Leaving Blythe River: A Novel (26 page)

“I
so
do not have a way with people.”

“You do. You just don’t see it yet. You have a talent for getting along.”

“I have no talents. I’m the least talented person I know. You and Jone have talents. You can ride and shoot and live in the wilderness. I have nothing like that.”

“Riding and shooting are okay,” Sam said. “They have their uses. But it’s a limited application. You know what I mean? But knowing how to get along with people . . . or, you know, helping other people get along better . . . hell, you give me the choice, I’d take people skills over riding and shooting any day.”

Ethan briefly wondered if Jone was still awake, and if she could hear them. Also if that had been a shooting star he’d seen, faintly, at the corner of his field of vision.

“All I said was to be honest with her. That seems pretty basic.”

“Maybe to you. But do you really think everybody in the world’s walking around getting it that they’ll impress people more by being honest about their own failings? Well, I’ll tell you. They’re not. Trust me. They’re not. This’s not as popular a theory as you might imagine.”

Ethan looked away from the stars for the first time. Looked over at his friend Sam’s face. Then he slung an arm over the older man’s shoulders. Even though it hurt.

“I’m glad if I helped,” he said.

“That would be putting it mildly. So what are you doing out here looking at the stars?”

“Oh. Right. I came out to pee. But I haven’t gotten around to that yet. I guess I just felt like this was my last chance. The stars, I mean. Not the peeing. I’m going back to Manhattan pretty soon here. Let’s face it. We’re wrapping up our search soon enough. And then the next step is flying home to my mom. We don’t have stars like this in New York. I figured I should enjoy the show while I can.”

“Well. I’m going to sleep. Or I’m going to try, anyway. I might be too excited to sleep.”

Sam patted Ethan’s hand where it sat on his shoulder. Then he ducked out from under Ethan’s arm and back into the tent. It hurt when the arm came back down to Ethan’s
side. Everything hurt.

Well. Almost everything. All the outside parts of him. On the inside, things felt slightly better.

Chapter Fourteen: Designer Fleece

Six days after his father disappeared

Ethan woke up late. At least, late by the standards of a wilderness search team. The sky was fully light, the sun just ready to peek over the mountains, to light up the trail they were about to search. Or, rather, search again.

Jone was making coffee on the camp stove, and Ethan could smell it. He’d had coffee a few times in his life, but had never depended on it or craved it. Until that morning. Sam was stuffing two of the sleeping bags into their stuff sacks, whistling. And humming. Intermittently.

Rufus was lying half on his side in the dirt, paws unbandaged, watching. Smiling. Or so it seemed to Ethan.

Ethan ran his fingers through his hair in lieu of a comb. It hurt to raise his arms, but he did it anyway. He sidled over to Jone and the coffee. He squatted down near her side, which was no easy task with just about every muscle in his body locked up like steel.

“Wow, I know I ask this a lot,” he said quietly near her ear, “but what the hell is wrong with Sam?” But this time he said it in a wry, joking way, as if it were abnormal for anyone to be so outwardly happy at a time like this.

She burst out laughing. Sam turned around and looked at her, smiled, then went back to his work.

“You’re a funny kid,” Jone said. “You know that?”

“Not really. I’m funny?”

“When you’re not worried or scared, you are. So I guess that’s why it took me some time to notice.”

“Oh. Thanks. I guess that’s two things, then.”

“Two things?”

“Last night Sam told me I had people skills. That I’m good at getting along with people and helping other people get along with each other.”

“Yeah,” Jone said. “I can see that. Coffee?”

“Oh, God yes.”

She poured him some in a light metal mug with foldaway handles. He sipped the coffee. It tasted like salvation.

“So last night . . . ,” Ethan said. He noticed a quick pause in which Jone’s hands stopped moving. He talked through it. “. . . I was outside looking at the stars. And I was thinking it’s nice that I learned something good about myself. Because when I go home with that . . . with that new thinking about being good at something . . . well . . . maybe it’ll make it a tiny bit easier that I don’t go home with anything else. I think you know what I mean. So that’s why I was happy to add funny.”

