Reagan's Ashes

by Jim Heskett

  Reagan and Charlie took up seats on large rocks next to the trail, and Dalton stepped into the thick of the trees to find a secluded spot to take a leak. He hiked for three minutes until he was far enough away that he couldn’t see them, and then found a cluster of trees to provide cover. He stood on the sloped ground, one foot rested against the trunk of a tree so moist and rotted that it barely held together when he put his weight on it.

  When he’d finished, he zipped up his jeans and made the arduous trek back across the brush toward the trail. Before he was clear of the trees, he saw Reagan sitting on a rock, leaning back with her hands behind her. The way she was reclining pulled her shirt tight against her tits.

  But the troubling thing was the strange guy standing over her. They were both smiling, and Dalton got the feeling this guy was a douchebag. Smarmy grin. Beady eyes.

  Charlie was away from the trail, taking closeup pictures of a swarm of ants on a log. Dalton stepped out into the clearing, headed straight for his cousin.

  “I came down over flattop yesterday,” the strange guy said. “Saw tons of marmots up there. Seems like they’re getting more fearless each year. One tried to steal my granola bar when I wasn’t looking.”

  She laughed at this, even blushed a little. This guy looked at least ten years older than her. Just the way he loomed over her was creepy enough to say something.

  “Excuse me,” Dalton said. “What are you doing?”

  The strange man turned and looked at Dalton for the first time. He was tall and square-jawed, wearing one of those bicycle caps with the tiny brims.

  “I’m talking to my new friend here,” the strange guy said.

  Dalton pointed at her. “That’s my cousin.”

  The man kept staring, a look on his mug like he couldn’t care less.

  “Her dad died last week,” Dalton said. “I think you should move along.”

  Reagan and her new friend both dropped their jaws.

  “Dalton, what the hell is your problem?” she said.

  The stranger snatched his pack from the ground, buckled his hip strap and pulled his hiking poles from slots on either side. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause any trouble or anything like that. I was just chatting with a fellow hiker.”

  “You’re not causing any trouble,” she said, raising a hand to stop him, but her words came too late. The guy was already starting down the trail.

  “That’s right,” Dalton said. “Keep on walking, buddy.”

  The guy didn’t turn around to respond, and Dalton kept watch as this loser slinked away. Nobody wants to mess with Dalton Darby.

  Reagan leaped to her feet, her arms crossed in front of her. “Nice, Dalton. Real nice. Why did you do that?”

  Dalton shrunk the space between them. “Me? I’m the dipshit here? Your dad died, you’ve got a boyfriend at home waiting for you, and you’re flirting with some old guy out here in the middle of nowhere?”

  She uncrossed her arms and put them on her hips. “Flirting with him? That’s ridiculous. He was a nice guy, and we were talking about the trail up ahead. Only you would see something sinister in that.”

  “You were definitely flirting with him.”

  She huffed a sigh. “This is just like high school.”

  “You don’t understand how guys think, Reagan,” he said, pointing at his temple. “You smile at some guy, and he thinks you’re inviting him into your panties. Next thing you know, that guy’s following us back to our campsite tonight and stretching duct tape over your motherfucking mouth.”

  “You’re insane.”

  Charlie finally took notice and wandered back to where they were standing. “Is something going on?”

  “Nothing’s going on,” Dalton said. “She thinks she’s so damn smart she can outwit some rapist.”

  Charlie frowned, glancing back and forth between them. Reagan’s nostrils flared as she pushed air in and out. Dalton couldn’t believe how unappreciative this dumb bitch was after he had just saved her life. She had no idea how the real world worked.

  “You don’t have to act so paranoid and be the big man out here,” she said. “There are tons of nice people hiking in the park. It’s not like we’re on Colfax Street and someone is trying to break into your car.”

  “I’m just trying to keep you out of trouble.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but said nothing. Tears swelled in her eyes, and Dalton felt himself getting angry. She was going to use the waterworks method of winning the argument.

