by Pam Withers
He’s trying to tell me something, but there’s no point attempting to interpret it. I’m not going to do anything more to annoy our guide — whose mood is like that of a grizzly bear with a toothache — than I already have.
Dominik slices up some salami, cheese, and bread, adds squares of a chocolate bar for dessert, and hands it around. The water beside us burbles noisily. Mosquitoes appear and whine in our ears. None of us has bothered to bring repellent, given how often the stream would wash it off in a day. The sun sinks in a pink and orange haze as shadows take over our camp. Crickets begin singing their nightly tune to our tense, silent gathering.
“What is happening tomorrow?” Dominik finally asks.
“I’m contemplating our options. I’ll let you know in the morning,” Brigit says curtly.
CHAPTER 15
The buzz of insects forces me to raise one eyelid. The sky tells me it’s morning and an overcast day. Squeezing my eyelids shut again, I picture Mom in the hospital. Guilt and worry flood me; I want to leap up and go to her. Instead, I replay yesterday’s strange events in my mind, then roll to my right to see if Dominik is awake.
He’s gone. No Dominik, no sleeping bag, no pack. Probably he rose early to track some unsuspecting creature.
I roll over the other way to ask Brigit and Dean where he’s gone. Their boulder is empty. No sign of anyone. Nothing left behind.
What? I jump up and at high speed, pull on my wetsuit and stuff things into my pack.
“Brigit? Dominik? Dean?” I call out.
There’s a faint echo from the granite face across the stream.
My pulse runs riot. They wouldn’t abandon me. They’re just ahead scouting or something. I crouch down to check their trail. There’s a muddle of boot prints where they converged and started downstream along the bank, clearly walking slowly and silently so as not to wake me up.
Then I see a boot print upstream of theirs, one that doesn’t belong to our group. It’s one solitary print beside where I slept.
I lean down to sniff, touch and analyze it. It’s fresh, no more than a few hours old. My heart convulses. Joy, disbelief, and confusion all flood my senses. By leaning in even lower, I confirm by 150 percent that it’s Dad’s boot: his and no one else’s.
And it’s from last night, no doubt about that either. Dominik would surely confirm my conclusions if he were here.
“Dad?” I shout. “Dad? It’s Tristan! Are you here? Are you okay?”
The echo mocks me.
Despite my best tracking skills, I find zero other signs of my father, not even the faintest trail indicating where he appeared from or carried on to. Nothing, nil, nada. Like I’m a total dickhead instead of one of the best hound dogs around. There’s only one explanation: He was at my side at some point in the night, and wants me to see he was here, but doesn’t want me to track him farther. He has the skills to do exactly that.
But why has everyone left me this morning? Eventually I’m forced to leave camp and follow my group’s trail.
Phew! I’m relieved when I see Brigit ambling toward me.
“Tristan! You’re up! Figured you needed some extra sleep,” she greets me. She extends cupped hands filled with wild salmonberries. “Hungry?”
“As a wolf in winter. Where are the others?” Damned if I’m going reveal the panic I had earlier, or the visit from Dad.
She pushes past me to spill her load of berries into two bowls arranged on a flat boulder beside her pack and digs out two spoons. “I talked Dominik into taking Dean up and out. We found a safe spot. So it’s just you and me now.”
“You talked —”
“You heard me. They’re hiking out. They’ve got the ascender device, pulley, and backup rope, and Dean’s in good hands. He didn’t want to go, but he had his fun yesterday. Even managed to do the falls. Did pretty well, considering.” She sounds cheerful, proud, a different human being from yesterday.
“And Dominik was okay with babysitting him up to the top? Then Alex will pick Dean up or something?”
She chuckles as she sprinkles sugar on the berries. “Exactly. And I promised Dominik he could drop down and rejoin us before the end, while Alex and Elspeth put Dean into lock-up.”
“Lock-up?”
“I’m joking. But Elspeth has to find a way to keep him from returning, or she’ll be in deep, deep trouble with me.” There’s a sour, scary undertone in her voice.
