“I’d freak too, if I saw someone up there in the middle of the night,” I said.
“Last place you’d expect to,” Gary agreed. “I thought the guy might have gotten it wrong, seen some critter in the brush, maybe even been confused by a dream. Then I got a report yesterday from the ranger at Chimney Pond. She had a group of college buddies check in who’d camped at Davis Sunday night. They didn’t exactly sound like reliable witnesses. From what I heard, they were drunk, stoned, or both while they were at Davis. But they were sober enough to hang their food in a bear bag before they crashed. And they all agreed it was gone when they went looking for their breakfast the next morning.
“Probably not a bear,” Cassie said.
Gary gave a nod. “Not impossible, but given the Saturday night spook, I’m guessing it was the same guy. Anyway, headquarters decided to close Davis until we figured it out. No one has reservations there till this weekend, and I’m hoping we get this solved by then.”
“We’ll take a look,” I told him.
“Thanks. Just be careful. Whoever he—or she—is, I doubt they’re dangerous. But it’s a long, hard hike out of there if anything goes wrong.”
***
Cassie and I got ready for the hike quietly. After her invitation in the lean-to the evening before, I’d left for an hour and returned to find it empty. I waited awhile but finally crashed, exhausted from the excitement of the day. I woke in the middle of the night to hear her snoring softly on the other side of the shelter. An hour before dawn, I woke again and had the sense that she was awake too. I stared into the darkness and wondered what the hell I could say.
I was glad we had a job to turn our attention to now, and I think Cassie felt the same way. We both dressed in uniform for the hike. If we could find the person haunting Davis, we wanted him to know we meant business.
We broke camp and shouldered our packs. The hike from Russell started out over pretty gentle terrain, but the day was gray, and Gary had told us the forecast called for rain. Cassie was polite but distant. She answered my comments about the weather pleasantly enough, but I could tell she wasn’t interested in small talk. I didn’t blame her. When the trail hit Wassataquoik Stream and started to climb along its bank, I was glad for the chance to put my body to work and give my mind a rest.
We followed the trail up the stream, crossing over it and sometimes walking on the flat granite slabs of the riverbed. The constant murmur of the water was a welcome relief from the silence that stretched between us. The clouds were low, but the weather held. We pulled ourselves up over the last craggy incline to stand at the knoll looking down over Lake Cowles, the larger body of water just up the trail from Davis. After a few more minutes of hiking, we arrived at the lean-to.
It was empty, of course. “I’ll scout around by the pond,” Cassie offered. “You wanna beat the bushes ’round here?”
“Sure.” We triggered our radios to make sure they were working, then headed off to see what we could turn up.
I wasn’t trained to track people, but after stumbling around the woods near the lean-to for a while, I was pretty sure nobody was hanging around. I radioed Cassie and we rendezvoused back at the shelter.
“Nothing at the pond,” she reported. “I climbed the knoll leading to Harvey Ridge and scanned what I could with my binoculars. But when I thought about it, I realized that if I was gonna hang around here for any length of time, I’d want to stick close to my water supply.”
“The pond’s pretty exposed,” I countered. “Anyone popping down from the lean-to would see you if you were anywhere near it.”
“Davis wasn’t the water I was thinking of,” she said.
***
Ten minutes later, we were back at Lake Cowles. Cassie stood on a boulder, scanning the lake and small valley around it with her binoculars. I scouted the area near the main path and found a small game trail that looked like it led down to the water. “I’m gonna search around the lake,” I told her.
“Okay. Keep your radio on.”
It took me longer than I thought it would to get down to the water. The trail petered out, and I had to push my way through the thicker brush. I was pretty scratched up by the time I made it to the shore. I bent down to wash the blood off my forearms, scanning the shoreline as I did. It was all the same mix of dark and light green foliage, but as I searched, I got the feeling that something was off. I went over the terrain again before my eyes came to rest on a green shape that didn’t quite fit.
