Point of Law

by Clinton McKinzie

  “What’s wrong with him? Is he shot?” she asks, breathing hard from the cold swim.

  “I don’t know yet. I think so.”

  My hand comes away from Oso’s right hip feeling warm and sticky. “Yeah, he was shot.”

  “Let me feel.”

  Together we explore every bit of fur on Oso’s body. The beast is compliant, not whimpering and just barely growling. But he continues to pant as if he’s just run miles through the woods. The only wound we can find is an absent piece of his right hamstring. The chunk that’s missing feels to be about the size of a tennis ball. He’s lucky to have been so close to the shotgun when he was hit—more than ten feet away and the pellets would have spread wide enough to blow off his entire rear end.

  “Shit,” I still say, feeling the amount of sticky wet stuff spilling into the sand from beneath my dog’s leg. “It’s bad, but I don’t think he’s bleeding out.” Some of the blood feels reassuringly clumpy, as if it’s coagulating, but I can’t be certain it’s not just mixing with the powdery sand.

  Kim pulls off her wet T-shirt and squeezes it over the wound. Then she dips the shirt back into the water and does it again. I hope the dripping water will wash out the sand. After several washings she shoves the shirt into my hands. I squash it into a tight ball and press it into the wound. This finally draws a low whimper of pain from Oso.

  “I need something to tie it off with. Go in the water and see if you can find my pants.” I vaguely remember having kicked them off after leaving Oso here.

  She splashes around for a moment, then says, “Take mine.” In the darkness I can see Kim’s gray form writhing in an odd dance as she struggles out of her wet jeans. I take them and tie them tightly around the dog’s leg to hold the shirt packed in the wound.

  “Is he going to be okay?”

  “I think so. The wound’s already starting to clot. But there are probably pellets still in the leg, so infection is the real danger. And I’m worried there might me some serious damage to his tendons or bone. I need to get him to a vet.” I wonder for a moment if Kim’s one of those people to whom a dog is just another animal. To such a person it would sound strange to be so worried about a gunshot dog when your friend has been kidnapped and is probably being assaulted as we speak. But Kim is crouched by the beast’s head, gently massaging his ears. When he groans she gently shushes him, her voice more tender than I’ve ever heard it.

  “He’s really hurting.”

  “He’s tough,” I tell her. “Before I adopted him he’d been neglected, starved, tortured, and maced. He’s probably just pissed. He’ll want a piece of those two.” And so do I.

  After rubbing his chest and murmuring in Spanish about what a buen viejo perro he is, I finally sit up. For the first time I notice how cold I am. The water that’s still beaded on my naked skin feels like it might turn to ice. My teeth are making rapid clicking sounds. I reach out an arm and put it around Kim’s shoulders, noticing that she is also shaking uncontrollably, still wet in just her underwear. I pull her to me.

  “Curl up with Oso. You know, spoon him. Use each other’s warmth. I’m going to see if I can find a way out of here. Or some sort of shelter. We’re going to get hypo-thermic if we stay here.” I sense more than see Kim nod beside me.

  I march away from the water like a zombie, holding my hands outstretched before me and stepping high with my feet so that I won’t break a toe on any unseen rocks. In the dim starlight that reaches into the gap, I can see only the two dark walls on either side, close enough so that if I stretch my arms to the sides I can feel them both, and the strip of sky above. I remember Sunny saying something about there being a place where you could climb out but it being too hard to climb back down. That was why she’d jumped in the lake from above when she’d recognized us in the late afternoon.

  The canyon twists and turns several times but heads for the most part in the same direction. I keep my eyes on the sky, looking for where the line of stars might open or branch. I guess I walk for several hundred yards on the mercifully smooth floor without seeing any change before I give up and turn back. We will have to wait for more light before we can find Sunny’s climb. My brain only then remembers that this is wild land—I remember the map showing nothing but canyons and buttes for miles and miles. Even if we find a way to climb out, it’s unlikely it will lead anywhere. Our best chance of finding help is on the lake.

