He’d spotted us as we clambered down the riverbank, hence his efforts to kick at the rocks that were underfoot, disturbing the scene with his kicking up a storm, urgently moaning, despite his gag, desperate to catch our attention. We scoured the immediate area for any further sign of trouble, deducing it safe enough for me to release him with two swift strikes of my knife.
The dude’s wrists were red raw from the rope. I reached around the back of his head and cut through the old T-shirt that served as a gag. He sputtered and spit and bent forward to catch his breath, stumbling back against the tree to regain his balance.
“Man, is it good to see you two,” he said, relief spreading across his face.
“How long have you been tied up here, officer?” I asked.
“A while, I lost track, blacked out I guess . . . kids, male and female . . . young devils long gone by now.”
It was then that we were stopped in our tracks by the truck alarm, followed shortly after by a loud screech of tires and Maggie’s screaming bloody murder from above. We’d thrashed and scrambled through wild grasses and brush to bust our way back up the riverbank to find both she and the truck and the darn dog gone. Maggie astounded even herself by making it back with our wheels.
~ I awoke sometime before sunrise the next morning, confused. I could not for the life of me figure out where I was. It was the waning moonlight that woke me as it stole through the window in the so-called guest room that was more of a junk room to be honest.
Walter had been insistent on putting Maggie and me up at his place after all the excitement on the road the night before. His home is a compact, one-story deal with a knotty pine cathedral ceiling in the living room, big ol’ single pane windows, skylights and solar tubes. A typical ‘60’s-build, I would say, back when boomers like Walter were kids.
The room where we slept was piled to the rafters with boxes of seed packets, stacks of plastic plant pots and gardening books, a mess of unidentifiable objects Walter claimed might come in useful someday.
Our host had shuffled around the room on showing us in, shifting a bunch of boxes from the top of the bed to the floor.
“Let’s hope Bobby’s quake doesn’t choose tonight to hit,” I’d whispered to Maggie.
“What’s that?” Walter asked, absentmindedly.
Maggie winked at me, stifling a giggle.
A round metal spaceship of a wood-burning stove kicked out a substantial heat and the house was toasty in no time. Little Honey had been as relieved as us to be out of the truck. She was a deal less flustered by the carjacking as we were, as far as we could tell.
“Maybe she’s used to drama,” Maggie said as Little Honey yawned, closed her eyes and stretched out her swollen form on a large, lumpy cushion Walter had set down for her by the fire. The soft light from the stove turned the color of her blonde fur a blazing gold.
Despite how wiped he must have been, the dude had taken it upon himself to rummage around the kitchen cupboards for the makings of a late-night feast.
We’d sat ourselves down, three road warriors on rickety chairs pulled up to the stove. Though the closed-up room had warmed substantially, our breath mingled with the steam cast from the full bowls we’d set on our laps, filled with pasta tossed in one of Walter’s prize artichoke pesto sauces he’d made a show of pulling from the freezer.
“Impromptu suppers are my forte,” he’d declared, his chest puffed with pride. “Welcome to Waltersville, Maggie and Marcus. I will be honored to show you around the famous Walter’s Garden come daylight.”
We had been witness to the contents of the chest freezer he kept in the garage, filled to the brim with an impressive stash of vacuum packed fruits and veggies and cuts from our host’s past hunting expeditions — venison, elk, duck, wild boar, turkey.
Walter wandered off in search of a towel and an extra blanket for the bed. “I’ll figure out the hot water in the morning,” he said. “You’ll find a redwood tub at your disposal on the deck — nothing says Humboldt better than an outdoor soak.”
Maggie’s hair spread out over the pillow beside me, it’s blue-black hue tinted silver by the moon’s luminescence. I tuned in to the mesmerizing rhythm of her breathing, placing my arm on the round curve of hip, taking care not to awaken her. My eyes rested on her mouth, her lips upturned in a pleasing dream, which brought a smile to my face. Gently, I slipped my free hand to rest in the soft, warm space between her mid thighs and she slept on, untroubled by her ordeal of the prior evening.
