by Scott Blade
One day, two weeks after he first closed his eyes on Gray’s pillow, he overstayed his welcome. He knew it. They both did. She was career-focused. He was forward-focused, not the same thing. She wanted a life of promotions and accommodations and occupational achievements. She was a NCIS agent, a cog in the wheel, a taxpayer. He wasn’t. He wanted no part of it. Therefore, he was no use to her. They had no future. Widow’s future was paved in everlasting blacktop. Gray’s was filled with more criminal busts, salary bumps, and rising through NCIS ranks.
There was no reason to kid themselves. One day, he didn’t wait for her to ask him to leave. He simply showered, dressed, and said goodbye after coffee one morning. And that was that.
About two weeks later, he was riding a bus near Austin, starting to read a paperback called Into the Wild, listening to a guy in a tie arguing on the phone with his parents about who they would be voting for in the upcoming election. He listened to complaints about the state of the country, economy, and the world. He thought the guy had some points. But it was a one-sided conversation for him because he couldn’t hear the parents. He realized something in that moment. One-sidedness was rampant all over the world. He had simply decided he needed a break.
The book he started gave him the perfect idea. What better place to get lost for a couple of weeks or so than Alaska? To add even more sense to his assessment, he thought, Why not Kodiak Island?
Now he was on an island that automatically had a small population of people for him to deal with, but also, it was in Alaska to boot.
He spent two weeks camping and fishing for his dinner and bathing in rivers. And he loved it. He hadn’t seen but a few people here and there. There were six days where he never even spoke. Not one single word. He felt rested and reinvigorated and calm.
Everything was going fine until he started to feel lonely. Eventually, he started to miss the world, the people. Wasn’t life funny? He came there to escape, which worked, but by the end of the last two weeks, he missed the hustle and bustle of the world.
Widow had met several hunters and fishermen and campers in his five week hiatus. All good people. All friendly. It was right there in the beginning that he met one young couple who shared a campfire with him. That’s where he picked up a new interest and hobby. They were bird-watchers. They even gave him a pair of old binoculars with a strap and a little book on birds.
He was searching across the eastern part of the Karluk River for the Northern Shovelers when he heard a bear roar. And now he stood over a frightened old man who was nearly breakfast for a huge bear.
Widow reached his hand down and offered it to the old man. The old guy looked up at him and took it. Widow pulled him to his feet like he weighed nothing at all.
The old man dusted himself off as best he could. He looked up at Widow and said, “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“You’re welcome. You okay?” Widow said.
“Yeah. I’m whole.”
Widow took a good look at the old guy. He stood maybe five eight, about a hundred and fifty pounds. He had gray stubble on his face and a mop of thick, gray-and-black hair. It blew in the wind even after he fixed it. He was dressed in a wader with typical outdoor-style clothing underneath. The old guy’s face was amazing. There was a lot of life in his eyes. His face was symmetrical in all but one way. There was a long white scar down his right cheek. It went from his sideburn down his cheek. It was old and healed to a deep white. It looked like a knife scar. Widow would know. He had seen healed knife wounds before. He didn’t ask about it.
There was something else about it. Something familiar. Widow recognized him from somewhere. It wasn’t the scar. It was something around the guy’s eyes. He had two big eye sockets, like a face designed to hold goggles on it without a strap.
Widow couldn’t place him, but he felt that he had seen his face once before.
“Sorry about your fish,” Widow said.
“That’s okay. I really wasn’t out here for the fish. But that satchel, I loved.”
“Sorry about your bag.”
“Better the satchel than my arm, I suppose.”
Widow cracked a smile and said, “That’s true. Although, I doubt that bear was interested in you.”
“He seemed to be.”
“Nah. He was just wanting the fish.”
“He was pretty aggressive. More so than normal bears.”
Widow shrugged and said, “You might’ve been fishing in his watering hole.”
“Is that why he was so aggressive, you think?”
“Could be. Bears are territorial.”
“Are they?”
“I think so. I’m no expert.”
“Well, he’s gone now. Normally, I would’ve sprayed him with bear spray, but I left it back on my four-wheeler.”
“Is that how you got out here?”
The old man looked at Widow sideways. “How else would you?”
“Lots of ways. By boat. Horseback maybe.”
“You see a lot of horses around here?”
“There could be.”
“You’re not local. Are you?”
“What gave me away?”
To that, the old man didn’t respond. He just gave a kind of sneer, not intended to be rude. The old man reached his hand out and said, “My name’s Bill Liddy.”
Widow took the hand, tried not to crush it, and shook it. “Widow.”
“Widow what?”
They stopped shaking hands.
Widow said, “Jack.”
“Nice to meet you. Widow Jack.”
“Not Widow Jack. It’s Jack Widow.”
“Oh. Why did you say your last name first?”
“That’s what people call me. Always have.”
“I see. Well, nice to meet you, Widow. Just call me Bill. That’s what my friends call me.”
Widow nodded and stayed quiet.
