“Sun’s getting low in the sky, Teddy. What do you say we head back? Think this thing through.”
Teddy led his horse back down the ravine. The animal seemed hesitant, but it moved deftly under its rider’s direction. Teddy opened a saddlebag as his horse came alongside Cal’s mare. He reached inside and tossed his canteen to the sheriff. It was an old metal canteen, military issue. Cal opened the top and drank greedily. He’d already drank all of his own.
“We can’t let up, Sheriff. We can’t give up on the trail before nightfall.”
Cal choked and wiped his mouth. “Trail? What trail?” he yelled, and felt his voice getting higher in pitch. “Can you show me the trail, ’cause I’d sure like to see it!”
Ted looked away for a moment, at the sky and the river.
“You ever stalk an animal, Sheriff?”
“Not much of a hunter, Ted.” He felt silly for losing his temper. It made him feel even more like the boy in this pair. He capped the canteen.
“The trick to stalking, Sheriff, is staying stubborn.”
Cal didn’t feel up for another of Teddy’s lessons. But if a story would keep him from having to ride that awful horse for another few minutes, so be it. He handed the canteen back to Teddy.
“How so?” he asked.
“I tracked a buck once for half a day through this woods. You can tell a buck track from a doe track ’cause of the way the hooves spread out in the mud.” Ted held up two fingers and spread them apart. Cal nodded as if he was truly interested.
“Bucks’ necks get thick when they rut,” Teddy went on. “Makes ’em lean back when they walk, spreads their toes apart. I spotted a big set of tracks in the frost and spent the next five hours moving about two hundred yards until I lost them in a thicket. I backed out on my belly, made this wide circle downwind.” Ted traced half a circle in the air with his finger. “And you know what happened, Sheriff?”
“Nope.”
“I started thinking about the football game. About sitting in a warm kitchen. Started getting impatient, walked a little faster and noisier. Eventually the sun came up high enough to melt the frost and the hoofprints with it. I gave up and stood at the downwind edge of that thicket, and what bust up from the poplar slashing but a buck with antlers like this.” Ted spread his arms wide, canteen in one hand. “Antlers thick as wrists, tearing off into the thicket again.” Ted opened the canteen. “If I’d have spent five more minutes, just stayed stubborn, I’d have found him, bedded down with his nose facing the wind.” He took a drink.
“There ain’t no frost out here, Ted. There are no tracks. We’re stomping around blind.”
“The boys are out here. We just gotta keep at it.”
The sun was well down in the trees now. The shadows were long on the forest floor. The sheriff cursed the shadows, and the trees. If he were back in Houston, they’d have a command set up by now. They’d have teams of men. They’d have coffee and maps and helicopters. They’d have a plan. Cal decided to put his foot down.
“We’re going back, Teddy. We’ll get some other departments involved. This ain’t the right way to do this.”
Teddy just looked at him.
Cal went on. “We had to come out here and try, but now it’s time to get serious. Get some support. Teddy, my radio won’t even reach town from out here. It’s just you and me riding through the woods.”
Teddy’s face soured. “No offense, Sheriff,” he said, “but I don’t want more cops involved.”
Cal cringed. Teddy sounded like Blind Burt Akinson, but Cal kept his cool. He needed Teddy to listen to him. “Why not?”
“Because more cops will turn this into a manhunt, and this ain’t a manhunt.”
“They’re boys, Teddy. I know that. Everyone will know that. But we need dogs. We need eyes.”
“I don’t see it.” Teddy waved his hands in the air, as if to wash his hands of the whole idea.
“Don’t see what?” Cal was losing ground and patience. Teddy knew these woods, but he didn’t know search work, and Cal didn’t like being so much at the mercy of another man when the search was ultimately his responsibility.
“And speaking of dogs, where is that dog of yours, Sheriff?”
“He’s in town.”
“You come out to search for two boys and leave your dog? Could have used him out here. Could have used him back where we crossed that river. Could have given us a place to point. And now you think you’re the one to go back and make the plan, the sheriff who fails to bring his dog to a search?”
Cal held up his hands to stop the comments. He spoke very slowly now. “I thought, Teddy, we’d be moving a little faster on horseback. I didn’t think my dog would keep up.”
“What do you mean, faster?”
Cal felt his face blush. “You know, like galloping or something. I thought horses galloped.”
“Where do you think we are, Sheriff, the great plains of Texas?”
The sheriff bit his lip. How could he have known they’d be moving about as fast as a man on foot? How could he have known what it was like to ride through a brush pile of a forest?
“You think we’re out here chasing buffaloes? Drinking whiskey for breakfast? The real Wild West, huh?” Teddy’s voice quavered a bit as he spoke. His face had reddened. He waved his hands in the air again, as if to keep Cal’s worthlessness from sticking to him.
Cal’s face burned with shame. Teddy had smelled the whiskey on his breath in the kitchen. Cal was losing all leverage, and fast. He swallowed the accusation. “You’ve had your chance here, Teddy, and I went along with it. But now it’s time to do it my way. We’re going back. Now.”
