On Location

by Elizabeth Sims

  Crusted blood had dried black beneath his nose—it must have been very hard for him to breathe, his mouth being taped shut: his sinuses were whistling with the effort to get enough air.

  At least the forest air was so rich in oxygen, I guessed we all needed less of it to adequately nourish our cells than with L.A. air. It really felt like that. Denser.

  Kenner's eyes perked up when he saw George and me, though his body remained slack against the tree.

  I hoped he knew enough to gather what energy he had left, to know that we weren't going to dick around very long.

  He did not recognize me.

  "Hey," snickered Bonechopper, nudging him in the thigh with his boot, "you look a lot different from when I first saw you. Fancy boy?" Then, viciously, "Nobody gave me shit. Never had no fancy camping stuff. You shoulda seen the shit he had in his pack! Stupid tent like a pair of panty hose! Binoculars I can't even pronounce! Porro prisms. Never had no million dollars! Fuckin' nancy boy! H'h! Not so fancy now, huh? Look at me, ya pussy!"

  Kenner refused and got a kick for it. He made no sound.

  "Turn him loose now," repeated George evenly.

  "Well, now," said Bonechopper, coming back to himself, "how are we gonna work this?"

  "You're going to free him, then we're all going together to get the money in Chelming."

  Two chunky metal fasteners secured Kenner's cabling. It wasn't immediately clear to me how they worked. The cable bit into his upper arms in spite of his jacket.

  "No," said Bonechopper. "You go on back for the money, then you can have him. Bring the rest of the money."

  "Chopper—" began Dendra.

  "Shut up."

  He had, I perceived, gotten drunk on the feeling of that deck of bills in his pocket.

  Yes, after all, he was the one with the gun, the five thousand dollars, the knowledge of how the iron latches worked—easy to anybody familiar with them, I'm sure—and the captive. He was the super-smart one who'd figured out we weren't looking for rufous hummingbirds.

  Totally in control.

  Such a dangerous position to be in.

  Just where we wanted him.

  He saw me finger the head of my hatchet. As he drew his gun again, I heard a tiny click; the safety catch.

  OK.

  Showing very good judgment, he covered George while saying, "I don't like the looks of Loony Tunes and her tommyhawk. Give it over to Dendra."

  I shrugged and nodded, drawing the hatchet, and as Dendra came over to me, cigarette in one hand, the other outstretched, I stepped in close and slammed the flat of the blade into her face.

  Chapter 26 – A Savage Place for Boys

  Daniel Clements carried a grocery bag crammed full of burnable trash from the kitchen cabin to the unused cabin nearest the lake. This way, if a plane or helicopter should fly over, he could quickly light it to begin a signal fire. As he crossed the clearing, he kept an ear out for the return of George and Rita. His breath puffed white in the cold, still air.

  Gina had come back to herself shortly after Rita and George had set off to try to rescue Kenner. Daniel felt less worried about her, which was good, because he was worrying hard about George and Rita, and a fellow can only manage so much concern at a time.

  Petey had created a primitive hunting sling from one of the camp T-shirts—stretchy fabric that stored energy nicely—and was lobbing stones into the lake, learning relationships between launch trajectory, force, missile mass, and splashdown. Even though the rain had stopped, the boy still wore his flat-topped brown hat. He reminded Daniel of an Appalachian banjo picker he'd known, a stalk-necked guy who never removed his hat, even to eat.

  Daniel turned toward the medical cabin to check on his patients when he saw a man standing at the edge of the woods. Just standing there, a knife sheathed on his belt, his hands quiet at his sides. Daniel realized he must have stepped from the wet woods and waited to be seen. A wilderness courtesy.

  "Hello," Daniel greeted him.

  The man stepped forward, and they talked. Daniel had been wondering about the Indian Gina had spoken of, the guy with the ponytail who'd helped her escape from the kidnappers, then gone "into the river."

  One shoulder seam on the guy's jean jacket was torn down like a tongue, and the knees of his pants were busted through, but his flat-boned brown face showed no distress, no hunger.

  Daniel smiled. "You're the Indian. Your name's Alger, right?"

