Vineyard Fear

by Philip Craig

  No answer. Of course, the man I had decided was Orwell had never actually admitted that he was that person. If any of this ever came to trial, I could never testify that anyone calling himself Orwell had actually admitted to anything. Clever Orwell.

  I looked up at the cliffs. Hawks were riding the winds like dots in the sky. I was wearing my very best hiking gear: shorts, a tee shirt advertising Papa’s Pizza, my old combat boots, and my forest green Martha’s Vineyard Surfcasters Association cap. I had a small knapsack containing the second walkie-talkie, a light jacket, a plastic canteen of water, and a ham and cheese sandwich. I delayed long enough to cut myself a walking stick, then, having no more excuses, and feeling empty and fatalistic, I started up the trail.

  A bit after eleven, puffing like the little engine that could, I passed the Craig Cabin. There was a padlock on the door. I went on up toward the ridge, taking slow steps with many pauses, like the climbers you see in those movies of Everest. I got to the trail at the top of the ridge and sat down, sweating and breathless, my legs weak as Billy Beer.

  To the east, between promontories covered with spruce and quaking aspen, I could see the mountains beyond the Animas Valley rolling away toward infinity in giant blue waves. Around me the wind sighed in the trees. At my feet the green meadow I had just ascended fell away to the tiny log cabin and on down to the stream that had, over a million years, cut the gap in the cliffs that made the Goulding Trail possible. It was all shining, it was Adam and maiden. The innocence of the wilderness. I stared at it with fascination.

  “You came,” said Orwell’s voice from behind me.

  I nodded.

  “If you’ll slip off that knapsack, I’ll just have a peek. That’s it. Ah. Lunch. Very good. Stand, please.”

  I stood.

  “You will allow me,” said his voice, and I felt his hands pat me down. “Thank you,” The hands went away.

  The knapsack landed lightly beside me. I picked it up, and turned. Orwell, wearing green fatigue pants and a green tee shirt and cap, was putting the walkie-talkie into a backpack. There was a pistol in a camouflaged cloth holster on his belt. There was a flap snapped over the butt of the gun. Orwell got his arms through the straps and hoisted the backpack up onto his shoulders. He noticed me noticing the pistol.

  “No machine gun. I hope you’re not disappointed, but they’re hard to get through metal detectors at the airports. This pistol, on the other hand, goes through more easily. It’s a Glock. A lot of it’s plastic.”

  “I fired one once.”

  “Did you? An excellent weapon, I’m sure you’ll agree.” He gestured toward my scarred legs. “You are a veteran, I note. I recognize shrapnel scars when I see them. Asia?”

  “The recent unpleasantness in Vietnam.”

  “I was too young, but my father was there. I was at Grenada and Panama. The men of my family attend all of the wars.”

  “I was an amateur soldier, not a professional.”

  “That is an important difference between us. Shall we go?”

  I pointed north.

  “After you,” he said, with smiling mouth and icy eyes.

  We walked north alongside the rail drift fence until we passed through the gate and came, a bit later, to the first of the great, rolling meadows that gave such fine graze to the cattle which summered there. Off to the southwest, the peaks of the La Plata Mountains pointed into the sky. On the far side of the first meadow, a few white-faced cattle grazed. It was a quietly pastoral scene, and I was struck by the irony of our tense intrusion upon it. The cattle lifted their heads and looked at us, then returned to their feeding.

  Orwell seemed unaffected by the altitude that was making me pant. We came to the dark spruce woods that grew on the north slope of the vale where Skye’s camp had been, and I found the trail leading through the trees. When we emerged on the campsite, Orwell said, “Stop.”

  I stopped and looked at him. He was standing half hidden by a tree, sweeping the terrain with field glasses. He took his time, then returned the glasses to his pack, and gestured to me to go ahead. I walked down into the campsite.

  Orwell approved of it. “Water, graze for the horses, early sunlight, flat spots for tents. Good place for a hunting camp. Where’s the nearest fishing stream?”

  I didn’t know. I pointed to the east. “We go that way.”

