The Signal (14 page)
Authors: Ron Carlson
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Married people, #Literary, #Western Stories, #Westerns, #Marriage, #Ranchers, #Wyoming, #Ranchers' spouses
When he rejoined Vonnie, she saw his fishing pole and said, “Good. They didn’t follow.”
“Not on this trail.”
“Is there one above?”
“Above and below. Let’s go.” Vonnie found her leg warmed to the walking; it was better when she was moving.
“How long have they been operating?” she said to Mack.
“All summer from the looks of it.”
“ ‘We’re just fishing,’ you told them.”
“That was lame.” He immediately added, “Excuse my language. It was poor. I couldn’t come up with anything else. I have no recollection of what I said.”
“You’re a horrid liar.”
“I am. That’s why I gave it up.”
“You sure said, ‘Go.’ ”
“It’s worked for me in the past. Oh hell, Vonnie.” He took her elbow, stopping close in the woods. “I should have told them that this was our last trip and I wanted them not to wreck it in any way and I wanted them to stop poaching elk and find meaningful work. Like I’m going to do.” Mack was surprised he could joke.
Vonnie, limping, led them down to the main valley trail and then to the wooden bridge crossing of the Wind. The sun was out and warmer, but the light had changed, tilted and it felt so much later in the year than it had two days before.
“Do you need to stop?”
“No, let’s have some water and go up to camp and get dry socks and get absolutely out of here.” Mack didn’t like being in the open meadow, but any other route would have cost them an hour and kept them wet. They crossed the river and climbed out of the open space into the forest, slow and steady now and warmed by their efforts. “You knew the other guy?” she asked.
“I may have seen him, but I don’t know. I may have seen him in the paper for that big meth farm down in Rawlins and such. I think I met him a time when I was loaded. I don’t know; he may have been the cook. Christ, I may have been working for him.” Reaching into the dark like this spent Mack and braced him; he had done things of which he had only shadowy recall. It took his breath.
“How’d you stop drinking?” she said.
“Suddenly and permanently,” Mack told her. “I don’t joke about it.”
“Those weren’t new rifles.”
“No, they weren’t, but we’re in their thoughts this morning, dear, and it’s the kind of thinking I don’t care for.” They climbed the last steps on the narrow trail and turned above Valentine Lake.
Their camp was trashed. The place was tilted wrong and took a moment to settle in their vision. Trashed. The sight was a mess of boot prints and the cooking kit had been kicked around and into the rocks and brush. The tent was gone and their packs. Vonnie took Mack’s arm and backed him up before they entered the area. They turned and walked down a hundred paces and he stopped her and nodded left. She followed up, wending through the pines and sandstone until they emerged along the bluff above the site. Mack scanned the sky. “I’d like to see those kids’ camp smoke about now.” They knelt in the sunlight and waited twenty minutes not talking. Valentine Lake changed beneath them from a thin sky blue to flat gray and then under the sun it went green. They stood and walked into camp.
“They left the clothesline,” Mack said. He was gathering the pans and cups and forks and he found the goody bag of cheese and crackers and candy.
“There,” Vonnie said, pointing down. The two sleeping bags were snagged on the rocks and he could see his tent in the lake six feet under on a rock shelf.
“I’ve got my knife and matches,” he said.
“Where are your car keys?”
“On the passenger rear tire. Like always,” he said.
“Same as mine. I’ve got my knife.”
“And those flies,” he said.
She had taken off the fishing vest and draped it on a little pine to dry. “We’ve got to go,” she said. “You want to grab the sleeping bags?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m a little confused.” He sat down on the warm rock and held his head. He could feel the friction there, the fatigue.
“You look weird,” she said.
“You look weird,” he said. But he said it quietly without looking. Now he lay back with his heavy arm over his eyes.
“You’re soaked,” she said.
“You’re soaked,” he said. Vonnie climbed down to the lake by sitting on each rock step. She dragged one of the sleeping bags up and stood above him.
“We can’t stay here,” he said.
“Then come on, mister. Let’s go up beside the lake out of sight. They won’t come back and if they do, they won’t see us. We’ll leave the stuff, the tent and the one bag. Bring that food. Leave the pans.” She kicked his foot. “Come along.” She pointed at him. “Leave your dear clothesline and come along.”
They found a place two hundred yards farther, an open room in the rocks, and in the sunlight Vonnie unzipped the sleeping bag and spread it on the dry duff. “Yeah,” she said. “You look funny. You’re blue.”
“You’re blue,” he said.
“I’ve got a cramp in my back.”
“It’s the cold from last night,” he said. But he could feel the pressure in his head, the fever, waving across, working now steadily behind his eyes.
“Give me those wet pants,” she said. She sat and took off her boots, unlacing them and opening them on the sunny sandstone and then she did the same with his boots and sopping socks, hanging them on a branch.
“That’s better,” he said, and then she pulled his Levi cuffs until he squirmed out of the wet heavy garment, his legs gooseflesh.
“Get in,” she said, and he rolled into the sleeping bag and she covered him over and zipped the bag. “Give me that shirt and your underwear.” His eyes were already closed, but he complied. “You want an apple,” she said, taking a bite and chewing. She sat against a log, her legs stretched out in the thin sunlight.
“No,” he said.
“You want a story?” she said, but his answer was sleep.
