“No.”
“It’s not a tough hike. Just some sneaker ones will do.”
She looked at the lightweight boots. “They’re worse.”
“You only have to wear them once.”
“That’s a waste of money,” she said.
Benjamin mock-stared at her. “Who are you and what have you done with my daughter?”
Emma’s shoulders sagged.
“Really, just once. Do the ones you have on fit?”
“I guess.”
“Then we’ll get those. Just humor your old man.”
She started to unlace the boots.
“What are you doing?” Benjamin asked.
“I’m not wearing these things out of here. No way.”
“Okay, okay.”
Benjamin bought the boots and they got back into the car. Emma fiddled with the radio. “My music,” she said. “Only my music.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
What the music came to was Emma cycling through the stations. There was a preponderance of religious chatter until she got up to 100 on the dial and there was only country music she detested and at the upper end were a couple of stations playing songs in Spanish. She went through twice. She tried to turn off the radio in disgust, but managed only to turn the volume to near zero. Spanish music played softly just above the hum of the engine.
“I hate this place,” she said.
“I know, honey. I’m sorry.”
“Mom’s in Seattle.”
“How do you know that?” Benjamin asked.
“She called.”
“I see.” He looked out the window at the view of the mountain.
“Have a good chat?”
“I guess.”
“Is that where she’s living now? I thought she was in Spokane.”
“Was.” Emma looked through the lunch pack her father had put together. “We talked about me visiting there.” She opened a bag of chips, offered some to Benjamin. After he declined, she said, “It’s been a year.”
“Goes by fast.”
“What else did you talk about?”
Emma looked out the window and said nothing.
“Remember when we used to come up here a lot?”
The girl nodded. “You tried to teach me to cast. I hated that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It made me feel like you wanted a son instead of a daughter.”
Benjamin swallowed hard. “I didn’t know that. I just wanted to share stuff with you.”
“I hated touching the fish.”
“I didn’t know.”
He felt small and suddenly tired. “You probably won’t believe me, but I was always happy to have you as a daughter. I knew you were a girl when your mother told me she was pregnant.”
Emma ate a chip. “What did you bring to drink?”
“Water.”
She made a face.
He thought about apologizing, but didn’t.
Benjamin pulled the car off the road at the trailhead. “You know we can just go back home if you want.”
Emma opened the box and looked at her boots. “We’re here. Let’s just do this.”
“You make it sound like we’re on a mission.”
“Aren’t we?”
“Get your shoes on.” Benjamin stepped out and tightened his own laces while he waited.
Emma slammed the truck door and marched up the trail without him. He followed, caught up to her, and grabbed her arm.
“Hold on a sec,” he said. “I didn’t come up here to fight. I didn’t bring us up here for a forced march. If you’re that miserable, we can head down the mountain right now.” He looked up the trail. “I don’t know what you and your mother talked about. Just know that I’ll do whatever will make you happy. And safe, of course.”
“What if I want to move to Seattle and live with my mother?”
“Is that what she’s offering?”
“What if it’s what I want?”
“Of course I like having you with me. I want you with me, but I want you to be happy. Maybe you need your mother now. Or maybe you just need a break from me. I don’t know.” A deer bolted across the trail about thirty yards up. “I would understand that. Is that what she’s said, that you can come live with her?”
“Let’s hike,” Emma said.
They covered the first easy mile in good time, Emma leading the way. Benjamin stopped at a mound of scat that the girl had walked past. She turned and came back to him.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Not coyote,” he said. “Cougar, maybe. Pretty fresh.”
Emma looked up the trail through the aspens. “What do you think?”
“We’ve always had cats up here,” Benjamin said. “We can just head home if you want.”
“No, let’s go on.”
Benjamin looked at the mound of scat. The ground was bone-dry and was no good for a sign. He tried to make out what might have been a track. “I wish Doc Innis was with us. Cats are nocturnal. This scat is steaming.” He looked around.
“So?”
“Maybe I don’t want to go on.”
“Jesus, Dad.”
“Are you wearing any perfume?” he asked.
“What?”
“Perfume—are you wearing any?”
“No.”
“Are you having your period right now?”
“Dad!”
“Someone once told me that cats could be attracted to a menstruating woman.” He had also heard that that was a myth. Still. “Are you?”
“No. Why are you so nervous? You’re the one who always told me that the woods are safer than a mall.”
“I don’t know. You’re right. I guess I’m just overprotective of my little girl.”
“Give me a break.” Emma started again up the trail.
Benjamin followed.
They hiked another couple of miles. The trail became steep and Emma complained about her boots.
“I’m getting a blister on my heel, I think,” she said.
“Well, let’s stop. I’ve got some moleskin.” Benjamin dug into his knapsack. “We should eat our sandwiches anyway. You hungry?”
“A little.”
“Get that boot off. The other feel okay?”
“I think so.”
They heard a loud hiss. Both jumped.
“What was that?” Emma asked.
