“She wasn’t making a whole lot of sense at first, like she was trying to tell me too many things at once. Something about her daddy falling, and a dead deer, and somebody named Mr. Paulson, and somebody else named Mr. Moseley.
“I said to her, ‘Relax, now, sweetheart, start at the beginning, nice and slow.’
“Within about ten minutes I was able to get the story straight, and I called the ranger station and nobody answered, so I phoned every Paulson in the county and managed to track down the right one—Edward—though I didn’t have luck with anyone named Moseley. Ed Paulson was a Fed ranger. He’d been up to their encampment and said he could take us to the spot Mirabella described.
“We were gonna need a few bodies to move him, and what’s more, we had to move right then, or Dave Cartwright probably wouldn’t make it through the night, if he was still alive at all. We were gonna need an airlift, and that was a hell of a dicey proposition considering the weather and the fact it was long past dark. We had power lines down and outages all over the county, so you knew it had to be howling up on the mountain.
“No matter what happened to her dad, that little Cartwright girl, she was the hero in all this. Can you imagine an eight-year-old girl finding her way nine miles down that mountain in a blizzard trying to save her daddy’s life? I would’ve never believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes.”
N’ka
For days on end, Bayla sat by N’ka’s bedside during his convalescence. She was a soothing presence in the pale glow of the fire, the shadows falling across her face when sleep finally came to take him each night. And she was still there, alert and attentive when he awoke in the morning. She brought him water, and fed him, and tended his fire. N’ka could not help but wonder at her kindness.
Thrice daily Bayla redressed his wounds, dabbing the sweat from his forehead as he winced against the pain of her ministrations. She spoke soothingly to buffer his agony, and smiled kindly down upon him. She listened patiently, hour after hour, as N’ka gave voice to his guilt and anguish at the fate of his mother.
And Bayla’s kindness extended still further, for she did her best to teach N’ka the ways of the world as her people understood them. Though N’ka may not have been the quickest study, he could not imagine ever tiring of the beautiful language, the soft vowels and rolling syllables that flowed out of her mouth with the fluidity of a stream. How ugly and unnatural his own brutish dialect must sound to their ears, so sharp and angular, so stark and abrupt, like the mountains that inspired it. But here was an altogether more fluid landscape of rolling green hills, and flowing water swimming with life. Of course their language was beautiful.
Bayla taught N’ka the word for river, and the word for sky, and the word for mountain. As for this place where N’ka found himself, this tidy, bustling camp strung out along the river, it had no name. And N’ka would learn that it was not the only home of Bayla and her people. Twenty miles to the west, away from the mountains, on the shores of the great sea, lay a second home for the people, and it was called Sala.
Upon what must have been the sixth or seventh morning, once N’ka was well enough to move about on his own power, the ones called Amon and Reka came for N’ka in his tent, where steadfast Bayla was at her post.
Amon addressed him with words he still could not comprehend. Beside him, Reka with the scar across his face nodded solemnly.
They led N’ka from his tent—Amon, Reka, and Bayla—west along the pebbly bank of the river, then south through the ferns and yellow-leafed trees to a steep, grassy rise. At the top of the rise, they came upon what could only be his mother’s figure, packed in the snow, presumably for preservation. Her body was wrapped in hides and hooded in leather. N’ka had only to imagine her disfigurement, her ravaged body, her gouged face, wrapped beneath what amounted to a water skin, so nobody was forced to look upon it.
Two young men that N’ka did not recognize attended his mother’s body, both of whom nodded solemnly and respectfully, in the same manner as Reka.
Adjacent to his mother’s cloaked form, a hole four feet deep had been dug to host her remains. The sight of the pit, even more than the sight of her body, was too much for N’ka to absorb, and he broke down immediately.
Amon spoke at length in his lyrical tongue.
Heartbroken, N’ka stood on the hill, his splinted arm dangling lifelessly, his face to the wind as the grass whipped his bare shins, while Reka, the quiet young man, and Bayla, his green-eyed savior, flanked him on either side, Bayla clutching his good hand firmly.
