by Urban Waite
It was only the sheer terror and realization that each footfall and beat of her sole could be heard against rock and pine needle that caused her to pull up short. She veered to her right and stood stock-still, with her back to the thin trunk of a tall pine, trying as best she could to catch her breath. She was immediately aware of how alone she was, how very lost she was from any comfort or salvation. Out there in the wider brightness of the field from which she ran, she could see no one and she had heard nothing since the bullet flew past her and struck the ground no more than ten feet off.
She needed to get away and she needed to get away now. She looked around at the half-lit forest. She knew now why so many of the original pioneers were lost in places like this. The lodgepole pines everywhere she looked, straight as arrows, thick as telephone poles, each the same, like the makings of some carnival funhouse there was no escaping from.
* * *
WILL CAME DOWN OFF THE RIDGE, HALF SLIDING AND HALF walking through the loose gravel that lined the bottom of the cliff. When he came to Lonny, the man’s eyes were still and open and a savage gash could be seen across the side of his head that ran all the way along one cheek and up across the skin just above his ear. His neck was clearly broken and the skin had bruised and even as Will took hold of an arm, meaning to turn him over, Will could feel the lifelessness of his body and the looseness of the muscle.
Will rolled and pushed Lonny over. He was lighter than Will but he was by no means easy to move, and as Will pushed he could smell already the turning of the body and the release of all its liquids. He pushed Lonny all the way over and now he could get his hands on Lonny’s pack.
Undoing the drawstring at the top he began to pull item after item from the backpack and lay them out. Much of it Will had seen already when they’d made their camp the night before. But when he came to the wolf collar with the transmitter he was not at all surprised. He pulled it up and stood looking at it. He turned it over in his hand. It weighed little more than a few pounds and he could see where there was a little switch that could be turned on and then turned off.
For ten seconds, he stood there looking at it, then he slid the collar back inside the bag with all the rest of Lonny’s things and pulled the man over and let him rest. Up above Will could see the place he had once stood and he looked now into the field another hundred or so feet down slope. He set off in the direction he had seen Mary May heading, knowing that Eden’s Gate was not far off.
When he had made it all the way across the field he could see figures moving on the ridge. He watched them where they formed just at the lip of the cliff. Will moved under the trees now, not wanting to be seen. Once he was in the shade he raised the scope and put his eye on them, watching as they looked down on the place Will knew Lonny to be.
Will watched them long enough to see them break apart from their small group and move out along the ridge in single file. He watched them come to the place that Will himself had found to thread his way down from atop the cliff. And then Will watched them move across the loose rock and talus just as he had done. John walked out front, leading with the antenna, no doubt moving toward the transponder and the wolf collar within Lonny’s bag.
* * *
MARY MAY HAD WAITED JUST LONG ENOUGH TO SEE HOW MANY had been following her. She watched the distant shape of a single man move down and away from the far ridge as he cut through the grass almost in the same path that she had surely followed. She could see the rifle on his back and she watched him stop midway through, studying something he saw there in the grass.
Without giving any more time for the man to catch her, she removed her boots and stuffed her socks down within. Then, with boots in hand and the .38 stuck back down the waist of her pants she set out, moving fast and making her way up a small rise to the north she knew might give her a vantage of the land. She was careful with her movements as she went, knowing the man had tracked her this far and could likely track her farther.
She moved barefoot over the forest bed of pine needles and she stopped often to look back at her trail. She was leaving less of one but she could still see in places the scuff of one foot followed by the other. She had grown up in these woods. She had been trained by her father and his friends to track and hunt and she knew an experienced hunter could track just about anything over almost anything, except the smoothest rock or water.
With hands outstretched she moved onward up the slope as she made her way to the slight rise above. The slope now growing ever steeper in a way she had not calculated for, much of it hidden behind the dense trunks and underbrush of the forest. Halfway up she fell and slid four feet down and getting to her feet she saw the dark scrape she had made there in the pine needles. She could do nothing for it and she moved now, quicker even than she had gone before.
Soon she gained the rise and with a single scanning look down the way she’d come, she drew herself up and over a large outcropping of rock there. Laying herself out flat so that she could present the smallest profile. The rock on which she lay was like some backbone across the topmost portion of the rise, but unlike the ridges and ranges she had crossed through earlier it did not offer the view she had been hoping for. The rise only high enough above the forest floor to offer up the briefest view of the land beyond.
In the silence that followed, as she listened to her heart beating in her chest, she thought she heard the sound of breathing. She held her own breath, steadying herself where she hid. In the far distance, she heard the call of a shrike dusted up from somewhere on the other side of the rise. The bird’s anxious call settling in across the forest as it flapped up along the rise then came out above, moving past and then away, threading its way down into the trees beyond.
