Falcon Wild

by Terry Lynn Johnson

  Cooper jumps sideways, startling me out of my thoughts. I catch a glimpse of a pika disappearing down a hole.

  “Watch out for that man-eating rock rabbit, Cooper.”

  “Whatever.” He mumbles a few more things as he walks, his back rigid. Then he turns to me. “Seriously, did the GPS say there was a highway, or are you just playing me?”

  “Well, yes, but…”

  Cooper makes a rude noise. “You want me to think you know what you’re doing out here with your clover and your fire and your hunting hawk—”

  “She’s a falcon—”

  “But you don’t have a clue where we are, do you? Just admit it.”

  “Where do you think we should go, then? I saw the GPS before I left. It showed the highway just west of us. Anyway, why do you keep blaming me, phone stealer?”

  “Enough with the phone, okay?” Cooper raises his hands and clasps them behind his head. He stares at the sky for a long moment with a bleak, lonely expression. He blows out his breath. When his arms fall back to his sides, he seems to deflate.

  “Look, I was mad at you guys. I knew you were thinking that I’m just a piece of trash you picked up on the road. You’re talking about your perfect family and your perfect life. And then you see me and think, man, we better get the stink of him out of our van.”

  I feel a small twist in the center of me.

  “My life isn’t perfect. We were heading to give away Stark. Stark. The only bird that would have stuck by and hunted grouse for me when she could be flying away anywhere.” My voice wavers, and I stop. “Where’s your family, Cooper?”

  “My dear old dad couldn’t deal with the stink of me either,” he says. “He tried giving me away. So how’s that for not perfect?”

  “Giving you—? To who?” The naked pain on his face makes me want to save him somehow. When he catches my expression, he closes off like a trap.

  “You think you can judge me just by looking at me? You don’t know me. No one does. My dad doesn’t even know me. In the end, it’s up to all of us to just take care of ourselves. Remember that, Karma.”

  “What about your mom? Where is she?”

  “Would you shut it for one freaking minute? You never stop. Let’s just get out of this place so I don’t have to listen to your—” Cooper’s eyes bug out. He looks at something behind me. I whirl around in time to see a large brown shape appear from between the trees. My blood turns to ice.

  A grizzly bear.

  It throws its nose in the air. Even from this distance, I can tell it’s sniffing our scent. Then it stares straight at us.

  Cooper and I gape at each other.

  “Run!” Cooper screams, and takes off down the slope.

  “No!” Everyone in Montana knows that the main thing about grizzly attacks is that people run. That will trigger a chase response. Food runs. It’s the worst thing that Cooper could do.

  “Cooper! Stop!” I stand frozen in place. Then I steal a quick glance behind. Maybe the bear decided to go back into the forest. But no, the bear is moving toward me.

  Cooper is getting farther away. Panic clouds my judgment. I don’t want to be left alone with a bear. I can’t help it; I race after Cooper.

  As I run, I imagine the bear is right on my heels. I can practically feel its breath on the back of my neck. Any minute, I expect sharp claws to rake down my back. Or will it go for my feet? Trip me with a swipe of its paw, then roll me over? It will start at my belly. I’ll have to curl into a tight ball. I will not be gutted like a grouse!

  Or will it go for my throat?

  I keep running, pumping my arms to gain speed. My ball cap flies from my head. The pack on my back thumps me with every step. The terrain turns loose and rocky. I try not to slide as I chase after Cooper. He doesn’t even look back. I want to kill him.

  I glance behind me. The bear is not running, but it’s definitely following us. I watch it sniff the air and begin to lumber faster. I swing my head around, desperately searching for some way out of this. What do I do?

  I can’t get eaten by a grizzly. Never during our lessons did I think I’d be facing one in real life. Scanning the sky, I briefly fantasize about Stark attacking the bear for me. Will she even know what’s happened to me? Will she fly to my body and sit on my head, waiting for me to feed her? Will she pick the meat off my bones?

  I trip on a rock, almost falling. It brings my attention back to the terrain. Cooper has stopped just ahead. He’s waving at me to hurry. I glance back again. The bear is barreling across the scree toward me, fully charging on all fours. Its bottom lip hangs down. I can see the hump on its shoulder blades quiver with the motion. Its glossy, frosted fur shines in the sun.

