Biting the Moon (24 page)

They both shook their heads. Andi said, “It was out of our way.”

Reuel looked at her but settled for that and did not pursue the matter. “We was talking about the Atkins girl.”

Something dark, like the shadow of a hawk's wing, passed over Jack Kite's face. He unbuttoned the pocket of his khaki shirt and pulled out a cigarette, which he held but didn't light. “Peggy Atkins.” He said the name almost reverently, but quizzically too, as if it suggested all sorts of unfinished business. “I will never understand that. You know how many fatalities we've had on the Salmon all told? Maybe half a dozen, and if memory serves me right that was all in one raft, when the discharge rose overnight from around nine thousand to nearly twenty thousand. That was freakish, doesn't often happen. But when Peggy Atkins drowned? There was nothing out of the ordinary. At the most that was a class-four rapid and she'd have been expecting it; she'd have scouted it. She was real experienced in using a kayak, is what I heard. So that was one strange accident. The only eyewitness was Harry Wine.” Jack finally lit the cigarette he'd been playing with. The match flared. “He was the only eyewitness,” he said, as if it needed repeating. He picked up his coffee cup, set it down without drinking. “Every once in a while, you hear talk about Harry, things he's into. Harry wants you to think he's nothing but an easygoing river man, when in reality he's in up to his eyeballs.”

“In what?” asked Mary.

“Politics, money into the campaign of any politician that's against all these environmental groups. But he never shows. Know what I mean? You never see Harry in any public way; he never comes out; he never really talks. Money talks, so Harry don't have to.” Jack paused, looked from one to the other of them. “You girls really interested in all this? You'll have to excuse me, but Mr. Wine's one of my favorite topics.
Least
favorite, I should say. Nothing bad goes on around here, but Harry Wine's into it.”

“Such as?” said Andi.

“Pornography, that's one thing—”

Reuel interrupted. “She don't need to know all this, Jack.”

Jack stopped, apparently changing his mind about what he'd been going to say. “And worse.”

“What's worse?”

“Never mind.”

Andi kept looking at Jack Kite as if she'd stare the answer out of him.

“Stuff.” Jack was not saying any more.

Andi went back to the subject of Peggy Atkins. “What happened, exactly?”

“It was river hydraulics, which covers a lot. It was at Big Mallard rapids, about eighty miles down the Main Salmon. There's a hole there that's really bad—or so I'm told, I don't do rafting myself—what's called a keeper. She never surfaced. They had to pull her out.” He stubbed out his cigarette. “You'd of thought she'd be well protected with Harry Wine there. Just about the only way that could've happened would have been to fail to read the river or to read it wrong.” He paused. “Harry Wine can read a river like a rat.”

“I just don't understand how you could tell Harry Wine we were advanced at rafting,” Mary said, who understood completely; it was hardly the first time. “We've never been near a raft, either of us.”

They were now lying in their separate queen-sized beds in their motel. Mary didn't say it, but she thought it was great, this driving and stopping in motels whenever you felt like it, watching cable television. Right now the big-screen TV was on and the sound off. Mary found it restful to watch lips moving with no words coming forth. “How'd you know all that about those other rivers, anyway?”

“It wasn't a lot; it was just a few facts I got from a book in that bookstore we stopped in.”

“What if he'd asked questions you couldn't answer?”

“He did. But the idea is, you don't let the other person ask questions. If they manage to wedge a question in, you stomp on it and go on talking. Pretend confidence; it doesn't matter if you don't feel it.”

Mary thought this over, lying there with her hands crossed under her head. Andi had been convincing, no doubt of that. “I don't think just anybody could pretend that way. I couldn't, for instance.” She supposed she wanted Andi to contradict her, but Andi didn't, so she went on. “I don't want to toss cold water on your plan, but I can't say I particularly want to get in one of those rafts. Nothing but rubber and air. I don't see how they make it across a fishpond, much less white water.” Mary saw, in her mind's eye, the canyon walls, the tiny buffeted figures who might have been drowning right before her eyes. “And I
especially
don't much want to get in one after you've gone and told everyone we're advanced boaters. How did you resist saying expert?”