  "She's here, then." Alger's voice came low and calm.

  "Yes, she made it."

  "What about her boyfriend?"

  Daniel shook his head.

  "Did you find him?"

  "Yeah, in the river."

  "Ohhmm." A sad exhalation. "What did you do with him?" Daniel inclined his head toward the shed, and Alger nodded.

  "My name's Daniel." They shook, looking into each other.

  Petey came running up. "I haven't seen you before!"

  "I've seen you," said Alger mysteriously, but he wouldn't answer Petey's immediate barrage of questions.

  The two men went to the kitchen cabin, where Daniel made hot coffee. The Indian drank two cups in a row, gratefully, but refused the bread and sardines Daniel offered. Alger smelled of woodsmoke and cooked meat.

  "Squirrel for breakfast?" Daniel guessed.

  "Porcupine."

  "They're good." Daniel then noticed some quills Alger had saved, bundled and stowed in the sleeve pocket of his jacket. The tips poked out like stiff fur. "Can you really catch fish with porcupine quills?" he asked.

  "No, I save them for regalia. I never go to the woods without a couple of real fishhooks and a little bit of line. Have you guys been fishing here?"

  "Not yet. I'm sure you found the bridge washout."

  "Yeah. I came here to chill for a while and figure another route out. Don't want to run into—you know."

  "You've had it with them, huh?"

  Daniel explained how George and Rita went off to try to rescue Kenner. "As soon as they're back, we're all getting out of here."

  Alger Whitecloud knew Camp Saskee-wee-wit from his boyhood. "I grew up on rez land over by Portal Bay, but my father wanted me to meet white kids. They had scholarships to here, and he actually filled out the forms and got me one."

  "So you became a charity boy, too."

  Alger looked at him but asked nothing.

  Daniel said, "I bet you had to kick plenty of ass here." Alger laughed. "Just a couple of guys. Do you have any tobacco?"

  "No, I don't. Wish I did, but I stupidly gave it up just before we came here."

  "That's OK."

  Petey poked his head in. "May I have some M&M'S?" Daniel handed him the almost-empty bag. "Go 'head and finish 'em. What are you gonna do now?"

  "Work on my pictures. There's—interesting stuff around here."

  "Boy, you said it."

  Alger asked, "Where is Gina?"

  "The next cabin."

  Alger studied Daniel's face. "She's not OK, right?"

  "Do you, ah, know any—ah—medicine?"

  Alger smiled at his awkwardness. "You figure I might know some Native American healing folkways?"

  "Well—do you?"

  "Not really."

  "Oh."

  "But I was a medic in the Army in Afghanistan for a year and a half."

  "Oh!" Daniel then noticed that one of Alger's shoulders was lower than the other.

  Alger said, "Yeah, a sniper got me there. I'm OK."

  It was the kind of "I'm OK" movie tough guys try to emulate after they've been blown up by a gasoline bomb, but Daniel realized he'd never hear the authentic thing.

  "Oh," he said. "I'm sorry."

  "No, I was lucky."

  ——

  Dendra collapsed vertically, like an unwanted building imploded with dynamite.

  George had once told me, "Nice guys never expect you to hit them in the face."

  Maybe Dendra was a nicer guy than I'd thought.

  Before she hit the g
round, George kicked the gun from Bonechopper's hand with enough force to send it flying down the hillside.

  Knowing George could take Bonechopper—I was confident that he could handle any unarmed man, no matter what inequalities in reach and body weight—I leaped to the tree and fiddled with the clasps. They weren't like climbing hardware, they were different, so I set myself, aimed the blade of my hatchet, and gave the cable a good whack, my ears ringing with Dendra's delayed-reaction shriek.

  I suppose I'd broken some bones in her face. She ground the back of her head into the forest floor, holding her face and screaming really hard.

  I whacked the cable again and again.

  George and Bonechopper punched and wrassled. The cable popped in two with a satisfying toing!

  In a second Kenner was standing, ripping the tape from his mouth and gulping air. I stripped the tape from his wrists, which hurt him; he clutched his left forearm. "It's Rita," I muttered.

  "Oh, my God," Kenner said, his eyes widening.

