Luke practically danced over to where Nate entered data in his GPS. “Somebody’s excited,” he said with a grin. Then he showed me the map, encased in plastic. “This here’s going to be hard goin’.” He pointed to a place about two hundred yards or so in from where we were starting. “A deep drainage that no doubt has water in the bottom.”
“And hard up the other side.” I took a deep breath and met Nate’s eyes. “Let’s do this thing.”
“Bring Luke over here and let him go then.”
I moved toward the spot Nate had entered as our launch point. I checked for wind and found none. Just a lot of rain. I made Luke heel, then removed his leash. “Seek, seek!” My excited dog took off.
Chasing Luke through the woods in daylight was one thing. Doing it on a cold, dark, rainy night was something else again. I used both my lighted visor and my good flashlight, but I still stumbled at times.
I found myself distracted by the shadows of trees that swung around as I moved. More than once, I saw a dead stump and thought it was a little boy. When we got to the ravine, I nearly fell down it before I realized I was at the edge.
Casting my light forward, I saw Luke racing up and down the ravine looking for a scent. Suddenly, he stopped and looked at me. “Seek, seek!” I called out, gesturing toward the other side. He took off, scrambling up the far side, and disappeared into the woods.
“Does he have something?” Nate asked.
“I’m not sure.” I worried that we’d end up stumbling around on a cold dark night for nothing.
I made my way down into the ravine and up the other side. I heard Nate right behind me. The clay was slick under my feet. More than once I slipped, and he had to catch me.
When we reached the top Nate said, “Stop. Let me set a waypoint and take a bearing.” He looked up after a moment. “Better call him back. We’re not too far from those cliffs.”
Rain dripped off my visor. Nate and I were both covered in mud. He was looking at a map encased in plastic and still had to wipe it off now and then. Whatever marks he’d made were smearing.
I whistled for Luke who came bounding back. The rain didn’t seem to bother him at all. I poured some water into his portable bowl and let him drink, then finished the bottle myself. After all this, what if we found the kid dead? Please, no. No, no, no.
“Best leash him up,” Nate said, gesturing toward Luke. He shined his flashlight on the map and held it out so I could see it. “Cliffs are ten, maybe fifteen yards away. With all this rain, they could be crumbling.”
I pulled a thirty-foot lead out of my pack and clipped it on Luke’s harness.
“Let’s give it another half hour,” Nate said, “then regroup.”
We worked Luke on leash right up to the cliffs. In several places, Nate even got down on his belly and shone his flashlight over the edge, searching for a little blond-haired boy. I wanted to hang onto his legs. Once, the edge crumbled under his hand, sending him scurrying backward.
“Nothing,” he said.
I think both of us were discouraged at that point. I know I was.
We’d covered the sector we’d been assigned. “Should we go back?”
Nate cocked his head. “We go back, that’s it for this little boy. Nobody else coming out here tonight.”
I didn’t want to quit. I was wet, tired, and frustrated, but I didn’t want to quit. We knocked around some ideas, but nothing fit until I asked, “What about that ravine? What if the boy stumbled into it and started walking downhill?”
“Then he’d be on the beach down there, but they searched that good, according to the sheriff.”
“But a little kid like that, he might not make it all the way to the beach. And it was hard for us to make it out of that ditch. I don’t think he could have. I remember my little sister at that age. She certainly wouldn’t have had the strength to climb up that steep wall.”
Nate shifted his weight. “So what are you thinking?”
“Let’s go back to the ravine using a different path. Then let’s search in the bottom, downhill, going toward the river. I can let Luke go down there in the bottom. I trust him.”
“We could start here,” Nate said, pointing to the map, “and work our way down. It’s gonna be hard.”
“I know. But I think we should do it.” Luke stood near us. I could see he was ready to go again. “Look, Nate, I won’t be able to sleep if we leave without checking that ravine.”
My passion forced a grin to his face. “I call that good prey drive.”
I laughed for the first time in months.
