“I’m around plenty, Mom.” He looked over at me quickly before turning back to Mara.
“—You weren’t here yesterday, and you’re never at home,” Mara continued.
“Who says I’m never home? Kim?”
“Well, yes, and—”
“I know she misses me when I’m at work, Mom, but our family is my absolute first priority. I’m home plenty.”
“But I don’t think you’re there much at all . . . ,” Mara said, her voice growing uncertain.
“Mom,” he answered slowly. “I know you think that, but I am.” He reached out and took her hand. “You just don’t remember the times I’m there.”
I glanced at Aaron. He was watching his father now.
“But you’re not there for dinner,” said Mara, her voice now barely a whisper.
“I am, Mom. I go off to work every morning, and I come home at six almost every single night. You just don’t remember. But don’t worry, I’ll help you.”
I’d heard enough.
“Can I talk to you?” I asked. Robert didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes on my mother for a long time, smiling at her while he patted her hand. Mara frowned and stared past him, searching for truth somewhere between his words and the memories she chased.
Finally, he let go of her hand and turned to me. “Sure.”
I turned my back to him and started walking, forcing myself to breathe slowly. After a couple dozen paces, I heard Robert laugh behind me. “We going for another hike?”
I spun on my heel and tapped my finger on his chest. I didn’t do it hard, but it was enough to wipe the smile off his face.
“I know,” I said.
“Know what?” he shot back, his face beginning to cloud.
“I know why you’re not home at night.”
I watched his face carefully, enjoying the silent struggle I saw taking place behind his eyes.
“And if I ever hear you try to take advantage of my mother like that again,” I continued, “if you use her disease to cover your ass, you won’t be coming home for a very long time.”
I thought he might man-up then and actually admit to the affair. Like so many times before, however, my brother-in-law didn’t rise an inch above my expectations. But when I thought about it later, I realized that though Robert’s response may have been cowardly, it was also clever. He couldn’t win the argument we were having, so he changed it instead.
“I don’t know what you think you know,” he said, “but I know a lot more about what happens in my house than you, Uncle Paul.” He laughed at the way he pronounced the title, making it sound like an obscenity. “You may have my kids fooled, but you’re not fooling me. What kind of a man abandons his family, his own mother? You think you know about her, about her disease? How could you? We’re the ones who have been there while you’re up here playing Paul Bunyan. Let me fill you in on what you’ve been missing,” he said, his voice rising. “The mornings when your mother starts cooking spaghetti for the kids’ breakfast. The afternoons I’ve driven home from work to babysit her to make sure she doesn’t walk out of the house and wander into traffic. The nights your sister’s cried herself to sleep because she’s terrified of where your mother’s headed, and that she might end up in the exact same place.”
“Dad, Mom wants you to come have breakfast.” We turned to see Aaron standing behind us. Beyond him, I saw that Kim had joined my mother at the picnic table. Both of them were watching us.
“I ate,” Robert said, never taking his eyes off me.
I held his gaze and my tongue. A second later, he turned and led his son away.
I unclenched my fists and started walking to Loon’s Nest. As I passed the ranger’s cabin, I saw Tyler standing by the door, staring at me. This time it was his own hat he held, twisting it between his hands.
26
10-7
The goddamned nail wouldn’t give. I dug at it with my pry bar and leaned my entire weight into the thing. There was a “snap” when the head popped off the shank, just before my knuckles rammed into the edge of the floorboard.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Ranger Strand!”
I looked up from Loon’s Nest’s half-stripped porch to see Cassie smiling at me. When she saw my face, she started laughing. “Here,” she said, handing me a Nalgene bottle, “it’s lemonade. You look like you could use a drink. Sorry I don’t have something stronger.” I put my tool down and joined her on the cabin’s front steps.
“I thought you were taking a break while your family is here,” she said.
“I was. I am. But I needed a break from them.”
Cassie shook her head. “Only you would call demo’ing a cabin a break.”
“Yeah, well, it beats taking my sister apart. We had a pretty big blowout. Of course she and I were only exchanging words. After that, I was about ready to trade blows with her husband.”
“Yeah, Tyler told me there was some trouble.”
“Great.”
“Where are they now?”
“Went for a picnic over at Daicey. They sent my nephew over to invite me to come, but I’m sure they were happy I passed.”
Cassie took the bottle out of my hand and sipped slowly. She put it down and reached into her pants pocket to take something out. When she shifted her position, her leg came to rest against mine. I didn’t pull away.
“Finished,” she said, holding out the small white duck she’d carved. Like all of her work, she left it unsanded, revealing the small scallops from the knife that had shaped it to life. “The kid’s mom checked out before I could give it to her, but I’m gonna put it away. She said something about coming back up here next year.”
“That’s a long time to wait for something that may never happen.”
“I guess you don’t know this about me yet, Paul, but I’m a very patient woman.”
Maybe that’s why I said what I did next. Or perhaps it was simply because when I mentioned my family’s problems, she didn’t dig for details. But that’s exactly what I gave her. The whole story came out, everything from Kim’s phone call, to my search for Tommy, to the events of the past few days. Finally, I fell silent.
