“There is also running water, flush toilets. I figured out how to light off the hot water heater so there should be hot showers in a few hours.”
“How can there be running water? There’s no electricity so a well pump couldn’t be running.”
“Beats me. I didn’t investigate that yet.”
“How long you been up?”
“About an hour. Went outside. Looked at the creek. I love this place. This is like a dream. You sure she didn’t . . . like . . . will this to you?”
I laugh and shake my head. “No possibility. What happens to something like this when there is no will and no next-of-kin?”
“I don’t know. Government takes it over, I guess. Beats me. Think we can get squatter’s right?”
“Seriously doubt it.”
“How about for the summer? We could give up the apartment and live here until the fall session starts, or until someone kicks us out.”
I close the pantry door. “It’s a thought.”
“There’s a Ford F250 four-by-four in the garage. Keys are in it. I moved the car in next to it to keep it out of sight.”
“You have been busy. Was the Rhino in there?”
She turns off the burner and carries the pan of soup to the bowls. “Rhino?”
“Remember . . . I told you about how we escaped on the Rhino ATV?”
“Oh, yeah. No. It wasn’t in there.”
“It’s probably still sitting where we hid it.”
I pull a plate from the cupboard and dump a bunch of crackers onto it. We sit at the table. I dip my crackers. Mandi breaks up a half dozen and dumps them in. “We’re going to have to drive out a ways until I can get phone reception,” I say.
“Hmm.” We eat in silence for a while. “You may only have to go as far as the gate. We could see the lights of the valley from there. You may have reception.”
“You know . . . if we can find a padlock and chain, we could lock that gate so that no one else can get in here.”
Mandi points her spoon off in some direction. “I saw some padlocks in the garage; brand new in packages. Her garage is stocked like her pantry. Tools, oil, cans of gas, those rubber fan belt things, oil filters; she was ready for anything. I’m sure there were chains there.”
Mandi was right. I have phone reception up at the gate. . . two bars. While she wraps the chain we found around the gate and post, I dial Matt’s number. She puts on the lock and then looks around; a little pill container containing one of the keys is in her hand. I look with her, the phone to my ear. There is no answer. Matt’s greeting kicks in. I point to a grouping of rocks. “How about there?”
Mandi moves the rocks and places the pill container amongst them. She sets one rock on top to totally hide it. It’ll be easy to describe to Matt if I can get him to come.
“Hey, Matt,” I say into the phone. “This is Reba Price . . . ah . . .” I suddenly don’t know what to say. “We need your help. We’re at Sam’s old place. You won’t be able to call because there is no reception there. Please come as soon as you can. Bring your doctor vet stuff. Thanks.” I look at Mandi and raise my eyebrows.
“The key!” Mandi says.
“Oh! If . . . when you come, the gate is locked. The key is under a pile of rocks about twenty feet inside the gate, to the right. Please call and let me know if . . . when you’ll come. Leave a message. I’ll come up occasionally to where I can get reception to check messages.” I look at Mandi again.
“Phone number?”
I leave my phone number and start to end the call before I remember one more thing. “Also, I hope you have your GPS from last year, and that it still has the coordinates of the cavern where . . . ah, where Mom and Sam died. If I don’t hear from you by tomorrow morning, we’re going to try and find it. If you can, come to the place where we first entered the mountain. That’s where I’ll need your . . . ah, medical expertise. It’s a gunshot.” I press end, and we walk back down to the house.
I let Mandi do the shower first as she is the one who got the heater going. When it’s my turn, I run it out. We snoop through the house and garage for the remainder of the day, taking an hourly walk up to the gate to check messages. Nothing from Matt. At sunset we stand and look at the creek. I tell Mandi how we ran out of the house and dashed up the creek a ways before coming out and charging up into the trees to get away. I tell her the story to where we arrived in the confines in the rocks and stayed until Sam showed up the next morning on the Rhino.
We go inside and put together a dinner, then walk up to the gate again with flashlights. There is still no message from Matt. There is one from Christi, though. I haven’t talked to my sister since her birthday in February. She’s fifteen now. I feel a pain of guilt for not calling her more. I dial her back.
“Hi, Becky,” she says after one ring. I’m glad to know I’m still in her caller ID. She doesn’t sound happy to talk to me.
“Hi, Sis. How are you?”
“Okay. When you coming home?”
I had a hunch I would be facing this question. Christi comes right to the point, no beating around the bush. Everybody goes home for the summer, it seems, except Mandi and me, and it wouldn’t take Christi long to figure out when classes let out. “I’m not.”
“Oh.”
“Mandi and I got a place together. I’m getting a job.”
“Oh.” There is a very long silence.
“How is your first year of high school?”
“Sucks. Everybody hates freshmen.”
“It’s almost over. Next year will be different.”
“Maybe. Dad’s turning weird.”
“Weird?”
“He went out with some bimbo last week.”
I catch myself holding my breath. I blow it out. “Dad’s dating?”
“Isn’t that what I just said?”
“How much?”
“How much what?”
“How much has he been dating? Is it a lot?”
“How should I know? I’m not his social secretary!”