“Because then he'd expect us to be a lot better.”

Mary turned her head from watching the moon drifting through the branches of a tree beyond their window to stare through the dark. “Better? Well, advanced is sure ‘better,' at least where I come from. I mean, it's better than beginner, which is what we are.”

“He doesn't take out beginners. You heard him.”

Propping herself on her elbow, Mary said, “Listen to yourself; you really think that answer makes sense, don't you? Whether he does or doesn't, we're still beginners.” She turned back and pummeled her pillow into shape, then laid her head heavily on it. “I still don't see why we have to run rapids.”

“How else would I be able to hang around him? Rafting is how he spends his time.”

“But you won't be able to talk to him is my point. He'll have his mind on those eddies and deep drops. And the six-foot waves, don't let's forget them.”

“While we're actually on the river, yes. But we're going to be
off it
for hours at a time. There's lunch”—here she held up the brochure she'd been reading by the weak bedside lamp—“ ‘on a gorgeous secluded inlet, where wildlife abounds.' I bet. Then we'll be camping overnight, too.”

“There are going to be other people besides us. They'll all want to talk to him.” She could feel Andi looking at her and rolled on her side so her back was to the other bed. The trouble was, Mary's argument sounded unconvincing even to her. She just didn't want it pointed out.

Which it was, of course. “If he's who we think he is—”

“
We
think?”

“—then I won't have any trouble getting his attention. And if he's not—well, it doesn't matter if I do or don't.”

Mary rolled back over again and looked at Andi. “If Harry Wine's
him,
wouldn't he have reacted more? I mean, God, if
I
ran into my victim, I don't think I could just talk about where the takeout point on the Gurley River is—”

“Gauley.”

Mary sat straight up. “If he's Daddy, why would he let you get away back in February? That man had you right in his truck.”

Andi had an answer. She always seemed to have an answer. “Because he knew I didn't recognize him. And because Patsy Orr would have told him what I told her at breakfast. Yet no one called the police. He knew something peculiar had happened, and when he saw me at that country store he knew I didn't remember him. If I didn't remember him, I wasn't any danger to him. The things I told him in the truck—about my father and brothers meeting me to go skiing on Sandia Peak—he knew I was making it all up. He knew I was alone.”

Mary thought about this. “What a low-down dirty bastard.”

“We knew that already, didn't we?” Andi raised up on her elbow, supported her head in her hand, pulling back her hair, which was the color of moonlight. “Listen, Mary, he doesn't think anyone can touch him. He's so confident. It's like he's playing a dangerous game and he makes it even more dangerous by doing things like taking me to a bed-and-breakfast place; he makes a big impression on Mrs. Orr, talking her ear off. If he'd wanted to make sure she could identify him later, he couldn't have done more.” Andi flopped down again on her back. “He must have been pretty sure there wouldn't have been any reason for the cops to look his way. Which means he had plans for me that didn't include my future.”

Mary felt the cold at the base of her spine as if a frozen hand had dropped there.

“He knows I don't know,” said Andi.

“Andi, you have to tell the police.”

“No.” She was quiet for a moment. “It's been too long. Why would they believe me? Me against him? In this town? I don't think the police would do anything.” Andi was shaking her head. “He thinks he's safe. He must feel safe.” She turned her head again toward Mary.

“What about the gun?” asked Mary. “Maybe they could trace the gun.”

“That might not worry him either. Like I said, he just must feel safe. If he didn't, he'd be after me. He'd be after me,” she said again.

“You could tell Reuel—”

“No. He'd just say to go to the police.”

“I don't know about that. He doesn't seem to be a man who's very fond of cops. He sounds like someone who'd just as well take care of business himself. Like some other people I know.” When the silence lengthened, Mary thought Andi might have dozed off. She whispered, “Are you asleep?”

