Breaking Wild

by Diane Les Becquets

  They both ran back to the patrol car and got in, and inside it was warm and dry, and because it was summer, the patrolman turned up the air-conditioning, and when the cold air blew on Amy Raye’s wet skin, her legs and arms turned to gooseflesh. She scooted over close to the man, who she thought looked about forty, and other than a small belly that most of the men around his age had, he was nice enough looking. He clapped a freckled hand on her left knee, and shook it back and forth as if to warm her up a little. He asked her what she was doing out on a night like this and where she was heading to.

  She said she was on her way home. She told him about the stable and the horse. “Can’t you tell?” she said. She lifted her shirt out a little ways from her chest. “Don’t I smell like a barn?”

  “You smell good,” he said, but he was looking down her shirt when he said it, so she turned toward him and pressed her hand inside his thigh.

  “I’m still cold,” she said.

  The man looked over his shoulder, and Amy Raye could tell he was getting nervous. They were on a highway. There hadn’t been any other cars, but there might be.

  “You think we ought to drive somewhere and get you warm?” he said.

  “I don’t much care to leave my truck on the side of the road,” she said. “I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.” And all the while she was talking, she was rubbing her hand along the man’s inner thigh, and his breathing was becoming thicker. “Oh, Jesus,” he said, but he was all out of breath when he said it. He removed his gun and set it on the dashboard, and Amy Raye worked her hands up to the man’s belt and lowered her head to his lap.

  She left that night, without a ticket or a warning, drove herself the rest of the way home, said hello to her parents, read for a while, and went to bed. And she’d almost forgotten about the whole affair, until two weeks later. She’d just gotten home from work. Her mother had cooked a pot roast that morning in the slow cooker. Amy Raye hadn’t eaten anything since lunch, a premade sandwich she’d bought at the store, and was looking forward to dinner. But when she walked into the house, her parents were sitting across from each other at the kitchen table. The table was bare except for her father’s hands, which were clasped in front of him. The slow cooker was still on the counter, and the pot roast smelled burned.

  “What’s going on?” Amy Raye said.

  “You have five minutes to pack your belongings and get out of this house,” her father said.

  “What are you talking about? What’s going on?” Amy Raye was standing between the door and the kitchen table, about four feet from her parents. She had a denim purse slung over her shoulders, was wearing a pair of army fatigues and a green T-shirt from the convenience store with an advertisement for Purity Dairy products on the front and Stoker’s chewing tobacco on the back.

  “I won’t have a whore living under my roof.” Her father was staring at his hands.

  Amy Raye tried to make eye contact with her mother, whose hands were in her lap. But her mother continued to stare at the surface of the table.

  Amy Raye kicked the legs of the chair closest to her, knocking the chair on its side, and started to walk through the kitchen and back to her room, but her father shot up out of his chair and grabbed her arm.

  “Clyde!” Amy Raye’s mother said.

  “Stay out of this, Sharon.” He was twisting the skin on Amy Raye’s arm, and his saliva had left drops on her face. “How many?” he demanded. “I know of at least one, but how many others?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “The hell you don’t know what I’m talking about. Someone at the station says your license plate was called in the other night. Says I might want to ask David Skinner about it. Seems like there was some talk going on. So I asked Skinner, and he tells me I best keep an eye on you. Says he would have hauled your ass to jail if it wasn’t for him calling in your plate and finding out you were my—” Her father let go of her arm, dropped his hand to his side. “Like I said, you got five minutes. And if you got any sense left in you, you’ll get out of this town.”

  There was a suitcase open on her bed, and inside the suitcase, many of her clothes had already been packed. And then the tears came, burned rivers down her face. She grabbed her things from the bathroom, a couple of her books. She tried to feel anger. She told herself he had no right. But the pain was there, in all of its shades, in her father’s eyes, in her mother’s voice. Maybe just for a night, or maybe a week or two. Things would settle down. Yet her heart trembled from the sheer force of what could not be undone. She closed the suitcase and carried it out to her truck. Her parents were no longer at the kitchen table. The chair she’d knocked over had been set upright. Her father was standing at the kitchen sink with his back to her. Maybe he was looking out the window at the small backyard. Maybe he was thinking the grass needed to be mowed. Perhaps he was looking at the swing set with the red, white, and blue striped poles that had rusted over the years, the one her parents had wanted to hold on to for the day when Amy Raye would have children.

