The Starlight Claim

by Tim Wynne-Jones

  “Now isn’t that an imposing sight! A barricade.” Nate was out of sight behind the big blue-and-brass trunk, waiting. Ready. But he wasn’t ready for what he heard next. A sound he’d never heard in real life but knew instantly what it was: a handgun being cocked. “Let me tell you about this firearm,” said the man. “It’s loaded with some super-duper bullets. Teflon coated. You ever hear of such a thing?” He made extravagant lip-smacking sounds, as if he’d just taken a bite of lemon meringue pie. “The improvements these manufacturers get up to,” he said. “Very impressive.”

  Then he took a step up the stairs.

  “Now, some people call these here bullets ‘cop killers’ because they’re really good at piercing car doors.” He chuckled. “Have I got your attention yet?”

  Behind the man, the wind howled through the door he’d left open, which kept banging against the wall, kept the cowbell clanging. Nate slid to the floor as if a silent bullet had already pierced the trunk and brought him down.

  “I’d like to meet you, young man,” said Shades. “Preferably before I kill you. Because I have a question or two to ask.” He paused, then Nate heard him take another step up. Nate slid away from the trunk on his belly, but not so far that his feet lost contact with it.

  “Are you being coy with me? Hard to get?” The man waited. “Oh, please,” he said, a note of irritation finally finding its way into his chatty voice. “Why don’t you just come on down!” He put some energy into the last words, as if he were a host on the worst possible game show ever.

  Nate felt Dodge stirring inside him. Really? You think I’m coming down there? But there was no Dodge to give him the bravado to say anything at all.

  “You see, we really, really want to know what you’ve been up to! Before, as I said, I waste you.”

  If they’d found the cell phone, they’d know exactly what Nate had been up to. But maybe it had fallen off and sunk into the snow, or was frozen and they couldn’t fire it up? Either way, he wasn’t going to respond. He doubted if his voice would make it through an entire sentence.

  “Oh man. I am getting so bored,” said Shades. “And I’ve got to tell you, I am losing my patience.”

  “You never had much to begin with,” said a voice Nate recognized. And then the door finally closed, tight, and the cowbell stopped clanging.

  “Stay out of this, Bird.”

  “Thought you said you was goin’ to the outhouse, Shaker. Then I found myself wonderin’ why a man’d take a handgun to the outhouse.”

  “I said stay out of this.”

  “No, you stay out of this. You don’t want no more trouble ’n you’ve got already on your plate.”

  The man called Shaker sighed. “Oh, how little you know me.”

  Nate dared to peer around the trunk and saw, for the first time, the revolver in Shaker’s hand: black with maybe a six-inch barrel. Shaker was looking at Bird, but then he turned toward the stairwell and Nate’s head darted back behind the upended trunk. “I’m going to count to three,” said Shaker. “I can count a lot higher than that, but three is about the limit of my patience right now.”

  “Leave the kid alone.”

  “One —”

  “Put that damned thing away,” said Bird, more irritated than anything else.

  “Wait your turn, Bird. Let me kill the boy first and then you.”

  “And leave you stranded,” said Bird. “It’s as much as you deserve.” And then he entered farther into the camp.

  “Don’t step in the oil!” Nate shouted.

  The footsteps stopped abruptly. “What the hell?”

  He must have assessed the situation. Maybe he noticed Shaker’s pants all greased and streaky, the coat hanging over the back of the chair even worse off. Because the next thing Nate heard was the old guy laughing.

  “Oh please!” said Shaker. “Don’t encourage the brat.”

  “Just put the gun down,” said Bird calmly. “Beck’s gone up the hill. He’s gonna let Kev know we’re comin’ out. Within the hour. Ya hear what I’m sayin’? You don’t need this.” Nate dared to peek.

  “Oh, it isn’t about need!” said Shaker, holding his handgun at face height. “This is all about want. I’ve been cooped up in this damn wilderness hovel for days now and I’m just dying to blow somebody’s head off.”

  “Well, if you like,” said the old man. “Here, let me help.”

