Biting the Moon (19 page)

He did. Dr. Krueger could barely get the needle into him because the Lab insisted on licking his face. The vet smiled. “Pretty friendly. My receptionist said you found him. He's a stray?”

“Not exactly,” said Andi. “We got him from the gypsies. They had their camp by the road; you know the way they stop their carts and throw up tents by the side of the road, wherever they want to. Well, this dog was obviously hungry—and so, I guess, were the gypsies. We gave them ten dollars for him. Probably, they'd've taken five.”

Dr. Krueger managed to get the dog to lie still so that he could run his hands over him and inspect his teeth, throat, ears. “He seems to be
in pretty good shape, but as malnourished as he is I'd say you found him just in time. Another few days, certainly another week, and—” The veterinarian shrugged. “It would probably be best if I kept him here for a couple of days, just to see he doesn't have a bad reaction to the shots.”

Mary calculated: Rosella would be back in a week, and it would take them two days to make the drive back. They'd have five days, then, in Salmon. “Could you keep him four or maybe five days? We'll be going back then and we can pick him up on the way to Santa Fe.”

“You're from Santa Fe? That's a long drive for you girls, isn't it?”

Mary ignored the patronizing tone. “But could you keep him? The reason we're headed for Salmon is to go rafting, and we wouldn't have any place to keep him there.”

“Shouldn't be a problem. You're going rafting on the Salmon?”

Mary nodded; Andi's attention was taken up by the Labrador, who appeared to be enjoying his stint on the cold table, his terrible imprisonment forgotten, even his hunger.

“You've gone rafting before, have you?”

“Dozens of times,” said Andi, still leaning over, muzzle to muzzle with the dog but losing no opportunity to shore up any fantasy. She straightened from the stainless steel table and asked him, “Do you know anything about dogfights around here?”

His reaction was surprising: he took a few steps backward, as if she were about to assault him. And then his face became that expressionless mask faces take on when they don't want to pursue a subject. “Dogfights? What makes you ask that?”

Andi shrugged but still gave him a searing glance. “The gypsies said there were.”

“No. It's against the law, at least in Idaho.”

“It's certainly against
something
.”

Dr. Krueger made no comment, continued making notes on his writing pad. “All right, then? We'll see he gets back to you in better condition.” He had a rather bitter smile, made so probably because his mouth was so thin.

In a swift movement, Andi, as if just now recalling something, took the camera out of her coat pocket, set the flash, and took a picture of Jules with Dr. Krueger beside him. Then she gave the dog a last pat on
the head and the doctor a brilliant smile. “I'm always taking pictures. You just never know.”

They left the office.

The boy was still there. Mary thought it rather inhuman to keep him waiting. Bad for business, too. She went over to him. “I'm really sorry about your dog,” she said in as low a voice as she could.

His look was woebegone. “Thanks.”

Mary said, “Look, I don't want to make you feel any worse, but . . . what did he die of?”

“She,” he said. Forlornly, he went on, “I'm not really sure; I brought her in here because she had a kind of fever. Something connected with that, I guess.”

Mary frowned. For God's sake, why did he have to
guess
? Hoping she wouldn't bring on a fresh spate of tears, she asked, “What are you going to do with the . . . remains?”

“The vet said cremation”—he paused and swallowed—“would be the best thing to do.”

Mary stood there for a moment, staring at the bulletin board over his head. There were snapshots of lost dogs, hand-lettered cards giving information about them. The dogs around here seemed to be disappearing with amazing regularity.

Mary felt queasy. She said good-bye to him and walked out to the car where Andi was waiting. She got into the passenger seat and said, “Did you notice all those missing-dog pictures? Do you think we should leave Jules there?” Forlornly, she looked back at Peaceable Kingdom. “I think he acted kind of—strange.”

Andi gathered speed after she turned onto Route 93. “Why do you think I took the picture?”