Jone smiled, a small and lightly sad thing.

“Let me give you another big one for your list,” she said. “Number three. Brave.”

A laugh burst out of Ethan. It sprayed through his lips and sounded a little like a donkey braying.

“Brave? Is that some kind of joke?”

“Not at all,” she said, and then carefully sipped at her hot coffee.

“See if this sounds familiar.” He rose to his feet, using his hands for leverage, and purposely not saying “ow.” He definitely thought it, though. “‘Shoot the bear!’” he squeaked, in a parody of his panic-driven voice. “‘Shoot the bear!’” He danced around slightly, waving his sore arms, careful not to spill his precious coffee. “‘If it moves, shoot it!’ And then you have to put a hand on my shoulder and point out that it’s on the other side of the lake drinking water and paying no attention to us.”

Jone chuckled at his self-imitation. “See? Funny kid.”

“Okay. I’ll take funny. But brave?”

“Listen,” she said, and leveled him with a gaze that looked deadly serious. “How hard was it to come out here, nervous as you are, and after a close encounter with a grizzly?”

Ethan swallowed hard. Paused before answering.

“Very,” he said quietly.

“And that’s called brave.”

Ethan said nothing. There was nothing he could say. She was right. And it was not in his nature to address that deep a compliment head-on.

He sat down beside her again, cross-legged in the dirt, and they drank coffee together and watched Sam feed and saddle up the horses. Jone leaned over in Ethan’s direction and handed him a clean pair of his own socks.

“Not sure I did you a favor,” she said. “Because they’re still just a tiny bit damp.”

“You’re amazing. It’s a huge favor. Huge. I hate wearing dirty socks. Hate it. Thank you.”

“No worries.”

“What
is
that thing he’s whistling?” Ethan asked, a note of joking derision in his voice. As if there was such a thing as too cheerful early in the morning, after sleeping on the hard ground all night.

“Not sure,” she said. “Might be something from an old Disney film.”

“Ah,” Ethan said. “
That
explains why I keep expecting a cartoon bluebird to land on his shoulder.”

“Look at his paws and tell me what you think,” he said to Jone.

She came over and lifted Rufus’s paws one by one, examining the sore pads.

“I don’t think they need to be bandaged,” she said. “They’re dry. Almost the very first phase of scabbing over. But I don’t think he should be walking on them, either. Half a mile or less and I guarantee you they’ll be bleeding again.”

“Oh,” Ethan said. It was impossible to keep the disappointment out of his voice.

“What’s the problem?” Sam asked, appearing suddenly behind them.

Jone answered for him.

“Kid’s arms and back are sore from holding the dog on the saddle with him.”

“Oh,” Sam said. “Why didn’t you say so?”

He wrapped the dog up in his big arms and lifted him off the ground. He carried Rufus over to the stock, who were standing ready to go, and plopped the dog down on Rebar’s packs. Rebar turned his head around and bared his teeth as if to bite. Sam, or the dog; Ethan wasn’t sure which. Sam cuffed him on the muzzle, and he straightened his neck and looked ahead again.

Sam rummaged around in one of the packs and found the makeshift rope harness he’d used to get Rufus safely across the river. He tied it onto the dog and then used its length of rope to snug it down to the packs on both sides, so Rufus was literally strapped down with the rest of Rebar’s load.

“Got to keep that ornery head forward, is the only thing,” Sam said. “But I’ll deal with it. Well? I’m ready to ride when you two are.”

The edge of the valley—just where it touched the base of the cliff—was a hard place to ride. It was rocky, a sea of scattered boulders that Ethan could only guess had come down from the side of the mountain. Maybe yesterday. Maybe before any of their grandparents were born. Some were the size of a suitcase, others the size of a car.

Sam took the job of swinging down from his horse and walking over and around the rocks to check out the places that couldn’t be accessed on horseback. Sam seemed to have energy coming out of his ears.

At first he handed Rebar’s rope to Jone so she could keep the mule’s head forward, away from the dog. Soon it became clear that Rebar had forgotten the dog was even up there. But still Jone held the rope, just in case.