Ted brought the butt of his canteen down against the pommel of his saddle hard enough that both horses yanked their heads up. “My grandson killed a man, Sheriff, shot him in the head, and he took with him the pistol he used to do it!”
“Teddy—”
“And I’ll be damned to hell, Sheriff, if I’ll let a bunch of cops and newspeople out here in a woods they don’t belong in, siccing their dogs and cameras on those boys!” Teddy tossed his canteen back in his saddlebag.
“Teddy—”
“To hell with it. To hell with you.” Teddy took the reins in his hands.
“We can’t do this ourselves.”
“Maybe you can’t, Sheriff,” he said as he turned his horse to face the hill.
“Teddy, those boys are in danger out here. This ain’t about what you want.”
“They’re smart boys. They’ll make good choices until I find them.” He snapped his reins and trotted up the hill.
Cal cursed under his breath. “Get back here, Teddy!”
Ted turned in his saddle and pointed a hand through the trees toward the river. “You’d better stick to the river after dark, Sheriff. The crossing is four miles upstream. Give my horse to my daughter. She’ll be at my farm already, knowing her. I’m headed downriver.”
“Teddy!”
His horse made the top of the hill. The light in the woods was bluish now. Cal hated the idea of heading back without Ted in tow. But he hated even more the idea of spending the night in these woods, only to spend another day aimlessly ducking pine branches. Ted was right about the stir the story of his grandson would cause. There would be news cameras. But that energy might help find the boys too, news helicopters or otherwise. That was the way things were done. But Cal still needed Teddy. The search, however complex it became, needed a man who knew these woods intimately.
Teddy’s figure slipped in and out of sight between trees.
Cal cupped his hands to his mouth. “Teddy Branson,” he yelled, “you are under arrest!”
No response came back through the forest. Teddy had disappeared from sight. Cal shifted his boots in the silent woods. The noise they made in the leaves seemed louder than it should have been. The forest at dusk tightened its grip. Cal tried to spit, but his mouth was too cottony. The mare looked at him with one large white eye.
“You�
��re under arrest too,” he told the horse.
There was no sense waiting around. Ted was stubborn, and Cal knew he wasn’t coming back. He looked out toward the river. The light was still warm there, but was quickly giving way. He approached his horse, reached for the pommel, and put his foot in the stirrup.
When he tried to pull himself up, however, the horse trotted sideways and then bolted. Cal pulled himself toward the saddle, gripping the pommel with both hands, but was swatted from the horse’s side by the branches of a scrub pine. Cal had the wind knocked out of him as he fell onto his back. He instinctively tried to sit up, but pain shot through his tailbone. He let his head fall back into the leaves, gasping. Above him, the branches wove a dark lattice across a purple sky with a streak of orange in it. The mare stood on top of the ridge, through the brambles where only minutes ago it had reared in defiance. It lowered its head now and calmly bit a mouthful of something sprouting through the forest floor, flicked its tail. Cal shut his eyes. His tailbone throbbed. Otherwise he seemed uninjured. He still had his hat. His flashlight. One of his boots was missing. He felt for the pistol in his holster. It was secured. He wondered how long it would take him to walk out of these woods once he caught his breath. He worried Teddy would find the boys without him and wondered what such a thought said about him as a sheriff. The mare whinnied on the ridge past the brambles. Cal wondered what horse tasted like, grilled over a cedar fire.
Eight
FISH WHISTLED QUIETLY, AND BREAD’S MUD-SMEARED FACE emerged from behind a tree twenty yards away. It was becoming hard to see in the shadows. The sun was nearly gone. Only a backdrop of orange and red shone between the gaps in the forest. With Bread’s attention, Fish pointed to his own eyes, then to a ledge of rock ahead, dotted on its top with baby spruce. He made a flapping motion with his elbow, and then a walking motion with two fingers. As his body moved, his mind whispered to his friend, On ledge, a chickadee, I am closing in.
Bread nodded, looked to the ledge, and began stalking forward with spear in hand.
The chickadee was distractedly preening its feathers, the bird’s black and white head beating up and down. Fish slipped forward, stopping only when the bird stopped preening to look about. Fish felt every twig under his bare feet, every subtle shift of the air against his skin. He wondered why he had never tried this before—running away and swimming a river, getting muddied up and stalking birds on an island. The freedom thrilled him. He was a lone and painted warrior, cutting his teeth in the wild. He was Adam, the world’s first man, plus Bread. He had a cedar spear. A knife. A flint. He was good and strong, like his grandfather said.
Fish tried to keep cedar trunks between himself and the chickadee until he closed the distance to about ten feet. Bread worked into good position as well, crouching now behind a moss-covered stump.
The bird stopped preening its feathers.
Fish looked to his friend with his eyes only, his head unmoving. Bread’s eyes seemed to nod, and his throwing arm moved slowly back behind his head. Fish readied his.
The chickadee cocked its head at the branch it stood on, the spruce ledge above it, the ground below.
In one fluid motion, a step and thrust, Fish launched his spear at the chickadee. The spear shot toward the bird and ricocheted from the stone ledge behind it. As the bird sprung into the air, another spear shot toward it, diverting its flight path. The spear buried itself on top of the ledge.
