The Guide

by Peter Heller

  Jack stepped back. Instinct. He never let himself get into a grapple.

  “How’d you know we went into town?”

  Kurt didn’t say anything. He turned his head and spat. “You’re getting out on thinner ice,” he said.

  “Second time I’ve heard that tonight. Why? ’Cause I felt like drinking something different than Cutthroat ale?”

  “You make trouble, don’t you?” the manager said quietly. “Wherever you go.” He turned and walked back up into the shadows toward the main house.

  That stung. That might be true, Jack thought.

  * * *

  •

  That night Jack lay awake on the bed fully dressed except boots, with the Pendleton blanket pulled over him and his hands folded under his head. No reason he could articulate, except that he couldn’t sleep and somehow undressing, getting into sheets, slipping off, even, into sleep, would make him more vulnerable than he wanted to be right now. It had been a long day—of fishing, of being closer to Alison, of new people who were smart and challenging—of revelation. Was it? Revelation in Shay’s explanation?

  He didn’t know. It wasn’t just Kurt. Something was off, as it had been at this place from the first moment he was shown his quarters. Even his vulnerability: he sensed danger, but he wasn’t at all sure why, or from where. He might be suffering from PTSD after all—what Wynn’s mother had gently suggested on the phone when he had called to check in last winter.

  He wished he could talk to Pop. As reticent as his father could be, he was as clear-eyed a person as he had ever known, and had sound judgment to go along with it. Uncle Lloyd, too. Lloyd was an extravagant storyteller, and as much as he moved within a cloud of his own laughter, he shared with his brother that remarkable ability to see things clearly and to act with prudence and courage. Jack wished he could be like them. Maybe it was what he wished for more than anything, except for being able to do two days in his life over again.

  It must have been a few hours before dawn when he drifted to sleep. The alarm on his iPhone went off and he shunted the blasts of the hunting horns into his dream, where he was on some kind of warship that had been rocked by an explosion and the bulkheads were gushing seawater and the PA speakers were blaring the all-hands siren. He woke with gray light in the windows and his heart racing and some kind of grief from the dream and he realized as he remembered the last images that there were no other crew in the gangways, no shouts or running sailors. It tore him—the utter solitude of the disaster. And as he sat up against the headboard he thought, or felt, that dying among a band of brothers, or within one’s tribe, was better than trying to get to a lifeboat alone.

  He turned off the alarm, left the phone on the bed table, rubbed his eyes. How different we were than wild animals, or even house cats. They’d had one cat at the ranch they let in the house, and she slept on his legs or feet every night of his life until midway through high school, when she died. When she died she did not find her way to his bed, where he would have lifted her to her usual spot, but she vanished, and he found her a day later curled up in the dust behind the furnace off the laundry room. People need people, more than any other being needs any other being, and Jack thought as he sifted the remnants of the nightmare that the need makes us particularly vulnerable.

  Well, he needed coffee. Maybe company, too. He would have loved the reassurance of Alison beside him in the night, but she was not at all clingy and she knew how to give a new friendship room to breathe. Was it a friendship? He didn’t know what it was. No need to label it. In the taxonomies of relationships there were plenty of strange outliers and hybrids.

  He reached for the phone without looking and heard the thunk as it fell to the floor. Damn. Lucky it had a silicone case. Stiffly, as if he’d taken a long hike the day before, he eased out of bed and crouched into a crawl to look for his phone. Dim in the cabin and he didn’t see it, but he felt under the bedstead, which was a wooden box with maybe an inch gap above the floorboards. He could just get his fingers underneath it to swipe along its length. He did and hit the side of his phone, good, and pulled it out. Except it wasn’t his phone.

  * * *

  •

  It was green. A green case with a pale pink stripe down the middle and the black spot pattern of a rainbow trout. Jack understood immediately that the phone was Ken’s. Now he was wide awake. It was an iPhone and, still on hands and knees, he touched the screen and it lit. Of course it did. Probably only four days since…he wouldn’t let his mind go there. Jack swiped the phone. It was not password protected. It opened on the voice memo app. There were two new recordings. One was titled “URGENT To the Next Guy.” The latest one said simply, “FUCKED.”