It would have been so easy to miss. The color was a perfect match, but the outline of the bright green bivy sack was too smooth to completely disappear into the vegetation around it. I thought about radioing Cassie, but there was a good chance its sound would carry over the open water. The small shelter was only about a hundred yards away. My best bet for approaching unheard was to skirt the bank of the lake instead of beating my way through the bushes. Of course, if the trespasser came out, he’d see me right away.
As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. When I got within twenty paces of the small tent, I could hear its occupant inside. He was snoring. I crept up to the opening and unzipped it slowly. I’d unsnapped the leather strap on my knife holster, though I doubted I’d need to threaten the guy. He was sleeping on his belly, and from what I could see, he looked skinny and pretty small.
“Wakey, wakey,” I said, giving his bag a rough shake.
He flipped around so fast that my hand flew to my knife. The eyes in his thin face went wide. His skin was so pale I could see the vein pulsing in his neck. It ran under the blue tattoo of a five-pointed star. Delicate fingers flew up to brush a shock of white-blond hair from his forehead. When his eyes found mine, they softened. Then, incredibly, he smiled.
My mouth dropped open and hung there for a moment. I swallowed and spoke the only word I could find.
“Tommy.”
29
Taking Point
“Hi, Paul.”
I could only stare. No words came to me, and I had sense enough to know that if I started searching for them, neither of us would like the ones I found. I poked my head a bit deeper into the bivy to buy myself some time. My nose wrinkled from the sour smell. I could see duct tape running in a zigzag line across one side of its roof. There was a water bottle and cheap flashlight lying next to the ratty sleeping bag. The only thing in the tiny tent that looked new was a large purple stuff sack in the corner. It was open, and I could see a couple of packages of freeze-dried dinners peeking out of the top.
“Is that the food you stole?” I asked.
Tommy’s smile disappeared. He looked down at his hands. “Yeah,” he said softly, “I didn’t plan to.” His voice quickened, sounding earnest. “It’s just that I didn’t expect to be here long, and, well, I got hungry.”
I shook my head. He sounded just like he did when he was seven, trying to explain the pile of empty candy wrappers our father found under his bed.
I handed him the beat-up backpack parked by the shelter’s tiny entrance. “Pack up,” I said. “I’m here with another ranger. We’re right above you, on the trail. Don’t keep us waiting.”
***
Cassie was watching me carefully as I scrambled out of the brush. She’d slipped into her rain jacket, and I felt the first fat drops hit me when I came to her side. “You got him?” she asked. “I could see your head moving over the brush but not much else.”
“Yeah, and I know him too.”
She waited.
“It’s Tommy,” I told her.
I could see her work it out in her mind. At Loon’s Nest, I’d given her a pretty extensive history of my relationship to my brother, including my last-chance attempt to make contact by mailing him Baxter reservations.
“I’m not sure we should radio this in,” she said.
“I’m not going to lie for him, Cassie.” She peered past my shoulder, eyeing the lake while she ran down options.
“I’m not saying we lie, but once we radio, we lose contr
ol of the situation. I’m not sure how headquarters will respond.” She thought for a moment longer, then zipped up her rain jacket and flipped up the hood. “Listen, let me hike down and give Gary the news in person. Davis is empty. Why don’t you hole up here with your brother for the night? Listen to his story and figure out your next move.”
“He’s a trespasser, Cass.”
“He’s family,” she answered. “I think even headquarters might cut us some slack if they knew that, especially if he stayed in the custody of a ranger.”
“I don’t know. And it’s starting to rain. It’ll be dark before you hit Russell. I think we should radio it in, bunk at Davis, and hike down in the morning.”
“Paul,” Cassie said with a half-smile before hefting her pack and shrugging it on, “I’m hiking down. I’m sure you’ll do what you want, but it seems to me that the best way to straighten this thing out is by talking to your brother—not headquarters. Besides,” she said, turning to start on the trail, “I think one night in a lean-to with you is about all I can stand.”
