“Why?”
“Shhh.” He gripped a notched projection and ascended the creviced rock face hand over hand. I climbed behind him, shadowing his toeholds, curious.
At the top he crouched and pointed. In a wooded draw below us, woven into a windswept alpine fir, a rough stick nest lined with moss and matted white tufts teemed with baby birds.
“Ravens.” He was whispering, rapt. Two large black birds were riding thermals across the valley, headed our way.
“Here they come, Cabot.” Corvus corax. I wanted out of there. Tales of ravens protecting their young were the stuff of legends. We did not want to be hanging over their nest when they arrived. “Let’s go.” I backed down the boulder and took a shortcut through loose scree to the trail below.
Cabot didn’t follow. He lay prone on the rock, his feet jutting past the edge, patiently watching those parents with their chicks. I was sorry I had spooked. I could have been lying up there, too—right beside a guy who liked birds, maybe as much as I did. Nobody I rubbed shoulders with at school gave a lick about them.
“Think they were sleeping on fur?” We were back on the trail, heading toward the car.
“Yeah. From mountain goats.” He shaded his eyes and swept the slopes. Pointed at a cluster of white dots on an outcrop across the valley.
I zeroed in on the distant animals. “How’d you know about that nest?”
“Came across it on a hike four years ago. I’ve watched this pair every year since. Biggest clutch was seven. The male’s blind in one eye. If I’m ever reincarnated, I’d like to show up as an egg, right there.”
Reincarnated? Spiritual, too, this guy. Cool, I guess, though Gram would say his ladder was up a dead tree.
“Yeah? Why’s that?”
“Ravens dominate. Strong. Smart. Crafty. Live long, never quit. Know what they want and will take on anything, even eagles, to get it.”
Ravens had nothing on this guy. I didn’t know about the crafty part, but from what I’d seen so far, he’d just described himself. “Cool that you watch them. I’m partial to raptors, myself.” Oh, the stories I could tell him, but he changed the subject to his work schedule.
No big deal. From the sounds of what he had in store for us, we would have lots of time to talk. On the way home, however, when he told me we were going to Boulevard Park the following Tuesday, my caution light flickered.
Then I relaxed. So what if he failed to ask. The man was a planner. By the time he parked in front of Gram’s house, he was laying out the rest of our week together. I scanned the windows when he pulled me close, hoping she wasn’t watching. But when he kissed me, I forgot about her. His lips dissolved something in me. I was still woozy from our connection when he leaned across my lap and opened the door for me from the inside.
Good thing Gram was getting groceries. She’d have sent him packing in a heartbeat if she’d seen us. Half an hour later, I met her at the porch and carried bags to the kitchen.
“You got some sun today.” She brushed a wisp of hair from my forehead and studied my face. “Hike far?”
I avoided her eyes. “Picture Lake. Artist Point. Pretty up there. Saw a raven’s nest.”
“You must have enjoyed that.” She was trying to read me. “Handsome boy, Cabot.”
“He’s okay.”
“And he’s twenty, Celia. I remember when he was born.”
“So? You know his family?”
“Not well, but I do. He tell you about them?”
“Not yet. We talked about other stuff.”
“Mm-hm.” She hesitated and turned her head. Praying, I guessed. She prayed in the middle of sentences sometimes. Buying time, I figured, until she shut me down. “You make any other plans with him?”
“Yeah. He wants to see me again. I’d like that, Gram. We had fun today.”
“I’m sure you would, honey, but—”
“Twenty’s not that old. His birthday was only a couple of weeks ago.”
“You’ve never dated, Celia. A man changes a lot between sixteen and twenty. Besides, it’s not just his age. He’s been through a lot, and—”
“Thatta way, Gram. Judge him without even knowing him. You can’t keep me in a cage forever.”
She sighed. “Your father said—”
“And why would he have any say in this? He’s gone, Gram. Lied and left me.”
“He’ll be back, sweetie. And in the meantime, I’m looking out for you. I didn’t say you can’t spend time with the boy. Only that you’ll have some limits. Follow them, and we’ll do fine. Agreed?”
