Reagan's Ashes

by Jim Heskett

  Big beefy Tyson might not like that so much.

  What the hell, though, what else did he have to occupy his time? Maybe only a look at the place.

  As he had a think about his options, Anne drifted in and out of rooms in the house, mostly ignoring him. For a time, she did set out a yoga mat on the living room floor and perform a series of bendy and twisty motions, and Spoon tried his best not to pay too much attention. She seemed to be doing the sequence at him, which was a strangely nerve-wracking event.

  After a shower, she came and sat next to him on the couch, loosely holding a glass of red wine in one hand.

  “So how did you hurt your knee?”

  He closed the lid of his laptop. “Footy.”

  “Footy? Is that football?”

  “Depends on where you’re from. In Melbourne, footy means AFL, which is Australian rules football. It’s not much like your American gridiron football. More like soccer, actually. In Queensland, footy is rugby. In Sydney, footy means soccer, but that’s just because those tossers can’t put together a good AFL team to save their lives, so they pretend like they don’t care about real footy.”

  “So which one was it? I’m confused.”

  “Australian Rules Football. Tore my ACL when I made a hard cut and my leg went wonky.”

  “And you were in Australia when this happened?”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “Austin has a USAFL team called the Crows. The American AFL isn’t the same, but it’s a bit of home.”

  She sipped her wine, grinning at him with her eyelids barely open. “That guy my old roommate dated was quite athletic too. You Australians are a competitive bunch.”

  She said this with a tone of finality, as if the small talk was over. Blank space between them grew weighty during the few seconds of silence that elapsed.

  He figured he might as well come out with what he wanted. He swallowed, feeling a little tension in his jaw. “Do you think you might let me borrow your car, yeah?”

  She sat back and blinked, then scrunched her face. “Do you need something? I’m going to the grocery store later. Make me a list and I can get you whatever you need.”

  “No… I have some errands to run and don’t want to trouble you with it.” Given how dismissive she’d been to his questions about Tyson, maybe this was better than telling her straight out.

  “I don’t know,” she said with a drunken grin. “Don’t you guys drive on the other side of the road? How do I know you won’t crash my car?”

  “I’ve been in America for a few years, Mrs. Darby. I can drive on the wrong side of the road just fine.”

  She laughed. “You have to call me Anne, darling. None of that formal stuff.”

  He stared at her, waiting for her to respond to his request. Only the relentless whoosh of the air con and the gentle hum of the refrigerator cut the silence in the room.

  He cleared his throat. “So, do you think…?”

  She huffed, stood up, and left the room. What an odd woman.

  He set his laptop on the coffee table and struggled to stand up. Out of breath, he took his crutches from the other side and followed her into the kitchen. Of course, she was pouring herself another glass of wine.

  “Did I say something wrong?” he said.

  She was facing away from him, staring out the bay window overlooking the meager backyard with its overgrown grass. “I can’t let you borrow the car. I might need to go somewhere. Reagan has the other car, so I need mine.”

  “I won’t be gone long.”

  She whipped around, a splash of red wine falling from the glass onto the kitchen tile. “Fine, Spoon, or whatever your name is. I’ll let you take my car and run your errands if you have a drink with me.”

  She motioned to the kitchen table and an empty glass sitting in front of the chair.

  He shook his head. “I can’t. I don’t drink.”

  “I’m bored. Have one little drink with me. I want you to tell me all about Australia. I’ve always wanted to go.”

  “I can tell you about Australia without having a drink.” He felt his temperature start to rise.

  “No drink, no car.”

  He gripped the crutch handles, his fingers sinking into the neoprene bands. Why was she so determined? “No.”

  “I could even tell you stories about Reagan, all the juicy stuff she probably hasn’t told you herself. Why don’t you humor a poor widow?”

  An incredibly callous thing to say, especially since she seemed to have no hint of mourning or sorrow on her face when she said it.