Nothing he had done made money. The bookstore was ridiculous; they did better on greeting cards and then that just petered out and he closed the rented storefront and hauled boxes of books to the Western Horizons rest home south of town, and then his computer consulting kicked in, or he tried to jump-start it, and it looked like it would really go until his start-up expenses told the truth. Then it was month to month and the mortgage went un-tended. He liked the computer work some of the time, but only some. He wanted the ranch with all his heart, and he knew he needed to gather his gumption and run the guest ranch again. He didn’t want to raise livestock of any stripe. He could farm, but not really very well. He’d prefer to repair equipment all winter and had done so, rather than drive any of the tractors even a week in the good weather. There were times when he felt stupid, a fraud, some guy with a soft heart for the ranch and no real reason. Finally he decided he didn’t care what it was, but it was that he wanted the place where he’d grown up. He saw the town change and change again and it would never ever stop; there would be curbs and gutters clear to Dubois. But home is home, he told himself, and worth fighting for. When Yarnell showed up, he was about to start his EMT and join the county ambulance squad; trouble was up and harm and general injury, and he’d been part of it, the carelessness, but he had gathered enough of himself to know that he was good in hot moments. If he’d been able to keep Vonnie, these would be good days.
He woke in a dry bake, wonderful, face down, drooling a little onto the deep green liner of Vonnie’s sleeping bag. There was a distant crack, the rifle, and a second later the ruined hollow echo broke against the mountain. He swallowed and turned over on his back, his arches taking a stretch he hadn’t planned. The sun was a silver star in his eyes. His head hummed now fainter. Sometimes being warm was just the cure. He sat up and was alone with the quick air on his bare chest, the sky now a solid serious winter blue.
“Vonnie,” he said. Across Valentine Lake the mountain had given up its last morning shadow and stood like a great amphithe ater, a million gray seats, the ghosted shushing descending the cascade. It was grand here, larger than a person could understand, except to be challenged by it, made real and temporal and quiet and humble the way a prayer sometimes worked near the heart, not always but sometimes. The vault of air between the man and the mountain called to Mack, but he couldn’t tell to what, the old feeling that something was going to happen next. “Vonnie,” he said again.
His blue chambray shirt was on the rock, dry where the sun hit it, and his underwear. Standing up he found his socks and boots. He walked to the perimeter of the sunny rock circle. Vonnie sat cross-legged out of the wind below him.
“How far was that shot?”
“Hard to tell, a mile up there, not two,” he said.
“Good.” She looked up at him. “You’re in with Yarnell.”
“Hand me my pants. I’m not in with anybody.” She threw the Levi’s in his direction and he put them on.
“You lie.” She shook her head. She held up his BlackBerry. “What’s this?” Mack sat and cleaned his socks and carefully put them on and then his boots, tying them double. “You know he’s a fucking crook.”
“I don’t know. I know he’s slippery.”
“Slippery? He is more of a mercenary than anyone we’ve ever known. Kent knows all about him and his little loaner air force.”
“He should; they were partners.”
“A long time ago. God, Mack! What the fuck are we doing up here? I’m making you a nap and you’re on a fucking treasure hunt. Did you even want me to come?”
“Vonnie.”
“Fuck you, mister man. Fuck you twice.” She hauled back and threw the BlackBerry out and it fell into the lake ten feet from shore.
“Vonnie.”
She turned to him. “No, fuck you. Why am I even saying? Good luck, you fucking patriot.” He saw she had charged her vest with some of the food, granola bars, an apple. “I’m gone, Mack. If you see me in the post office, don’t even say hello.”
“Vonnie, don’t do this.”
“My phone’s dead. Those guys were half a mile from Clark, right?”
“Right, straight west of Clark in the timber.”
“I’ll call from Crowheart. Don’t follow me. I’m hiking out. Use the bag; I don’t want it now. I only waited the hour to see you lie again.” Vonnie picked up her fly rod. She started to drop down the rocks but caught herself, her sore leg, and turned to pass him and cut to the trail.
“How’s your leg?” he said. She walked into the trees and was gone.
He stood in his boots. He knew what he had to do. He crossed quickly to the campsite and gathered what gear there was, caching the cookware between two large rocks and hanging his old coffeepot in a branch in the third tree back. He rolled her sleeping bag and tied it tight and lodged it well up in the fourth tree. He looked down at his tent, but no way. Now he descended to the shore of Valentine Lake and skirted to where he saw the BlackBerry in the pellucid depths. He cut the leader off his fishing line and tied on a swivel and clipped on the biggest treble hook he had, along with a lead drop sinker. He tried it five times bumping the thing. When he reeled in the last time, it was to measure the depth. Sixteen feet. He stripped and folded his clothing high and dry on a rock the size of a desk by the water. The BlackBerry looked like it was four feet away in the shimmering curtain of sunlight. He took a breath and dropped into the water which was so cold he felt he was being crushed. Mack was never a good swimmer. He pushed down, feet first, and his ears hurt and still he went down, striking the thing with the sole of his foot and squeezing it there with the other until he could reach quickly, his ears snapping again, and grab it in his hand. He blew out and ascended and sputtered onto the rocks. His skin burned in the raw air and his head was full of water. He shook the BlackBerry and set it in the sun while he danced foot to foot. He knew it was waterproof, but he didn’t know about sixteen feet in a lake at eleven thousand.
“Cold again,” he said. “Wet again.” He waved his arms and tried to dry his legs with his hands, gasping, and finally he just stood, back to the sun, his arms on the rock as if he were about to give a sermon naked to the massive sandstone scree while the chills ran up and down his skin. I am not an admirable man. What am I doing with a treble hook anyway? And that’s just the start of it.
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