This totally random thing, whatever the heck it is that we have between us, it frequently induces a most strange yet pleasant physical sensation like a bunch of butterflies let loose in my stomach. And I was all for giving it the green light to pick up steam that early morning, to grant it permission to grow into something real and good and solid for once in my goddamned life.
My last relationship, if you’d call it that, lasted one entire month, though, in truth, we never spent so much as one whole night together. Her name was Rachel. She was smart and all — a professor if you please from Sonoma State, out at Point Reyes on a late spring assignment to study wildflowers.
Though Rachel was the book smart type, she was impressively robust, with real pretty cornflower blue eyes, I recall. I admired her mettle though in truth, she never so much as set my heart on a medium flame. I’d been assigned to her for the purely practical purpose of preventing any mishap, accident or run-in with the wildlife while she navigated the more remote trails and rugged cliff sides of the National Seashore.
She had never learned to drive. I thought this mighty odd for a field scientist. Other than that, Rachel was resourceful. I could relate to her being happy enough with her own company.
It’s so damn easy to escape from the outside world in a 71,000-acre preserve, let me tell you. The two of us spent many long hours together during Rachel’s four-week study assignment, traversing the more remote corners and hard to reach interior of the park. One evening, early on, after she’d invited herself over to my cabin for a supper of cold cuts, pickles and bread, she asked me straight out, after we ate, if I’d care to go join her in bed.
I’d never heard it put so matter-of-fact. For the remains of her stay, Rachel switched her daytime attentions from wildflowers to her intimate study of the male form, every darn evening after dark, like clockwork.
I willingly obliged, though I doubt either of us would look back at it as an overtly passionate pairing in any wild stretch of the imagination. We liked each other well enough, I figured. And I never felt like she expected me to fake that it was any more than that on my part.
Rachel was fit and toned from frequent hiking on the trails on Sonoma Mountain and I guess I’d have to say, looking back on it, we were matched in a scientific sense, meeting one another’s short-term biological and physical needs. Though we made the best of our time together, neither of us tried to hide any lack of sorrow when it came time for her to leave.
Two introverts do not make for sparks to fly. With Maggie and me, I have to say, it is the polar opposite, a primal pairing. Where Rachel was all sharp, electric edges of a purely technical focus, Maggie is soft and warm and generous. I feel it in the way she smells, her voice, her touch, her eyes and her kisses telling me exactly what it is she wants from me.
It was after nine when a glowing, bare-skinned Maggie propped herself up on her elbow, watching me quizzically.
“You look surprised.” I said. “What? Did you think I’d take off in the night? Leave you here with Walter to figure things out?”
“I wouldn’t blame you, Marcus,” Maggie replied, her lips nibbling at the outer edge of my ear as she snuggled in closer. “I can’t help but wonder when you’re gonna tell me that we’re making a mistake, rushing into things like a couple of dumb teenagers.”
I shook my head and took her face in my hands.
“Darlin’, I may not be a man of many words, but don’t you be thinking I’m not bold enough to take you on.”
�
��In that case,” she said, kicking off the sheet that was wrapped around her middle, “since you’re sticking around, I think it’s only right that you check me over for damage from yesterday’s ordeal.”
I took my assignment seriously, my senses fully alert as I set about inspecting her body in close detail for any signs of more serious battle distress than the road rash I’d tended to the night before.
All’s I will say is that it was a good thing her adrenaline had kept her holding onto that damn windshield. We would have been looking at a serious case of broken bones or worse had she lost her grip.
The house was silent. There was no evidence of Walter in the kitchen or elsewhere and, for the first time since we’d been thrown together on this fucked-up, crazy road trip, the time was right to get to know each other a little better in daylight, her contours, the curve and scar tissue of my stump. We took it slowly, it was less ecstatic than the first time, but hey, it felt every bit as doggone good to mix it up by morning light.