  There was a skittering noise — one of the chairs — and suddenly there was a thud, one very similar to what Nate had heard five minutes ago. He peered around the corner of the trunk and saw Shaker lying on the floor again, a chair having taken his feet out from under him. Bird was standing over him. Bird had a rifle he was holding the wrong way around, the butt suspended above his victim’s face. The handgun lay on the floor, hefty and deadly looking.

  “It looks like I’m going to have to see my chiropractor when I get out of here,” said Shaker, rubbing his shoulder. He lay his head back on the shiny wet floor and swore mightily, like someone hoping to pop nails out of the rafters with his voice. It was the first time Nate had heard him raise his voice, and the change — the rage — in it froze him to the core.

  “We. Don’t. Need. This,” said Bird, leaning over him.

  Shaker glared up at him and then, with surprising speed, grabbed his handgun and had it aimed at Bird’s chest before the old man could do a thing. “Drop it,” said Shaker, all the fake friendliness gone from his voice.

  Very slowly and carefully, Bird lay the rifle down on the floor while Shaker hitched himself up on his free elbow and then gradually climbed to his feet, never taking his eye off the man in the ski mask. “I’m really tired of you telling me what to do, old man. You got us into this godforsaken hole. And now look what’s happened.”

  “Nothin’s happened!” said Bird. “We’re stuck in a storm is all. The copter couldn’t come back for you.”

  “Yeah, well, some of us wonder why it had to leave in the first place.”

  “You know damn well why.”

  “Bird, please face facts: the plan stinks.”

  “The plan is your get-out-of-jail card. In another couple weeks, in case you forgot, you was gonna be shipped south to a nice, cozy maximum-security penitentiary. For twenty years. So, yeah, the storm is inconvenient. Believe me, I’m as anxious as you to move things along, but we’re still good.”

  Shaker laughed. “Your idea of good is not my idea of good. And that brat up there . . .” He waved his free hand toward the staircase.

  “I’m your option B,” said Bird patiently. “Just like before. The roads were all closed off, just like was expected, and so the copter beat it up here. No one has a clue where you are.”

  “True, neither do we.”

  “Which is where I come in.”

  “Which is why the whole thing stinks.”

  “Whatever,” said Bird. “The thing is, the kid makes no difference one way or the other. He’ll make a big difference if he’s dead.”

  Then the back door opened, the cowbell clanged again, the wind howled. Nate could see none of that from where he hid, but judging by the lack of response from the two men, he assumed it had to be Worried Man, aka Beck, who closed the door and stomped his feet.

  “What’s going on?” he said.

  “Your pal here has the idea that shootin’ up the joint might make things better somehow.”

  “Jesus, Shaker.”

  “Oh, don’t you start! I’m so tired of this. Tired of him, tired of you, tired of Mr. Home Alone up there. Tired of being cooped up. I. Want. Out. Now.” He sounded dangerously close to snapping. He poked the gun threateningly at Bird, who held his hands up lazily but otherwise did not back away.

  “What’s the news?” said Bird. “You get through to your people?”

  Beck moved into view below. He picked up Bird’s rifle from the floor, strapped it over his shoulder, and walked around to stand behind Shaker. “Yeah. They’re going to meet us at the lumber camp.”

&nbs
p; “In this?” said Shaker, waving his arm toward the window, the storm.

  “They got one of them snowcats with the enclosed cab,” said Beck. “Storm’s no problem. They’ll be there for us.”

  “See? What’d I tell you,” said Bird, his voice unperturbed. “So why don’t we just get back to camp, get ourselves sorted out, and hit the trail.”

  “Kev say anything else?” said Shaker.

  Beck nodded, smiling nervously. “Yeah. It’s just like I was telling you.”

  Now Shaker smiled, too. “Good. Good. That’s the best news I’ve heard in days.”

  Bird put his hands on his hips, bowed his masked head, and shook it slowly. “Here we go,” he said. “I heard you cowboys might be cookin’ something up.”

  “Whadaya mean?” said Beck.

  “A little birdie told me.”

  “What?” said Beck.

  “I think he means the annoying little villain hiding upstairs,” said Shaker.