***
Tommy came up the trail a few minutes later, scrambling out of the brush with his pack on his back and his face half hidden under the hood of a thin yellow poncho. The memory of the last time we stood in this place flashed. My father had taken the two of us on a backpacking trip the year before Jordan died. I was sixteen; Tommy was only seven. My mother wanted to keep him at Kidney with Kim and Jordan, but my father finally convinced her to let him come with the men.
Now that he stood before me, however, I could see the years on his face. His skin was still smooth as a baby’s, but his eyes told a different story. They were green like Aida’s, but the fire that flashed in hers was nowhere to be seen in Tommy’s. I don’t think I ever saw a pair that looked so tired.
“C’mon,” I said, turning onto the small trail that led east.
“I thought we were going down,” Tommy said, still facing the trail north that Cassie had headed down a few minutes before.
“Nope, you’ve got one more night at Davis Pond.”
***
A half hour later, we were sitting in the lean-to, tucked behind the pocket of trees that stood just uphill from the pond. Tommy spread out his meager possessions on one side of the structure while I cooked up a package of the pilfered freeze-dried chili on my backpacking stove. I handed him a mug of chili. After he inhaled it, I cooked a second one, and he downed that too. Then he scooted to the back of the lean-to and hugged his knees to his chest while the rain pounded down outside. I watched him there for a moment before taking a fleece out of my pack.
“Here, put this on.”
He slipped into it. The dark green fabric seemed to swallow his body, but when he scooted back to his seat, I saw he’d stopped shaking.
“Okay,” I said, after I’d finished my meal. “Let’s have it.”
“Have what?”
“Your story, Tommy. How the hell did you get here?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Look around,” I told him. “You got something better to do?”
He took a moment before answering, his silence underscored by the soft sound of the rain drumming on the metal roof of the lean-to.
“I’m clean, Paul.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”
“It’s different this time.”
“Heard that too.”
“If you want to hear my story, it starts with that fact.” Suddenly, there was a crack of thunder that made us both jump. I went to the back of the lean-to and mirrored Tommy’s position. It was still a few hours till sunset, but the gray light cast us both in the deep shadows that darkened the back of the structure.
“Okay,” I told him, “you’re clean. How’d you get that way?”
“Kim,” he said simply.
“She told me she was done giving you money.”
“She told me the same thing. But when I called and told her I thought my girlfriend, Kelly, might be pregnant, she said she’d send me one more check—the last one I’d ever get. This time I didn’t use it for drugs, even though I wasn’t really sure Kelly was pregnant.”
“I met her; she is.”
“You met Kelly?” he asked, his voice incredulous.
“Another long story,” I said. “Yours first.”
“That’s why I left,” he said softly—almost to himself. “It killed me to do it, but I knew there was no way we’d stay clean together. Was she clean, Paul?”
“She gave up cigarettes, had a job.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Can we get back to you, Tommy?”
“I came straight here from Vimutti Village. Well, almost.”
“Never heard of it.”
“It’s a really nice rehab center in western PA, tucked between the Allegheny and Elk State Forests. Middle of nowhere, perfect spot for a place like that. I took Kim’s check, cashed it, and bought a bus ticket there. Some girl I knew who got clean raved about it. I’d tried to kick before in a couple of rehabs closer to town. I thought a new place farther away might do the trick.
“Kelly told me she’d taken a pee test after missing her period, but we lied to each other about so many things that I wasn’t sure she was telling the truth. When she threw up three mornings in a row, I figured there was a chance that she really was. I showed up at Vimutti with an envelope full of cash. I hadn’t fixed for two days when I walked in. It was all I could do to make it through the door.”
He unfolded his legs as he warmed to his story. I could tell he needed to share it now. I gave him a nod.
