Short Stories
Page 22
Nash nodded. Maybe it did all look the same to Walker. But three framed photos of the same exact composition of trees, mountain, and lake? You didn’t have to be Ansel Adams to recognize a theme when you saw it.
Walker asked reluctantly, “You need a lift to Pocatello?”
“I’ve got my rental car. I’ll turn it in at the airport.”
“Great. ‘Cause no offense, but it seems like leaving you at the airport is not a healthy thing to do.”
“Yeah, no offense taken.”
As an afterthought, Walker offered his hand. And as an afterthought, Nash shook it.
* * * * *
He found the site late that afternoon.
Nash had deduced, it turned out correctly, that several professional prints of a particular spot on the shore of Bear Lake meant the place was photographed a lot and was therefore reasonably accessible. The coffee shop attached to his hotel had a selection of pretty postcards, and sure enough, he found the exact arrangement of trees, mountains, and lake. The area was called Shoshone Point.
Why Shoshone Point should be important to Glen, he had no idea. Maybe the fishing was great there. Maybe Glen liked the view. The significance of the site was one more mystery, but Nash had no doubt Shoshone Point had been one of Glen’s favorite places.
He figured it this way: after he and Glen said goodbye at the airport, Glen had felt pretty much like Nash had — like he had just made a huge mistake — so Glen, with a few hours before work, had headed out to the lake, to a place that obviously meant a lot to him. Not to go fishing, not to kill himself, just to clear his head before he had to be on duty. Because that’s how Glen thought, that was the way his brain worked.
And there on the shores of Bear Lake, there at Shoshone Point, something bad, very bad, had happened to Glen.
Whatever that bad thing was, it had resulted in Glen’s SUV being found in Tremonton, Utah. Tremonton just happened to be the closest bus station to Bear Lake, a mere two hours away. No way was that a coincidence.
Nash parked his rental car on the sandy shore and got out. The air was nippy and smelled of pine trees and wet grass and fish.
The water really was aqua in color, the lake living up to its name of Caribbean of the Rockies. In the summer, the lake was a popular tourist spot, but this was April and the wind-scoured shore looked cold and barren despite the tropical-colored water. The distant lodges and cabins appeared deserted. No lights shone in windows, no smoke drifted from chimneys. There were no boats on the lake, nobody fishing from the shore, no cars parked anywhere.
No sign of life as far as Nash could see.
He shaded his eyes, staring up at the watery sun, searching for any ominous circling of birds. But the cobalt sky was empty of anything but ragged, rolling, dark-rimmed clouds. He shivered. The wind off the water had a bite to it. Only a couple of weeks ago there had still been snow on the ground.
He began to walk slowly over the uneven ground, scanning the wet earth for tire tracks.
Near a small cairn of rocks, he found bleached and scattered bones. His heart stopped, but the bones were old and too small to be human. Still, it was a grim reminder that this area was home to everything from elk and mule deer to wolves and grizzlies.
“Glen?” called Nash. His voice sounded tentative, doubtful, and in a hard to explain way, that made him angry. He called again, with more force, “Glen?”
The word seemed to bounce off the surrounding mountains and fall flat on the grassy shore.
Nash moved on down the beach, still scrutinizing the clumps of grass and sedge for tracks.
According to local legend, there was supposed to be a creature living beneath those turquoise waters, the Bear Lake Monster. Maybe Glen had run into the monster. It made as much sense as anything.
That was a mistake, though. Looking for things to make sense. Finding a pattern wasn’t the same as finding meaning, any more than an explanation supplied reason.
“Glen?” shouted Nash. The silence of pines and mountains seemed to swallow the word whole. He called again, loudly, stubbornly, “Glen?”
A few yards down he found the impression of a sports utilitiy vehicle’s tires in the dried mud near a fallen tree. Nash knelt, tracing the tiny dashes and arrows of hardened soil, like a blind man reading braille. Journey’s end. That’s what these tracks spelled out. He could make out where the vehicle had parked, and where it had reversed in a wide and crooked arc, crossing its earlier tracks as it headed out across the hilly terrain.