  “What’d he tell you?” said Beck.

  Bird sighed. “That your good pal Kev had a plan to cut me out. Save your people payin’ the money they owe me for holin’ you up while the heat was on and gettin’ you out when the time comes. Which, apparently, is now.”

  “There you go,” said Shaker, sounding pleased. “We’re done here.” Without taking his eyes off Bird, he inclined his head toward his partner. “So let me deal with this riffraff and we’ll go, right?”

  “Yeah . . . well, it’s not that easy,” said Beck.

  “What do you mean?” asked Shaker, which made Bird chuckle. “Oh, shut up!” said Shaker, and reaching out, he grabbed the top of the man’s ski mask and tore it off his head. Then he threw it on the floor.

  From where Nate stood, he couldn’t make out much: black thinning hair, going gray at the temple, a face as much like wood as his gnarly hands. Pockmarked skin. A bent nose — probably from sticking it so often into other people’s business.

  “I want to take a good long look at your ugly mug before I reconfigure it,” said Shaker. “Man, I have really been waiting for this. You and then the brat.”

  “Cut it out,” said Beck, his voice panicky. “You don’t want any more blood on your hands.”

  “What have I got to lose? You got directions, right?”

  “Yeah, well . . . like I said.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” said Bird, “since your pal here ain’t exactly forthcomin’. Kev couldn’t help you out with directions. Could he, Beck? No need to answer. GPS’d be useless, since there’s no reception in the bush. So I’m guessing he said something like follow my snowmobile trail out and then . . . what? Take a hard left at the 7-Eleven? Maybe drop in and get some cash from the ATM nailed onto a tree up by the Spanish River while you’re at it?”

  “Didn’t I tell you to shut up?” said Shaker.

  Bird chuckled again. “Think about it. My trail will have been wiped out by this blizzard. And even if you could follow it to where I come in, there’s a whole lot more forest between there and Branigan’s lumber camp, assumin’ that’s where this pickup of yours is supposed to happen. And that forest out there, boys, in case you didn’t notice, goes all the way to James Bay, just about. True, it thins out once you hit the tree line, but take my word for it, nothing Kev told you will keep you from getting lost out there until the Second Coming.”

  Shaker growled low in his throat, then raised the gun as if he were about to pistol-whip Bird, but it was an idle threat. “He send you anything useful, Beck?”

  Beck shook his head. “Not really. Bird’s right. We need him.”

  From the look on his face, this was the last thing Shaker wanted to hear. He shook his head. “Well, here’s the thing: I’m not sure I do,” he said. “Need him, I mean.” His voice went deadly quiet. Then he raised his other hand around his gun hand, took one step back, and straightened his arms. “I think this old man walked us right into a trap, and where, pray tell, is he going to take us next?” He held the handgun higher to take aim. “I actually think I don’t care.” He started to pull back the trigger, when —

  “OWWWW!”

  The hardball had struck Shaker on the forehead. The scraping sound of the trunk being shoved aside at the top of the stairway had made him turn to look, and Nate had beaned him good. Shaker had been knocked off his feet.

  For the third time.

  Now Bird stood over him yet again, holding Shaker’s firearm, picked up from the floor where it flew when he fell. After a moment, after he’d gotten Beck to hand him back his rifle, Bird shoved the firearm into his overalls pocket, wiping his oily hand on Shaker’s pant leg. Meanwhile, Beck crouched beside his partner, resting a hand on his forehead. Shaker slapped it away. The baseball rolled into the living room, pushed by some low gust of wind, looking for all the world as if it were trying to get away.

  “Guess this means you get first base for free,” said Bird.

  Shaker turned his head to glare up the stairs at Nate. Beck looked up at him as well and just shook his head.

  “Boy, you are messing with trouble,” said Beck.