  The slow cooker had been unplugged and the smell of charred meat had grown stronger. She walked out the side door to the driveway, careful not to bang the door with her suitcase, and she wondered why she was being careful now. She set the suitcase in the bed of the truck. She climbed into the driver’s seat, and when she turned the key, a loud announcement for Auto Rama Used Auto Fair played over the speakers. Her mother stepped out of the house and walked up to the truck. The windows were rolled down. She handed Amy Raye some money. “It’s all I have.”

  “Is this what you want?” Amy Raye asked.

  “You have to go. I can’t change his mind.” Her mother was crying now. She pressed the money into her daughter’s hand.

  “Mom, don’t do this.” But Amy Raye knew it was too late.

  Her mother leaned in through the window and kissed Amy Raye on the cheek. “I’m sorry,” her mother said. Then she turned around and walked back into the house.

  —

  The night Amy Raye left home, she drove to the Free Rein Stables. She talked to the horse named Hemlock that she was told she’d one day ride. The horse came up to her and nibbled at her T-shirt. It hadn’t rained that night, and the stars were out. After she left the stables, she drove out of town a ways until she was halfway between Lynchburg and Tullahoma. She pulled her truck over on one of the dirt roads that led to Sam Burt Hill Summit. Then she climbed in the back of her truck and, using one of her sweatshirts as a pillow, lay down. She stayed awake most of the night deciding what she would do. Her mother had given her seventy dollars. Amy Raye had over seven hundred dollars in an account at the bank.

  Once the sun was up she drove to the Quik Mart in Tullahoma, fueled her truck, and bought a package of donuts, an orange juice, and a United States atlas. Then she drove back to Lynchburg to the Moore County Bank. She sat in her truck in the parking lot, finished her donuts and orange juice, and studied the atlas. When the bank opened, she went in and withdrew all of her money.

  On her way out of town, she stopped by her grandparents’ farm. Their truck wasn’t in the driveway, and she decided maybe it was better that way, because what would she tell them and how could she face them if they knew what she had done? She stepped into the barn. Van Gogh walked up to the edge of his stall like he always did when Amy Raye was around. She scooped up a handful of grain from the trough, opened his stall door, and fed him. She soaked in that warm feeling of his muzzle on her hand. “I’m going to miss you most of all,” she said. Though she knew it wasn’t Van Gogh she was going to miss the most.

  When the pain behind her eyes and in her chest got to be too much, she kissed Van Gogh’s nose and rubbed his ears. She told him not to step on any barn cats. She told him he was her sky and that she would always love him. She closed the stall door behind her and wiped away her tears. She walked up the hill behind the barn, along the tract
or road and into the woods. She sat in her blind for close to an hour, watched the birds and the dragonflies and the squirrels and the chipmunks. She wanted to tell everybody she was sorry. But she wanted them to be sorry also. She grabbed a fistful of dirt, held it to her nose. It smelled like mud and leaves and creek water. She shoved it in her pocket and stepped out of the blind.

  Instead of heading back toward the barn and house, she walked a little farther through the woods until she came upon the small cemetery with the three markers, where Nan and Lionel and she used to play with their toy soldiers. They’d use the headstones, slabs of granite that stood about two feet out of the ground, as barricades. When they’d first discovered the site, there were only two headstones, but over the next couple of years, a third one had appeared. There was something peaceful about the smoothed-out clearing as they lay on their stomachs and manipulated the plastic figures, until the afternoon Amy Raye understood whose lives were buried there, and the person who had dug the small graves.

