“Please! I’m down here. Please help me!”
Jar and I rush to the edge of the canyon because—of course—the person needing help is on the other side.
In case you’ve never been here, the Grand Canyon for the most part does not have guardrails, so you can walk right up to the very edge and, if you’re as unlucky as the guy crouching on a ledge about two meters below us can attest, you can go over the side, too.
He’s in a precarious spot. The half-meter-long ledge is just wide enough for his shoes to fit side by side. About the only good thing is that the canyon wall is not a sheer drop like it is in some places. But the slope is still steep, and if he slips off the ledge, he’d be in for quite the long slide before he stops again. He might survive it, but he wouldn’t be in good shape.
He’s clutching something in his right hand that looks like a stuffed animal. He looks too old for something like that, but who am I to judge?
“Please, get me up!” he says.
When I first glimpsed him, I thought he was probably in his twenties, but now as he stares up at us, hope in his eyes, I realize he’s a lot younger, maybe sixteen or seventeen.
He’s pressing his body against the canyon wall, his arms thrown out on both sides, hugging the rock. And he’s not wearing a face mask, which is becoming an unusual sight these days, even when one is out alone.
“Can you raise your hands above you head?” I ask. If he does, they might be high enough for us to grab.
The speed at which panic replaces the hope in his gaze has to be some kind of world record. “Are you kidding?”
“Okay, okay. We’ll figure something else out. Just don’t move.”
“Where would I go?”
I take several steps to the left to get a better look at the ledge he’s on. It appears stable but there’s no way to tell for sure, and it’s possible the whole thing could shear off at any moment.
“What’s your name?” I ask.
“Evan.”
“Evan, I’m Nate. I’m going to need you to hang in there for a little bit longer.”
“No, no! You have to get me up now.”
“To do that, I’m going to need some rope. We have some in our camper. It’ll take me a few minutes to get it, but I promise I’ll be right back. Jar will stay here with you.”
“Jar?”
“I’m Jar,” Jar says.
“That’s your name?”
“Is that a problem?” Jar asks.
Apparently realizing how insulting he sounded, he says, “No. Um, sorry. I, uh, was just asking. Hey, uh, did you see anyone else up there?”
“Anyone else?” I ask, looking around. “Should there be?”
He hesitates then says, “I thought I heard someone right before you showed up.”
“Just us as far as I know. Now you sit tight. I’ll be right back.”
I race toward the campground. About halfway there, I’m hit with the sensation someone’s watching me. Without breaking stride, I glance over my shoulder, but the trail behind me is empty.
The rope is in one of our gear bags, which is stowed in the storage area under the Travato’s cushioned bench seat. We may be on vacation, but I’ve learned if I’m going to be away from home for more than a day, it’s always best to take the tools of my trade with me.
I grab a hank of rope and am running back down the trail in less than half a minute. At the same spot as before, I once again feel the sensation of being watched. Someone must be hiding in the brush. If Evan wasn’t on the verge of taking a fast trip to the bottom of the canyon, I’d take the time to find out who it is.
When I reach the canyon rim again, I’m happy to see that Jar is calmly lying near the lip, looking over the edge, talking to Evan.
As I stop next to her, I hear Evan say, “Is that him? Is he back?”
“He is,” she says. “Just a few more moments now.”
“Please hurry.”
I unwrap the rope and tie a loop on one end that’s large enough for Evan to fit through, then take the other end and run it around the base of the biggest bush I can find. I give it a tug. The bush jitters, but I think it will hold.
Satisfied, I return to the canyon lip and look over. “You ready?”
“Yes! Hurry, please.”
I hold the looped end of the rope over the edge so he can see it. “I’m going to lower this down to you. I want you to put this over your head and under your arms so that it sits in your armpits and straps across your chest. Make sure to put the knotted end at your back. Got it?”
“I…I’m not sure I can do that.”
“It’ll be fine. I’ll talk you through it.”
“Oooookay.”
I lower the rope until it dangles against his body. “Very slowly, move your left arm to your chest.”
“I don’t want to let go.”
“Keep it slow and steady and you should be fine.”
Evan does not look convinced.
“It’s the only way we’re going to get you out of there,” I say.
His fingers curl toward his palm, then, like an inchworm, he slides his arm toward his body until his hand rests on his chest.
“Excellent,” I say. “Now slip your arm through the loop, then raise the rope high enough so you can get your head through it, too. Remember what I said before. The rope goes under your armpit, and the knot at your back.”
He gets his arm through with no problem, but the moment he bends his head forward to move it into the loop, he starts to lose his balance and slams back against the dirt wall.
“Ohmygod. Ohmygod. Ohmygod.”
“You’re all right,” I say. “You’re not going anywhere.” While his left arm is in the loop, his head is not. “I need you to try again. But this time, don’t lean your head forward. Just put the rope over the top.”
“I can’t.”
“You can, Evan. Once the rope is over your head and your other arm, I can pull you up and you’ll be standing here with us in less than a minute.”
