Scientists, Walter explained, are studying the banana slug to see what the future of slime might hold for the environment, for human life.
“Tell us more about the settlers here — the Europeans,” I asked, moving on from our natural science lesson to veer back into a seemingly limitless anthropological knowledge trove.
Walter was clearly in his element with Marcus and me at once his most responsive, or at the very least, captive students.
“Most of the settlers were Gold Rush prospectors that never did get lucky finding any gold,” he said. We were leaning against a large, cold, smooth-sided boulder, the three of us side by side, Little Honey by our feet. “Settlements gradually built up along the coast, those with good access to the Pacific, boats coming up from San Francisco. It was the more adventurous folk who spread east into the Eel River Valley, pushing their boundaries deeper into native land.”
Wispy strands of creeping fog rolled stealthily upriver. The temperature had dropped noticeably.
“Logging companies established themselves in the region at a rapid pace, as they also did along the Russian River, stripping the river basin of hundreds of millions of feet of redwood timber board in no time,” Walter said.
The wood was floated down the river to an estuary.
“Given the many twists and turns in the Eel, larger logs were cut into more manageable, more easily floatable pieces of wood that they called cants,” he explained. We craned our necks to look down river at the pearl gray, by then fluffier curls of incoming fog.
By the 1880s, I discovered, the Eel River and the Eureka Railroad that was later deemed as being way too dangerous to maintain, transported tons of lumber from the estuary to Humboldt Bay. From there hundreds of thousands of lengths of solid redwood were shipped to San Francisco to build its famous Victorian structures.
I’ve rented apartments in countless Victorian conversions in San Francisco over the years. I thought about the last place I’d shared with Andres, the one I’d walked away from, a large, light-filled, top floor apartment in an ornate Victorian structure most certainly constructed from redwood logs floated down this very waterway.
I’d never given it much thought, the monstrous volume of raw material acquired in the mad race for development in San Francisco and the many emerging towns and small cities that popped up throughout Northern California during the Gold Rush.
I strained my neck and looked upwards into the canopy as daylight dwindled and the treetops faded into a dirty pink sky. The liner of my old leather jacket was proving insufficient for the necessary insulation and I shivered.
“Oh, hello . . . we have company,” Walter remarked.
Across the riverbank, we watched as a family of three deer, a mother and her fawns froze in place. We none of us moved a foot until the mother deer backed slowly into the shadows of the forest, followed by her young.
“These beautiful, sacred redwoods, home to these and many more magnificent creatures, represent a mere fragment of the global forest it once was. We’re talking millions of years,” Walter whispered, in the deer’s wake. “Gets me every time.”
“We were just talking about this,” Marcus replied. “Maggie and me. The fact that the redwoods covered much of the world’s hemisphere . . . Alaska, Siberia, Greenland.”
“It makes me happy to think of the dinosaurs that rubbed elbows with these trees,” Walter continued as we made our way back uphill to the truck. I grabbed on to strands of longer grasses for support. “Continents shifted, climates changed. The ancient redwood forest shrunk to what remains today.”
Marcus caught my eye and made a face as Walter rambled on.
“It only added insult to injury,” Marcus interjected, moving the topic along a pace: “the logging industry coming into its own was a terrible blow for the already endangered redwoods.”
Marcus helped a struggling Little Honey Momma scramble up a steep section of the bank, pushing her gently from her backside.
“We ought to be more than aware of our follies, by now,” Walter added as he opened the door for Little Honey, avoiding the bulge of her belly as he carefully hoisted her up. “It’s our responsibility, all of us, to protect these coastal redwoods — Sequoia Sempervirens,” he said, quoting the scientific name of the colossal beauties that watched down on us.
If there was any place to reach out and hug a tree, this was it, the Redwood Highway being so narrow in parts that I could have easily rolled down my window and touched my palm to the rough, red bark of any one of these gentle giants.