It was a slower job than any of them had anticipated.

By the time they’d covered three-quarters of the fall zone and reached a trail intersection, the sun was high overhead and Ethan was hungry for lunch. But he didn’t want to stop. He wanted to finish.

“Is this another one of those tricky intersections?” he asked. “Like a judgment call we’ll end up arguing about?”

“Maybe,” Sam said. “But we’re not going to argue. We’re just going to decide. This is really more of a use trail. Unofficial, you know? But we can ride it. It’s wide enough, and it’s safe. It switchbacks up the side of this mountain and joins the high trail about a quarter of the way along.”

Ethan craned his neck and looked up.

“This is the first time I’ve seen anything that looks like it could break a person’s fall,” Ethan said.

Sam raised his binoculars. That seemed odd to Ethan. It was right there, plain to see. Was there really that much difference between seventeen-year-old eyes and fifty-something-year-old ones? There must be, he figured.

“I don’t know,” Sam said. “Pretty narrow. A person could slip off the trail and shoot right past that skinny little ledge and into the valley.”

Jone raised her binoculars, as if to offer a second opinion.

“Depends on how you fell, I think,” she said. “If you put your outside foot down on some snow and ice, thinking it was trail, you might drop straight down onto that little jut.”

“And it’s long,” Ethan said.

“Yeah, I’ll give it that,” Sam said. “It’s long. You could go about a tenth of a mile, all the while keeping that little shelf underneath you. Still not sure a person could hit it, though.”

“What’s the downside to going up this use trail?” Ethan asked.

“We miss searching the last bit of the base of the cliff.”

“Can’t we get it on the way down?”

“Yeah. But then we miss looking over the edge of the last little piece of the high trail. We could always circle back and do both if you don’t mind it taking most of all day.”

“Can I borrow your binoculars?”

He rode his mule over to Sam, who reached them out for Ethan to take. Ethan used his left leg to nudge Dora sideways, closer, so he could reach them. He was getting good at that. Too bad that, after that morning, he wouldn’t need the skill again as long as he lived.

Ethan took the binoculars and searched along the sheer rock face on the other side of the use trail.

“It looks pretty straight up and down farther on. I say we go up. Look down on that shelf. Then we can come back the way we went up. Search the rest of the edge of the valley.”

“Done,” Sam said.

He put his heels to his bay horse, and steered him up the use trail toward higher ground. And the horse surged forward. But he never really gained much traction. There was a problem hampering his forward motion. It was an anchor named Rebar.

“Move, you damn mule,” Sam spat over his shoulder.

Rebar didn’t budge.

“What’s wrong with him?” Ethan asked, sitting his mule behind Rebar, waiting to follow them up the mountain. If they ever moved.

“He wants to go home. We were almost back to the trailhead. Only a couple miles. He thought we were going home. He doesn’t want to climb that mountain. He doesn’t want to turn around.” Then, to the mule, Sam bellowed, “Move, damn you!” and gave a sharp yank on the rope.

Rebar moved. The problem was, he moved backward.

“Get out of his way, son!” Sam shouted at Ethan. “Don’t let him back into you. He’ll kick if he backs into you.”

Ethan didn’t know how to make a mule back up, so he reined Dora around in a circle. Off into some high weeds. Rebar continued to twist backward and pull on Sam’s horse, so Ethan kept moving out of the way.

Dora was upset now, because Rebar was upset. She held her head high, her eyes wide. And her hooves danced, rather than plodding. That scared Ethan.

She began twisting around in circles even though Ethan was now trying to rein her into a stop.

“Don’t pull back on the reins,” Sam shouted to him. “That’s how you back her.”

Oh,
that’s
how you back her,
he thought. He loosened the reins, and she surged forward into the path of Rebar, who was still in reverse, and Ethan had to steer her off into the weeds again.

Sam dismounted, walked around toward the back of his mule—carefully staying out of range of those dangerous hooves—and smacked Rebar hard with the flat of his hand. Ethan could hear the crack of it.