  PRU

  That next week, Colm brought six men in for questioning, including the husband and Aaron and Kenny, despite the men from the hunting party having already passed a polygraph test. Each night I called Colm.

  “How did it go?” I’d ask him.

  And each night I’d get the same answer. “Not a thing.” One of the men had met Amy Raye at a convenience store. Two of the other men had met her on dating sites. Aaron said he hadn’t been involved with her for six months. Kenny had broken down several times during the questioning. But every one of the men passed the lie detector test, including Farrell. And each was willing to cooperate, though Aaron was reluctant at first because of his family. He said his wife didn’t know, and he had recommitted himself to her and wanted to make things right. But what got to Colm most was Farrell.

  “Up until her disappearance, he didn’t have a clue. Then he gets home from the search and he’s trying to talk to the kids. The girl doesn’t think Amy Raye is dead. She thinks her mom will be coming home, like Moab, their dog who’d run off one night, only to return the next day. So here Farrell is trying to talk to the kids, trying to hold himself together, and he goes to bed one night and turns on his wife’s phone.”

  “I thought you were holding the phone as evidence,” I said.

  “Evidence of what? We didn’t know about this other life she had going on. We gave the husband back all of her belongings. We’d rather spend our time pulling records than trying to break a passcode.”

  Colm went on to tell me that Farrell had tried different combinations of numbers, and one of them had worked. Amy Raye had at least ten new voice messages. Seven of the messages were from Kenny, telling her how much he loved her and how worried he was. Another message was from one of the men Colm had brought in. The guy had heard Amy Raye had gone missing. He’d called to hear her voice. The other two messages were from Farrell.

  “And get this,” Colm said. “The PIN on her cell phone was her and Farrell’s anniversary.”

  “What about text messages?”

  “There were plenty of those. And I don’t have to tell you the nature of them.”

  “Any pictures?”

  “The last pictures were from their daughter’s birthday party,” Colm said.

  “I don’t get it,” I said. “No pictures from the hunt, or photos after Kenny and Aaron filled their tags?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe that wasn’t her thing.”

  “How long has the husband known?”

  “A couple of weeks.”

  “And he didn’t say anything to you? Do you find that odd?”

  “You don’t know men.” Colm exhaled into the receiver, more like a drawn-out sigh. “Let’s just say a wife’s infidelities aren’t something a man is proud of.”

  I hesitated, thinking about what Colm had said, and wondering if he had meant more. Then I asked, “How is Farrell taking all of this?”

  “He’s confused. He’s upset. He’s angry. But I’ll be damned, that man loves her. If there’s a trump card to this whole thing, it’s that. He’s got one hell of a broken heart. He really believed she’d loved him.”

  Colm’s words made me sad, not just for Farrell, but for the woman. I wished she could know how her husband felt.

  “Have you changed your mind about Kenny?” I asked. I’d already told Colm about the photo Joseph had pulled up. I’d told Colm that we might be looking at a tree stand and that I was going to be checking it out after Christmas.

  “Yeah, I guess I have.”

  I was sitting in the living room next to the wood stove. Joseph and I had put up a tree, a pinyon we’d cut from the woods. We’d be driving over to Boulder at the end of the week. My parents would be meeting us there, as well. “It’s weird, you know. It’s like we’re angry with her, and we don’t even know her. It’s easy to forget that she’s someone’s mother and someone’s wife, and they’re having to get on without her.”

  The tree lights flickered. Kona was lying beside me on the sofa. I stroked his warm fur.

  Colm had become quiet. After about a minute, I said, “Are you there?”

  “Yeah, I’m here.” And then, “When are you and Joseph heading out?”

  “He’s got his last final Friday morning. We’ll leave after that.” I had a couple of sites near the Coos shelter I still needed to check out, so I was glad we weren’t leaving any sooner. Sometimes getting to those sites was prohibited by the snowy terrain, but I could at least look for any disturbances in the immediate area.