“What kind of limits?”
“I’m serious, Celia. Toe the line and you can see him. Cross it and you won’t.”
“Whatever.” I didn’t know what I was agreeing to, but at least I’d get to hang out with him again.
That night after Gram went to bed, I crept into the kitchen and dialed Meredith’s number. Her dad answered, groggy. I looked at my watch. 1:00 a.m. in Houston. I stretched the cord and hid under the counter between the barstools.
“Mr. Prescott? Celia. Sorry to wake you. May I speak with Meredith? It’s important.”
“Humph.” The phone banged when he dropped it. Footsteps trailed off.
I was about to hang up when she answered. “Hullo? Ceils? You okay?”
“Sorry so late, Mer. Waited for Gram to fall asleep.”
“Not a problem, hon’. Just got home.” I heard her teeth clink glass, heard her swallow. “Your Gram? She at the lake with you?”
“We never made it to the lake.” I filled her in on Daddy’s untimely deposit of me on my grandmother’s doorstep before he absconded.
“Your four-foot leash dad? Who’d a guessed? You must be pissed. Shoulda stayed here. I saw Luke Ralston.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s been askin’ ‘bout you.”
I puffed my cheeks and exhaled. “I think I can be home in three weeks.” I told her about the strawberry farm. The dog bus. “Will you pick me up? I can stay with you, right?” My request lacked conviction. Leaving would be different after today.
The line crackled. “Mer?”
I heard her breathing. “Uh. No question, baby girl. I’m here for you. Lots happenin’ this summer you don’t want to miss. The twins’ parents went to Europe for six weeks and left their crazy uncle in charge, so it’s carte blanche over there. Pretty sweet.”
I saved Cabot for last. Embellished the story.
“He kissed you? You let him?” She choked on whatever she was drinking. “Whooeee! My little Celia’s comin’ outta the library. How old is he, anyway?”
“Twenty. Works at the dairy north of Gram’s.”
“Oh yeah. You are makin’ up for lost time. That’s my girl.”
The toilet flushed upstairs. “Gotta go, Mer. Gram’s up.”
“Okay. Keep me posted.” She giggled. “Be ready. I expect he’ll surprise you. Or you may surprise yourself.”
CHAPTER 20 ~ AGGIE
Hounds
Six days after her injury, Aggie loitered around her den, famished. The gash kept her from plowing mud for cattails, and she’d eaten the last of her stored food the night before. She wished the afternoon breeze moving the treetops would blow her way, where she slouched against her log. Even the forest shade seemed steamy, the birds lethargic. She emptied her water bottle over her head and contemplated a trip to the spring, but stayed put.
Until she heard them, barking and baying in the distance upriver.
Hounds.
The fuzz on her neck and arms stood like gophers. These weren’t dogs like those that had come through with locals in the days preceding her injury, but real hounds. Probably bloodhounds.
Bloodhounds, Dad said, had noses like no other—except for German Shepherds, and then only the outstanding ones. Hounds could sniff out anything, he said, and their handlers were usually experts, too. Hound teams found who they were looking for.
She assessed the area around her log. Loaded with scent.
<
br /> Climb, Aggie. Now.
Trembling, she crawled into her den and scraped away the cottonwood fluff that lined the old log’s walls, heaping it onto the blood-soaked down that covered her dirt floor. Then she wadded up every bit of the mess, crammed it under her shirt and tucked the hem into her pajama bottoms to contain it all. If she left no physical evidence or fresh trail, she might throw them off, slow them down.
Fortunately, she tried to leave no footprints ever, and she always pooped on maple leaves and tossed them in the river. She traveled along branches or in waterways whenever she could, interrupting her foot trails, and since her injury, she hadn’t wandered far. The heavy rain would have smeared aging scent on her wider-ranging routes toward the homestead and the dairy, and she hoped the heat would have lifted her smell off the ground. Could they still follow her?