Avoiding the main road.
Nash’s heart thumped hard with excitement and dread.
He rose and continued down the shore in a slow lope, scanning the waterline and the uneven swells of grassy hill and rock.
He came upon a firepit, a ring of blackened rocks around the remains of charred driftwood. Empty beer cans littered the ground, and there were multiple, mostly obliterated footprints.
“Glen?”
He heard a faint cry, and turned, eyes searching the empty landscape. Nothing moved. Nash listened tensely, afraid he had mistaken a bird or an echo for an answer.
He tried to call out again, but his voice was so choked, the word was as much sob as syllable. Even so, he nearly missed the answering shout.
He stumbled up the bank, up the grassy hillside until he found himself looking down into a shallow ravine.
A man lay unmoving on the green slope. He wore blue jeans and a blue hoodie. His dark hair was soaked with blood and he held a pistol. His bearded face was tilted up as though he was watching the clouds tumbling overhead, but his eyes were shut.
Nash half ran, half slid down the slope, landing next to the supine figure.
His voice shook. “Glen?”
Glen’s eyes, bloodshot and red-rimmed, opened. He stared blankly and something in his hollow gaze flickered into life. His cracked and peeling lips moved. “Nash?”
“It’s me, Glen.”
“This is…a…pleasant…surprise,” Glen got out slowly, painfully.
“Where are you hurt?” Nash’s hands were trembling as he felt Glen over, careful to avoid an obviously dislocated shoulder, broken arm, the cracked—
“Ribs!” Glen sucked in an agonized breath.
“Sorry. Sorry it took so long. Sorry. How bad is it?” A stupid question. Nash was close to babbling.
Glen gulped out, “Can’t be…too bad. Be…dead…by now.”
Nash shrugged out of his jacket and carefully laid it over Glen, sliding the pistol out of his unresisting grasp. He dug his cell phone out. No signal. Nash swore with quiet and restrained fury. “Be right back. Don’t go anywhere.”
Glen’s eyes were closed. His colorless mouth twitched.
Nash bounded up the rocky slope. He kept walking until he saw the signal bars and called emergency services detailing the bad news: ribs, shoulder, arm, head injury, shock, exposure, dehydration… None of which could outweigh the good news.
Glen Harlow was alive.
“They’re coming. Help is coming. Hang on. Half an hour. Tops.” Nash flung himself back down beside Glen and Glen’s lashes stirred, though he didn’t open his eyes.
He mumbled, “I hope…you’re real…” The rest of it trailed away.
“I’m real. I’m not going anywhere.”
Glen’s mouth tightened.
“Don’t go to sleep,” Nash said urgently. “Glen, stay awake. You’ve got a head injury.”
Glen started to laugh and then cried out. “Fuck.”
Nash was laughing too, unsteadily. “I thought you were dead.”
Glen’s head moved a fraction in negative.
Nash didn’t know what to do, so he leaned over him, trying to cradle him, warm him, without moving him. Glen smelled like blood and sweat and, very faintly, Old Spice. His cheekbones were sharp, his skin gray, his hair matted.
“Glen,” Nash whispered. Not the start of a conversation, just…Glen. The miracle of Glen. Still here. Still alive. Still Glen.
Glen’s
colorless mouth curved. He said gently, almost inaudibly, “Nash, you’re…raining.”
Nash hastily wiped his face on his own shoulder. “Yeah. Why the pistol?”
Glen’s face twisted. “Trying…to get…rangers’…attention.”
“What the hell happened? We all thought—” No. Maybe he’d wait to share all that until Glen was stronger.
Glen’s eyes opened. He frowned. He said more strongly, “Parked by the lake. Bunch of…jackass kids were fooling around. Thought I better…break the party up.” He squinted as though trying to see past Nash’s shoulder. “It’s kind of…fuzzy. One of the little shits must’ve hit me with a rock. Something.”
“Thank God for that.”
Glen’s eyes widened. He said faintly, “Yeah. My lucky…day.”
