He reached out with outstretched fingers and gripped an edge, then blindly scrabbled for a toehold to support his weight. The rock was smooth, but he found a crack and jammed his toe in then gathered himself and shoved up the last few inches. For a few seconds he was partially suspended, his energy rapidly sapping with the effort of holding on, and then by force of will he dragged his weight another inch until he could hook an elbow over. He hung there momentarily exhausted.
When he recovered his breath enough he looked up. Cully was hanging to his side. With only one hand free he stretched as far as he could, but her leash was still inches from his grasp. He paused to think, and knew there was only one thing he could do and he reached for his knife. The blade gave him the extra inches he needed to cut her free, but more than half the leash was still attached and he knew he was only delaying the inevitable. He sawed on the leather and felt it give, and for an instant Cully fell before she opened her wings and flew clear of the bluff.
She rose again, riding the breeze that flowed around the rock face then she banked and turned towards the valley heading rapidly out of Michael’s line of sight.
He looked down at Jamie far below and summoned the strength to shout to him. ‘USE THE LURE, JAMIE. CALL HER.’
Jamie threw out the cord and began to swing the lure at his side, and as he did he ran around the base of the bluff.
Michael could only watch helplessly as they both vanished from view. All he could hear was the mournful moan of the cold wind. For an instant he thought he heard a thin cry and he listened for it again, but it was gone now, perhaps only the wind and his hope after all.
He hung there as the feeling in his limbs drained away and looking back across the snowfield he saw a figure approaching.
***
Ellis followed the tracks from the road and when he was a quarter of a mile from the ridge he heard a faint voice calling. Raising his glasses he saw the falcon rise and vanish from sight, leaving Somers stuck high up on the rock. He wondered what the hell he was doing there.
Ellis spat in the snow and took the rifle from his shoulder. Sometime during the night it had come to him that all his recent troubles began and ended with Somers. He didn’t blame Rachel for doing what she had. It hadn’t been easy for her these last couple of years. He should’ve swallowed his stupid pride and gone to her when everything at the yard started to get fucked up. If he’d done that it would’ve been okay. Instead he tried to pretend he had everything under control, and to make sure he didn’t see through his own bullshit he started hitting the bottle again. It was hard to understand how he could be so stupid. The last person in this wide world he ever wanted to be anything like was his old man, who was drunk every day of his life. Some things are learned young though, Ellis guessed, and then no matter how hard you fight against it those habits are always there.
He still could’ve made things right, though, Ellis believed. If only he’d gotten that falcon back when he first saw it this would’ve all turned out differently. It wasn’t the money, he knew that. A couple of thousand dollars was never going to solve his problems by then. But he would have proved to himself that he wasn’t the loser he knew he was on the way to becoming. With that one thing to allow him to hold his head up he would’ve got back on the right track and made things right with Rachel. Together they would’ve got the yard running again. They were a team. They were always a team.
It was all gone now, though. Ellis thought about Rachel and how he left her lying on the bed. He remembered when he hit her and in that instant he knew he was just like his old man after all. Why did she have to do it? Why did she have to go for a guy like Somers of all people? It was like Somers had taken everything he had. First the goddamn falcon and then Rachel. An unwelcome image of them together formed in his mind and Ellis screwed his eyes tightly shut to get rid of it, but he knew it would always be there.
When he opened them again he saw Somers still hanging on to that rock, and he raised his rifle and rested it into his shoulder and peered through the scope. Sonofabitch, he thought, this is where you get what’s coming your way.
***
After Rachel drove off, Susan got in her Ford and scrabbled with the key. She turned it and the engine started. She felt like she was on a roller coaster. Over the past eight hours her whole life had been turned upside down, and she’d gone with her emotions without having a moment to think. She had this feeling of dread, certain that just when something good had happened it was all getting turned around.
She put the Ford in gear and reversed around. The wheels slid and churned up the snow when she stepped too hard on the gas, and she eased off and then tried again. The car lurched and stopped and the wheels span.
‘Damn it!’
She told herself to slow down and took her foot off the gas. This time she eased it back on and the car slowly inched forward before it stuck again. She jammed her foot down to try and get it free, but it only made things worse. She felt the back of the car sink into the deep furrows she was digging with the wheels.
‘Not now,’ she pleaded, resting her head against the wheel. ‘Please don’t do this to me now.’
She took several deep breaths, trying to calm her pounding heart, then she got out and examined the problem. The wheels were buried a foot deep in snow and mud and she knew she was never going to get out without something to give her traction. When she saw the wood- store she ran over there and grabbed a couple of hefty logs, which she carried back and wedged under the wheels of her car. After she’d fetched another half dozen she thought she had enough and got back behind the wheel. She turned the key, put the car in drive and slowly applied the gas. The car edged forward, and she felt the wheels catch and grip on the logs. The Ford rocked, but didn’t come right up so she let it roll back then tried again. This time she moved forward a foot and a half and then in her impatience she put the gas on too soon and suddenly the car slewed around, spitting logs out to the side before the wheels started to spin.