  We walked across the meadow Billy Jo and I had crossed only yesterday, found the trail leading out to the cliffs, and walked through groves of trees and over meadows under the warm nooning sun. We came to the ridge where Skye had said he’d be hiding. I’d seen no hoof-or footprints on the trail, and wondered if he was there. I didn’t look to see if I could spot him. We passed out onto the last green meadow that led up to the cliffs and walked on.

  We crossed the meadow, climbed the last rise, and were suddenly there, atop the cliffs. I felt the old familiar vertigo as I puffed for breath and looked across that horrible void to the magnificent mountains on the far side of the valley.

  “This is the place,” I said, tasting bile in my throat.

  “Magnificent!” Orwell smiled and stared at the scene. “I’ve not seen anything like this since the Andes.”

  Now I knew why these heights were not affecting him. The Andes were even loftier than the Rockies. Seeing him smiling at the magnificent scene before him, I was acutely aware of the paradoxical truth that a sensitivity to beauty and the desire to kill can exist in the same person.

  “It is amazing,” I said, feeling the wind trying to push me over the edge, feeling the earth beneath my feet preparing to break off and plunge into the valley.

  “An excellent spot for lunch,” said Orwell. “You look a little green around the gills, Mr. Jackson.”

  “I am a little green. Acrophobia.”

  His eyes were sweeping the cliff top. “But before we eat, a little scouting, eh? Those trees off to the north will wait, but I think I’d like a look at this grove just south of us. Naturally, I want you to come along. Just in case you have someone in there waiting for me, you understand.”

  “Yes.”

  We went into the grove, Orwell behind me somewhere. I stayed away from the edge of the cliff and felt pretty good when I couldn’t see it. We came to the far edge of the grove and turned back. We swept the place twice before Orwell was content that no one was there, and we returned to the spot where the meadows reached the cliff.

  “I take it that we are being watched from some place out there,” said Orwell, pointing to the ridge where Skye had said he’d be, then sweeping his hand north toward the trees on that side of the meadow. “A long shot with a rifle, so we’re fairly secure. Still, I am putting a great deal of trust in you, Mr. Jackson.”

  “I want you to decide that you’re after the wrong man, and then I want you to go back to the Andes, or wherever it is that you’ll be going. I’m not interested in harming you, and I don’t want you to harm anyone else.”

  “A romantic humanist, eh? How nice.” Orwell had dug a can of rations out of his pack, opened it, and begun eating. I had no appetite. “I may not be going back to the Andes,” continued Orwell. “This leg of mine. Infuriating, but not surprising. I may end up stateside, sitting at some damned desk!”

  There were anger and despair in his voice, which surprised me. When I had gotten my million-dollar wounds, I’d felt only gratitude that I was still alive and might not have to go back into action. But then I was no career military man.

  “For every man on the lines, there have to be a dozen supporting him,” I said carefully. “You know that.”

  “The Orwells do not sit at desks!” He glanced at his watch, and got out the walkie-talkie. He switched it on and looked at me.

  “Channel thirteen,” I said. It was the first time he had admitted to being Orwell.

  He put the walkie-talkie beside him on the grass.

  “It’s more than the leg,” he said conversationally. “I’m home on special leave. Stress. My father’s death, my sister’s
death this summer.” He flicked his eyes at me. “I believe they think I’ve lost control. What do you think?”

  “You’re terrific,” I said. “You’re sitting there with a pistol at the top of the cliff, you’ve come two thousand miles to kill a man because you think maybe he seduced your sister, you already tried to kack me three times, and now you want me to tell you whether I think you’re out of control? Forget it.”

  His laugh surprised me. “Don’t contribute to the unbalance of the patient, eh? Very sensible. I withdraw the question. I apologize, as well.”

  Just then the walkie-talkie crackled. Orwell’s smile went away. He picked up the radio.

  “Dr. Skye? Yes, this is he. I’m listening. Make your statement.”

  He flicked his eyes toward me. They reminded me of the eyes of a snake. I made myself sit still.

