by Ron Carlson
“Oh my god,” she said. “That would be nice. With those sugar cubes, thank you.” She was whispering. “I’ve become dedicated to your sugar cubes.”
He assembled his stove under the tree and scooped and rescooped a tin of water from the rivulet above the beaver dam.
“We can have a fire after dark,” he told her.
“This is a bivouac,” she said.
“It is.”
“Is it dark yet? I’m kidding. But I’m going to want a hot stone,” she said. She was testing her wound with her fingers, pressing each side and making faces.
“Next you’ll try to get up,” he said. “Don’t do that. We can try for that in the morning.”
“That is a great stove,” she said. “I’m a dedicated fan of your stove and those sugar cubes.”
Mack watched her face and couldn’t read it. He told himself to stop worrying, because worry only made decisions into wet knots, his father said. He needed simple assessment. You did this, he thought. This is you, all the way. Vonnie sat sideways on her good leg, against a wet tree. She was pale but she could talk. They had the tea with sugar cubes and an apple which he sliced and the day lunch he’d brought of pita bread and cheese, and he boiled some more water and they had weaker tea with twice as much sugar. She took some aspirin. The rain was an unwavering fact, but under the tree they dried as fast as they got wet and it continued. The dark came in vertiginous increments; it took hours. It had been so dark all day, the evening was imperceptible. After seven Mack stood and went to the edge of the trees and saw finally that the light had drained.
“I’ve got to pee,” Vonnie said.
“Let’s try the standing thing.”
She lifted her arms and said, “Wait, my shirt is full of sticks.” Mack took them and stuffed them now dry into his daypack. He stood before her with her hands in his and her feet braced against his boots. He pulled her up and she stood. In the gloom he saw the wave of faintness cross her face and pass.
“Here,” she said, adjusting him on her injured side.
“We won’t go far.” With her arm over his shoulder they made ten steps, three trees.
“Now what?” she said. “Oh hell, Mack, hum something.”
“What?”
“That annoying hobo song.” She had him turn face away.
“Here’s to you, my rambling boy,” he sang softly. “May all your rambling bring you joy. Late one night in a jungle camp, the weather it was cold and damp, he got the chills and he got them bad. I lost the only friend I had. Then here’s to you, my rambling boy, may all your ramblings bring you joy. That’s all I know.”
“That’s not enough for this trip,” she said from below. “Sing it again.” He did, and then she pulled herself up.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I’ll learn the whole song for next time.”
“Do that.”
He built a fire the size of his hand, keeping all his fuel nearby. The first white finger of smoke was hope itself; the fire worked and wavered in the rain but not enough to worry him. Their poachers had their own fire to worry about. Mack gathered his dry sticks. He lay on his side and had Vonnie lie between him and the fire—on her good side.
“You okay?”
“I’m okay,” she said. “I paid a price for running in the woods, Mack, but I’m okay.” A minute later she said, “No service.”
“Turn it off and save that battery,” he said. “Kent would want you to.” He laid his arm out for her head and his other arm he put across her belly from where he would feed the small wood into the fire.
“That was the guy you worked for?”
“Canby. He’s a dealer and he’s smart, knows everybody. I saw him tie good knots when he was loaded.” Mack felt his air go out and now he whispered. “I drove for him and did the rest.”
She was quiet and then in a small voice she said, “Did you love that girl?”
“I was with that girl. I was. I was as crazy as you get to be and now sorry the same way, but I know what love is, Vonnie, and the answer is no. If it was yes, I would say yes.”
“Did she love you? Trisha?”
“No one knows that, not even her. She had a wild way of talking, but she never said love, and I never saw her when she wasn’t impaired or headed hard for it.”
“How could you.”
The water moved everywhere, draining and dripping, merging with the sound of the light touches of wind, and Mack fed the small fire. “I don’t know, Vonnie.” He sorted a handful of little sticks, piece by piece. “Vonnie. She died. I heard and then saw it in the papers. She never came back from being out there. Part of it is on me.”
“I wondered. I knew about it. I’m sorry, Mack.”
“I am, my friend. I’m sorry.”
After a moment, Vonnie said, “Bivouac.”
