No Time to Wave Goodbye

  “Forgive me and don’t answer if you don’t want to,” Vincent gasped out. “But do you remember when Beth …”

  “I don’t remember, in fact, but it’s definitely one of the great Cappadora legends,” Ben answered. Vincent was gratified to notice that even Ben was winded. In fact, he was more embarrassed than irritated, sort of faking annoyance to cover up the fact that all those days at the restaurant had him a little out of shape.

  “If you don’t remember, then why does Eliza sing it to Stella?” Vincent asked.

  “I never heard her.”

  “She sings it all the time. And she sings it like Mom did … Mom, as in our mom …” Vincent added, his rage suddenly a spear sharpened in the burning of his muscles. He realized his feet were nearly numb, the new boots at least a size too small. “She sings it, ‘If a bunny catch a bunny …’”

  “I don’t remember!” Ben roared, as, with a horrible slowness, he slipped off the path, down a slight grade, coming to rest on a frozen crest of snow maybe three feet below Vincent.

  “Don’t move, Sam. Don’t move an inch. If we’re lucky, that’s a stable shelf of snow …”

  “Okay,” said Ben, his eyes blank with dread. Vincent could see his brother’s shoulders shaking. He knew what it would mean to hit water, here and now.

  “I’m going to lie down on my stomach, in case it won’t hold both our weight, and hold out the snowshoe.” Vincent ditched the pack and was unlacing one snowshoe when he heard a soft, horrible shushing.

  Just as Lorrie shouted, “There’s a good clearing up here, and it’s nice and flat. Come on, about fifty yards more …” the crest where Ben stood began to sink, insubstantial as a meringue. While Vincent scrambled down toward him and Ben clawed for Vincent’s hand, Ben sank silently through into water as deep as his chest.

  “Jesus Christ!” Vincent yelled. “Help us! He fell in.” They heard Lorrie come schussing down the slope. The dog came huffing in front of her, lithe, sure-footed and human-eyed as he drew level with Vincent.

  “Don’t move any closer to him,” Lorrie said in a voice so quiet it had the effect of literally slowing Vincent’s heart. “You’ll both go in and then neither one of you will survive. If we don’t get him out of there, his chances are slim to none anyhow.” Pulling a set of straps from her pack, she buckled it around Roman’s shoulders, tossing knotted whip ends to Ben who scrabbled to catch them in his gloves. They slipped away, and Ben pulled the gloves off. “Ben! There’s genius for you. Now he’ll lose a finger. Plus, I hate that he has to do this.”

  “Me, too,” Vincent said. “Hurry, Lorrie. He’s not only freezing, he’s scared to death.”

  To Ben, Lorrie said, “Drop your pack. Try not to let it slide underwater. Just shove it into the bank.” Ben did. “I mean I hate that Roman has to do this. It’s a strain on him. Roman, up,” Lorrie said and the huge dog clenched his massive hindquarters and stepped backward. Ben, visibly trembling, came stumbling and crawling up the bank. Vincent thought his brother’s face looked gray as modeling clay. Lorrie broke off a branch and snagged Ben’s pack with it. Then, ripping off the harness, Lorrie headed back up the path.

  “Where the hell are you going?” Vincent howled.

  “I’m going to throw the tent up in the clearing and hope to God I can find enough wood that’s dry enough to start some kind of fire!” she said. “Get him up here!” By the time they stumbled up to where she was, Lorrie had laid a platform of flat logs she had struck from a single bough and hacked apart with the ax. She’d snapped off low boughs she called “squaw wood” that were bare of snow, stripped off the bark, and used one of the Vaseline balls to start a fire that roared up, although it also smoked like a chimney that hadn’t been cleaned in years. Somewhere, she’d also found a big rotten dry stump that was dead and that she split into six pieces, all in about five minutes. “Get him out of his clothes,” Lorrie barked.

  Half-dragging his brother, Vincent said, “Say again?”

  “Get it all off, everything. Look at his face. His eyes. He’s sleepy. He’s already hypothermic. The wet clothes have to be hung to dry and we have to get him warmed up. We should quit this right now and go back. I tried for a cell phone signal and there’s nothing.” Lorrie’s mouth formed a grim line. “We’re on our own.”

