Breaking Wild

by Diane Les Becquets

  The weather was clear that day, and I was enjoying the time away from the office, when Kona and I came across an elk carcass that I guessed to be a couple of years old. The bones had been scattered and broken. I didn’t think much of the whole thing at first. It wasn’t unusual to find the remains of an animal that a hunter had shot and field-dressed. And if the head had been severed, I could be sure the animal had been a bull elk, and that his head was mounted on somebody’s wall. Kona and I walked on a little farther, and about thirty or forty yards west of the carcass, Kona sniffed out a skull that had been dragged beneath the branches of a large serviceberry shrub. My first thought was that the elk had been a female. Cow elks weren’t trophy worthy. But in recent years, a lot of hunters had been taking the heads to the DOW to be tested for chronic wasting disease, a form of mad cow syndrome, which led me to wonder if this carcass was a case of poaching. I knelt to look at the skull. It was definitely weathered enough to be a couple of years old, and CWD inspection wasn’t mandatory these days. Just beneath the left eye socket was a bullet hole. And that was when I got to thinking about our missing hunter. Her number one arrow wasn’t slotted in her quiver. Everything in me believed she had to have gotten a shot the morning she went missing, and if she got a shot, she had to have been tracking the elk when she set down her quiver and bow. Her gun had fired one round. It seemed likely that she’d found the elk she was tracking and put a bullet in him to put him down. I felt certain a carcass was up there, and if we could find the skull, we could match it with the bullet. None of this would bring Amy Raye back, but it would help in giving us a better picture of what might have happened to her. If she had indeed gotten a shot and successfully tracked an elk, she wouldn’t have been able to pack the animal out on her own. She would have gone for help, and as thick into the woods as she was, she could easily have become disoriented and gotten lost. Then if I factored in the harsh weather and her not having her compass with her, I didn’t see any way she could have found her way out of there. I also didn’t see any way she would have made it through the night. And without any body heat, none of the search’s thermal detection devices would have worked.

  Before returning to the house, I stopped by the office. It was dark by the time I’d made the hour drive back to town, and most everyone at the BLM had already left for the day. I turned on my computer and opened up my file for the search. I’d made copies of my files and given them to Colm, and I couldn’t be sure what I was looking for, but something was gnawing at me, as if I just needed to be certain I hadn’t missed anything. Throughout the search I had taken pictures of the area as well as of the items and tracks we’d discovered. There were close to sixty photos. I knew I was going to open and zoom in on each one and that could take hours. I walked into the small kitchen, filled a bowl of water for Kona, and made a pot of coffee. Then I called Joseph.

  “I think there’s some lasagna in the freezer,” I told him. “I may be a while.”

  One by one, I pulled up photos from the search. I zoomed in closely on each image, looked for marking tape, a footprint, anything out of the ordinary. I was tired and both Kona and I were hungry. I’d gone through about twenty-five photos. The rest of the employees had long since left. Kona was lying on his bed by my desk. He raised his head and a moan started up in the back of his throat. Someone was at the front door.

  I stood up. Kona followed me to the lobby. There was Joseph standing at the glass door with that grin of his and a plate wrapped in aluminum foil.

  I unlocked the door and let him in.

  “I thought you might want some dinner,” he said.

  I said something to him about how thoughtful he was, and that, yes, I was starving. He walked with me to my desk and pulled up a chair beside me. I showed him what I was working on. He scrolled through some of the photos while I ate. I asked him about his day.

  “Good,” he said.

  I kept eating. Then, feeling bad for Kona, I fed him my last couple of bites.

  Joseph was studying one of the pictures. “Did you see this?” he asked. His fingers tapped away at the keyboard. He copied a corner of the photo onto the desktop and enlarged the picture. “Is this anything?” He pointed at an image in the upper right corner of the monitor.

  I leaned in to have a better look. “I’m not sure. Can you zoom in any closer?”

  “This is as good as I can get it,” he said.

  Joseph had been able to enlarge the photo enough to capture the upper half of a pinyon and zoom in on what looked like something man-made.

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “Looks like something metal.”

  “Could be a tree stand,” I said. “It’s hard to tell. Might be worth checking out.”

