The Signal

by Ron Carlson

  “We always camped at Valentine.” This was their neighborhood.

  “Where are we camping today?”

  Mack lifted his chin. “Let’s go over there,” he said. “I know where there’s a ring of stones and some firewood.”

  Valentine Lake was a twenty-acre heart of silver blue rimmed to the edge by pines and red sandstone. They came over the low ridge and saw it set out as if invented this morning. Circling west they stepped up the stony terrace to the rock porch where they’d been before. It had the advantage of a level place for the tent and the boulders made a kind of room, good for sitting and leaning the packs. The fire ring was still in place, remarkable in that it was unused; this wasn’t on any trail. They had gathered the six rocks, each the size of an unabridged dictionary, ten years before and set them here on earth above the lake. Mack shrugged off his pack and leaned it against one of the boulders. He marched off into the trees, counting them to ten and finding the steel wire oven rack where he’d hung it. Over three stones it made a perfect cook stove.

  “We are golden,” he said, returning.

  Vonnie hadn’t moved, her pack still on. Now she walked to the perimeter of the campsite, her hands clasped behind her, a strange look on her face. “This is such a bad idea.”

  He had seen this face before, almost a year ago. He said, “Let’s get some firewood.” The day had broken on the evening’s clouds, and the surface of the lake was a million coins in the breeze. She looked at Mack and he stopped.

  “How’s Trixie?”

  He folded his arms.

  “No, how is she.”

  He knew to stand and face it, but it was against the grain. “Her name was Trisha.”

  “Trixie.”

  Mack waited, but he knew to be silent was to lie and he was done with that. “And she’s gone. You know that.”

  “Oh, what happened, big boy? Did you lie to her?”

  “Don’t, Vonnie. I mean, you don’t need to.”

  “Don’t.”

  He had resolved in his bitter extremity to say things as they were, not to duck or feint. It was one of the hardest things he had ever done, and it hurt every time before the relief descended. He hated to have this conversation here, above the lake in their camp, but he would do it. “Trisha is gone. I made a mistake. A series of them.”

  “Just one series of mistakes?”

  “Vonnie.”

  “Did you just lie to her?”

  “Don’t.”

  “No, I won’t. It’s a stupid question, no? To ask a liar if he lied.”

  “Vonnie. Let’s get some wood.”

  “Liar. A lying liaristic lie-maker.”

  “I stopped lying.”

  “Oh, when, ten minutes ago? How does a liar stop lying?”

  “Vonnie.”

  “Do they remove something?”

  “Vonnie.”

  “Yvonne. And let’s not get wood. No fire. Let’s just go up to Clark Lake.” She was crying now and her pack was shaking a little as she stood. “And catch a fish and get out of these fucking mountains.”

  “You love these mountains.”

  “I used to.” Her pack trembled. “But they’re full of liars now. You even ruined the mountains.”

  “Do you want to camp someplace else?” She didn’t answer but turned and stood looking at the corrugated lake in the mountain twilight. “I’m sorry, Vonnie.” He now too felt it a mistake, all the mistakes. “This was the wrong spot, all wrong. I’m sorry.”

  “Valentine Lake,” she said. “Go get some wood.”

  The wind was steady, but the small fire bent and flourished, and he cooked the tomato soup as always and burned the bread on his long fork so they could dip strips into their bowls. The fire helped. Vonnie took off her boots and wore her camp moccasins, sitting by the fire. They’d unpacked and Mack had set his tent. Vonnie was reading, holding the book flat to catch the light.

  “How’s the school?” he asked.

  “It’s going well; every time they cut the music program some rich parent steps up. Somebody gave us a grand piano, but we don’t have a room for it, so now they’re building a room. There’s a lot of money in that town, but it only comes out in certain ways.”

  “A grand piano.”

  “Yeah, and Kent started a board that does fund-raising.”

  “He’s got to be good at that. And he gave the school a car.”

  “He did.”

  Mack had wiped out the bowls and wrapped them in the dishtowel. “Did he not want you to do this?”