She threw her digging stone and stick far into a blackberry thicket, cinched her waistband’s drawstring around the lip on her bottle, and climbed. Her only hope to evade the hounds completely would be to dead-end them. Leave them yammering into trees she had already departed. She thought about the routes she had tested through the leafy canopy and examined her weakened body, her damaged arm. Could she still make the passes between trees? Climb as high as she did when she was stronger?
Reduced to prey, an animal hunted, she listened to the tenor of the dogs’ voices, waiting for their excited barks and yelps to change to a sustained bawl once they caught her trail. Her every sense heightened; her body wound taught. And from somewhere, she garnered reserves she didn’t understand.
She climbed a wide maple and moved through the trees, stowing her bottle above ground, distancing herself from the oncoming dogs, and following the hot, treetop breeze that carried her essence away from them. She returned to the forest floor multiple times, whenever trees were too far apart, or whenever weariness or her compromised arm limited her, trusting mere patches of ground scent to confuse the animals and redirect them to places she had already abandoned.
Far downriver from the homestead, she spotted a cottonwood on the riverbank, offset from the rest of the forest. Risky, climbing a tree she’d also have to descend, but she needed a height open to the breeze for her plan to work.
A fresh shot of energy infused her veins when distant, dreaded bawling reverberated through the trees. The vocal shift meant one thing: the dogs had caught her scent. Racing to the cottonwood, she climbed, gripping branch stubs and bark, tearing her fingers and toes in her rush to get high enough to release the bloody fluff.
Her hands shook as she let it go in bits, dropping some, tossing some, but always into the wind, which seemed glad to lift the tufts and carry them farther still. Downy wisps landed on the riverbank, in the water’s currents, in fields surrounding her and between the trees that lined them, planting her smell everywhere—but without scent trails attached—in an area she hadn’t traveled and didn’t intend to. Quickly, she rubbed the last clinging shreds from inside her shirt, scrambled down the solitary tree and hurried into the denser woods, where she again climbed and cowered from the advancing hounds.
Their baying ramped up, shifting to a frenetic, urgent chorus. Noises played tricks in the woods, she understood that, but they sounded close now. Aggie pictured them, noses to the ground, smelling her every step, every pee. Where she slept, sat, washed. What clues had she left behind? A sweaty sheen covered her forehead and cheeks, dampened her chest and underarms. The dogs were yelping, leaping, she imagined, on each tree she had climbed.
She cringed, listening with every cell in her body.
Until the howling shifted direction and faded to sporadic yelps. Her hesitant smile grew. The detours had bought her time.
An hour later she left the silent woods. With bottle in hand, she settled on a wide branch, where she leaned into the trunk of a sycamore near the milking parlor, hidden by foliage and waiting for dark. And then, after Cabot left in his blue car, and after her brother finished the night milking and walked to her aunt and uncle’s farmhouse, and after his light in the upstairs bedroom went out, Aggie crept into the milkhouse, climbed the ladder to the giant tank’s lid, and filled her quart bottle with cooling milk.
She drank half of it right there, then dunked the glass again, buffing drips off the stainless tank with her sleeve before she dashed like a rat across the barnyard gravel. At the foot of the haystack, she filled an empty feed sack with baling twine, then returned to the woods and climbed awkwardly, the bag between her teeth, milk sloshing from the bottle tied to her waist.
It took a while to lash herself with twine into a tree’s high branches. Afterward, with her belly full and exhaustion overtaking her, she slept. She later roused to drink more milk and to scoot off the branch to pee, but soon fell into her deepest slumber since the cougar’s attack. Only when twittering birds woke her in the warm predawn did she untie herself and finish off the bottle’s contents.
At sunrise, the hounds cried again, closer this time, their intermittent bays rolling her way as they moved through the woods. The handlers would have wanted an early start, she figured, when the ground was damp and cool, holding her scent low, clean. Her hands shook as she returned twine to the sack and added her empty bottle.
No old trails, please, please. If the dogs locked in on aging scent, they would go to Mender’s and come to the dairy. She wouldn’t be safe anywhere.
