by Pam Withers
“Amazing! There was a nice guy who’s a tracker and a honeymooning couple you’d have liked. The weather was perfect, the trees are all sprouting buds and — well, it has been a long time since I was out, so I really appreciate your letting me go.” I judge it less than wise to mention the excitement of the flash flood. “What did you and Uncle Ted get up to?”
“Oh, Ted needed to do things at the shop,” she says. “So he arranged for Elspeth to drop in with her boy. And the boy read to me while Elspeth ran errands. It was lovely.”
“But, Mom — Elspeth doesn’t have a kid.” Guilt hits me sledgehammer-like for being away having fun while some strange kid read to my bedridden mom. I look around her room and spot one of my joke books half open on her nightstand, bookmarked with a stick of jumbo black licorice.
“You’re right, Tristan. It was just a boy she was babysitting. A nice boy. Seemed like I had met him before.”
I rise and pick up the licorice between my thumb and forefinger like a police officer collecting evidence at a crime scene. “So, Uncle Ted jams on looking after you, and Elspeth, who is being paid to look after someone else, shows up and dumps her babysitting job on you. What was this boy’s name, Mom?” Negatory detect-o-meter activating.
Mom sighs and closes her eyes. “Sorry, Tristan, I don’t remember.”
“Dean?”
“Mmm, that sounds right. He was a nice boy. Okay if I sleep now, honey?”
Squeezing her hand, I exit the room. In the kitchen, I open and close cupboards. They’re as empty as when I left. Got to get us some food. The money tin turns out to be empty: Uncle Ted still hasn’t gotten around to refilling it. After tiptoeing upstairs, I open Mom’s purse as she snoozes. I take the only card that still works, and hop on my bike for town.
• • •
At the grocery store, I grab two cans of baked beans, the cheapest loaf of bread, and a carton of milk, then punch in the code my mother trusted me with the week after Dad disappeared.
“Sorry, card declined,” a freckled cashier woman informs me.
“But that’s impossible. There should be —” My face burns hot. I push the food back at her and flee, my stomach rumbling big time. At high speed, I pedal all the way to my dad’s — er, uncle’s — store.
“Closed,” the sign declares.
“What?” I say out loud, cupping my hands around my eyes to peer into the darkened interior. My sweaty fingers slide down the glass.
• • •
It’s only a few blocks to the garage where Uncle Ted used to work. I cycle over and immediately recognize his scuffed safety boots sticking out from under a car.
“Uncle Ted?”
A hand holding a wrench appears from under one side of the car. Then the boots wriggle toward me. “Tristan! You’re back. How was the canyon?”
“It was great. Thanks for letting me go. And Mom’s fine. But Uncle Ted, there’s no money in the tin, no money in the bank, and no food in the house! And why are you here and not at the store?”
Uncle Ted sits up, grease smears on his face, and frowns at me.
“Tristan, the account has been low for a long time, and I’ve been buying most of your food from what I can earn here when I’m not at your dad’s shop. The canyoneering store has been losing money for months, son. So I’ve reduced its hours, and I close up when I get called in for some work here.”
I stare at him, unable to move. “What are you saying, Uncle Ted?”
“I’m sorry, very sorry, Tristan. I’m just not cut out to manage a retail store. It’s time we close it down and sell what inventory we can. You’ll need to get a job to support the two of you.”
“But you didn’t want to cut back Elspeth’s hours when we talked last week.”
He hangs his head. “I honestly didn’t know how bad things were until I took a tally while you were away yesterday. I’ll pay the last of Elspeth’s wages and put a little into the account, but the last few months have been tough on me, too, Tristan. I’m struggling to support the three of us, and I can’t keep it up. I’m just telling you like it is. If only Mary would —” He stops, lays his wrench on the concrete floor, and drops his chin to his chest.
My feet take an unsteady step back; my chest has seized up. Mom and I are broke? Unless I drop out of school and work like a madman. Or unless Mom pulls herself together and gets her job back at the bakery.