  “Of course he didn’t. He hates you. You should have never fucked with his car.”

  “I shouldn’t have done anything I did this past year, Vonnie, but breaking the most expensive windshield in Jackson was as pure an act as ever I did.”

  “You were drunk?”

  “I was drunk for, let’s see, just about five months.” Mack turned to her and held open his hands. “I’m sorry, Vonnie. Sorry. But more, I’m done with it. I’m done with desperation. I was as lost as you get.”

  “How was jail?”

  “That is a great question. You always said I was in my own way with my pride, remember that?”

  “You were.”

  “I was. Jail fixed that. I’m not proud anymore. Jail is jail and I had weeks of it and those weeks were the same as a lot of weeks last year. I’m all even all over town, except for two more apologies and the bills. Bills and three more apologies, but I’ll get them.”

  “Who’s on the ranch?”

  “Jessups. He was going to get sheep, but as far as I can see they’re just living there.”

  “Do you get a decent rent?”

  “Decent minus the horses, the upkeep. I’m a little negative, but I’m working on some projects.”

  “Did Yarnell come through?”

  “Sort of.” Mack set sticks into the small fire. The last daylight was trading around from the rocky towers, and the gloaming would last half an hour. It took the darkness a long time to fill.

  “Kent says you’re tight with Yarnell and that Yarnell is the enemy, a crook.”

  “He’d know.”

  “He’d know before you’d know.”

  “Well, I’ve got some projects is all.”

  “You could sell it all and just go.”

  “I could and where would I go? Where do people go, Vonnie? San Diego? My knees are too bony. This is where I go.”

  “You’re fighting the whole county.”

  “I just want to keep the place. Stay straight and do what I can to keep the place.”

  “The bank?”

  “The bank is the bank. They were with me and now they’re deciding. You want me to sell so you can get that money?”

  “Mack, did you look at the letters?” He had the five ivory envelopes unopened in his father’s rolltop.

  “Not yet. I’m sure they explain your position. They are beautiful envelopes, Vonnie. That guy has some bona-fide stationery. My theory is that beautiful envelopes are full of terrible news. I can wait if you can.”

  “You are still proud. And you are dumb as a stone.”

  “Don’t let the stones hear you talking that way.”

  There had been a dozen ups and downs before Mack really went down. He had lived forever at the edge of his money and he was tired of it. After they were first married, he had to rent the place out and he and Vonnie took a place in Driggs, across the border, an old refurbished trailer at the end of a road for the grayest year of his life. At first it was right. He could feel the money they were saving, positive four hundred dollars a month, almost, working the mortgage along, but the stupid place was built into the hillside and cold at all times and actually not even level, but they were in love and poor and so fine, but then they wore out poor and they did some damage to love. Her parents offered help and they took some, and it stung Mack and he took the stinging as a weakness, but he could not turn it into anything good.

  He remembered one day when she came out of the l
ittle tin bath in just her shirttails holding up a pair of her underwear to the light and he could see them worn thin and she was laughing, saying, “This is us in the glory days, my ass a millimeter from the world. If I have to go to the hospital, change my drawers first, please. Promise me. Go to Woolworth’s and get me a highwaist pair of whities before they operate.”

  She was laughing and laughing, and so he swallowed it all and laughed too, the poor ranch owner a millimeter away from losing the deed. But it hit him and was a seed of his desperation. He was working odd jobs, one in a bookstore drugstore/drive-thru liquor in Driggs, and she was teaching piano out at the ranchsteads. In the spring, when they moved to Jackson and took a two-bedroom townhouse a hundred dollars over their budget, the farmer they had rented from hauled their terrible trailer out to his summer house and buried it for a septic tank. They had laughed about that too. Seven years ago or six, he forgot.

  Now he stood up. “You want to fish? There’s still some light.”

  “It’s cold and I’m tired,” she said, “but yeah.”

  “Okay, let’s go down.” They geared up in camp and walked down fifty feet to the lake. Three boulders protruded into the water, each as big as a bus, and they stood downwind and cast into the mirrored sections along the shore.