  George had not yet neutralized Bonechopper. The dude was tall and sinewy and fought dirty; I saw him trying to rip George's mouth with one of his filthy fingers. I was about to split his skull with my hatchet when he went down from a solid blow to his head from George's elbow. Out cold, for the moment.

  "Let's go!" shouted George over Dendra's screams. "Go!"

  The three of us scrambled downhill—a slippery slope indeed, and I was going down it in more ways than one—to the rude path near the river and set off retracing our way, George and I supporting the wobbly Kenner.

  There was something else about Kenner, something dark, I now perceived. Something black and hopeless, a desperation that did not lift when he was freed, though his energy seemed to surge.

  He pointed. "There's a road this way!"

  "No," George said, "he'll expect us to take it, then. We've gotta go overland back to the camp." He looked back. "He's gonna come after us," George guaranteed, moving strongly.

  The trees and bits of sky wheeled over our heads as we fled; our breath streamed white behind us.

  "Why didn't you just kill him?" I said irritably.

  "Rita!" protested George.

  "When a dangerous animal attacks you," I said, "you kill it!"

  "They didn't attack us! We attacked them!"

  "Nobody takes my hatchet!" I yelled defensively. "We needed it!"

  Indeed, that was part of the plan. The hatchet was for cutting Kenner's bonds, if any, in a hurry. Not for slamming anybody's face, but hell, you do what you gotta do. My gut told me that if I relinquished that hatchet, we'd never get Kenner out of there.

  Because of course George did not have $1.2 million in cash; he only had a couple of packs of hundreds given him by Mrs. de Sauvenard.

  It was not our problem that these people were desperate assholes.

  Kenner panted, "Thanks. Thanks. Where's Gina?"

  "She's safe," I told him.

  "Where?"

  "Where we're going."

  Kenner nodded with gladness.

  He cradled his left arm in his right.

  "How is it?" I asked.

  "They broke my arm and fucked up my elbow," he panted. "Hurts like hell."

  The forest of broken bones.

  I tucked the arm inside his jacket for him, to better support it.

  We hustled through the woods. Eventually Kenner began to move as if his hiking boots weighed twenty pounds apiece, and we stopped next to a freshet spraying down like silver from a cleft. We drank handfuls of the ice-cold water, the droplets splashing our chins, then moved away from it to let Kenner rest for a minute, the better to hear anyone coming.

  "Those fuckers," muttered Kenner, the stubble on his pale jaw like charcoal smeared on paper.

  George needed to explain something to me. "I didn't kill him, Rita, because I didn't want to kill him. Jesus! I knocked him out, and I hope that when he comes to he'll give it up, or assume we went down the road Kenner indicated. But he could be insane enough to try to overtake us. We have to count on it." We all pricked our ears but heard no one.

  "I really wish things had gone differently," George went on, "but I have to say, I admire your technique in coldcocking Dendra back there. The lack of hesitation."

  "Why, thank you, George. I hope she's spitting teeth."

  "That is so unladylike to say."

  "H'h. A lady's supposed to do stuff like that while holding her nose, right?"

  "Right," he laughed.

  Yeah, I thought. A lady's still a lady as long as she doesn't relish the violence she commits. Goddamn slippery slope.

  At last Kenner pulled it together to ask the question I'd been dreading. "Where's Lance? Do you guys know?"

  I was momentarily paralyzed, but George said, "We've gotta get moving. Now."

  Kenner hauled himself upright, his body as spare as a praying mantis's—with the disproportionate strength of such an insect, I felt—and blocked us. "I said where's Lance."

  George glanced the question to me. I said, "We found him in the river, Kenner. He's dead."

  Kenner was silent for a moment, his eyes wild. He threw back his head. "Nooooo!" His volume was almost as earsplitting as Dendra's.

  "Damn it," said George tightly. "Be quiet!"

  Simultaneously, we heard an unmistakable crashing in the woods behind us, the sound of a large animal suddenly changing direction, having just caught a better whiff of its prey.

  "That's him," said George, already moving. "Come on!"