  “Here!” Cooper screams, and shoves me.

  I plummet over the edge of a drop-off. My arms flail as a scream erupts out of me. All I see is the sheer drop below. The next moment my scream is cut short as I plunge into frigid water. I’m bobbing to the surface of a river, gasping in a wet breath. Where is Cooper? Did he jump too? Did the bear get him?

  I see the outline of the bear hanging over the drop-off far away. I realize the river is moving. Fast. I’m being swept downstream in churning water.

  Water is everywhere. I can’t breathe. Can’t see where I am. The shore flies past so quickly, I feel like I’m in a vortex. Every time I try to yell for Cooper, my open mouth fills with water. I choke. Gag. The water closes over my head as I go under, plunging me into that weird world of echoing underwater sounds. When I resurface, all I hear is the roar of the river and my own wet gasps.

  I’m carried along until I snag on something, and I grab it instinctively. It’s a log jutting out into the water from shore. A slippery log. My fingers are cold as I try to grasp it. I concentrate on digging my fingers into the wood with the kind of strength sheer terror brings. The water shoves me against the branch. I kick my legs, feeling the weight of my clinging jeans. Using the last of my waning energy, I pull myself into a small eddy near the bank. The insistent current subsides. I can feel the bottom with my feet. The water comes up to my chest. I keep going, dragging myself out of the water before flopping onto the bank.

  I cough and cough. My lungs are full. Then I throw up—mostly just water but also chunks of something that burns coming up. I lie on my side, retching and trying to suck back air. Finally I lie quiet.

  I’ve never been this exhausted. My limbs hardly feel attached as I stare at the sky and just breathe. I close my eyes. And then begin to shiver. The shivering racks my body and knocks some awareness into me.

  This is bad. And where is my pack?

  I bolt upright. The waterproof matches were in my pack. Along with my water bottle. But the matches are the most important at the moment. With my wet clothes, I’m going to be too cold to start a fire if I don’t find my pack soon.

  I climb to my feet and look around, trying to recall every survival lesson we’ve had. Because I’m going to survive this.

  Around me are mixed hardwoods instead of the pines we were walking through earlier. The river roars past, churning sticks and debris along with it. There’s nothing downstream to grab hold of. I’m lucky I found this branch.

  “Cooper!”

  Another shiver racks my body, and I wrap my arms around myself. I head downstream, searching the banks for Cooper. I keep screaming his name until my throat is raw.

  Where is he? Did he get swept away? Has he drowned? What if Cooper just kept going and was tossed around in the river and bounced off rocks? The image churns around in my mind once I’ve let it in.

  “Flog off!” I scream to the sky.

  As I move along the edge of the water, I see it. My pack! It’s on the opposite shore, snagged on a branch. It bobs in the current. I’m still shivering and so cold my bones hurt, but I need that pack.

  No time to think. I wade into the waters again and swim for the opposite shore. Now that I have a goal, the water doesn’t seem as chaotic. As long as I keep focused on the pack, I won’t think abou
t being in a cold river. In October. In the middle of nowhere.

  I let the current do most of the work, sweeping me past the pack and into the far eddy. I’m almost there.

  Suddenly it’s as if a giant hand yanks me under the current of water pounding over a rock. I claw at the rock. Water is all I see. I can’t believe it was only yesterday that I was dying of thirst.

  And then the river lets me go. I shoot into the eddy. My knees rasp on the sandy bottom. My arms and legs are shaking with adrenaline. I’m never going swimming again. I want to get as far away from the river as possible. Once I pull myself up, water streams off me, and the wind hits me hard. I have to get dry. Get warm now.

  I walk upstream until I reach my pack. After fishing it out of the water, I stagger up the bank. The mud is slippery, and I slide back down the steep slope. But I dig my wet shoes in and climb up again.

  “Karma!” I hear his voice. Cooper.

  After I stumble up the bank, I see him in the water. I drop the pack and cover my mouth. I didn’t realize how alone I felt until now. The relief almost drops me, but I raise my head. “I’m coming!”