“I don’t know,” Benjamin said. They sat quietly for a few seconds. “Here, eat up. I’ll get your foot squared away and we’ll just head back to the car.”
“What was that sound, Dad?”
“Bear, maybe. Don’t worry, he’s not interested in us.” He put the moleskin on Emma’s heel. He put her sock back on and her boot, laced it up. He patted her foot. “Just like old times,” he said.
“Thanks.”
“Nice view,” he said.
They finished their sandwiches.
“Dad?”
“Yes, sweetie?”
“I’m sorry I stayed out so late.”
“Okay. I’m over that.”
“About Mom.”
“Yeah?”
“You’re great,” she said.
“Okay.”
“But I’m a girl.”
Benjamin smiled at her. “I’m aware of this.”
“What if I want to live with Mom for a while?”
He looked off the edge of the trail at the valley below. “I’d like to say I’d be understanding, but I can’t. Your mother left us. She left you and I don’t trust her now to be responsible with you.”
“She’s changed.”
“Right.” Benjamin felt small. He felt sick. This wasn’t the father he wanted to be, but he could find nothing else. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“Right.”
“You’re my responsibility. I have custody of you. If she wants to all of a sudden play mommy to you, then let her prove herself to the court.”
“I can go if I want.”
“No, you can’t. It’s that simple.”
Emma stepped away quickly down the slope. Benjamin moved to follow, but he landed on a round rock. What started as a skid escalated into a knee-buckling cartwheel off the side of the trail. Emma was scrambling down behind him even before he stopped rolling.
“Dad, are you all right?”
He tried to sit up, but fell back onto the slope. He knew he’d done something terrible to his right leg. His ankle was sprained, dislocated, or maybe even broken. He had to slow himself down to assess the damage. His heart was racing. His first concern was for his panicking daughter. “I’m okay,” he said. “Really. I think I twisted my ankle.”
“Daddy,” Emma said.
He could hear in her voice that she was seeing something he had not seen yet. He looked down to see that his foot was cast off to the side at a strange angle, almost ninety degrees to his leg.
“Fuck,” Benjamin said, not so much out of pain as out of anger. “Sorry.”
“Does it hurt?” she asked.
“I think it’s about to start hurting,” he said, realizing that adrenaline was ruling the moment. “Let’s get me up on the trail before it does.”
Benjamin pushed and Emma pulled and they clumsily managed to get him up the hill. His ankle was erupting in pain now. He screamed.
“Is it broken?”
“I don’t know,” he said.
Her hands hovered over his boot.
“No, leave the boot on. I think that’s the thing to do.” He reached down and felt it. It was painful to touch. “It’s dislocated, that’s certain.”
“What do we do?”
He hated hearing his child so frightened. “First thing is to relax,” he said. “I’m not going to die.” All he could think was that they were at least four miles from the car. “Let’s see if I can stand.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Help me up.”
She did. He tried to put a little weight on his left foot, but it wasn’t there at all. His foot flopped like a fish.
“You’re going to have to drive down the mountain to get help,” he said.
“What?”
“I can’t walk four miles and you can’t carry me.”
It was then that they saw the cat on the other side of the arroyo.
“Dad, is that a cougar?”
Benjamin didn’t answer.
“Daddy?”
“Yes, baby, it’s a cougar. Don’t panic.”
“I’m not panicking.”
Benjamin watched the animal disappear into the brush. The cougar looked to weigh about a hundred pounds, but still looked thin. He saw this as a bad sign. If the cat was hungry there was no telling what it might do. He couldn’t let his daughter head down that trail. She was so terrified, she might break into a run at any second and so trigger the cougar’s chase instinct.
“When can I panic?” she asked.
“Find me two sturdy sticks about two feet long,” he said. “Let’s make your old man some splints. Let’s get me mobile.”
“How big?”
“Strong sticks. An inch in diameter. Straight as possible.”
She stood and looked around.
“Stay in sight,” he said. “There should be a couple close by.”
While Emma searched for the sticks, Benjamin tried to straighten out his ankle. He couldn’t do it. It hurt too much. He felt like a wimp.
Emma returned with four possible splints. “What about these?” she asked.
He chose two. “These should work. Okay, now I need you to do something.”
“What?”
“You’re going to have to pull my foot out so I can set the splints. Just pull it. I’m going to scream, but keep pulling until it seems straight.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“You’ve got to do it. It will be all right. I’ll be screaming because your dad’s a big baby. Let’s do it now.”
She grabbed his foot and let go when he winced.
“Grab it,” he said.
She did.
“On three pull hard and fast.” He counted and she pulled. Benjamin tried not to scream and so made a noise that actually sounded worse. He broke into a sweat and he might have passed out for a second. The sky was too bright for his eyes for a few seconds. He collected himself. “Good, that’s good.”
“Good? Are you kidding me? Your leg is broken.” Emma was shaking, her hands still floating over the injury.
“It’s okay, baby.” He sat up. He took off his shirt and belt. “Here, tear the sleeves off of this.”
