Caught in the Crossfire

by Juliann Rich

  Simon turned his wheelchair to face Paul. “You are putting the life of a person at this camp at risk. You are risking Ian’s life, and the best chance that boy has of surviving this storm is standing in front of you. Jonathan was the last person with Ian. He knows where he should begin looking, and Dawn knows that forest better than anyone I know.” Simon’s eyes strayed to Dawn. Something unspoken passed between them. “We have to trust God, Paul. He will guide Jonathan to Ian.”

  An unmistakable look of repulsion crossed Paul’s face. Just for a second, but I saw it.

  “I’m going, Paul. With or without your blessing.” No one spoke to Paul like that, but I didn’t give a damn. I finally understood what was wrong with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

  Paul walked away without another word. Dawn and I pushed open the lodge door, unleashing the rain that fell on us like a stoning and splattered Simon. His face, filled with concern, flashed into view for a brief moment before the door slammed shut. Dawn and I leaned into the straight-line wind that raged off the lake, slamming against the camp and anyone foolish enough to brave it. Dawn grabbed my arm and together we charged back into hell.

  As if the sheets of pounding rain and wind weren’t enough, the sky opened up and hurled Ping-Pong ball sized hail at us. We sprinted across the campground and ducked into the forest where the biggest issues were slippery trails and darkness. If I hadn’t known better, I would have guessed it was the middle of the night.

  “What do you think? Stay together or split up?” Dawn asked me once she’d caught her breath.

  “I think we should split up. We can cover more distance that way. Find him faster.” It surprised me how easily I assumed command. It surprised me even more how easily Dawn followed my lead.

  “Okay, but keep in touch on the walkie-talkie. Take the high trail where you saw him last. I’ll follow the lower trail in case he got lost and wandered off,” Dawn shouted into the wind.

  “Sounds good. Thanks for coming with me. It means a lot.”

  “You’re doing the right thing. Now ask God to guide you to Ian. He’ll help you find him.”

  I clicked on my flashlight and began the slick climb up the steep incline to the upper trail. I stumbled and slid back down. My knees bashed against the protruding rocks. Determined, I grabbed the rocks and scaled the incline like a rock climber until I reached the familiar upper trail and stood outside the bush that led to Porcupine Point.

  “Ian, are you in there?” The screaming wind was my only answer. “Ian, where are you?” It howled in my ears. An owl screeched, ahead of me and farther down the upper trail. I followed its call. When the trail dead-ended, I turned and pushed through the thick bushes into uncharted territory. My foot landed wrong on a root and my ankle twisted. Jolts of pain shot through my foot and into my leg. Hot tears sprang to my eyes, and I bit my lip to stop from yelling out, took a tentative step, screamed, and crashed to the ground in excruciating pain.

  The darkness closed in on me, the same way it had when Ian punched me. “Help me!” I sobbed to God, to my father, maybe to both of them. Was it rain or my own tears that fell from my chin? There was no way to be certain. My panting breath slowed. The tingling began in my hands and moved to my arms, down my chest, and into my legs until all my empty places filled with warmth. I stood and limped forward, pushing my way through a thicket of bushes that scratched my hands and wrists, leaving long red claw marks on my exposed skin. I stepped into a small clearing that was being pummeled by rain. A pile of dirty rags lay in the center of the clearing.

  “Ian, where are you?”

  “Jonathan? Is that you?” The pile of rags rose up from the dip in the ground. Filthy and plastered with dirt and leaves, he looked at me through calm eyes. I hopped and fell on the ground next to him. We clung to each other as wind and rain and hail pounded disapproval on our heads.

  “Yeah, it’s me. We’ve got to get back to the lodge.” I wrapped the raincoat around his thin, shivering shoulders.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing out in this?” Ian’s voice outshouted the thunder.

  I ignored him and reached for my walkie-talkie. “Dawn, I found him. We’re heading back to the lodge.” I struggled to stand up and fell back to the ground.

  “Scratch that, Dawn,” Ian shouted into the walkie-talkie. “Jonathan hurt his ankle. There’s no way we can make it all the way to the lodge.”