  The river snakes in on itself here. Cooper has wound up in a back eddy away from the current, but the bank there is too steep for him to climb out. As I slide down the embankment on wobbly legs, I see the white falcon in a tree above him. I blink. Stark really is here with him. It’s as if she’s watching out for him like he’s part of our little pack.

  “Grab my hand,” I yell, lying flat in the mud and reaching. Our hands clasp, and then I’m hauling him out. We both roll in the cold mud, panting hard. My limbs are stiff, and my fingers are starting to curl.

  “Are you okay?” He raises his white face to look at me. His lips are blue. Mine probably look the same.

  “We need a fire,” I say.

  We lurch into the trees, and I find a dead standing fir with drooping branches. Cooper struggles to pull out his knife from his soaking-wet jeans. He opens the blade with shaking hands and then hacks at the branches. I peel bark from a log lying on the ground. As soon as we have a small pile ready, we huddle over it. With numbing fingers, I open the Ziploc bag containing the matches.

  “Please be dry, please be dry,” I whisper. Despite their name, waterproof matches are almost impossible to light when they’re wet.

  The matches are dry.

  Soon the fire is crackling, and we’re holding our hands above the flames. My mouth smirks a little at the heat. I made this heat. But my pride is short-lived when I notice my clothes sticking to me. They’re sucking away any warmth my body is making. The first thing to do after immersion in water, I know, is to take off your wet clothes. But I have nothing else. The book didn’t suggest what to do if you didn’t have a nice warm sleeping bag to crawl into.

  “The sooner our clothes dry, the better,” I say, wringing out the bottom of my hoodie. It hangs down to my thighs. Cooper still has his thin windbreaker double-knotted tightly around his waist. His plain, gray long-sleeved shirt clings to his narrow torso. His hair hangs over his eyes. He stares grimly into the fire, lost in his own thoughts.

  I don’t know where we are. I’ve lost all sense of direction. The sun is obscured behind an overcast sky. The tension in my muscles isn’t just from being cold.

  “Cooper,” I say. “We really are lost this time.”

  Cooper nods, staring blankly into the flames. “Did you see how fast that bear ran? We could’ve actually been killed and eaten out here.” He seems to have shut down, as if the bear chasing us was the last thing he could handle.

  “I’ve been to wild places before,” he continues. “I’ve seen Yellowstone. Through the car window. But not like…” He lifts his head and stares at me. “I thought he was going to get you.”

  “Yeah, so did I. Thanks for waiting,” I say.

  “I’ll save myself before I save you,” he tells me. “Every time.”

  “But you didn’t.” As I relive it in my mind, I begin to smile. “You pushed me away from the grizz first. You waited.”

  Cooper shrugs, then pokes the fire with a stick. He’s silent so long, I wonder if he’s angry at me again for something. What is he thinking?

  Finally he quietly repeats himself. “I thought that bear was going to get you.”

  I sit beside him, and this time he doesn’t move away. He was scared for me but doesn’t know how to say it. I can’t imagine why he’s always afraid to show what he’s thinking. Why does he pretend he doesn’t care about anything, when he clearly does?

  I shiver and lean into the warmth of Cooper, solid and real beside me. He leans in too, and somehow I’m not embarrassed by our closeness. We may not be in the cafeteria at a real school, but I have someone to sit next to. After a while our shared heat slows down my shivering.

  I wonder if Mom has called Stark’s owner. She must’ve done that. And then found out we never arrived. She must be flipping out. Maybe she has every police officer out searching for us. But that wasn’t even a road we were supposed to be on. They won’t search for a van stuck on the side of a dead-end road that we weren’t going to take. I’m suddenly on fire with the need to get to them. We don’t have time to sit here. I glance around again, looking for the sun—anything to figure out where we are.

  “Maybe we should climb to the top here so we can see where we are.” I point to the mountain behind us.

  We both look up at the climb. There’s a path of flatter terrain cut out of the rock by erosion. It’s stamped into the mountain in switchbacks. Shrub brush grows along the side of the path for the first part, before it gives way to barren rock.