  “I don’t drink,” he said through gritted teeth.

  She pouted. “Why not?”

  “Because I’m a recovering alcoholic!”

  He had raised his voice accidentally. She was cowering against the sink, but with indignation on her face.

  “Oh, look,” he said, “I’m sorry I got loud with you. I shouldn’t have done.”

  She strutted to her purse, took a set of keys, and hurled them at him.

  “Take the damn car. Take it and do whatever. Too good to drink with me, fine. Just go.”

  He contemplated apologizing, but the look on her face promised a losing battle. With a half-hearted smile, he placed his crutches in front and slinked from the room as quickly as he could.

  Guilt settled over him as he crossed the living room. It had been a long time since he’d lost his temper like that, or even raised his voice. He’d have to make amends for the outburst at some stage down the road.

  As he walked outside, sunlight blasted his eyes. The street was empty except for a blue Chevy Tahoe parked along the curb. He approached a Subaru Outback in the driveway, then isolated the big key with the buttons on it.

  As he opened the door, ready to toss his crutches in the back seat, he got a shock: a manual transmission. Three pedals requiring two feet and two healthy knees.

  “Bloody hell, Spoon. You can’t drive this.”

  He stared at it for a few seconds, considering the possibility of driving it with only one good leg. But that was crazy.

  Defeated, he went back into the house and dropped the keys on the table next to the front door. He would have to find some other way to explore the city and investigate Tyson. A taxi, maybe? He was too low on funds to spend hours in a cab. And according to Reagan, Denver’s public transportation system was almost non-existent.

  Anne gave him a full-toothed smile as if they weren’t shouting at each other two minutes ago. “That was quick.”

  “You have a manual. Can’t drive it with my knee like this.”

  She took in a sharp breath and giggled. “Oh my, I didn’t even think about that. You poor boy. Now you can join the rest of us who have nothing.” Her laugh grew, became something dark and bitter.

  “I don’t understand why you keep saying that. Are you putting me on? Didn’t your husband have life insurance?”

  Her belly laugh turned into a cackle. “Life insurance? You must be joking. Mitchell cashed that in last year. That was another little surprise we got the day of the service. When I said he left us with nothing, I meant he left us with not a damn thing.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  2:35 pm

  Reagan stared at the mass of fallen trees obstructing the area that should have been their campsite. Logs–some of them thicker than her waist–lay crisscrossed and jutting at spiked angles. After eight miles with thirty pounds on her back, all she wanted was to set up camp, but now they had to hunt for a new clearing large enough for two tents. Her chest felt tight, like being squeezed between two massive stones.

  “What are we supposed to do now?” Dalton said.

  “I guess we’re not camping here,” she said, looking up at a sky full of charcoal-colored clouds.

  Find a new spot, set up the tent, have some alone time.

  She let her pack slip from her aching shoulders and began exploring the area. A skinny footpath led west from the clearing and into the trees. The walkway opened again to a privy, which was a small woode
n shelter hiding a toilet positioned over a hole in the ground. Nowhere close to there was going to work, unless they wanted to sniff crap all night long.

  She went back the other way to the central area and turned north into the trees. A small clearing suggested enough room for the tents, but if those other trees had fallen, there was no guarantee the trees around this clearing were safe enough to camp underneath. She listened for creaking but heard only occasional bird chirps. She moved on to find something better.

  After a few minutes, a light rain started, and she gave up looking. If the tents weren’t operational in ten minutes, they’d be soaking wet. “Over here,” she called to Dalton and Charlie.

  The best she found was a space about ten feet by ten feet. Large enough for the tents, plus a stump and a giant downed log for sitting. Technically, they were supposed to camp within fifty feet of the red backcountry site marker, but this would have to do.

  The guys dumped their packs and looked at the massive trees providing shade overhead.

  “Is it safe right here?” Charlie said.

  The rain was already starting to plaster her hair against her neck. “Probably.”

