Squirm

  Leaning back, I spot something hovering no more than fifty feet in the air, straight above my head.

  A remote-controlled drone.

  I wave both arms.

  “Hey, Dad, it’s me! Billy!”

  The drone draws closer. It’s a gray quadcopter—four propellers and a red stripe on the bottom. I can see the shiny black eye of the camera lens.

  I keep waving. “It’s okay! You can come out!”

  I’m not sure how long it’s been since Mom sent any photos of me to my father, but I’ve grown about three inches in the last year. I hope he recognizes me on the video feed. Maybe he can read my lips, since most drones don’t come with microphones.

  Unless it’s a super-high-tech military spy drone.

  “Yo, Dad, can you hear me?” I yell.

  The quadcopter flutters for a moment, spins slowly, then begins rising.

  “Wait! Wait!”

  It keeps going, up, up, up, until I can barely hear the motor. Still, I keep waving like a fool.

  “Wait, it’s only me!” I holler at the shrinking speck. “Billy Dickens!”

  But the drone speeds away above the rocky field, heading for distant treetops.

  I chase after it until I enter a stretch of timber so dense that I can’t see any blue patches of sky. There’s no trail to follow, so I’m forced to slow down and thread my way through the tree trunks.

  Not far ahead I hear something make a deep-throated noise. It sounds large and not particularly human. I fumble to pull out the bear spray—a major swing and a miss. I’ve left both canisters back in the meadow.

  All I can do now is shout: “Whoa, bear! Hey, bear! Don’t eat me, bear!”

  Slowly I begin backing away. If you run from a grizzly, then it thinks you’re dinner—at least that’s what it said online. But, actually, who else but the bear could possibly know what it’s thinking?

  Exiting the forest in reverse seems to take forever. Finally I feel the sun on my neck, and once again I’m out in the exposed meadow. Hurriedly I retrace my steps to where I dropped the bear spray, hunker down next to the canisters, and unzip the backpack. Inside are a pair of binoculars and four peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches, one of which I stuff in my mouth and wash down with a bottle of water. I also devour an apple and a power bar that tastes like a roof shingle.

  Clouds are skidding in from the northwest, and the temperature is diving. There’s still no sign of Summer and Lil. I lie down to wait using the backpack as a pillow. Overhead, shiny black crows circle in odd silence.

  I can’t stop wondering what my father’s doing way out here and why he hasn’t come out of the woods to meet me. I also wonder if any hungry bears have picked up the tasty aroma of my PBJ.

  A normal person could never fall asleep in such a sketchy situation, but that’s what I do—doze off, clutching a can of bear spray in each fist. If Mom saw me now, she’d have a nervous breakdown.

  The crows begin to caw excitedly, and that’s what wakes me up. Or maybe it’s the humming.

  I open my eyes and see the gray quadcopter staring down at me. This time I don’t bother to wave.

  A small object drops from the craft and lands near my head. It’s a small round rock, wrapped in white paper. Still flat on my back, I put down the bear spray and read the message on the paper. It’s written in blue ballpoint ink, the letters small and extremely neat:

  Billy, please get away from here as fast as you can. I’ll explain everything later, when I see you.

  Love,

  Dad

  P.S. I apologize for all the lost years. Be sure to tell your sister, too.

  I glare up at the camera, spread my arms, and shout: “Are you kidding me?”

  The drone spins around and flies off.

  Watching it fade into a pale dot, I realize my father could be hiding with the remote control just about anywhere in this wild countryside. There’s no point trying to find him, because he obviously doesn’t want to “interact.”

  A mix of sadness and anger tells me not to move—to just lie here in the middle of the meadow until the man feels guilty enough to show his face. I assume the drone is still airborne, aiming its faraway eyeball at me.

  The minutes drip by. I remain outstretched and motionless. From the sky it must look like I’m unconscious, maybe even dead. I wouldn’t be surprised to attract some hungry buzzards.

  “Come on, Dad,” I mutter. “Do something.”