He dropped his head. I noticed his eyes were closed. I swear, he was praying. Who was I working with? Tim Tebow? Then he looked up, took a deep breath, and said, “Okay, we’ll do it.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out a protein bar that combined dried fruit, nuts, and chocolate. “We’re going to need some energy.” He handed it to me and retrieved one for himself, then found a jerky treat for Luke.
Luke’s coat glistened with rain. His ears were still pricked and his nose active. I was glad all the running and work we’d been doing had kept him from getting soft.
We worked our way back to the gully, and I let him off-leash. I motioned down to the bottom. “Seek!”
Luke started down. He slipped but caught himself. I followed him, holding onto roots to keep from sliding on the slick clay. Once a root gave way, and I started falling. Nate grabbed my shoulder, supporting me as I scrambled to find secure footing. By the time we got to the bottom, we were both a mess, covered in mud, wet and cold.
Luke was out of sight. “The dog went that way,” Nate said, gesturing down the ravine. He looked up at the pouring rain. “We got us a frog-strangler.”
Great. A hick Tim Tebow.
We picked our way down that ditch. It was slow going, past rocks and tree debris that interrupted the flow of the stream running down to the river, making waterfalls and pools we had to skirt around. “This’d be hard in the daytime,” I called out to Nate, who had taken the lead. I had to trust Luke was ahead. I couldn’t see or hear him. “How far to the river?”
“Three-quarters of a mile,” Nate said over the drumming of the rain. “Twenty minutes, I reckon, in these conditions.”
That’s when I heard Luke bark. My heart jumped. “Did you hear him?”
The dog came racing back. He dodged Nate, got to me, and grabbed the tug on my belt. I could hardly believe it. “He tugged!”
“Let’s go!” Nate moved faster.
“Good boy, good boy. Seek!”
Luke raced on ahead.
For fifteen more minutes we worked past shrubs and boulders, tree roots and slippery mud. I fell and Nate helped me up, then he fell and cracked his kneecap, hard, on a rock. “No matter,” he said, “just keep moving.”
All the while, Luke dashed back and forth, barking. Finally, he stood still and barked and there, partway up the wall of the ravine, was an indentation made by the root ball of a huge, fallen oak. And a little blonde-haired boy lay curled up in the mud.
“We got him!”
Words can’t describe the way I felt. It was like fireworks and Christmas morning all wrapped up in one. Like a perfect score in agility. Like seeing your dad for the first time in forever.
Nate felt the boy’s pulse while I praised Luke. “He’s alive! Thank God! You take care of him while I call it in.”
Take care of him? How?
“Joey?” I said, approaching the boy as Nate got on the radio. The toddler’s eyes opened a little, but he didn’t cry. When I touched him, he was freezing cold.
Nate returned. “We got no cell signal, and we lost radio contact.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“Warm him up. Here, I’ll do it.”
Nate jerked off his pack and pulled out a Mylar emergency blanket and a small, chemical hot-pack. He stripped off the little boy’s wet clothes, dried him with a small towel, and covered him with a spare T-shirt.
“C’mon, little guy,
wake up,” he said. The rain was coming hard again, and Nate had to work fast.
Unzipping his own jacket, Nate pressed the boy close to his chest and covered him with the Mylar. “Here, break this.” Nate handed me the hot-pack and I bent it, releasing the chemicals that would create heat.
“Hypothermia?”
“Yes. But he’s breathing, and his pulse is steady. Soon as he warms up, I’ll go back for help.”
“Wait,” I said, unzipping my jacket. “Give him to me.”
Nate hesitated, then complied. “Keep him horizontal if you can, and don’t apply the heat to his arms or legs. Keep it near his chest but not directly on his skin.”
Cradling the boy against my body, I stroked his wet hair and called his name. “Come on, Joey. Wake up. Wake up now.” I pulled the Mylar close around him and my jacket over that. Fatigue mixed with fear and elation created a storm of emotions in me. Don’t die on me, kid! Don’t you dare die.
“Come on, little guy. You can wake up now. Look, see the big dog. He found you!”