  “Let’s get this shit knocked out,” Dalton said. He unzipped his pack and started dumping possessions onto the moist ground.

  Reagan opened her pack and took out Dad’s three-man tent, which was only big enough for two actual people. When she and Dad had slept in it, they wedged their packs between them, and they slept pushed up against their respective sides. This was fine most of the time, but he did have a habit of farting in his sleep, which turned her into a stink-prisoner.

  Setting up the tent would be no trouble, since that was her job when they were here two years ago. Dad’s was to take out the sleeping pads, unroll them, and blow them to full size. She tried not to think about how she’d feel when she had to do that by herself.

  “I’ll go get some firewood,” Dalton said.

  “Whoa, wait a second,” she said. “You can’t have a fire in the park. It’s not allowed.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says the park rangers. No fires inside the park.”

  Dalton put his hands on his hips. “That’s ridiculous. I want to have a fire.”

  “Maybe we shouldn’t,” Charlie said.

  Dalton groaned and sat on the log next to the stump. From a small plastic box, he took out a skinny rolled piece of paper and lit it.

  “Is that a joint?” Reagan said.

  “Yup.”

  “You can’t smoke that here.”

  “The fuck I can’t,” he said. “It’s legal so I don’t see why not. No different than cracking open a beer.”

  Reagan raised her hands toward the foliage around them. “It’s different because we’re in a National Park on federal land. If a ranger comes by and sees you smoking that or sees us lighting a fire, they’ll call the cops. You have to have some respect for the rules, Dalton.”

  He laughed and threw a glance at Charlie, probably for solidarity, but Charlie only shook his head. “Tell you what,” Dalton said. “I’ll smoke this here pinner real fast, and keep it in me and Charlie’s tent after that. And I’ll shut up about the fire.”

  She didn’t want to spend her dwindling energy arguing with her cousin. Instead, she went back to her unpacking duties. Tent, sleeping pad, sleeping bag. Bear canister. Small dry-bags filled with first aid accessories and other things to save from water. Bag of clothes. Her possessions, packed so tightly into the backpack, exploded onto the surrounding area as if they’d come from a container twice the size.

  As she hustled to get the tent poles connected, the rain let up. A nice surprise. The mostly-mesh tent rose with the poles through the slots, and then she threw the rainfly over the top and strapped it to the tent. The rainfly, packed tightly into a bag for the last couple years, came out crumpled like old paper when stretched and laid out.

  Five minutes later, with the tents set up and all of the various gear in the proper places, they gathered on the stump and the log and waited for dinner time.

  “What did you guys bring for dinner?” she said.

  “Mostly granola bars,” Dalton said. “Charlie here brought some chocolate, right?”

  Charlie nodded, pleased with himself. “I thought I might save it for the last night, to give us something to look forward to.”

  “Fuck that,” Dalton said. “I want a piece now.”

  Charlie grudgingly dug into his pack and gave Dalton a Hershey’s bar.

  Reagan sighed and pulled the freeze-dried spaghetti and meatballs she’d shoved in the pocket of Dad’s cargo pants since the bear canister was overfull. On the back, the package read serves 3. She’d intended to eat it alone because the yawning in her stomach said she needed the calories.

  “You’re gonna share that with us, right? We’ll share what we got with you,” Dalton said.

  She said nothing.

  “Please?” Charlie said.

  The earnestness in her youngest cousin’s eyes pricked her and made her want to cry. Dalton demanded, but Charlie asked, and that was good enough.

  She set up Dad’s Jetboil stove and poured the last of the water from her water bottle into the pot. “In the morning, if you guys will take my water filter down to the creek and fill up all the water bottles, I’ll break down the camp.”

  “Sure, no problem,” Charlie said. “It’s good we’re here, right, Reagan? You know, doing all this camp stuff seems like a lot of work for one person.”

  “It can be,” she said.