  I strain to listen for footsteps, or the call of a man’s voice. But there’s nothing to be heard except for those obnoxious crows. Once again I feel seriously restless.

  So much for the sunny summer day: a light cool rain has begun to fall, and bugs are chewing my ankles. I brush something off of my cheek, but now it’s clinging to my hand—a lanky brown spider.

  That’s it. I’m done.

  I flick the spider into the wildflowers, grab the backpack, and stand up. Dad’s lame note is folded in my pocket where I’d put it. I think about that open box of ammunition on the front seat of his pickup. What does he need a gun to protect himself from? Bears? Wolves? Or something else?

  We might never end up being friends, but I intend to find out what’s going on.

  The wind howls, and it’s getting colder by the minute. My plan is to hike back toward the road, where the truck and the SUV are parked, and wait for Lil and Summer to return. Obviously they took the other path where the trail forked.

  While crossing the meadow, I sense I’m being watched, though not from the air. Carefully I step around an impressive mound of fresh animal poop—seriously, it would take the world’s biggest dog a year to make a pile so huge. The poop is full of chokecherries, the favorite snack of a certain hump-shouldered mega-predator.

  The tree line is only a hundred yards away, so I jog to the place where I first came out. Or where I thought I came out.

  But where’s that trail? Usually the compass in my head is reliable, but not today. There are no easy landmarks to use for direction. The trees, mostly lodgepole pines, all look about the same size.

  As I search back and forth for the slim opening into the forest, I feel a pair of eyes locked on me. My hands tremble as I grope through the backpack for the binoculars. They’re not super-fancy—just your basic 7 × 35—but they’ll work fine at this distance.

  Standing erect on the far edge of the meadow is something tall and cinnamon-colored. It takes me a moment to dial in the focus.

  Now I can see her perfectly, watching me watching her.

  I know it’s a she because two chubby cubs are rolling around in the wildflowers nearby.

  “Griz” is what I whisper to myself. “Wow.”

  I don’t realize I’m inching backward until I trip over a rotten log and end up on my butt. I scramble to my feet and snatch up the fallen binoculars. Breathlessly, I scan the border of the clearing, but the mother bear’s not there anymore.

  If she ever really was.

  I can’t rule out the possibility that I’m imagining things.

  Somehow I find my way to the main dirt road. It still feels like there’s a jackhammer in my chest. The first thing I notice after leaving the forest is that the rain has stopped. The second thing I notice is this:

  My father’s red pickup truck is gone.

  “What’s his problem?” I say aloud, to nobody.

  Who drives off and leaves his son alone in the middle of grizzly country?

  P.S. I apologize for all the lost years.

  Yeah, Dad. Whatever.

  The third thing I notice, the one that worries me the most:

  Lil’s blue Explorer is gone, too.

  * * *

  —

  I’ve never hitchhiked before, but I assume there’s no point sticking out your thumb when there aren’t any cars in sight. Ba
sically, I’m hiking without the hitching.

  A night in the Tom Miner Basin with no tent or sleeping bag isn’t an ideal option. I don’t even have any matches for starting a campfire.

  So I move at a fast clip down the dirt road. The highway leading back to Livingston is miles away. I can see it from here—a gray ribbon snaking through the foothills. At this point I’m mad at almost everybody—my father, Lil, Summer, but especially myself.

  Coming all the way to Montana thinking Dad would be happy to see me was foolish. I should have listened to my mother.

  Right now she’d be saying: “Hydrate yourself, Billy. Hydrate!”

  So I take a water break, and that’s when I hear a car engine. Someone is speeding up the hill, opposite the way I’m going, but I don’t care. A ride’s a ride.

  A pale green pickup rounds the bend, churning dust. I thrust out one arm, thumb extended.

  The driver slows to a stop. It’s a ranger with the U.S. Forest Service. He says somebody phoned in a report of a gunshot in an area where deer poaching has been a problem.