Luke had discovered a place to lie down, finally tired after all of his searching. He turned and looked at me when I said the word “dog,” and thumped his tail. “Yes, you are a good boy.”
When I looked up, Nate was climbing the side of the ravine. It took a minute to realize what he was doing—heading for high ground to get a signal back to the base camp.
I leaned over and kissed the little boy on the top of his head and instantly remembered doing that to Brooke when she was little. Where had those tender moments gone?
“They’re comin’.” Nate’s eyes were shining when he returned. “How’s he doing?”
Just then, little Joey Washburn opened his eyes and began to cry.
9
It doesn’t get much better than finding a lost kid two days before Christmas. The elation of the parents, the relief of the law enforcement officers, the press swarm (which I managed to mostly avoid), and the happy newscasts that followed created a bubble of goodwill. It also made Christmas Day at my mom’s house easier. For once I didn’t feel like an outcast. They had something safe to talk to me about.
Only once during that time did the dream edge into my sleeping mind, like a mockingbird harassing me. I woke but reoriented myself quickly and managed to fall back to sleep.
Two weeks after Christmas I found myself sitting across the table from Nate at his favorite steak place.
“Feels good, don’t it?” he said, grinning at me.
I had to agree with him. It did feel good, good enough to make me reconsider quitting SAR. Maybe if I stuck to the live-search team, I’d be okay. That thought had obsessed me over the last couple of weeks.
Dinner was courtesy of the sheriff’s office in Westmoreland. When Nate called to tell me about the gift, he’d suggested this place. Its location on the outskirts of a strip mall parking lot was nothing to brag about, but Beef ‘n Brew knew how to cook steak.
With its nouveau log cabin décor and noisy bar, B&B (as the regulars called it) had created a guy-friendly, meaty enclave in a country increasingly full of small plates and pretty vegetables. In the parking lot I’d seen a bumper sticker: EAT BEEF The West wasn’t won on salad.
I ordered a T-bone and Nate had sirloin. The smell wafting up from the plates as the server set them down predicted a terrific meal.
We talked about the search and the reactions to it while we ate. About halfway through my meal, my curiosity shoved my reserve out of the way. “Nate, I realized I don’t know the first thing about you. Are you married?”
“No. You?”
I shook my head. “Where do you work?”
“At the community college.”
“Really? What do you teach?”
He took a big drink of water and chewed on the ice, but he kept his eyes on me. He was up to something. “I cut the grass.”
I gave him a twisted smile. “Not much grass cutting going on in January.”
“You are right about that.”
“So…?”
“I fix things.”
“Besides dogs?”
He laughed. “It’s the dogs fixin’ me mostly.” He took a drink of water. “Time was I thought I’d use the GI bill to go to school. I enrolled in classes, but I saw they were advertising for a maintenance worker. Figured I could use the money. After a while, I just dropped the classes.” He fingered the knife next to his plate. “Thing is, I found out I could bring my dog.”
“Sprite?”
“The dog before her. Springer named Maggie. I was spending six hours or so on the riding mower, and she would ride with me. Jump off once in a while. They got so used to seeing me with that dog, they didn’t blink an eye when I started bringing her with me on inside jobs. Fixing plumbing. Painting. Laying carpet. You name it, Maggie and me would do it. I got to be known as the dog man.” He grinned. “Which was fine by me.”
“I love having Luke with me.”
“I got hurt over there in Afghanistan. I came back messed up. Real messed up.” Nate’s eyes caught the candlelight. “A dog was one of the things saved me.”
One of the things. I didn’t want to pursue that.
“Dogs are funny, picking up on stress, trying to make us right. Balance out our emotions.” He let that hang in the air between us. When he looked up again, I felt his eyes piercing me like a scalpel dividing bone and marrow. “I’ve noticed Luke doin’ that with you.”
I blew that statement off with a shrug and a redirection. “Why were you so negative at first about Luke and me doing SAR?”
“I weren’t.”
“Yes, you were.” I wasn’t going to let him dodge that.
He laughed softly and shook his head. “Okay, I was. I guess I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what?”
