The Dog Who Knew Too Much (8 page)

He was sitting on a rock at the top of an easy rise. What else? I smelled water, lots of it. And Turk was smoking a joint. Turk looked at me. I looked at him. A lot of humans will say something to you at a time like that, just being friendly. Turk did not. He took one last drag, then dropped the butt and ground it into the earth. You run into potheads in this business—Bernie’s had fun conversations with some of them—but Turk was way more energetic than any pothead I’d ever met. I went over and sniffed at the remains of the joint, then got to work on digging it up out of the little hole Turk’s heel had made.

“What the hell?” Turk said and sort of kicked out at me. Whoa. I backed away and barked. At that moment Bernie came in sight, moving much better now on the flat ground, that tall golden grass waving slightly, and Bernie looking sort of golden himself. He strode up the rise and stopped beside us.

“You two getting acquainted?” he said.

Turk glanced at me. “I guess.”

I barked again, not my real scary bark, but lower and more rumbly, the bark that lets you know the real scary one is on the way, unless something you’re up to or not up to changes pretty damn quick. Why I was doing it now was a bit of a mystery. But the next moment, Bernie shot a real quick look directly at the ground-up butt of Turk’s joint, more like his gaze sweeping right over it, so if you didn’t know Bernie, you would have missed the whole thing. But I knew Bernie.

“Been meaning to ask you something, Turk,” he said, leaning against a tree. “You’re going so fast I thought I’d never get the chance.”

Turk glanced at the sun. Hey! It had sunk pretty low in the sky when I hadn’t been watching. “This ain’t fast,” he said. “What’s your question?”

“Devin must have had a pack,” Bernie said.

“Sure,” said Turk.

“Where is it?”

“I left it at the campsite in case he came back.” Turk rose. “With food and water inside, plus a note telling him to stay put.”

“That was smart,” Bernie said.

“I know my job,” Turk said. He gave Bernie one of those down-the-nose looks. “Had enough rest?”

Bernie pushed himself away from the tree. We moved on.

The smell of water got stronger and stronger and then the sight itself came into view, a lovely smooth sheet of blue, darker than the sky.

“Whiskey Lake,” said Turk.

Wasn’t whiskey a kind of bourbon, or bourbon a kind of whiskey? I tried to remember the details of a discussion—if that’s what it was, with all the yelling and shouting and broken glass—about this very subject at the last Police Athletic League social. But the point: whiskey was a kind of golden brown, not dark blue. So was this lake full of whiskey or not? I sniffed the air for whiskey, detected none.

Bernie has some beliefs. One is you don’t bring a spoon to a knife fight. Another is don’t overthink. We’re on the same page about that one, me and Bernie. The next thing I knew I was swimming in Whiskey Lake. Not whiskey at all, but cool, delicious water. Turk and Bernie followed the path around it, appearing and disappearing through a screen of tall cattails. I’d seen cattails once before on a riverbank down on the border. The name bothered
me, but I tried and succeeded in not thinking about it as I swam straight across the lake. Love swimming—it’s just like trotting, only in the water—which I don’t get to do nearly enough in the Valley, where we have aquifer problems, a bit of a mystery but one of Bernie’s biggest worries.

The far shore was steep and rocky. I scrambled out, ran onto the trail just ahead of Turk and Bernie, and gave myself a good shake, the kind that starts at my head, ripples down to my tail and all the way back again—can’t tell you how good that feels—maybe spraying them just the slightest bit. Bernie laughed. Turk raised his hands to block the tiny water drops and said, “Christ almighty.”

Bernie stopped laughing.

We climbed a steep ridge, saw rocky mountaintops streaked with white in the distance. The sun sank behind those peaks and the sky turned purple. I’d never smelled air like this, so fresh and pure. A funny kind of air: I wasn’t panting or anything—how could hiking with a couple of humans bring on panting?—but I seemed to need more of it. Bernie was huffing and puffing again, but now he didn’t fall behind, even seemed about to go into the lead once or twice. That was Bernie: there’s something inside him.