“Uh-huh.” I try to imagine how Brigit talked Dominik into the task. I imagine her cozying up to him and pouring on the charm just long enough to get what she wanted. Polish passion clearly fries the brain circuits. The bigger worry is whether she has some kind of new agenda now that it’s just her and me. I want to search for Dad, now that I’ve seen signs of him, but I also want to get away from Brigit and get back to Mom, if she’s in the hospital. I’m torn, but am determined not to let Brigit see that.
“Brigit, you know I have the bandana, and I don’t really need to carry on to the bottom of the Lower Canyon. My mom’s in the hospital, and I’m sure Uncle Ted needs me. The shop’s losing money. I’ve got to start working. I can’t just carry on like I’m on vacation.”
Is Dad really alive? He’ll show himself again if he wants to, or maybe he’ll follow me home. He’d want me to get back to Mom, for sure. Anyway, I can search for him once Brigit is out of the picture, right?
She tilts her head and surveys me with that same smile, the one that now makes me suspicious. “Sure you can carry on. Your mom’s in good hands. Better off than she was before, since she can’t pull it together on her own. And you don’t want to wimp out on the very last part of the Lower Canyon. Not after wanting to do it all this time. And by the way, Alex has made a generous offer to your uncle to buy the shop. ”
My eyes narrow. Firecrackers erupt in my chest. “Alex has no right to go behind my back like that! Uncle Ted would never sell without talking to me. And you don’t know anything about me or my mom! You don’t give a shit about either of us, and who says I’ve always wanted to do the stupid Lower Canyon?” My raised voice startles some starlings from a nearby bush.
You’re letting her get to you, Tristan. Embrace calm. You’re supposed to stay strong and positive.
No! I’m sick of being Mr. Strong and Mr. Positive!
She keeps the smile on her face. “It’ll all sort out when you get back, Tristan. Relax.”
Relax? Is she for real? But a question pushes itself forward and overrides all the other crap for now.
“Brigit, do you think my dad might still be alive?”
Her smile grows larger. “I know he’s alive, Tristan.”
Electrical charges travel down my spine. “What? Why wouldn’t you have told me before? As if you’d know, anyway.”
“Tristan, chill,” she says in a too-calm voice. “He ran off with my mother. They were hiding out together. He wouldn’t want you or your mom to know that, would he?”
“You’re a freaking liar, Brigit. You make up ridiculous stories and think I’ll believe them.”
She shrugs. “I couldn’t tell you in front of Dominik or anything, but when I was on the Search and Rescue team looking for your father, he approached me when no one else was around. At Twin Falls, which is still downstream of us.”
My entire body goes rigid. My vocal cords shut down.
“He wanted to know if my mom had made it out. He told me they faked their death at Plunge Falls, so they could take off and be together, but then she disappeared on him. He was searching for her and hiding from Search and Rescue.”
“You think I believe a thing you’re saying? You’re the one who needs a mental ward!” I spout. “He wouldn’t even know who you are!”
She sighs and looks at me with something like pity. “He knows who I am. He was at our house in Lillooet.”
I pretend to play along for a minute, to see w
hat other crazy shit she’s going to serve up. “And what did he say when you told him your mother had drowned?”
“I didn’t.”
“You what?”
“I told him she was still in the canyon looking for him. So that he’d keep suffering. So that he’d die down here searching for her, since it was his fault she’d been lured away and died in the first place.”
Goosebumps have broken out all over my body. I would declare her totally insane except for one thing: I saw my father’s boot print. “And you never told Search and Rescue you talked to him, that he was alive?”
She shakes her head with an air of satisfaction. “Nor anyone else until I told you just now. But I know he has been watching us the last few days, Tristan. Maybe following us. You feel it, too, don’t you?”
I shiver despite myself. “If Dad were still alive, he’d have come home,” I declare. “And if he were here now, he’d come talk to me.”