  It was then that I realized how tangibly different it is to be pursued by a wounded animal, rather than one who is merely hungry. That extra surge of dread.

  "He's no more than three minutes back," said George, as we all dashed on, Kenner admirably quick, given his sudden shock. Those brothers were so close.

  George muttered, "If we make it back to the camp, Daniel and I'll have a chance to stop him. He'll realize he's beat, and I'll be able to talk to him. Right now all he can see is a million dollars running away from him."

  "All we have to do is get to the log bridge," I panted, "and still have those three minutes between us."

  "What?" said George, his legs pumping hard.

  ——

  Daniel took Alger Whitecloud to Badger Cabin.

  The cabin smelled of musty wood and fresh air, as Daniel believed his patients needed it. He'd made sure they were covered well against the draft from the four inches of open window. This morning, when Gina had begun to feel better, he had temporarily shut the window, then washed her hair in a basin and rubbed it dry. That seemed to help her feel quite better, but she'd fallen silent, had refused the water, flavored with a little sugar, he'd offered her. And now she didn't look well at all.

  Alger washed his hands in the bucket of clean water Daniel kept in the room, then knelt to Gina and examined her. "Does your stomach hurt?"

  Her eyes flew open as he probed her abdomen and swollen side. She smiled thinly. "Alger. I'm glad he didn't kill you."

  "Me too." To Daniel, under his breath: "She feels hot."

  "Yeah," said Daniel. The men stood up.

  "She might have an infection building somewhere inside," Alger said quietly. "Maybe a spleen laceration as you're guessing, but maybe a viscus rupture, which would—"

  "Gut rupture, you mean?"

  "Yeah, which would be gravely serious."

  Daniel's mouth went dry thinking of an internal infection. Alger speculated, "Could be a lung contusion, you know; that can cause a transient fever, which she could get over by herself. The shoulder looks OK for now. You've been pushing fluids?"

  "Yes, but no solid food."

  "Good."

  "But she hasn't been drinking enough today. She seems—indifferent, sort of."

  "Looks like you've done as much for her as can be done. She needs to be evacuated."

  "I know. As soon as they get back, we have to move."

  "Who's breathing over there?" Alger touched the curtain. Daniel inclined his hea
d, and Alger drew it back.

  "Joey."

  Daniel saw that they knew each other, and by Alger's lack of reaction Daniel knew he was very surprised.

  "Hi, dude," said Alger after a moment. "Funny to see you here. What happened to your leg?"

  "What's funny about it?" said Joey, propping himself upright in his bunk. He rubbed his elbows.

  Daniel explained, "While we were looking for Gina, we found Joey in some trouble."

  Joey Preston said, "I had a mishap."

  Alger stood in silence for a minute.

  Unnerved by Alger's quiet stare, Joey went on, "I seen Lance de Sauvenard in trouble at the gorge, and I tried to help him."

  "You tried to help him?"

  "Fuck you, Alger!"

  Daniel asked, "What're you guys talking—"

  "Hey, man, everything's OK," said Alger. "Come on, I'm sorry, fuck it." He knelt to Joey. "Let me see your leg."

  Joey permitted him, wincing as Alger carefully felt it with his brown, tree root-like hands.

  "Did you set this?"

  Daniel nodded.

  "Good job."

  In a fluid move, Alger settled himself on the floor, cross-legged, next to Joey's bunk. Alger's manner was easy and matter-of-fact and Daniel could see Joey relax a little.

  He knows nobody believes him, Daniel thought. What a position to be in.

  "Been a long time," said Alger to Joey, "since we were here. Was this your cabin?"

  "No, I was in Marmot."

  "I was in Kestrel both summers I came. The jokes we used to play on each other, eh?"

  Joey closed his eyes.

  Alger went on talking. "You had it tough around here."

  Joey said, his eyes still closed, "It's just 'cause you were an Indian that you didn't get it worse."

  "If I remember right, you were little for your age back then."

  "I guess I was."

  Daniel realized that Alger was intent on learning what the hell Joey Preston was doing with Lance de Sauvenard at the river gorge and he was setting out to do it like a smokehouse puts flavor into meat: slowly but penetratingly.