Evan closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. At first, I think he’s too scared to do anything, but then he brings his left arm back in, raises the rope over his head, and reaches back out to hug the wall. Then his right arm moves slowly to his torso and through the loop.
“Good,” I say. “Really good. I’m going to pull on the rope now. Just a little at first to make it tight. Okay?”
He nods.
Using the lever of the bush, I do as I described, until the rope hugs his chest and the knotted end is raised behind his head.
“You ready?” I ask.
“Yes! Get me off of here.”
I don’t yank him up but pull at a steady rate, sliding him up the canyon wall. As soon as his torso is above the lip, Jar twists him around so that he can lean forward onto the ground. Once he can get a leg over the lip, I stop pulling and let him crawl the rest of the way to safety.
He lies there on his stomach for several seconds and then rolls onto his back, clutching the worn-looking stuffed tiger he’s been carrying tight to his heaving chest.
Jar and I both move a socially acceptable two meters away. I disentangle the rope from around the bush and begin rolling it up.
When Evan finally opens his eyes again, I say, “Are you okay?”
“I…I think so.” He sits up, pulls the loop off him, and drops it to the ground.
“You might have some bruises from the rope,” I tell him as I coil up the last of it.
“Okay,” he says as he jumps to his feet. “Um, thanks.” And without another word, he runs back toward the path.
I stare after him. I didn’t really expect him to hang around for social hour, but I thought we might get more than just “um, thanks.” After he moves out of sight, I look at Jar. “Kids these days, huh?”
“He is troubled,” she says.
“He’s a teenager. By definition he’s troubled.”
Her eyes narrow in a grimace as she studies me. “How did you know he was here
?”
Oops.
Not only is she asking something I don’t want to answer, but I’ve failed to keep the surprise of her question off my face. I try to cover it with a comically raised eyebrow and say, “ESP.”
“You turned off the path at exactly the right spot.”
“It was just a guess.”
She gives me a hmmm and starts walking toward the path.
She bought my excuse, right?
Yeah. I don’t think so, either.
Chapter Four
Instead of returning to the Travato, Jar and I continue on our walk.
I wish I could appreciate the surrounding beauty more than I am, but Jar’s not talking to me. At least not with anything more than single-word replies.
Which is awesome, by which I mean it totally sucks.
But what am I supposed to do? I certainly can’t tell her Liz guided me to Evan. The only thing I can play is the it-was-a-lucky-guess card, but it would probably just make her more suspicious.
So I’m stuck with mostly silence, which turns to thoughts of Liz and what she did today. Leading me to Evan like that? I mean, it’s great, but it also makes me feel uneasy.
Check that. Uneasy is too mild a word.
It makes me feel…well, shaken.
How can I continue to believe she’s just a figment of my subconscious when she does things like this? Things that I have no way of knowing about?
Stop it, stop it, stop it.
She can’t really be here. She can’t.
I decide to do what I have done all the other times I was struck by this existential crisis. After considering the situation just long enough to make me feel troubled, I push the thoughts as far to the back of my mind as possible and lock them away.
Obviously this isn’t a permanent solution, but it will get me through the present.
Jar and I watch the sunset from a canyon lookout point along the path, the last vestiges of the day playing out across the opposite rim as the canyon itself grows dark.
Not only is it a feast for the eyes, but the view is powerful enough to break through some of Jar’s defenses, and she leans against me as we watch the final rays of the sun disappear.
Above us, the stars begin to shine, and soon a whole swath of ancient light dots the sky. With the night comes a chill in the air, which finally gets us moving back to camp.
I think everything is back to normal again until I catch sight of the Travato. I put the campfire out before we left but it’s roaring again, and in its flickering glow I see the silhouettes of two people sitting at the picnic table that came with our campsite.
A glance at Jar tells me she’s seen them, too.
For the life of me, I can’t figure out who they are. Squatters? Park rangers? People who were cold and thought nothing of using our firewood to warm up?
It’s not until we’re about twenty meters away that I realize one of our visitors is Evan.
With him is a balding man in his mid-forties, if not older. His stomach sits as firmly on his lap as the grimace resting on his face. I can see the latter because neither of them is wearing a mask.
As we near the fire, the man stands up and prods Evan to do the same. The older guy is a bear of a man—that stomach of his hangs off a body that has to be at least a hundred and ninety-six centimeters (six foot five).
“Evening,” he says. His voice is deep, scratchy. A smoker.
Jar and I stop on the other side of the fire, leaving a good four meters between us and them.
“We’re sorry to disturb you,” the man says. “It’s, um, my understanding that you helped my son.”
When the man says my son, Evan, who is standing behind him, looks at the ground as if wishing he was anywhere else but here.
“No big thing,” I say. “Just happened to be walking by.”
“Said he slipped and got trapped between a couple rocks and would have still been there if you hadn’t stopped to help him. Doesn’t sound like nothing to me.”
That does not sound anything like what I did.
But seeing no reason to dispel the kid’s lie, I say, “He’d have eventually worked his way out on his own. He wasn’t really in any danger.”
The man looks back at Evan, taps him hard on the arm, and nods at me.
