by Cronk, LN
“Does Laci know?”
He nodded again.
“Did you tell her about what happened in Alaska?” I asked, “Or has she been noticing it too?”
“Both.”
I closed my eyes, trying not to get mad at all three of them for keeping this from me.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” I finally asked.
“I . . . I guess I just wanted it to work,” he said, glancing at me. “I wanted you to have a good time.”
“I am,” I assured him. “I’m having a great time.”
He nodded slightly and said, “Good.”
It was quiet in the tent except for the sound of the lantern hissing. I knew that Hawk was on the other side of the campsite, taking care of the horses or something.
Tanner and I were alone.
His defenses were down.
I might never have another chance.
“Ya know, Tanner,” I said. “I’m not afraid of what’s happening to me. I know that God’s in control and–”
“Don’t even try to have this conversation with me,” he interrupted sharply.
I didn’t answer.
“Trust me,” he said, bitterly. “The last thing you wanna do right now is try to talk to me about God.”
I’d never heard him sound so angry before and I knew our conversation wasn’t going to happen tonight, either.
I sighed.
“I’m sorry I screwed up you getting that elk today,” I finally ventured.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “I’ve got two more days to get something.”
“Yeah,” I agreed.
“I’m just glad you’re having a good time,” he went on, the bitterness almost gone from his voice.
“I am,” I assured him again. “Well, except for the whole ‘trying to shoot people with loaded rifles’ thing.”
He almost gave me a smile.
“Can you imagine how mad Laci would have been if I’d killed myself?” I laughed.
“She never would have talked to me again,” he said, suddenly serious again.
“Aw, don’t worry about it,” I said, waving my hand at him dismissively. “She never would have talked to me again either.”
The next day was completely unproductive. We saw no new signs, sighted nothing through our spotting scopes, and only heard bugling that was coming from at least two miles away.
By the next afternoon – our last day – when we were sitting in the timber eating sandwiches and jerky, I had pretty much accepted the fact that Tanner was going to be going home empty handed and that it was all my fault.
That’s when we heard a limb snap.
We all looked up at one another, suddenly alert. Hawk pulled a cow call out of his jacket pocket and motioned for Tanner to get ready.
Tanner got ready, but it took a lot of cow calling and antler rattling and bush raking before Hawk finally figured out what the big guy wanted.
He wanted a fight.
Once Hawk pulled out a fighting whine call, our monster bull came tearing through the brush at us so fast I barely had time to hiss a desperate whisper at Tanner: “Don’t miss!”
He didn’t.
We flew home satisfied and when we landed I turned on my phone and got the message from Laci that baby Chelsea had been born at about the same time we’d boarded our plane in Billings.
“Dorito could have come with us just fine,” I told Tanner as we got into his truck in long-term parking. “He hardly would have missed anything.”
We drove home in relative silence but when we were a few miles from Cavendish I turned to Tanner.
“This has been great,” I told him. “That’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“I hope you had fun, too.”
“I did,” he assured me.
I looked at him skeptically.
“I did!” he insisted. “It was great.”
“I’ve done almost everything on my bucket list,” I went on.
He nodded.
“Almost,” I reiterated when he didn’t say anything.
That caught his attention.
“Almost?”
“Almost.”
“What else do you want to do?” he asked.
“I want to go one more place with Laci,” I said.
He nodded again.
“But,” I ventured, “I don’t think we should go there alone.”
There was a long pause.
“What do you mean?” he finally asked.
“I mean we would need someone to go with us.”
“Me?” he asked.
“If you’re up for it . . .”
“Up for what? Where?”
“I mean, I can’t take her alone,” I hedged. “Not this place. Especially not after what just happened.”
“Where do you want to go?” he asked again.
“There won’t be any guns involved this time!” I promised, adding, “well, at least we wouldn’t have any guns . . .”
“Where?” he asked, losing his patience. “Where do you want to go?”
I glanced away, took a deep breath, and then looked back at him hesitantly.
“Israel” I finally told him. “I want to go to the Holy Land.”
~ ~ ~
THE FIRST THING I did when Laci got home was to complain that she and Tanner and Dorito shouldn’t have been keeping things from me.
“You should have told me,” I said. “As soon as you guys knew that there were problems you should have told me so that I could go see Dr. Keener and let him know what was happening.”
She nodded at me reluctantly and promised that it wouldn’t happen again.
I almost believed her.
After that we made an appointment with Dr. Keener and drove to Minnesota the next week to see him. He didn’t seem surprised to find out that I’d become symptomatic again and he wrote me a new prescription that would double the number of blue jobbies I’d be taking every day.
“This is the maximum dosage allowed for Coceptiva,” he said, making it a point to look at me in a significant way as he spoke.
I nodded to let him know that I got it.
Once this quit working, things weren’t going to be such smooth sailing anymore.
