Trueblood knocked the coal from his pipe, shook his head at the memory. “In a way it was like I’d never known her,” he said. “I’d walk around where we’d been hand in hand once, but her face began to fade and the country lost its interest for me. I started doing stupid things like climbing cliffs I shouldn’t, because I didn’t care if I fell. That’s how I got bit by Tickler the First, reaching a hand to pull myself up onto a ledge without looking where I was putting it.”
He began to load the pipe.
“Aren’t you going to smoke?” He held out the bag of rough cut. “Put hair on your pectorals.”
Sean said he was fine.
“I’m not boring you, am I? I just thought you ought to know. The real stories are always the stories behind the stories.”
“You’re not boring me. Did you see her again?” Sean couldn’t understand how a childhood crush that was over so long ago could have left such deep scars on two middle-aged men.
Trueblood had the pipe going and drew on it.
“Yes, I saw her.”
The cherry coal winked in the darkness.
“There are days I wish I could say I didn’t, for everyone’s sake.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Yellow Ribbons
When he picked up the story again, nine years had passed since the idyll and heartbreak of his childhood. He’d joined the Army right out of high school. Without a college deferment, it was either that or be drafted. Had gone to Vietnam like the unquestioning Montana son that he was, and became one of the lucky, catching two golden BBs six weeks into his tour. He told Sean that his left leg could tell the weather, though climbing remained a bit of a problem. That’s why it had taken him so long to get to the cave that afternoon. He said he had a cane but too much vanity to use it. Especially with Clint being such a hail fellow.
As it turned out—he drew on the pipe as he thought back—a couple weeks before his injury a letter came for him in one of the helo drops. It was from his mother, who wrote him nearly every day, and inside the first envelope there was a second one, unopened, that had been sent to his parents’ address. A return address, but no name. The canceled stamp read Bangor, Maine. He’d looked at it, his fingers shaking.
“Here I was,” he told Sean, “important things to do like staying alive, scared for my fucking life, and I was shaking because of an envelope. It shows how some things never go away, even after you thought that part of your life was dead and over.”
Inside the envelope was Becky’s senior-class photo, a small one like you’d put in your wallet. There was a note on the back. “I was a fool. It was you all along. Please forgive me.” It was signed “Love, Becky.”
He’d written back, telling her where he was, and that he feared he might never make it home. He wrote: “I’ve loved you all my life. Will you marry me? If you will look up at the North Star and say ‘I do’ before God, then I will do the same.”
He wrote that he’d carry the photograph over his heart to keep him safe. And it did, depending on how you looked at it. It was a month later that he took two bullets during a firefight in the Battle of Ap Gu. One chipped his left tibia. The second bullet—Trueblood patted the ribs on his left side—had missed the photo by about two inches on the side to miss it by, if you have to be shot. It sent a fragment into his left lung.
Trueblood tapped the stem of his pipe against his chest. If the bullet had hit the photo, he’d be dead, he said, so maybe her picture did possess a kind of magic. He’d been Hue-ed out and spent a month in recovery at the 6th Convalescent Center in Cam Ranh Bay. That’s where he had got the tattoo of the snake on his fingers.
He nodded with the point of his goatee, looking across the water.
“I’ll never forget the day I came home. Those trees in the yard I said needed cutting down, one of the reasons I don’t is my mom had put yellow ribbons on them, and when I look at them today, I think of that. She told me to take a walk around, that there was a coming-home present behind one of the trees. I didn’t let myself think about it, didn’t want to get my hopes up, because she’d never written back. I was thinking a horse, maybe a graphite fly rod, I just didn’t know.”
She was standing behind the last tree in the backyard. She was wearing a blue dress. It turned out her parents had moved back to Maine, and that’s where she’d flown in from.
He paused at this point in his narration and looked at Sean. When he spoke again, his voice was scarcely audible over the sound of the river.
