Strawberry Hill

by Catherine Anderson

  He cursed under his breath as he jerked up his britches, forgot to point his toes down, and got his foot stuck in the sheath of denim. Son of a bitch. The leg of the jeans wouldn’t go up without dragging those five digits backward. Wouldn’t pull off without bending them double the other way. Stuck as tight as a hair in a biscuit. With a mighty pull upward, he got his foot pushed out and winced at the pain. That was his gouty toe, damn it. Now he’d be hobbling for days.

  Zip, snap. He hopped to pull on a boot. Heard another scream. He put the second boot on, grabbed his rifle, a seven-millimeter Remington Mag bolt-action, and lurched out of the tent, his big toe joint shooting pain a mile up his shinbone. Breaking into a run, he realized that Dale had chosen the last tent down the line to serve as Vickie’s quarters. That put her smack-dab at the edge of camp with nothing and nobody between her and the wilderness. It also put her too far away from him. Not good. He’d reacted to her screams faster than a prairie fire with a tailwind while the younger fellows were still fumbling around to get their pants on. Screw that. Vickie’s tent needed to be next to his, not so far away that he had to grease the wagon twice before he could reach her.

  Even though the screaming had stopped, Slade was still frightened for Vickie’s safety. The woman hadn’t been raised on concrete. There wasn’t much in a montane forest that got her knickers in a twist. If she didn’t have a gun, a bear or a cougar might scare the bejesus out of her, but not much else would send her into hysterics. A bear. Oh, Lord. Had Four Toes already found the camp? Whenever Slade left the ranch to do guided hunts each fall, it normally took Four Toes four or five days to figure out where he’d gone and follow him. But the bear was older now and a little wiser. Since Slade set up his base camp in pretty much the same location every year, Four Toes might have remembered the way and no longer needed a genius IQ to find him.

  Slade sent up a silent prayer that it was his bear bedeviling Vickie. At least Four Toes wouldn’t hurt her. Well, Slade didn’t believe the bear would harm a human, but he was a wild animal. Nobody with half a brain ruled out the possibility that a bear could suddenly go loco. He chose a path well away from the tents. The night had turned as black as truck-stop coffee, and he didn’t want to trip over a tie-down peg.

  Slade reached Vickie’s tent, which was illuminated from within and shone golden in the darkness. With a sweep of his left arm, he pushed back the door flap. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see. Vickie’s torn and bleeding body, he guessed. He only knew he didn’t expect to find Four Toes with his broad rump parked on the dirt floor of the tent and a bottle of ketchup held between his front paws. Vickie, whose face had drained of color and looked sort of gray, huddled at the head of her bed, her slender arms hugging her knees. She watched her uninvited guest with eyes that had turned jade green and looked as round as marbles. A handgun lay on the sleeping bag beside her.

  “Four Toes, what the Sam Hill do you think you’re doing?” Slade yelled. “Get your fat ass out of here!”

  Vickie shot a wondering look at him. “You know this bear?”

  Slade had jacked a cartridge into the chamber of his rifle as he was racing to reach her. Now that he knew the ruckus had been caused by Four Toes, he reversed the action, popped the copper casing out onto the floor, and bent over to pick it up. “Oh, yeah. Vickie, meet Four Toes. Four Toes, get your sorry self out of her tent.”

  The bear’s response to that order was a slurping sound. He’d punched a tooth or claw through the squeeze bottle and, suckling like a baby, was now enjoying what appeared to be a much-needed ketchup fix.

  Vickie’s shoulders visibly relaxed. “Oh, thank God. I thought he was wild.”

  “Oh, he’s wild, and cantankerous, and the biggest pain in the ass I’ve ever been cursed with. He was orphaned as a tiny cub. His mama got killed in a rockslide up Flotsam Trail.”

  A hint of color returned to Vickie’s cheeks and mouth. She gave Slade a ghost of a smile. “You rescued a bear cub?”

  Slade laid the rifle across the center of her cot.