  — 26 —

  I knew that my anger was a manifestation of fear, but the realization did not bring me calm. I listened irritably and watchfully while Orwell held the walkie-talkie to his ear. He said nothing. John Skye, as many academic types tend to do, was apparently making what he considered a reasonable argument. Intellectuals are inclined to believe that people are, ultimately, rational and that given certain facts they will arrive at proper conclusions. I was not so sure. I watched Orwell’s face, trying to read something there that I could not read in his silence.

  After a time, he suddenly looked at me. His eyes were without expression. He held up a hand, palm toward me, in that way people do when they are listening to something important. Then he spoke into the radio.

  “Yes. Yes, you have. I am immensely grateful to you, sir . . . Yes, I understand. I will tell him . . . Yes. Would you like to talk to him? Yes, here he is . . .”

  He held the walkie-talkie toward me, and I took it.

  “Yes, John?”

  “I told him everything, and he’s agreed that he’s been wrong. Thank God! I told him that I’m going back down to my family, but that it would be best if he doesn’t meet them, since Mattie is pretty worked up about this whole affair. He understands that. He’s agreed to stay with you for a half hour or so, so I can assure Mattie that I haven’t been fooled and followed back to camp.”

  “Ah.”

  “It’s all over then. I can’t thank you enough, my friend.”

  “I’ll take it out in beer. Best to Mattie. You’d better get going.” “Yes.”

  I thumbed the radio off and retracted the antennae. I turned to Orwell. He was staring at the ground and had a curious look about him.

  “So John convinced you, eh?”

  He raised his eyes. They were hollow-looking, devoid of feeling. His lips tightened, then one corner of his mouth flicked up. He nodded toward the west. “He’s been out there watching us with field glasses. Now he’ll slide away and go wherever he’s going.”

  He rose and walked to the edge of the cliff. “This is unbelievable country! Look at those mountains. The hunting must be good here, too. Elk, deer . . . Do they hunt bear? They do in Maine. I hear that cougars and grizzlies are coming back to this country. That would be something, wouldn’t it? To meet a grizzly up here.” He turned back to me.

  “Your friend Skye spins a fine web of words. The kind he spun to catch an innocent girl. He thinks he’s caught me, too, but I listened to his silence as well as his words. He talked long of my poor sister’s early affection for him, and longer still of his own innocence. But he said nothing of taking her to his Vineyard house this summer, or of abandoning her there and taking up with another girl! What a liar sweet Jonathan is! And what a fool.”

  “No!” I said, getting up. “John didn’t take her to the Vineyard . . .” My voice trailed off, since if I insisted that John had not done it, I might be obliged to say who did, and thus put another life in harm’s way.

  But Orwell was not listening. He was carried away by his own convictions. “He’ll go back to his wife and kiddies now, thinking that I’m going to go away forever and he’ll never see me again.

  “And he’s right about that. He won’t ever see me again. But I will see him. Sometime when he least expects it! Damn him!”

  This last was shouted, for I was already running into the grove of trees.

  “You can’t get away!” he called after me. “I know that grove from end to end! You can’t hide! And if you try to escape across the meadow, I’ll just run you down. You’re not accustomed to these altitudes, but I am. Give it up! Make it easy on yourself!”

  But I was into the trees by then, running, zigzagging, waiting for the thump of bullets. None came. I looked back. I didn’t see him. I ran toward the cliff and came to it suddenly. My head swirled and I staggered away. I seized my fear and pushed it from me. I walked along the edge of the cliff. I heard Orwell’s voice somewhere behind me, to the north.

  “It’s no use, Jackson. I babbled too much just now, so you’ve got to go. Nothing personal, I assure you. We sometimes have to do this sort of thing in my work. Today’s friend is tomorrow’s foe, or becomes a danger too costly to keep alive. Come out. I’ll make it painless.”

  I worked my way along the edge of the cliff and came finally to the log that marked the entrance to the ledge leading to Skye’s cave. I-climbed over the log and found the ledge. I crept out onto it and lay flat, feeling the tug of the void, the suck of the vacuum, drawing me over. I clung facedown to the stone. I was condemned by my silence. I could not trade Jack Scarlotti’s life for John Skye’s. I tried to dig my fingers into the ledge.

