—
Colm and I watched the volunteers, slow to leave despite their exhaustion.
“They’re good people,” Colm said. “They gave it their all.”
Farrell and his sister were there, as well. They thanked each person who had been part of the search.
“Do you think I made the right decision?” Colm asked me.
“I do. As hard as it is, you did the right thing. Jeff said the same. We’re dealing with snow on sheer rock faces,” I told him.
Colm looked at his watch. “You should probably get going. If you leave now, you can still make the game.”
“It’s hard to keep track of what day it is,” I said. “I can’t believe it’s Friday. You going to be okay?”
“I’ll be fine,” Colm said. “Tell Joseph to break a leg.”
“Not really something to say before a football game.” I tried to smile.
Colm shook his head. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”
“I’ll have my phone with me. Call me if you need anything.”
AMY RAYE
Amy Raye was now on her hands and knees. The rain slapped hard on her back as she moved slowly through the grass, inspecting each blade, each indention. About four yards from the tree, she found a drip of blood on the underside of a stick. She tied marking tape to the tip. A couple of yards north of it, she found another drip spilling down the veins of a leaf. From there she found nothing. She moved in every direction. Her knees sank into the soft soil. The smell of cow elk estrus lingered on her skin, her clothes, despite the rainfall.
More hours had passed. She wondered how much area she’d covered. She wished she could get word to Kenny and Aaron. Cell phones were useless in these parts, as there was no signal, and the rain could ruin the battery, and so she had left her cell phone back at her tent. If she did not find the elk soon, she would need to hike back to the truck and return to camp. She’d have to solicit Kenny and Aaron’s help. Still on all fours, she raised her head and searched the trees that surrounded the meadow. Perhaps the elk was dying somewhere close by. Perhaps he was already dead. She stood, moved in an outward radius from the clearing, then back, then outward again, looking for some sign: tracks, blood, broken branches.
She heard him before she saw him. A struggle for breath, and that tightening feeling in her chest. She shouldn’t have taken the shot. He was still alive. She had miscalculated. The arrow had not killed him.
She stood, walked about twenty yards to her left, and there she found him, lying behind a rock, eyes open, his breathing intermittent and raspy. She’d left her quiver and bow back at the tree. She’d have to retrieve her gun from her pack and put a blow to the elk’s head. She stepped around to the other side of the rock, out of sight of the elk. She was familiar with the stories of men and women who had been jumped by an elk and gored to death.
She determined from the irregular rhythm of the elk’s breathing that in another half hour or so he would be dead. “Our Father who art in heaven,” she prayed again. “Hallowed be thy name.”
How long can one say the Lord’s Prayer with a child while the sex from a lover is still on one’s skin? And always there was the fear that Farrell would find out. There were times when Farrell appeared home earlier than usual, became aroused by a song or the smell of dinner, or the way the slope of her T-shirt revealed her soft cleavage. She’d turn and he’d be there, his hand scooping up the hem of her shirt, his thumb stroking the smooth skin on her waist. And she’d give back to him, desire him with the same kind of urgency she’d felt with someone else earlier in the day at having Farrell gone.
The first time this happened in their relationship, she was afraid Farrell knew. They’d been seeing each other for five weeks, had fallen asleep together four times, made breakfast, and made love. Farrell had stopped by one night unexpectedly.
“I thought you were working,” she’d said, her voice tight.
“I decided to take a break. I missed you.”
The light left his eyes. It was subtle, but she saw it in that second before he tried too hard to correct it. “I won’t stay,” he said.
And then the tightness in her loosened itself like particles of dry sand. She grabbed his hand playfully. In that moment, making him feel okay was the only thing that mattered. She vowed in her mind that she would change her ways, that she would give herself to one man, and in this moment of truth, all the other lies could be washed away. And so their patterns of behavior began.
Farrell followed her deeper into her apartment, past the sofa and onto the bed.
“I’m glad you stopped by,” she said. She took his hand. “Come here.”
Her bedroom lights were dim. She lit a candle next to the bed, curled up into his arms, sheets and blankets tangled around their feet, kissed him without slowing down.
In the beginning of their relationship, Amy Raye thought Farrell was just easy, but now she knew otherwise. He loved her, deep down loved her. And that was the one thing she’d always wanted.
If Farrell had ever suspected her infidelities, he had never let on. No, she was certain he hadn’t. He had remained too pure in his devotion to her.
When she was young, maybe eleven or twelve, her mother had read her a story about the legend of Bluebeard, a nobleman who’d had many wives who had disappeared. When he married his seventh wife, he devoted great attention to her and lavished her with affection. She was happier than she had ever been. He tested her obedience and devotion to him by giving her a key to all the rooms in his great castle. He told her she could enjoy all he had and go into any of the rooms, except for one, whose door she was forbidden to ever open. One day, while Bluebeard was away, her curiosity became too great and she opened the door, and with that one act came the end of their great love, for she discovered the bodies of her husband’s previous wives.
But Farrell wasn’t like the seventh wife. He would never risk what he and Amy Raye had. He would believe what he chose to believe.
