“I’m not getting anything,” I said.
“You work this area a lot,” Jeff said. “You ever get a signal?”
“Sometimes up on the bluffs I’ll get a bar or two. Usually I have to drive back to the road and start heading out of the canyons.”
The sound of the helicopter was getting stronger, though as low as we were I still couldn’t spot it.
“We should have checked the pocket on her quiver,” I said. “Looked for her cell phone or a camera.”
I was thinking that if a cell phone or camera hadn’t been in the zipper pocket of the quiver, then there’d be a good chance she had one of the two on her body. Even if they were in her backpack, hopefully the pack was still strapped to her back. The new detection device Colm had mentioned the night before would only be able to identify the subject if she was under snow and if she had some kind of electronic equipment on her that used diodes. Most hunters didn’t wear watches. Didn’t want the unnecessary sound. The experienced hunters would judge the time of day by the angle of light.
“Command, Alpha One,” I said, holding the radio close to my mouth. “Is there a cell phone or digital camera in the subject’s quiver?”
I waited and listened as Colm radioed back and forth with Terry Peterson, the leader of Team Three.
“Negative on a cell phone,” Terry said.
Team Four had been ordered to return the quiver and bow to the command station. Team Three would be proceeding in the direction of Jeff and me.
“You okay?” Jeff asked.
“Yeah.”
“Maybe they’ll find something in this clearing,” he said.
“That’s just it. I’m afraid we won’t like what we find.”
Jeff rolled his chapped lips together. His bushy mustache was flecked with ice. “Answers are better than nothing,” he said.
I thought back to a warm day in early June, when a cool wind from the hills dipped into the valley, and the bed linens, white with patterns of purple lilac, snapped on a clothesline and swelled like a sail. I was eighteen years old. I was lying on the floor of the front porch, staring up at a spiderweb, listening to the sheets, listening to the breeze in the cottonwood trees, watching a struggling fly that was caught in the elegant weave of gossamer. Earlier that day my mother and father had taken off together to get the mail, to pick up grain at the co-op, to check out a parcel of land that was for sale.
A two-hundred-foot dirt driveway wound up to the house, gravel-patched and gullied on the sides. Usually the sound of a vehicle approaching our house was that of an engine gearing down mixed with the subtle crunch of gritty-packed earth and an occasional rock-ping. I smelled the stirred dust almost immediately as my father’s truck sped toward the house. I jackknifed to a sitting position and shielded my eyes.
The truck came to a stop, the engine still running. Dad opened the driver’s-side door, stepped down with his left leg. His right hand gripped the top of the steering wheel. “Prudence, honey, there’s been an accident. There’s been a bad accident. You need to come quick.”
I ran down the steps. I got into the truck, the vinyl seat hot and sticky beneath my palms. “Where’s Mom?” I asked.
“She’s there now. Sweetheart, it’s bad. It’s real bad.”
“Dad, what is it?”
“It’s Brody, sweetheart. Something’s happened to Brody.”
AMY RAYE
Amy Raye spotted drops of blood on saplings within inches of where she had found the arrow. Careful not to step on any recent tracks, she moved forward in an eastward direction as if connecting the dots. Sometimes the blood ran in a thick rivulet down a blade of grass. Other times it filled tiny pools in the ground. The trail led Amy Raye to a steep decline. Elk typically ran downhill to die. Even so, this elk wasn’t giving up.
Amy Raye continued to follow him. A half hour passed, then an hour, then two. The rain fell steadily. Up until that point the elk had stayed in the timber, its blood trail protected by the shelter of the evergreens. He was losing more blood, and he was slowing down, leaving larger pools as he rested. But the terrain had reached an opening where the trees stopped. And there, Amy Raye lost the trail. The elk might as well have vanished. Rain had fallen for hours, had completely drenched the exposed grassy clearing, and it wasn’t letting up, nor showing any sign that it would. Amy Raye leaned her bow against a tree and removed her quiver. She pulled the bugle and cow call over her neck, took off her pack, and stored the tools inside. Then she lowered herself to the ground, crouched on the balls of her feet. The tree’s branches sheltered her from the rain. She drank water, ate a couple of pieces of jerky. In that moment, she felt everything—life, death, the tangy sweet smell of pine, the freshness of the rain. It was the immensity of those feelings that drove her mad at times. These were the moments when she would wonder about it all.
Farrell had thought this time would be good for her. And yet it was her love for him that might drive her away. Leaving Farrell would be the most honest and decent thing she had ever done. But to leave him would mean leaving the children. Being a mother was the one thing in her life that she felt redeemed her. She would still have time with Trevor, but Julia was her stepdaughter, and she worried about the time she would lose with her.
Her love for Farrell had been a selfish one, she knew that, mixed-up and needy. How could she ever explain it to anyone, especially to her husband? Still crouched beneath the boughs, she watched the rain drizzle from the tips of the branches and thought about how her life had gone so wrong.