  As I near the place where I’d left Oso and Kim curled on the sand, I can still hear tiny waves spilling on the sand at the water’s edge. It worries me for a moment. I don’t know if the water’s disturbance is due to wind on the lake or the reflection of the speedboat’s wake off the canyon walls. Conceivably, they could come back. But a boat won’t fit in the gap and I don’t think they’d take the trouble to swim in. I worry about it, though, to keep from worrying about what they’re doing to Sunny. It’s easier that way.

  “Kim?” I call, my voice barely louder than a whisper.

  “Here,” she answers, almost at my feet.

  I stare at the ground and in a moment am able to make out the dark shape of Oso prostrate on the sand and the lighter shadow of Kim beside him. Her arms are wrapped around his chest. She is pressed against the big dog’s back.

  Kneeling, I put my hand on Oso’s head. The dog flinches at the touch, then snuffs at my scent. A hot, dry tongue rasps against my palm. “Easy, Oso. Easy.” He continues to growl.

  “What’s the plan?”

  “We have to wait for light—I can’t find a way out. When it gets light I’ll swim for help.” I try to recall the beach where we’d had lunch. Hopefully the kids in the houseboat will still be there.

  I touch Kim’s bare shoulder. Her skin jerks and twitches like Oso’s had. She is shivering violently. I consider getting her back in the water, which is surely a lot warmer than the nighttime desert air, but I know it will suck the heat from our cores much quicker than the air and leave us hypothermic in minutes. So I lie down beside her. I curl myself against her body, pressing my own half-frozen flesh hard against hers. One arm I slip under her head, then Oso’s. The other I put across her chest. Unable to stop myself, I put my lips against the back of her neck and blow gently, letting the warmth of my lungs seep into her skin.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Warming you up.”

  And suddenly, despite it all, she laughs. But within seconds that laugh turns heartbreakingly cheerless. She begins to sniffle.

  “I did it again. I let it happen. No, I made it happen. And I didn’t even fight for her. Oh God, Anton.”

  “You waited for your chance and you got the hell out of there. There was nothing else you could do.”

  “No, I ran. I ran and left a friend. I’ll never forgive myself.”

  “You did the only thing you could. They had guns—you didn’t. And we’ll get Sunny back.”

  “How? They’ll take her back to the valley, make her show them the cave, and then they’ll kill her.”

  “We’ve got some time. It will take them most of the night just to find their way back to the marina. And then they’ll have an eight-hour drive to Tomichi. They won’t dare march her around the valley in the daylight because someone might see them. So we have until tomorrow night. If we don’t freeze to death tonight.” I scoot closer, fitting my bare legs tight against hers, my hips to her buttocks, my chest to her back. I don’t mention and try not to think about what Sunny will have to endure until then. It would probably be better if they killed her outright.

  THIRTY

  I CAN SENSE the sun’s heat above the gap’s high walls but feel none of it. The night’s deep chill lingers on the canyon floor. A slight breeze magnifies it. It’s frustrating to think that just a hundred feet over our heads the desert sun is probably beginning to bake the rust-colored earth. Sandwiched between Oso and me, Kim still shivers in her sleep as my stomach clenches with hunger and cold. It has been a long night.

  I peel myself away from her curved back and clim
b unsteadily to my feet. My body feels worse than if I’d abused it by drinking tequila all night. Sand is plastered to my skin from where I’d scooped it half over me in a vain effort to stay warm. Standing, I feel a heavy ache in one shoulder and one hip. My left forearm is black, blue, and yellow, but otherwise unmarred. Oso’s teeth had not punctured the flesh when I’d surprised him in the water right after he was shot. I try to stretch as I take in our surroundings.

  The shallow water a few feet away is very still and very green. It turns to deep blue about fifty feet out where the walls open up into the tiny hidden cove. The gap itself is only five feet wide; the walls are close to a hundred feet high. In the other direction, the gap is floored with fine-grained sand. It stretches back a hundred yards or so before twisting out of view. I can see my footprints from the night before, when I’d staggered between the walls in a hopeless search for some shelter.