  “I can’t take you with me,” he says, “but I’ll give you a lift on the way back, if nobody else comes by before then. You got a phone?”

  “No bars,” I say.

  “Keep walking and you’ll get a signal.”

  “I didn’t hear any shots.”

  “You wouldn’t if you were standing upwind. It’s blowin’ twenty-five, maybe thirty, miles an hour out there,” he says. “Stay on the road, son, okay? No shortcuts. I’ll keep an eye out for you on the way down.”

  So at least I won’t be stuck way out here until morning, which is a relief.

  A little while later I hear another engine, also speeding uphill. The blue Explorer comes around the bend—this ought to be interesting.

  Little Thunder-Sky slams on the brakes as soon as she spots me. Summer Chasing-Hawks is in the passenger seat wearing a worried expression.

  “Nice of you guys to come back,” I say.

  Summer leans her head out the window. “Come back where? We’ve been looking all over for you.”

  So…it turns out the trail I followed out of the woods wasn’t the same one I followed in. That’s why I didn’t see Dad’s pickup or Lil’s SUV when I reached the road. I was in the wrong place.

  “Did you find Dennis?” Lil asks.

  “Nope. He sent his stupid drone,” I say. “A touching father-son moment.”

  Lil sighs. “Hop in, Billy.”

  She makes a three-point turn, aiming us back toward the highway.

  “Your father’s got more than a cell,” she tells me. “He’s got a full-on satellite phone.”

  “That’s handy.”

  “It means he can contact us from basically anywhere, anytime he wants,” Summer explains, “even from a dead zone.”

  “Isn’t science amazing,” I say.

  “He called Mom, totally freaked because he spotted you with the drone. He asked what the heck you were doing out in the bear meadow. She told him we drove up to fix the flat tires on his truck.”

  Lil takes over the story: “I explained that you came all this way because you want to see him. He kept saying he wasn’t allowed to leave his ‘surveillance post.’ He said he couldn’t come out of the woods because he’s working ‘undercover.’ ”

  “That makes no sense,” I say. “Why would the government be doing a secret mission out here in the middle of nowhere? What are they spying on—terrorist chipmunks?”

  Summer’s eyes narrow. “You think he’s lying?”

  “Something’s weird about his story is all I’m saying. He’s working ‘undercover’ in the middle of a forest? What—disguised as a pinecone?”

  Lil looks perplexed. “I don’t know what’s going on, but his tires definitely got slashed.”

  “That doesn’t mean he’s on a dangerous government assignment,” I say. “It just means he pissed somebody off.”

  I tell Lil about my encounter with the ranger. She doesn’t seem concerned by the report of gunfire in the area. “Lots of people poach deer out of season,” she says with a shrug.

  We pass Dad’s empty pickup, parked in the same place we found it. Lil doesn’t bother to slow down. What would be the point? He’s not coming out of the woods.

  I take out two peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and hand them across the seat.

  Summer grabs one, but Lil isn’t hungry.

  “Summer and I tried to find you,” she says. “We must’ve taken a different path.”

  “You didn’t see my dime?”

  Summer spins and fixes me with a scalding look. “First of all, Mom and I were practically running, trying to catch up. Second, you never told us to look for a dime. And, third—that’s the best you could do for a clue? The smallest coin they make?”

  Lil waves a hand. “Just tell us what happened out there, Billy.”

  “Dad sent me a note taped to a rock. The drone delivered it.”

  “A note?” Summer says. “What did it say?”

  “Basically, not much.”

  Lil is plainly irritated with my father. She apologizes to me about sixteen times. “You came all the way from Florida. I really wanted this to work out.”

  “It wasn’t a wasted trip. I’m pretty sure I saw a momma grizzly.”

  “No way!” Summer exclaims.

  “With two cubs. I swear.”

  Thinking about the bears makes me smile.

  Thinking about my father doesn’t.

  SIX

  The next morning, Lil and Summer announce we’re going to Yellowstone National Park. I guess they feel bad about my father snubbing me and they think a road trip would be a fun distraction.