  “You gonna live?” said Bird to Shaker. “’Cause we need to move out. You got that? I’m leadin’ ya out and I’m collectin’ the money your people owes me. I want to put a whole lotta miles between me and this whole stinkin’ business. That’s what this is about for me. Gettin’ out.” He glanced up at Nate, just once, quickly, as if the speech had been aimed his way: some kind of explanation. Then he turned his gaze on the man on the floor. “Your long-sufferin’ partner is gonna get you your jacket and you’re gonna put it on. He’s itchin’ to go. Me, too. You want to stay here, it’s fine with me. I’ll give the boy this fancy Ruger of yours, show him how to use it, in case ya get any more jeezly stupid ideas. Let him finish you off. How’s that do ya?”

  He glanced up the stairs again. Nate didn’t know the face, had never seen it before in his life. But he did half recognize the smile, marred as it was by the leaking eye and the flash of gold and a chipped front tooth. It was a face creviced with age but for the eyes — the one clear eye, anyway. Black as pitch but bright. The Bird, of course: a Crow.

  Calvin Crow.

  His grandfather.

  “You’ve got to be valiant,” says Dodge.

  “Valiant?” says Nate.

  “Yeah, like brave on steroids,” says Dodge.

  “I know what valiant means,” says Nate. “I was just wondering what new hell you’re planning.”

  Dodge grabs him in a head squeeze. “Oh, you know me too well, Master Crow!” Then he steps toward the edge of the cliff and points to the waves slapping far below. “This,” he says grandly.

  They’d been tromping uphill through the bush to the top of the jumping cliff on the east side of Picnic Island. You could climb up the cliff face maybe twenty or thirty feet from below, but you couldn’t scale all the way, not without climbing gear. But they’d found their way in, for the first time, from the picnic spot on the other side of the island. Dodge chuckles. “Bet you don’t have the cojones to jump it.”

  “You’re right. And if I did, I’d lose my cojones doing it.”

  “Told you.”

  “I’m not going to jump from here because I’m not suicidal,” says Nate. He stares down the cliff face, his hands on his hips. “It must be around —”

  Dodge cuts him off. “We’re not measuring this in yards or feet — and don’t give me any of your metric shit, either. This is stories high, Nathaniel; I’d say six, maybe seven. Seven stories.”

  Nate looks again; his own guess would be closer to five, but that’s not what scares him off. The cliff rises from the water at an angle of maybe eighty degrees. He knows the water is plenty deep, even right at the foot of the cliff, but with a slope like this . . . “Man, you’d need to jump out something like three or four yards just to clear the rock face.”

  “You got it,” says Dodge. He looks mesmerized. His expression kind of scares Nate. Then his
friend turns his gaze away from the water below. “So we need to make a runway,” he says.

  They spend a good whack of the afternoon doing just that. Clearing bush in their bathing suits and tees, Nate in his Walmart aqua socks, Dodge in his Speedo Surfwalkers. There is a breeze out near the cliff head strong enough to keep the blackflies at bay, but as they move inland, the flies close around them, getting in their hair and eyes.

  Nate knows better than to try to convince Dodge not to do it. So what you do when your best friend is about to try something drastically stupid is make sure the “runway” is clear and long. And you calculate in the back of your head the whole time just how long it will take you to make your way back down, zigzagging through the trees to the boat at the picnic place; get the Evinrude cranked up; and then speed around to the other side of the island to rescue that best friend, who will have hit the stone face of the cliff before making it to the water, maybe gotten himself a concussion and drowned in the meantime.

  The runway needs to be straight and, preferably, not uphill. And because of the trees and some intractable undergrowth, they end up with a path that actually runs almost parallel to the cliff for about twenty yards before doglegging right toward the edge for the last ten yards or so. In his mind’s eye, Nate imagines a high jumper’s approach to the crossbar — coming at it slant.

  Nate measures out the stretch directly after the dogleg: five or six good long strides. He stops at the brink, feels a little dizzy looking down. He drinks some water from his bottle. Over to the left, below is a rocky outcrop perfect for mooring the boat when they come out here to jump. It’s the same place they stand to operate the Seeker. They’ve done it all along, daring each other to climb higher and higher but until today only as high as they could make it clawing their way up. If he gives it any thought, Nate can remember seeing Dodge stare up the cliff to the summit more than once. The only surprise is how long it has taken him to think about coming at the cliff from the land side.