“Vimutti’s a Buddhist term. It means ‘freedom from suffering,’ the gift that comes with satori, or enlightenment. Vimutti Village was founded by a former big-time heroin addict and Hell’s Angel, Cody Carpenter. He got clean about fifteen years ago and worked his ass off getting donors to finance the place. It has everything: great staff, beautiful grounds, a gym, yoga studios—they’re big on exercise and meditation.”
“Sounds posh.”
“It was. Of course, it took me a while to realize how good I had it. Detox was a bitch, took me two full weeks—longer than most.”
“How long were you there?”
“Ninety days. I’d just gotten out and had an address for a sober house in Pottsville. Cody even set up a job interview for me. He was my sponsor too. When I left, he handed me back the envelope with a couple hundred bucks left in it. Kim’s check was big, but I doubt it was big enough to cover ninety days at that place. But that was Cody.
“Anyway, on the bus ride out, I didn’t get off in Pottsville. One of the big parts of the twelve-step program is to make amends. I wanted to repay Kim, and there was a guy, Kenny, at Heavenly Arms who owed me some cash. I realize now it was pretty stupid, but I stayed on the bus until I got close enough to hitch there.”
“You went back to the apartment?”
“Well, the lobby. Kenny and I used a mailbox there to trade drugs in. He’d done time and was too paranoid to deal in person. The mailbox was for a demo’d apartment. Kenny got the key from the former tenant and had another one made for me. I thought the cash he owed me might have been in it.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, well, let’s just say that you’re not at your brightest when you’re in recovery. I got fixated on the idea. Anyway, of course there was no cash. But on the way out, I looked into the broken mailbox for the apartment I shared with Kelly. There was a single envelope inside with my name on it.”
“Your Baxter reservations,” I said.
“Exactly. They might have just come, but I’m guessing Kelly left them there for me. A few hours later, I’m on a bus north. I got off in Medway and thumbed my way into the park.”
“So what the hell are you doing at Davis, Tommy?”
He scooted away from the wall to get close enough to see my face before he answered.
“I freaked out, Paul. I hadn’t seen you all in so long.” He turned away. “I’ve done so much, so
many things . . . I just got scared.”
“So you snuck up here.”
“Yeah. It wasn’t hard. I ducked into the woods to get around the gatehouse, then caught a ride to Roaring Brook. I was feeling really good, really strong, and decided to hike into Russell. When I got there, I just kept going. I planned to hike up here, camp a night in the woods, then hike up to the Northwest Plateau and down the Hunt. I thought the physical challenge of climbing over the mountain would prepare me for facing all of you. But I burned out.
“I’m amazed you had the energy to get here before you did—after rehab and all.”
“It’s one day at a time, brother. I’m in PAWS now: post-addiction withdrawal syndrome. It’s a roller coaster: good days, bad days.”
We sat in silence and listened to the rain for a minute, the tempo of its patter pulsing between slow and fast. Tommy scooted over to the side of the lean-to and grabbed his poncho from a nail.
“I gotta use the head, then crash,” he said. “I have a hard time sleeping these days, another PAWS symptom. When I actually feel tired, I need to take advantage of it.”
“Sure.”
When he was gone, I took my sleeping pad out of my pack, blew it up, and slipped it under his thin sleeping bag. Then I threw a pair of fleece pants on top.
“Put those on,” I told him when he got back.
He sat down on his bag to do it. “Hey, I’m not taking your pad,” he said, spinning around to pat the cushier seat.
“Tommy,” I told him, “you’re not calling the shots up here. Go to bed.”
He was asleep in five minutes. The thunder rolled and the lightning crashed, but he didn’t move an inch. At one point I got nervous and bent over him, just to make sure he was still breathing.
I settled my back against the wall of the lean-to and reached over to the side pocket of my pack. My hand found the flask I’d slipped into it, and I sat there in the dark, taking a small sip every once in a while, relishing the pleasant burn of the whiskey in my chest. Every once in a while, a flash of lightning would reveal the small body curved on its side across from me.
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