Borders are easily confused when crossing out of densely forested Humboldt and into Mendocino and Trinity counties within the Emerald Triangle. I think of the region now not as a triangle as such, more like the side profile of a woman looking over from the coast to the east. Waist up is what folk say they see of her silhouette — her backbone forming the spine of the more remote parts of the Lost Coast.
“How many people live up here?” I asked.
“Less than a quarter million in all three counties,” Walter replied. “Not counting the extras who flood in for the trimming during harvest time.”
Marcus talked of it being the perfect place to grow weed given the warm, fertile soil and a typical 14 to 18 hours of sunlight every 24-hour cycle. “Airflow and breeze being optimal,” he said.
Walter agreed. “Average temperature sits between 70 and 80 degrees,” he said. “Most of the folk who live here are largely minding their own business, spread out among tens of thousands of square miles of curvy, narrow, isolated dirt roads in dense forest land, though most, these days, are directly or indirectly involved in or impacted by the pot growing industry.”
“Why’d you quit teaching?” I asked. My eyes were immediately drawn to what looked like the flash of lights a ways up ahead.
Walter shrugged his shoulders. “I gave it up, called it a day after Connie passed. Lost the heart for dealing with a classroom of hormonal teenagers.” I turned to him as he moved closer to peer through the windshield and check out the disturbance, one hand on top of his duffle bag, the other rested in the small of Little Honey’s back.
“Looks like trouble ahead,” Marcus said, slowing to a crawl and pulling to a stop beside a cop car’s flashing lights. An empty sheriff deputy’s vehicle was stopped at an awkward angle clear across the center of the highway.
We were close enough to see in through the open driver’s seat door, to hear the engine running. My hackles rose. Visibility was fading fast.
“Wait here,” Walter instructed as he slid a pistol out of his pack and slipped it into his jacket.
“What the hell?” My eyes popped wide at the sight of the gun.
“Never travel without one these days,” Walter replied. “Connie, bless her, she would not have heard of it, old hippie that she was, but she’s gone and times have changed. No need for you two to be afraid, it’s called moving with the times, merely a safety precaution.”
“Sure appears as if you’re well equipped to protect what’s yours,” Marcus said, reaching across to stop me as I motioned to open my door. In one smooth move, he released the latch on the glove compartment, keeping his eyes trained on Walter in the rearview mirror.
My eyes widened a second time as Marcus felt around and retrieved a fixed blade survival knife from behind the stack of CDs, the sort my old man had favored for setting traps, cutting branches, carving wood, skinning rabbits.
“Hop into the back seat with the dog, Maggie,” Marcus instructed, keeping his cool. He slipped the knife into his boot. “Lay low and lock the doors.”
“Hell no, you’re not leaving me here, I’m coming with you,” I shot back, my animal instinct kicking in, a rush of adrenaline charging my veins.
“Best you listen to Marcus in this instance,” Walter leaned forward and intervened. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but this may not be the right time for you to prove your mettle. You’ve got bigger fish to fry.”
The city girl in me believed there was safety
in numbers if nothing else, though I took short stock of what he’d said and slunk, reluctantly onto the back seat alongside Little Honey Momma, locking the doors behind the guys as they stepped out to approach the flashing vehicle. I peeped out of the side window to watch as they walked slowly, side by side, Walter pointing his pistol into the open door, while Marcus kept an eye on the surrounds.
Later, Marcus explained, it was on account of the sheriff deputy’s shotgun being missing, removed from its strap in the front of the vehicle and there being nothing and nobody in the back seat or the trunk, not a single soul or evidence of another vehicle in sight, that prompted them to investigate further.
“Law enforcement is forever on the lookout for cannabis traveling south, narcotics, weapons and drugs being ferried in the opposite direction, the Redwood Highway being a major portal of illegal trafficking, drugs and people, both,” he’d said.
Minutes after I spotted the tops of their heads disappearing down the riverbank, I came close to having another of my fake heart attacks at the sudden sound of rapping on the passenger seat window above my head. I flipped around and found myself eyeball to eyeball through the glass with a zit-faced kid — a teenager, dancing around on his feet, frantic. He was maniacally motioning for me to open the door, to give him the keys.