“I told you I wouldn’t tell you the story of being married by God, and here I have. But what we said to each other that night, that is one thing I think I’ll keep private. You understand that?”
Sean said he did.
He’d seen her in May, he said, and they had set a date to be married in the yard on the second week of July. It would have been in Maine, but her mother had died and she was the organizer in the family, so it was better all around if the wedding took place in Montana. The plan was they would build a house on the property, help Bart’s father set up a guiding business, and put up a few rental cabins. Becky knew that business and tourism was picking up.
Clint’s folks still had their house on the river, but the last time Bart had heard from him, he’d graduated from Montana Tech and was entering law school at the University of Montana. They’d been on good terms by then, and as an old family friend, he was invited to the wedding. That’s when Becky had told him that she had a confession. She said that she and Clint had had a relationship, that they’d reconnected after high school and he’d taken a trip to Maine to see her. It hadn’t lasted long. Neither was what the other expected they’d be. But there it was. She didn’t want their life together to begin with a secret.
Bart assumed by relationship that she meant a sexual one, though she hadn’t spelled it out and he hadn’t asked. It had bothered him, but then, who was he to hold her to a standard of purity? They had been out of touch for years, and it wasn’t like he’d been waiting for her. He wasn’t a virgin. In fact he’d been seeing a young woman before he went to war and would end up marrying her ten years later.
The second bowl smoked, he knocked out the coal, murmured something Sean couldn’t understand, and said, “I’m drawing this out, aren’t I? It’s that it’s hard to get around to, so you put it off. You speak like you’re telling a story, nothing deeper. That’s how you keep the soul from leaving your body.”
He said that the night before the wedding, his parents had had Clint and his parents over for dinner. Afterward, the three amigos went down to the river. They’d all been drinking and Clint dared them to go skinny-dipping. This being July, the water was warm. Bart wasn’t comfortable with it and said so, but Becky had always been . . . unbashful, if you had to put a word to it. When they were kids, they’d go swimming and she would take her shirt off to keep it dry, even after she started to develop just a bit. She wasn’t an exhibitionist, but more like an innocent, someone without the usual inhibitions. She started to unbutton her shirt, and Clint had said, “That’s what I remember, that’s what I’m talking about.”
That’s what I’m talking about?
Bart told Becky not to do it. She said, “Oh, come on, I’ll leave the bits and pieces on, you can too,” and Clint was stepping out of his jeans, and said something like, “I’ll bet you remember me now,” though he later denied it. But Bart heard what he’d heard, and it was a coarse remark, and he had snapped, and the next thing they were fighting on the bank and Becky had jumped between them and was screaming, “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it! If you don’t stop, I’ll jump into the river and drown!”
But they were rolling around, not listening to her. When they finally broke apart and stood up, squaring off, Clint said, “Where’s Becky?”
Becky was gone. The two young men stopped fighting and ran up to the house to see if she was there, not there, and ran back. They got in the johnboat and
rowed it out, and shone lights around. But the mist was over the water and it was like looking through smoke. Below, they could hear the river where it started running fast and Bart thought he heard something, maybe Becky calling. So they kept going down and down, but couldn’t find her, and hauled the boat back upstream and floated through again, this time with Bart’s father in the boat. It was his father who spotted her shirt in the light. She looked like she was moving, but she wouldn’t answer and the closer they got—well, they knew. Her body was only moving because it was in an eddy. And her head, it was like she was lying on a pillow of blood. Bart held her while his dad went back to the house to call an ambulance. It had to come all the way from Helena, and Bart was still sitting in the water, holding her to his chest, when help finally arrived. His father had to pry him away from her.
He stopped. His voice had broken, and Sean could see his chest heaving.
“Clint was running up and down the bank like a crazy man, calling for her until he lost his voice. Long after we knew she was dead.”