Benjamin positioned the sticks on either side of his ankle and secured them midcalf with his belt. “Okay, okay,” he said. “Let me have a sleeve.” He wrapped a sleeve tight around his ankle and foot. Just touching it made him want to vomit. To handle the pain he thought about Emma’s fear. He tied the second sleeve above his knee.
“Is that it?” Emma asked.
“Help me up.”
Benjamin got onto his good leg. The only good thing was that the break, if it was a break, was not compound. There was no blood. But there was plenty of pain. It quickly became clear that Emma was not going to be able to support him. “I need some bigger sticks,” he said. “Crutches.”
The snarl of the cougar sounded in the arroyo again.
“He’s still here,” Emma said.
“Big sticks.” Stay on task, he told himself. “Focus,” he said out loud. “Focus.” He scanned the ground above him. “There!” He pointed.
Emma found the limb. “This one?”
“Yes, and find another like it. With a Y, just like this one.”
She did, but it was a couple of inches shorter. Benjamin put the short crutch on his good side. He felt his way down the hill, keeping himself in front of Emma. He told her that if he fell he didn’t want to take her out with him. And he did fall. Twice.
“Daddy, this isn’t working,” Emma said.
“We’ll be on ground that’s less steep soon. And we’ll be off this hard stuff, too.” The ground did level off a little, and under the canopy of trees, away from the exposed edge of the trail, the floor was more a mat of plant matter.
“See,” he said. “Easy-peasy.”
“I hate that expression.”
“Noted.”
“How is it?” she asked.
“Hurts like hell.” Benjamin was sweating crazily. His T-shirt was drenched and he was starting to feel cold. He wondered if he would notice himself becoming disoriented if he started to suffer from hypothermia.
“Daddy, I’m sorry,” Emma said.
“You have nothing to be sorry about,” he told her. “It’s your old man who has to grow up. I’m sorry.”
Father and daughter stopped together on the trail. The cougar was not fifteen yards in front of them, facing them, sitting like a dog.
“So much for easy-peasy,” Benjamin said.
The cat growled.
“What do we do?” Emma asked.
“We don’t run, I know that,” he said. He almost laughed as he considered his ankle. He was sorry to see that the animal was thin. That meant that it was probably hungry. But that was all he could see. The lion was backlit and so there was no face to see. That made it worse, Benjamin thought.
“Dad?”
“How loud can you scream?” Benjamin asked.
“What?”
“I want you to scream as loud as you can while we walk forward, slowly forward. I’m going to scream, too, so don’t be startled by how loud your old man can get.”
“Really?”
“Now start screaming.” And they did. Emma screamed, her voice child-high and shrill. Benjamin put a little weight on his left leg and reacted to the pain, yelled at the lion. They clung to each other and made as much noise as possible. After three small dragging steps the cougar had seen and heard enough; it ran off the trail and up the mountain.
Emma started to cry and laugh at the same time.
Benjamin
started to buckle.
The girl tried to catch him and then he caught himself. “I’m okay,” he told her. “Let’s keep this train moving before our friend decides to come back.”
“You’re shivering.”
“Let’s go. At least it’s downhill, right?”
It took them three hours to make it to the car, looking over their shoulders the whole way. Benjamin was scared to death, much of him numb. He felt he was barely lucid. His shivering was out of control. He was suffering from exposure or he was in shock. Maybe he had hit his head in the fall without knowing it and had sustained a concussion.
“You’re going to have to drive,” he told his daughter.
“I’m fourteen.”
“I know and so I know you can do this.”
He had Emma move the passenger seat all the way back. He had to be in the front to help her, to calm her, if he could. He got into the car, pushed away his crutches, and Emma closed the door. She fell in behind the wheel. She started the car and looked at her father.
“Thank god I bought an automatic,” he said.
“What do I do?”
“You know what to do. First, turn up the heat.”
She did.
“Now you move it to D and go.”
“Just like that?”
“Go slow,” he said. “Go slow.”
Emma moved ahead.
“Good,” Benjamin said. “Slow.” He closed his eyes. He was starting to drift. “You can do this, sweetie.”
“Daddy?”
“I’m fine. Daddy’s fine. Just drive.”
Wrong Lead
The big red mule backed out of the trailer as calm as anything. This was in stark contrast to the wide-eyed, on-the-muscle beast that Jake Sweeney had seen in the backyard of a trailer house just outside Dubois. He’d agreed to buy the animal without a vet check, something he’d never done before, though he was pretty good at judging equine qualities and soundness.
“I took him in,” the tall woman standing next to him had said. She wore thigh-high wading boots. “There is this horse and mule rescue outfit down around Lone Pine and they brought him to me. Said he was abused.”
“How so?” Jake had asked.
“Don’t know. He’s big and skittish. That all I’ve got on him. I haven’t even seen him run. Not enough room here, as you can see. He’s got feet like steel, the farrier said.”
Jake should have backed off, found out more, but he’d fallen in love with the palomino mule at first sight.
Half an Inch of Water: Stories Page 7