  Jack tapped the first. The voice was young, breathless as if the boy had just been running. It was energized with near panic. “You’re the next guy. Prolly a guide. Some shit going on here, I don’t even know. Had a evening off, scouting elk for bow season, nothing says we can’t hunt…I saw the kids—”

  The voice cut. Jack was on all fours and for a second he couldn’t breathe. He remembered the girl running down the road, the deputy intercepting her and slamming her against the car hood. Her terror-stricken face, the scratches on it.

  He breathed. He hit the next memo, “FUCKED.” “Okay I’m fucked I think. If you’re listening I am, I really am.” Now the kid sounded beyond panic. “One of the mercs saw me. Sure of it. I told Jensen there was family trouble and I need out, sorry. Looked at me like I was a worm, said I was broken. Cuz of the…getting caught selling. Fuck him. That was a year ago, I was just helping Sean. Jensen said Den only hires broken people. Said nobody believes ’em. Fuck ’em all. Going back up for one more look and then I’m gone.” Kid had more nerve than Jack had figured. He was clearly scared and pissed off at once. “Den is watching everything. Check the thermostat” was the last thing he said. Then the memo cut.

  * * *

  •

  Broken people. Nobody believes ’em. Us.

  The heat was in Jack’s face. On his knees on the rag rug he was actually shaking. It was a blind fury. Is that the way they—Den, Kurt, whoever—saw him?

  He moved his fingers up toward the head of the bed and felt his own phone and retrieved it. He AirDropped the two voice memos to himself and slid Ken’s phone back under the bed. He stood slowly, glanced at the Nest thermostat on the east wall, and couldn’t think of what to do except walk over to it. It was round and black with a digital screen in the center that said off. He ran his fingers around the cover and with a sharp pull he popped it off. And saw, stuck to a small circuit board, the camera lens. No bigger than the one on his phone, and unmistakable.

  It faced the bed, took in the whole small room, porch door to headboard. If he felt angry and violated before, when he found the camera that watched him fish under the bridge, now it was a white rage. He was about to yank out the bead of lens, but stopped. He took a deep breath and swiftly replaced the cover and tapped the thermostat to on, and ran his finger up the screen until the digital number said 70. Anyone watching through the camera would only see a man who had slept in his clothes, probably too cold with just the blankets; see him approach the thermostat and deliberate and turn it on. And they would think that this tough young honcho guide was really a wimp after all.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Only now did he strip off yesterday’s clothes and take a hot shower in the narrow stall, letting the scalding water pound his neck and shoulders. Eyes closed, he found the razor he’d propped on the soap shelf, and he shaved himself by feel, and by feel nicked his left ear, damn, and washed his hair with the miniature shampoo someone—who was it? Ana—had left a few days before. How many days? It already seemed like a lifetime…

  The whole shower might have taken five minutes. When he dried himself there was blood on the white towel. The nick on the ridge just above his earlobe must have held some kind of blood vess
el because it always took too long to stop bleeding and if he was going to cut himself anywhere, he unerringly found it. He tore off a corner of TP and pressed it onto the cut and it adhered itself and flowered with crimson. In his zip toilet kit he found the vial of styptic powder and he peeled off the sopped tissue and dabbed the cut and it miraculously stopped. Good.

  He had two pairs of clean jeans in the dresser and he pulled one on, and a clean camo tech fishing shirt, and hiking boots not shitkickers, and he coasted the bike down to the lodge.

  * * *

  •

  He stood outside with the bike and he made himself look up as if he were admiring the last stars in a luminous sea of blue. The cold and heedless distances always calmed him, and did now. Cooled the fury, a little.

  Okay, he murmured, act like a guide.