“No.”

“What're you thinking about?”

“The sandwich guy.”

Mary raised her head up. “Who?”

“The sandwich maker. You remember, I told you. In that store along the highway. His name's Andy too.” Andi held her arm out, palm facing the window where the bright moonlight seemed to light the fingertips like small candles.

Mary fell back onto the hard mattress. “Tomorrow we'll drown, and you're thinking of boys. Great!” She had never had a boyfriend, a fact of which she was intensely ashamed, as if she had been found wanting in some essential human faculty, some beam or ballast that held up her whole structure.

Mary lay there, thinking about Andi's parents, who must really be suffering. She assumed there were parents; at least most people had them, even if she didn't. Here was another thing to be jealous of. With
all of the things to envy about Andi, she wondered how she could like her so much. Then she wondered how she could be jealous of anyone in Andi's situation. At least she herself could remember things; maybe there wasn't much good to remember, but still she had the memories. Andi must feel sometimes like a raft caught in rapids, torn from rock to pool to hole, whipped this way and that by currents. And yet . . . was that really a true picture of Andi? Not considering the way she went looking for things.

A breeze, cool and soft, drifted through the open window. Mary drew the covers up to her chin. She asked, “What do you think will happen?”

Andi answered after a moment's thought. “I don't know.”

“Do you think he'll—try to do something?”

“I don't see how he could,” said Andi. “There are other people going. We'll have witnesses.”

“Yes.” But Mary wasn't reassured by what potential witnesses there might be. What if he got Andi off by herself? What if they got separated? Something like that could happen and there'd be no witnesses, nothing except the river. Rivers made poor witnesses.

Mary loved riding in a car in early morning. She loved the mist that gloved the dark green-blue ponderosa pines and cobwebbed the cottonwoods and maples and, rising from the ground, made roots and roads nearly invisible. The earth seemed primitive in the early morning.

They had started out at seven to allow themselves plenty of time for negotiating the narrow dirt roads and for getting lost. Andi was driving; her driving had improved to the point where she was as good as Mary (which wasn't saying much).

The windows were open to the pine-scented air, and Mary was breathing in great gulps of it. They passed farms, a water tower, and
came to Bonnie's house. Sounds were muted and faint, to the point that Mary wondered if she'd imagined the cry, a sudden cut-off yell. “What was that?” The car was slowing. “What are you doing?”

“Stopping.” Andi drove between the trees, where the woods closed around them like a gloved hand. “Come on,” she whispered.

The house, once white, was now a wispy gray, the color of fog. It sat at the bend, where the crooked arm of the road curved to the right, alone in the woods, with no neighboring houses unless you counted Wine's Outfitters, a quarter mile down at the end of the dirt road. A swamp-green Jeep was parked near the steps.

They got out. The ground was cushioned with layers of fern and brown needles. Pine and aspen were thick and made the blurred light fade into gloom. To see the house, they had to hold back a curtain of branches.

The house seemed to float, insubstantial in the mist that covered the bottom step going up to the porch. It was a big porch that wrapped around three sides. An old metal glider and a wooden swing moved slightly, as if remembering the weight of those recently risen from them. Folding chairs were stacked against the wall, and playthings such as blocks and dolls were scattered around. A red tricycle leaned precariously on the steps. It was the only spot of color, that red; everything else—the swing, the glider—was a uniform gray that caused the whole of the house to melt into the woods, taking on the protective coloration of trees and rocks and ground mist. A wind came up and creaked the ropes of the swing with a sound that could have come from a ship's rigging. That was what the house made Mary think of: sails and spars whipped by the wind, a lumbering ship heaving and rasping in water fog.

It had been less than a minute since they'd heard the first shout, and now came a long ululating cry, as if the gray ship had been slammed down into the trough of the waves. This was followed by an uneven chorus of smaller voices. Mary shrank from the sound, thinking it the most terrible, because most pitiable, sound she had ever heard.