Squirm

  “On his way down to Tom Miner,” Summer says.

  I don’t like anything I’m hearing. Baxter didn’t need to trace Dad’s license tag to get his name, because he didn’t need Dad’s name. All he needed was a way to lay a trap.

  “Summer, where’s your mom?”

  “On the river.”

  “Do you know how to drive?”

  “Come on. I’m fourteen.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  She realizes I’m serious. “Sure, Billy. I mean I’m not supposed to drive without a grown-up in the car, but I know how.”

  “Where can we get a vehicle?” I say. “Any vehicle.”

  “You think it’s an ambush, don’t you?”

  “Maybe I’m wrong again. I hope I’m wrong. But what if Baxter figured out his wife was talking to Dad, and now he’s using her to set Dad up?”

  From Summer’s expression I can tell she’s had the same chilling thought.

  Her eyes flicker, but her voice holds steady. “I’ve got a knucklehead cousin who lives over on M Street.”

  “What kind of knucklehead?” I ask.

  “The kind that always leaves his keys in his car.”

  NINETEEN

  The cousin owns a toad-gray Subaru with 199,009 miles on the odometer. I’m sure it came off the assembly line before Summer or I was born.

  She says, “I learned to drive on a tractor, like half the kids in Montana.”

  “But you’ve also driven a car before, right?”

  “More than you, I bet.”

  She’s undoubtedly right. My entire road experience is one tense afternoon with my mom, going ten miles an hour back and forth in an empty church parking lot—not exactly good training for mountain highways.

  As predicted, the keys to the Subaru are in the ignition. Summer says her cousin bartends at night and sleeps all day. She sticks a note in the mailbox saying she’s “borrowing” the car.

  “Hop in, Billy Big Stick.”

  “Please tell me the seat belts work.”

  Although Summer’s tall enough to see over the steering wheel, she still looks too young to be in that seat. Her solution is a wide floppy hat and a pair of Lil’s wrap-around shades. It turns out she’s a pretty good driver.

  We brought water, bear spray, snack bars, and the plastic whistle that Dad gave Summer to take on hikes. She offered to carry the binoculars, which means I’ve got extra space in my backpack. I plan to use it.

  I say I need to pick up two things for our trip. Summer asks what. I tell her.

  Her response: “Are you nuts?”

  The first item we can find at the drugstore. The second will require some luck.

  Later, heading south on Highway 89, I get a call from my mother freaking out at the Denver airport, where she and Belinda have a layover.

  “I cannot believe you got off that plane! You are so permanently grounded!”

  “That’s fair.”

  “Don’t you dare be sarcastic with me.”

  “I’m not, Mom. Whatever you decide to do is okay.”

  “Where’s your father? Put him on the phone right this minute.”

  “You’re gonna miss your connection,” I say. “Text me when you and Belinda get home tonight. Bye.”

  After ending the call, I hear myself let out a sigh.

  Summer laughs. “How long are you grounded for?”

  “Only until I turn twenty-five. You want me to google directions to Tom Miner?”

  “I know how to get there,” she says. “Hey, I broke up with Davey on the phone last night. Want to know why?”

  I’m thinking: Not really.

  “He was getting bored with me, I could tell. And I was semi-bored with him.”

  “Summer, one thing you’re definitely not is boring.”

  “It’s all good. No pain.”

  The radio in her cousin’s car is broken, so I can’t turn up any music to end the boyfriend discussion. My only escape is changing the subject.

  “Do you think you’ll ever move back to the reservation?” I ask.

  “Maybe after college,” she says. “Why don’t you look more surprised?”

  “Because I’m not.”

  “I want to be a doctor. How about you?”

  “No clue. I can’t think that far ahead.”

  “Billy, I can totally see you as a veterinarian. A reptile veterinarian!”

  “Right,” I say. “Can’t wait to run that one by Mom.”