Christi has found a sharp tongue. Right on schedule; about the same time I found mine. Now I know how Mom and Dad felt. I’d like to break the tip off of her sharp tongue.
“He and Aunt Suzie went out last night.”
“Aunt Suzie? They hate each other.”
“Not anymore.”
Is that good or bad? I have no idea. Aunt Suzie is not . . .
“She’s not Mom,” Christi finishes my thought.
“No, not even close. But . . .”
“But what? It hasn’t even been a year and Dad is looking for a replacement. Why can’t he at least wait until I’m gone? I don’t want to have to watch it.”
“You and Aunt Suzie get along really well. She likes you a lot better then she likes me. You’re her favorite.”
“I like her as my aunt. I don’t want her as my mother, and that’s what she’s turned into, dating Dad or not. She’s becoming weird, too.”
Dad’s dating bimbos. Suzie’s dating Dad. Definitely weird on both levels. Maybe they’re both getting desperate.
“I’m sorry.” It’s the only thing I can think to say.
“And you don’t even want to come home. Do you like it better there than here?”
Damn! “It’s not liking or disliking. It’s . . .” I don’t know what it is.
“You don’t want to have to deal with what I’m having to deal with. You started it, made a mess of it, got Mom killed and now you’re turning your back on us. You’re a chicken shit.”
I gag on my lack of defense.
“And you wouldn’t even come with us to put up Mom’s plaque.”
“Dad didn’t give me an opportunity to work it around my schedule. He called me and said you guys were doing it and that was it. The next thing I know you’ve done it.”
“You’d already said you didn’t want to go. You don’t care about going there again.”
“Hell I don’t! I’m there now.”
“There
where?”
“Up in the Flathead Mountains. Mandi and I are going to hike in to where Mom is tomorrow. I’ll see the plaque you guys put up.”
“Bullshit!”
“No! Not bullshit! Maybe he didn’t really want me to go cause he didn’t want to deal with me. Well, I’m here now and I’ll do it on my own.”
“I think it’s because you snuck out with our college money and are too chicken shit to face us.”
“I took little more than half of the money that was mine, and I’m using it on school. Don’t you go giving me crap about that you sniveling little brat!”
“Fuck you!”
I start to respond with same and catch myself. I don’t know what to say. Be gentle? Be angry? Ignore it? Was I this bad at fifteen? No, I wasn’t. I never used the F word, even around my friends. I take a deep breath and say, “Let’s be rational.” There is nothing. “Christi?
“Shit to hell!” I flip the phone closed.
“That didn’t sound like it went too well,” Mandi says.
“She hung up on me! My little sister who never had a bad word to say about anybody said, ‘fuck you,’ and then hung up on me.” I want to sit down but there is no place but on the ground. Actually I want to bury my face in my pillow and scream! I also want to get angry and hit something. The only thing that stops me, that defeats my anger entirely is the knowing that she was right. The entire thing was my fault. I started it. I got Mom killed. I didn’t want to go back to put up a plaque when they did, though Dad really didn’t give me much of a chance. I wasn’t ready to face it then. I’m not so sure I’m ready to face it now. The only reason I’m really here, I keep telling myself, is because of the cats. Still, sitting on the peripheral of my mind this entire day, has been Mom. I knew from the second I suggested this crazy trip that I’d have to deal with her death again, see the place that it happened, relive it in my mind, find the plaque that they placed.
The thing is I would not be here if not for the cats. I’ve spent the last eight months buried in studies, telling myself I’m doing that for the right reasons when, actually, I’m doing it to avoid the inevitable. I was scared of summer coming, of July ninth coming—the day Mom died. Life did a sneak around on me and threw me back into it two months earlier than I had been subconsciously planning. As I stand here staring out into the night, Mandi’s hand on my shoulder, my eyes burning with tears, I realize that that is what has been in the back of my mind. I had been planning on going there on the first anniversary of the explosion that brought the mountain down on top of her.
“Why don’t you try calling Matt again?” Mandi suggests.
“Sure. Why not. Maybe he’ll tell me to fuck off, too. I’m the one who got his dad killed. He and my sister have every right to gang up on me.”
“Give him a chance, Reba.”
I look at my phone. “I don’t know if I want to get my head bit off again.”
She snaps it from my hand. “He has no reason to bite my head off.” I start to take it back, and then stop. Maybe it is better if she calls. He has to be nice to a stranger, right? Mandi finds his name in the address book and punches the send button. I cross my arms over my chest and wait. It’s now obvious to me that coming here was stupid. We should be kicking back in our new apartment reading books, listening to music, and watching videos on Mandi’s DVD player. I should be looking into summer classes and getting ready to do summer field work. I should be going home and trying to patch things up with my dad and sister.
Right now, I’m cold and I want only to curl up next to a roaring fire.
“Still no answer,” Mandi says. “Think I should leave another message?”
I shrug. “Sure. Why not?”
A few seconds later she says, “Hi Matt. This is Mandi. I’m with Reba up at Sam’s place. We’re heading up to the cave in the morning. Hopefully Reba can find her way. It sure would be great if we had those coordinates from last year. Also, Reba needs your help. We know there is an injured . . . ah . . . animal up there. He’s been shot.” She looks at me. I shrug again. “We have to come up to the gate to get phone reception so if you call, leave a message. We’ll come up and check again in the morning.”