Amon stood facing them, tall, straight, and somber-eyed, buffered by the wind at his back. Following a considerable silence, Amon said a few words, and though N’ka could only guess at their meaning, the words were delivered gravely, and in a deliberate tempo. The one word N’ka recognized at the time, a word that was invoked on no less than four occasions, was sho, river.
Perhaps Amon likened his mother’s life to a river, vital, steady, flowing into the unknown. Or perhaps by summoning the river, Amon was asking the river to take his mother’s spirit and deliver it to the place behind the sky. Or maybe the idea was that life flowed like the river into the horizon. Or maybe Amon was just commenting on the view, for his mother’s final resting place indeed offered a view of the river.
N’ka let Amon’s words wash over him as he gazed down at an elbow of the river, running swift and turbulent over the rocks, disappearing through the trees, winding its way to yet another new world farther west.
Once Amon concluded his speech, he nodded in turn to N’ka, and then to the body of his mother.
N’ka understood this as a cue and stepped forward to look down into her hooded face, wishing he could look upon it one last time. As sure as he stood there on the grassy hill, grief-stricken, N’ka knew that he would move forward in dutiful compliance with the laws of survival. He would carry out the tasks of living, he would hunt, and fish, and rage, he would dream, and wonder, and ache, and even love, should he be fortunate enough. He would measure the days and the seasons as always by the sun and moon, as his mother had taught him. He would think of her often, he would hear her voice, he would speak to her in times of doubt and tribulation. He would hold her close as long as he could. She would always be a part of him.
“If only you could have seen this world with your own eyes,” he said to her hooded visage, as they lowered her into the pit. “You would have to believe, Mother.”
Mercy
Judy was already in bed, flipping through TV channels, when her phone vibrated on the nightstand.
“Judith Cartwright?”
“Yes.”
“Sheriff Dale, here, ma’am.”
Judy bolted upright. “What is it?”
“Mrs. Cartwright, we’ve got your granddaughter down here at the station.”
“Bonnie?”
“No, ma’am, Mirabella.”
“Wha—is she okay? What is she doing there?”
“She’s fine,” he assured her. “Little bit of frostbite, but she’s thawing out fine. She straggled in here about an hour and a half ago, half-frozen.”
“Where’s her father? Is he okay?”
“We can’t say at this point, ma’am. He’s somewhere up beyond the canyon, east of the river. Injured, apparently, but we don’t know how badly. We’re sending up a party within the hour. Suppose there’s any way you could see your way down here to pick her up? I’d bring her by myself, but as you might imagine, I’ve got my hands full with search and rescue.”
“Yes, of course,” said Judy. “I’ll be right down.”
“Take it easy on those roads, ma’am,” he said. “It’s slick out there.”
Judy hopped off the bed, snatching her keys off the kitchen counter on her way to the foyer, where she donned her puffy winter coat, and stepped into her fur-lined boots.
The snow was still falling, flakes the size of postage stamps sparkling in the porch light. The crunch of her feet over the snowy walkway seemed the onl
y sound in an otherwise silent world. Somewhere, miles and mountains away from Judy, her firstborn was in mortal danger, and there was absolutely nothing she could do to save him.
There must have been ten inches of snow on the hood of the LeSabre, which Judy began clearing in wide swaths with the sleeve of her coat. She ought to have called Travers to come pick her up in his truck. Truth be told, Judy also didn’t see too well after dark anymore. She actually made it a point not to drive after sundown if she could avoid it. But she was impatient to get her arms around Bella, to serve her poor Davey the only way she could. Besides, Travers tended to be overbearing in crisis situations.
Judy’s heart was a clenched fist as she scraped the ice from the windshield, her breath fogging the air. She always knew it would end badly for Davey and Bella, no matter how hard she prayed for their safe return. It always ended badly. At every turn, life tested her faith. When the world wasn’t punishing the ones she loved, it was taking them from her. First Nadene, now her Davey. God have mercy on their souls, she thought, and God show mercy to their poor orphaned child.
Stop that now, she scolded herself. Don’t start putting anybody in the grave yet.
