by Peter Heller
He smiled back at her now. Her smoky, musky scent was intoxicating. “And,” she said, “I’m paying you. Which feels weird. I don’t really wanna be that gal.”
Jack was surprised at the wave of relief. “Okay,” he said.
“Okay. So turn around if you want. I’m gonna try to get these tights off.”
* * *
•
They sat on the tailgate in the lowering sun. They drank Hawaiian Punch happily, in the hum of endorphins and relaxed tiredness that can come after a full day fishing. Jack couldn’t hear the reticent creek, though it was just beyond the screen of willows, but he heard the evening trill of a meadowlark. It was unabashed and self-delighting. One of his favorite songs. She said, “I don’t wanna go back.”
“You don’t?” he said. “To the lodge?”
“Not right now.”
Jack checked his watch. “Four-oh-five. We’ll barely make it to the bar before dinner if we leave now.” He meant the bar at the lodge.
“Fuck the bar. Will and Neave can barely speak anymore. Those others, the blondies, they looked kinda beat-up this morning, too. Jeez.”
“I noticed that.”
“What the hell? What’s going on? Will and Neave don’t fish, the Youngens fish, supposedly, but we never see them on the river.” She rolled down the sleeves of her quick-dry shirt and buttoned the wrists. “Any ideas?”
Jack said, “This morning, just before you showed up for coffee, I saw Shay loading maybe twenty breakfasts into the back of one of those golf carts. On trays.”
“Twenty?”
“Just guessing. More than ten.”
“Who would she be taking them to?”
“She was heading upstream. That’s one thing. The little cart path goes to the parking area inside the gate. So either to a vehicle or on upriver.”
“To Kreutzer’s.”
“It’s only half a mile more.”
Alison chewed her bottom lip. “It’s like it’s another lodge. Like maybe they have a bunch of guests there, too, but for some reason we’re not supposed to know about it.”
“Yeah, right. I keep thinking about the boot.”
“The boot?”
Jack’s mouth closed. He had forgotten that he hadn’t told her.
“What boot?”
“I don’t want to freak you out. A guide’s supposed to keep certain things to himself.”
“What thing have you kept to yourself? I’d say you’ve been free with all your things lately.”
He laughed, couldn’t help it. Last night in the truck seemed like a dream. Now she shook her hair out of her cap and it was a mess and she looked righteous and pleased with herself. “Point taken,” he said.
“So stop being coy. Is this how cowboys are?”
“When you caught your fish by Kreutzer’s and I went across the river to pee, I saw a boot.”
“So?”
“Just the edge of it. Sticking out of a bed of spruce needles. All hidden in those thick trees. The ground had been disturbed. It was a wading boot.”
She didn’t say anything.
“The ground around it had been roughed up, about the size of a tent. Or a grave. So that night I went back. I went to the same spot, I’m dead sure. There was no boot and the ground had been smoothed over. That’s when I heard the scream.”
“The owl.”
“The owl.” Jack blinked at her, into the sun. “The guide I’ve been hired to replace left in a hurry was what Kurt told me.”
“Kurt. Kurt Jensen.”
“Right.”
“Mr. Kurt has an interesting relationship with the truth,” she said.
“That’s what’s dawning on me.”
Her eyes darkened. They were pretty when they were lit, but when a shadow moved into them they were so beautiful they stopped his breath. “Are you saying…?”
“I’m not saying anything,” he said. “I just wonder if you shouldn’t check out. Maybe say you’ve been called back to Nashville or wherever for urgent business.”
“Asheville.”
“Asheville?”
“Mountains of North Carolina. I like to fish, remember?”
“So, Asheville. Maybe you shouldn’t finish out the week—”
“Ten days.”
“A lot can happen.”
“You chew, right?” she said.
He nodded.
“Let me have some.”
“You?”
“Singer can’t smoke. Shouldn’t.”
He fished the tin out of the back pocket of his Wranglers, handed it over.