  Midday traffic is steady on the main road through Paradise Valley—mostly tourists streaming to Yellowstone National Park. Summer is careful to drive below the speed limit, which means we’re getting passed constantly by rental cars, minivans, trucks pulling drift boats, even a Winnebago.

  But she’s smart to go easy on the gas pedal. If we got stopped by the police, we’d never be able to BS our way out of this—two underage kids cruising along in a vehicle that doesn’t belong to them. Summer has kept one eye on the rearview mirror ever since leaving the Livingston city limits.

  She relaxes a little once we reach the turnoff to the Tom Miner Basin. Not many cops up here.

  “I hope this is the right place, Billy.”

  “If Baxter’s setting a trap for Dad, it makes sense to do it here. He knows the area from the last time.”

  “When Dennis buzzed that big old grizzly.”

  “The drone master himself,” I say.

  “Too bad we never got to see the video.”

  My father erased the file from the quadcopter’s SD card. He was afraid someone who didn’t know a poacher was on the scene might think he was dive-bombing the bear just for a sick thrill.

  Summer slows down to show me a young elk browsing in the emerald-green alfalfa, hundreds of feet below us. The crop is being watered by the rancher’s pump station, on the bank of a silvery creek.

  I ask Summer if Lil knows that Dad went chasing after Lincoln Baxter.

  She says, “He didn’t have the you-know-whats to tell her. He waited until she left this morning before he took off.”

  Heading uphill toward the campground, we spot my father’s red Chevy king cab. It’s parked on the shoulder, not far from where we found it the last time. None of the tires are flat, and the fenders show no fresh bullet holes. Summer and I agree that’s encouraging.

  This bumpy dirt road would be Baxter’s only way in or out, but we don’t encounter any other vehicles until we pull into the campground. There’s a chrome RV occupied by two friendly couples from Canada, a Honda sedan carrying college kids getting ready for a hike, and a rust-chewed Jeep Wagoneer that appears to be the permanent residence of a snowy-bearded geezer with four scrawny dogs, all yappers.

  Summer does like a seven-point turn, motors back down the road, and parks behind Dad’s pickup. She taps her knuckles on the steering wheel and says, “Where the heck is Baxter?”

  “Maybe he’s on horseback.”

  “Horses get hauled in by trailers, Billy. You see any trailers?”

  “Then maybe he’s not here. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was never coming.”

  I just now thought of this: “What if the real plan wasn’t to ambush Dad? What if the real plan was to send him on a wild-goose chase?”

  “But why would Baxter do that?” Summer asks.

  “So he could sneak off somewhere else and shoot a bear, drone-free. See, he makes his wife think he’s hunting up here again, knowing she’ll rat him out to Dad and then Dad’ll come looking for him—”

  “Only meanwhile,” Summer interjects, “Baxter is miles and miles away, over in the Tetons or the Beartooths, killing a grizzly.”

  “The ultimate revenge, right?”

  “Another solid theory, Billy Big Stick. But so was the last one.”

 
“I’ll keep trying till I get it right.”

  * * *

  —

  One thing we forgot to pack was rain jackets. I don’t know where the storm came from. In a matter of minutes the afternoon sky changed from sunny to dark, angry purple clouds spilling over the mountain ridges.

  You’re not supposed to stand near a tall tree during a lightning storm, but Summer and I find ourselves stuck in the middle of a towering forest. In a pounding downpour we crouch low on the trail, flinching whenever a lightning bolt strikes close by. The car is more than a mile away, so there’s no sense making a run for it. We’re already soaked to the skin.

  This is my second serious Montana thunderstorm, and I’m not sure if I’m safer here in the woods than I was on that rock beside the river.

  One time I got caught in weather like this with Mom and Belinda, down in Everglades City. It blew in on a Sunday morning while we were out in the neighbor’s boat watching the bald eagle nest. The stupid outboard engine wouldn’t start, so all three of us lay down in the bottom of the boat, pressing our cheeks against the aluminum hull. It seemed like the lightning and thunder went on for hours, but the worst of it probably lasted only ten minutes. Still, we had to keep bailing rainwater out of the skiff, Mom using her coffee mug while Belinda and I scooped the best we could with empty Gatorade bottles.