Time passed. We were in the trees again, not those white-bark trees: these looked more like Christmas trees. The going got rougher, the trail almost disappearing as we worked our way along a narrow crest. I was in the lead now, and starting to pick up human scents, faint but there: by a tall spiny bush, I found Preston’s smell, for sure. Not long after that, I glanced back. Hey! Bernie and Turk had put on headlamps. I checked the sky: dark, with twinkling stars. No headlamp for me: night or day doesn’t make much difference. I turned and trotted on, not my fast trot, but the go-to trot, as Bernie calls it, the trot I can keep up as long as I have
to. More scents now: Preston’s again, Tommy’s, and Turk’s. Plus just a trace of that strange locker-room-laundry-hamper scent I’d first picked up at the trailhead. Locker room laundry hamper, yes; human, no.

Kind of puzzling, but then I caught sight of the white streaks on the mountaintop. I couldn’t see the mountain, just the white streaks, a new and beautiful sight, and I forgot all about whatever had been puzzling me. Other questions arose, like: Was the moon coming tonight? Stars came out every clear night, which was just about every night in the Valley. The moon was trickier, appearing some nights but not others, and often changing its shape. Bernie had explained the whole thing to Charlie at the dinner table, and I’d gotten that feeling in my head when I come very, very close to understanding; a nice feeling, almost as good as actually understanding. What a life!

Up and up I went, and then the ground leveled out, and I heard trickling water. A few more steps and I could see a gurgling little stream, sparkling with starlight. The great outdoors—that’s what humans call it, a perfect name—and at night: hard to beat. I leaped onto a broad flat rock in the middle of the stream and lapped up more delicious cold water. I wasn’t thirsty, but what a treat, all this tasty water around. We’d have to cross the state line more often, if that was in fact what we’d done.

The two headlamp beams bobbed up in the distance, moved closer and closer in a jerky kind of way, and then shone on me. I heard their voices.

“There’s your dog,” said Turk.

“Uh-huh,” said Bernie.

“Stiller’s Creek,” Turk said. “Weird how it ended up here—the camp can’t be more’n a hundred yards away, just on the other side.”

“Not it,” Bernie said. “He.”

The headlamp beams both swung around, turning on each other. Light shone on both their faces, Bernie’s and Turk’s. They looked squinty, tired, annoyed. That was a bit of a surprise. I couldn’t remember feeling better, myself. Okay, there was the time Bernie and I went on vacation to San Diego, and I surfed. But other than that.

I hopped over to the far side. Bernie and Turk crossed the stream, both stepping on rocks to keep their feet dry. That’s not something I worry about.

Turk walked up a little slope toward a shadowy grove of low trees. Bernie and I followed, side by side. Bernie has a kind of walk for when his leg hurts but he’s trying not to show it; he was doing it now.

We reached the top, moved into the grove. I smelled ashes, plus chocolate, the way it smells when hot chocolate gets burned in the pot, and then Turk’s headlamp beam illuminated a small circle of stones: the remains of a not-too-long-ago campfire. I knew fire pits, of course, went over and took some closer sniffs. Burned hot chocolate, yes. There’d also been Spam and something eggy. I stuck my nose just about right into the ashes. They were cold.

“Where did you leave the pack?” Bernie said.

“Huh?” Turk said.

“Devin’s pack.”

“Oh. Yeah.”

Turk took off his headlamp and shone the light carefully around a tree stump outside the circle of stones.

“That’s funny,” he said.

“What is?” said Bernie.

“This is where I left his pack—leaning against the stump.”

I sniffed at the stump, didn’t pick up Devin’s smell, although I
did detect the scent of burned marshmallow. Marshmallows: you can have them—just way too sticky. Same for cotton candy.

We walked around the clearing, the two light beams poking at trees, rocks, bushes. No pack in sight. “Tent was over here,” Turk said.

Bernie looked around. “And where did you sleep?” he said.

“Under the stars, like I told you,” said Turk.

“I asked where,” said Bernie.

Turk pointed with his thumb, back toward the fire pit. I’d slept next to fire pits, too; if you make a roaring fire, those stones stay warm almost till dawn.