“Would he, if he is still looking for my mother and not wanting you to know that?”
Still looking for her mother months later? Seriously? Brigit is nuts! I grit my teeth and refuse to answer. She looks pleased with herself, like she has won a round or something.
Peering about, I weigh my options. Brigit has the main rope and best gear and knows how to carry on down the canyon. I’ve got to stay on her good side until I can escape, especially since Dominik has taken most of our spare equipment. But escape I will, and as soon as I can, because the woman is scary dangerous.
“So, ready to move on down? Some fun stuff ahead.”
“Um, what about breakfast?”
“Um, ya! Coming up, Tristano. Fresh wild salmonberries, sweetened.”
CHAPTER 16
The rain starts pelting while we’re eating. I spoon down the salmonberries in a hurry.
“Could flash flood, Brigit. We should climb higher, in case.”
“Nah. Just a little local precipitation. Let’s do a rappel or two and then decide.”
She selects a stump to serve as an anchor and prepares to shimmy down to the next stretch, twelve feet below. “If I signal you to jump, go for it.”
“Okay.”
A minute later, I peer down and hear her blow the all-clear signal on her whistle. I also see a white shadow lurking under the water, like a granite boulder that could shatter my body. I toss my pack down and opt for the rappel.
“Could’ve missed that by a mile,” she says when I point it out. But I’m trusting her less and less.
“How far away is the feeder canyon that Dominik and Dean took?” I ask.
“Around the next bend.”
I relax a little. She may not know it, but that’s my exit ramp, where I’ll be leaving her Horror Show Swallow Canyon Expeditions tour, now down to just one non-paying customer.
Meanwhile, the stream section through which we’re slogging in the ever-steadier rainfall has risen to thigh-chilling deep. I peer up and see a ledge five feet above us that would make things safer and easier. A skinny overhang, for sure, but I’d rather make like a tightrope walker than half swim in rising, waist-deep current.
Moving to the stream’s edge, I balance on a wet rock and reach my fingertips to the ledge. It takes several tries, but eventually my bouldering experience and upper body strength gets me up there, pack and all.
Brigit watches with a frown, then moves reluctantly to the same stone. In attempting to pull herself up, she slips and falls into the stream.
“You okay? Your pack’s too heavy,” I say as she clambers to her feet. “Hand it to me, and then I’ll pull you up.”
“No!” she snaps.
No? What’s with her precious pack that makes her all but cling to it? Instead, with admirable determination, she tries several more times until she manages to join me.
With our backs to the wall, hands feeling along it for balance and packs hanging off our shoulders, we glide sideways like nervous crabs, fingers pinching whatever knobs the granite offers. I’m having an easier time of it, since Brigit’s bulkier bag forces her farther out from the wall. It doesn’t help that the rain is now battering full force and the ledge is slippery.
• • •
Suddenly, Brigit totters and screams as she falls into the water.
I watch, horrified, as she thrashes about under the fast-moving water, trying to escape from the pack she had not fully lowered from her shoulder. Time slows as I witness her struggle in watery silhouette. I’m about to shed my own pack and dive in, when she surfaces, gasping.
Her pack pops up beside her, and she reaches for it to help keep her afloat, but it slips from her grasp as the current hurls her toward a narrow drop-off. She has just enough time to aim her feet downstream before she disappears. A second later, her bag lodges itself solidly across the chute.
Uh-oh. That’s not going to be easy to get. But I’m on it. I break off the end of a branch sticking out from the wall beside me and squat down to poke and prod the pack in an effort to coax it down the slide. No luck. I grab my throw-bag rope and locate an upward-thrusting bit of stone in the wall beside me that allows me to hang off my ledge and reach down to attach the other end of the rope to the backpack. Five minutes of grunting later, I finally manage to haul Brigit’s runaway pack up beside me.
I lift my whistle and offer a long blast to let her know I’m okay.
I hear a faint whistle indicating she’s okay, too.