The next day I asked Laci to drive me to Southern’s – the only Big and Tall Men’s Shop in Cavendish and the only place that Tanner shopped for clothing.
“Can I help you?” a young salesman asked, looking me over dubiously after we’d entered the shop.
“I hope so,” I said. “I was hoping to get the measurements for one of your customers.”
He looked at me even more skeptically.
“We want to order a custom-made jacket for him out of elk hide,” Laci quickly explained. “But we want to surprise him and he shops here all the time so we were hoping maybe you would have the measurements for him.”
The outfitter had handled all of the game care for us during our trip. We’d both wanted the meat and the antlers, of course, but Tanner said he wasn’t interested in paying to have the entire head mounted or to have the hides tanned. I had pulled Hawk aside and quietly told him to that we did want the hides. I figured it was the least I could do for Tanner after I’d almost killed him (or myself . . . or whatever it was that I’d almost done).
It was going to be a couple of months before the hides were ready, but the tannery told me to send them the measurements as soon as I could. Apparently “giant sized” wasn’t good enough – they actually wanted some real numbers.
“What’s his name?” the salesclerk now asked us.
“Tanner Clemmons,” Laci said.
“That’s not ringing a bell,” he said. “What’s he look like?”
“He’s about this tall,” I said, holding my hand way over my head, “weighs about two-seventy . . .”
The salesman raised an eyebrow at me.
“Everyone who comes in here looks like that!” Laci said, rolling her eyes at m
e. She pulled out her phone and scrolled for a minute until she’d found a picture of Tanner. She held it up for the clerk to see.
“I don’t recognize him,” he said, shaking his head, “but I’ve only worked here for a few months.
“Can you check your records?” Laci asked.
“Sure,” he agreed as he headed over to his computer. As we started to follow him, I spotted another sales clerk.
Now Tanner only looked for two things in a potential date: 1.) pretty and 2.) female. This salesclerk happened to meet both of these criteria and I nudged Laci, giving her a meaningful look as I nodded in the woman’s direction. Laci looked toward her too and then gave me a knowing smile.
“Excuse me, miss?” Laci called, holding up her phone and walking toward her. “Do you know this man?”
“Oh, that’s Coach,” the saleswoman said as soon as she saw the picture.
“Is he in the computer?” our original salesman asked, touching the screen.
“Yes,” she nodded. “Tanner Clemmons.”
“We need his measurements,” Laci explained to her as they walked over to the counter to join us.
Soon we had a printout full of huge, astronomical numbers on which the saleswoman made a few changes in pen.
“His arms only measure thirty-nine,” she told us (only?), “but he likes it when the fit’s a little longer. Add an inch here, trust me.”
We took the printout home. I started sending the measurements to the tanning company, but I worried that it wasn’t going to be right. Maybe I should have just told Tanner what I was doing and gotten the measurements directly from him instead of trying to surprise him. Laci assured me that the saleswoman had known what she was doing and that the jacket was going to be absolutely perfect.
Somewhat placated, I turned back to the computer and tried to decide what color to have the hide tanned: chocolate, black, palomino, tobacco or saddle.
Suddenly I realized that Laci . . . was crying.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, walking across the room to where she was standing.
Her hands were over her eyes and her shoulders were shaking.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again, gently rubbing her arm. “Why are you crying? Please . . . talk to me!”
She ignored me and kept crying.
“Laci . . .” I said softly.
At the sound of her name she looked up at me in surprise and flung her arms around me.
“Oh, David!” she cried, burying her face into my chest.
“What happened?” I asked, hugging her back.
“You didn’t know who I was!” she exclaimed, looking up at me.
“I forgot your name?” I asked.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It wasn’t just that you didn’t know my name . . . you didn’t know who I was! You didn’t have any idea who I was!”
“Laci,” I said, looking at her doubtfully.
“I’m serious, David,” she said, calming down a little now that I apparently did know who she was. “You didn’t know who I was or that we were married or anything!”
“I’m sorry,” I told her, rubbing her back.
“Sometimes before I’ve felt like maybe you didn’t know, but this time I knew for sure . . . it was like you were just gone!”
“I’m sorry,” I said again.
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s not your fault. I’m sorry I got so upset.”
“Did I take my pills this morning?” I asked. She nodded. “Are you sure?”
She nodded again.
“We just increased the dosage,” I reminded her. “It probably just hasn’t kicked in yet.”
She nodded at me one more time and wiped a tear away. I pulled her close and gave her a hug, kissing the top of her head.
That night – when I took my medicine – I held the bottle up and stared at it for a long moment.
Please don’t fail me now, I implored the little blue pills. I’m going to go to Israel. I shook the bottle as if hoping to make them pay attention and then I mentally said it again. Please . . . don’t fail me now.