Jack said, “Did Mr. Den say his first name? When you talked to him?”
“Sure. His name’s Nicholas. Nick.”
Out of a front pocket, Jack now slid his phone. “No cell service. Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“Back toward town. I have an idea.”
She didn’t say “You do?” She reached in the back of the truck where she had folded a fleece vest. “What’s in the bucket?” she said.
“Fencing tools. I leave it in there out of habit.”
She tipped it toward her. “Fencing tools, come-along, can of staples…”
“How do you know that stuff?”
“Country girl, remember?”
“Hunh.”
“Dynamite? Three sticks?”
“Don’t you have bedrock in North Carolina? Places on the ranch even the Hulk couldn’t dig a post.”
She turned her face back into the sun and her eyes lit and her laugh challenged the meadowlark.
* * *
•
They didn’t get decent cell reception until they were nearly three miles from town, so she said they might as well go in and have a beer. He said they’d be lucky to make the lodge dinner at all at this rate and she said, Fuck it, we might as well just eat in Crested Butte while we’re at it. He asked if that wouldn’t raise suspicion, and she said, Of what? That we’re boinking? And he laughed and she said as they drove that it must happen all the time, the guide-client thing, and they’d probably be suspicious if they weren’t. She was right, probably, but Jack still felt uneasy. He had the feeling, with no evidence to support it, that the lodge did not take kindly to guides and guests going AWOL. But she was paying the bill, what were they going to do? Fire her? His elbow was out the window and he shivered but it wasn’t from cold.
The town was less packed tonight and they parked right on Elk and walked a block down to the Dogwood. They couldn’t get their old table, but they got the four-top next to it in the window, and the waitress saw them from the bar and lifted her chin, turned herself sideways in the crowd, and raised her tray to get through. She recognized them and put down waters and unhooked the mask from one ear to reveal a big smile. “Blowdowns?” she said.
“Yep,” Alison said. “Good memory.”
“Eating?” the girl said. She was beaming again, as if she didn’t at all believe the llama-raising story.
“Definitely.”
“Okay, I’m Molly. Back in a sec with the beers.” She took two narrow happy hour menus out of her apron pocket, slid them onto the table, and dove back into the crowd.
“So much for social distancing,” Alison said.
“Right?”
“What was your idea?” she said.
“Hold on, I’ll come around.” Jack moved to the seat beside her and pulled out his phone.
* * *
•
There was a candle in a glass on the table and Alison took out an ancient Zippo. Jack loved the snick and scrape of the old lighters as they opened. Uncle Lloyd had one with which he fired up a cigar once in a while.
“Ambiance,” she said, and lit the candle.
“I thought
you didn’t smoke,” Jack said.
“Nope, the lighter was Papa’s. It’s good luck.” She showed it to him. The nickel plating was worn to black at the edges and was stamped with a Harley on one side and a white-tailed deer on the other. “His two passions,” she said. “And me, of course.”
They googled Mr. Nicholas Den. There was a Scot whose Spanish land-grant ranch, the Royal Rancho, comprised most of Santa Barbara County in 1880, but that wasn’t him. Then there was a Trinity College, Oxford, and Yale PhD biochemist who now lived in London and had invented synthetic RNA, whatever that was. His company, DenGen—Nicholas clearly had a sense of fun—was bought by the German agri-pharma giant BauerSpahn for…
“Holy crap.” Alison squinted into the phone and pressed her icy beer bottle against the side of her face.
“Two-point-one billion dollars,” Jack said.
“And stock, worth half a billion more.”
She squinted again into the phone. “Ddddddddddddd—reading sounds…” she said. She read faster than he did. “Okay listen to this,” she said. “He was a major investor in PreVen—the dude can’t help himself, I’m surprised it wasn’t called PreVenDen—a Dutch company that was working on a promising vaccine for Covid Redux. It failed in its second clinical trial.”
“That’s Wiki. Let’s go back.”