“Just like uptown,” he said.
“I’m going to need a story,” she said. “What was his name?”
“His name was Hiram Corazon.”
“Was he Mexican?” she asked.
“He was Canadian,” Mack said, “but from a province that no longer exists. The two rivers thawed and the province disappeared.”
“It was small,” she said.
“Big enough for the village.”
“Where he met the girl,” Vonnie said. “And her name was.”
“Lucinda Amateur.”
“It was a dear family.”
“It was,” he said. “Full of Amateurs. They farmed goose down and made comforters for the town.”
“Oh my, a thick goose-down comforter.”
“Five inches thick.”
“And dry.”
“Absolutely.”
“How did they meet?” Vonnie said. “No, how did he lose her?”
“Which?” They were whispering.
“Meet,” she said.
“They met the same way he lost her.” Mack spoke from the edge of his own sleep.
“Tell me.”
“It was because of the lost goose.”
“I don’t know this part. This is the cannibal, right?”
“Vonnie, listen. People thought he was a cannibal and he got that reputation of a cannibal and the legend needed a cannibal, but what Hiram Corazon did was something very tender and surprising.”
Vonnie shifted back against him. “Are you cold?”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s how I know we’re here.”
“I’m okay. It’s a good little fire we have here.”
He could feel her face on his arm. “Okay,” he said. Mack felt it in his gut, the worry, but talking could keep it off him. He thought about the airplane part, Yarnell’s mission, and the stupid money. He wanted it still. The next bad choice. The woods now were dark dripping curtains, but the fire held against them, and Mack spoke into Vonnie’s hair. He spoke slowly as the words appeared for him.
“They were young and wanted to help their families in the village and they took work collecting down at the goose station. Geese stopped at the station going north in the summer and going south in the winter. They could eat corn at the station and talk and spend two or three days resting and reading. Putting their webbed feet up. Geese have big feet that they like to rest at any chance. In the winter Hiram curried the southbound ducks, harvesting the down. They loved it. Many of the geese got facials as well and their beaks polished, beakicures.” That Vonnie didn’t ask about that word told him she was asleep, but he was almost asleep and kept whispering. “Big bales of down for the village comforter factory, the finest down comforters in all the Americas and parts of Manchuria, where they had an outlet. One day at the end of work Hiram discovered one of the southbound geese missing, and he was responsible for every goose. He knew this goose, whose name was Robert Guatemala, because he was the mayor of a flock that wintered in that country, was not scheduled to depart until the morning. He consulted with his down-currying associate Lucinda Amateur about what to do. They had closed the grooming shop and put their tools away
the way they had done for a year. He loved the way she put the tools away, and he loved the way she curried the down and treated the southbound geese, and Hiram Corazon knew that he loved Lucinda Amateur, but he did not know what to do about it. He was going to tell her every next day, and he never told her. He lived his life at the edge of telling her. When she was near him his heart was beating. He could hear it beating even when the geese called. Lucinda said, we need to find that goose, even one goose; we must find him. So they went out into the northern night of the lost province and began searching. There were only two places to look. East of the village and west of the village.” Mack repeated that sentence and then said village one more time seeing the girl go into the dark and then he was asleep.
Day Five
It was a cold camp in the dripping dawn. Mack opened his eyes in the new light, and he could see through the pines that the sky was a sharp torn blue and the broken clouds were wispy and dissipating as the sun came. The cold had been working against his back for hours, not the thievery of a wind but the ever-moving air that left him with cramping chills. Rays of sunlight fell through the forest in slanted columns, catching the great branched spider-webs here and there; the effect was churchlike, and Mack thought that, but he was cold now, deeply, and his back hurt. He held Vonnie firmly in his arm, her back curled to his front down to their crossed ankles. Everything was damp even their small bowl of ashes in the ground, and they could have no fire. He was cold and he knew that moving would make him colder. There was no heat in the planks of sunlight. He sat up.
“What?” Vonnie said. “Are you cold?” She folded herself tighter.