•   •   •

They stopped twice along the sixty miles of highway from which they could sometimes see a river, and they wondered if it was the Salmon River. At one point, it was wide and calm and serene, the canyon walls studded with Douglas fir and whitebark pine and acres of the loveliest flowers that spread like a blue lake in the distance. Mary wondered what they were. Andi paged through the guidebook and said, “Looks like camas. I never heard of them.”

They heard the water first as a distant murmur, growing into a roar as the road curved by the river. When they stopped again to look, they were staring down deep canyon walls where water flowed like a flume, shot up in towers, roared between basalt boulders. Mary had never done any white-water rafting, had never really thought much about it, except when she saw photos of people in the churning water, almost invisible inside the white spray, looking like drowning puppies. And this view did nothing to tempt her further. She could see rafts and kayaks down there, dropped like dimes on the rapids, squeezed between rocks, torn from the surface of backwash, spun out of control like leaves.

“Lord,” Mary whispered.

“Looks like fun,” said Andi.

Mary rolled her eyes.

Back in the car, it was Mary who picked up the map of Idaho. She looked again at the uneven green outline of the Frank Church Wilderness and the words printed across it. She said, “You know what the Salmon is called? River of No Return.”

“I wonder why.”

The image of those white pillars of water, those little boats, rose before Mary's eyes. “I think I know.”

WILDEST RIVER IN AMERICA
, said the brochure. Mary imagined a few other rivers were right now making the same claim, but she was ready to believe the Salmon's wildness quotient was pretty high after one glance down those sheer canyon walls. According to the brochure Mary was reading outside the Forest Service office, Salmon was a good-sized town whose population increased threefold in summer with the influx of tourists who came for the rafting and steelhead fishing. The canyons (the leaflet told her) were at some points deeper than the Grand Canyon. She'd never been interested in going down that river, either.

Andi was inside talking to a petite gray-haired woman with the darting eyes of a field mouse. The open door looked out onto the clean-swept street and the businesses lining it. She was thinking what a neat, pleasant, pretty town it was when Andi came out.

“What did you find out?”

Andi scraped a pale lock of hair behind her ear and said, “I asked her where I could see old copies of the local paper. There should be something in them—if this is where I'm from.”

Mary felt her heart sink. “It's kind of a long shot, Andi, you being from here.”

Andi shrugged. “If he's from here, I could be.”

“The newspaper would have covered a disappearance, that's for sure. Only—”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Mary was thinking that if this were Andi's home, her return would create a stir, if not an actual sensation. She didn't want to point out that the woman inside assisting tourists, who was probably well informed, hadn't recognized her.

Neither did the postmaster.

Neither did the elderly couple who ran a general store.

Neither did the librarian who led Mary and Andi to a periodical nook. By the time Mary had looked at a few months-old newspapers, Mary was certain that the “incident” had not happened in Salmon. She believed Andi must have thought so too, for her inspection of the newspapers, slow and intent at first, grew progressively more quick and careless. But at one point, she stopped and said, “A girl died here.”

Mary did not want to point out, callously, that a number of girls might have died here. She looked over Andi's shoulder and saw what she meant. The girl had drowned in one of the rapids on the Salmon several years ago. There was a picture of her, taken with a group of other rafters. Or kayakers, maybe. A couple of these figured in the picture. The girl was young. Mary did not want to press the paper for details.

By the time they'd left the library, it was clear that Salmon wasn't Andi's home. And although she was disappointed—for who, having had their home wrenched from them by a force far worse than a hurricane, wouldn't be hungry to get it back?—Andi still wasn't giving up. Salmon might never have been her home, but that didn't mean it wasn't his.

Now they were drinking ice-cream sodas in tall ribbed glasses as they sat at the counter of an old-fashioned drugstore which, Mary
guessed, would do a good business in summer. Mary liked the drugstore because it really
was
old, and not some newfangled place trying to look old. The marble of the counter, instead of being a raw, glaring white, had a buffed and porous look to it, stained like weak tea. The chairs and tables were clearly old, with the same signs of wear and tear.