Jack scrolled down the pages of search hits for Den. Awards, DenGen announcements, conference speaking engagements—Den had spoken all over the world about the medical and industrial potential of synthetic RNA, which included medical therapeutics and gene analysis. “Funny, there’s nothing recent about Den and the Kingfisher Lodge. Hold on.” Jack searched for the lodge and found the usual reams of promotional hits, articles in Travel + Leisure, in the American Express Platinum magazine Departures, testimonials from world-class fly fishermen and -women.
“Hey,” Jack said. “Apparently he’s got more than one. Fancy five-star fishing lodge. Here in Traveler it says, ‘just one of the premier lodges in the Seven collection.’ Seven, that’s the company. Damn.”
“Go back to Den,” Alison said. He did. He flipped back to page nine of hits and rolled down with his thumb, snagged on something, scrolled back. Jack recited: “Simba, beloved red lion of Hwange National Park, shot by biomedical pioneer Nicholas Den. Special permit awarded by the government of Zimbabwe. The Los Angeles Times.”
He clicked on the link and they put their heads together and read in silence beside the big window. Out on the street tourists streamed by, the sky over the brightly painted wooden houses deepened into a bowl of clearest blue. In the bar, the gregarious babble around them did not cease. A plate of cheese nachos slipped in front of them and they looked up and Molly was grinning. “On the house.” She swapped their empties with fresh cold ones. “These I’ve gotta charge for.” Jack looked up and touched his cap, Thanks. He felt lucky in Alison’s company. He thought they must project something good together, out here in the world. Back at the lodge it was different; back there, he was feeling more and more…what? Suspect maybe. Isolated. And he didn’t know why.
“Bastard,” Alison muttered. “No words. Look, he worked with the Hwange Conservation Project to reopen lion hunting in the park. Rationale given that revenue from the few pricey permits would bankroll conservation efforts. Un-frigging-believable. Look at the smarmy sonofabitch.” She reached with a finger and tapped the news photo. There was Den, a handsome rogue, dark-haired, lean, hint of a smile, squatting with his rifle under a savannah tree and holding up the head of the gorgeous lion with the glorious ruddy mane.
“Can I scroll back?” Jack said.
She nodded.
“Created quite a stink. Not much in the news after that,” Jack said. “Looks like he and his publicists decided he better lay low for a while.”
“Let’s go,” she said. She tipped back the new beer and drank half, clacked it down on the wood table.
“Right now?”
“Yes.” Alison dug two twenties out of her jeans and set them under the wet beer. “I wanna go to the bar at the lodge. I wanna meet this new couple you mentioned. What time is it?”
“Five fifteen.”
“Okay, you better drive like you mean it.”
* * *
•
He drove back fast with the warm evening rushing in the open windows and the country station turned all the way up. They dropped off the aspen ridge and thumped over the bridge and turned up the Taylor River and just before they entered the canyon, in an open bottomland of meadows and cottonwoods, they saw a figure running up the road. A slight figure in white—a white robe? A hospital gown? As they passed they saw it was a thin black-haired girl. Her face was scratched and she looked wild and panicked and she was in a hospital gown and she was barefoot. Alison craned her head out the window and looked back and yelled, “What the hell?” But they were already around the bend.
Jack pulled over into the purple asters and overgrown grass of the shoulder. “We gotta…”
“Check it out,” she yelled over him. He spun the wheel and lurched forward and cranked a three-point turn. He gunned it back onto the pavement and they came around the bend and Alison popped off the radio and cried, “Wha—?”
Pulled up on the opposite shoulder was a squad car, lights flashing, and a deputy in a tan uniform was out in the road wrestling the girl. He had her bodily in the air and he slammed her against his hood and the gown shifted and they could see her bare bottom and then he had one arm and then the other twisted back and he was cuffing her. Just then he looked up and saw them. He waved, nodded, like All under control now, thanks for stopping, and he put his hand on the top of her head and as gently as he could he settled her into the back seat. Then he got in the front, pulled closed the door that said gunnison county sheriff, and pulled back onto the county highway. And then he did something that surprised them both: he didn’t turn around and head back to town. Instead he accelerated up the canyon, the way they were going, and was around the bend and gone.
