No Time to Wave Goodbye

  She began to remove items from her pack—the harness, the disgusting bags of dried goop, her little stove, one of her water bags. “Boil snow for water. This far up, you probably won’t even need iodine to purify it. There’s enough formula left for a couple more bottles. I’d say cut up some cloth and tape it on her for diapers. Save the one disposable. If you get a chance, cut more wood. I’m leaving you all the food I have. Romy and I will go as fast as is humanly possible. And caninely possible. You’ll hear that helicopter whomping by tonight. There’s more of a clearing here than I thought from what Sarah said at first.”

  While Roman ate the last of his high-energy kibble, Lorrie instructed the brothers, “Show me your mirrors and your lights.” Dutifully, they dug out their headlamps and flashlights and mirrors. “You could use those to signal if you had to. But that’s crazy. It’s not as though they won’t spot this place. They have super-spotter lights on helicopters, particularly the military kind. The tree cover here won’t mean a thing to them.”

  Vincent wondered if Lorrie was talking to them anymore or to herself. Her voice seemed to have slipped down a register, into a deeper key. “I’ve got my groundsheet and my sleeping bag and my mirrors and headlamp. I’ve got water. That’s it. All I ever needed and all I need now. If I get hurt, Roman knows how to go for help. But I won’t get hurt. That’s it.”

  Lorrie stood up, kissed Stella, who was now asleep, with her lips furled around the nipple, and hugged each of the brothers.

  “Godspeed, Lorrie,” Ben said. “I owe you everything.”

  “Thank you. Remember what I said, now. Stay put. We got off lucky with Ben. We got our prize here. Don’t rush it, now.” Vincent raised his hand in a parody of the Boy Scout pledge. “If, God forbid, you had to leave, it’s straight south. Straight south. You have your GPS. But don’t. Wait, no matter what.”

  Together, with Ben straining against Vincent’s hand on his arm, they watched Lorrie and the huge dog take off out of the trees and into the sunlight.

  “She’s something else,” Ben said. They dug chocolate bars out and ate them. Stella wakened and they took out spoons for her to play with. Within ten minutes, she tired of them and began to fuss. Ben fed her the last of the bottle and mixed another with the dregs of the water from his carrier. “I wish we could set her down to play,” Ben said. “But the floor’s not exactly …”

  The blood on the floor had begun to freeze, crystalline and black. Stella seemed sweaty, so Ben took off the snowsuit. The two men made a cave in which Stella could crawl back and forth between them on the padded bench. Her father would pull her to her feet when she reached him, to Stella’s instant hilarity. When she got back to Vincent, he would do the same thing. Her laughter sounded to Vincent like wind chimes on a summer afternoon. Finally, she visibly ran out of steam, and crawled into Ben’s lap, popping her thumb into the side of her mouth. He swaddled her close. Vincent said, “It’s getting cold. Let’s start a fire, and put the snowsuit back on.”

  Ben agreed, then said, “Geez, if we had cards, we could play gin. How long has it been?”

  Vincent looked at his watch. “An hour. Maybe an hour and ten minutes.”

  “Long time to go,” Ben said.

  “Six hours, easy, even if she only stops once or twice.”

  Suddenly, Ben asked, “What’s that? Look outside the window. It looks funny … like metal, silvery.”

  Vincent stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

  Out of nowhere, a curdle of cloud had darkened the sky.

  And it began to snow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  For something that looked to have been built by the Three Little Pigs, the eight-by-twelve-foot cabin was startlingly well-insulated: Heat poured from the little woodstove so quickly that soon, beads of sweat curled the dark tendrils along Stella’s forehead and Ben loosened her snowsuit yet again. The brothers could feel their shoulders relax almost instantly: Vincent’s began to throb with a steady ache. He hadn’t realized how much he had been protecting himself from the cold by holding his back rigid.

  “He came all this way to do this,” Ben said, as he glanced outside, pointing to how the snow began to cover Bryant Whittier. It was falling faster now. Vincent noticed that the blanket soon looked like a mound … like a grave.

