The Moose Jaw (23 page)

Their canoe wasn’t big enough to carry the four of us and all our gear, so we had to leave our river bags and all their gear behind.  They said they’d come back up and get it after they took us to their lodge.  It was downstream and it took us about two hours to get there.  They just kept the canoe in the fast, deep water and drifted. They didn’t talk at all on the way.  We got there about noon, I think.  It was a pretty big lodge.  Not on the Moose Jaw proper, but a little way back up a feeder stream.”

She thought it was Rainbow Creek.  I’d never heard of it, but resolved to see if I could locate it on the map when I had a moment.  She took another deep breath and continued.

“The little one sent the big one back upstream for our gear.  He told him not to bother with the raft this time; they would go find it later.”

She talked for an hour.
  She seemed to be remembering bits and pieces as she went along; hesitating now and then to see it all clearly before she told it to me.  She was remarkably calm through most of it, but she began silently crying toward the end, and I held her in my arms while she got it all out.  It was pretty bad; much worse than I’d imagined. 

Roy had, apparently, been trying to keep things on the up and up at first, providing the wilderness version of roadside assistance to stranded travelers.  He’d had a big row with Larry outside the cabin after Larry had returned with the gear.  She couldn’t hear all they had said, but it was clear that Roy was telling Larry to keep off the booze and behave himself, and that they had enough trouble with the Indian and didn’t need anymore.  Larry had come in sulking, gathered up his sleeping bag off a bunk in one corner of the main room, and went into an adjoining room and kicked the door closed.

Roy came back in and gave Jason the lodge’s medicine kit.  Then he went about cooking dinner, while Jason changed her dressings and gave her Codeine for the pain.  After he’d fed them dinner, Roy retired to yet another room and let Morgan and Jason sleep in the main room near the fire.  She assumed she’d been given Roy’s bed and Jason took the one Larry had vacated.  She’d slept deeply that night and didn’t remember anything until late the next day.

When she awoke, the three men were sitting at the table eating lunch and it was raining.  Jason had given her more painkiller and tended her wounds again.  She slept fitfully the rest of the day.  When she finally came fully awake it was dark. 
She woke to angry voices.
  Roy and Larry were shouting at one another, and it was obvious they had both been drinking heavily.  There was a bottle sitting on the table, and the smell of whiskey was overpowering in the close quarters.  Jason was not in the room.  She had wondered where he was.  Then she’d heard weeping in the next room and understood it was Jason.

It was at this point in the story where she began to cry.  She finished as I held her.  She’d already set the scene pretty well, and I thought I knew what was coming.  Nevertheless, I was unprepared for what she told me next.

It had rained all day, and the men had stayed inside.  She thought maybe they had just sat around drinking.  She didn’t know how Larry had gotten Jason alone in the other room.  Maybe Jason got drunk, maybe Roy fell asleep – she didn’t know.  But she heard what Roy had been shouting at Larry and she knew Larry had raped Jason, and had beaten him badly in the process.  She remembered that Roy had made Larry leave the cabin and go out into the rain until he could figure out what they had to do.  After Larry left, Roy had sat alone at the table quietly drinking for a long time.  She had tried to keep awake, but the drug finally got her and she slipped off.  When she woke up again she was naked, and her wrists were bound together over her head and tied off to something in the wall. 
One of her ankles was also tied to a bedpost.
 She heard the noises from behind the closed door to the other room.  She could hear Jason crying and the sickening sound of heavy slaps and punches, and Larry’s voice calling Jason a punk bitch and that he’d better learn to like it.

Then Roy had come over to the bed.  He was very drunk and he told her he was sorry.  He’d tried, but it was no good, and he may as well have his fun too.  He’d dropped his pants and tried to mount her, but she had bit him hard on the shoulder and he’d flown into a rage calling her a skinny fucking cunt, and if she liked it rough, he’d give it to her rough.  He hit her hard in the face with an open hand and she’d momentarily lost consciousness.  When she came around, he’d calmed down but was still drunk – mean drunk – and he’d taken off the rest of his clothes.   He said he’d waited for her to wake up so she could enjoy every minute of what he was about to give her.  He said he liked to do a little biting himself, and he wanted to see how she liked it.  He’d bit her breast hard.  The pain was almost unbearable.  He had started to climb on top of her again when there was a crash from the other room, and Larry came out screaming and holding his ear.  She remembered there was blood running down his cheek and dripping on the floor.  Roy jumped up, and he and Larry started yelling at one another.  Then Jason bolted out of the other room and was through the door and outside into the rainy night before they could stop him.  They both ran after him, shouting and swearing. 