  “Do you think this is what my dad would have wanted? Us arguing out here when I’m… we’re supposed to be taking this trip for him?”

  “You have no idea what your dad would have wanted,” Dalton said.

  Charlie had been ping-ponging his looks back and forth between them, but he settled on Dalton. “What are you talking about?”

  She glared, awaiting an answer to Charlie’s question.

  Frustration bubbled up and spilled over. No more of this idealized bullshit. “Fine. You think your old man was some magical, perfect, TV-dad kind of guy? He wasn’t.”

  She seemed too shocked to speak. He knew he should stop there, but couldn’t resist. “Your dad was a gambling addict and a thief who lost all your family’s money, and left you all with shit. How’s that for father of the year? Does that make you want to honor his memory?”

  Her face transformed into horror. In a flash, she took off, rushing past them and into the cluster of trees.

  Dalton watched her go, feeling the enormity of the stupid thing he’d said press against him until his head began to throb.

  Charlie let out a little whimper. “What just happened?”

  Dalton looked at the ground, groaned, and kicked a clump of spongy moss covering a rock. “Damn it. I fucked up; that’s what happened.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  11:50 am

  Reagan ran. She hopped over tree branches, stumps, and crumbled bits of boulders as she dashed into the thicket and up a hill. Her ankle caught in the roots of a massive overturned tree and she tumbled.

  She reached for her throbbing ankle, pushing around the bone and wriggling it. The ankle seemed to be okay, but her chest was heaving and heat flushed her face. Orange threatened to become a violent red. Panic swelled, but she forced it down.

  She focused on her meditation practice. Visualize a candle. A light breeze blows it left and right, but the candle stays lit. Always lit.

  Why would Dalton say those terrible things? Maybe Dad wasn’t perfect, but a gambler who lost all the family’s money? No way. Not possible. They never had much money to begin with. He was always away on business trips so when would he ever have had time to gamble?

  Empty casket. Empty casket. Empty casket.

  If Spoon were here, he would label Dalton a bogan or drongo or some other cute Australian word that would make her giggle and the whole situation seem silly. But he wasn’t here, and a quick check of her cell phone showed no service, so she couldn’t call him. She was on her own.

  A spider the size of a quarter crawled across the ground toward her, then disappeared underneath some fallen leaves.

  In a few minutes, her pulse had leveled, and she was ready to get back to the trail. Every minute spent not hiking was another minute of wasted daylight.

  She resolved that not only did she have to live with her trailmates, she’d have to learn how to tune them out, which she hadn’t done so far. She would survive this and honor Dad’s memory, despite Dalton’s jackass behavior. Time to focus again. Next step was getting to the campsite and getting some alone time. Just a few hours away.

  Dalton was grieving the loss in his own way, and maybe he needed to paint Dad in a bad light to make his peace with it. Other people had lost Mitchell Darby, too. Maybe Dalton couldn’t see that his chosen coping method caused Reagan pain.

  She stood up, dusted the pine needles from her hands and walked back toward Dalton and Charlie. Seeing Dalton again reignited the anger, but she took a deep b
reath and reminded herself to stay calm. Re-frame the experience and get some time to build perspective.

  “Reagan,” he said as she emerged from the trees.

  She held up the palm of her hand. Don’t talk to me.

  He stayed silent while she donned her pack and buckled in. As the weight settled on her shoulders, she could already feel the stiffness in her hips and neck where the pack was making contact. Another reason to hurry to the campsite.

  “Alright Fatty McFatterson, get your pack on,” Dalton said to Charlie.

  Just like that, she lost her ability to tune them out. Red flared. She pointed a finger at Dalton’s face. “And you can stop that right now. I told you already not to do that.”

  “I’m just playing around. He knows I'm not serious.”

  Charlie ducked his head, looking embarrassed.

  “I don’t care if you mean it or if you’re joking,” Reagan said. “And for the record, I was not flirting with that guy. We were talking, that’s it.”