  Vincent began pulling Ben out of his layers. Ben was groggy, shuddering like a guy in a spasm. Under the first layer, Vincent found wet silks. Water had seeped in through the waistband of Ben’s wind pants. Lorrie shook out Ben’s sleeping bag. “Get this in the tent,” she told Vincent. Ben nodded, swayed, sleepy-eyed.

  He said, “Fine. I’m good. I’m warming up.”

  Lorrie said, “Shit. That’s not good.”

  “He said he’s warming up.”

  “People who are too cold feel warm. Get his bag in the tent and get him in the bag. It’s probably twenty degrees up here and the wind’s picking up. I have to find a better way to shield the fire. I built it in the open like a fool.” Vincent was amazed at her prowess. She’d kicked away the snow for three feet around the fire so it wouldn’t go out and lugged a couple of big rocks to mount around a silver-coated shield—like a tiny version of some Japanese screen in a fancy living room. “I’ll add every bit of wood I can strip to it once we get him figured out. First, I’m going to warm up some hot chocolate.”

  Once Ben was in the bag in the tent, Vincent asked her for the chocolate. “I’m letting it cool. You ever hear of guys pulled out of the ocean and were walking and talking until they took a hot drink and dropped dead? He wasn’t that bad off but I’m not taking chances. You have to give him something warm first.” She stared at Vincent. “What are you doing? Strip off.”

  “I did. He’s in the sleeping bag.”

  “I mean you!” Lorrie said. “Strip down to your underwear now.”

  “Me?”

  “Pull your boots off and leave them outside the tent. I’ll put the poncho over them. Strip and get in the bag with him.”

  “What?”

  Lorrie sighed. “Your human warmth is going to do more for him than anything I can do. He’s your brother, and I’m not getting in the bag with him. I have too much to do out here. I mean it! Now!” She’d thrown a rope around the two closest trees and flipped Ben’s wet clothes over it.

  “Can I pee first?” Vincent asked.

  “If you hurry up about it,” Lorrie said. “We’ll dig a hole later. Try not to get too near to the fire. I don’t want a bunch of critters nosing around. When he’s warmed up, we’ll pull the food up off the ground in a bear bag …”

  “Can’t he just lie down close to the fire?” Vincent asked.

  “Sure, but it could kill him if it takes him that long to warm up,” Lorrie said.

  Vincent pulled off his clothes down to his underwear and threw them into the tent. He set his boots just inside so Lorrie wouldn’t see how wet they already were. Then he got down on all fours and crawled into the mouth of the tent. Lorrie zipped both openings behind them and pegged down the fly to cut the wind. Ben seemed asleep but he began to thrash when Vincent started to slip into the bag.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Ben’s skin was like the outside of a cold glass on a summer day, before the surface beaded up.

  “It’s not my idea. You’re … you have hypothermia. I have to warm you. I’m warm from all the hiking.”

  “Get outta here!” Ben mumbled, shoving weakly, his words coming slowly and slurred over each other like a song on a record with the batteries on the player about to run out of juice.

  “Come on, Sam. Cut it out. If I don’t do this, you’ll really be bad off.” Vincent wiggled in next to his brother. “I’m not going to make a pass at you. Come on. Lie still.” Ben finally stopped thrashing. Vincent could feel his arms, smooth and cold as the rocks outside. He wrapped his own arms around Ben’s back and held him close and slung his leg over both of Ben’s. The inert chill of his brother’s body poured over him like a fluid. “There. Now, um, tr
y to relax.” Vincent blew on the back of Ben’s neck, the only exposed part of him.

  Within a few minutes, Ben’s shivering began to slow down. “There you go. That’s good. Just push up close to me. It’s working.”

  “Great. Okay. Imagine how this looks, with our pink headbands,” Ben said, and Vincent’s heart took off. Thank God. If he was okay enough to be sarcastic …

  The zip opened and Lorrie, in her silks and her fleece pants, slid into the tent with a cup of chocolate and something on a spoon. “Sit up, Ben. And Vincent, you too.” Both of them struggled to a sitting position, like two caterpillars in a cocoon. “Get your hands around this.” Ben did. He drank the chocolate and Lorrie fed him a spoonful of peanut butter by bits. Then she said she’d stay outside to build up the fire. “I didn’t want anyone to see us, especially Bryant Whittier if he’s out here with one of his hunting rifles. But there’s no way around having the fire.” She gave Ben and Vincent each a power bar. “Stay here. We’ll eat more in the morning. I’m just going to put up my tent and let Roman sleep with me. It’ll get colder. But at least the wind’s going down. Normally, I’d think it was pretty. It’s all stars.” She looked back at them. “Sleep tight. Thank God for good dogs.”