That was it.  She had no memory of anything after that until she woke up here in my cabin.  She had no idea of what had happened to Jason, or how she’d gotten in the river.  No memory, but she thought she knew.

I held her until the sobbing subsided.  Then I built up the fire and put a pot of water on for tea.  It was past noon and we hadn’t had lunch, so I cut some cheese and got out a bag of jerky.  We sat at the table while we waited for the water to boil.  I reached across and took her hand.

I said, “I might know the two men you described but I need to be sure.  Can you remember anything else?  Anything at all?” 

She shook her head miserably, “No, I told you all I remember.  We were there two nights.  They tied me up and hurt me, but it was nothing like what they did to Jason.  I can’t believe that monster actually raped him.  Beat him up and raped him, and probably killed him in the end.”

“Do you think Jason’s dead?” 

Again, she shook her head, not in negation, but just to indicate it was too painful to think about.

“Probably.  I saw his eyes when he ran out the door.  He looked straight at me.  There was so much pain there.  Still…”

She shook her head again.   “I don’t know.  He might have been able to get away from them in the dark.  They were both drunk.  But, if they caught him, they would have killed him.  I’m sure of that.”

“You saw him when he ran out of the other room.  What was he wearing?  Did he have on shoes?”

She thought for a moment.  “I didn’t see his feet, but he clunked as he ran.  He must have been wearing boots.  He was naked, but he was carrying a bundle, tucked like a football under his arm.  It must have been his clothes.”

“I’ll need to know what he looks like.  Can you describe him for me?”

She looked at me across the table.  There was a look of hopelessness in the green eyes.

“You’re going to look for him?”

“I have to.  First I want you to tell me about him.  You know, age, height, weight, physical description.  I also need to know about his footwear.  Were they hiking boots or water boots?  Better yet, what kind of track did they leave, if you ever noticed?   When I do go looking for him, I’ll need to know what I’m looking for.”

She nodded.  She understood.  “He was a lot shorter than me.  Maybe five foot eight.  He was a champion wrestler in college, and he kept in good physical condition.  I’d guess he weighed one sixty, perhaps a little more.  He just turned thirty-three; I went to his birthday party.  Everyone from the office was there.  He was an up-and-comer in the firm, on track to be a partner in a couple of years.” 

I was a little worried that she was using the past tense almost exclusively.  It was as if she had already written him off as dead.

Tears welled in her eyes.  “He was smart and ambitious, and very good looking – almost pretty.  All the girls chased him.  He kept most of them at arms length, I think.  He had two passions:  The Law, and fly-fishing.  My father had taught me fly-fishing when I was a teenager.  I guess it’s my passion too.  That’s how Jason and I became friends.  Fly-fishing.  That’s why we came to Alaska, to the Moose Jaw.”

“You were just, ah, fishing buddies?”  I asked hopefully.

She smiled and laid a hand on my cheek.  “You’re sweet,” she said.  “We slept together a few times.  I think that’s what you’re really asking.  But, there was nothing serious between us.  Fishing buddies pretty much described our relationship.”

I had to admire Jason’s taste in fishing buddies.
  I had Haywood, Jason had Morgan.  Nothing against Haywood, but Jason, clearly, won that one hands down.  I went over to the counter, made two cups of tea and brought them back to the table with the jerky and cheese.  She took a piece of cheese and nibbled it delicately.  

“O.K.,” I said, “The boots.  What kind of track does he leave?”  I wasn’t yet ready to relegate him to the past tense.

“I know you have to look for him,” she said.  Then, after a long pause she looked sadly into my eyes and said, “You won’t find him.  He’s dead.  I can’t tell you how I know.  But I know.”