  “If you say so, cuz.” He tilted his head at the trail. “Lead on, then.”

  They continued to put boot in front of boot, soon crossing a wooden bridge over the rushing Tonahutu creek. She remembered several of these stream crossings from the hike with Dad, and that she’d counted them, but now she couldn’t recall how many there were. A half dozen on the first day? Maybe more.

  As the trail elevated, the trashcan-sized rocks along the meadows became larger and larger, and the path soon snaked around boulders covered with some kind of orange and green algae. Charlie often paused to take closeup pictures of the rocks. The air smelled minty and the temperature difference between sun and shade became more noticeable.

  The sounds of poles clicking and hip belts shifting filled her ears, and for now, her companions were at least silent.

  They started up a series of switchbacks, and at each sharp turn, Reagan peeked down at her trailmates below her. Dalton had found a suitable stick somewhere to use as a pole. Earbuds dangled from his ears, and he was bobbing his head to music. Rap, probably, if he still had the same musical taste as in high school. Charlie held both of his poles in one hand, because the other hand was clutching his camera, and he was snapping pictures of the trees and mountain squirrels, barely noticing where he was going.

  At the top of the switchbacks, the trail leveled and they came upon another clearing, shaped like a bowl at the foot of a steep set of foothills. Except this time, they weren’t alone.

  Across the clearing, maybe five hundred feet, a herd of moose hovered near the trees, munching leaves from low-hanging branches. Reagan counted a half dozen of the creatures, each of them larger than a horse. Jagged antlers like razor-sharp fingers topped their heads. Males. At least no females and therefore no calves, so less dangerous. Probably.

  During mating season, however, coming in close contact with any moose could be a lethal activity. Mating season should have already ended, but she couldn’t be sure. No sense being foolish. “Stop,” she said to her cousins.

  “Are those elk?” said Charlie.

  Reagan leaned forward on her hiking poles to shift her pack and give her aching shoulders a break. “No, elk are smaller. Also usually lighter. You can tell by the big belly.”

  “But they’re not dangerous, right?” Dalton said. “Not like bears or anything like that.”

  “Oh, no, they can definitely be dangerous,” Reagan said. “Up close, or if you come between a cow and her calf. We’ll be fine if we stay clear enough out of their way by going around the edge.”

  She studied the meadow. The trail twisted along the left side, near to the trees. The herd was close to where the trail disappeared back into the forest. The meadow opened to the right and ended at a scree field with a steep incline to a mountain peak. The ground between appeared wet like marshland.

  Clouds rolled across the sky. They didn’t look dark, but sometimes rain came from the gray ones. Detouring to the right side of the meadow would cost them twenty minutes. Or, the moose might decide to meander that way, and then they’d have to reroute again.

  She pointed to the mountain peak. “We’ll just hug the right side of the meadow.”

  “Hell no,” Dalton said. “Let’s keep to the trail. We can throw rocks or something to scare them off.”

  She stared at him, her lips pursed. “No. You listen to me. We’re going to go around, and that’s all there is to it.” After what he’d said about Dad, she wasn’t going to submit to his demands again today.

  Dalton seemed to appreciate this as he lifted his hands to show her his palms. “Okay, cuz, whatever you say. It’s your show.”

  An apology would have been better, but it would have to do.

  They separated from the trail and walked as close to the edge of the meadow as possible. Reagan unbuckled her hip belt as they strode across the marshy plain. If necessary, she could drop the pack and scurry up a tree. A moose might ram the tree and knock her out of it, or it might not. They weren’t like bears, which usually fled from a loud shout or a perfectly-timed rock to the nose. When moose were threatened or angry, all you could do was escape. Run like the devil and hope for the best.

  She kept an eye on the herd and when they’d reached the far side of the meadow, they turned parallel to the rocky scree field, toward the trees.

  “How far do we need to go this way?” Charlie said.

  “Just a few minutes,” Reagan said. “If they stay where they are.”