There were the games when she was young; at least to Lionel and Nan, that was all they were. “Open your mouth wider, don’t use your teeth.” But Nan was always chosen. Nan was the better one. And so Lionel would fuck Amy Raye instead, that was what he said. Her grandparents would have already turned in. And her father would continue to bring her to the farm on the weekends, and she began to crave the things that she was too young to understand were not good for her. That’s how it was for three years, until Lionel left, went to college, and Nan stopped coming to the farm, and Amy Raye found someone else.
It was the middle of summer. She was home alone. The neighbors next door were having a deck added on to the back of their house. They’d hired a carpenter who worked alone. Amy Raye had watched him come and go—a good-looking man, tan and strong, at least ten years older than she. She imagined the taste of his skin, imagined him aroused, and her power over him.
She was wearing a pair of cutoff jean shorts, a tank top, was barefoot. She poured a glass of ice water, left the house, and brought the water to the man. He was bent over a piece of wood that was supported on two sawhorses. His jeans hung low off his hips. He wasn’t wearing a shirt. Sweat glistened on his back. He startled when Amy Raye said, “Hey.”
She handed him the water. “I thought you might be thirsty.”
“Thanks.” He took the water, gulped it down.
They were standing behind the garage. No one could see. She ran the toes of her right foot up the backside of her left calf, pushed her hair out of her face. She watched the man drink the water. When he lowered the cup, she stepped closer, reached for his belt, and with all the deftness in the world undid his buckle, unzipped his pants.
There was another time she had stopped at an auto parts store in Fayetteville. One of her front high beams had burned out. She bought a replacement. She knew how to change the bulb herself, but there was vulnerability on the face of the man behind the counter, and she liked his subtle lisp. “Could you show me how to replace it?” she asked him.
He was glad to. She’d parked at the back of the store, under the shade of a large elm tree. And as he stood in front of the car and began to lean over beneath the hood and try to place his hand on the old bulb, Amy Raye pressed against him from behind and reached around him. It was all so easy, and the power was all hers.
She was careful in whom she select
ed. She’d watch the men before she’d approach them. And only once had she gotten it wrong, had things gotten out of hand. Saddle had been with her that time. After the man had struck Saddle with a limb, and Saddle had lain unconscious, Amy Raye had sworn to herself that she’d had enough, that she would turn her life around. And she did, for a few months, until everything started up again. And one other time, but that one hurt her in a different way.
Before Farrell and Amy Raye married she would go through periods of emotional withdrawal. The first time was after they’d dated for three months. She’d run into some hard times and he’d wanted her to move in. But she didn’t want to move in. She couldn’t see herself settling into a relationship, if for no other reason than she knew she would fail him. And there was something else, the stench of conformity. Instead she left Farrell, moved away without a word. “Not even a postcard,” he’d said to her when she finally called after four months had passed.
“Where are you?” Amy Raye had asked, hearing the noise in the background.
“Buffalo’s.”
She heard him take a swallow of his drink, heard the ice cubes clink against the glass. “What are you drinking?”
He told her he was drinking scotch.
“I thought you preferred Jameson.”
She wanted to tell him about the man she’d seen at the Center Store, and again at the Golden Saloon, the one who looked like Farrell. She wanted to tell him how much she’d missed him.
“I need you,” she said. She was crying then. “Something bad has happened.”
And Farrell took her back, like she knew he would. She told him he was her all, that he surrounded her, even in the corners, and nothing was like him, nothing.
Over time, she would withdraw again. At first it would show itself as a lack of warmth. And then the sarcasm, as if she were punishing him for the only wrong he had committed, which was loving her.
At times Farrell would push back, try to set boundaries. Once he left for a weekend. He told her he needed to get caught up on some projects from work. He would be staying at the home of a client who was going out of town. He assured Amy Raye that he still loved her.
She imagined him arriving at the client’s home, a high-end, three-room condo in Golden, elaborately furnished. She pictured him setting his duffel bag on the bed in the master suite, unpacking his laptop and setting it on a table in the living room that faced a window overlooking the mountains. Maybe he’d open a bottle of an expensive white wine he had purchased, pour a glass, and sit down at his computer. His intention would have been to work. But Amy Raye knew Farrell too well, knew him in a way that she believed no one else ever could. He would have been hoping for a call or a message from her, would have been checking his phone and his email, anticipating her apologizing for her ways, begging him to come home.
And so she sent an email. She could feel Farrell’s heart lighten as he saw a message from her in his inbox. But she knew how Farrell loved her, did not want to lose her, knew how important it was for him to hold the family together, and that was the power she had over him.
You say you need this time to get your work done. Where is your honesty? You stick your hand in a bee’s wick trying to extract some honey . . . and you get stung . . . who would have ever thought? I didn’t look for your hand to sting. It’s just who I am. Nor do I wish to sting anyone’s hand. I feel something man/woman missing between us. Most likely it’s just me. When all else fails, I’m a good bucket to throw it into.
She got the children tucked into bed that night, did the evening chores, crawled into her and Farrell’s bed, and began to read. Several pages in, she heard the door downstairs open and close, heard Farrell’s gentle footfall as he climbed the stairs. She did not look at him as he entered the room, removed his clothes, and climbed in next to her. She set the book down and turned out the light.