  Colm had remained quiet, and in that moment, I felt a bigger sadness stirring up inside me. “Colm, are you okay? You got any plans?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine. Dean wants me to stop by their place. Wants me to swing by early so I can watch the kids open their presents.” I heard Colm moving around in his kitchen, heard the sound of a skillet on the stove.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Just fixing some dinner.”

  “It’s late,” I said. Joseph and I had already finished and put the dishes away.

  “A man’s got to eat,” he said.

  “What are you cooking?”

  Colm opened a drawer and shut it. A couple of utensils clinked. “I’m frying a steak,” he said.

  “It smells good.”

  And Colm laughed.

  I heard him turn the steak over, heard a cabinet open and close.

  “I better let you go,” I said.

  A few seconds passed. “Have a good trip, Pru. Drive safe.”

  “I will. Merry Christmas, Colm.”

  —

  I didn’t know how Amy Raye’s family was going to spend Christmas. But I thought about them a lot over the holiday. And while I knelt beside Joseph during the Christmas Eve service at the beautiful St. Aidan’s, I prayed for Amy Raye and her family. I prayed for my family as well, and the Lidells, and I prayed for Colm. And I prayed for answers. I would be visiting the search area again. I would be checking out the possible tree stand that Joseph had identified in the photo. And I knew I would also be visiting the site where Kona had found the hat and the gun. I would be looking for some sign that Amy Raye had gotten a shot at an elk, and I hoped somewhere in the area I’d find the elk’s remains, specifically his skull, which might explain the gun. I wanted Amy Raye’s family to know she hadn’t taken her life. And I wanted them to have the answer that her death wasn’t the result of her illicit behaviors. I wanted to redeem her in some way. It would be the family’s memory of Amy Raye that would get them through all of this. I wanted to do what I could to protect that memory.

  AMY RAYE

  She awoke to a soft glow over the horizon, and a fresh layer of snow. Her body shivered against the cold, the fire no more than glowing embers now. She uncovered herself from the boughs she’d used to stay warm and brushed the snow from her clothes and hair. A
s the sun rose over the rocky bluffs behind her, she saw what looked like prints just to the other side of where she had built the fire. She reached for her crutch and pulled herself to a standing position, her muscles stiff, the break in her injured leg throbbing as it did every morning. She still could not will her left foot to move in any direction, and she wondered if she would ever be able to walk normally again.

  Within ten feet of where she’d slept were the fresh tracks of a lion, the four teardrop-shaped toes, the heel pad with the three distinct lobes. Leave me alone! she’d wanted to scream, but already the air felt thin in her lungs and her stomach weak. She knelt and laid her palm over one of the prints. It came to the first bend in her middle finger, which measured about four inches from the base of her palm, same as the tracks she had seen outside the cave. Lion were supposed to be wary of people. She’d always read that they would leave an area if they perceived a threat. This lion wasn’t seeing her as a threat. And then cold panic settled over her skin. A lion was a stalking predator. It would get close to its prey before ambushing it from a short distance. This cougar had been stalking her. Had she rolled over, roused from her sleep to kindle the fire, made some kind of movement or noise that had thwarted his ambush? Lion looked for vulnerable prey. Perhaps he had perceived her weakened state. But then she thought of something else. A cougar was mostly drawn by scent. He lacked the keen eyesight of other animals. The game bag that she’d used as extra insulation for her left foot had been saturated with elk blood. She knelt beside the fire pit and blew upon the embers until they reignited. Then she quickly untied the cloth and put it in the fire. She stoked the fire until the bloodstained fabric had completely disintegrated. She gathered her belongings and tried to move quickly, unable to shake the feeling that the lion was still watching her. She dropped her knife and fumbled with her bag, cursing each mishap. She would forgo any kind of breakfast. Besides, the weather seemed to be turning. There was a slight breeze that had swung around from the north. The air felt colder than it had during the night, and the wind was picking up momentum, whipping her jacket against her back. She worried about another snowstorm. She would go ahead and cover as much distance as possible while she could.