She quickly moved higher into a tall fir. With the feed sack between herself and the trunk, she shrank behind needled boughs and waited, as hours passed and a pattern repeated: the dogs bayed while they followed her short ground trails, yelped wildly when they thought they had her treed, then whined or went quiet. Men’s voices called to the dogs and each other. Terror froze her whenever the sounds grew closer.
But by late morning the barking and baying grew less frequent. By noon, it stopped altogether.
Where were they? Aggie squirmed, tense with uncertainty. Had they set a trap for her? Were they waiting nearby, ready to pounce as soon as she touched the ground? She had watched a coonhound tear a squirrel to ribbons once. Would the men find her like that, torn apart by their dogs?
A shout interrupted the silence. A howl. Baying again, rising in volume and intensity until she saw them. Three huge brown dogs yelped and leapt at the tree she’d climbed to reach her current leafy trail, close enough to hit with rocks. She inched around the trunk, squeezing herself and the feed bag behind it, out of sight. Someone crashed through the brush, breathing hard.
“They do it again, Dave?” A man’s voice, farther away.
“Uh-huh. Like chasing a ghost. Looka this. Empty. Same as the others.” Aggie held her breath, heard the men stomping around the tree, imagined them looking up. Branches crunched underfoot. The dogs bawled relentlessly.
She pushed on her breastbone to quiet her heart. Were they were looking her way? She refused to check. Kept her chin against her chest, her eyes squeezed closed.
At last, one man whistled, and the team passed downriver, toward an area where cottonwood fluff would have landed. Before long, the baying and bawling began again. Had they found her dried blood? They howled until midafternoon, so she slept in a tree that night and the next.
During the daytime she traveled through the canopy. She peed from high in the branches of the access tree she’d seen the dogs surround. Wrapped her poop in leaves and stuffed it into crevices. Her feet only touched the ground at night, when she drank her fill of milk, chugged some water from the milkhouse faucet, and topped off her bottle. Dogs would never get her.
Never.
CHAPTER 21 ~ CELIA
Playground
“You two have until nine,” Gram said, when Cabot showed up unannounced the day after we drove to the mountain. I checked my watch: 7:00 pm. He was packing two baseball gloves and a hardball. Gram pointed at the ground in front of her, smiling. “Good yard right here.”
“Sure thing, Mrs. B.”
He grinned, and I relaxed. He tossed me a glove; we played catch
and chased grounders for half an hour before he produced a deck of cards from his glovebox and stumped me with card tricks. Supine on the lawn, he made up ridiculous stories about the clouds, while I lay on my side and watched his hands, his Adam’s apple, his eyes. Pondered his lips. Sensed the air pulse with the drum of his voice. He was nonstop entertainment; I didn’t have to say a word. At 9:00 sharp, he knocked on the window and saluted Gram, pretended to twist my nose, and drove that throaty car of his away.
What was Gram worried about?
He was on my mind when I showed up at the berry field the next day.
“Emily’s the row boss.” Stout, bearded Herm Leegwater pointed toward one of his employees, a tall, twenty-something blonde in a straw hat. “Check in with her.”
Not quite 6:30 a.m. and already hot. Local kids and some fast-picking migrant workers straddled leafy rows, bending low and dropping strawberries into shallow wooden trays. I lifted my empty flat and followed Emily to the far end of my assigned section. “Pick clean,” she said. “Unless you want to start over.”
It was harder than I expected. I fumbled through the plants, lurched over the foliage. Picked too many green ones. Midmorning, I stood to stretch my back yet again, watching two dark-haired boys no older than thirteen work their rows at twice my pace. I bit into one fruit the size of a tangerine, savoring the spicy sweetness, then refused to eat more. Every berry got me closer to that bus ticket, though I had to say that the prospect of seeing Cabot for the third time in as many days rattled that goal.
I tossed a couple more berries into my half-filled flat and carried it to Emily. “I’m going home.”
She checked her watch. “Not even ten thirty yet.” She weighed my meager pickings on the white enameled scale and frowned at my punch card. “A sorry way to start a job.”
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