LeSabre idling, Judy sat in the driver’s seat as the back window defrosted. She fidgeted with her icy fingers, warding off anxiety. After a minute or so she cranked the heat with a warm blast and almost turned on the radio, if only to warm the frozen silence. Once the back window cleared, she squinted into the rearview mirror and backed into the dim red puddle her rear lights afforded her.
The back roads were dicey around corners, with the LeSabre’s front wheels spinning out on several occasions, but the highway had been recently plowed. White-knuckling the wheel, Judy hunched forward in the driver’s seat, as though her comportment could somehow enhance the performance of the car. The snow coming right at her in the headlights was hypnotic, and also a little disorienting.
The thought of her Davey up there in the mountains somewhere, marooned, frozen, life hanging by a thread, was almost too much to bear. Forty years, and not a day went by that Judy didn’t worry for her oldest. Forty years, and she could remember infant Davey like it was yesterday. Hardly crying, hardly eating, not pooping for days on end. She could still visualize toddler Davey clear as day, waddling around in his OshKosh overalls she bought at the Saint Barnabus rummage sale for two bucks. Putting every damn thing in his mouth, including his boogers, a habit that would prove harder to break than Judy ever imagined. She could see him at twelve, wearing his Seahawks jersey, Toughskins jeans riding halfway up his ankles, a little peach fuzz mantling his upper lip. She could see him in his pee wee uniform, the shoulder pads and helmet comically outsized. She could see him at sixteen, buffing out the smudges on the hood of that old Buick. It was damn generous of Gordy Prentice to gift him that car. Heaven knows Judy couldn’t afford to buy him one. And it was hard for Davey to manage a job during the school year, what with football and wrestling.
Judy fishtailed, nearly putting the LeSabre in a ditch as she veered off the highway onto Yew. The center of town was deserted, the traffic signals flashing yellow on either end of Cedar. Judy crawled past Dale’s, and Ace, and the shuttered-up video store, then past Doc’s to the west end of town, where she pulled into the Sheriff’s Department and parked, then crunched across the snowy lot to the entrance.
Bella was sprawled on a bench in the reception area, wrapped in a blanket, sleeping fiercely under the glare of the fluorescent lights. It only took one look at her pinched-up little face, the red rings under her eyes, and the homely little mop of dark hair pasted to her forehead, before Judy began to weep.
A bearded deputy stepped out from behind the counter to greet Judy.
“Just crapped out, mid-sentence. Like somebody turned out the lights. She’s had quite an adventure.”
“What about her father?” said Judy, wiping away her tears.
“They sent a chopper up there as of about twenty minutes ago. Ranger named Paulson thinks he knows where to find him.”
“What happened to him?”
“Listen, ma’am, I don’t want to get your hopes up. The chances that he’s still alive are pretty—”
“What happened?” said Judy.
“He had a fall, broke his leg pretty bad from the sound of it. We really don’t have a lot of details right now. You want I should carry the girl out to the car, ma’am?”
“No, it’s all right,” said Bella, groggily coming to. “I’ll walk.”
The instant Bella got to her feet, Judy stooped down and wrapped the child tightly in her arms, refusing to let go, as Bella sobbed into the puffy folds of Judy’s coat.
“Is he alive, Nana?” said Bella.
“We don’t know, yet, honey. But we have every reason to hope,” she said.
Ranger Ed Paulson
“See, that’s exactly why you don’t do it. You don’t just opt out of society one day and go out there in the backcountry with the idea of making a free life for yourself, whether it’s squatting in the National Forest, or the Trust Lands, or DNR land, or anyplace else you haven’t got a deed to. It’s not 1840, damnit. We’re not treating influenza with leeches, or tanning our hides with urine anymore, either. The frontier is not wide open. Heck, there is no frontier. We have regulations and policies for good reasons, to protect what’s left of the wilds, no matter how much some people want to rail against that fact. We’re a republic of laws. Without regulations, it would all be gone. That’s just human nature.