  “How’s your fly selection,” she asked, an old joke. There was no selection. He only had one size of big woolly caddis, but he had twenty of the things.

  “Perfect,” he said. “They like these bugs.” He had clipped on a red bobber and threw it thirty yards straight out, the wind ballooning his line as it fell.

  “A bobber?” she said.

  “I like to use it once and put it away.” The light failed imperceptibly. A mote across the lake became an eagle, a crescent that looped and landed alongside another in the top branches of the skeleton of a massive dead piñon. Vonnie glassed them with her binoculars.

  “Somebody’s been to REI.”

  “These are good,” she said, handing them to him.

  He was surprised at the lensing. He could see the throat feathers ripple. “It’s mother and daughter.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “They’re women,” he said. “See how calm they are.” He gave her back the new glasses. “I’ll be back,” he said, clipping his rod with a stone. Mack walked back up to camp and looked down on Vonnie lifting her line for another set. He powered the BlackBerry and dialed the window. He’d have to get within a mile to catch any signal from the missing part, and he didn’t know if that was sightline. The odds were crazy. He typed in: 10.5K Valentine. Send. He turned it off and looked at the device and put it back in his pocket. It was an uncomfortable lump, just like the whole deal.

  He’d been out of jail two weeks when Yarnell called. They had stayed in touch through the years with Mack doing short spot contract jobs, softcore hacking, for Yarnell for cash from time to time. It was a weird call, but they were all weird; whenever Mack was with Yarnell, he felt it in his gut. It was going to be trouble, but Mack felt he deserved it. And there was always money. Yarnell said to meet at the Tropical, the funky bowling alley in Jackson. Walking over there in the dark, Mack thought, this has got to be the low, meeting a crook in the bowling alley. He knew it was his father talking, and Mack straightened up. He’d lost weight in jail and he cinched his tooled belt to the old notch. You’re not fit to choose your company, he reminded himself. You’ve got to make something work. He’s going to say something and you’re going to do it, good or bad. Then in the summer night he spoke aloud, “Just who are you, cowboy?”

  The bowling alley had been at the thin tail end of its heyday when Mack was in high school, and then it slid into sleazy ruin and now it had been washed twice and was half smart and half tony, a place for the slumming realtors and tourists from Germany and Japan. The sign was a beauty: the big white neon bowling pin lit three times in a spin, rotating in jerks: up, over, upside down; up, over, upside down. It hummed as Mack walked under.

  Yarnell signaled him from the gravel parking lot, and Mack walked over and climbed into the black Land Rover. Mack had resolved to let the older man speak first.

  “You had some trouble,” Yarnell said. “Sorry.”

  “Yeah,” Mack said. It was an effort now. “Did you hear it from Chester?”

  “He didn’t say much, but yeah.”

  “I’m out.”

  As always, Charley Yarnell looked polished, his gold wire glasses and his broad forehead. He was wearing a two-hundred-dollar pink-checked shirt with a silver pen in the embroidered pocket. Mack had seen such shirts at the ranch. You saw a dozen any Saturday night in Jackson. Brokers wore them on western holidays.

  “Anything I can help with?”

  “The place is still not for sale.”

  “I know, son, but it won’t need to be if the mortgage folds. I’ll just step up and claim the pretty place.”

  Mack had his hand out almost to Yarnell’s chest. “No son, Charley. Let’s just talk.”

  “What happened to you?”

  “Too much to say. But recently I got myself arrested breaking a windshield right over there about six streets. I was drunk and thought I had a reason. There was worse stuff that they didn’t catch me for.” It always cleared his head to admit this. “Look, I can get out of your car right now.” He turned to Yarnell and saw he was being studied. There was something about him that Yarnell liked, and Mack understood it to be the weak places.

  “I got a job for you, if you want. Some money, which you need.”

  “I’m open. I expect it’s not computers.”

  “It’s an airplane. Remember the drones from my place?”