“What the heck was that?” Alison said.
“Beats me. Maybe the newest virus, I don’t even know what they call the latest one. Maybe it was someone breaking some sort of quarantine.”
“Yeah,” Alison said. “That’s probably what it was. They have quarantine centers in the damndest places.” But she forgot to turn on the music again as they drove back, and she was quiet and thoughtful the whole way.
* * *
•
Neither of them showered. They had to pass the little path down to Jack’s cabin on the walk to the lodge, so they just dumped the pack and their fishing gear onto his porch. He held open the screen for her and they both splashed off in his sink and she pulled her thick hair back into a band and they went on down the track. “Listo beasto,” she said. He carried the little lunch cooler, that was it.
At the bar it was as festive as Jack’s first night. The mood swings were jarring. They pushed through the heavy door from the porch into a room alive with conversation and the smells of rum and fresh baked biscuits. The Cuban son “Candela” poured from hidden speakers. Will and Neave were on stools at the corner looking just as rich but much more rested and energized. Next to them were the fleecy blond Youngens, laughing and talking loudly—the days of proximity seemed to have finally created some sense of cohort. Cody was there, too, beyond them, unsmiling but not unhappy, with a longneck in front of him. And all of their attention was turned to the new blood, a very attractive—Jack would have to say beautiful—young couple. They might have been thirty. She wore a simple, snow white button-down longsleeve that might have been a fishing shirt, and it so contrasted with the straight fall of her glossy black hair it was impossible not to stare. Her olive skin was tan, as if she’d recently spent days outside. He was compact and lean in a tailored khaki shirt and had an easy smile. Jack noticed right away that they both moved with a perfec
t comfort in their own skins and that their eyes were intelligent and curious. They carried a certain authority he sensed was rarely but deftly administered. At least they looked like fisherpeople. As he and Alison stepped to the bar, Ginnie called out, “The wayfaring strangers! Brilliant! Welcome. I think you two would fish twenty-four hours if there was some way to forgo sleep. Everybody, Jack and Alison. Jack and Alison, this is Yumi and Teiji—” The new couple turned on their stools and lowered their heads in a slight bow.
Well, now we’re getting somewhere, Jack thought. At last this looks like a fishing lodge.
Ginnie called, “Pull up a stool over here.” She gestured to the other side of the new guests and tagged them each with the forehead thermometer. “Jack, I’ve got your number”—she was already lifting an ice-cold Cutthroat ale from under the bar.“Alison, love, beer or”—she waved her hand over a line of mint-garnished tumblers—“can I sell you tonight’s mojito special?”
* * *
•
He almost managed to forget. The wider context. Sometimes the company is so congenial, the day’s fishing so glorious, the music and the drinks so spot-on…and the wonderful sense of having a new ally so restful and invigorating at once…it was easy to forget. Yumi and Teiji were charming. They were just to his left, and they broke away from the main conversation for a few minutes to ask Alison and Jack about the day’s fishing. Amid the telling, and in their few but carefully considered questions, the new couple betrayed a thoughtfulness and knowledge that went beyond politeness. They clearly took fishing seriously and were not here just for the peace and quiet.
* * *
•
Alison invited the two to join them for dinner. The four sat at the table by the window overlooking the river and the snowy rapid below. The sun was settling into the V of the canyon downstream and the river funneled and held the sprayed light. It warmed the pines and flushed the sandstone rimrock and gleamed in the lush greens of the alders and box elders at water’s edge. Again Jack thought, There is no more than this. But there was. Shay brought out a chilled Chardonnay to pair with tonight’s Cornish hen, and she held the bottle in a wrapped cloth for inspection by the guests, all of whom nodded amiably, and when she got to Jack her eyes slid away.