Darwin Expedition

by Diane Tullson

  Tej laughs. “I’ve heard of bears running away with bullets in their skull. I don’t think your rock did much damage.”

  I say, “Well, I guess I scared it away, which is more than you did.”

  “The bear was just bluffing. It wouldn’t have attacked us.”

  “Oh, and you weren’t scared at all.”

  He turns to look at me. “You’re scared of bears because you don’t understand them. Like you don’t understand most things.”

  I know where this is going. “If this is about me leaving Tremblay with you, I understand enough.”

  He shakes his head. “You don’t. You only understand what you know, and all you know is Tremblay. It’s a big, wide world out there, Liam.” He sneers. “The only thing big and wide in Tremblay is Jordan Campbell’s ass.” He laughs.

  I feel my face go red. “Is that supposed to be a joke, Tej?”

  He shakes his head. “Of course it’s a joke. You have no sense of humor.” He sniggers. “Maybe Jordan has sucked it out of you.”

  “Maybe you should shut up about Jordan.”

  “She’s holding you back, my friend.”

  I move in close to his face. “I’d rather be in Tremblay with Jordan than go live in some crap-hole college apartment with a bunch of guys who smoke and talk about girls because they never get a girl and never will because they’re so friggin’ conceited.”

  Tej looks a bit like the bear right now. His eyes have the same maniac gleam. He says, “There’s nothing wrong with being an intellectual.”

  “There is if you’re also an asshole.”

  He flips me the bird. “Fine. Rot in Tremblay. Work in the mill for as long as it stays open. Or pump gas. Any idiot can pump gas. Marry Jordan and have six kids. She’ll already have a couple of her own from bedding everyone else in town, but what’s a few more?”

  My face is burning, and I feel my hands forming fists. “Jordan likes me the way I am. She doesn’t try to make me into something else. And just because she turned you down for a date doesn’t make her a whore. If it did, then every girl in Tremblay would be a whore.”

  For a second it looks like he’s going to take a swing at me, but then he drops his arm. He tips his head. “Do you hear that?”

  “What?”

  He holds up his hand. “Listen.” He cocks his head. “It’s a siren. An ambulance or something.”

  I can hear it now, but barely. “On the highway.”

  Tej breaks into a grin. “The highway.”

  We start to run.

  Chapter Eight

  I’m in the lead now, running in the direction of the sound of the highway. Tej is panting to keep up, but I don’t care if I’m leaving him in my dust. I’m thinking about hamburgers, a six-patty monster dripping with cheese. And milkshakes. Chocolate. Strawberry. Both. And apples, a whole bag of apples. And pizza. My legs burn and the back of my throat feels like I’ve swallowed a scrub brush. “Hurry!”

  We’re charging up a slope strewn with rocks. Behind me, Tej stumbles and I turn to haul him to his feet. The sound of the siren has faded to nothing, but it plays in my memory. The highway. We’re going home!

  The slope grows steep and I have to scramble. I use my hands to pull myself up the rocks. Finally, the slope flattens to a broad plateau.

  Tej calls from below me. “Can you see it?”

  The light is getting flat. “It must be over the rise.” I wait for Tej to catch up, and then I start running again.

  I don’t know what makes me stop, but I do, and good thing. At the edge of the rise, the ground falls away down a sheer rock face, so far down that it makes me dizzy. I fall to my knees.

  Tej runs up behind me and I yank him by his legs to stop him from going over the precipice. He takes a look over the edge. “Oh no.”

  We can see the highway, all right. It snakes through the valley far below us. Cars on the highway look the size of toys. Tej flips on his cell phone and then swears as he snaps it closed again. “Nothing.” He jumps to his feet and starts shouting at the cars, “Hey, we’re here!”

  “We’re too far away. They’ll never see us.”

  Still shouting, he waves his hands over his head.

  “ Like that‘s going to make a difference.”

  He throws himself on the ground beside me. “Well, I found the highway. Now we just have to get down to it.”

  I scan the rock face. “We’ll k ill ourselves if we try to climb.” I’m so hungry I’m half-tempted to try it.