When she got out the ground was all gouged out and the Ford was buried as deep as it was before, and Susan knew she’d have to rebuild the ramps. She almost screamed in frustration, but she had no choice. She knew she had to take her time and do it properly, which meant somehow she had to try to stop thinking about what might be happening up in the mountains.
Fifteen minutes later she was almost done when Coop drove down the track. He stopped, and Rachel opened the door and scooted over to make room.
‘Get in,’ Coop said.
They were the only words he spoke. Once, Susan looked over and noted the way he looked. He stank of liquor. He didn’t look at her and she wondered what had happened after she left the dance last night. Rachel was silent too, staring out the windshield, her hands clasped into fists on her lap. They were bound together, Susan thought, the three of them rushing towards whatever the future held.
***
Ellis’s truck was stopped by the side of the road. The door was open and an empty bottle of whisky was on the floor. Coop followed the line of the tracks leading across the snowfield and raised his glasses. After a moment he passed them to Susan. She focused them on the distant figure towards the bluff.
It was Ellis. She saw the figure stuck to the rock face high up on the bluff and knew it was Michael. She quickly swept the ridge looking for Jamie, but there was no sign of him. As she lowered the glasses she realized Coop was already heading across the snow.
‘What’s going on?’ Rachel said, and even as Susan handed her the glasses they heard the sound of a gunshot like the crack of a whip.
***
Michael watched the figure getting closer, following the tracks he and Jamie had made across the snow. He was too far off to be distinguishable at first, but then he could make out a red checked jacket and a rifle and suddenly he knew it was Ellis.
He looked down. It seemed a long way to the bottom. He began to inch his way down. His hands were numb and he could barely feel them. As he reached for a hold a shot rang out and roc
k chips sprayed into the air close to his hand. He twisted around wondering what the hell Ellis was doing. He reached again and another shot blasted the rock an inch from his hand. He knew Ellis could pick him off anytime, so he wasn’t trying to shoot him. Ellis wanted to keep him pinned to the rock face instead, until the cold or tiredness got to him and he fell, as Michael knew he inevitably would. He looked down and wondered which he preferred, slowly freezing and then plummeting to the ground or being shot.
He began to make his way down.
Another shot missed his leg by inches, but it didn’t matter. Michael knew he wasn’t going to make it. He grasped a handhold and it slipped from his fingers. He was so cold his teeth were chattering and he was beginning to shiver uncontrollably. He reached for the hold again and this time by an effort of will he managed to hold on, but when he shifted his weight Ellis fired another shot and shards of rock exploded near his head. He felt blood running down his face. As best he could he pressed himself against the rock and waited.
***
Coop heard Susan shouting at him to do something. He saw Ellis firing at Somers though he couldn’t have meant to hit him because he made a clear target stuck up there on the rocks. He moved his scope to the bluff where Somers was pinned in the freezing wind and he guessed what Ellis was doing.
‘Help him!’ Susan yelled.
Coop didn’t look at her. Another shot rang out. He moved his scope onto Somers until it was squarely on a point dead in the middle of his back. He thought about when he’d watched them both outside the hotel the night before, and his finger tightened on the trigger. Susan yelled again and Coop froze. Abruptly he dropped the sight and found Pete Ellis on the snow and he shouted out his name. There was no reaction, but Coop knew he must have heard. Ellis fired another shot.
Coop called out again. He knew if he didn’t do something, Ellis would kill Somers one way or the other. He wavered and finally squeezed the trigger.
***
Michael couldn’t hold on any longer. He felt himself topple backwards and was aware of another shot at the same time as he was falling through the air. For a second he saw the sky and the rock face rushing past, and then with a thud that knocked the breath from his body he hit the snow. Points of light filled his vision, and a veil of darkness fell like soot and there was nothing.
When Michael came to he was on his back, spread-eagled and numb. He couldn’t move, couldn’t even think about it. He could still see blue sky and the shadow of the rock above. He heard the crunch of snow as somebody approached. He thought Ellis had come to finish him off, but it was Jamie who leaned over into his vision. There were tears in his eyes, but Cully was on his fist. The tattered end of her leash showed through his fingers. He was crying as he took off the remaining anklet around her leg.
‘I called her and she came down. I called just like you said. You can hear me can’t you?’
Michael couldn’t answer but he blinked. His eyes were wet. He felt a tear escape the corner of his eye and fall to join the snow on which he lay. He imagined it forming a crystal of ice. Cully looked around, proud, bright-eyed, dusky cream and grey. He could see the pulsing of a strong heart in her breast.
Jamie raised his fist and she opened her wings and rose into the air.
Small, cold hands turned his head so that he could see her in the cool, clear blue of the sky as she drifted across the ridge and over the valley.
‘She’ll be all right now, won’t she?’
Michael tried to answer, but there was a tremendous pain in his chest.
In his inner vision, he rises with Cully and feels the wind in the air. They soar and turn and far, far below, small figures converge on the white of the snow. The rushing air makes a faint whistling sound.