“Dang!” yelled Bread. He was grinning despite his disappointment. “Almost got that one!”
Fish frowned. Bread’s playfulness seemed out of place. “No,” Fish whispered to himself. “We did not.”
The two boys walked out from their hiding places and retrieved their spears. Bread pulled himself up the ledge a bit to reach his. Fish stooped to inspect the tip. He’d make a better spear tomorrow, use the barlow to whittle a barbed point. He inhaled and smelled the earth beneath him, the river around him. He frowned at the spear tip. It was dirt-covered and blunted. This wasn’t just about food. There was still a half can of tuna and a sausage stick across the river. They would eat tonight. But Fish felt dogged by something darker, some menacing doubt. He felt a pang of fear and loneliness. There was something very grave about missing throws at chickadees on islands in rivers. He wondered what Adam must have felt like that first night outside the garden.
“Fish!” Bread hissed, dropping to the ground beside the stone ledge, waving frantically for Fish to join him in hiding.
Fish crouched. Even in the fading light, Bread’s muddied face had turned noticeably pale. Bread was not playing a game. Fish ducked closer to his friend.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know?”
“There’s something up there.”
“Where?”
“Shhh.” Bread’s eyes motioned upward. “Up the ledge. Someone’s up there. Or something. It was staring straight at me. He has horns.”
Fish clutched his spear in both hands. Bread started to shake like he did around his dad. Fish got his feet beneath him and then peeked, ever so slightly, over the rise into the thicket of spruce. He came back down.
“Bread, I don’t see anything up there.”
Bread shook.
Fish breathed. “Do we run for it?” he asked. He didn’t like the look of Bread balled up and trembling like this. He wanted the bold Bread back, shimmering and smiling on the riverbank. It bothered him like Adam bothered him, like missing throws at chickadees did. It just wasn’t right.
“He’ll get us if we run,” said Bread. “He saw me.”
Fish took a few more breaths, and then he got mad. “Then we fight him,” he said.
Bread shook and breathed through his pursed lips.
“Bread, let’s fight him.” Fish nodded at him. “Okay?”
Bread nodded.
“On three.”
Bread pulled himself up into a crouch, his head held low. Fish whispered—one, two—and the boys charged up the rise, screaming as loudly as they could, brandishing their spears. The spruce branches were thick atop the slope, and Fish yelled and thrashed as he pushed through their spiny grasp. He hacked the limbs with one hand and stabbed his spear blindly into the trees with the other. He pushed his shoulder through a tangle of branches and roared at the sky and the ground. His heart beat sloppily in his chest and ears. He found some good footing, drove his spear into a particularly thick bunch of pine, bellowed his battle cry, and ran smack into the immovable torso of a man, a thing, with a skull for a face. The thing wore ragged coveralls on its bony body and deer antlers on its head.
Fish’s cry caught in his throat, and the last thing he remembered seeing was the intricate, lace-like hole of the beast’s fleshless nasal socket, and then trees—pine branches spiraling upward as he fell beneath them into deep and lasting darkness.
SHERIFF CAL HOBBLED BENEATH A MOONLIT PINE BRANCH AND pulled the horse behind him. It was dark now, and he walked through the brush of the riverbank with his flashlight in hand. He knew his flashlight had a run time of about two hours, and he had about nine miles to get back to his truck—four to the crossing and five to the farm. He could do it in two hours if he walked at a fast pace, but there was no way to walk quickly in the waist-high ferns hiding stumps and rocks, the tangles of saplings. He never did find his other boot. He limped by moonlight whenever the terrain allowed it. His tailbone ached. He cursed the horse. The mare grumbled back if Cal pulled it after him between spruce trees.
“How do you like it?” he said to the horse. “It’s called payback. Not that you would understand that.” Cal found himself talking to the horse more often now that the sun had set. The woods were downright frightening at night, and Cal felt shamed enough to admit it. Every unseen noise, every snapped twig, every creak of a tree trunk put Cal on edge. Man was meant to sit by a fire at night, or inside a house with a TV on, not wander around a black forest filled with black bears, and coyotes, and marshy
shorelines that filled his only boot with water when he got too close to the river.
Cal stood still a moment with the reins in his hand and took a drink from the small bottle of whiskey he’d tucked into his saddlebag. The moon, round and clear, watched him drink it. Cal saluted the moon’s accusation, took another pull, capped the bottle, and tucked it back into his chest pocket. No sense trying to fake it, he thought.
“You couldn’t understand payback, Mr. Horse, because you are a stupid animal, and I am a man. And when we get back I am going to hook you to a plow and make you drag a field.” It was difficult walking. To the best of Cal’s knowledge, he’d covered about three miles. The walking was even slower going now, because every hundred yards or so, Cal stepped as close as he could to shore, to try to spot the crossing. He remembered a small pebbled beach near a collapsed gravel embankment. He and Teddy had crossed near rapids, but Cal couldn’t remember now if they’d crossed above or below them. No matter. He’d test the bottom before he crossed. He’d go by feel. The whiskey warmed his belly and reassured him.
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