  That was the first time I’d been close enough to experience the sound of the sky being ripped like a sheet, in that frozen split second right before lightning strikes. And I totally admit being scared out of my freaking mind, though I also remember wondering if the baldies were all right, hunkered in their ragged treetop nest. Then the rain quit, the wind died, and the clouds rolled away. We looked up and saw Mom’s eagles circling overhead, scouting for baitfish, as if the storm was no big deal. A minor inconvenience.

  But at this particular moment it’s hard to stay patient and calm, because Summer and I smell smoke. A blinding spear of lightning struck a dead lodgepole pine not far down the trail, and the tree is smoldering in the rain. It probably won’t catch fire, but I’d still rather be somewhere else. Summer isn’t delighted about our situation, either. The temperature has dropped sharply, and we’re getting cold.

  She says, “Well, this truly sucks.”

  “What do bears do in weather like this?”

  “Party, I guess. They’re bears.”

  A drenched raccoon walks out of the woods, shakes itself like a weary dog, sniffs the smoky air, and ambles away.

  “He wouldn’t even look at us,” I say.

  “Because we’re so p-p-pitiful, Billy.”

  Summer’s teeth are chattering. I move closer to warm her up. All she’s wearing is a soccer jersey, hiking shorts, and neon-green cross-trainers. She wrings her hair and knots it into a soggy ponytail.

  “Maybe this is payback,” she mumbles, “for me breaking up with Davey.”

  “Or for me lying to my mom.”

  “The list goes on,” she says, and we both manage to laugh.

  Soon the thunder stops and the rain slacks to a drizzle. We stand up, dripping and stiff-jointed. The dirt trail is now pure mud, and the tracks we’d been following are all gone.

  They were impressions made by a man’s hiking boots. I wear a size 10½, and my shoe fit easily inside one of the tracks. Summer said Dad’s a size 12.

  We decide to resume walking the same way the boot prints had been pointing—a logical plan until we come to a three-way fork in the trail.

  “Now what?” I say to Summer.

  “Don’t look at me. Just ’cause I’m an Indian doesn’t mean I’m good at this stuff.”

  We crawl around on our knees searching for a broken twig or any tiny clue that might reveal which of the paths my father chose.

  “Major confession,” says Summer as she combs the wet grass and pine needles. “I was actually glad to get off the rez, Billy. It can be a dark, sad place. Some of our people, they drink too much. And do bad drugs. You look in their eyes, it’s like they just gave up. And some of ’em are kids my age!”

  For her this is a brutal subject, and as usual, I’m not sure what to say.

  “You want to stay part of this amazing culture,” she goes on, “but you’re afraid the bad stuff might drag you down so far you’ll never climb out. Truth is I’m not sorry we moved away. I’m sorry for the reasons I feel that way—especially when somebody tells me and Mom how lucky we are to be here and not there.”

  “Summer, it’s not like you totally disconnected from the tribe.”

  “Yeah, I know, we go back on weekends and hang with family. But that’s not the same as living it, day and night. And sometimes—like right now—it’s hard to feel like a real Native American. Not when a white boy knows more about tracking than I do.”

  “Hey, who found those panther prints in the Everglades? You!”

  “That was dumb luck.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” I say.

  I’m right, too, because moments later I hear her exclaim, “Billy, check this out!”

  She’s pointing to a bright blue, bean-sized beetle, lifeless in the muck on the middle of the three paths. The beetle did not die of natural causes—it’s been squashed almost flat.

  Summer says, “Something heavy landed on that little dude.”

  “Yeah, like a size-twelve foot.”