  I swing my arms in circles and again try to ignore the rumbling in my stomach. And the way the cold seems to have clenched all my muscles into tight fists. At my feet, Kim and Oso, still spooning, are showing signs of life. Kim moves her head and coughs sand into the fur at the back of Oso’s neck. The beast rumbles, flexing his forward claws. The homemade bandage of Kim’s T-shirt and jeans looks crusty with a mixture of dried blood and sand.

  Kim’s back, butt, and legs are naked. Sometime during the night I’d persuaded her to take off her wet underwear and bra. Cotton doesn’t dry easily and wet clothes just make you colder. I’d taken off my own shorts. The undergarments, now almost dry, lay spread on the sand in front of Oso’s head. I pull on my shorts before Kim looks around so as not to make too obvious a certain embarrassing stiffness. Despite the night’s terror and fury, the feel of her bare skin against mine is something I suspect will be branded in my mind for a long time to come.

  My attraction to her had already made itself more than evident in the dark some hours ago. As I held her, trying to both give and receive life-saving heat, my independent-minded limb swelled up between her naked thighs. “Anton, what are you doing?” she asked not exactly in alarm, but not in rapt pleasure either.

  “Nothing. It’s a natural reaction”—I breathed against her neck—“caused by the cold.” I thought about mentioning that she was having an apparent reaction to it as well—right where my left hand cupped one of her small breasts—but decided against it. Other than the feel of her skin, my only other comfort in the night was the sensation of that pointed nipple in my palm.

  She made a noise, almost a cough. “I’m glad to know it’s the cold and not me that gives you a hard-on.” I thought she moved her hips just slightly, pushing them back harder into me.

  “Well, I might’ve lied about the cold part,” I whispered carefully, as if my voice might wake Oso. It was a pointless concern—the beast was surely awake. I felt his head twitch beneath my right hand each time I spoke. I knew his eyes were wide with discomfort—both from his wounds and from having Kim wrapped around him, and me, in turn, wrapped around her. “Actually, I’ve been climbing in Alaska for weeks at a time without a hard-on. It’s you. Only you, Kim.”

  I waited without moving for her response. It took a long time in coming—but the tension took away all thoughts of my wounded dog, my caged brother, a kidnapped girl, and the brutal desert cold. While I waited I continued to blow gently onto the back of her neck with my lips just a fraction of an inch away. For a moment I sensed that we were on the edge of a cliff, ready to tumble off in one another’s arms.

  But then she pulled us back by saying, “I can’t deal with this right now, Anton. I really can’t. You’re a wonderful man, unbelievable in some ways. But there’s just too much going on.”

  “I’m going for help,” I tell her, my first words of the day. She’s still curled tightly against Oso’s broad back. Her face remains buried in his coat and all I can see of it is her sand-encrusted eye patch beneath the tangle of dirty black hair. I drape her sports bra and underwear over her side. Turning my shoulder to her, I squat beside Oso’s head. The beast tries to get to his feet but I put a hand on his shoulder to keep him down. “Easy, boy. Stay.” I’m afraid that if he gets to his feet the wound will split open and start bleeding again.

  “How does he look?” Kim asks through his fur and her own hair.

  “Better. He’s not in shock anymore, and that was the real danger last night. Now it’s just infection and tendon damage that I’m worried about.” My stomach clenches again. “We need food.”

  I hear the snap of elastic as Kim tugs the sports bra into place. When I turn to see her face for the first time this morning, she looks down shyly. It’s surprising to see this beautiful, self-assured woman acting timid—almost as if she were the one who had made a fool of herself last night instead of me. Neither of us mentions it.

  I dip my foot into the water, then jerk it out. After a night of teeth-chattering cold, the water feels like it should be skimmed with a layer of ice. In reality it’s probably almost sixty-five degrees. But the thought of immersing myself in it and having to swim is appalling. Like all breeds of fear, I know it’s best to confront it immediately, without hesitation. I look at Kim, still huddled and shivering in her bra and panties, and I look at Oso panting and bloody, and I think of Sunny and Roberto. Then, with a gasp, I march into the water.

  “I’ll be back in an hour, I hope. It should warm up before then.”