Uncle Ted is still sitting with slumped shoulders on the stained concrete floor. “I’ve let you down, Tristan. But I’ll keep trying. There’s always government assistance if you want me to help you with the paperwork. And I’ll give you a solid reference for any job you —”
“Hey!” comes a shout from the back of the garage. “Ted, I’m not paying you to socialize, and that car’s not going to repair itself.”
I breathe in slowly, then exhale. Fear has displaced the hunger in my stomach. That, and a stab of despair. Uncle Ted’s dejected figure is becoming blurred. My running shoes take another step back.
“It’s okay, Uncle Ted,” I manage to say. “I’ll figure something out.”
Then I’m on my bike, my feet working the pedals toward home. A vision of rushing upstairs and shaking my mother to her senses comes over me. Mom, Mom, get up and get a job! Be alive again! Lying here won’t bring Dad back. I can’t keep doing everything! He would want us to pull together.
But wouldn’t you know there is a certain moped in the driveway. And there’s its owner, standing in my mother’s apron, hands on her hips in the doorway and a wooden spoon in her hands.
“Tristan! Just in time for my lasagne. I made it at home, and I’m just zapping it in your microwave this minute. I’m betting we can convince your mom to eat some. What do you think?”
Okay, no need to say anything till I’ve eaten. And it’s true that she’s better than me at coaxing Mom to eat. I sit down at the table. “Thanks.”
As I chow down, she watches me with a satisfied grin.
“Tristan, your uncle has told me I’m laid off, but you know what? I’m so fond of your mother and you that I’m willing to keep coming around sometimes for no pay. Lord knows you both need a good home-cooked meal now and again. But what’s really important, as you know, is that you get into the canyon again and bring back that special token. The sooner, the better.”
My fork stops halfway to my mouth. An eye-roll is threatening to unleash itself. I’m trying to decide how to respond, when there’s a loud knocking at the door.
“For you, probably.” Elspeth rises, takes the small plate of lasagne she has served up for Mom and heads up the stairs.
“Dominik?” The last person I expect.
“Hey, Tristan, I asked around until I found out where you live. Was wondering if you would like to come tracking with me tomorrow. Because you are out of school now, right? And it is not like I know anyone else in town, tracker or otherwise.”
He’s looking around our living room, smelling the lasagne, no doubt taking in all the messes I have on my list to clean up. He’s also peering covertly at the stairs as if wanting a glimpse of my sickly mom.
“I can help you with some chores or something if that is what it takes for you to get out.” My stunned silence makes him stop peering about. “I mean, it is more fun to track with someone than on your own, yes?”
I picture Dominik and me tracking wildlife along the rim of the canyon. Then I envision me looking down, spying my father’s bright orange backpack hanging neatly from a branch sticking out of the canyon wall, and reaching down to retrieve it. Is that really what it would take to get my mom to rise and shine — to support us till I graduate and find someone to help us make the shop turn a profit again? Or am I just starting to think like crazy Elspeth?
Elspeth’s red clogs appear on the upper stair landing. “Tristan, I couldn’t help overhearing. I’ll cover things here tomorrow while you do that, oka
y? And I’ll have a meatloaf and apple pie on the table for you when you get home.”
I’m torn, but not for long. It’s for Mom, not me.
“You’re on,” I tell Dominik.
CHAPTER 9
“Thanks for helping me clean the barn,” I say as we drive off in Dominik’s little red rental car the next morning. I can hardly believe all the work he did to get me out of the house: replaced some rotten boards on our deck, hauled some junk from the barn and to the dump, and even fixed the washing machine while I scrubbed the bathroom and kitchen floors.
“No problem. Had to do all that stuff growing up, too. Who is the hippie lady who looks after your mother?”
Be positive. “Someone my uncle came up with. I can’t leave my mom for very long, so she helps out. And she makes pretty good food when she feels like it.”
“Hmm. Saw her with Alex the other day in town. Brigit’s boss.”
I shrug. “It’s a small town. Most people know each other.”