One night early in their relationship, Farrell and she had returned to Amy Raye’s apartment after having drinks and dinner at Beau Jo’s. They were sitting on the sofa, their legs extended over the coffee table, when Farrell asked her, “What do you think love is?”
Saddle jumped on the sofa and tucked himself next to Amy Raye’s side. She stroked his neck and rubbed his ears. After a couple of minutes, she said, “I think love is a reflection of how you feel about yourself.”
Farrell was quiet at first. His right arm was extended over the back of the sofa. He gently laid his hand on her shoulder. After a few minutes, he tugged softly on the strands of her hair, rubbed them between his fingers. “I think love is a lot like faith,” he told her. “It’s believing in what you can’t see.”
—
With her pack on the ground, she unclasped it as quietly as she could and reached for Kenny’s gun, a .357 revolver, which she’d stored in one of the inside pockets. She switched off the gun’s safety and stepped around the rock. The elk lay about thirty feet in front of her. Though he was still alive, he did not flinch. With the gun held in front of her and aimed at the elk’s head, she stepped closer to him so that she could be sure of making an accurate shot. Within ten feet of the elk, she fired the gun. The bullet struck just below the right eye. The elk’s head and body jerked, and then he was still. Amy Raye slowly dropped the gun to her side. She retrieved her pack from behind the rock and rummaged inside it for her rope, hunting knife, and bone saw. She’d have to dress the elk and bag the quarters before going back for help. She was too far out from the vehicle. Even in forty-degree weather, the elk’s own body temperature would spoil the meat, and she knew the animal’s muscles could generate heat for a couple more hours.
The rain had continued to fall and was now turning to sleet. Amy Raye could not remember having ever been this wet and cold. And she could not tell how much time had passed or how late in th
e day it was. There were no more shadows, just a steel-gray sky and rain that was turning colder.
Her gloves, soaked through and muddy, had become a hindrance, so she removed them and placed them in her pack. Then she tied long sections of rope just above the hooves of each of the elk’s legs. She took hold of the ropes that were knotted around the left-side legs and pulled until she was able to roll the animal onto his back. She tied the other end of each rope to nearby trees, to keep the elk’s legs apart.
With her eight-inch hunting knife, she made a clean incision just above the anus and clear up to the elk’s neck. Then she pulled the hide aside and inserted her knife below the sternum. She cut through hide and muscle down to the penis, careful not to puncture the gut. Next she cut around the penis, though she left the scrotum intact for when she would turn in her tag. Using her bone saw, she cut through the sternum, and when she was done, she set the saw aside. Soaked in the elk’s warm blood and the freezing rain, Amy Raye knelt beside the large animal, and in that moment she was certain she could feel his spirit clinging to the air like the cold breath of dew.
With both hands and several attempts, she pried apart the elk’s rib cage. The steam from the elk’s organs warmed her hands, and she hesitated for almost a half minute to enjoy the relief. Again she picked up her knife. She cut around the diaphragm, cut the windpipe, and began pulling everything down, separating the organs from the wall of the cavity.
Despite her shivering, she was able to remove the organs without snagging or puncturing them. She tossed the steamy guts aside. If the weather hadn’t been so bad and she’d had more time, she would have deboned the quarters to eliminate some of the weight. But she was losing light. She wondered if there was a square inch of dry clothing on her. Instead, she’d strap one of the elk’s shoulders to the top of her pack and set the other quarters a good fifty yards away and in a depression where the cold air would pool and the meat scent would disperse. With the meat set aside, scavengers would more likely be drawn to the smell of the carcass and the offal. Once she returned to camp, she’d dress in dry clothes. She’d put new batteries in her headlamp. Kenny and Aaron would have their headlamps as well, and they’d each have their packing frames. This wouldn’t be the first time they’d hauled an animal out at night. She thought about the heat running full blast in the cab of the truck, thought about the other sandwich Kenny had prepared and how good it would taste.
She cut out the elk’s liver and heart and placed them in the gallon-size plastic bag she’d brought. She didn’t care for the taste of these organs, but her grandfather had taught her not to let anything go to waste.
Water dripped down her face, and snowflakes began to melt on her hands. The snow surprised her, and for the first time she wondered how far she might be from the truck. She tried to remember how many times she had stopped to tie marking tape. She couldn’t remember, and yet she felt certain of the path she had taken since setting down her quiver, and once she had retrieved her quiver, she could use her compass.
She snapped the rope from the elk’s right hindquarter and began removing the hide from the meat. The snow picked up. Branches broke behind her, no doubt from the wind, or was there something in the grouping of pinyon just beyond her? Maybe a deer. And she realized how crazy she was to have made this hunt alone. She wasn’t a young girl hunting deer behind her grandfather’s property. The rack on this elk was four points on each side. The time it would take her to quarter the elk, bag the meat, and begin packing it out could take her into the night. The others had planned on heading home to the front range that day. They’d all been tired and ready to get back. As it was now, the three of them would be up all night getting the elk out of there. She’d been thinking only of herself. Wasn’t that the hell of it. That was the thing. And as Amy Raye worked as quickly as she could, as her knife made clean slices between the hide and the meat, her arms and coat and pants covered in blood, she began to regret everything she had done.