On the ground, Jamie turns to Susan. He is sobbing as she holds him. Jamie speaks to her, a fact she absorbs as she looks into Michael’s eyes, which seem distant now, and a frost has formed on his eyebrows.
Above them, the snow falcon calls.
CHAPTER 39
The snow was all gone except for those places high up in the mountains where it remained all year. The soft warm sun of late May fell over the house that Michael had grown up in. Susan looked towards the river, thinking it would be a hot summer.
The sound of men’s voices filtered through the woods from her own house where the movers were loading furniture into the truck. They’d worked all of the previous day packing and would be finished by mid-afternoon. Then she and Jamie would get in the car and leave. They’d drive up the track and turn away from town and twenty minutes later they’d hit the highway and turn south, and that would be it. Little River Bend would be behind them.
She looked for Jamie again and found him at the woodstore. ‘I thought you’d be over here.’
He smiled at her and flicked hair back from his eyes. ‘I was just looking around,’ he said.
‘For Cully?’
‘No, I know she’s not here.’ He looked toward the mountains and shrugged. ‘Maybe I was.’
They went around the front and Susan sat on the porch steps. ‘Come, sit.’
He did, planting his sneakers in the grass. She resisted the urge to touch his hair because she knew he hated it. She sometimes thought about how easily she’d become used to hearing his voice after that first time. All the fears she’d held deep within that somehow she wouldn’t recognize him, that he would speak with an alien sound, finally laid to rest. It took him a while to begin talking about David. Perhaps three or four weeks after that day in the mountains, she stopped as they were passing the church.
‘I’m getting out for a minute. You can stay here if you like,’ she had told him.
Jamie looked at her with those serious, wide, brown eyes then shook his head. ‘I’ll come with you.’
They just stood together by David’s grave for a while, but then later that night after supper he said, ‘After we leave, will we ever come back to see Dad?’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘As often as you like.’
He asked if they could look at some pictures and she fetched her laptop, and they sat at the table together going through them. Jamie listened while she told him about each picture, where it had been taken and when. He stared at the ones of his dad for a long time.
‘I thought I’d forgotten him, but I haven’t,’ he said and she hugged him, her eyes filling with tears.
He agreed to go back to Doctor Carey after that, and that was when he finally talked about what had happened the day David was shot.
They’d been stalking a deer; Jamie and his dad were crouched in the undergrowth trying to see into a clearing through the trees. The deer had been skittish, sensing their presence.
David signaled they should try to find a place where they had a clear shot and he lowered his rifle and rose. As Jamie followed his coat snagged on a sapling. It bent with him then tugged free with a sudden noise. As David turned, startled by the sound, he tripped and fell and the gun went off. It was as simple, but as devastating as that. An accident caused by a moment’s carelessness.
David was conscious as he lay on the forest floor rapidly losing blood. Jamie wanted to run for help, but David tried to stop him. Susan thought he probably knew he was dying. Jamie was terrified and shocked by the blood. He left his dad and went for help, but he became disoriented and got lost. Eventually he found his way back to his dad, but by then it was too late.
‘He feels guilty,’ Doctor Carey told her. ‘He blames himself for the gun going off, and then to make it worse, the way Jamie sees it he left his dad to die alone.’
He was getting better now, Susan thought, as they sat together on the porch. They could talk about it without him getting upset, but she knew that it would take time.
They talked about their new home and he seemed excited by the prospect of moving. He was nervous about going to a new school, but Susan thought it would be good for him. He would just be another kid there.
The clearing looked so different now, cover
ed with grass and the woods full and green, the air humming with insects. She remembered Michael standing back there in the cold snow of winter, calling Cully to his fist from the porch railing.
‘We ought to be going,’ she said eventually.
They took a last look around. The house had been sold and the new owners were due to move in the following month.
Coop arrived a short time before they left. He pulled up outside the house as the movers carried out the last of the big items.
‘Thought I’d drop by, say goodbye,’ he said. He saw Jamie come out of the door carrying a box of stuff to the Ford and raised his hand. ‘Jamie, how’s it going?’
‘Hi, Coop,’ he replied. ‘Is it okay if I take my bike with us, Mom?’
‘We don’t have room, Jamie,’ she said. ‘Let the movers take it in the truck.’
He shrugged his acceptance and went back inside.
‘So, everything’s all set,’ Coop commented.
‘Just about.’
It was awkward between them. Every time Susan saw him now she was reminded of that day. She could never forget the way he’d aimed his rifle, and the long delay before he fired.
‘Ellis got out of hospital last week,’ Coop said.
‘I heard. What’ll happen to him?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked away, unable to meet her eye. ‘Susan...’ he started to say.
She shook her head. ‘Don’t, Coop.’
He nodded, accepting. ‘Well, I better get going,’ he said eventually. ‘I hope everything works out for you.’
‘Thanks.’
He went back to his car, and he paused just for a second as he got in, then briefly raised his hand and drove back up to the road.
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