  Reagan looked at her youngest cousin. He was sweating, his jaw was working up and down. She stopped walking and waited for him to catch up. “It’s okay, Charlie. We’re going to be fine. They won’t have any reason to mess with us unless we give them one.”

  He let out an enormous sigh. Dalton shook his head and pushed forward as if Reagan and Charlie were fools to make such a big deal out of this situation.

  When they reached the trees and were the closest they’d yet come, some of the creatures finally took notice, but none of them moved. Then a black bird squawked and leaped from a perch on a branch near the moose, and it spooked the herd. Big hooves pounded the green earth as one and then all of them launched their gigantic bodies across the marsh. The ground rumbled with the thunder of their movement. Fortunately, they trotted in the direction Reagan and her trailmates had come, not where they were going.

  The sound of birds returned when the meadow had cleared.

  Reagan wiped her brow with the back of her hand. “Okay, we’re good. Just a few minutes out of the way. No big deal.”

  When they returned to the trail proper, the sounds of the creek became louder, meaning Granite Falls was nearby. In another five minutes through the trees as the trail rose and a small cliff overlooked the creek, she found a wooden board atop a post. Carved into the board were five lines in the shape of a hut. Backcountry camping site. She hunted around for an arrowhead marker nailed to a tree, and there was a small footpath leading to a side trail. There was the red plastic arrowhead, ten feet off the ground.

  She pointed to the marker. “Backcountry site marker. This will lead us to where we can camp.”

  “Fucking finally,” Dalton said, wiping his sleeve across his cheek.

  They crossed onto the footpath as the sounds of rushing water grew louder, drowning out the cavalcade of inner conversation galloping through Reagan’s head.

  “I can’t wait to get this pack off,” Charlie said. “My shoulders are killing me.”

  One red arrowhead marker, then two, then the footpath elevated over a little ridge.

  “It’s got to be on the other side of this ridge,” Reagan said.

  And it was. But not as they had hoped.

  As they crossed the ridge and looked down into the open area that was Granite Falls backcountry site #89, Reagan’s jaw clenched. A spiderweb of fallen trees covered the campsite, thick like off-trail brush.

  Beetle kill. No one was setting up camp here.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  2:10 pm

  S
poon had spent the morning trying to pretend what Anne had said about the verbal altercation with Tyson was true… that the event wasn’t a big deal and he should forget about it. He sat in the living room with his laptop, writing code for an app he was working on as a side project. Just a simple platformer game.

  But he couldn’t concentrate and instead spent most of the arvo worrying about Reagan. The text messages he sent came back as undeliverable. She’d said that mobile phone reception in the park would be dodgy, and he wondered if she might have turned hers off completely. Maybe he wouldn’t get to talk to her until Friday.

  In the course of his fretting, Spoon spent some time conducting internet research on all the members of Reagan’s family he knew about, from her parents to her cousins, and a few Aunts and Uncles that were spread across the sprawling North American continent. California, Maine, Colorado, Washington, Manitoba. An Aunt on her mum’s side had passed away quite young, but Reagan had never mentioned her.

  He loaded Reagan’s Facebook page to find more information on her snotty cousin Dalton. His page was sparse, mostly pictures of him at various pubs and quotes from old TV shows, but he often commented on his brother’s page. Charlie’s Facebook profile was private, but Spoon did find an album of pictures from a church group trip to the Grand Canyon.

  Spoon even found the lawnmower shop Anne had mentioned. A1 Lawnmower Repair in Broomfield, a small suburb on the northern edge of metro Denver. The website looked like something from the ancient internet days, with odd colors and low-resolution clip art. Unfortunately, the only information about Tyson himself on the site was that he had owned the establishment for over twenty years. Not even if Tyson was the first name or surname.

  The shop was a mere twenty kilometers away from Anne’s house, but Spoon had no car. He wasn’t even sure what a trip there would gain him. Would he just rock up and say, Excuse me, mate, care to tell me why you’re pestering my girlfriend’s stepmother?