  Dawn’s voice crackled through the yellow walkie-talkie in Ian’s hand. “Can you get to my cabin?”

  “Yeah, I think so.”

  “There’s a first-aid kit in the bathroom. Wrap his ankle with an elastic bandage and apply ice. Make a fire to get warm and eat something. I’m going to wait it out in one of the girls’ cabins until this blows over. I’ll come as soon as I can and check on you. Call Paul from my cabin. Let him know where we are and that we’re safe.”

  “Okay.”

  “Ian, it’s good to hear your voice.” Dawn signed off.

  “You’re going to have to lean on me.” Ian knelt and I wrapped my arm around his shoulders. He tried to pull me into a standing position, but pain shot up my entire leg. I collapsed on the ground, panting.

  “Are you freaking kidding me? Get it together. Get off your ass and come with me now.” The tone of his voice snapped me to attention. That’s the Ian I know and—

  I leaned my full weight on him and surrendered to his strength.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Dawn’s cabin was unlocked. Outside the wind screamed and the sky burst open with lightning and thunder aimed right at us.

  “Come here,” he ordered. “I want to take a look at your ankle.”

  I sat down on the cold fireplace hearth and held my ankle out to him. Ian knelt and rolled my pants cuff up.

  “Oh man, that looks bad.” He shook his head.

  I looked down and saw my ankle, already swollen and turning purple. He stomped into the bathroom and returned with dry towels and the first-aid kit. Ian threw the towel at me and bent to concentrate on stabilizing my ankle with an elastic bandage. When he had finished wrapping my foot, he went into the kitchen and returned with a bag of ice. I jumped as the cold and weight of the bag hit my ankle.

  “Quit being such a baby,” he snapped. “Jeez, Jonathan, what were you thinking?”

  “There was no way I was leaving you stranded in the forest again.”

  He looked at me, and his eyes softened for a moment before the cold glare returned. “Paul blew the emergency horn. You should have gone to the lodge where it was safe. Coming to look for me was stupid.” Ian attacked a stack of newspaper by the fireplace, crumpling sheets and hurling them into the fireplace. “How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t need you to come to my rescue? I can handle myself.”

  Stupid! Me and my stupid erroneous assumptions. “I’m sorry. I know you can. You were doing exactly what you were supposed to do. Lying low until the storm passed. Not like me, stumbling around like an idiot and spraining my ankle. At least I hope it’s just a sprain.”

  “Can you move your toes?” He threw small branches on top of the newspaper and refused to look at my foot. It hurt, but I wiggled my heart out. He lit a match and held it to the newspaper.

  “I think it’s just a sprain.”

  “See? You’ll be running out on people again before you know it.” The flames devoured the paper and licked at the white bark on the small birch branches. Black smoke billowed out at us.

  “I’m sorry, Ian. I really am.”

  “It’s going to hurt like hell, but you’re going to be fine.” The fire crackled as the logs were consumed in flame. Thick smoke swirled around us. Ian reached forward and opened the flue.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again.

  “You’re absolutely, one hundred percent right. You are sorry, and I’m sick of apologies. They don’t change anything.” He fumed and walked to Dawn’s desk. He picked up her landline and pressed the button marked Lodge. “Hey, Paul…Yeah, Jonathan found me.
We made it to Dawn’s cabin. She’s holed up in one of the girls’ cabins. We’re safe, but Jonathan is going to need some crutches…Yeah, he sprained his ankle.” The windowpanes rattled from the force of the wind that pummeled the small cabin. The door jumped in its frame. Lightning flashed, followed by a deafening crash of thunder. “No, we are not going to try for the lodge. Not yet. We’ll stay here until this blows over—Paul? Are you there? Paul? Phone’s dead.” He slammed the phone on the charger, stared out the window, and suppressed a shiver.

  “Hey, Ian, it’s warmer over here.” He turned around, looked at me. He shivered again and looked at the crackling fire. My thoughts wandered to the night of the bonfire when more than my hands had burned.

  “You’re blushing. Why?”

  Was that a hint of softness in his voice I heard? My heart thudded in my chest.