Liddy took a look at Widow’s rucksack. He knew there was a sleeping bag in it. That was obvious. He saw some basic camping gear. There was a cheap retractable fishing pole. And he saw a tin coffee cup hanging from the backside of the rucksack.
He asked, “You camping?”
“Yeah. Pretty much.”
“You get all that gear from Cutty’s Fish and Tackle back in Kodiak?”
“I did. How did you know that?”
“It looks like his cheap shit,” Liddy said, and he let out a cackle like old men do. Then he said, “He’s always selling shit to the tourists. That’s why his place is the first you’ll see when you get to Kodiak on the other side of the island.”
Kodiak was the largest and the closest thing to a city on Kodiak Island. They were about eighty miles away from it. Although there are plenty of waterways and people with boats all over the island, the fastest and most common way to get from one side to the other was by floatplane.
Widow smiled.
Liddy asked, “So, where is he?”
“I have no idea. Back at his shop. I guess.”
“He didn’t fly you over to this side of the island?”
“He flew me.”
“And he left you?”
“Of course. I flew over here with him and another guy to Akhiok Airport. They went in one direction, and I went in another.”
“Akhiok?”
Widow nodded.
“That’s like thirty miles south from here? You rode a four-wheeler all the way here?”
“No four-wheeler.”
“How did you get this far from them? Truck?”
“Can you get here by truck?”
“You’d need some serious off-road vehicles to do it. But sure. It’s possible. I suppose.”
Widow asked, “How many roads you got here?”
“Not many.”
Widow stayed quiet.
Liddy said, “You didn’t answer my question. How did you get this far?”
“I walked.”
“How?”
“Cutty didn’t bring me here just today or yesterday. I’
ve been here for about two weeks.”
“Doing what?”
Widow pointed down at the binoculars dangling from around his neck.
“Bird-watching.”
“Bird-watching?”
“Yeah.”
“You?”
Widow said, “Sure. Why not?”
“You just don’t look like the bird-watching type. So, you’ve been out here all by yourself for two weeks? Just bird-watching?”
“I’m camping too.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to take a break from people. I needed some quiet time with just me and nature.”
“What? Like Thoreau?”
“He lived in a log cabin, but sure. Similar.”
Liddy looked around like he was looking for the bear again. He didn’t see it. He lifted his hand and pointed north.
Suddenly, worry came over Liddy’s face. He patted his pockets like he was searching for something. When he didn’t find it, he spun around and scanned the ground. It was apparent that he had misplaced something.
“Oh no!” Liddy said.
Widow asked, “Everything okay?”
Liddy stopped patting his pockets and stopped searching the ground. He looked at Widow and said, “I need to get the satchel back.”
“Why?”
“There’s something important in it. I need.”
Widow asked, “What?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
Liddy didn’t answer that. He said, “Can you help me?”
Widow said, “You want to hunt down a fifteen-hundred-pound hungry bear and take its fish from it?”
“No. Not the fish. I just need something from the satchel. Please! Help me! I can’t do it without you.”
“What’s so important?”
Liddy paused a beat. He looked around like he was searching for spies in the trees. He said, “It’s personal. It’s sentimental.”
Widow said, “If you want me to help you track down a bear, I think I’m entitled to know what for?”
“There’s a photograph in it. It’s important to me. Please, will you help me? I’ll never find the bear on my own.”
Widow asked, “You don’t have a backup of the photo on your cell phone?”
“I don’t have a cell phone.”
Widow arched an eyebrow. He didn’t have a cell phone either. He’s owned them in the past. The NCIS has issued him smartphones before; usually, they were encrypted. He needed them for work purposes. But since he left years ago, he found them to be more of a nuisance. Smartphones are a little too smart for him. They come with GPS tracking chips inside them. Today’s smartphones are designed to collect data on the user and report that data back to the mothership corporation that designed the phone. He didn’t like that. Widow liked to keep his digital footprint as small as possible, which wasn’t easy these days. Even though he had no smartphone, he still needed to use money to get by. Cash money worked to keep his exact whereabouts and actions quiet, but he had to keep most of his money someplace. That place a bank, which meant that he had to carry a bank card. Every time he withdrew money from an ATM, he was leaving a digital footprint of where he was. He tried to keep money withdrawals down to once or twice a month.
The other thing that was annoying was that a lot of motels only took credit or debit cards before they allowed someone to rent a room. They claimed it was for purposes of reclaiming damages left behind. But Widow just saw this as another means of tracking him. He only used locally owned motels. He found that most times, the guy behind the counter was also the owner. They could be persuaded to overlook their own card-on-file policy.
Widow said, “I don’t have a cell phone either. So I understand.” He thought for a moment, and then he asked, “Why’s this picture so important?”
Liddy looked down at his feet for a moment. A look of suspicion came over his face, like he was about to give away state secrets. Then he said, “It’s of my daughter. It’s the only one I have. We don’t talk.”
Widow nodded and stayed quiet.
Liddy said, “It’s a long story.”
Widow said, “No need to explain it. Not to me. I understand. I didn’t speak to my own mother for seventeen years.”
“Oh? Why not?” Liddy asked.