  “She all right?” someone yelled from outside.

  “Yes, she’s fine,” Slade called back. “Four Toes came in for a visit.”

  A rumble of masculine laughter rang out. “Uh-oh. He’s a pain in the butt. Maybe you should try to shoot him again tomorrow.”

  Vickie sent Slade an appalled look. “Shoot him?”

  Slade hollered over his shoulder, “I’ve got this, guys. You can go back to bed now.” He shifted his gaze back to the bear, who now had tomato sauce smeared all over his nose. “And, yes,” he said to Vickie. “At least once a week, I try to shoot him.”

  “But you can’t,” she finished for him. “Because you raised him from a baby, and you don’t have it in you to pull the trigger.”

  Slade sighed. “Yeah, something like that. But sooner or later, maybe I’ll do it. Bottle-feeding him was one of the worst mistakes I’ve ever made.” He settled his gaze on the bear. Then he arched an eyebrow in question. “Why do you have a bottle of ketchup in your tent? That might be what brought him in. Maybe he could smell it.”

  “Maybe.” She didn’t immediately answer his question. Then she said, “I’m a ketchup fiend. I didn’t know if you kept any in camp, so I bought some.”

  “I always have ketchup and most other condiments on hand. One reason the cookshack is so far away from the tents is because of bears. If one happens to come in, it’ll go for the cookshack and not us. We use bearproof food containers for a lot of stuff, but once you cook, the smell of food is all over everything, and no matter how careful you are with edibles, a bear may catch the scent.”

  She watched as Four Toes finished off the ketchup and discarded the now-flattened squeeze bottle. “Now what? Is he going to get mad if I don’t give him something more?”

  Four Toes swiped at his crimson nose with a paw and belched. Slade stepped over to the tent flap and held it off to one side. Sitting on his ample hindquarters with his back legs sprawled for balance, Four Toes looked far too comfortable and content for Slade’s peace of mind. “Out,” he ordered.

  The bear grumbled, which sounded a lot like growling, but if it frightened Vickie, she did a superb job of hiding it. When Four Toes had vacated the shelter, Slade turned to study her. “I’d like to move your tent closer to mine. Dale shouldn’t have put you out here at the end of this row.”

  “I’m fine now that I know he’s your pet. If he comes back, he can sleep on the floor. I draw the line at sharing my bed with him.” She settled her gaze on his. “I appreciate your concern about where my tent is positioned, but practically speaking, I think right where I am will work well for me. It’ll be quieter here. Not so many men talking all around me and keeping me awake.”

  “If something happens, you’re too far away from me here. The boys were a lot slower to respond when you screamed for help.”

  She swung her legs over the edge of the cot and stood. “I wouldn’t have screamed if I could have found my ammo. From now on, I’ll keep my sidearm loaded and be perfectly safe.”

  Slade knew better than to press the point. The Vickie he’d once known had been hardheaded at times and always fiercely independent. She pushed at a curly tendril of hair that had fallen over her eyes.

  “I really appreciate that you came,” she told him.

  Slade knew a dismissal when he heard one. She wanted him out of her tent. He told himself that he didn’t want to be there anyway, but he knew he was lying to himself even as he formed the thought.

  “You’re more than welcome.” He leaned over to pick up the empty squeeze bottle, expecting it to be goopy, but Four Toes had licked it clean. “Sleep tight.”

  He turned to leave. Just as he reached his exit point, she said, “Slade?”

  His heart leaped with hope even though he knew it was stupid of him. She’d made it abundantly clear that she had buried that particular hatchet l
ong ago, and he’d be a fool to think she still had feelings for him. He struggled to school his expression as he turned back toward her so she wouldn’t be able to read any of his emotions. “Yes?”