  I went back to my notes on the photos and found the location for where the image had been taken, which was less than a mile from where we’d found the truck. “You could be onto something,” I told him.

  AMY RAYE

  Sometimes as minutes turned to hours and hours turned to days, Amy Raye would think about how simple life could be. She found pleasure in her routines, in the gathering of wood, the collection of snow for her water supply, her daily trek to her cache for meat, and the slow cooking of the meat over the fire. And she found pleasure in the beauty of things, the slant of light at different times throughout the day, the mountain air, the sound of the wind and the sifting snow. Perhaps this was all a preparation for how she would die, up here in this place. There was something almost peaceful in that. Her body would become fodder for the animals. She thought especially of the lion whose tracks she had seen from time to time around the vicinity of the cave, and whose tufts of fur she’d once found snagged on branches when she’d ventured farther from the cave in search for wood and the scarce pinyon nuts and juniper berries.

  But nighttime was a different animal. And the lines between death and life blurred, each second stretching out for what felt like eternity as she waited through the darkness for sunlight. And the realization that they had stopped looking for her, that she would never be found, settled into her like a slow encroaching death. And as she stared into the blackness, imagining a drop of water or the wind or a small animal into a family of rats or a lion, as she felt that she was being watched, or that she had seen something—yes, she’d feel certain she had—the stink of her fear and madness would be suffocating, and she’d want to scream and run out of the cave and into the night, but she was not mad enough to do so, and eventually morning would come.

  Other times during the day Amy Raye was seized with distress. Though she could now stand and hobble around by relying on a limb that she’d fashioned into a crutch, certain movements or pressures on her left leg still overwhelmed her. Worse were the muscle spasms that had set in. Without any salt or minerals, her electrolytes had dropped fearfully low, and the cramping in her leg sent such intense waves of pain that she thought she would surely black out.

  And her supply of food was diminishing. She had been living out of this cave now for six weeks. She had rationed the elk meat as best she could, consuming a little more than a pound each day. She’d found Mormon grass and made tea. She’d gathered small portions of pinyon nuts and had tried to tolerate the bitter juniper berries. But she was sorely feeling the nutritional deficits, and she was losing weight. Already she had tightened her belt a notch and would soon be tightening it another. Her wedding band had become too loose, and so she had switched it to her middle finger. Her left leg had atrophied. More and more she began to fear for her future. At different intervals throughout each day, she would sit at the opening of the cave and call out for help, already knowing there was no one to answer her. She had done the best she could with her misshapen leg, and despite not having enough variety in her diet, she was thankful for the protein the elk had provided her. She’d created her own form of physical therapy to strengthen her arms and her right leg. Using the wall of the cave for support, she would
extend her left leg in front of her and perform leg squats. She’d strengthen her triceps by planting her hands behind her and lifting her hips.

  And each night she made a mark on the cave wall, recording another day that had passed. She would clasp her hands together and find her wedding ring, a small gold band. She’d play with the ring, twisting it around and around, as if it were a rosary.

  Christmas was less than a week away. Had Farrell and the children put up a tree? Had he bought them presents? But she knew her husband. He would do that much for the children. And then she realized, he would have already been grieving for her as if she were dead. Amy Raye imagined people bringing food to her home. Imagined the women who would be eyeing Farrell as someone who was available. How much time would pass before one of those women would reach out to him, touch the places where he was the most vulnerable, those places where he felt needed? Farrell’s blue eyes were so open and kind, they made a person want to explain her whole life to him. But what about now? Would his eyes still carry that same kindness? How long would he grieve before he was in the arms of another?

  With her hands still clasped, she continued to hold on to her ring. She let her thoughts carry her to an overcast day in June, to Farrell and music and the smell of the barn, to the north pasture and clover where they’d fallen asleep drunk and naked on a blanket under the moon and stars and woken to sunlight and dew on their skin. They’d lain on their backs and held up their left hands to the sun, till its rays caught their gold bands and reflected gold light back upon them.