It turned out that she had cracked her skull. That’s where the blood in the water had come from, a deep fissure behind her right ear. In the morning, they found an exposed rock in the middle of the river that had dried blood on it. Apparently, Becky had not been swimming, but was wading across the river to get away from the fighting and lost her footing on the slick streambed stones and fallen. The impact with the rock had probably knocked her unconscious, and she’d been swept down the river and drowned. The sheriff questioned them, and Bart admitted hearing Becky say she would jump into the river if they didn’t stop fighting. It was just a horrible accident, of course. There were no charges brought. But the two young men had triggered the events that led to her death, and Bart Trueblood and Clint McCaine had been reliving the nightmare ever since.
“So you see,” Trueblood said in a quiet voice, “when you heard Clint at lunch, talking about forgiveness and moving on, that I’m somehow not able to do that and he is, don’t believe it. He’s as haunted as I am. This trip isn’t about the mine. If it was, like I said before, Clint wouldn’t have agreed to it. The truth is he can’t forgive himself and still thinks that the two of us can turn the corner on this thing. That the fondness we had for each other isn’t that deeply buried, and if we can revive it, we can share the pain and finally put the past behind us. Well I’ve got news for him. I’ve tried getting past it for the last thirty-eight years. I’ve tried with pills, alcohol, marrying another woman and having two children with her. Rebecca is still as close as you are standing to me.”
“Did Clint ever marry?”
“A rodeo queen. Miss Montana once upon a time. Arm candy for the banquet circuit. They divorced. No children. I don’t know it for a fact, but I have a feeling she couldn’t live with his demons. You get behind that smiling face and he’s just a lost soul. Ever since Rebecca, all he’s done is wander in the wilderness of his own head. You see what this is? It’s Eden, Cain and Abel. Genesis. The whole damn book. Everything but the fucking snake.”
“Aren’t you being a little dramatic?”
“Of course I am. I drank a quarter fifth of whiskey. But it’s true. What was the gift Abel gave God? You remember your Old Testament, don’t you?”
Sean tried to recall his Sunday school lessons. “A sheep. Or was it a goat?”
“Fattest of the flock. What did Cain give him?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Grain. Cain was a farmer. God liked the sheep better. Cain became furious and killed Abel. When God asked Cain where he was, Cain said, ‘Who am I? My brother’s keeper?’ And God marked him, and banished him to the Land of Nod. What did you see on Clint’s forehead?”
“A birthmark.”
“Is that what it is? Or is it the mark God gave him? That’s what I see, and that’s what he sees every morning when his face stares back at him in the mirror. You take away a few letters and even his name is Cain.”
Sean didn’t say anything. They stood, listening to the river rise.
“Aren’t you going to ask me who God is in our drama?” Trueblood said in a quiet voice.
Sean didn’t answer. He knew that Trueblood would tell him.
“When old Scotty visited us in the winter, I’d give him jerky from the deer I’d shot. Clint, the budding geologist, would give him pretty stones from the river. When they dried, they were just gray. So you see, I was Abel. Clint was Cain, and old Scotty, he was God. Now Clint’s only here in the flesh. His spirit is banished, and all that keeps him from eating a bullet is the mine. It gives him a purpose. And if the tailings breach, so be it. The river’s been dead to him for years, whereas to me, it’s all that keeps me alive. I don’t hate Clint. He’s my brother. I feel sorry for him.”
Trueblood put his pipe in his pocket. “Thanks for listening. Like Clint likes to say”—he spread his hands to encompass the black opal river, the moon-bathed cliffs—“it’s a hard rock heaven. But it’s a hard rock hell, too.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Blood or Kisses?
“Some watchman you are.”
Harold opened his eyes, the light just kissing the horizon to the east. “I heard you coming.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Smelled you, too.”
Sean squatted a few yards away. He rummaged through his backpack for his thermos of tea. “Nothing, huh?”
“A doe kept me company. The river told me its problems. What’s going on below?”
“Everyone’s asleep.”
“Late night, huh?”