At other times over the years he’d wanted them to talk to someone, but she had refused, telling him he was making too much of things and that if he wanted to leave her he could. But she would be gentler and kinder after those conversations. And though she had always worked hard, she would work harder, folding laundry at midnight, hosing down the floor in the garage, spending even more time with the children, playing War and Trouble with them late into the night, even though she’d have to get up early the next day for work. She would lift the covers for Farrell when he’d crawl into bed with her, and wrap her body around him and whisper to him that she loved him. She would prove to Farrell and the children, and herself, that everything was good. These were the times she would go the longest without acting out, when she would convince herself she could get a handle on things. She could see everything during these moments, see camping trips and graduations and grandchildren, see Farrell and her living out their full potential and just how glorious it all would be.
But after eight years, Amy Raye knew she had tired Farrell out, and he’d begun to wear his fatigue like a submission. Instead of telling her he was leaving for a weekend, he would put more time into his work. The lovemaking had waned until it was barely lovemaking at all. The thrill was gone.
The hurting of him had tired her out, too. She’d begun to think of leaving him, of doing the most decent and honorable thing she’d ever done. She’d agreed to go on this trip, not because of Kenny, but to give herself time. Kenny had simply been another option.
Then she and Farrell had taken a day to themselves, had hiked Ypsilon Mountain, and when she saw him, really saw him, an aching love for him stirred, as if it had awakened from a long slumber and was bringing her to a precipice. Nostalgia churned beneath her skin, and at that moment, she’d thought of Saddle, who’d come to her in the night and led her to this loving man. She thought of her faithful dog, who was at least four or five when she took him in, who knew her better than any person, and had loved her just the same. He’d developed arthritis as he’d gotten older, and eventually developed cancer in his hip. The day she had to put him down, a beautiful, clear-sky morning in May, the vet met her in a field. She’d held Saddle in her arms until his eyes glazed over into a cloudy shade of blue. She had not told Farrell she was taking Saddle that day, and when Farrell called and found out, he came home from work, stayed with her, and held her when she cried. And that night when she couldn’t sleep and went outside to search for Saddle in the stars, Farrell woke and found her. He wrapped Saddle’s blanket around her shoulders and stayed with her until sunrise. And while Farrell had held her, she’d wanted to tell him everything; she’d wanted to come clean. She wanted to believe that he, like Saddle, could love her unconditionally, might even help her find her way back to the person she should have been.
PRU
Colm had reassigned the search teams. They would now cover quadrants from the point of the hat and gun. The area was teeming with operations. In addition to the air search and the electronic frequency detector, another volunteer from Mesa County had brought an infrared scanner to the site. The scanner had proven critical in a search during the summer when a hiker went missing in the Black Canyon near Gunnison. The scanner, being used from a helicopter, had picked up the flicking of a lighter from about a hundred yards away. The hiker had fallen down a ragged incline, sprained his wrist, broken an ankle, and suffered minor scrapes and bruises. But he was alive.
“Alpha One, Command,” Colm called over the radio.
“Command, go ahead,” I said.
“It might be time you looked for a cache,” Colm said.
I asked him to relay some of the coordinates that Glade had given him.
“Heading there now,” I said.
If Amy Raye had shot herself, her body could very well have been dragged off by a lion and concealed. Jeff and I made our way back up to the top of the ridge and then began climbing north. Glade had said the old cache was about twenty yards from the edge of the butte. Within another hour we were in the area.
“You see any fe
line prints?” I asked Jeff.
“Negative,” he said.
And then maybe a hundred feet from one of the suggested coordinates Glade had given us, we found a cache in a grove of pinyons that backed up to a rocky overhang. After a lion fed on his kill, he’d cover it in a secluded spot, where he could return to feed on the prey for several days.
The cache looked old, maybe a couple of years. The trees and the overhang had buffered the area from the snow.
Jeff knelt and began removing some of the branches and debris the lion had used to cover his kill. I commanded Kona to sit, and then Jeff and I began inspecting the bones. There were a number of large rib bones, a femur, part of a spine.
“They go for the head,” Jeff said. “Or the windpipe.”
I walked around the edge of the cache, my eyes searching the timber every so often for any trace of movement. I knew with a cache this old the lion would have long since moved on to a different area in his home range, but I also knew lion were territorial. Once they’d established themselves as residents of an area, they’d fight other lion to death to protect it.
And then I stopped. “Jeff, over here,” I said.
Jeff stood and walked toward me. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he said.
We were both looking at the leg of a horse, the hoof intact.
“We’re a long way from any of the ranches,” I told him.
“That’s not a ranch horse,” he said. “There’s no iron on the hoof.”
We were looking at the leg of one of the wild horses. “Maybe that’s why I never see the band around here,” I said. “Maybe they got spooked.”
“If there’s a lion around, there’s another cache,” Jeff said.
“Don’t know that we’re going to be able to find it in this weather. Hard to believe we found this one.” And then, “Jeff, what do you think the odds are of a cougar attacking Amy Raye? I don’t know that I can ever recall a lion attacking a person anywhere near these parts,” I said.
Breaking Wild Page 9