  He says, “We’ll climb down the backside of the mountain and circle around to the highway.”

  Up here, we’re at the edge of everything we know. The highway leads home. One of those cars could be my dad. I swallow a lump in my throat. “I can’t do it, Tej.”

  Clouds roll around us, deadening the last light of the afternoon. I watch the highway vanish in the cloud. Maybe it was there all day yesterday and we just couldn’t see it. I shiver, suddenly cold.

  “We can do it, Liam.”

  “We’ll be out here another night.”

  Tej nods. “Maybe. We’ll walk as long as we can.”

  With a resigned sigh, I hoist myself to my feet.

  Tej takes a granola bar out of his pocket. “The last one.” He rips the package and hands me half. The bar is basically crumbs. I put it in my mouth, not even tasting it. It’s our last bite of food, night is dropping on us, and somewhere out there a bear could be just as hungry as we are.

  Chapter Nine

  Down. Down. Just keep walking down. One foot. The other foot. Down. Down. Down.

  It’s fully dark now, so dark that I have to keep my nose at Tej’s pack to be able to see him. The ground is uneven and my knees are sore from jamming my feet in holes. We don’t stop to rest because when we stop, our sweat starts to freeze. So we walk. Down. Down.

  We break back into the trees about midnight. The clouds thickened through the evening so that the stars and moon have disappeared. There is nothing but black sky. In the trees, I stop trying to see. Tej walks with his hands in front of his face to sweep away the tree branches, and I follow in his path. If he stumbles on a root or fallen tree, I fall on top of him. We’re not talking because there’s nothing to say. We’re walking. Down.

  We’re making enough noise, what with the branches we’re breaking. If there’s anything in this forest, it knows we’re here. And it knows we’re crazy.

  Crazy. I feel a light touch on the back of my neck and it makes me spin. A white flash of under-wing appears as a bird swoops across the path behind me and disappears into a high tree.

  “An owl!” I grab Tej by the pack and point up into the tree. “It touched me as it flew past!”

  Tej shakes his head. “Too bad, Liam. That means the owl is calling you to die.”

  I check his face to make sure he’s joking. He grins.

  “Not,” I say. “That’s if you hear an owl call your name.”

  “I’d say that if an owl actually taps you on the shoulder, it really wants you.”

  “Well, I’m not planning on packing it in.”

  “I don’t know, Liam. Looks like you’re going to win the Darwin Award—you’re dying young and stupid before you can pass along your genes. Our species is better for it.”

  He turns to continue walking and slams headfirst into a thick branch. “Ow!”

  I laugh. “Looks like I’m in good company. We must bet he Darwin Expedition.”

  Tej rubs his head. “The forest is too thick to walk in at night. We’ll stop and get a fire going. It’ll be light in a few hours and we can start again.”

  Images of hamburgers and milkshakes dissolve in my mind. I toss my pack on the ground. I watch while Tej gets a fire going, and in the light of the small blaze we gather deadfall. The trees are so dense right here that there’s little undergrowth. But the fire could spread to the trees, so we keep it small, feeding it branches to keep it going.

  We hug the fire, Tej on one side, me on the other. Across the fire,
Tej’s face glows red. His eyes are half-closed. He sits with his knees drawn up to his chest. “That bear that took my uncle’s sheep?” Tej pauses. Then he says, “They never caught that bear.”

  “I thought you said your uncle shot it.”

  “He did. But the bear ran off. They tried to find it, and they set traps. They actually caught it too. But it broke out of the trap, left two of its toes behind.”

  My stomach does an unpleasant roll. “That would make for one pissed-off bear.”

  “They tried to trap it again, but it was on to them. Every year they set traps, but no matter how they try to disguise the trap, the bear sniffs it out.” Tej’s voice is slow with sleep. “They never catch it. It comes into the pasture every spring and takes a sheep. Then it buggers off. They know it’s the same bear because of its three-toed tracks.”

  I put another branch on the fire. “Payback time for the bear?”