She presses end and we walk back down to the house.
Chapter 13
May 5, 2009 – Tuesday
I lie in my sleeping bag with my head sticking out and watch daylight creep in through the skylights. I’m exhausted from not being able to sleep, from fighting with Christi and Dad when I did, or being chased through the trees by men with night vision goggles and semiautomatic weapons. The memories are coming back in the form of nightmares. I really do wish I hadn’t come.
It is so nice hanging out with Mandi. She accepts me for who I am. I don’t have to hide anything around her, and I don’t have to worry about my psychic talents—no, not talents; more like burdens—getting in between us. As a matter of fact I’ve been able to go for long stretches almost forgetting what I am. That’s what I liked about school. It’s like it all went away. It flared up on Christmas day, but that was good because it brought me Mandi. After that there was nothing until the cats.
The cats!
Why me? Why did I have to respond to their needs? I should have driven in the opposite direction, back to Texas. Could they find me down there? How the devil did they find me in Bozeman, 300 miles away?
Mandi rolls over and sits up. I close my eyes. I don’t want to get up yet, at least not for another month or so. I hear rustling and then her feet padding up the stairs. I shift my position and lie in the quiet. I let my mind drift, relax, go empty of the nightmarish thoughts that have caused me restless sleep all night. The attempt is useless. I open my eyes again. This time, instead of looking up into the skylights, I am drawn to the painting over the fireplace.
I catch my breath!
Sam is looking at me, glaring at me; her smile is gone; her cheeks drawn, her mouth tight. You’re to blame, Rebecca Caroline Price. It’s all your fault and now you take over my house and eat my food.
“I’m sorry!” I cry.
I’m dead and you’re sorry? Your mother is dead and you’re sorry? Her voice grates in my head like a dozen cats clawing at a chalkboard. I throw my hands to my ears. And now you’ve taken over my cats!
“You gave me your cats; you forced them on me! I didn’t want them . . . don’t want them. I’m haunted by them, by the memories. I don’t want them . . . don’t want them.”
Such a pity, Rebecca Price. We should all have a pity party for you.
“Don’t want them . . . don’t want them.”
You’re a sniveling little brat.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it. I don’t want . . .”
Snivel . . . snivel . . . snivel.
“I don’t want . . . don’t want . . . don’t want . . .”
“Reba.”
Sam’s face fades, except for her eyes, and the huge cat eyes of the young sabre-toothed kitten in her lap. They glare in equal mocking. “Don’t want . . .”
“Reba!”
Something or someone has my shoulder; shaking me. I roll to my back and look up into Mandi’s face.
“Wow!” she says. “You awake?”
“Yes,” I say incredulously. “I’ve been awake since before you got up.”
“Really!”
“Really.”
“It looked and sounded to me like you were talking in your sleep. You kept saying you didn’t want something.”
I look at the painting. Mandi follows my eyes. “She was talking to me, blaming me.” Sam’s face is happy, smiling. The tart face is gone. The smirk on the cat is gone.
“You were dreaming, girl.”
“I wasn’t even asleep. I heard you get up just a few minutes ago.”
She laughs at me. “I got up twenty minutes ago and took a shower.”
I look at her. She has a towel wrapped around her head and smells of hot water and shampoo. “Oh.” I struggle to a sitting position. “Jeeze! I had nig
htmares all night. I’m actually kind of glad that was a nightmare. The painting was talking to me. Sam was angry with me, just like Christi.”
“Sounds to me like it’s more dangerous to go back to sleep. Get yourself up. I’d cook us up eggs and bacon, but we don’t have any chickens or pigs, so you’re going to have to settle for something else. Any thoughts?”
Sam’s words are still echoing in my head. The last thing I want to think about is food. “Whatever. Soup is fine, or you pick. I don’t know if I’ll be able to eat.”
“Yeah, sure. Go take a shower.”
She throws her coat on over the sweatshirt she is already wearing and heads up to the kitchen. She is high energy this morning. I want to go unconscious until noon. Since all I would get is more nightmares, I slide out of my sleeping bag into the cold morning air and go about getting ready for a long hike.
“Why am I doing this, again?” I ask the cold room.
“Because I’m insane.”
The only thing that made me turn off the hot shower was that it was becoming lukewarm. Now I sit in the kitchen with my hands wrapped around a mug of hot coffee, my empty bowl of stew pushed to the side. So I was hungry; so what?
“We both have wet hair and no way to dry it,” I say.
“We’re strong, healthy gals.” Mandi leans against the counter with her hot mug. “We can handle it.”
“You’re a Canadian. I’m a Texan.”
“Wear a hat and tuck the hair up.”
“I don’t like hats.”
She blows air. “You drug me up here to do this.”
“Dragged.”
“Whatever! How long has it been since this cat, ah . . .”
“Edik.”
“Edik. How long has it been since Edik was shot?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I say into my coffee. “At least a week, I’d guess.”
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 96