“But never mind the politics; it’s just damn dangerous living out there in the backcountry. Just look at Dave Cartwright and that poor little daughter of his. A person can get themselves in a lot of trouble out there. And nine-hundred-and-ninety-nine times out of a thousand, there’s not going to be anybody out there to help them. Especially not at four thousand feet in the middle of a damn blizzard. You can die out there, a fact that ought to be obvious. Forget the modern conveniences, and the social benefits, it’s the emergency services that keep people living in bunches, instead of out there by themselves. If we didn’t have an organized way of taking care of one another, everybody would go the way of Dave Cartwright eventually.”
Lights in the Sky
When he wasn’t brushing the fresh snow off himself, or feeding sticks to the fire, Dave lay on his back, trying to conserve his waning vitality. Time, such as it even existed in his current state, was impossible to gauge, though if Dave had to guess, he would’ve ventured that it was moving slower than usual. Lightheaded and sluggish, he tried to eat; gnawing on a mouthful of cold venison for what seemed like an eternity, until, unable to swallow it, he spit the masticated lump into the snow. He was bleeding from the mouth, but that may well have been from biting his numb cheek; he had no way of knowing.
The weather was only growing worse, if that was possible. The snow, not so much falling as churning and swirling, clouded the air in flurries. Visibility couldn’t have been four feet. Dave could only hope it was better through the canyon, otherwise Bella was liable to break her own leg out there, or get lost, or fall off a cliff. Over and over, Dave cursed himself for his own carelessness. Even now, in this most dire hour, the parental instinct to manage his child’s risk, with no thought of his own peril, kicked in. More than his own life force, Bella was his imperative. It seemed in those interminable moments of uncertainty, with the snow assaulting him and his own flame growing dim, that his life only had meaning insomuch as it related to Bella’s.
The pain in his leg had subsided entirely, which he knew was not necessarily a good thing. His thoughts, still mostly clinging to Bella’s welfare, raced despite his waning energy and his efforts to remain calm.
A dark line of questioning suddenly imposed itself upon Dave: How would his death obligate and entrap others? Where would the nine grand for his demise come from? Who would make those arrangements? Would they even be necessary? Perhaps it was better this way, him getting buried in the snow, lost to the world. But what would become of Be
lla when he was gone? Who would protect her? Whom would she cling to when he was gone? And his mom wasn’t going to be around forever to look out for Bella, either. He should have never brought Bella up here to begin with, and she never should’ve come back, either. Somehow even that was his fault. Dave should never have turned Travers away when he came back for her. He should have just gone back down the mountain himself and started rebuilding his life out of the rubble.
Shining the headlamp down his leg, Dave took a grim inventory of the damage; the wound swollen, inflamed, horribly discolored, and likely crawling with bacteria, or worse. Goddammit, he was gonna lose it—assuming he even got out of there alive. Imagine him surviving three combat tours only to lose his leg, possibly even his life, to an icy mishap. But that was the least of his worries. If anything happened to Bella, he wouldn’t want to go on living anyway.
Now, more than ever, Dave wished he had a God to pray to. But how could he, given the state of the world, or the condition of his own failed life, or the hopelessness that seemed to weave its way into the very fabric of humanity? Time, gravity, mortality—these things were tangible, these things were real, but faith was a mirage. And yet there was his mother, and a billion people like her, clinging to the impossible. Or maybe it wasn’t impossible after all, maybe it was a force, just like gravity.
He could hear them, Pope, his mother, Reverend Hardy, the chorus of the devout: God has a plan for everybody, Dave, His grand design is beyond our conception. Everything happens for a reason, Dave. Every obstacle, every pitfall, every tragedy that befalls us is a gift from God. His strength is made perfect in our weakness. We are stronger because of our suffering.
Bullshit, thought Dave, gritting his teeth. What of the weakness that was unchecked greed; how did greed benefit the world? What of the weakness of willful destruction, or the subjugation of other living things, or the architecture of injustice that seemed to govern the world? If you could pretend to find meaning in senseless tragedy and destruction, you were lucky—among other things. But no sensible design would ever ask as much of a little girl, an innocent who did nothing to earn her measly lot, who understood so little, but was forced to withstand so much in the ways of the world.
Legends of the North Cascades Page 28