  Tej rolls onto his side and puts his head on the ground. “I think the bear wakes up hungry from hibernating all winter. So it eats a sheep. Then it goes away and does normal bear things.”

  Normal bear things. If a bear eats an elk calf, or a sheep, how weird is it to think a bear might eat a human? Or maybe Tej is right—bears don’t eat humans. But they might give us a swat that crushes our skull. A bear could crack our heads just like I broke those eggs when I dropped them.

  “Last year my uncle saw smaller tracks too, like the bear had brought a cub. My uncle thinks the bear was teaching the cub to avoid traps. And about the taste of mutton.” Tej closes his eyes.

  I listen to Tej’s breathing deepen as he sleeps. I don’t feel sleepy. I’m beyond tired. I lean back against a tree. The fire feels good. I let the heat of the flames soak into my feet and shins. I hold my hands out, warming them over the fire. I feed the fire and listen to it crackle and pop. My eyes get heavy.

  The bear’s jaws made that sa me popping sound.

  I jerk my head up. That was hours ago and miles away. The bear is long gone.

  I wonder if the owl has found some tasty rodent to eat. Yum. I let my head drop back against the tree.

  It’s all about food, really, for owls and bears. My stomach rumbles. And for me. Food and sex. I don’t have personal experience with the sex part. Tej thinks that’s all Jordan and I do. Not. Jordan isn’t in a hurry to have sex. And I don’t mind too much. I like that Jordan is happy with me.

  Tej sets the bar high for people. Jordan could be royalty and she wouldn’t be good

  enough, not in Tej’s opinion. He’s like that with everyone. He’s really hard on himself.

  I don’t know how he puts up with me.

  I fall asleep, I’m sure, because when I wake up, the fire is out and Tej is sitting up straight, peering into the trees. The first strands of dawn lighten the forest. Tej’s hat is covered in a light dusting of snow.

  “What?” I try to follow his stare. A skiff of new snow coats the ground.

  Tej scrambles to his feet. “It was nothing, just a branch snapping. A squirrel probably.”

  I heave myself up. Every muscle in my body complains. My clothes feel damp and chilled. I shiver. I turn to take a leak. Tej swings his pack on. “Come on,” he says. “We need to move.”

  “Yeah, yeah.” I watch the snow steam yellow.

  “Now, Liam.”

  I look at Tej’s face. He’s shivering and pale. His lips are blue. “Okay.” I zip up. That’s when I see them, clearly marked in the fresh snow, a stone’s throw from where we slept—the big-clawed tracks of a grizzly.

  Chapter Ten

  “Is it the same bear?”

  Tej’s teeth chatter when he speaks. “More than one bear,” he says.

  “More than one?” Tracks lace in and out of the trees around our camp. In one place I can see where a bear plunked its butt on the ground. It’s a large impression in the snow. Very large.

  Tej points to a set of tracks off to the side. “Those are bigger tracks.”

  Almost twice the size. I swallow.

  Tej says, “Could be a sow and the yearling, or a different yearling and its mother. But it’s more than one bear, for sure.”

  Despite the cold, I’m sweating.

  He motions with his hand. “Come on.”

  I don’t question Tej on that. We take off through the trees. Snow from the branches plops on our heads; the ground is slippery. Tej falls and I pull him up by his pack. “Let me go first.”

  He doesn’t speak, just steps in behind me. That should have been my first clue. When Tej is silent, something is wrong. I glance behind me to find he’s dropped way back. “Pick up the pace, Tej!”

  He stands and looks at me.

  “What the...?” I walk back to him.

  He drops down to his knees. “I’m tired. I need to rest.”

  I yank on his arm. “We just started. Get up.”

  “I’m cold.”

  “So am I. If you walk faster, you’ll warm up.”

  “Maybe you should just go.”

  I yank on his arm, hard enough that he should cry out. But he doesn’t. “Tej, you’re talking like a crazy person. I’m not going to leave you.”

  “I don’t know where we are, Liam. I never knew. I just said I did. When I heard that siren yesterday, I thought we were out, but we’re not. And I don’t know how to get out. We’re going to die and they’ll never even find our bones.”