  “We can climb that,” I say. “We’re lost after that trip down the river. We’ll be able to see the highway from up there.”

  Cooper scans the mountain, and I watch his face as he studies it. Stark leaps from the branch she’s been in, and flaps down to me. She lands on my damp jeans and perches on my knee as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. I feel a bit smug and proud that my falcon is sitting on my lap. I glance at Cooper to see what he thinks. He’s pulling off his shoes and wringing out his socks.

  “Too bad Stark can’t tell me what it looks like up there,” I say. “I wish I could read her mind. Wandering around down here hasn’t worked out for us too well. We need a plan.”

  “Yeah,” Cooper agrees. “A plan for no more bears.”

  I’m not curling into a ball and hiding from bears. Nothing can keep me from saving my family. I have things to do. I am not afraid.

  I reach out my hand to stroke Stark, and cry out from the pain. Cooper’s head comes up. When I clutch my arm, he peers closer at it.

  “Let me see.” Gingerly, he takes my hand and pulls up my sleeve. The redness has spread to my wrist in lines that radiate up.

  “That’s messed up,” Cooper says. He carefully turns my arm over to inspect the wound. His touch is as soft as a wing tip. He bends over my arm, studying it, running his fingers over the edges, tentatively wiping away the thin, bloody ooze that seeps from it. Then he suddenly seems aware of how he’s holding my hand and drops it abruptly.

  “It’s infected. You need antibiotics. Your body will try to fight it, and you’ll get a fever and get sick within a day. Can you still use your arm?”

  I pull my sleeve down, shaking my head. “Not really. It hurts a lot. But I won’t need it. Those switchbacks look like a good spot to get up the mountain. Not much slope. We can just walk up. Easy.” I force a smile when all I want to do is cry.

  “How do you know so much about wounds?” I ask.

  “My mom was a doctor.”

  She was? As in, his mom’s dead? Is that why he’s so angry? “Oh. I’m…I’m sorry.”

  He looks at me then. “What? No, she’s not…Just forget about it. That was years ago.”

  “Cooper, talk to me. Where is your mom? You said your dad didn’t want you. Why don’t you live with her? Why did you say you don’t live anywhere?”

  He sighs and runs his fingers
through his wet hair. He stirs the fire, and the heat blasts my face. Stark flies back up to her tree.

  “Because I left my uncle’s place, okay?”

  When he doesn’t continue, I wait. The silence stretches between us, hangs in the air. Still I wait.

  Cooper sighs again. “Last year my dad lost his job and got all stressed out with everything, and we had to move into a crap apartment and we didn’t even have enough money for groceries.”

  He pokes the fire angrily. “Then a buddy of mine told me about a paid job that we could do one night that was guaranteed. But it turned out it wasn’t his car we were riding in. I didn’t even know that, but the cops didn’t care. Suddenly everyone is involved, social workers and everything, all up in our business. That goes on for a while, and I figure that since everyone already thinks I’m a thief, I might as well actually get some money that way.”

  Cooper slides a glance at me, and I fiddle with my sleeve to make it seem as though I’m not looking at him. Instinctively I know that my gaze could make him feel self-conscious, and I want him to keep talking.

  “But I screwed up one too many times. It put Dad over the edge, you know? So he just dumps me off in Red Rock, at his brother’s ranch. In the middle of nowhere. It’s so small I wouldn’t actually call it a town. And he doesn’t even live in town but out in the open. You have to drive everywhere because it’s so far from anything.”

  “Hey, I live south of Red Rock! My mom owns the flower shop. It’s not so bad living in a small town. Most people are genuinely nice.”

  “Well, Uncle Mike’s already got his own two kids to care about. And he also didn’t like it when I borrowed Nicki’s jewelry box.”

  “Um, whose jewelry?”

  “I wanted to use my aunt’s old jewelry box as a model to make her a new one in woodworking class. We were supposed to think of a project. It was a stupid idea. Since it was a secret, I didn’t want to tell her, so I borrowed it. Unc said he believed me, but I could see him watching me after that. He didn’t need the hassle of having me there. So I left.”