“Got your pack! Coming,” I shout, even though it’s highly unlikely she can hear me.
That’s when I get a flashback of Dean tilting his head toward the pack. “Have to tell you somethin’, Tristan,” he’d confided, prompting his sister to order, “Stop whispering, you two!” And after that, she put lots of effort into keeping me away from both the pack and him.
Dean wanted me to open it.
I glance toward the chute. She has no way of seeing me right now. My gloves come off, and fumbling with wet, cold fingers, I unclasp the buckles and start digging. Rope, carabiners, and other metal gear, headlamp, food, first-aid kit. The usual. In another bag stuffed into the big one, her sleeping bag — but it feels strangely heavy and lumpy. My hand plunges into it, touches worn leather, fights to extract what is buried inside the bag.
A boot. Just one boot. The left-foot one.
My throat clamps up; my mind begins to race. Both times I saw Dad’s boot print, it was the left foot. Never the right. And there was no further evidence, no trail, beyond the imprint itself.
She has been planting the boot prints for me, drawing me down the canyon for whatever perverted reason. My gut turns over with this devastating realization, and shivers travel down my limbs as I realize she’s crazier than I imagined and I am alone with her.
Maybe she planted the bandana as well. But no — Dominik went ahead of both of us there. Maybe she asked him to plant it? Could I trust either of them? Was meeting Dominik in the woods that day a coincidence or not? Had he already met Brigit? Why did he take off with Dean without even saying goodbye this morning, especially knowing I wanted to get out of the canyon to go see my mom?
I open my own bag to pull out the bandana. It’s not where I stored it. In a panic, I paw through my pack. Someone has been in my bag and stolen it! The only trace I have of my father, the item that I’d hoped would somehow help my mother, is gone. It doesn’t take much guessing as to who took it, but even when I remove every item in Brigit’s bag, I’ve got to admit defeat. It’s not in her pack either. She tossed it away just to be cruel.
Then again, I’ve been too eager to believe what I wanted to believe. I failed to stop and think logically. My father only ever wore his bandana on the approach to the canyon, not while actually canyoneering. It would have been in his backpack, not on his neck at the time he was in the place where I found it. And even if he’d gone to the trouble of taking it out and tying it to that spire in the airpl
ane tunnel, Search and Rescue would have seen it months back. Come to think of it, floods would have ripped it away or frayed it until it looked much worse than it does now.
I don’t know where she got hold of some of his stuff, but she must have been so desperate to make me think I was finding signs of my father, she didn’t think things through — that he wouldn’t have worn that bandana here in the canyon.
My father is neither alive nor following us. My entire body slumps and shrivels into itself with this realization. The pain washes over me, hot and sharp, a cruel redo of the agony I suffered when we first lost him.
Where did she get my father’s boot and bandana? Just forming the question churns my stomach. And what else of his does she have from her Search and Rescue stint? My body begins to shake uncontrollably. It’s all I can do to remain standing on the ledge.
As rapidly as I can, I return everything to her pack, hopefully in the same order as it came out, and snap the buckles shut. I secure mine, too. Then I shuffle carefully along the ledge, my pack on my front, hers on my back, both hanging from just one strap down my shoulders, until I’m past the chute. I peer five feet down into a section of stream where my pale-faced guide is up to her neck in water, clinging to a bulge of rock.
I toss my throw-bag rope down to her and help her back up. We stand there a minute, shivering and clutching our packs, as the stream level continues to rise.
“That’s where Dominik and my brother went,” Brigit says through chattering teeth as she points downstream at a tributary streamlet coming in swollen with muddy water.
“Think they made it out before the worst of the downpour?” I ask. Somehow, I’m certain they did. I just wish I were with them. As I view the flooding channel, my spirits sink: no longer an exit option for me.
“They’ll be okay,” she says, but there’s a hint of worry in her tone.
“And us?” I ask.
“We’ll carry on in a minute.” She forces a smile. “Maybe there will be a rainbow at the end of the rain shower.”