  Farther along we come across a broken branch, still green. Dangling from the sharp end is a thread of khaki fabric, confirming that a human has passed this way. We hurry on, trying to keep our voices low. A patch of blue above the treetops signals the storm is officially over, though the branches are still shedding raindrops.

  The path leads us out of the woods to a wide rocky meadow that looks familiar to me. I’m almost certain it’s the same place where Dad’s drone dropped his first note, the same place I spotted that momma grizzly and her cubs.

  Summer takes out the binoculars. Something in the distance caught her attention.

  “Bad news, Billy,” she says.

  I grab the binoculars from her hands and have a look. At the far end of the meadow, a raft of large dark birds is circling. They are definitely not eagles.

  “I wonder what they’re looking at,” Summer murmurs uneasily.

  “Whatever it is,” I say, “it’s probably dead.”

  Because that’s what buzzards hunt.

  TWENTY

  Deep in griz country, Summer and I don’t want to draw attention by crossing the open fields. Instead, we take the longer route toward the buzzards by following the edge of the trees.

  I start chanting: “Whoa, bear! Hey, bear! Don’t eat me, bear!”

  Summer pokes me in the back and says, “Knock it off.”

  “But you told me to make noise so we don’t surprise ’em.”

  “Can you please come up with something not so lame?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know, Billy. Sing a song. That’s what lots of hikers do.”

  “No way. I’d sound terrible.”

  Summer doesn’t sound terrible. She has a really nice voice. I can’t understand the words, but it doesn’t matter.

  She says it’s a “push dance” song from Crow social gatherings. She only remembers the first part, which she sings over and over. The melody is high and piercing, but the vibe sort of fits our situation. There’s no danger of startling a grizzly now—they will definitely hear us coming.

  As we hurry along the timberline, the sun pops out and a warm breeze starts to blow. Classic Montana weather—one minute you’re shivering, the next minute you’re sweating. As the meadow lights up, Summer and I notice something that wasn’t visible in the first gray aftermath of the storm:

  A large military-style tarpaulin, in prairie camo. The tarp has been pinned down to conceal something bulky beneath it.

 
Leaving the cover of the pines, we venture out for a closer look. In the distance the buzzards keep circling. Both Summer and I fear the same awful possibility, though neither of us dares to say it aloud.

  Meanwhile the tarp is flapping like a ship’s sail in the gusty wind. We start yanking out the stakes until one side billows upward, revealing a small red helicopter. It’s a two-seater with folding rotors.

  My latest theory was wrong, obviously. Lincoln Baxter didn’t send my dad on a wild-goose chase. He’s right here. He also didn’t lie on his profile about being a pilot.

  “This is not good,” Summer says, folding her arms.

  “I know, I know. Just give me a minute!”

  “We gotta hurry, Billy.”

  I step into the chopper and take the pilot’s seat. It’s like sitting in a glass bubble. Randomly I start turning dials and flipping levers, anything to stall Baxter’s escape. I’ve got something else that might work, too, the second item we picked up on the way to Tom Miner.

  As I unzip my backpack, I notice Summer striding away, crossing the meadow.

  Straight toward the circling buzzards.

  I yell for her to come back, but she can’t hear me. The cockpit glass is too thick. As soon as I hop out of the helicopter, she takes off running.

  I’m faster. That’s not a knock, just a fact.

  Even though I tackle her as gently as possible, it’s not exactly a soft landing. She cusses and kicks, but I’m not letting go until she settles down.

  And I totally get why she’s so frantic.

  “It’s not safe out here,” I whisper into her ear. “We need to get back in those trees, like, now.”

  “No, but what if that’s Dennis out there on the ground under those birds! He could be—”

  “Stop, Summer. Don’t even think it.”

  * * *

  —

  Once in a while I wonder about my dad’s mother and father, the grandparents I never got to meet. And it sounds weird, but I try to imagine the phone call Dad got on the day they died. How do you deliver such horrible news? What words do you choose?

  It was a car accident, Dennis. They swerved to miss a turtle.