In a flash, I pressed the alarm button on the electronic keys Marcus had placed in the palm of my hand. I kicked the passenger door open and hurled myself out into a somewhat unstable standing position. The second I found my balance, I took off, running, leaving Little Honey Momma in the truck, initial thoughts rushing through my mind that she would jump out after me.
I never paused to turn my head though I heard his body stumble into the side of the truck as he came running after me. It didn’t take him long to pick up sufficient speed to take me down. My knees and the bottoms of my palms stung, the weight of his slight frame on my back, briefly, as he rolled me around, straddling my torso on his knees, prying my fist open, yelling in Spanish: “Dame las llaves” — “Give me your keys”.
He was more afraid of me than I was of him of that I was sure. Still, he’d had the strength to take me down and keep me there and he grabbed what he was searching for, leaping up after he’d pulled my clenched fist apart, taking off running in a cartoon cloud of dust, back in the direction of the two empty vehicles.
It took me a minute to compose myself, to figure out if I’d done any more serious damage than the stinging cuts and bruises of my fall onto the loose rocks on the surface of the road. I placed my hands back on the ground and slowly rolled myself up into a standing position with a view of the road behind me. I felt dizzy but my adrenaline continued to pump. I strained my eyes to better see what I could already hear — he was clearly having trouble getting the truck into gear, revving the engine over and over. The kid was clumsily attempting to figure his way around a manual transmission.
Finally the truck lunged forward a ways as he tried to make a U-turn. I raced toward the vehicle and launched myself by some crazy-ass impulse on top of the hood, pressing my body onto the windshield. I held on to the wipers for dear life; that served as double duty in blocking his vision from the driver’s seat.
“Don’t ever ask me to pull a stunt like this again,” I warned Marcus, later, “Where the hell I found the strength I have no idea, but I was not about to let the fucker get away with your truck and with Little Honey Momma in her condition all shook up on the back seat and all.”
“No messing with your gut-reaction, Ms. McCleery, that’s for sure,” Marcus replied, wide-eyed, turning my hands in his to inspect the damage. It dawned on me he didn’t even know my married name. I was done with it, anyway. It felt surprisingly good to reclaim my bloodline and my fighting spirit. I should never have given it up for Andres.
Anyway, once I’d latched myself onto the windshield like some kind of mad, giant leech, the kid pressed his foot to the gas and screeched around a sharp turn in the highway, lurching into second gear and screeching forward in the southbound direction. Somehow, in my head, I sensed he was going to have even more trouble getting into third and so I clung on, despite my almost pissing myself in fear that he’d run us into a tree, or the river.
I’d say we were a little less than a mile down the deserted highway before he’d ditched his dumb-ass carjacking idea. He slammed on the brakes, leapt out and scrambled up into the dense grove of trees on the hillside running parallel to the road.
As for me, well, I took my driver’s test in the old man’s truck that I’d learned to maneuver around the ranch from the time I could see above the steering wheel. Stick shift is second nature to me. No sooner than he’d taken off up into the trees, I’d slid myself off the hood and onto the ground, raced around the side of the truck and hopped in through the open driver’s seat door. I turned around just long enough to check on a surprisingly nonplussed Little Honey Momma, flipped an impressive U-turn and floored it back to where I’d seen Marcus and Walter head down the riverbank by the side of the still flashing sheriff deputy’s vehicle. The two of them were standing in the center of the highway, hands on hips, a third guy, short and round in a sheriff deputy’s uniform —the three of them looking totally dazed and disoriented. I’d felt like I’d been unwillingly cast in a high-speed collision course car chase movie scene, my fight-or-flight reaction having kicked into overdrive along with a rush of my body’s vital defense mechanisms.
The teenage failed carjacker fit the description of one of two kids the deputy dude had pulled over for weaving over the center divide. It was the same idiot boy who had knocked him out with a punch to the head and tied the officer to a tree down by the river’s edge.
