Leaving Blythe River: A Novel (13 page)

Then it turned its head away and took three unimaginably long strides toward the valley. It stopped. Looked over its shoulder again. Rose up onto its hind legs.

Ethan’s finger found its way back to the trigger.

The bear dropped onto all fours and turned away a second time, loping down the trail toward the lakes. Every ten paces or so it stopped and looked back at Ethan and his dog. Then it rose. Rocked. Fell to all fours and loped farther away.

He felt Rufus wiggle out from under him, dropping Ethan’s butt hard onto the rocky trail.

Ethan dissolved into trembling. Or maybe he’d been trembling all along but just hadn’t had time to notice.

Ethan stumbled along, looking more at the sky and less at the place where his feet touched the trail. At times the stumbling became quite literal. Still, each time he managed to right himself and move on.

There was something robotic in his movements. Ethan could feel that, but didn’t know how to change it, and was in no way motivated to try. He felt as though his true spirit, whatever essence of Ethan had animated his body in the past, was gone now. What moved him down the trail in its stead felt jerky, automated, and unemotional.

And there was a recurring noise. Something he kept hearing. As it got steadily closer, it began to sound like his name. Like someone calling his name over and over. But he couldn’t seem to connect with any sense of what the word meant, or how he should respond to it. It reminded him of that moment when the phone is ringing in your sleep, and it’s half waking you but you’re half still dreaming, and you can hear it perfectly well but you can’t remember what it means or what it wants you to do.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he shouted out a big sound, something from deep in his throat. It startled him so much that he fell over, part backward and part sideways. He landed on one hip, rolled over onto his butt, and looked up into the face of Sam. Sam was standing over Ethan, holding the reins of his mule Dora, who waited patiently behind him.

“Ethan?” Sam asked.

“Um,” Ethan said. “Yeah.”

“Where are you going?”

“Home,” he said, pleased with how it sounded. As if he were right there inside his body and knew exactly what he was doing.

Sam helped him to his feet.

“What’s wrong with you, buddy?” Sam asked, peering into his face.

“Wrong?”

“You look like you’re drunk or something.”

“Drunk?”

Sam sighed, and picked Ethan up. Just swung a big, beefy arm around Ethan’s waist and lifted his feet off the ground. The next thing Ethan knew, he was perched on the bulky western saddle on top of Sam’s mule. Sam let go and took one step back, as if to see how well Ethan would stay in place without help. But Ethan wasn’t balanced, and he swung dangerously to the right. Dora had to take a wild step to one side and square her stance to compensate. Ethan shouted out that strange grunting noise again and grabbed the saddle horn.

Sam steadied Ethan with one hand. Then, when he seemed sure it was safe to let go, he began to rummage around in one of Dora’s saddlebags. The bags were secured to the saddle behind where Ethan sat, and Ethan didn’t dare turn around to look, afraid of unbalancing himself again.

A moment later he felt a canvas strap wrapped twice around his waist. When Sam tied it to the saddle horn it jerked Ethan’s body forward uncomfortably.

Then they were moving. The mule had a rocking walk, jarring on each footfall, and Ethan could feel himself shifting slightly back and forth within the confines of the snug strap.

Sam walked ahead, and he didn’t have hold of his mule in any way. She simply followed.

Ethan looked around to see if Rufus was still with them. He was. He trotted placidly behind, looking tired but not especially upset. Some very distant part of Ethan’s brain marveled at that. Imagine being a dog and being able to leave an experience like that behind. Just come back to the moment. But it was a disconnected thought. Almost as if someone else were having it.

It was interrupted by Sam’s voice. “Where were you going?”

“Home,” Ethan said, wondering if it was only his imagination telling him he had established that already.

“I meant in the first place.”

“Oh.”

Ethan didn’t answer the question, because he didn’t understand it. He knew in a distant way that he
should
understand it. That it was simple enough. But he could make no sense of it. He furrowed his brow and decided the rocking of the mule’s gait felt comforting. Then he tried to drag his mind back to the question, but he’d forgotten what it was.

“Why were you even out here?” Sam asked.

“Now that’s a good question,” Ethan said.

He didn’t say it sardonically. It was an honest answer. He knew there had been a reason, some kind of thinking involved in his being out on the wilderness trails by himself. It wasn’t even so much that he couldn’t remember what he’d been thinking. More that he could no longer imagine why he’d found the collection of thoughts convincing. He wasn’t sure why he’d ever listened to them in the first place, not to mention obeyed their directives.

In other words, he knew only that it had seemed like a good idea at the time. Which wasn’t much to know.

Just as they crested the first pass—now the last pass between them and home—Sam attempted to talk to him again.