  Southbound on the highway, I’m doing okay until we pass the Tom Miner Basin, where I find myself scanning the sky for the sparkle of a drone.

  And thinking: What’s your story, Dad?

  In the town of Gardiner, Lil gasses up the Explorer while Summer and I grab three subs for lunch. At the park entrance there’s a line of cars and RVs, which turns out to be a preview of the whole day. This time of year, the Yellowstone experience is basically a traffic jam with incredible scenery.

  The park fills with thousands of tourists determined to see actual wildlife, which is fine. I get that. But too many of these pilgrims get crazed, rushing up to the animals and snapping pictures so they can show everybody back home.

  The bigger the critter, the bigger the traffic mess. Bear jams are the worst.

  Summer fills me in on the scoring. Number one on the tourist hit-the-brakes list are grizzlies, then black bears, wolves, moose, bison, elk, antelope, and deer, in that order.

  But any four-legged creature—large or small—draws a crowd. Our first traffic jam is caused by a gopher, of all things.

  A van with a Florida license plate skids to a halt when the driver spies one of the chubby rodents munching grass by the edge of the road. Gophers are the biological opposite of an endangered species. There are jillions of them out west, digging tunnels and holes in yards, pastures, and hayfields. Stopping to photograph a gopher in Yellowstone is like stopping in downtown Miami to take a picture of a rat.

  Yet now, unbelievably, throngs of people are streaming from their cars to surround one of these bewildered rodents. So we sit in the long line of traffic, waiting and waiting….

  “Oh, this is nothing,” Lil says.

  It’s not a terrible place to be stuck. The brisk mountain air smells like Christmas trees. Eventually the rock-star gopher gets bored and crawls down a hole. The cars and RVs begin rolling onward again.

  The next traffic jam is what Summer calls a tourist IQ test.

  A group of buffalo is grazing in a vast field. The vehicles ahead of us aren’t moving, because a woman in flip-flops has hopped from a cam
per and is now striding toward the largest, gnarliest-looking bull in the herd.

  Once you see something like this in person, you’ll never need to look up the word moron in the dictionary.

  Signs are posted all over the park warning visitors not to approach the wild animals, because they are…duh, wild. Still, every summer a startling number of nitwits decide it would be cool to get a selfie with an American bison, a creature that has no sense of humor and weighs as much as a Toyota sedan. Sometimes these photo adventures end badly, with tourists getting gored.

  Which is something I don’t want to witness with my own eyes. Neither does Lil. She jumps out of the SUV and starts hollering for the woman in flip-flops to come back. Other motorists are yelling at her, too.

  “Stop! Stop!”

  “Stay away from that thing!”

  “Are you crazy? Leave him alone!”

  The woman ignores the uproar and approaches the shaggy horned giant.

  Buffalo have poor eyesight—one reason they nearly went extinct back in the 1800s. White settlers shot them by the thousands, sometimes out of hunger but often just for cruel fun, even firing from passing trains. The buffalo didn’t run away because they couldn’t see what was killing them.

  The government finally outlawed the slaughter, and the bison herd in Yellowstone gradually made an amazing comeback. Yet because the animals are now protected from hunting, they’ve got basically zero fear of humans.

  Which doesn’t mean they actually like us. They just tolerate us, and barely.

  The woman in flip-flops starts clicking pictures of herself in front of the buffalo, which turns its boulder-sized head and paws a hoof on the ground. This is a signal that the bull is getting annoyed. The woman might think the animal is dull-witted and slow, but it could chase her down and trample her in like five seconds flat.

  Lil keeps yelling, though the other onlookers have grown quiet, as if waiting for something awful to happen. Several of them are now shooting videos of their own.

  The wayward tourist appears to be speaking to the bull buffalo as if it were a stray dog. Maybe she’s coaching it on how to pose for her photos. All I know is that the humongous old bison looks like it’s had enough.