: Who can you truly rely on but yourself?

  She knew it was a stark, maybe cliché, take on the world, but she couldn’t deny its truth. In the past, when she had dedicated herself to a man—changing her own life, compromising for his happiness—she found that she only lost herself and gained little in return. With female friends it was the same.

  Five years back, she’d been engaged to a banker from New York, but Noelle just couldn’t go through with it. She’d felt imprisoned, tied down by his expectations. To him she was a wild western filly waiting to be broken. Rather than spend her life as a suburban housewife, she left. There was still too much to explore, both within her and in the outside world. So she joined the National Park Service.

  That morning Noelle had felt as she always did, at ease, content, but not particularly energized. She walked to work out of habit, and barely took notice when she arrived, as she had the previous day, and the day before. She had fallen into a comfortable but mundane routine.

  Now she was sitting anxiously in her truck, wondering what she was going to tell the cops and picturing the disturbing scene of attack. She felt a new brand of excitement, like adventure was coming her way. The attack had taken at least one innocent life, and this was a tragedy, Noelle knew, but she felt more alive than she had in years. She hoped these feelings weren’t overly disrespectful to the dead.

  Noelle focused again on how to tell her story to the police.

  “I woke up and the sun started to heat the chil
ly, dry mountain air.”

  This doesn’t have to be literary.

  “I was led to the scene shortly after I started work this morning, and no, I didn’t get the name or card of the person who led me there, thank you for asking.”

  Noelle’s morning patrol had been interrupted when two young men waved her down as she swung her vehicle in a three-point turn in the Death Canyon parking lot—a popular trailhead in the southwestern part of the park. Putting the truck into park, she went out to see what the fuss was about.

  The men were out of breath, and from their faces Noelle knew immediately they had seen something grim. This was not a twisted ankle. She stayed calm. The men motioned for her to follow them to a corner of the parking lot and up the hill.

  As they hurried up the trail toward the overlook, the younger of the two, gasping, explained the situation as best he could. He and his friend had been day hiking when they encountered the injured couple. He didn’t speak in any real detail. He said they immediately turned and ran to get help before they could assess the gravity of the injuries. But it was bad. Both men looked as if they’d seen a ghost.

  Wilderness first aid guidelines dictated that one of the men should have stayed behind to tend to the victims, but Noelle decided it wasn’t the time to chide the hikers. Instead, she radioed the park paramedics and told them to send an ambulance to the trailhead and to be on standby for a Life Flight.

  When Noelle arrived at the overlook, she gasped and cupped her hand over her mouth. One man and one woman lay facedown on the ground, motionless.

  Christ.

  Noelle suddenly felt overwhelmed and alone. Like she was lost at sea. Desperate. A feeling of vertigo washed over her. The woods were quiet but she felt the lodgepole pines watching her, taunting. She’s gonna puke! She can’t handle it!