  Ben slept, and though the sweat rolled off Vincent, so much that he had to pull one arm outside the sleeping bag, Ben stayed dry.

  Vincent tried to sleep. He thought, Ben was that close. Ben nearly bought it. Ben was so cold that it’s stifling in here and he doesn’t have enough warmth or fluid in him to sweat.

  A few hours later, Lorrie woke them and gave them some warm Jell-O in liquid form. It nearly gagged Vincent but Ben drank it all down as though it were some kind of magic potion. They lay back down.

  Vincent imagined he heard things. He imagined he heard Bryant Whittier’s voice, saying some villain thing, like What have we here? He imagined he heard snuffling and coughing and told himself, it’s only a raccoon.

  When Vincent finally slept, or thought he slept, a twitching version of sleep, through which sounds and cold swam readily, he saw things in his dreams. Once, he was almost sure he cried out, at a vision of red eyes in the darkness. But when he woke, the fly of the tent was still tightly shut.

  “What?” Lorrie called.

  “Nothing. I’m good,” Vincent said. “Nightmare.” He slipped out of Ben’s bag and pulled his own from Ben’s pack—which was back in the corner where Lorrie had stowed it. The groundsheet crackled with cold as he wriggled down into it and slapped his arms and thighs to warm himself, finally pulling out his extra wool shirt and struggling into it. But Sam was unprotected in there now, with nothing on but the bag. “Sam?” Vincent whispered.

  “Yeah?”

  “I got your dry clothes. Can you put them on in there?”

  “Yeah,” Ben said. “Hand ’em to me, okay?”

  “You got them?” Vincent asked in the dark.

  “Gloves,” Ben said.

  “They’re still drying out.” Vincent pulled off one of his layers. Whoa! Had the temperature plummeted or was it just that he was alone? Maybe moving over hadn’t been such a good idea. He handed his gloves over to Ben and put his own hands between his knees. “You warm now?”

  “Are you?”

  “Not so much.” Vincent scooted his bag over until he and Ben were back to back.

  “Come back in here then.”

  “Now I’ll freeze you,” Vincent said.

  “It’s okay. Come on.” Vincent wiggled back out of his bag and into Ben’s, a cold dollop of fear coating his stomach as he realized how very badly prepared and provisioned they had been for this accident. And as much as they were was only because Lorrie had insisted. He and Ben would have brought Kit-Kats and sports drinks.

  After a moment, Ben said, “I do remember her singing that. Beth.”

  “Yeah. I figured.”

  “But it was like they wanted to own me. I hated them for that. She kept looking at me all the time. Like she wanted to devour me. Those big eyes.”

  “Yeah,” Vincent said.

  “And they probably felt like I feel now. Like if I ever see Stella again, I’ll never let her out of my sight. I’ll never put her down or let her go to school. And they waited so long and gave up. I never got it,” Ben said.

  “How could you get it? You were twelve. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter. You get it now, and I’m sure Mom and Pop wish you had no idea how it feels. They felt just exactly like this.”

  “I never knew,” Ben said again.

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Basically, I treated them like crap. I didn’t know who they were. I only knew they wanted me because they produced me. I was their possession. Like I was a … crop. I didn’t know how you would feel because I … didn’t know.”

  “They don’t blame you.”

  “Vincent, if they felt like I feel about Stella … the morning she was born, I felt like I was going to explode. Like go up in the air like a hot-air balloon. I felt like nobody ever felt like I did, like you could die from loving a person. I wanted to get on my knees. Why didn’t they tell me?”

  “You didn’t want them to, Sam,” Vincent said carefully. “They didn’t want to make it worse for you. It’s okay now. Go to sleep.”

  “Great. I’m an asshole. When I said that to you … at the hotel. I didn’t really …” Ben began.