  “I do.” A few summers before Mack had driven out to Yarnell’s place sixty miles west. It looked like a ranch from the road, but behind the house and the barn and the toolshed were twenty acres of winter wheat and then a narrow asphalt landing strip and four small hangars. You had to duck your head in two of them. Charley Yarnell had two Cessnas, one a blue twin engine, and a two-man grasshopper helicopter under a canvas awning. But he took some time showing Mack his set of a dozen drones, little gray things with single jet engines with air intakes the size of liter bottles. “This is the future,” he said. “This is the money.” He could get them to take off in sixty feet, a ninety-pound aircraft, and he ran them from handhelds and from the computers in one of the buildings. “They’re hardwired for this strip,” he said. “Latitude, longitude, and elevation.” He pointed to the control panel along the fuselage. “All I put in is the time to touchdown and the wind speed.”

  Yarnell had Mack’s old friend Chester working for him and the whole little spread was squared away nicely. Chester had been in high school with Mack and he waved from the small hangar and pushed one of the little planes out onto the paved lane with a long T-bar. When he came over, he took Mack’s hand and asked, “How’s that place, cowboy?”

  “Rented out for now,” Mack said.

  “It’s a tough country on ranches,” Chester said. “You ought to get back out there and run it.” Yarnell stepped over and Chester handed him the control unit.

  “I might. And now you’re a pilot?”

  “Yes sir. I went to airplane school,” Chester said. “You’d like flying.”

  “There’s too many mountains in my life to put an airplane in it.”

  Yarnell handed Mack the control to examine and took the T-bar from Chester and straightened out the little plane, handing the bar back to Chester without looking.

  “This gentleman has some airplanes. Some don’t need a pilot; that right there tells you how hard flying is.”

  A bright blue six-wheel tank truck entered the far yard. Chester stepped up and took Mack’s hand again. “I’m glad to see you. I’m going to get over and take delivery on some fuel. Say hey to Vonnie and get back with your horses, you cowboy.”

  “Will do, Chester.”

  Yarnell showed Mack the hand controller for the aircraft and then led him over to four white
Adirondack chairs in the shade of the hangar. He had Mack press the switch and then hold the red button which ignited the jet, more of a hiss than a roar. Yarnell took the controller back and used the simple joystick to send the plane forward in a sudden rush, like a thrown thing, instantly in the sky and a moment later out of sight. They had coffee for twenty minutes there and Mack scanned the bulbous cumulus cloudbank running along the blue-sky horizon like a hedgerow for the craft the whole time. Yarnell had made a show of putting the controller on the ground.

  “There,” the man said, pointing.

  Mack saw the gray dot again, remarkably small, now descending slowly like a toy and banking at the end of the strip for a turn, coming in for a landing in soft bumps with the engine off. “Hands off,” Charley said.

  “Where’d it go?”

  Yarnell looked at him. “You tell me. I loan these to the government.”

  “Don’t they have their own?” Mack had asked.

  “That there is a mystery,” Charley had said. “I wanted you to see what we’re doing is all.” Mack looked across at Chester atop the fuel truck with his wrench and he did feel a little better about the whole deal.

  In Yarnell’s Rover in the parking lot of the Tropical, Mack asked, “What’s the job?”

  “We lost part of something. It fell from a plane. It’s about the size of a book.”

  “In the mountains?”

  “In the Winds.”

  “Some kind of secret?” Mack said.

  “Some kind.”

  “Is it radioactive?”

  “No. It’s too hard to explain,” Yarnell said. “But it’s like a trigger, a fingerprint. And they need it. It’s the linchpin, the prototype.”

  “There’s a new drone.”

  “There is.”

  Mack asked, “This trigger. Whose is it?”

  “Ours,” Yarnell said.

  “Ours as in us,” Mack said. “Who?”

  “It’s worth ten thousand dollars to you, if you can hand it to me.” Mack watched the big bowling pin tumble through its stations. Behind it the night was lit by the bar lights of Jackson, and the outline of the two-story town was cut against the mountain. Looking over the buildings had always confounded Mack. It wasn’t just Jackson; it was any town. There was something wrongheaded and sad about the venture to him, something that didn’t fit. He could abide it, but the clock was ticking.