  “I don’t know.” Less than five feet separated us in Dawn’s small living room. It might as well have been five thousand miles.

  “Yes, you do.”

  The wind howled and battered the small cabin. I could see the trees whipping through the rain-streaked window.

  “Ian, I…I—”

  “A…N. Yup, that’s my name. Good, now can you form any other words? Should we try Jonathan now?” A slight smile played on his lips.

  “Ian, I don’t know how to do this.” There, I’d said it.

  “Clearly.”

  “Do you? Is this so simple for you that you never struggle with it?”

  “No, it isn’t. Nothing about this is simple, but at least I’m not pretending to be someone I’m not.”

  “You’re right. I have been hiding from everyone. Paul, my parents, my friends. But don’t you understand? I couldn’t let them see the real me. It was”—I clenched my fists and frowned. I had to get this right—“unthinkable before I met you.”

  He crossed the room and sat beside me on the fireplace hearth, and when I touched his knee, he did not pull away. “Holy shit!” He noticed the red blisters that had appeared on my hands over the past two days. “What happened to you?”

  He didn’t know. He still thought his journal had burned in the fire. I pulled it from my back pocket where I had been carrying it and held it out to him. “I meant to give it back to you that night in the forest, but you were so upset and then we…well, we had other things on our minds. And then you wouldn’t talk to me and then—”

  “Please stop saying and then.” He took the journal from me and ran his hand over the blackened cover, his fingers coming away with flakes of ash clinging to them. He traced the inward curves where the fire had feasted on it, the jagged edges crumbling and falling on his legs. “Jake threw it in the fire and you”—he shook his head—“you saved it? Everybody had to know I’d been writing about you. Why? Why would you do that? If you care that much, why did you run out on me?”

  Finally, a chance to tell him. “I wasn’t running away from you, Ian. I was running away from me.”

  He leaned forward, the journal clutched in his hands, and exhaled. “Yeah, I get that.”

  “So you’ll forgive me?” I asked and immediately wished I hadn’t. It sounded too pushy. Too hopeful.

  He turned to look at me, his eyes glistening in the firelight. “I’m going to try, Jonathan. I’m really going to try.”

  *

  The storm raged for hours. Ian curled up on the braided rug in front of the smoldering fire and fought sleep. My chest hurt from trying to keep my feelings inside.

  He rolled on his back and threw an arm over his head, smiling in his sleep. The glowing embers cast long shadows against the log walls and his face, revealing a peacefulness I’d never seen there before. The room darkened into a charcoal wash.

  “That’s what he meant.” I didn’t mean to speak out loud.

  “Hmm?” Ian mumbled. “What who meant?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Go back to sleep. I’m sorry I woke you.”

  Ian opened his eyes and looked at me. “No, it’s okay. Tell me.”

  “It’s just something Simon said that didn’t make sense. He told me to see the light, not just look for it.”

  He sat up, yawning. “Sounds very Simon-esque.”

  I laughed. “Tell me about it. But he was right. I won’t find light by looking directly into it. It just burns my retinas and leaves me with blind spots. No, I have to look at the place where the light falls. That’s where it is.”

  “Where what is?” Amber light played across his face as he smiled at me again.

  “Everything, Ian. Everything.”

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Ian snuck out of the cabin when the rain still fell, but the lightning and thunder had died away. He thought it best if we didn’t walk into camp together. Even though I wished I didn’t, I agreed with him.

  “It’s the last day. Only a few more hours and then you never have to see this place again,” he said, glimpsing only some of my feelings.

  The first rays of tentative pink streaked across the sky when Dawn, carrying crutches, and Bear approached the cabin. I could feel Dawn’s shadow as it moved into the room. She studied me from the doorway, seeing things I could never express.

  “I have to go back, don’t I?”

  “Eventually, but not right this minute. For now I think you should let me adjust your crutches.”

  “Thanks.” I stood and she adjusted the crutches to my height.

  “Do your armpits a favor and don’t lean all your weight on them. Just use them for balance, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Now sit while I make us some breakfast.”