For only a second did she keep her eyes on the path of this bird. She knew maybe it had simply startled up out of some tree, called from the branches by some prey or thing it hunted. But she also knew this was only hopeful thinking, that somewhere down below there was a man tracking her with a rifle.
For a beat, she looked down into the gray muted light of the forest. Afternoon was settling in and the sun had begun to move away beneath the trees. She pulled herself back, moving on her stomach until she could stand safely out of view. Somewhere down below she knew she would come to a road and farther on the church, and hopefully if she could find him, her brother.
She had grown up in the county and she knew these roads, she knew the forests and the mountains. And though she had never gone this far into the woods, or off the paths that lined and connected many of the lakes and mountains in the area, she knew where the county road ran the edge of the Eden’s Gate property and she charted a course in her head to get there. Pines and aspen on the slope then paper birch below that ran out and moved across boggy lowlands a mile on. She’d have cover all the way down the slope into the lowlands before she started coming across sedge and grassland right before the road.
She took one last look over the edge of the rock outcropping before she turned and moved downslope. A couple hundred feet on she came to a dead stop and looked back up toward where she’d been. In the exact spot she had picked to lay upon her belly, was a man seen standing at the top of the rise there looking down on her.
* * *
WILL DID NOT PUT THE RIFLE ON HER OR EVEN MAKE A SINGLE movement. He stood atop the small rise and looked down toward her. She had grown up considerably since he’d seen her last. She wore jeans and a T-shirt and a dirty, zippered sweatshirt. She carried her boots in her hands. She stood there looking back at him and if she recognized him at all she did not show it.
She was off and running before he could say a thing and for only a second he let her go. He knew where she was going and though she had removed her boots and changed her track, he could see now that he would have little trouble following her. What did concern him was the ache and sickness he had started to feel at his core. He was moving now slightly bent over with a hand across his belly where Lonny had connected with a fist and then delivered kick
after kick. Will knew whatever damage had been done, a bruised organ or a cracked rib, the adrenaline of his fight with Lonny had hidden it. And now as he went on that feeling was wearing off and each step seemed to pain him further.
He watched the place she had been standing, then he set off down the rise and came into the wood. For a moment, he could see her running, the light coming through the pines above flashing on her as she moved. He took several steps forward, the ache and pain in his stomach now showing on his face. He stopped and looked to where he had seen her last, but she was not there. He wondered how much time he had. He wondered about Lonny and what Lonny had said to him before Will had moved and watched the man go over.
Then, standing there, he bent double and the insides of his stomach came up and splattered across the ground. He went down on a knee and the relief he felt was almost immediate. He could breathe again and the muscles of his stomach had come free from the knot that had bound them up so tight. Will could see blood in the vomit and he wondered again what evil thing might reside within him, whether it was an ulcer, or whether it was simply Lonny beating the shit out of him only a half hour before. But there was no time to dwell on it as he rose to his feet again then looked back the way he’d come.
John and four of his men were still out there and if any of them were trackers they would come upon him soon. Will looked back upon the rise and the path he’d taken down from it. He was unsure what to do. He was unsure what would happen, or what had been meant to happen all this time.
John had said he wanted to help Mary May, as John and The Father had once helped Will so long ago.
Will turned and looked again to where he had last seen her. He’d lost too much time and he knew it. She was scared and now she knew she was being followed. He called her name low at first and then stepping forward he cupped his two hands to his mouth and yelled her name. He had said he would protect her. He had said he would keep her safe and he would help her, but he could not do that if she ran. He could do nothing for her if he could not catch her. He called her name again. “Mary May,” he called. He let the name linger in the air and then he yelled again.
* * *
MARY MAY TURNED AND LOOKED BACK THE WAY SHE’D COME AS soon as she heard her name. She hesitated and for a second she thought about stopping. But there had been no denying the fact that she had been shot at, that the man who had likely shot at her was out there following her still, and that like a hunter using an elk call, this man was hunting her, calling out her name, hoping that it would stop her and draw her near.
Twenty minutes later Mary May saw the road. She had backtracked and crosscut the forest behind her in such a fashion that future archeologists looking over the casts of her movements in the mud would wonder if she were not already wounded in some way, delirious, and headed straight for whatever tar pit might be close at hand.
She came out of the trees into patches of dogwood and mountain ash, dotted here and there with clearings of sedge. Her legs burned slightly and her hands and forearms, though tough from years of working the bar, were scratched and dappled with minor cuts and bruises.
She had no idea where the man who hunted her had gone, and she had seen no more of him. She stopped and just listened to the forest, then satisfied he was gone she put her boots back on one at a time. A mile or so up and over the ridge was the sound of a big truck running down through its gears as it came out of the northern mountains. She tried to listen for more but all she fathomed from it was that perhaps it was a logging truck, though that seemed false to her, the church already having bought and closed the mill years before.