I rolled myself off the mattress onto my crutch and made my way into the kitchen for coffee. A flash of Bobby’s being swept away in the floodwater washed over me afresh. Grief came close to consuming me as I stood waiting for the coffee to brew. A fresh stab of guilt flowed through my core. What type of dude rolls around the sack with his dead best buddy’s sister-in-law so soon after his sudden and tragic demise? Maybe it was Bobby after all who had configured this crazy thing with Maggie and me. I could not so much as take my eyes off her when I was with her, how was I to stop what he’d started by asking me over there in the first place?
Strange thing is I would have been the first in line to declare it all a load of crock before I met her. This freaky, unnerving, despairing of wanting and needing to be with her all of the time — all new and totally foreign to me. Bobby’s death would have done me in had Maggie not been by my side. And then again, if Maggie had not been by my side, then maybe Bobby would not be dead. I poured strong, black coffee into a matching pair of Save the Redwoods mugs, quitting the brain conniption and giving in to plain gratitude for what my buddy had brought into my life.
After we drank our coffee tucked on between the sheets of the toasty bed, we decided to make our way outdoors into the fine morning drizzle. Maggie helped me navigate the slick deck with me balanced on one crutch, carefully stepping down into the soothing waters of Walter’s secluded redwood tub.
“Just look at that view,” a naked Maggie pointed to a primeval world of redwood trees, the mountainous forest beyond. A thick, purple heather-colored layer of clouds floated on the upper reaches of the forest. The redwoods were busy doing their daily job, moving moisture out of the clouds, funneling it down those mighty 35-story trunks and into the thirsty receptacles of their root systems.
“At a risk of sounding too much like Walter, this forest, I believe this ancient, complex ecosystem serves to reinforce how truly insignificant and tiny our lives are.” I reached out to trace her bare collarbone with my thumb. “We’re here for so short a time, Maggie. Bobby, Bridget, you, me. These trees, on the other hand, they remind us not to squander the time we’ve been given.”
I closed my eyes and pondered the god-dang fragility of life, the lives of those we love. A pang of fear ran through me when I thought of Mia and Jazmin still out there in the redwoods somewhere, who the hell knew where.
“Shush, now,” Maggie replied, taking my hand as we soaked and savored a few moments more of peace and quiet in the comfortable embrace of the warm water. “You’re a deep one.”
Walter returned just as we were drying off. Maggie wrapped the extra towel we had wrestled from a pile of laundry around her torso in a modest move to cover the important parts. Anyways, I reckoned our new pal and fellow fugitive chaser is cool with a spot of outdoor nudity, so it didn’t bother me none to hop on back indoors buck naked. Hey, last thing these old hippies are is prudes.
A basket of aromatic oven-warm banana nut muffins sat on the kitchen counter, wrapped in a yellow napkin.
“You can thank Lori for the baked goods,” Walter said, following the hunger in my eyes as they honed in on the muffins. “I stopped in to see her this morning while you two young’uns were catching up on your beauty sleep.”
Lori keeps an eye on the place when Walter is away and, I suspect, more than an eye on Walter when he’s back home. “She’s a good ol’ gal, waters the garden when its thirsty, though Lord knows, it’s not been in the least part a necessity what with all this rain,” he rambled on with his well-versed diversion tactics, having detected my picking up on the glint in his eye.
Walter’s neighbor’s baked goods sure hit the mark. A satisfied rumbling from my belly testified to her baking skills. Lori’s muffins revealed themselves deliciously gooey on the inside on account of a generous handful of dark chocolate chips she’d thrown into the mix.
Our host placed a heavy, blue, cast iron teakettle to boil on the stovetop flame. Maggie’s phone vibrated on the table. She started from her seat, checked the caller, placing it on speaker.
“Maggie, it’s me, Bridget.”
We all three jumped to attention. You coulda heard a pin drop on the kitchen floor.
The connection was spotty, yet through its thin signal we clearly heard what it was that Bridget had to say.
“Jazmin — Maggie, oh my God, I just found out that she’s safe, at least. Turned herself in last night.”