As Evan moves closer to the fire, I notice a slight discoloration on the right side of his jaw. It could be just the flicker of the flames, but I don’t think so.
“Thank you for helping me,” he says.
“You already thanked me. You don’t need to do it again.”
“I’ll tell him what he needs to do and what he doesn’t,” Evan’s father says, a flash of his annoyance now directed at me.
I smile and make no other response.
The man takes a breath. “Sorry. The boy’s got me a little…. It’s all right. Look, I wanted to say thank you, too.”
He takes a step as if he’s going to walk around the fire to us.
Before he can, I hold up a hand in the universal signal to stop. “Don’t worry about it. Happy we could help.”
The man halts, seems to take in our face masks for the first time, then snorts a laugh. “Sure.” He nods back at a lump of something sitting on the picnic table. “The wife sent over some cookies. She made them this morning.” He forces a smile. “You have a good night now.”
He grabs Evan by the arm and heads into the darkness, toward the big Winnebago down the road. Before Evan completely looks away from us, several expressions cross his face that seem to say thank you and I’m sorry and…well, the last isn’t so much directed at us. It’s more a sense of impending dread. Like he knows his evening is far from over and the worst is yet to come.
When they are out of earshot, Jar says, “I do not like Evan’s father.”
“Don’t like him.” I say this unconsciously, my inner tutor popping out to help her with contractions.
To her credit, she doesn’t scowl at me like she probably should. “I don’t.”
“For the record, neither do I.”
We sit by the fire as the night continues to cool. At some point I go inside the Travato, warm up some chili on the stove, and carry our bowls back outside.
We talk little as we stare at the flames and eat. This is not unusual for us. Comfortable silences are more the rule than the exception in our life together. Only something’s not quite comfortable about this silence.
I don’t know about Jar, but I’m having a hard time not thinking about Evan and his father. Every once in a while, I catch noises coming from their campsite, nothing loud enough to determine the cause but they make me uneasy.
It’s nearly ten p.m. when we put the flames out and head inside the camper. As we do, I notice the fire at the Winnebago is still lit, so either they’re staying up late or letting the flames burn unattended, which is against campground regulations, not to mention common sense.
Jar and I break out the PlayStation and play Overwatch. Yes, we’ve brought it with us. Gamers gotta game.
Except my focus is divided and I keep getting killed. I can’t help but glance out the window every twenty minutes or so to see if the fire at the Winnebago is still going. It is.
After about two hours, when Jar says, “Maybe we should check,” I realize she’s been looking out the window, too.
Intuition, or maybe you’d call it suspicion, is a hazard of our day job. It would be great if I could turn it off when I’m not on a mission, but I’ve never found the switch. Right now, the feeling that something’s wrong is hitting both of us hard.
We leave the TV on and set it to play a movie on Netflix so that the screen will continue to flicker. In the glow, we grab a few items from one of the storage bins and head out through the driver’s door, which is on the opposite side of Evan’s Winnebago. Though it’s pretty cold out, we’ve opted to wear sweaters instead of jackets, as they will allow us to move a lot more quietly.
There are six campsites between us and the big Winnebago. In each is a cleared
area with a fire ring and picnic table. The areas between the sites are dotted with a light cover of brush and the occasional tree. We stay low enough that our silhouettes are indistinguishable from the ground cover. We’re aided in this effort by the fact moonrise is still a few hours away.
The campfire by the Winnebago is still burning, though it’s beginning to lose strength. As we near, we can see the picnic table and some chairs similar to the folding ones we brought with us. They sit empty. The lights inside the RV are off, which I take to mean everyone’s gone to bed.
My jaw tightens in annoyance. The rule about unattended fires is not the kind you want to ignore. An unwatched fire could be a death trap for anyone in the area.
I’m contemplating whether I want to make a big deal out of it by pounding on the RV’s door and making Evan’s father put the flames out or just doing it myself when Jar taps my arm. I glance at her, and she points at the ground near the firepit, a mixture of concern and uncertainty on her face.
For a second or two, I think the lump on the ground is a pile of supplies the family left outside. But then I realize it’s a person, curled in a fetal position, facing the dying flames.
The air is chilly enough that sleeping outside couldn’t be comfortable, even in a sleeping bag next to a fire.
But this person isn’t in a sleeping bag, and has just a stocking cap and a jacket on over his clothes.
I lead Jar to the edge of the campsite. Though the person is facing away from us, I have no doubt it’s Evan.
I scan the area to make sure I didn’t miss anyone else. The person at the fire is the only one outside. I check out the RV. The only window facing the fire that doesn’t have a curtain drawn is the one on the front passenger side.
Because the Winnebago is backed into its parking space, I don’t have a great view through the window from where I am.
Check, Liz whispers.
I motion for Jar to stay where she is, then sneak across to the road that connects the campsites and move into the bushes on the other side, where I will have a better view.
Someone is sitting in the front passenger seat. The starlight provides more than enough illumination for me to see the person is bald and big. Unless Evan’s father has a twin brother, it’s the boy’s dad.
Mercy (The Night Man Chronicles Book 3) Page 4