And the sodas were marvelous. The old man, who went so well with the drugstore and who had made the sodas, was coming along behind his glass display cases now.

“Anything else, girls?”

Mary started to give an automatic no but was interrupted by Andi.

“I guess you've had this business for a long time, haven't you?”

“ 'Deed I have, young lady. Longer'n I sometimes care to think about. And where might you be from?”

“Santa Fe,” said Andi, and hurried on. “You must know just about everybody.”

“Well, I hope I cured more'n I killed.” His laugh was wheezy.

Andi joined him in a polite laugh. “The reason I ask is, we got kin around here—”

Kin? We got “kin”?
Mary just looked at the marble counter and shook her head.

“—but I'm not sure where they live.”

The pharmacist had picked a Coca-Cola glass out of sudsy water and started to dry it. “What's your relatives' name?”

Here, of course, Andi was stumped. All she could do was offer “C. R. Crick.”

He held the glass to the light, lowered it, and started in polishing. “Can't say there's no one lives here by that name, only I never heard it. Where's he live?”

As if an address were written on it, Andi read from a now-crumpled piece of paper the Forest Service lady had given her. “ ‘Box Ninety-one, Salmon, Idaho. That's all.”

That was clever of her, thought Mary. Not committing herself to a certain street. But it was still useless; she was giving a name that was pure fiction in the first place. But she had to have something to which she could attach her description. For all the good it did her.

“Easiest thing to do is try the post office.”

“We did. They said the box number must be wrong; there wasn't such a one.”

Andi repeated Patsy Orr's description of “Daddy,” which was also a description of the driver who had picked her up, adding a more vibrant picture of the dark hair and blue eyes, eyes that got bluer with each telling. But it was all she had to go on, so Mary made no comment.

Having polished the Coca-Cola glass to a diamond shine, he set it down, pulled out another. “Well, now, that description, that could fit half a dozen fellas in Salmon I know of.”

“Who? Where do they live?” Andi had the stub of a pencil out and was smoothing the piece of paper out to write on.

“Whoa, now, little girl! You're not gonna try chasin' down each one of these men?” His shaking hand set down the glass. “Ain't one of 'em named Crick, I promise you that.”

“Well, we might be mistaken in the name,” said Andi.

The old man was not also an old fool; now he was suspicious. No matter they were merely two “little girls,” he was still suspicious. “Don't have much on this fella, do you? Now he ain't even got a name.”

For once, Andi was silenced. Mary helped out, saying, “It's someone our mom's trying to trace; it's really important to her; we don't have much information, that's true.” Mary marveled how Andi's glibness had spilled over onto her.

He resumed his glass polishing. “Tell you what. You want to talk to a man named Reuel, lives at the trailer park. He takes care of the town dump. 'Cept these days we call it the landfill. He'd probably be there now, for it's open weekends, closed on Mondays. You girls got transportation?”

“Yes,” said Mary. “We're with Mom.”

He nodded. “Here, I'll draw you how to get there, to the dump.” He made a rough sketch of the part of town they were in and the roads they'd have to take. “Reuel knows just about everything goes on. And surely knows
everybody
.”

“Thanks very much,” said Andi sweetly. “That's the best ice-cream soda I ever drank.”

When Mary started to put down three dollar bills, he waved the money away. “Ah, forget it, girls. Call it a welcome to Salmon, and have a nice stay.”

Five miles outside of Salmon proper they found the town dump. The road they traveled to get there was stony, rutted, and winding. Andi (who said she wanted more experience driving dirt roads) pulled up in a cloud of dust before a high chain-link fence, its big metal gates open, accelerated, shifted too late, and lurched to an unplanned stop. She tried again and popped them through the gate and went grinding up the incline. There was a lot of land and plenty of room for cars to circle. The road itself was a horseshoe, making an easy entrance and exit.

“Look at
that
,” said Mary, all in a breath.