  Vincent answered, “He didn’t mean for it to get like this. He meant to get back down and leave Stella in a safe place, make a phone call, probably. Or have someone make it for him. Whittier obviously had a lot of checks he could cash, a lot of favors out there he could call in. My guess is that he gave it up when the snow forced him to stay up here. He’s a lawyer. He would have known that if it went this far and he was found, he was in prison for life. Kidnapping is a capital crime. From what his wife said, I don’t think it meant all that much to him anyhow.”

  Ben asked, “What?”

  “His life. He didn’t care.”

  “Then maybe he did mean for it to get like this. How the hell did he get all this stuff up here?” Ben said.

  “Fucking beats me. Over from the other side.”

  “What other side?”

  “Sarah Switch said there’s always another side.”

  “Why’d he wait until he heard us then, if it didn’t mean anything to him?” Ben asked.

  “If I had to guess …” Vincent began. He stopped then.

  “Go on. What?”

  “So he knew for sure that Stella would be safe.”

  “Oh, Jesus. Thank God. How could somebody be that crazy and also that, like, good?”

  “He loved his little girl too, I assume.”

  “We should probably put up some of these red blankets and make some kind of sign out there so that somebody can come up here and get him,” Ben said.

  “I don’t know if anyone will ever end up seeing it,” Vincent said. Unspoken, between them, was the reason. The snow was falling too fast. Anything they laid down now would be covered in thirty minutes. “We’d better stay inside, conserve the heat. I’m going to try to catch ten while Stella’s asleep. You should too.”

  “I’m too wound up.”

  “Kerry told me once that when she had to grab a nap before a performance, she would just lie down and listen to some sound far away and she could pass out for fifteen minutes, wake up ready to go,” Vincent told him. “Try that.”

  A few moments later, when Vincent glanced at Ben, he saw that his brother was already asleep, Stella cuddled like a doll between Ben and the back of the bench. It was surprisingly easy for Vincent to pillow his head on the coat he found (okay, it was Whittier’s, but who cared?) and blink out too.

  The sound that woke him was howling, distant, insistent. The wind was rising.

  Determined not to wake Ben, Vincent slid to his feet and laid his hand on the woodstove. It wasn’t cold, but his hand was comfortable against it. He looked inside and used a long fork to poke the ashes. The nylon log carrier Whittier had used was empty but for a few chips. Vincent stepped out and dragged in what wood he saw stacked against the wall. It was soaking wet. Next, he turned to the cooking stove. He lifted the ten-gallon propane can. It was empty. In turn, he lifted the other three he found outside lined up against the cabin—willing to hear a slosh inside one, just one of them. Nothing.

  Nothing but hollow steel.

  Nothing.

  The single light above their heads blinked out. What was this? A generator of some kind? What ran it? Where was the box? Vincent could barely see the outline of his brother, huddled on the bench. He began to search the cabinets and the loft for an electrical box or another propane tank, making no attempt to be silent. He climbed up into the sleeping loft. The only thing left was the little tank for Lorrie’s portable camping stove. How long would the cabin hold the heat?

  As Vincent descended the ladder, a beam pierced the murky daylight. Ben was sitting up, wearing his headlamp and looking at Vincent.

  “What in the hell do we do now?” Ben said.

  “We have t
o go down,” Vincent said. “It’s dark. No helicopter. She had to stop.”

  “You don’t know that,” Ben said.

  “You know it has to be me and you know it has to be now.”

  “How do I let you do that?” Stella woke and began to cry. Ben recovered the bottle and quickly, the baby sucked down the last of the formula and began to cry harder. Ben filled the bottle with water. Stella took it, but whimpered. “Vincent, that’s all the food I have for her.”

  “The water’s good. You can give her some … crackers.”

  “I will,” Ben said. “But she’s not used to eating food.”

  They secured Stella by a blanket strip around the waist to the only chair, and she began contentedly banging spoons on the table and throwing them against the wall, laughing when they fell back down in front of her. Her absurdly long legs in the snowsuit danced like blue puppets.

  The cabin was still warm but Ben and Vincent had contrived to hook up the canister of stove gas to the stove. They agreed that no one would turn it on until the cold was mortal.

  “I’m uneager to go,” Vincent said. “Believe me. I don’t want to go out and stumble around in that muck. I’m not the hero. That’s you.”

  When Ben muttered, “Yeah, right,” Vincent’s heart stepped up a rung.