  “People say things. Go to sleep.”

  “She’s so little.”

  “We’ll find her.”

  “What if we never find her?” Ben asked. “What if I’m one of the parents in the movie?” Vincent rolled over on his back and studied the clear plastic window in the roof of the tent. He saw a single shooting star among the broken crystal of all the rest. He wished, squeezing his fists and closing his eyes, like some stupid kid.

  “It’s so dark,” Ben said.

  “Sam, go to sleep,” Vincent said, reaching over to pat his brother’s back. “Go to sleep now.” He felt Ben’s shoulders shaking and was about to ask if Ben was cold again, when he realized that Ben was crying. He withdrew his arm and looked up at the stars until they began to spin. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he looked up again, the sky was gray.

  They could get up and get on the move. Vincent felt like he had a hangover but felt oddly energized too.

  He burst out of the tent. Lorrie said, “It’s almost six a.m. I thought you were going to sleep all day. Sam, you survived and now I don’t have to lie to your daughter when I tell her her dad’s a very brave man. Not to mention a very foolish one.” She glanced at Vincent. “And her uncle’s worse.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  What they ate in the morning looked like what came up after a long night with a Mexican meal and too many margaritas. Vincent forced himself to get it down, chasing it with two cups of tea and five or six spoonfuls of sugar.

  “Okay, this is why we stay on the path,” Lorrie said. “Suck the tea down and pee or whatever it is you have to do. If whatever you do is more than pee, dig a hole and cover it up. Leave no trace.”

  “We’re being eco-friendly while my niece is out there?”

  “Why not?” Lorrie asked. “It’s just as easy.”

  “I thought we were going to sleep three hours and race through the night or something,” said Vincent. He thought then, Why am I arguing with her about pooping?

  Lorrie said, “We would have except for your brother’s little dip. It took all night to dry his clothes. I had to keep moving them around while you snored. Thank you very much. Just hang the tent up to air a little and get dressed,” she told him, turning to the dog. To Ben she said, “Are there any parts that feel funny? Hands or feet?”

  “I’m good,” Ben said.

  “So drink a lot today and watch it. I’m shocked that the boots dried out,” Lorrie said to Ben.

  Vincent didn’t mention that his hadn’t. He slipped a plastic bag over each dry sock and heard the small squish as he laced his boots up.

  Within an hou
r, they were packed up, Lorrie rearranging their packs with some magical ability to get them square and squat when Ben and Vincent could barely manage to get them closed. Before they did, Lorrie asked them to wait and stand with her as the sun came up. She read, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help…. The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night…. The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.”

  “Did you think we were religious?” Vincent asked.

  “Why would I care?” Lorrie asked, as she fed the dog. “I’m doing what makes me feel strong.”

  They hiked in silence for four hours. Lorrie stopped for her usual unannounced siesta. Then, still in silence punctuated only by their gasps, they slogged on. An hour, then two, then three, when suddenly Lorrie stopped. Without hearing her saying so, both men knew that she thought the dog had seen or smelled something. They pulled up short behind her.

  “What?” Ben finally asked.

  “There was a wood fire,” she said. “Recently.”

  “Ours,” said Vincent.

  “No, up ahead. Can’t you smell it?” They tried and Ben said he caught a whiff of something like the bonfires they lit when he was a kid. “That’s it. It’s up there to the left. Maybe just campers. But I don’t think so. There can’t be more than one idiot on this ridge right now. It smells like more than a campfire, though. Good wood. Cedar, maybe.”

  Lorrie struck off where the track divided, following Roman, who suddenly seemed to have brightened up. Back and forth, the huge dog worked, like a needle in and out of a cloth, crashing out of the scrub trees to a large cleared area. “Stay back here a minute.”

  While they watched, Roman veered to the left and looped back slightly to the right, then headed straight on. Lorrie signaled for them to follow, quietly. Roman continued for what Vincent imagined would be the equivalent of a few city blocks.

  Then he stopped and raised his head and tail. Telling them to stay put, Lorrie approached the dog, knelt and pulled out the bandana, pulled it back and forth in his great mouth and then ruffled his neck and ears before she gave him a handful of treats. She motioned to Vincent and Ben.