“Hold still, I want to look at your leg.” The wound was swollen and now stains of blue had come up on every side, but it was not red or infected. He was on his hands and knees above her and looked into her face, her hair collapsed into a cone around it. She gave him the who me smile and said, “Can I walk? Will I dance again? Really what I want to know is, will I be warm again?” She lifted her hands and he took them. “Help me.” It was a life of this, the two of them, all hands joined, about to do the next thing.
“Love to,” he said. “Hello, Vonnie.”
They paused like that a moment and she met his face and said, “Hello, Mack,” and then she nodded and he pulled her up. She grimaced and stood. “Rub my back, Mack, will you. Send those chills to China.”
He braced her with his forearm across her clavicle and kneaded his knuckles up and down her back. She shivered and then let go and came into his embrace, and he heard her catch a sob. Her hand clenched on his shirtsleeve, and then she straightened. “Okay,” she said, “it’s cold. What are we doing?” She had her phone out again. “No service here.”
“Try it,” he said, pointing at her leg.
“It’s got to work,” she said. “We’re not staying here. This was a fine place, but we used it up.”
“Okay then,” he said, “let’s go to Valentine.” She rolled her hips left and right and lifted each knee.
“Can’t run,” she said, “but let’s march.” She leaned forward and commenced an irregular stride. Mack sighted and started walking west, down through the soaking brush that had them both wet again in a minute. He bushwacked in a long arc finally intersecting the Upper Divide trail well below where they dropped it yesterday. There were no tracks in the muddy trail, but Mack moved slowly and looked up and down. They were both shivering. He stopped and found Vonnie a patch of dry ground in the sunlight.
“Wait here a second,” he told Vonnie. “I’m going up to see something.” He helped her sit. Mack climbed by walking aside the trail in the bunch grass trying to leave no tracks. A quarter mile above his pole was where he had thrown it by the trail and there were no tracks at all. Canby and his buddy hadn’t even come this far. He opened the BlackBerry and there was a flashing blue light. What the hell. He couldn’t get the screen to go on, but the blue dot pulsed in the corner every second.
When he rejoined Vonnie, she saw his fishing pole and said, “Good. They didn’t follow.”
“Not on this trail.”
“Is there one above?”
“Above and below. Let’s go.” Vonnie found her leg warmed to the walking; it was better when she was moving.
“How long have they been operating?” she said to Mack.
“All summer from the looks of it.”
“ ‘We’re just fishing,’ you told them.”
“That was lame.” He immediately added, “Excuse my language. It was poor. I couldn’t come up with anything else. I have no recollection of what I said.”
“You’re a horrid liar.”
“I am. That’s why I gave it up.”
“You sure said, ‘Go.’ ”
“It’s worked for me in the past. Oh hell, Vonnie.” He took her elbow, stopping close in the woods. “I should have told them that this was our last trip and I wanted them not to wreck it in any way and I wanted them to stop poaching elk and find meaningful work. Like I’m going to do.” Mack was surprised he could joke.
Vonnie, limping, led them down to the main valley trail and then to the wooden bridge crossing of the Wind. The sun was out and warmer, but the light had changed, tilted and it felt so much later in the year than it had two days before.
“Do you need to stop?”
“No, let’s have some water and go up to camp and get dry socks and get absolutely out of here.” Mack didn’t like being in the open meadow, but any other route would have cost them an hour and kept them wet. They crossed the river and climbed out of the open space into the forest, slow and steady now and warmed by their efforts. “You knew the other guy?” she asked.
“I may have seen him, but I don’t know. I may have seen him in the paper for that big meth farm down in Rawlins and such. I think I met him a time when I was loaded. I don’t know; he may have been the cook. Christ, I may have been working for him.” Reaching into the dark like this spent Mack and braced him; he had done things of which he had only shadowy recall. It took his breath.
“How’d you stop drinking?” she said.
“Suddenly and permanently,” Mack told her. “I don’t joke about it.”
“Those weren’t new rifles.”
“No, they weren’t, but we’re in their thoughts this morning, dear, and it’s the kind of thinking I don’t care for.” They climbed the last steps on the narrow trail and turned above Valentine Lake.