“Did you see the second one, female?” the sheriff deputy asked. “Whole thing happened so damn fast. I figure given his move to jack the truck, she’d ditched him when he was down by the river, took off with the goods most like . . . a solo mule makes a boatload more money than two.”
He turned on his dispatch radio and proceeded to issue a multi-county alert. “This is Deputy Alejandro Hernandez — two suspects are on the run following abduction of a law enforcement officer during an apprehension for suspected drug transportation . . . ”
Walter volunteered to accompany the deputy in tracking down the boy. “Kid can’t have gotten far by foot.”
Marcus sat me in the truck beside Little Honey Momma, shielding me from any further incident or episodes of sudden bravery, at least for the time being. “You’d make a mighty fine stunt woman, Maggie,” he joked, smoothing my hair with his hand, smiling, a little shakily. He could see I was energized. “Take it easy, now,” he urged, looking into my eyes to evaluate how wired I really was.
Not ten minutes passed before the deputy and Walter returned with the kid in cuffs in the back of the vehicle.
“Cornered the quivering wreck up a tree, a ways up from the fresh tire marks where he’d skidded to a stop,” Walter said.
He was wasted, cold and wet and he was shaking uncontrollably, poor kid. I felt a stab of sympathy for him. What was he? Barely sixteen? Real skinny, long, lank hair scraped back in a ponytail, pockmarked skin on a thin, sad face. He looked terrified to me.
“Came down pretty damn sharpish at the sight of us, seeing as he dropped my pistol half way up,” the deputy added. “Looks like a regular dopehead. I doubt the kid’s a serious drug runner himself on account of his age and his not knowing a whole bunch about how to handle a vehicle.”
Chapter 20
Marcus
Before the whole truck-jacking episode occurred, we’d stood beside the flashing vehicle just as the creeping onset of dusk shrouded the river, Walter and me both, scratching our heads as to why we should give a damn. We both knew we could have just as easily driven by, carried on along our way without so much as a second glance.
“It comes down to common decency, man,” I’d said. “Law enforcement’s out here on the road doing its job. Least we can do is go see where they’re at, if there’s a problem.�
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“They’re forever on the lookout for cannabis traveling south,” Walter replied. “Narcotics, weapons and drugs ferried north, humans and all.”
The rest stop we’d pulled in at earlier had been plastered with posters of missing people, girls and young women mostly, those the law believes to have been abducted and trafficked up into the Emerald Triangle.
“The cops are best suited targeting the big, old illegal grows, not wasting time chasing small time dealers on the road,” Walter said.
“Why’d you reckon he made this stop?” I asked.
“Most likely on suspicion of transportation of ecstasy, meth, cocaine, I’d wager, possible outstanding warrant or stolen vehicle, firearms even,” Walter replied.
“A broken taillight, expired registration, about all it takes to get yourself pulled over,” he said. “Pretext stops — open the door and hey presto . . . ”
“OK, so where’s the other vehicle in that case?” I asked.
“It’s the big dealers they’re after,” Walter replied, shrugging his shoulders. “This guy could be in a whole bunch of trouble if he messed up on an arrest. Come on, we best take a look down by the water.”
I voiced my confusion as to why, being that the Redwood Highway is under the jurisdiction of the California Highway Patrol, a sheriff’s vehicle would be this far out.
“On occasion, sheriffs and city cops dispatch officers outside of their jurisdiction,” Walter explained. “This one’s a Eureka deputy judging from the plates. Long way from home base.”
I’d spotted signs of a struggle in a bed of flattened foliage leading down to the riverbank. “Take a look at that,” I said. Maggie and the mutt were still safely inside the truck at that point. “You head north Walter, and I’ll head south by the water’s edge.”
Dense fog rolled in. It was difficult to make out any other sound above the roaring of the fast flowing river. It was Walter who detected a shuffling of rocks beyond the waisthigh ferns and he heard a series of low, stifled, grunts. He called me over and we kept to the shadows by the grassy bank ‘til we came upon the sheriff deputy, a short, stocky, Latino dude, gagged and tied by the hands and knees to the trunk of a tree.
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