Serious hesitation followed. Nate stared at his fork as if he were willing it to move. I knew he was buying time.
Finally, he lifted his gaze. “Afraid of getting involved, of having to walk someone down the same mean road I been on. Afraid of stirring up my own past.”
“What are you talking about?” As soon as that question was out of my mouth, I regretted it. I should have just laughed it off, sidetracked the conversation, changed the subject. But the rocket had been launched, and there was no calling it back.
“Like I said, I saw the way Luke was acting toward you. I thought, this girl’s been through something.”
My breathing became shallow. What did he know?
“I saw him nudging you when you got stressed, protecting you, trying to balance you out. Trying to take on your negative energy is the way some put it. I saw him doing a version of what my dog did in Afghanistan when the rockets were whistling overhead, and I was shaking under all that body armor. I didn’t know what your story was, but I was afraid of getting involved with it. And that’s nothing but selfishness and unbelief. And I’m sorry.”
My mind raced. There was this weird buzzing in my head. I felt exposed, like someone had just opened a window into my messy soul. Heat flushed my face.
Quickly, I seized an escape route. “My dad,” I said, averting my eyes, “was an NYPD officer. He died on 9/11, running into the South Tower.” I put down my fork. “It’s been a hard loss to get over.”
Nate squinted. “How old were you?”
“Twelve.”
“Tough age for a girl to lose a dad.”
“Very hard.” I continued on with the story, about how I was at school and how my mother came and got me and how we sat on the couch, clutching each other while we watched the news on TV, and how we knew, in our hearts, that my dad was dead.
It was a good story and it was true, every word of it. But I knew it was not the story. It was not the root of my anxiety. Not the source of my nightmares. Not the reason for the iron-fisted fear that gripped my heart and sent me retching on the side of the road.
If the partial truth was actually a lie, then I was guilty as sin.
Swiftly, though, I diverted the c
onversation. “What happened to you? How’d you get your scar?” I nodded toward his left arm. I willed my eyes to relax. I even smiled.
I had gotten good at deception.
“In Afghanistan, I had a Belgian Malinois named Rock. He was young, restless, and the most courageous dog I ever worked with. Beautiful dog. Our job was hunting IEDs buried in the road, weapons caches, anything we could find.
“One day we were driving down a road another unit had cleared. We were two weeks from going home, and we thought we were in safe territory. All of a sudden, an RPG came out of nowhere and landed right on the vehicle we were in.
“I remember the explosion. I remember the smell of fire, of burning flesh. I remember my leg being trapped, not being able to get away from the flames.
“When they got to me, Rock was lying on top of me, dead. Still trying to protect me.”
My throat slammed shut.
“Everybody died but me,” Nate said. “Every person in that vehicle, including Rock. They shipped me home to the burn unit at Brooke. Wanted to do skin grafts. I told ‘em not to bother. I wanted to die.
“I was one angry SOB. I swore, I cursed. I jerked IVs out faster’n they could plug ‘em in. One day this guy came in, a double amp. Rode that wheelchair like it was a racehorse. Smooth as silk.
“His name was Peter Turner, and that dude would not leave me alone. He came every day, rolling into that room like he was the sun risin’. Talkin’ to me. Tellin’ me how I could make it, how I needed to make it, and how there was a reason I made it through.
“I hated that guy. But after a while, I got used to him. And then I missed him if he was late. ‘Got hung up in PT,’ he told me one day. ‘Had a kid who didn’t think he could walk again.’
“‘What happened?’ I asked him. ‘Oh, he walked all right. I wouldn’t let him quit.’
“I knew then I didn’t have a chance with Peter. He wouldn’t let me die. What’s more, he wouldn’t stop talkin’ about Jesus. Jesus this, Jesus that. I hated that too. Over time, he made Jesus real to me. He got me reading the Bible. He gave me hope, he did. Hope anchored in heaven.”
Nate’s tattoo?
“By the time I left that burn unit, Peter had planted faith in me.” Nate pulled up his sleeve. “I got this tat the day he died,” he said, revealing a large anchor with words I couldn’t quite read.
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