  Her gaze clinging to his, she just stood there for a moment, and he really thought she might say something important—like maybe apologize for growing angry and calling him names earlier, or that she’d finagled her way into this job just so she could see him again. Finally she said, “Don’t forget your rifle.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Vickie felt far less safe in her tent than she’d let on to Slade. Four Toes was out there somewhere, and she had no guarantee that he wouldn’t lumber back into her quarters. She had no more foodstuffs in her duffel that would attract him, only some bottles of hot sauce that were reputed to raise blisters on the tongue and a container of baking powder that was the key ingredient for a ketchup bomb that she hoped would go off right in Slade’s face. He loved his ketchup and slathered it over everything at breakfast, even his eggs.

  Hopefully, the bear wouldn’t be back. Using her penlight, she stepped out of the tent to get some more firewood. The little stove did an excellent job of warming the interior of her tent, and she didn’t want the fire to go out during the night. Though it had been more years than she cared to count, she could still remember the shuddering morning cold of the mountain air in late September. It was no fun to crawl out of a toasty sleeping bag to put on ice-cold clothing.

  After loading the stove belly with as much wood as it would hold, she sat on the edge of her bed to check her phone messages. There were several from Nancy, all related to the glow-stick prank. Feeling weary, Vickie texted her daughter, explaining that no one had noticed the fake eyes and how the trick had been a complete flop. She decided against telling Nancy about Four Toes’ invasion of her tent. Her daughter had never been in a real wilderness area, and she might lose sleep worrying about Vickie’s safety if she read about something so alarming right before bedtime. Vickie heard a rustle of movement on the other side of the canvas wall, listened for a moment while holding her breath, and then decided that she would probably be the one who lost sleep, fretting about the bear deciding to return. She’d never been all that afraid of wild black bears, because, for the most part, they tried to avoid humans. But Four Toes wasn’t really wild in the strictest sense of the word, and he had no fear of people. While that didn’t necessarily make him dangerous, he was a large and extremely powerful animal. Something as simple as a toothache might put him in a grumpy mood.

  After digging out her nightclothes, a fleece sweatshirt and sweatpants that would keep her warm even if the fire went out overnight, she turned down the lantern wick until the lamp put off barely any light and then peeled out of her garments. Knowing that even faint illumination might cast her shadow upon a wall, she hurried to get her body covered again. She opted to keep her socks on. They’d serve her well as slippers and keep her feet warm.

  Before turning the lantern completely off and climbing into bed, she dug through her duffel one more time to find her new solar charger, which she’d set on the sunny dash of her car that morning while driving over from Coos Bay. After hooking her phone up to it, she doused the light, felt her way to the cot, and groaned with exhaustion as the fluffy sleeping bag enveloped her body. Out like a light, she assured herself. If she didn’t allow herself to think, she’d be asleep before she could count three sheep.

  Only how did a woman turn off her thoughts when her heart was breaking? She punched her pillow with her fist, imagining that her target was Slade’s midriff. Right in the solar plexus. Her anger began to resurface. She tried to tamp it down. She told herself that she’d already cried a river of tears over Slade Wilder and wasn’t about to shed any more. And, damn it, she wanted to turn off the voice of that desperate person inside of her who kept whispering, Maybe he never got those letters. He wishes he’d had children. There’s nothing he wants more in the world than an heir. So why would he so stubbornly refuse to acknowledge Brody?

  Vickie had no answers, and her rational self knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that all four of her letters to him in regards to Brody couldn’t possibly have been lost in the mail. If anything, the United States Postal Service had been even more dependable back then than it was now. Times had been slower. The population had been smaller. People had taken personal pride in their job performance. Slade must have received at least one of her letters. How could he have stood there tonight, acting as if he had no idea she’d borne him a child? If she lived to be a hundred, she would never understand it. They’d been so open with each other at one time. No lies, no secrets. Or so she’d believed. But maybe all the honesty had come from her, and she’d never really known him at all.

  She pictured Brody, so very much like Slade in both looks and demeanor. But there the similarities between the two men ended. Brody loved his wife, Marissa, and he was a steadfast, affectionate, and responsible father to his three children. He believed that family ties were all-important. In short, he was everything his father wasn’t, a man who would never turn his back on one of his kids. Even now, if some young fellow knocked on his door and told Brody that he was his son, Brody wouldn’t immediately discount the claim. Brody would undergo DNA testing, if necessary. The only thing he would absolutely never do was tell some kid to get the hell off his porch.