  It was in the pasture behind Idaho McKenzie’s barn, where Amy Raye and Farrell had said their vows. Idaho was one of Farrell’s closest friends. He played the mandolin in a folk group called Folk Yeah! His girlfriend, Hallie, played the fiddle, and Howard, a retired plumber, played the guitar. Howard was also a justice of the peace, so he did the honors of officiating the wedding. Idaho was Farrell’s best man. Amy Raye wanted Saddle to stand up with her, but when Howard laughed a little too loudly at her idea, she chose Farrell’s daughter, Julia, instead. Maybe fifty people attended, and Amy Raye did not know the names of most of them, and Farrell did not know the names of others. But the people were in good spirits and had brought food and drink. Amy Raye wore a white gunny-sack dress and her gold and brown cowboy boots, and Farrell wore a gray tuxedo with an American Eagle bolo tie, and his black Justins.

  Before they said their vows, Farrell played his guitar for Amy Raye and sang Kate Wolf’s “Give Yourself to Love.” A cool drizzle began to fall. Howard pronounced the two husband and wife, and people cheered, and the rain fell harder. Farrell kissed each raindrop on Amy Raye’s face, and she laughed and cried. Folk Yeah! set up in the barn and made music, and everyone gathered around them and danced and ate and drank. After the rain stopped and the moon came out and stars began to appear, Farrell tried to waltz with Amy Raye to “Magnolia Wind,” and when they stumbled and fell and got back up, he gathered her in his arms and held her close as they danced to “I’ll Lay Ye Doon, Love,” which Idaho sang with a Scottish lilt.

  —

  Amy Raye awoke the next morning with a fresh sense of purpose. The sky was clear and the temperatures outside the cave relatively mild, maybe in the twenties or thirties. She retrieved the remainder of the elk quarter. Her arrow had hit the elk’s right scapula, the same shoulder that she’d hauled out, and the broadhead had broken through the bone and penetrated up to six inches. A scapula shot usually resulted in little blood trail, as the blood would get trapped behind the bone. Amy Raye thought about the long hours she’d spent tracking the elk, the small collections of blood, the rain that day. She was lucky to have found the elk at all. She carved what little meat remained from the shoulder blade and from between the tendons of the leg and set the bones aside. She knew the names of all the bones on an elk, the same as those of a deer, and as she cooked the meat, she recited the names—scapula, ulna, radius, tarsus, carpal phalanges, tibia, metatarsus, metacarpal. And upon reciting the names, she thought of her grandfather and the farm. And she thought upon a time when she’d been ten years old, when she’d worked on a science project for school, and she’d chosen to put together a deer skeleton from the bones she’d found on her grandparents’ property and the woods beyond, carcasses left over from hunters or coyote kill. She’d soaked the bones in bleach in steel tubs behind the barn and then laid them in the sun to dry. Her grandfather had helped her drill holes through the marrow of the bones, until he came to one of the tibias.

  “We’ve got us a cougar out there,” he said. “See the end here, how it’s broken off?”

  Amy Raye held the bone, rubbed her fingers over its jagged edges.

  “A cougar’s got some strong jaws. Breaks the bone clean in half and eats out the marrow.” He showed her the hollowed-out space where the marrow had been.

  —

  Amy Raye ate a small portion of the cooked meat and, using the gallon-size plastic bag, packed up the rest, no more than a couple of pounds, to bring with her. Despite the sun, the snow was deep, and she was not sure how she would manage over the rocks, but she had to at least try. She picked up the scapula. The triangular bone was about a foot long and maybe nine inches at its widest point. Though it would add extra weight to her pack, it could be of use to her. She scraped the scapula clean. Then she removed the shoelaces from the boot she could no longer wear and picked up one of the longer sticks she’d collected for firewood. Using the laces, she tied the end of the scapula to one of the ends of the stick. The shovel was small enough to strap to the back of her pack. She had no idea what the forecast would be. She could only hobble around at best. It would be days, maybe a week before she could cover enough distance to reach a road or find help. And yet if she stayed in the cave, where she could keep warm as long as she could gather firewood, within two weeks, probably less, she would be dead. Building a fire once she left was not a guarantee, given the snow and the winds that could pick up. She wondered what it would be like to die from hypothermia. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad. Her body would go numb. She wouldn’t feel anything. She imagined crawling into a fetal position in a soft drift and falling asleep. But she knew hypothermia wasn’t that simple. She’d read enough accounts of the hallucinations of those suffering from a severe drop in body temperature, heard stories of people who had stripped out of their clothes because of an imagined fire and a false sense of heat. She also thought of how difficult it would be to manipulate her legs and feet over the ice-slicked rocks. And what if she were to experience another fall, another broken bone? Maybe leaving the cave was a mistake. But if she waited any longer, she would no longer have a choice, and she wanted that choice. She wanted her children to know she’d done everything she could to return to them. She had already packed her few belongings, had filled her hydration bladder. Even though the game bag had been soiled with the elk’s blood, she’d folded the four-foot cloth and used its drawstrings to create a bootie for her injured foot.