When she reached the road, she did not go directly out. The light was fading and she was beginning to feel the cold. She had no way of knowing exactly where Eden’s Gate was, whether it was right or left, but she was certain it was on this road. She was shivering slightly, the dusk was settling in and the thought of spending another night out here was beginning to weigh heavily on her mind. She stepped now onto the road and she began to run, feeling her lungs beat inside her chest and the air move across her skin.
When the headlights broke from around a bend in the road far off and spread their light toward her she was quick to drop off the road and hide herself within the underbrush. But the vehicle did not pass her by. It stopped fifty feet away, its headlights reaching out across the pavement, and the dusky light of the setting sun giving everything a tinge of auburn red.
She heard a door open, then she heard the sound of boots on cement and she watched the shape of a man walk out and through the light of the headlights as he came toward her. She backed now, increasing her distance, almost certain she would run. Almost certain she would need to dive headlong through the brush, that whoever had seen her would go after her and finish whatever had been started days before.
But when she heard her name it was not the same voice she had heard calling to her in the mountains. It was not John’s voice or any she had heard in a very long time. She stood now and she came forward. She heard her name called again. She walked up onto the road, almost disbelieving she had found him, or that it was him that had actually found her.
“Drew?” she said.
He stood looking down on her from there atop the road. He was thinner than she remembered, but bigger in the chest and in the shoulders and though he was bearded, his skin and eyes were much the same and she knew he was the same brother she had so often thought about and that her father had gone to find.
“Drew,” she said again, just to say it, just to speak his name as if she feared she might not get another chance.
“It’s me,” he said. He walked forward and put a hand out and he pulled her up from out of the roadside ditch. He was a few inches taller than her and he pulled her into him and hugged her, holding her for a long time.
“You heard about Daddy?” she asked. “And Mamma?”
He let her go. He stood close to her, his arms still holding her shoulders. “I heard,” he said. “I heard what happened.”
“He tried to come and get you.” The tears were coming now and she could not stop them. She looked away and he pulled her close again and she could feel the way he held her. She could feel the way his lungs moved and she let her head down onto his chest and she cried for what seemed a very long while.
When she was done, when she had pulled away and had wiped a hand across her eyes, he said, “Let’s get you home. Let’s get you somewhere warm. Let’s get you some food and water. Let’s get you somewhere safe.”
She looked at him for a time and she stood there waiting and thinking of what to say next. She could hardly believe he was here, that he had found her and that he would take her away from this and everything could be the way it had always been meant to be.
“Come on,” he said.
He started to lead her back to the truck, but she stopped and then he stopped. She was looking at the insignia on the side of the truck and then she was looking up at him. “The truck? You’re driving one of their trucks. One of their church trucks.”
He looked at her like she might be crazy. He ran his eyes from her to the truck then back again. “You’re going to be okay,” he said. “You’re going to be just fine. I’m going to take you home. You’ll see. I’m your brother. You’re going to be fine with me.”
She looked at him. She let what he had said sit between them. “You’ll take me home?” she asked. “And you’ll come with me?”
“Yes,” he said. “Now get in the truck and let me help you.”
* * *
WILL CAME TO THE ROAD JUST AS THE BRAKE LIGHTS FLARED ON and the truck moved away. He watched the taillights until they were gone from sight. He had seen the road from higher up and he had seen the truck stop, then Mary May come up out of the ditch with the man standing over her, offering her his hand.
Almost in the same instant Will had gone crashing down through the dogwood and ash that had started to populate the land. He came out into the clearing before the road, knelt and swung
the rifle around and looked through the scope to where the truck had parked there in the middle of the lane. Mary May was holding onto the man and Will put the crosshairs on him and waited for the man to release her. When he had—when he had stepped back from her and turned toward the truck—Will could see him now clear as he had seen Mary May standing there on the mountain looking back at him. It was her brother, Drew. Will let the rifle down and, with one knee still down in the dirt of the field just before the road, he watched both siblings climb into the truck and drive away.
Now, he walked the road for fifty feet and then stood looking out down the empty pavement. The light was all but gone, the blue of night settling in, and he could hear the chirping of frogs in the ditch off the side of the road. When he turned and looked opposite he found a lone maple tree standing in the middle of a clearing. And though it was not yet late summer, the leaves had turned and many had begun to fall and litter the ground below.
Will came down off the road, took a wide step across the ditch, and walked out into the field. The ground was boggy and in places he could see a foul mud that held atop it a greasy oil. He walked almost to the tree, but stopped just before it and stood looking up into the branches, knowing for its height and width that it had lived a long time in this place and might have lived even longer had the earth itself not changed.
As he stood there he could see several leaves come loose then drift down. The tree was not barren but it likely would be soon.
When John’s voice called to him from behind, Will did not turn. He kept looking up at the tree and wondering just how long it would go on.