Sharing this was all Bridget was able to muster before she broke down, sobbing, catching her breath. “Don’t get too ahead of yourself, it’s not all good news, I barely know where to start . . . she says she has not so much as set eyes on Mia these past couple of months.”
There followed the deep and mournful cry of a mother in pain. We stood in silence, mouths agape, wide-eyed, waiting for Bridget to regain her composure and tell us more of how it was that Jazmin was apart from Mia.
“Oh dear God, the girl is scared to death as to what may have happened to Mia,” Bridget sputtered.
Maggie tried her best to calm her sister. “How, why, whoa, what do you mean, Bridget, when you say that Jazmin turned herself in?” she pressed. “Let’s start there.”
“She showed up at the police station in Ukiah last night. Turned herself in along with a truckload of weed.”
It took a little more than a minute for the light bulb moment to hit. Maggie, me, Walter, the three of us in unison — judging by the look that passed between us, it did not take a genius to figure out the freak coincidence.
Jazmin had made a run for it while her counterpart was otherwise occupied dragging the unfortunate, unconscious sheriff deputy down the riverbank. We must have passed her, unbeknownst to any of us, heading in the opposite direction on our way up along the Redwood Highway.
Bridget, Luna and Jazmin’s parents were about to head up to Ukiah to reunite with the girl. Jazmin was scheduled to meet with a public defense lawyer and a team of psychological and medical professionals.
Bridget managed to sufficiently gather her wits about her to further explain how investigators were now aware of Jazmin’s precarious situation given that she is over 18 and is no longer a juvenile, with no papers to her name. What Jazmin was claiming, Bridget explained, was that she had turned herself in as an innocent victim who’d been caught up in a drug-running ring.
“They’re tellin’ us if what Jazmin claims is true, it’s suspected human traffickin’ we’re lookin’ at in so far as her defense,” Bridget added. “All we can do is pray this prompts a high profile search for Mia, Maggie. I can’t bear it. How the hell do I keep goin’ if we don’t find her soon? It’s the not knowin’ what has happened to her, Jesus Christ, it’s too much to bear.”
Maggie cleared her throat and spoke real calm, taking great pains to reassure her sister we were on it. We were in Humboldt, she explained, with people who were already helping ramp up our hunt for Mia. “Trust me, Bridget,” she said as she hung up, “We won’t stop until we find her.”
“At the very le
ast, Jazmin turning herself in puts Mia on the law enforcement radar,” Walter said.
On cue, Deputy Hernandez showed up at Walter’s front door within five minutes of Bridget’s phone call. The dude was a deal more chipper than we’d found him after his personal ordeal the previous evening. A shower and a clean uniform helped. He wore fresh bandages wrapped neatly around his wrists, visible beneath his long sleeved shirt.
“Good morning to you all,” he said, shaking hands in turn. “I’m here to let you know I have been apprised of some interesting news. The passenger of the stolen truck surrendered last night. She was taken into custody in Ukiah,” he announced, immediately sensing from our reactions that his news did not come as the surprise he had expected. He explained how he was on his way down to Ukiah after talking first with us.
Maggie patiently shared what we’d learned from Bridget’s call and how we’d connected the dots. “It’s vital that you help us find Mia, officer,” she pleaded. “As soon as humanly possible. We have every reason to believe she’s still alive and that she’s in serious danger.”
Officer Hernandez nodded, gravely. He seemed a decent enough cop, though my confidence in the speed of his detective work reinforced the fact in my mind that it was up to Maggie and me to find Mia and fast.
“There’s no time to be wasted, I agree,” he said. “Troubling thing is it’s not at all as textbook as it should be up here.”
He told us how he had confiscated such a volume of illegal weed haul that month alone his wife was sick and tired of washing his uniform. “If she don’t launder it separate from the family wash, the kids, they darn well go to school reeking of it.”
Walter pledged to call on each and every one of his own personal connections in the tri-county region. “I made a start with my visit to Lori, this morning,” he said. “She’ll be over shortly.”
Big Green Country Page 27