“No,” I told her.  “You think you know, but you can’t know for certain.  What if he’s still out there, injured maybe.  We’ve a duty to try and find him.” 

She looked at me as if I were a child, but she didn’t argue.  “Look for him if you must.  We all have our code, and our destiny.”

Her words sounded almost prophetic.  They sent a little shiver up my spine, but I shook it off and pressed on.

“Please, I insisted.  “Tell me about the boots.”

She sighed and ran her hand through her hair.

“He was wearing hip boots when the bear attacked us, but I think he changed into his hiking boots while we were camped.  I’m pretty sure that’s what he was wearing when those brutal pigs took us to their lodge.”

“What kind of hiking boots?”

“I’m not sure.  Regular hiking boots,” she said.

“What kind of sole?” I persisted.

“I don’t know!”  She was getting exasperated now.

I went to the corner and brought back one of my hiking boots that had a waffle-stomper tread.

“Was it like this?”  I showed it to her.

She studied it for a minute, and said, “Yes, something like that.”

“Good,” I said.  “What size did he wear?  Do you know?”

She shook her head.  “I’m not sure.  Not as big as yours.  Almost, but a little smaller.”

I wore size eleven, so Jason probably wore a ten.  That was close enough.

“O.K.”  I told her.  “Now, was he a good woodsman?  Could he have survived out here if he got away from the McCaslins?”

“McCaslins?”  She looked at me pointedly.

“The two men you described.  They came here the day after I found you.  They said their name was McCaslin.  Roy and Larry.  I didn’t want to tell you.  I had already guessed most of what you just told me.  I didn’t want you to worry about them finding you.”

“They were here?”  She seemed incredulous but not troubled.

“Yes.  They came that first day.  And they came in the night, just after you had regained consciousness.  I didn’t see them that time, but I scared them off.  A bear nearly got them.  They left a lot of clear sign.”

The wisp of a smile touched her lips. “A three toed bear?”

I’m sure my mouth dropped open in astonishment.  How would she know that?  I studied her for a moment.  There was something I hadn’t seen before, far back, deep behind those green eyes.

“Yes,” I said, troubled.  “A big grizzly with two toes missing on his right front paw.  He’s probably the one that attacked you.  How did you know?”

She gazed into the candle flame as if it were a crystal ball.  Her voice came from far away.

“Sometimes it’s as if I’m floating above it all, looking down, seeing what has happened – or what will happen.  It’s very strange, but I know, because I see.  And, yes, he is the one that marked me.  Now, he …” her voice trailed off.

This was eerie. 
There was something about that bear
, I had felt it the moment I’d seen his reflection on the water.  The fear I had experienced then had not been the fear of man facing beast.  It had been that of a child facing all the forces of nature – the storms, and the seas, and the dark of night, and the unknown gods and demons that ruled them.  I had felt his supernatural power, and I had seen the message in his cold, cold eyes, even before he scratched it into the living bark of the tree.  I couldn’t yet fathom its meaning, but I knew it had meaning.  It was as if I had been told the first two parts of an ancient trilogy, but part three had not yet been revealed to me.  I sensed, rather than knew, the bear had a role for me in his final episode.  I resolved that I would be the one to write that closing chapter.  It might be his trilogy, but I intended to be the master of my own destiny.

It occurred to me that I, too, had been lost in the depths of the candle’s dancing flame.  I shook my head, got up and poured us each another cup of tea.  I set hers in front of her but she sat quietly, still far off in some mystic place.

After a few minutes, I leaned across the table and blew out the candle.  There was a little light coming through the east window, but I stood and lit the kerosene lamps and turned them up high.  The spell was broken.

   She noticed her tea and sipped it.  “They’re looking for me.  That’s why you hang your shirts over the windows.”

“Yes,” I said.  “They present a problem.  I’ve got to go look for Jason, just in case he’s still alive, but I don’t dare leave you here alone with the McCaslins still prowling around.  Have you ever shot a gun?”

She nodded. “A shotgun.”

“Good.  Tomorrow I’ll scout around a little upstream.  I’ll set up a few booby-traps outside before I leave.”

She looked puzzled.   “Booby-traps?”