  She lay back on the boughs she used as a mattress. She looked up at the cross she had etched into the rock wall. She did not believe the cross would protect her. She was not superstitious in that sort of way, and yet she had found that it brought her comfort.

  Amy Raye thought about that comfort and the ways a child is raised. She thought upon the white church where her grandfather had been an elder, and, for years, her father had been a deacon. And while her father had been a deacon he’d visit the sick, and sometimes Amy Raye would go with him. She’d carry the large Bible and her father would carry a cup of coffee and a box of donuts that he and Amy Raye would have picked up at the Donut Barn in Tullahoma. If there were any donuts left after they’d made their visits, he and Amy Raye would eat them in the front seat of his patrol car. And on a warm day, they’d ride with the windows down and sometimes she’d lean her head out the window and let the wind blow her hair.

  The big, brown leather Bible belonged to the church. It had been given to the con
gregation by Governor Buford Ellington in 1967, the same year he signed a bill repealing the Butler Act of 1925 that had outlawed the teaching of evolution in public schools. That was also the year he’d appointed the state’s first black cabinet member, Hosea T. Lockard. Some old-time members of the church hadn’t been fans of Governor Ellington. The church was known for its biblical conservatism, so the church didn’t mind that Clyde Surgarton took that particular Bible with him when he visited the sick. He told Amy Raye that the big book carried with it healing powers.

  “How so?” Amy Raye had asked him.

  “Because it was given to the church by a man capable of changing his ways.”

  Those were the most profound words Amy Raye would ever hear from her father. And for a long time, she let those afternoons with him and those words define him.

  —

  After a fitful sleep, after eating a small portion of meat and drinking some Mormon grass tea, she looked the cave over one last time before leaving. A few bones from the elk’s leg, the firewood, the discarded boot from her left foot, the small handprints on the wall next to where she had slept, the trapezoid figures that she had called carrot people. She had no way of knowing the weather that lay ahead of her. But for now sunlight shimmered over the snow and the morning sky was a cerulean blue. How many days had she held the image of the map in her mind, tried to recall its vertical scale, tried to remember those low chasms where the map’s contour lines were spaced farther apart. But those chasms lay to the west of the bluffs. The cave faced east, and all Amy Raye could see from the ridge were dense woods and steep terrain. She felt certain she was in the thick of the bluffs, and if that was the case, she was standing at over seven thousand feet in elevation. Should she move eastward, that elevation would climb to over eight thousand feet, which would mean an increase in the snowpack. She might very well become more lost than she already was. No, she would have to get around this rocky bluff in which the cave had been carved and eroded so many years ago, and to do that, she would have to climb. To the left of the cave, the ledge came to a dead end, abutting the vertical rock face from where she had fallen. To the right of the cave, the ledge continued to widen into an expanded step into the bluff of almost fifty yards. It was from this area that she had stored the elk meat and gathered wood. Each day she had explored it further, seeing how far it would take her. The ledge eventually merged away from the rock wall, to a more gradual incline of about forty-five degrees. The incline was littered with rocks and deadfall. And without the heat from the afternoon sun, the slope had remained mostly covered in snow. But if she could just get to the top of this hill, she could gauge the direction in which she would need to go, which would involve climbing down in elevation and moving westward, where she might be lucky enough to come across one of the pipeline roads.