  He said, “I won’t go all the way down. I’ll stop at the big clearing. Halfway. I’ll call for help on the phone and get them to come and get you.”

  “You first. I have shelter here.”

  “You have Stella here,” Vincent said.

  They waited a few moments—Vincent unable to think of an encouraging word, Ben unable to think of an argument.

  “Well,” Vincent said, “I’m going.”

  “Take at least half this junk. Take the sleeping bag to wrap up in. Put on a double layer of socks,” Ben said. “Here are some wool socks. Clean in the package. He didn’t wear them. And this vest thing.”

  “You sound like Ma,” Vincent said.

  “And don’t take that huge backpacker thing. There’s this little pack, like a school bag. The sleeping bag’s at the bottom if you get cold. And I’m putting in some of this trail mix and a water bag. I found some Coke …”

  “Don’t make it too heavy, Benbo,” Vincent said. He realized too late he hadn’t said that word for ten years or more.

  Ben said, “Shut up.” Vincent heard the gravel in his voice. Ben was trying not to cry.

  Hurriedly, Vincent went on, “I’ve got my compass and my miner’s light and every other gizmo on earth. I’d have to be a deef to get lost.”

  “Which is why I said it,” Ben told him. Stella was waving a cracker in each of her mittened fists. “I just stuck in some of those little stadium warmer things you crack open. Just in case. Whittier had them too.”

  “Hey,” Vincent said. Ben looked up from stuffing Vincent’s pack. “You’re good. You think about cracker face here. I’ll be okay, Sam.”

  “If you get fucking lost out there, I’ll kill your ass. I’m on the level here,” Ben said, standing up straight.

  “I’ll take that into consideration,” Vincent said. He pulled the pack onto his back, slipped the light over his head securely, and affixed the snowshoes to his boots. Then, without waiting to think it over, he stepped out into the clearing and shut the door behind him. Instantly, he was in a cloud, a moving cloud that pelted his face. When he flipped on his light, the cloud became a dancing, gossamer curtain, silver and crystal, dense as fluttering fabric. He looked down at his GPS and then at his feet and took his first sliding three steps due south.

  “Vincent,” Ben called. Vincent looked back. He could see only a faint outline of the little house. “I’ll find you!”

  “Dude,” Vincent answered, and the wind pulled away his words. “No worries!”

  The flare of the headlamp disappeared as Ben ducked back inside.

  Move forward, Vincent instructed his feet. One foot in front of the other. Push, sink, slide. Push, sink, slide. Ben, Vincent said without sound, I can’t feel my hands. Thank Christ I took the hat off Stella’s head before I left. I can’t feel my feet either. Push, sink, slide. How, he thought, am I going to feel the rocks when I get to them? Easy, fool. The rocks mean you’re going down to another flat place. Through the snow, he thought he could sense a slight lowering in the path, a depression, the remnants of Lorrie’s trail.

  Push, step. Push, step. Vincent held his arm up to the headlamp so he could see the hands on the dial of the watch. He had been moving for an hour. Or a minute. He could scarcely see where the hands stood.

  It must be an hour. Under the vest, his two layers of shirting were soaked with the sweat of his effort. Talk, Vincent said. Stay alert. Stay alive. Who said that? He had! He and Rob said that in some PSA ten thousand years ago. Stolen it from someone else … Why didn’t I put my goggles on, Ben? Ma, can you believe this is California?

  Vincent stumbled forward in the darkness. He counted his steps. Twenty. Eighty. One hundred and nine. Two hundred. Five hundred and five.

  Miraculously, the snow began to thin to wispy pinions of flakes, whirling among the trees. Then there were no trees. Vincent turned on the big flashlight and panned around him. Cautiously, he began the descent from the high meadow to the trail. From this vantage, he thought he could see faint marks of the deeper trail they had made going up and Lorrie’s trail going down. Next to him, just below and to the right, was the creek where Ben had fallen. To his left, behind and above him, then back in the trees, must have been the shelter of their hasty campsite. Look ahead, Vincent told himself, look ahead and not down at your feet. He began the descent, balancing steadily. Step. Step two. Step three. One more step down. Vincent grounded himself on the snowshoes and reached for the last of the incline, glancing up toward the path, over which he would fly to the next and gradual descent, the last one before the big clearing, the halfway mark. His right foot was on the path when the toe of his left snowshoe caught something and tugged. Vincent stumbled and went down hard, to the unmistakable stomach-churning bite of a twisted ankle.