“If you call two in the morning late. It went better than I thought. They talked themselves out of politics and remembered they’d been friends once. Lillian was in a good mood, now that she’s got her story in the can. Everything from here on down to the take-out is gravy. She has an eye for your son, but I think it’s a mentor’s eye. He seems to enjoy the attention.”
Harold nodded. “He drink anything?”
“Marcus? Just cider.”
“Good.”
“I did learn something last night. Remember when they were at each other’s throats, the forbidden subject?”
“Rebecca.” Harold stood up and stretched, getting the kinks out. “Bad blood there.”
Sean gave him the short version of the story that Bart Trueblood had told him on the riverbank.
“So they’re either going to draw swords or bury the hatchet. Which do you think? Blood or kisses?”
“We’ll see what the day brings,” Sean said. “Last night was the liquor talking.”
* * *
—
It was still talking, or so it seemed to their ears, when Sean and Harold walked back into camp. Marcus was fussing with a matchless fire, coaxing new sticks to flame by waving his hat over last night’s coals. He looked up, smiled, and rolled his eyes. Swept his right arm to include the scattered campsite, the snoring tents.
McCaine and Sam Meslik were the loudest, sounding like buffalo death rattles. By comparison, Lillian Cartwright exhaled popping noises. Only the tent Bart Trueblood had pitched was silent.
It was still silent an hour later, after everyone else had risen—an optimistic word, staggered to their feet more accurately—and had their coffee and were back among the living.
“Who wants to pull on his toes?” Sam said. “We’ve got fifteen miles to make today.”
Clint volunteered. They heard him say, “Come on, old buddy. It’s morning and I need someone to argue with.” And then, louder, with urgency. “Bart!” Followed by “Shit. There’s something wrong.”
Sam was up and three “goddamnits” later was digging into his duffel for his medical kit. “The fucker’s got a pulse like a racehorse. But Jesus, he’s hardly breathing. Sean, help me get him out of the tent.”
Sean did as told and they stood in a circle as Sam, who was a certified wildern
ess first responder, talked to himself as he began to systematically check the body.
“Drooping eyelids. Skin color is off. Edema in the left hand.”
Sam unbuttoned the cuff of Trueblood’s shirt and they saw at once the cause of concern—twin puncture wounds an inch apart on the lower forearm, raised like black kidney beans. The skin around them was turning an angry red and looked puffy in early stages of necrosis. Sam licked his fingers and worked the wedding ring off the left third finger. He asked for a knife to cut the leather band of Trueblood’s wristwatch, which had bitten deeply into the swollen flesh.
He barked out orders.
“Sean, get the sat phone and find out when we can get a helicopter in here. Air Mercy out of Great Falls is closest. We can float him to Sunset Cliff in an hour and they can land on the bench above the bend. If they can touch down closer, great. Harold, let’s sit him up. We need to keep the wound below the level of his heart.”
“What can I do?” Marcus said.
“You can see if the goddamned snake is still in the tent. If it is, kill the fucker. Use the ax, whatever. Just don’t get bit.”
“I’d like to help,” McCaine said.
“Then get your shadow out of my goddamn light.”
McCaine stepped back.
“Sorry,” Sam muttered. “You grew up with him, has he ever been bitten before? Snake? Spider? Does he have any allergies?”
“He was bitten by a rattlesnake on the calf,” Clint said. “Back when we were kids. It was my dad who drove him into the hospital.”
“Well, fuck,” Sam said.
“Is that bad?”
Sam’s face was grim. “It means his body has produced antibodies to fight poison once. They’ve gone dormant, but they’re still there, ready to answer a fucking call to arms.”
“Isn’t that good?”
“No. It means if he’s bit a second time with a similar venom, the body can overreact. It might produce antibodies too fast, because they have a head start. He can have an allergic reaction and go into anaphylactic shock, and I don’t have a fucking EpiPen.”
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