  Orwell’s voice went away. I heard nothing. Then the voice came again, this time from the south.

  “You’re very good, Mr. Jackson. I was sure I’d have found you by now. Please step out and save us this trouble. I assure you that I’m better at this sort of thing than you are. The end of this game is certain.”

  The afternoon sun was slanting shadows toward the east. Below me, the shadows of the great cliffs were already stretching across the valley floor. In not too many hours, it would be night, and not even Orwell could see in the dark.

  The thought occurred to him as well. I heard his laughter. “I hope you aren’t depending on the night to protect you. I have night glasses, as you should have expected from an old soldier like me. You won’t see me, but I will certainly see you. Besides, you won’t really last that long. Do come out, so I can shoot you cleanly. Otherwise you may suffer considerable pain before I can dispatch you.” Then he said a strange thing: “Oh, God, I’m tired, I’m tired.”

  A half hour later I heard the brush of leaves and the sound of a snapping branch. He was moving just on the other side of the log.

  I stopped breathing. To see me he had to come over the log and look to his left. There was no apparent reason to do so, and he did not. I heard him move on.

  The next time, he would cross the log, because by then he’d have searched out all of the logical spots and would be doing the illogical ones.

  I got up on my hands and knees, closed my eyes, and crawled down the ledge, brushing my left shoulder against the cliff face as I kept as far as possible from the abyss on my right. I came to a spot where there was no stone for my guiding shoulder to touch, and I opened my eyes. My stomach turned and my head whirled. I was looking a thousand feet straight down over the edge of the ledge, which narrowed sharply and cut back to the left around a corner of stone.

  I brought my eyes up and around and saw the cave. It was a wide, hallowed space under a rimrock that made it invisible from above. The nearer corner went back out of my sight. Twenty feet of narrow, rotten ledge linked me to it. The ledge looked too narrow for me to negotiate on my hands and knees. I got up and plastered myself to the rock face and moved ahead.

  A flat stone under my feet tipped. I cried out and tried to become part of the cliff. Small stones fell away into the void.

  I shifted my feet and moved on, my boots uncertain on the ragged surface of the ledge. I stared at the cave and took coward’s steps, feeling rather than seeing. Stones tumbled i
nto the silence beneath my feet. And then I was there, scrambling with undignified haste back under the overhanging rimrock. I felt sweat on my brow and saw that my hands were trembling.

  I heard a voice from above.

  “Mr. Jackson, I do believe I heard your voice. Thank you. I knew you had to be somewhere near the cliff, but I didn’t know where. If you’d like to jump, that will be even better. Please do! Meanwhile, I thank you again for that shout.”

  I didn’t have much time or much to work with. I unlaced my boots and, with my pocketknife, cut a four-inch length of the tongue from one of them. I felt quite doomed and, curiously, quite detached. I punched a hole in either end of the portion of tongue and knotted a shoelace to it.

  I now had a crude but serviceable sling. I was no David, and I was long out of practice, but there was nothing else. I tied a loop in one end of the shoelaces and hooked my middle finger through it. I held the other string between thumb and forefinger.

  “Well, well,” said Orwell’s voice from beyond the bend in the ledge. “What have we here? Where does this lead? I believe I’ll find out.”

  I would probably get only one try, but there were plenty of rocks for ammunition, so I took my time in selecting two: both squared-off pieces of sandstone an inch and a half by an inch and a half that fit pretty nicely into the sling. I said goodbye to Zee and wished her happiness in her new life, and stood up, the sling hanging by my side.

  A hand appeared around the corner of the ledge. A moment later Orwell’s face peeked around, jerked back, and peeked around again. He was a careful man.

  “Ah,” he said, “there you are.” He swung up the Glock.

  I stepped out of sight into the nearer corner of the cave. It was a shallow depression that barely hid me from him.

  “You’re making a mistake,” I called. “Skye wasn’t with your sister on the Vineyard.”