A while later, Dominik parks at the trailhead, and we clamber out. We’ve hiked for less than ten minutes when Dominik bends down.
“So, what do you say these tracks are?”
I study the small rounded footpads featuring five oval toe marks with pinprick claw marks on the ends. An imprint of stiff hairs fills out the impression. “Something in the weasel family.”
“Tak.”
“Skunk?”
“Good man. Male or female?”
I lean down closer to compare front and back footprints. Since the hind feet are slightly to the outside of the front feet, and female skunks’ wider pelvises make them waddle like my three-hundred-pound Great Aunt Hilda, I say, “Female.”
“Okay, I am impressed. How old are the tracks? And what is this skunk’s story?”
“Skunks are nocturnal, and the tracks aren’t many hours old, so I’m guessing they’re from last night. She was tracking a grasshopper,” I note, pointing at the faint grasshopper trail: sets of offset diagonal dents in the dust with an in-between line of horizontal dashes.
“Wow, someone taught you well. Your turn to test me.”
I spot a tree with a large hollow at its bottom and point to it. “What lives there?”
Dominik wanders over to it, gets down on hands and knees, and pulls out a flashlight and magnifying glass. He sticks his head in and sniffs while directing the light and magnifier on tracks and hairs. “A squirrel, no big surprise.”
“Come on, what type of squirrel?”
He does an exaggerated sigh and pulls out a ruler to measure various prints. “Used to be a ground squirrel, but a grey one seems to have booted him out. And the new resident has been nibbling on a small snake, judging from the fragments in his scat.”
“What kind of snake?”
“Oh, give me a break, kid.” Dominik grins. “How are you at tracking people?”
“Not my specialty,” I claim, unwilling to tell a Search and Rescue professional that Dad and I used to play trackers’ hide-and-seek for hours in the woods. I especially won’t admit the weirdest advice Dad ever gave me for tracking large animals or people: hide in a mud hole, breathing through a reed. And if you’re playing with a friend, rise suddenly to surprise him as he passes by.
Dad played that on me once, and I smile at the memory.
“Okay, give me five minutes, then try to find me,” he says, winking.
“You’re on.”
I sit down in the hollow of the tree, close my eyes and spend five minutes trying to identify the multitude of smells in the musty, rotting home. At the agreed-on time, I amble through the woods, following broken twigs, upturned stones, and the occasional portion of a footprint. At first his trail is obvious; he’s purposely crashing through bushes and walking like someone who doesn’t know how trackers work.
Soon he starts covering his trail like a pro. But I’ve done enough tracking to keep on him. Like a cat creeping up on a bird, I move slowly without sudden movements, my arms and hands close to my body. Each step is so slow-mo that I make almost no sound. At one point, when I think I’ve lost him, I place my ear against a flat stump, which is a natural conductor of sound — as good as an echo chamber, my dad used to say. With this method, I identify the slightest footfall a good distance to my left, but at the same time, a distinct crackle in the brush well to my right.
I jerk my head up, confused, and stare to the right. Someone or something is following both of us, and my senses tell me it’s a human being. And yet — I grin. Clever Dominik thinks I don’t know about the rock-tossing trick that can make a follower veer the wrong way.
Still pausing, looking both left and right, I notice I’m only feet from the canyon rim. The Lower Canyon rim. My feet move there on their own; Dominik’s and my game can continue in a minute, after I’ve peeked over the edge. I lie on my belly and stare down several storeys into the depths. The pungent smell of dirt and vegetation rises to my nostrils; shadows play off the boulders, and I can just hear the trickle of water at the bottom. Tangles of roots form a sort of ladder halfway down the slope beneath my chin. And —
Something red — red? — is hanging on one of the last loops.
I slide forward, head and chest now hanging over the gradual drop-off, trying to identify the item. My father wore a red bandana. Was he wearing it the day he disappeared? Could he have tried to climb up this very face? Could this red piece of cloth be what’s left of his bandana?