“Maybe the kid came back and headed out with the pack,” Turk said.

“But your note said to stay put,” Bernie said. Meanwhile, he was crouched down, sweeping his light slowly back and forth over the place where the tent had been. I crouched beside him, picked up the scents of Preston and Tommy, plus those two other boys, their names escaping me.

“Maybe he didn’t read it,” Turk said.

Bernie rose. “Turk?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“That’s enough theory. Have you got any facts for us?”

Turk gave Bernie a hard look, said nothing.

Bernie turned away from him. Then he cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, “Devin! Devin!” louder than I’d ever heard him. Turk jumped right off the ground. So did I, kind of, even though it was Bernie.

“Devin! Devin!”

The night was silent.

EIGHT

W
e sat around the fire pit in the darkness. No one seemed to be making a fire. That was a first in my camping experience. Did no campfire wipe out the possibility of nibbling on roasted things in the near future? I feared that from the get-go and turned out to be right. Turk and Bernie ate sandwiches— peanut butter and jelly, the smell so much better than the taste, a strange disappointment I’d tested out more than once—and I had kibble. I was just about finished licking out the bowl—our traveling bowl, a little smaller than the kitchen bowl but nice and round at the bottom, the way I like—when Bernie said, “Tell me about the kids.”

“What kids?” said Turk, wiping his mouth on his sleeve.

“The kids in tent seven,” Bernie said. “The ones in your charge.”

Turk shrugged. “I take what they give me.”

“Meaning?”

“I’ve guided hundreds of kids into the backcountry,” Turk said. “Maybe thousands. They all blur together after a while.”

“Understood,” said Bernie. “You’re only human.”

Hey! One of my favorite expressions—it made so much sense to me.

“Damn straight,” Turk said.

“But,” said Bernie, and he paused—Bernie’s a real good pauser, all part of his interviewing technique; I bring other things to the table, in case I haven’t mentioned that already—“of all these hundreds, maybe thousands, Turk, did you ever lose one before now?”

“Fucking well didn’t. And you’re startin’ to push me, pal.”

Uh-oh. Turk had a temper. I got my back paws under me. I’ve seen lots of trouble, comes with the job, and it often starts right about now.

“See, Turk,” Bernie said, “you just admitted you’ve never been in a situation like this. Chet and I have, more than once. The goal is to bring Devin back alive. Nothing else counts.”

Turk sat there, a dark shadow but sort of bulging, like a muscle loading up.

“So let’s talk about the kids in tent seven,” Bernie said. “How did they get along?”

I heard Turk taking a deep breath. The violence that had been building inside him escaped into the air; I could sort of feel it. “Didn’t give me problems,” he said.

“Glad to hear that,” said Bernie. “But it’s not what I asked.”

“Lost me,” Turk said.

“Yeah?” said Bernie.

When he said “yeah” like that it always meant he didn’t believe what had just been said, not one bit. Love Bernie’s little ways! We were on the job!

“Let’s narrow it down,” he went on. “How did the boys— meaning Preston, Tommy, Luke, and Keith—get along with Devin?”

“Pretty good, I guess.”

“Guess harder,” Bernie said.

“Huh?”

“The four boys are all returning campers. Devin’s new. That can be tough.”

“Tough? None of them know shit about tough. They’re all rich kids from the city.”

“Bullies can be rich or poor, city or country,” Bernie said. “Preston’s a bully. Luke and Keith are followers. Tommy’s stand-up, but he’s still too young to know it. What about Devin? Is he the victim type?”

“Where are you getting all this info?” Turk said.

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Ranger Rob? I didn’t think—” Turk cut himself off. Sometimes the mouth gets ahead of the mind in humans. I watch for that one.

“You didn’t think what?”

“Nothin’,” Turk said.

There was a silence, except for the breeze rustling the trees, and an owl doing that hooting thing, but very distant, right at the edge of what I could hear.

“What kind of a kid were you?” Bernie said. “Bully, victim, follower, or stand-up?”