“That’s a lot,” Cassie said simply. I nodded.
We sat there quietly for a bit, watching a dragonfly buzz at our feet and listening to the distant laughter of kids splashing in the pond. It was the kind of comfortable silence that only comes with someone you know very well.
“Listen,” Cassie said, “I’m heading over to Russell Pond for the night. We’ve got a rogue camper somewhere in the woods near Davis Pond. I’m gonna hike up there tomorrow morning. I’m fine going solo, but if you need a longer vacation from your family, you could go 10-7 to help me flush him out.”
I smiled at her use of the park code for going off duty, then looked at my watch. “It’s almost noon. We’d be hitting Russell at sundown, at best.”
“You scared of the dark?”
I thought about it for a moment. Russell Pond was on the other side of Katahdin. It was a ninety-minute ride on the tote road to get to the trailhead, then at least a five-hour hike to reach the campground at the pond. There was a good chance I’d be gone two nights, not one. I was sure Robert would be happy to have me gone. I was also sure Kim and my mother wouldn’t. Then again, disappointing them would hardly be anything new. In the three days we’d spent together, things hadn’t really improved with my mother. And they’d definitely gotten worse with Kim.
“Give me fifteen minutes,” I said finally. “I just need to throw some gear in my pack and tack a note to Sentinel’s door.”
27
Russell Pond
It felt good to be on the trail. The flat, six-mile hike into Russell was the perfect stroll to clear your head without killing your body. Cassie and I traded park gossip for the first mile, then settled into a comfortable pace as we picked our way between the birches and pines. The ground underfoot was wide and clear, with a soft bed of peat to walk on instead of
the usual snarl of roots and rocks, freeing our eyes to look at the terrain we passed instead of keeping them trained on our boots.
The deeper we traveled into the forest, the better I felt. I knew where we were headed, and I couldn’t wait to get there, even if we would have to play cop once we arrived.
Baxter’s deepest spells are cast in the backcountry. Part of that magic comes from the pride earned by paying your way in with sweat. The Russell Pond trail may be level, but you have to carry a full pack on your back if you expect to eat at the end.
The campground at Russell was remote but not as secluded as our final destination of Davis Pond. The power of that place was a secret I shared with few. Davis’s single lean-to shelter guarantees that when you book it you’ll be the only soul privileged to breathe the rarefied air of the Northwest Basin. In a world of seven billion people, having so many acres of virgin peaks and pines to yourself seems like nothing short of a miracle to me.
Cassie called a rest stop at the huge glacial erratic that stood by the side of the trail. I knew the boulder well, but after hours of hiking between screens of green foliage, its presence always startled me. My hikes into Russell were usually races to spend a few hours fishing the pond before sundown. But that two-hundred-ton block never failed to remind me that there was a much slower clock ticking in the world, and that for all my frantic scurrying, I could never outdo the glacial powers that did so much more than I could ever do to change it.
We pushed harder after our break. The sun was low when we came out of the woods to see the final barrier to reaching Russell: Wassataquoik Stream. I’d crossed it many times before. It could be a refreshing footbath when it was low or a harrowing swim when it rose high enough to knock you off your feet. It was usually shallow this late in the season, but when I saw Cassie stop at the bank ahead of me to scan the water, I realized that wasn’t the case today.
“Surprised it’s this high,” she said.
“Pretty fast too,” I answered. “Let’s scout upstream to see if we can find a better place to cross.”
We found a section that looked a bit quieter and sat down to exchange our hiking boots for the water socks we’d packed. Their pebbled rubber soles made them a better bet for crossing the slippery rocks we’d have to feel for below.
“Want me to go first?” I asked.
“If you don’t mind, I’d rather get it over with.” She stowed one of her poles, undid her backpack’s waist belt and sternum strap, then waded in. I gave her a good lead and then followed, both of us facing upriver and planting our single poles ahead of us as we stepped with our feet spread wide. We used that tripod technique to make our way slowly across, angling slightly downstream as we went. I heard Cassie suck in her breath a moment later, when the water reached the top of her legs. She stopped for a second to find purchase with her pole, and I held my breath until she started moving again.
The bank we were headed for was steeper than the one we’d started from, so we knew the water would be deeper at the end of our crossing. Cassie slowed to a crawl, panting in the cold water as she probed the jumbled rocks to find a plant for her pole and her feet. I was stuck waiting behind her but kept silent. Even a single word of encouragement could break the concentration she needed to cross. Slowly, she made her way until I saw the waterline appear lower on her legs. I was in the deepest part of the stream when she looked over and gave me a smile. “Better here,” she said. I saw her take her next step, heard a splash, and she was gone.
“Cassie!” I shouted. I couldn’t turn around. I cursed myself for not waiting until she was over before starting out myself. I’d misjudged how tricky the crossing was going to be. I yelled again but heard nothing. I forced myself to concentrate. My best chance was to move slowly to make sure I didn’t end up in the river too, then run down the bank as soon as I was out. I called her name twice more as I made my way across, finally free enough to hurry over the last few rocks. After shrugging my pack off, I scanned the river, desperate for the sight of her bright blue T-shirt. Finally, I saw it, much farther downstream.