  Slade had sent out that message, not with words, but with his failure to respond to her letters in any way, fashion, or form. Nancy had it right. He was a deadbeat dad. Vickie was tempted to have a T-shirt made for him with that title emblazoned across the front and back. Tears welled in her eyes, and they weren’t for herself or for Slade or for the shattered dreams of the girl she’d once been. They were for her son, who’d never really gotten a fair shake his entire life. She’d saved any gratuities that the restaurant serving staff had shared with her to buy Brody western-style clothing, enabling him to attain the look he’d wanted, but she’d never been able to afford any of the other things he yearned for. He’d had to wait nearly twenty years to buy himself a patch of land and a good horse. Then, without any formal schooling, he’d learned to train horses and turned that talent into a paying business. By all rights, he should have been well-set at this point in his life, but Marissa’s illness was slowly but surely draining him financially. Brody’s health insurance company had canceled on him when Marissa was first diagnosed, claiming that her rheumatoid arthritis was a preexisting condition. All the diagnostic testing had cost a small fortune, and the insurance had refused to pay for even that. Marissa needed some kind of special medicine that started with an m, a chemo drug of some kind that cost over five hundred a month, to prevent the deformities that her arthritis would eventually cause. The pharmaceutical company that produced it had a giveaway program for patients who couldn’t afford the shots, but Brody made just enough money to disqualify Marissa. And that didn’t count the expenses for her physical therapy, her pain medications, the nutritionist, or all the special foods she needed to strictly follow her diet. Vickie had seen dark circles form under her son’s eyes. He’d started working with more and more horses and putting in longer and longer hours. She knew without him saying a word that he was dog-paddling in water way over his head in a desperate attempt to stay afloat. Yet he’d never once complained to Vickie. Never once asked why it had to be his wife who got a horrible disease. Never once cursed the vagaries of fate that were eroding the life he’d worked so hard to build.

  Vickie turned her face into her pillow to muffle her sobs. She’d grown so furious with Slade tonight that she’d almost ruined everything by bringing up Brody too soon. If nothing else good came from her taking this job, she could at least work nearly the full month to draw all the wages she could. Maybe when she got back to Coos Bay, she’d put her house up for sale after all. Pay off the equity loan. Get herself a cheap apartment. Draw on her social security. Maybe she’d even quit working entirely. With no job t
o eat up her time, she could go out to Brody’s farm on a daily basis and help out around the place. Marissa had always been a champ about doing her share of the work, but now she was in so much pain most of the time that she couldn’t contribute much.

  Vickie cried until she felt drained, and then she just lay there in the darkness, with only a faint fire glow coming from the stove to illuminate the enclosure. Sounds from the surrounding forest drifted to her. The mournful calls of a coyote. The hoot of an owl. A light wind rustling through the boughs of the trees. If she strained her ears, she could even hear the chuffing of the horses. At one time, all those sounds had seemed beautiful to her. Now they just made her feel empty, and she wished that she’d never come home.

  Chapter Nine

  Bluish light pressed against Vickie’s eyelids. As she surfaced from deep sleep, she dreamed that she’d been abducted by aliens, flown through space faster than the speed of light, and enclosed in a sterilization capsule that used infrablue beams to eradicate all communicable germs. Warmth pressed close around her. She felt as if she were drifting on clouds. If this was how it felt to be cleansed, maybe she’d just stay.

  “He tore my shitter all to hell!”

  The shout, laced with murderous rage, jerked Vickie from slumber. With a backward swing of her arm, she sent the top layer of her sleeping bag flying. A blast of frigid air cut through her fleece sleepwear and raised goose bumps all over her body.

  “I’ll kill him!” the male voice came again. “I mean it this time! I’ll put a bullet right between his eyes!”