Widow shook his head and said, “That’s for me alone.”
“I sorry. None of my business.”
Widow asked, “Which way is your four-wheeler?”
Liddy raised a hand and pointed in the direction he left it parked.
“Okay. Let’s go there first.”
Liddy asked, “Why?”
Widow said, “If we’re going to track this bear, then we’ll need that can of bear mace.”
Liddy nodded and said, “Okay. This way.” And he turned and started to walk away.
Widow said, “Lead the way.”
The two men walked north, back to Liddy’s four-wheeler. Liddy kept his head on a swivel. He looked every which way, into the tall grass, up and down the river as the crossed it, and behind every tree. He wanted to make sure the Kodiak bear wasn’t lying in wait.
5
They got lucky. It turned out they didn’t have to track the bear down to retrieve Liddy’s satchel. On the way back to the four-wheeler, Widow spotted the satchel just over the riverbank. It laid sprawled out at the center of a large chunk of crushed grass. The bag was split in half like a torn phone book and nearly right down the center. Liddy stayed behind Widow as the two men walked over to it.
Widow pointed down at the chunk of crushed grass and said, “The bear must’ve sat down here to pull the fish out. He ripped your bag in half, took the fish out, ate one, and ran off with the others.”
Widow pointed at a mess of fish guts, scales, and crushed bones peering out of the crater left behind in one of the bear’s massive pawprints.
Liddy asked, “Why here? So close to us? Is he still around?”
Widow rotated his arm and pointed at bear tracks on the ground that went off to the west. He said, “He’s gone. You might’ve tired him out with all that running. He decided to pop a squat here and get the fish out. He took the rest for later.”
Liddy stepped out from behind Widow. He looked in all directions like he was crossing a dangerous intersection. He knelt on one knee and scooped up the bag. He clenched it close and examined the damage.
Liddy reached in and dug around the shredded contents of the bag. Finally, he pulled out the photograph. From the back, it looked like an old polaroid with the black back and white frame casing around it. It was crumpled a bit. The corners were bent. One was torn clean off, but overall, the photograph looked intact.
Liddy brushed it off and straightened out the corners and the wrinkles. He inspected it. Widow shuffled and sidestepped and moved closer behind Liddy. He looked down and caught a glimpse of the photo over Liddy’s shoulder.
The picture was faded and a little too dark, like someone forgot to use the flash. But he could make it out, and once he had, he realized why it was too dark. It wasn’t a picture of a little girl, like Widow had expected. It wasn’t even a picture of a human being, not in the exact scientific definition of what a fully developed human being was supposed to look like. The photograph that Liddy was holding wasn’t a polaroid at all. It was an ultrasound from the nineties.
It was black and white. There was printed information along the left side. Widow could make out a somewhat-formed fetus. He was no expert, but he would guess it was maybe four months along.
Widow caught a glimpse of the information on the left. He saw a name, maybe the name of the doctor. He saw technical information and numbers and arrows pointing out the head and other formed and forming baby parts.
Liddy caught Widow looking and quickly moved the ultrasound out of view. He pocketed it into his inside coat pocket and rose up off the ground onto his feet.
He sniffled and cleared his throat like he had become emotionally histrionic for a brief moment. Wid
ow caught Liddy wiping away a tear from his eye. But he didn’t ask about it. Like his own feelings and regrets about his mother, it was no one’s business. Liddy’s troubles were his own.
Instead, Widow knelt alongside Liddy and picked up the two halves of the satchel. He stacked them one on top of the other and asked, “You going to be able to have this fixed?”
Liddy sniffled one last time and looked at the remains of his satchel and said, “Doubtful. But I’ll take it back anyway. I don’t want to litter.”
Widow nodded and said, “I’ll carry it for you.”
“Thank you,” Liddy said, “Can you help me up?” Liddy reached up his empty hand to Widow.
Widow nodded and stepped up, grabbed Liddy’s hand, then stepped back and pulled him to his feet.
Liddy thanked him and pointed north again. He said, “This way.”
Liddy stepped away and walked out in front of Widow. He led the way back to his four-wheeler. Widow tucked the two stacks of the satchel underneath one arm tight, and followed. They traversed through high grass away from the bear’s tracks and made it to a thick cluster of trees. After walking up a short hill and then back down the other side of it, Widow saw a narrow paved road in the distance. It looked like it was concreted long ago by locals. He doubted it was on any map that existed today.
Widow asked, “How old is this road?”
Liddy shrugged and said, “Who knows? It’s old. Probably, older than me. The island is full of old roads and paths like this. We’ve got lots of uncharted wilderness here. People didn’t think to start mapping a lot of this until a few decades ago. Hell, Alaska’s only been a state for sixty years.”
Widow said, “Sixty-one. Actually.”
Liddy stopped and looked up at Widow. Something glinted back at Widow from his eye. It was weird, like a mirrored message at sea. It was like a person trapped inside of Liddy was there and then he wasn’t.
Widow shrugged it off, smiled, and said, “Alaska became the forty-ninth state in the Union in nineteen fifty-nine.”