“Good thing you didn’t go in any deeper than you did. There was a big grizzly sow down in that second valley. Twenty Lakes Valley, we call it. And not in a very good mood, either. The sow, I mean. Not the valley. She had some kind of thorn in her butt. Figuratively speaking. I thought she was going to charge me and Dora when we rode back through. She did, really, but it was only a false charge. She never got very close. She was big enough I thought she was a full-grown male. But it was a sow all right.”

“What’s a sow?” Ethan asked. Or heard himself ask, anyway.

He could feel his brain coming back slightly. Coming around. But he still felt half asleep.

“Female.”

“I thought a sow was a female pig.”

“That, too,” Sam said. “Anyway, I’m glad I was the one to run into that lady, not you.”

“Actually,” Ethan said, “we met.”

Sam stopped. Dora stopped. Ethan rocked forward in the saddle. He looked down to see Sam staring up into his face—as if deciding whether to trust Ethan’s information.

“What happened? You come up on her and surprise her?”

Ethan shook his head. It still felt wobbly.

“The dog went after her,” he said. “And vice versa.”

“Oh, crap. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Well, I had this shotgun,” Ethan said.

But he held up both hands, and he did not have the shotgun. He had no idea where it had gone.

“How close she get to you?”

“She had one fang broken off. And really bad breath. And her fur stank like mold. That close.”

“Damn.”

Then no one said anything for a long time.

“Well, that explains a lot about your condition,” Sam said, and started to walk again.

Dora followed.

As Ethan attempted to lean back in his tight lashings—because they were headed so steeply downhill—Sam shot one last sentence over his shoulder.

“Anything else about the experience you care to share?”

“Maybe later,” Ethan replied.

Sam walked the rest of the way to the rented A-frame in a respectful silence. Dora followed like a faithful old dog.

Ethan sat on the couch, his knees pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped around them and drawing them even closer. He kept his eyes on Sam, who was rummaging around in the cupboards of the A-frame’s tiny kitchen.

“What are you looking for?” Ethan asked at last.

“Looking to see if your dad has any booze around the house.”

Ethan snorted. It was a sound vaguely related to laughter. “I would think
I
was the one who needed a drink.”

“Who do you think I want it for?”

That brought its own moment of silence.

Sam broke it.

“I know what you’re thinking. You’re underage. But whatever age you are, if you’re out in the freezing weather or you’re in shock, one or the other, I’ve found a good snort is useful. Think of it as medicinal. If nothing else, it might help stop the shaking.”

Ethan looked down at himself, surprised to hear that he was shaking. Sam had been right about that. Ethan wondered how he could have been so unaware of something happening so close to home, so directly in the core of what should have been his being. Right in the spot where he was meant to live, but so often couldn’t.

Meanwhile Sam was still talking.

“Hell, I was a lot younger than seventeen when I had my first snort. My daddy gave it to me. For snakebite.”

“What does liquor do for snakebite?”

Sam stopped rummaging briefly. Looked up above his own head, as if considering the question for the first time. As if the answer must be on the ceiling. “Ah, hell. I don’t know. Not much, I guess. Keeps the patient calm.”

“Under the sink,” Ethan told him.

What felt like thirty seconds later, a short, squat glass appeared in front of his face. In the bottom of it sat about two fingers of a thick-looking brownish liquid.

“Slug it down all at once if you can bring yourself to do it.”

Ethan took the glass, watching it quake in his grip. Watching the liquid slosh up the sides of the glass and then coat it brown for an instant longer than he might have expected. He counted to three, tipped it back, and drained its contents all in one big swallow.

It exploded in his throat like fire and made his eyes water, but Ethan staunchly resisted the urge to cough. He wanted to drink like a grown-up. Like a man, not a little boy. Even if it
was
only one snort given as medicine for shock.

When the burn subsided, Ethan held as still as possible and felt the warmth of it move through his belly, and down the muscles at the core of his arms and legs.

“Now,” Sam said. “What were you doing out there?”

“Oh,” Ethan said. “Didn’t you ask me that already?”

“Yeah. But I never got much in the way of an answer.”

Silence.

“It would sound incredibly stupid,” Ethan said.

“You were looking for your dad.”

“Yeah.”

Sam sighed and plunked down on the couch next to Ethan.

“That doesn’t sound stupid,” he said. “It sounds like a plan without much chance of success. But I figured that must be it. I can understand why you would want to do that. I mean, he’s your dad. You love him.”

“I hate him,” Ethan said, marveling at how the shaking really was beginning to subside.

“Then why go look for him?”

Ethan kept his gaze firmly trained down to the rug. “Maybe I love him
and
hate him. Both. Is that possible?”

“Oh, yeah,” Sam said, laughing something rueful out with the words. “It’s more than possible. It happens all the time. Trust me. I’ve got two ex-wives. I know.”

He rose to his feet, took the empty glass from Ethan, and carried it to the sink.

“I went by your house first,” Ethan said. “I wanted to ask you to take me up there. But you were gone. I thought you had a paid customer. I thought you might be gone for days.”