I have no binoculars or canyoneering gear, but on impulse this morning I stuck a thick, non-technical rope into my backpack. I’m suddenly obsessed with a need to get a closer look at the thing. I check around for a natural anchor. The only option is a boulder the size of a beach ball; there’s a scattering of smaller rocks beside it. After pushing and pulling on the boulder to make sure it’s not going to move, I place my rope around the boulder’s neck and start working my way down.
I’m trusting that the boulder as anchor, my superior upper body strength, the rope, and the tree roots will allow me to scramble back up the slope, while my lock-hold on the rope will keep me from falling. In reality, I know it’s a little crazy, sliding down a drop without companions or proper stuff. But what if the tiny scrap of red was my father’s? A chill runs down my back.
Lower and lower I go, my running shoes loosing dirt showers, my sweaty palms greasing the rope. I twist my head around every now and then to sight the scrap. Slowly, way too slowly, I draw near. All that’s clear is that it’s small, faded, half-shredded, and red. Maybe a bandana, maybe not. I’ve got to actually examine it in my hand. How did it get halfway up a cliff wall, anyway? And how long has it been here? I’m at the end of my rope, but if I release it for a second and trust my heels to a lower stirrup of roots, and reach, reach down with my left hand —
“What the —” I scream as a shower of dirt rains on me from above. I push my head into a small cavity in the cliff, trying to protect my skull from whatever might come loose next. It’s a good thing I do, because the next avalanche is small rocks pouring down, several glancing off my sweaty shoulders, more unsettling than painful.
The loop of roots securing my feet breaks as I wriggle to flatten my body against the cliff face, and for a second, my hands cling to a too-small root while my feet flail for a hold. What was I thinking, going lower than my rope? An even lower root finally decides to hold one foot, but now my arms, still clinging to another root, are stretched like bungee cords. From afar, I must look like a large spider cowering under a gushing bathtub spout.
The little avalanche runs out of fuel. My desperate foothold and panicked handhold remain secure, if tiring. Slowly, delicately, I find even lower handholds and footholds, then look down to see that one foot has actually come to rest on the root holding the cloth. Bingo! But my movement has freed it, and now it’s floating, ever so slowly, toward the bottom of the canyon. From the way it’s drifting, I can
see now that it’s not cloth but paper: a picnic napkin probably caught in a small wind gust as people sat eating on the boulder above.
Idiot. Nearly killing yourself for a napkin. My desire for a clue to my father’s disappearance had overruled my common sense. Even if it had been Dad’s bandana, I should’ve waited for Dominik to help me. Or come back tomorrow with binoculars.
Gingerly, I work my way back up to the bottom of the rope, then put all my strength into pulling myself up it. Visions of gym class flash through my mind. Palms tightly around the rope, I continue to climb, hand over moist hand, tentative toeholds in the roots helping.
“Tristan?” A voice sounds from above as I come within arm’s reach of the top.
I stare up at the welcome sight of Dominik’s face. “I’m just hanging out here, but I could use a hand.”
“Tak, I guess you could, you demented devil.” His bulging biceps hoist me up like a powerful mechanical crane arm.
Taking a deep breath as I lie on solid ground, I stare at the boulder that served as my anchor. The pile of rocks beside it is gone. All gone, now sitting at the bottom of the canyon. But the small rocks were never right beside the edge. Had someone moved them? But who? I vaguely recall wondering earlier if someone was following us.
“You okay?” Dominik asks, eyebrows puckered. “And you will award me with an explanation?”
“Yes, but that slide wasn’t natural,” I say, raising myself to my hands and knees and crawling around the boulder in search of footprints.
“A slide? Stuff fell on you?” Dominik examines my head and shoulders. “You seem okay. But why would you go over the edge at all? You are a moron if you think my trail led down there!” He shakes his head. “And what do you mean it is not natural? That’s what cliffs do. They erode and send rocks and dirt down sometimes. It is why we wear helmets when canyoneering. But we did not come here to canyoneer today, as I understand it. So why did you have a rope in your pack, anyway?”