All the kids made it home to Cavendish for Christmas that year, Chelsea meeting most of us for the first time. Lily announced that she was expecting again and I promised her that if she had a boy I would buy her a car or take her to Hawaii. I was only kidding, of course, but Grace looked at Andrew and told him that they ought to think about starting a family.
All of the kids were worried, really worried, when we told them that we were going to Israel.
“I don’t think this is a smart thing for you guys to do, Dad,” Dorito said as Marco and Meredith murmured their agreement.
But then as soon as they found out that Tanner was going with us, it quickly turned into a great idea.
Suddenly every one of them couldn’t have been happier.
Laci was as excited as I’d hoped she would be and she spent hours poring over travel guides and even a lot of time online, planning out what we would do for each of the seven days that we were going to be there.
By the end of March, we were ready to go.
~ ~ ~
OUR FLIGHT HAD three legs. The middle one – from Chicago to Madrid – was, by far, the longest. It was at the beginning of this flight (when we were staring fourteen hours of flying time in the face) that Tanner, for the first time, started asking for details about our trip.
“I sent you the itinerary,” I said.
“Do you know how many messages I get every day?” he asked.
I reached into my jacket pocket and pulled out some papers, thumbing through them until I found the one with our schedule. I handed it to him.
“Day one . . . Western Wall,” he muttered to himself. “Day two . . . Rachel’s Tomb. Day three . . . Sea of Galilee.”
His eyes quickly scanned the page. “Where’s the Dead Sea?” he asked.
“We can go there on the last day,” I told him.
“It says ‘Open’.”
“Right,” I nodded.
“Why’s it say that?”
“Well, ya know,” I said, shrugging. “It means we can do whatever we want.”
“Why didn’t you just write ‘Dead Sea’ on there?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, “we might decide we want to do something else.”
“Don’t we want to go to the Dead Sea?”
“Probably,” I said, shrugging again, “but you never know . . . something else might come up or we might enjoy something so much the first time that we want to do it again.”
“But that’s the only thing I told you I want to do while we’re there,” he said, anger creeping into his voice.
“I know,” I said. “Don’t worry . . . I’m sure we’ll get to it.”
He glanced back down at the paper. “I notice all the things that you two want to do are actually on the list,” he said crossly.
“Relax, Tanner,” I said. “We’ll go to the stupid Dead Sea. If we have to we’ll give up going to see where Jesus was baptized . . . or where He was born!” I rolled my eyes at him. “All so you can finally float.”
“Don’t do me any favors,” he muttered, thrusting the paper back at me and dropping it into my lap. Then he rested his head back against the headrest and pretended to sleep.
What a grump.
Laci spent the rest of the trip shooting me dirty looks that were intended to make me be nice to Tanner, but I ignored her and he stayed grumpy until we arrived in Tel Aviv.
Not knowing what we were doing, Laci and I allowed ourselves to get separated when we went through security. Suddenly I found myself standing in front of a gruff looking security guard who was wielding an Uzi.
He looked at my passport and then looked intently into my eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked in a heavy, Hebrew accent.
“David Holland.”
“Are you Jewish?” he asked.
“No, sir.”
“Then why are you here, David Holland? Why do you come
to my country?” The way he was staring at me was completely unnerving.
“I’m a tourist,” I explained. “I’m here to visit the Holy Land.”
“The Holy Land?” he asked. “Where you from?”
“Mexico City,” I told him.
He looked at my passport again.
“I mean the United States,” I said hastily.
“Why do you say Mexico City?”
“I . . . I forgot,” I said. “I used to live there. I forgot.”
“You forgot?” he asked, incredulously. “How do you forget where you live?”
“I lived there for a long time,” I explained, licking my lips nervously.
“How long did you live in Mexico City?”
“Twenty years.”
“What model of car do you drive?”
“What?”
“Car. Car! You have a car, no?”
I nodded.
“What model is this car?”
I glanced to my left, looking for Laci. She was through security already and was standing behind a barrier a long, long way from me.
I looked back at the guard.
“What model is your car?” he asked again, staring at me relentlessly.
“I . . . I don’t know,” I finally said.
“You don’t know?” he asked.
“I . . . I can’t remember.”
He turned and looked at another guard who was standing nearby and spoke to him in Hebrew. The other guard walked over to us.
“You come with us,” he said, reaching down and taking hold of my arm. As I stood up, I heard a commotion behind me.
“Leave him alone,” Tanner’s voice called as I was being led away. I turned in time to see two guards grab Tanner by the arms. He yanked free and two more guards advanced.
“In here,” one of my guards said to me, giving me a little push toward an adjoining room. I searched around for Laci again, but could no longer see her and then I cast a desperate glance back toward Tanner. He stared at me, unmoving . . . no longer struggling against the guards who had surrounded him.