Their camp was trashed. The place was tilted wrong and took a moment to settle in their vision. Trashed. The sight was a mess of boot prints and the cooking kit had been kicked around and into the rocks and brush. The tent was gone and their packs. Vonnie took Mack’s arm and backed him up before they entered the area. They turned and walked down a hundred paces and he stopped her and nodded left. She followed up, wending through the pines and sandstone until they emerged along the bluff above the site. Mack scanned the sky. “I’d like to see those kids’ camp smoke about now.” They knelt in the sunlight and waited twenty minutes not talking. Valentine Lake changed beneath them from a thin sky blue to flat gray and then under the sun it went green. They stood and walked into camp.
“They left the clothesline,” Mack said. He was gathering the pans and cups and forks and he found the goody bag of cheese and crackers and candy.
“There,” Vonnie said, pointing down. The two sleeping bags were snagged on the rocks and he could see his tent in the lake six feet under on a rock shelf.
“I’ve got my knife and matches,” he said.
“Where are your car keys?”
“On the passenger rear tire. Like always,” he said.
“Same as mine. I’ve got my knife.”
“And those flies,” he said.
She had taken off the fishing vest and draped it on a little pine to dry. “We’ve got to go,” she said. “You want to grab the sleeping bags?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m a little confused.” He sat down on the warm rock and held his head. He could feel
the friction there, the fatigue.
“You look weird,” she said.
“You look weird,” he said. But he said it quietly without looking. Now he lay back with his heavy arm over his eyes.
“You’re soaked,” she said.
“You’re soaked,” he said. Vonnie climbed down to the lake by sitting on each rock step. She dragged one of the sleeping bags up and stood above him.
“We can’t stay here,” he said.
“Then come on, mister. Let’s go up beside the lake out of sight. They won’t come back and if they do, they won’t see us. We’ll leave the stuff, the tent and the one bag. Bring that food. Leave the pans.” She kicked his foot. “Come along.” She pointed at him. “Leave your dear clothesline and come along.”
They found a place two hundred yards farther, an open room in the rocks, and in the sunlight Vonnie unzipped the sleeping bag and spread it on the dry duff. “Yeah,” she said. “You look funny. You’re blue.”
“You’re blue,” he said.
“I’ve got a cramp in my back.”
“It’s the cold from last night,” he said. But he could feel the pressure in his head, the fever, waving across, working now steadily behind his eyes.
“Give me those wet pants,” she said. She sat and took off her boots, unlacing them and opening them on the sunny sandstone and then she did the same with his boots and sopping socks, hanging them on a branch.
“That’s better,” he said, and then she pulled his Levi cuffs until he squirmed out of the wet heavy garment, his legs gooseflesh.
“Get in,” she said, and he rolled into the sleeping bag and she covered him over and zipped the bag. “Give me that shirt and your underwear.” His eyes were already closed, but he complied. “You want an apple,” she said, taking a bite and chewing. She sat against a log, her legs stretched out in the thin sunlight.
“No,” he said.
“You want a story?” she said, but his answer was sleep.
Nothing he had done made money. The bookstore was ridiculous; they did better on greeting cards and then that just petered out and he closed the rented storefront and hauled boxes of books to the Western Horizons rest home south of town, and then his computer consulting kicked in, or he tried to jump-start it, and it looked like it would really go until his start-up expenses told the truth. Then it was month to month and the mortgage went un-tended. He liked the computer work some of the time, but only some. He wanted the ranch with all his heart, and he knew he needed to gather his gumption and run the guest ranch again. He didn’t want to raise livestock of any stripe. He could farm, but not really very well. He’d prefer to repair equipment all winter and had done so, rather than drive any of the tractors even a week in the good weather. There were times when he felt stupid, a fraud, some guy with a soft heart for the ranch and no real reason. Finally he decided he didn’t care what it was, but it was that he wanted the place where he’d grown up. He saw the town change and change again and it would never ever stop; there would be curbs and gutters clear to Dubois. But home is home, he told himself, and worth fighting for. When Yarnell showed up, he was about to start his EMT and join the county ambulance squad; trouble was up and harm and general injury, and he’d been part of it, the carelessness, but he had gathered enough of himself to know that he was good in hot moments. If he’d been able to keep Vonnie, these would be good days.