  “You don’t know where we are? “ Whatever concern I felt for him vanishes. “You never knew?” I reach down with both hands and haul him to his feet. “Well, thank you for bringing me with you.” I shove him in the chest. “For taking the stupid forestry road in the first place. For rolling your truck and almost killing us right then and there.” I shove him again. “For hanging off my ass since first grade.”

  “I didn’t force you to take this trip.”

  “No, you just expected I would. Like you expect me to do everything you want. You know how often I’ve turned down parties because they didn’t invite you too? You know how often I’ve gone to parties with people you like, and I sit there all night wishing I were anywhere else?”

  Tej looks away from me.

  “I’m sick of you. I’m sick of the way you talk to me. I’m sick of your so-called jokes about Jordan.” I suck in a breath. “Don’t you ever say anything about Jordan again. I never should have listened to you about anything. I’ll be happy when you leave town, Tej. Then I can get on with my own life.”

  His voice is small. “So, go. Piss off.”

  “I will.” I take a step away from him.

  “When I leave Tremblay, I’m not coming back.”

  “Good. We’ll be a better town for it.”

  “You don’t know where you’re going either, Einstein.”

  “Like I care. At least I’ll be rid of you.”

  I break into a run. Tree branches snag on my pack. I rip off my pack and leave it. The downward grade increases and I bounce against the trees, pinballing down the mountain. I don’t think I could stop even if I wanted to. My head starts to spin and I grab onto a tree to slow myself.

  Maybe all that has kept those bears from killing us is that we’re two people together. Maybe, apart, they’ll pick us off. Or maybe they’ll be satisfied with Tej.

  Tej. I look back the way I’ve come. I can’t see him.

  He doesn’t mean to be a butthead, I know that. I know him. When we snowboard together, or play sports, or watch movies, he’s the best guy on the planet. He just can’t stand being wrong. He gets a hundred percent on a math test, and then he agonizes over the bonus question he missed. And with me, he’ll bluff rather than admit he made a mistake.

  He’s scared about leaving Tremblay, I know he is. I’m scared about him leaving. He’s still leading, but I’m not following, not this time. I don’t quite know where that leaves me.

  In football, I love the long bombs that bring the crowd to its feet. But sometimes the best play is into the thickest resistance. These plays aren’t sp
ectacular, but they are solid and what you expect, a few yards gained each time. That’s the way it is with Tej: not always what you want, but solid and predictable. I head back up the mountain.

  I find Tej about halfway up, picking his way from tree to tree. He doesn’t look surprised. I guess I’m predictable too. He doesn’t say anything to me, just takes the lead again. And I let him.

  The sky has lightened so that blue shows now and then. Otherwise we’d never have seen the far-off plume of smoke. Not a forest fire, not when it’s been so wet. Man-made smoke. Like from a smokestack.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tej surveys the rock face above us. “Looks like granite. The smoke could be coming from a quarry,” he says. We’re perched at the edge of a scree slope that extends above us and then down a good ways through a gully to a creek. We can’t see any buildings; they must be too far away.

  The scree is basically flat shards of rock smaller than my hand, but the slope is dotted with a few chunks the size of soccer balls. I heft one of the bigger rocks and lob it down the slope. It rolls a couple of times and then catches air, bouncing down the slope. Behind, it leaves a light-colored wake of the smaller rock.

  Tej whistles. “It’s like liquid rock.”

  “Or snow. We can boot-ski.”

  Tej looks at me. “It’ll shred you if you fall.”

  “I don’t plan on falling.”

  “That’s because you’re an idiot.” He peers down the gully. “It’s a friggin’ double black diamond.”

  “Sounds like you’re scared.” I make a chicken sound.

  “Smart and scared are not the same thing. I just happen to know the logical consequence of doing something stupid.”

  I ignore the superior tone in his voice. “You even smell like a chicken.” I sniff the air. “Like you’ve pissed yourself. Again.”

  “I don’t smell anything.” Tej sniffs too. “Oh wait, I do. It smells like you, only more.”