Nash started to laugh. “I mean thank God it wasn’t worse.” That it had not been what he and everyone else had believed. The randomness of life had struck again. There had been no dark intent on Glen’s part, no plot against him, no plan to harm him. No rhyme. No reason.
Yet…here they were, against the odds, together. And maybe Nash was getting soft in his old age – probably — but he couldn’t help feeling that the very fact that they were here together, against the odds, meant something. That maybe this was the way it was supposed to work. That maybe the universe was trying to tell him something, and that the message lay in the very randomness of life.
He rested his face against Glen’s cold one, very gently kissing Glen’s eyelids, nose, corner of his mouth.
“Nice…” Glen breathed. “Thought you’d left, Nash.”
“I came back.”
Glen nodded a fraction. He was breathing in shallow, careful breaths. “Why?”
That was a great question, wasn’t it? Nash cared enough for Glen to drop everything, even risk his precious, all-important job to race across the country when he’d thought Glen might be dead. And yet, the idea of doing the same thing when Glen was alive and well and could reciprocate had seemed impossible then, even crazy. Crazy to try to find a way to make it work with the man he loved?
The only crazy thing was that it had taken him so long to see the truth.
“You know why,” Nash said softly.
In the shadow made by the cradle of his arms, he saw moisture glinting under Glen’s lashes. “Yeah,” Glen whispered. “I know.”
About the Author
A distinct voice in gay fiction, multi-award-winning author JOSH LANYON has been writing gay mystery, adventure and romance for over a decade. In addition to numerous short stories, novellas, and novels, Josh is the author of the critically acclaimed Adrien English series, including The Hell You Say, winner of the 2006 USABookNews awards for GLBT Fiction. Josh is an Eppie Award winner and a four-time Lambda Literary Award finalist.
Find other Josh Lanyon titles at www.joshlanyon.com
Follow Josh on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads.
If you enjoyed this story, check out the following titles, also by Josh Lanyon:
Novels
The ADRIEN ENGLISH Mysteries
Fatal Shadows
A Dangerous Thing
The Hell You Say
Death of a Pirate King
The Dark Tide
Stranger Things Have Happened
The HOLMES & MORIARITY Mysteries
Somebody Killed His Editor
All She Wrote
The Boy with the Painful Tattoo
Other novels
The ALL’S FAIR Series
Fair Game
Fair Play
This Rough Magic (A SHOT IN THE DARK Series)
The Ghost Wore Yellow Socks
Mexican Heat (with Laura Baumbach)
Strange Fortune
Come Unto These Yellow Sands
Stranger on the Shore
Novellas
The DANGEROUS GROUND Series
Dangerous Ground
Old Poison
Blood Heat
Dead Run
Kick Start
The I SPY Series
I Spy Something Bloody
I Spy Something Wicked
I Spy Something Christmas
The IN A DARK WOOD Series
In a Dark Wood
The Parting Glass
The DARK HORSE Series
The Dark Horse
The White Knight
Snowball in Hell (DOYLE & SPAIN Series)
Haunted Heart: Winter (HAUNTED HEART Series)
Mummy Dearest (XOXO FILES Series)
Other novellas
Baby, it’s Cold (in Comfort and Joy)
Cards on the Table
The Dark Farewell
The Darkling Thrush
The Dickens with Love
Don’t Look Back
A Ghost of a Chance
Lovers and Other Strangers
Out of the Blue
A Vintage Affair
Lone Star (in Men Under the Mistletoe)
Green Glass Beads (in Irregulars)
Blood Red Butterfly
Everything I Know
Short stories
A Limited Engagement
The French Have a Word for It
In Sunshine or In Shadow
Until We Meet Once More
Icecapade (in His for the Holidays)
Perfect Day
Heart Trouble
In Plain Sight
Wedding Favors
Wizard’s Moon
PETIT MORTS (SWEET SPOT Collection)
Other People’s Weddings
Slings and Arrows
Sort of Stranger Than Fiction
Critic’s Choice
Just Desserts
Merry Christmas, Darling (Holiday Codas)