  Hell, no!

  Don’t worry, Ben, Vincent said, I’m okay. I’ll lace the boot tighter. Goddamn boots are so tight, at least it won’t swell. He lifted his leg out of whatever little hidden crevasse had trapped it and concentrated on his injured ankle. He didn’t dare remove the snowshoe. There was no telling if he would get it back on, for, as he fumbled with the laces, Vincent tried and failed to ignore how his fingers really were as cumbersome as little stubs of lumber. When he moved his gloves, it was as though he were operating a robot claw. Shit, Vincent then realized, no wonder. He had begun with two layers of cheesy gloves, given one to Ben forever ago in the tent and forgotten to get it back. Jesus, where was his mind? He knew that Ben didn’t realize he still wore Vincent’s woolen layer under his own insulated gloves.

  But Ben was in the middle of the epic crisis of his life—to which he’d added enough guilty realization about his childhood and their parents to last for the next forty years. How would he have thought of such a little thing? It was Vincent’s own fault.

  Vincent leaned back and jerked the laces tight. A red band of pain exploded between his calf and his wooden foot. His breath came faster and his mouth filled. He leaned over and puked his chocolate into the snow. Scrabbling in his pocket, Vincent found his phone and flipped it open. He had bars! Desperately, he punched in his father’s number.

  “Hello?” Pat said. “Vincent? Son?”

  Vincent tried to answer.

  “Vincent? Vincent? It’s his number but nobody’s there! Where …? Somebody tell Candy!” The screen went black. Pat couldn’t hear him. Vincent tried again. This time, the phone didn’t even make a connection.

  Other phones, Vincent thought. The other phones.

  He had left them behind, in the big reinforced pannier pack, stuck only the one into his pocket.

  Why?

  Ben had no use for them! He wouldn’t get squat up there. Lorrie didn??
?t. But maybe he would. Ben would try.

  Ben should try.

  Vincent knew he would try, at least.

  So, for now, Vincent would handle it. Was there a choice? Didn’t he hear once—hadn’t he read that you rubbed snow on them? On frostbitten fingers and toes? Vincent stripped off his gloves and gasped at the sight of his fingers. They were waxen, like Halloween dummy hands, despite all the time they’d spent in the relative warmth of the cabin. When the hell had this happened? Reaching down, Vincent pulled off the gloves, then rubbed snow between his palms. Carefully, he stowed the gloves in a pocket and stuck his hands inside his shirt under his arms, where he felt their stiff cold bash into his warm core and, distantly, like the sound of fireworks far away, he also detected a slight prickling in his palms and thumbs. Vincent kicked off his left snowshoe and was unlacing his right when he slipped back on his elbows. The pain in his ankle growled once more and then bit hard. Vincent fell over onto his back. The pain was a howl, keening.

  The stars above him steered a hard right and disappeared.

  At eight p.m., as the last light faded above the tree line, the canister of propane from Lorrie’s little outdoor stove breathed its last. Ben had finally found the tracker’s Jetboil, but it had burned no more than twenty minutes. So the little house fell into darkness and the cold curled against the windows like a waiting thing.

  From his experience of the past five hours, Ben knew he had a good hour or more of heat left and an hour after that of relative chill.

  It must have been harder going for Lorrie than she first thought, the new snow adding another layer, literally, to an already difficult situation. And as for Vincent … Ben was scared as hell for Vincent.

  Tucked back in her blanket nest in the drawer, Stella slept quietly.

  Glancing at his baby, Ben thought, What the hell? Why not try? Because it will kill me if it doesn’t work? I can wait. I can do anything, he thought. Grabbing one of the phones from the pack, he stepped outside into snow that swept over his ankles and crowded his knees in drifts. He closed the door behind him, first testing it to see that it would open again. Looking down, he could see a vague green smudge of lights, distant as a planet. He breathed a prayer and flipped the telephone open. He had a connection. Not daring to move, barely daring to inhale, Ben dialed his wife’s number.