  I sat in Dawn’s old, comfortable plaid chair and inhaled the dust that rose from the stale ash of last night’s fire. Bear stretched and looked me in the eye. He picked up a slimy and well-chewed nub of what was once a rawhide bone and dropped the sticky gift on my leg. Drool dangled from his mouth and landed on my pants.

  “Aw, thanks, Bear. I bet that’s your favorite bone.” I scratched under his chin, which must have felt good because he leaned forward and buried his head in my lap. Dawn moved around her small kitchen. Cabinet and refrigerator doors opened and closed, pans clattered, a whisk stirred something in a bowl. The air filled with smells that set my stomach grumbling. She returned with a steaming mug and a plate of scrambled eggs.

  “Drink. And eat some eggs.”

  I held the stoneware mug to my face and inhaled the soothing scent of orange and clove. I took a sip and warmth spread throughout my body. The dread retreated just a bit. “Mmm, what is it?”

  “It’s a special tea that has healing properties.”

  “Did your mother teach you how to make it?” I imagined an older Native American woman with long braids crushing herbs in a clay pot.

  “No, Hannah did.” Dawn crossed to the window and opened it. A fresh morning breeze circulated through the room. All the scents of danger that had filled the air the night before had disappeared.

  “She did?” I put the mug on the table, uncertain whether or not I wanted anything from Hannah or the world she represented anymore. I picked up a fork and stabbed some eggs. I held them to my mouth, but the smell nauseated me. Dawn caught my eyes and I shoved them in my mouth anyway.

  “Yes, I showed up one night at Paul and Hannah’s cabin, looking pretty much as crappy as you do right now. Hannah made me a cup of that tea, and Paul prayed with me. I found out that my world was okay after all.”

  “Paul said awful things to me.” The anger and accusation in my voice surprised even me.

  “I’m listening.” Dawn sat on the hearth.

  “I didn’t choose this. And I’m not under satanic attack or in bondage to sin. This is just who I am, Dawn, and I can’t pretend to be someone I’m not anymore, but Paul’s never going to accept that.” For the second time in a month, I cried with Dawn. She sat with me until I could speak again. Outside, a chainsaw sprang to life. Bear cocked his head to listen. “And neither will my parents.”

  “You’re probably
right.”

  “So you know? About me? That I’m—” I couldn’t say the word aloud again.

  “That you’re strong and filled with courage and that you have begun a vision quest? Yes, I guessed that.”

  “I’ve begun a what?”

  “A vision quest. It means that you have begun asking questions about your life. More importantly, it means that you have begun to search for your own answers. My people have a saying. No man begins to be until he has seen his vision. The Ojibwe believe that Gichi-manidoo will show you the answers you are looking for when you are ready.”

  “But I’m ready now!” My voice sounded desperate, even to me.

  “You know enough about God to know that our timing is not His timing.”

  “Yeah, but Dawn, you don’t understand. My mother is coming today. I don’t know how I’m going to face her.” The chainsaw chewed into something that resisted. The humming rose higher until it squealed.

  “You’re wrong. I understand better than you know.” Dawn rose and walked into her bedroom. She returned with a picture of a woman with olive skin and black eyes. The family resemblance was unmistakable.

  “Your mother?”

  “Yes. I haven’t seen her in four years.” Dawn traced her mother’s face with her finger.

  “Why?”

  “I came here as a part of an ecology class. What I found changed my life, but not right away. I went back to my college life of studying and partying, but inside, I felt empty. I returned to the reservation that summer. I thought being with my family would fill the hole that grew bigger every day, but it didn’t. So one night, four years ago, I just left. I climbed in my car and drove back here. It was crazy. I mean, I barely knew these people, but they had something I needed. It was the middle of the night when I knocked on Paul and Hannah’s door. He took one look at my face and asked if he could pray with me. I don’t even think I realized that I had begun my vision quest. I just knew that I was hurting, but that night, as Paul prayed, I received my vision. I saw the face of Gichi-manidoo, and it was Jesus Christ. I saw that He loves me more than I could ever imagine being loved. I am a Native American woman who loves Jesus Christ. This is my path, and it gives me such joy to walk it. The only sadness is how it hurts my mother. In her opinion, I turned my back on my people.”