  “Be careful,” Kim calls after me.

  God, the water is cold. It takes all my will not to dance uncontrollably in the shallows. When I lunge headfirst into the gap, the cold rips the breath from my lungs. My calves try to cramp in rigid protest. I crawl-stroke hard down the gap and into the small cove, hoping the exertion will at some point warm me.

  The cove has none of the menace from the night before except for where the air-filled bow of Sunny’s Sea Ray points out of the water like the white tip of an iceberg. And where a single red shotgun shell floats nearby. The top of the west wall shimmers red and gold in the morning sunlight. I pause, treading water, to look around for a moment. The place would be perfect for a postcard picture if the cold and the night’s terror didn’t still have its grip on me. Deep-blue water, a sign of great depth, causes me to give up any hope of diving for my gun.

  I swim through the low arch leading to the sub-canyon, and up that toward the bay. The steady stroke is finally beginning to warm me, but it’s tiring, too—it’s been years since I’ve done any serious swimming. The muscles in my shoulders and back burn as if I were on a long climb. I welcome the lactic acid’s heat. After ten minutes I try to rest by floating on my back, but it’s not much of a rest because I keep sinking. I remember that fresh water is far less buoyant than the salt water I swam in as a child. So I forget about resting and just swim on.

  Coming out into the bay, I’m disappointed to neither hear nor see any sign of other boats. It’s too early for the sightseers to be out. There’s just a flock of white birds that spins and dives in formation far out over the water. I turn to the south, my right, and crawl on toward the canyon with the houseboat on the beach.

  I’m almost to the canyon when I hear a hollow pumping sound. For some reason it brings back memories of high school and college. I wonder if the cold is making me delirious. Then I latch onto a memory and pinpoint the sound—it’s the heaving of someone’s stomach after a night of excess. The gut-wrenching sound is actually welcome to me. Turning the canyon’s corner, I find the big houseboat with two speedboats tied to the side. A beefy young man with sleep-tussled hair is leaning over the boat’s second-story rail. He’s spasming with a long series of the forceful contractions. I head toward the closest end of the beach, wanting to approach on foot rather than like a thief from the water. And I’d rather not swim through his vomit.

  The sand feels good under my feet. I stagger on it as I come out of the water, my legs having turned to wet noodles. They’re too tired from the swim to respond to the ordinary demands of walking upright. I feel like I’m drunk
myself—my mind and limbs are so numb with cold. And like something out of an alcoholic daze, what appears on the beach is beyond surreal.

  Three topless girls are sunbathing just a few yards away. They stare at me in horror as I trip and splash face-first into knee-deep water. “Oh my God!” one of them says.

  Back on my feet, I stumble toward them. One girl springs to her feet with the agility of a startled deer and sprints on board the enormous boat. The other two fumble with their swimsuit tops before standing awkwardly, unsure if they too should flee.

  “There’s been an accident,” I say to them, trying hard to look as inoffensive as possible in my clinging underwear. “I need help.”

  During the long swim I had decided to tell no one here at the lake about the shooting and kidnapping. To do so would mean hours spent with the local police and whatever federal agency had jurisdiction over a national recreation area such as Lake Powell. It is imperative that we get back to Tomichi as fast as possible, where we can enlist Sheriff Munik’s help in finding Sunny. If he refuses, I’ll go to the FBI, the Forest Service, or anyone else who will listen.

  The girls evidently decide I’m harmless despite my scarred face and lack of clothes. One of them tilts her sunglasses down on her nose and looks me over. “You’re the guy who was with the woman and the dog, right?” Apparently having been seen in the company of a beautiful woman and a dog gives me some credibility.

  “That’s one badass dog,” the other says. “Was he hurt?”

  “My friend and my dog are okay, although my dog cut his leg pretty badly in the crash. But our boat sank. Can somebody here give us a ride back to the marina? I’ve got to get my dog to a vet.”

  The girls look at one another and at the speedboats. “Sure,” the one with the sunglasses tells me. “It sounds like fun. It’s getting kind of boring here anyway, just listening to the guys puke.”