  Before he entered he saw the new couple’s rods already strung in the rack on the outside wall. Curious, he stepped over. They were Winston five weights like his and he lifted them up lightly and turned them toward the porch light. He examined the blanks just forward of the cork grips where he knew the company always engraved the name: Y. Takagi on one, T. Takagi on the other.

  Alison was at the fire already, as were Yumi and Teiji, and he was happy to see them in conversation, he wasn’t sure why. The bona fide Knight Commander of the British Empire and his mute wife wore brightly patterned Norwegian sweaters this morning, and were already seated at their usual table, which was odd. It was as if they wished to remain securely apart this morning. They nodded at Jack and he noticed that the brightness had returned to their eyes and that they were animated. Sir Will had a pair of compact binoculars and he trained them out the window, handed them to Neave. Jack fetched his coffee and as he approached and greeted everyone good morning Alison studied him a moment too long, and her eyes flickered with concern. He wondered if he was so obviously upset.

  The new couple was dressed head to toe in quick-dry khaki. They bowed from the neck and raised their cups—osprey for him, kingfisher for her. Jack appreciated the Takagis. He thought, how perfect: the husband chose a bird of prey as did she. Both birds were fishers but each had different strategies, and he thought that on the river they probably fished with different tactics and style. It would allow them, statistically, to show the trout more and different targets, but he bet that it also contributed to a more harmonious time on the river, which Jack thought fit their personalities.

  Alison said her usual “Sleep well?” and Jack said, “Yes, thank you.” Which was true for a couple of hours. And he could see that she knew he was lying.

  That’s when Jack asked whom the couple would be fishing with and they glanced at each other and Teiji said, “No one. We prefer to be led to the water like a horse…” Teiji interrupted himself. He was smart enough, Jack thought, to see that his metaphor might lead to the perception of an insult to this guide, which Teiji did not at all want to convey. But Jack appreciated it. Being led to the water and forced to drink put being guided in a whole new light.

  Jack rescued him. “I get it. It’s good to fish new water and use the skills you’ve learned on similar streams to figure it out. And sometimes the solitude is the best part.”

  Yumi nodded; it was more like a bow. “That is well put, thank you. That is what we enjoy best.” And she turned to Alison, not wanting to disrespect her, either, in any way. “And we also often still find employing a guide to be the most productive and fun.”

  God, Jack thought. There you have it: it is the most fun either way. Amazing. Was there anyone more polite on earth? Or thoughtful? Did it take twice as much energy to go through the world being this considerate? Alison smiled. She, too, appreciated the effort. She said, “I just go with Jack because he’s cute and tells killer stories.” Which was pretty much true. Scary stories. Jack saw Yumi blush.

  “Has anyone oriented you at all?” he said to the Takagis. “The boundaries, the bridge, the trail?”

  “Yes, thank you,” Teiji said. “Mr. Jensen gave us a very good description from the deck. We plan to fish from just below the bridge upstream this morning. That is, if it does not interfere with the two of you. And then we will have massage and spa treatment in the afternoon.”

  “Yes,” Yumi chimed. “We have been working terribly hard at home. We plan to fish half the time.”

  “And relax the other half,” Alison said. “That sounds perfect to me.”

  Perfect, Jack thought. Fishing and spa time. Or, if Shay was telling the truth, some kind of addiction treatment? The Takagis were the least addicted-seeming people he had ever met. Maybe they would just get massages. But what about Ken, what he had said on the memo, what he had seen. Kids? Half-naked like the girl on the road? Was all this a front for some kind of sex-trafficking ring? He had to remind himself again that he wasn’t the best judge of people, but the Takagis did not seem that type, either. God. He was saved by the bell, because just then Shay breezed out from the kitchen and rang it.