After she had skinned the shoulders and hindquarters, she severed the cartilage and connective tissue of each of the joints. She placed each quarter in a game bag. Then she removed as much meat as she could from the neck and cut out the backstrap that ran down both sides of the elk’s spine. She placed these in a fifth game bag. All the while, the sky grew darker, the temperatures dropped, and the snow continued to fall. She would sever the head from the spine when she returned with Kenny and Aaron. For now, using the extra rope, she secured one of the front quarters, a good sixty pounds, onto the top of her pack. She used the remaining rope to drag each of the other quarters at least fifty yards to a divot in the ground beneath a mature juniper. She cut several boughs from another tree and covered the meat to help it stay dry. But after dragging these quarters, after lifting and pulling them over rocks and deadfall, her arms and legs quivered from the sheer fatigue of it all. And so she pushed herself harder. She needed to make time before dark and cursed the fact that she had not packed extra batteries for her headlamp. Even if she’d had her headlamp, going over this terrain would be tricky. As she returned to retrieve her pack, she hastened her steps, all the while watching the ground for deadfall and jutting rocks. And then came the impact to her head, a heavy jab from an overhanging branch. The force of it knocked her off balance so that she almost fell backward but instead rocked forward and landed on her hands and knees. This was not the first time that day that she’d hit her head on a jagged limb. The junipers, especially, were twisted and gnarly, their trunks like petrified wood.
She felt light-headed when she stood, and also a throbbing pain. She pressed her palm where the limb had made impact, and when she did, she felt the tear in the fleece, and soon after the warm blood against her hand. She removed her hat and, using her fingertips, inspected the wound. If she had been home, she would have cleaned the cut properly and would most likely have gotten stitches. She replaced her hat, pressed her right palm against the gash, and continued to apply pressure for a few minutes until the bleeding slowed.
A hundred more feet and she was standing beside the carcass. She lifted her pack, carried it to the rock, and, leaning against the rock, slid her arms beneath the shoulder straps. She secured the hip belt and sternum strap. Then she stood, transferring the weight of the pack onto her back. But with the exertion, she felt the cut open again, and the blood trickled from the crown of her head through her hair and down to her left ear. Once more she applied pressure, and continued to do so while she walked around the rock. The snow was accumulating quickly and prevented her from seeing her tracks. Just ahead was the meadow. On the other side she should be able to pick up her trail and make the steep climb to the ridge. She was still light-headed, and worried about the climb. She stopped and drank at least eight ounces of water from the hydration reservoir in her pack, and thought about the Advil she had back at her tent. She should eat something, but she did not want to remove her pack again or waste what little daylight was left, and so she moved on, hoping for some shelter from the snow once she was in the dense spread of trees. Maybe there she would be able to find her tracks.
Upon crossing the meadow, the wind whipped through her layers. Carrying the weight of her pack with the elk quarter would be good for her, as the exertion would warm her body. But her head felt tepid and wet, and when she reached to check the gash, certain it was still bleeding, her fingertips pressed against her damp hair. She was no longer wearing her hat, and she could not recall when it had come off. Perhaps when she’d entered the meadow the hat had gotten snagged on a branch. Again she applied pressure to the wound, but this time she kept moving. She could not turn back, and wished she had brought the blaze orange hat she’d left at the truck. She was still feeling light-headed, which would worsen if the bleeding continued. And without her hat, her head was already becoming soaked from the snow. She would lose too much body heat should she stop, and how much farther until she would be at the truck? She tried to pick up her pace.
She was now
at the far edge of the clearing. She entered the timber and looked for her tracks but could find none, and she wondered if in part the snow and wind had erased her path. Then she thought of the rain and how hard it had fallen. There would be no tracks. The rain would have washed them away hours ago. And she had been on her hands and knees much of the time. She continued on, confident she was moving in the right direction. She thought of the deadfall she had crossed over earlier and the steep terrain. Everything looked familiar.
Though Amy Raye did not have a watch on, she had to have walked more than an hour. She should have come upon her quiver. The taste of panic coated her tongue. With each minute that passed, she was less sure of herself. Perhaps her quiver was nearby, but with the snowfall and these thick woods, she’d have a difficult time identifying the marker, and to circle back would only waste time, and dusk was quickly approaching. More than once she’d almost slipped and lost her footing. The terrain was rockier than she had remembered. She stopped occasionally to take a sip of water, to catch her breath. She was carrying up to eighty pounds, and every muscle in her body felt stiff and ached. She thought of shedding the elk quarter, but something else was taking hold of her, an awareness of her surroundings, and the cold, and the approaching nightfall. She’d relied on her adrenaline, had attacked these woods, trying to make good time, and now with each step, she knew just how lost she had become.
COUGAR
PRU
As I drove away from the command station, I felt the letdown from the search, as well as the fatigue, and yet with each mile closer to Rio Mesa, something different began to take hold of me, something large and warm and comforting. I tried to call Joseph, though I knew he would be in the locker room getting ready for the game. When I got his voice mail, I left a message. “I’ll be there,” I said. “Rio Mesa against the number two team. I think I’ll bet ten on five.”
Breaking Wild Page 12