I ran over the uneven boulders on the bank and almost went down, pinwheeling to right myself. I looked downriver and uttered a quick “thank God.” There she was on the edge of the bank, breathing hard—but breathing.
“Nice move, huh?” she said, when I reached her. She laughed. Then, she began to cry.
I saw a stream of blood on her neck and told her to sit still. “It’s okay, Cass,” I told her, hoping it was. I located the source, a small cut over her left ear. She got ahold of herself quickly, but I held her there, my arm around her, as I slipped the bandanna from my head, dipped it in the water, and pressed it softly to her wound. Slowly, I helped her sit up. Her pack had come off and was soaked, but she had an iron grip on it. I gently pried her hand away and asked her to look into my face. Her pupils contracted when she did, the first good sign that she didn’t have a concussion. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Mud, if this story gets out. I’m all right, Paul. My shoulder took most of the blow. I didn’t hurt anything but my pride.”
I smiled and brushed the wet hair from the side of her face. “That,” I said, “will heal.”
***
I dressed Cassie’s wound, and we started back on the trail. It was less than a mile to the campground, but we took it nice and slow. I watched her carefully as she hiked. Though she started off a bit shaky, she wouldn’t let me take her pack. By the time we walked into camp, she was moving slowly but steadily. “I’ve got dry clothes if you need them,” I told her when we found our lean-to.
“I double-bagged, I should be good,” she said. “Why don’t you check in?”
“You sure?”
She smiled. “I’m fine, Paul. I’ve got nothing but a bump on my head and a story to tell. Go.”
***
Russell Pond was deserted. The lean-tos on either side of us were empty, and when I made it to the ranger cabin, I found it locked. I knew the ranger, Gary Kent. Good guy but very quiet, the perfect temperament for a backcountry post. I left him a note on the pad by his front door, then turned to take in a view of the pond.
Its blue-black surface was punctured by the golden tips of boulders lit by the last of the setting sun’s rays. Their color was a perfect match to the peaks of the low mountains that rose around the rim of the pond’s northern end. I saw one of the boulders move, and a long head came up, revealing itself to be the back of a cow moose out for an early dinner. I knew it was a Monday evening, three weeks after the peak summer season, but still—a place like this, and there was nobody here.
Except for my bunkmate, of course. As concerned as I was for Cassie, I thought it best to give her a bit of time to herself. A woman who packs a gun in a wilderness park doesn’t need a nursemaid, and I took her at her word about her wounded pride. I made a slow detour around the banks of the pond before finally heading back to our lean-to.
The sun had just fallen below the treetops, but there was enough light filtering through them to blind me as I approached. I shielded my eyes with the palm of my hand as I walked up, searching the shadowed interior of the lean-to in front of me. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust. When they did, I found Cassie.
Her arms were over her head, fastening a towel around her damp hair. She sat cross-legged on her sleeping bag. Her wet clothes hung on a line she’d strung between a couple of trees nearby. When my eyes finally returned to full focus, I saw that she hadn’t put her dry ones on.
I stared at her body for a long moment, her form filling some empty space in me. My eyes slipped from the hollow of her neck to circle the round curve of her breast, then fell over the soft swell of her stomach before coming to rest in the cinnamon thatch peeking over the top of her crossed legs. When those legs moved, I caught sight of the high arch curving under one of her delicate feet. The image sent my skin prickling, igniting a flush of heat that rushed to the tips of my fingers, ears, and toes, where it burned in a way that nearly brough
t me to my knees.
I started to turn away, but Cassie called my name. I looked and saw her leaning back with her hands behind her, arms and legs open, her face shining with a warm and steady smile.
That morning, I’d poured out my family’s story to Cassie, the first person I’d ever taken that risk with. We’d ended the same day by forging the kind of bond only a shared physical crisis can inspire. Now here we sat, alone in the middle of a pure and wild place in the pink twilight of an early autumn evening. I gave this woman I wanted so much one last, long look. Then—like the fool I was—I turned my back and walked away.
28
Davis Pond
There was a light tap on the side of our lean-to at Russell early the next morning. When I sat up, Gary Kent’s lined and leathery face came around the corner and into view. I couldn’t see his mouth under his colossal gray mustache, but his eyes showed a smile. As I shook his hand, Cassie walked up from the pond, a camp towel thrown over one shoulder. She avoided my eyes as she greeted Gary.
“Thought I’d update you two on the quarry you’re after,” Gary said.
“Any description of the guy? I’m guessing it’s a guy?” Cassie asked.
“No idea,” Gary answered. “Here’s what I know: Sunday morning, a man and his young son checked in here after staying at Davis Saturday night. He said he got up to pee after midnight, and when he walked back to the lean-to, someone was standing on the trail beside it. He couldn’t give me a description. Whoever it was disappeared into the brush the moment the guy saw him. Spooked him pretty bad. Said he stayed up the rest of the night and hiked down with his boy at first light.”
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