  * * *

  •

  The Takagis were thoughtful enough to allow the famous singer and her guide to have breakfast to themselves. It was clear to Jack that they knew who she was, he could see it in the deference with which they spoke to her, see it in Yumi’s almost painful shyness. But of course they would never raise that part of her life in conversation and Jack could see that they expected the same discretion. And just because they had been invited to join Alison for dinner, they in no way assumed that there was an open invitation for breakfast. They made it clear by their demeanor that they very much enjoyed the company, and also that they would never take anything that wasn’t offered. There was nothing at all sticky about them, nor were they aloof. Jack marveled. He wondered what it would be like to move through life with that much assurance and composure.

  So he and Alison seated themselves at their table by the window, looking down on the first direct sunlight pouring into the canyon like a tide. And they saw below two ducks wing past, the pair in perfect tandem, arrowing downstream—a stuttered flash of white and teal not fifteen feet off the water. What could be better? Again: if one could focus on a tiny corner of the cosmos. Shay said, “Beautiful morning,” and poured more coffee and used tongs to coax fresh hot croissants out of a cloth-covered basket. “There’s local honey in that little ceramic pot,” she said, and wouldn’t look at Jack.

  When she was gone, Alison leaned forward. It was a beautiful morning, and warm, and she herself was stunning. She was wearing a black sports bra and a light cotton button-down open to the sternum. When she leaned forward the table swelled the tops of her freckled breasts and he felt a stab of desire. Could a person be swept by so many emotions at once? The last half hour had been pretty damn rich.

  “What’s up with you and Miss Shay?” she said. “She won’t look at you. Did you call her mother a name?”

  “Sort of.”

  “And you look a little cross-eyed.”

  “I am.”

  “Wanna tell me?”

  “I think so. But not here.”

  She raised one russet eyebrow and winked at him. He thought she did, it was so fast. And she said, “More will be revealed.” When she said it, he couldn’t help but think of her taking off her clothes. He checked himself with an unspoken Get your shit together…

  That was the way the morning was going. He looked out to the deck expecting to see Cody and the Youngens breakfasting by their usual fire, but the table was empty.

  CHAPTER NINE

  They dropped to the river but didn’t fish. They sat on a log in the deep shade. Through the trees they saw the Takagis come down the steep railroad-tie steps and hit the river trail and turn upstream. Someone was doing what they said they would do.

  It was nice to sit and listen to the stream in conversation with itself. It chortled and lapped and threshed. Jack could see an ouzel hopping rock to rock at water’s edge, diving into a burbli
ng pocket and jumping out. The little black bird glistened like the wet stones, and seemed rounded by water like the cobbles, and it bobbed where it stood with its signature inborn rhythm.

  They weren’t in any rush. He needed the calm of the bird, of the morning. As if reading his mind, Alison said, “I wanna go really slow this morning.”

  “Me, too,” he said.

  “If we fish one seam all morning, that’s okay with me.”

  “Okay.”

  He needed the time anyway, to get his thoughts together. They wheeled like a kaleidoscope, without the symmetries. He and Alison sat in silence, both content for the moment just to listen to the babblings of the river, and birdsong, to hear the canyon waking into its day. Alison touched Jack’s arm. “Look,” she whispered. He looked. Coming down the steps at a run was…Cody. Jack didn’t imagine a kid like that running, ever, unless he was on a horse. But he was athletic and balanced, even in his packer boots, and he hit the river trail yards from where they sat, and turned upstream at a brisk trot, just in front of them, through the scrim of trees. A few minutes later he was coming back, this time leading the Takagis. Jack and Alison went very still. The little group was twenty feet away and they could hear them clearly, Teiji saying, “We are embarrassed.”

  “It happens,” Cody was saying over his shoulder.

  Teiji: “We are so sorry. We were certain the treatments were in the afternoon.”

  Yumi (carrying her rod as any expert through trees and over rough ground—by the reel, with the length of the rod facing backward where it would not double and break in a fall, or snag on a branch): “Yes, we were certain it was afternoon.”

  Cody: “That’s tomorrow. No harm, no foul, they’re just getting started.”