  Dalton eyed her. “She wishes her hunky Australian boyfriend was here instead, I bet. I’m guessing from that knee brace and those crutches that he wasn’t going to be able to hack it.”

  She considered it. This morning, bringing her cousins along had seemed like a good idea. Family time, healing. But now, given the choice, she would absolutely take Spoon over the two of them.

  “What’s it like dating a foreigner?” Dalton said.

  “I don’t know,” Reagan said. “He’s a really good guy. He’s got funny words for things sometimes, like ‘arvo’ instead of ‘afternoon,’ or ‘servo’ instead of ‘gas station.’”

  Dalton cleared his throat and sat up straight. “Moye nyme eez Spewn,” he said, slowly enunciating each word in something like an Australian accent.

  Charlie cackled. “That’s perfect!”

  “King of comedy up in this motherfucker,” Dalton said. A twig snapped behind him and he whipped around, but there was nothing there. “How can you not be paranoid about a bear walking right up into this campsite?”

  “I don’t think about it,” she said. “A bear probably won’t mess with us for no good reason.”

  Dalton shook his head. “I don’t know if I’ll sleep tonight with all this bullshit. And that is a royal pain in the ass, because I’m tired as hell.”

  “You’ll sleep,” she said.

  “What time were you thinking we’d get up in the morning?” Charlie said.

  Reagan screwed the stove onto the fuel canister and turned the knob to start the fuel flow. “First light. We’ve got a long, long day tomorrow.”

  “Seriously?” Dalton said. “After all that hiking, we can’t sleep in a little bit?”

  “It’s going to be forty degrees outside at seven o’clock in the morning. You can get up and start moving, or you can sit and shiver in your tent. Besides, if you thought today was a lot of hiking, we have to go about twelve miles tomorrow.”

  Dalton gasped. “Jesus Christ. You trying to give us all heart attacks out here?”

  Charlie’s mouth dropped open. “Hey, dude, that’s not cool.”

  Reagan pretended she hadn’t heard her cousin make a heart attack joke a week after Dad had died from one. She tried to focus on the camp stove and nothing else.

  Empty casket. Empty casket.

  She lit a match to the fuel and tried to blink away the tears welling in her eyes.

  The water took six minutes to boil, and then
after pouring the water into the bag, the spaghetti took another seven minutes to cook. They hardly spoke during that time.

  When the food was ready, she shared her spork with them, since neither thought to bring any utensils. She was about to dig in when Charlie held up a hand to stop her.

  He closed his eyes and bowed his head. He took a deep breath, and then in one quick speech, said, “Bless us oh Lord and these thy gifts which we are about to receive through Christ our Lord amen.”

  Charlie nodded that they could eat now. He ate his share in silence. She assumed he was embarrassed for his brother. Dalton’s silence, on the other hand, seemed more the indignant variety. Halfway through the spaghetti, she didn’t care anymore. Just a stupid slip of the tongue. He couldn’t possibly have made an intentional heart attack joke.

  When the food was gone and the sun had escaped behind the mountains, she shivered as the cold began to descend. “Okay, guys, I’m off. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  ***

  8:30 pm

  Finally alone in her tent, Reagan first stretched out on top of her sleeping bag and breathed deeply for two straight minutes. She tried to empty her mind of all thoughts and instead focus on the rhythms of her body. Her shoulders and hips ached from the day’s long trek, and her ankles throbbed from the boots that didn’t fit quite right. Had her feet grown since high school? That was a troubling thought.

  As darkness descended on the campsite, she wrapped her headlamp around a loop jutting from the roof of the tent. She sat up and removed Spoon’s t-shirt and a hefty paperback from the side pocket of the pack. Spoon had given it to her a month ago, the first in a series of a dozen fantasy books about an elf searching for his sister across an unforgiving desert landscape. Not her genre, plus the female characters were either outlandishly warlike or outlandishly sexual. But Spoon loved the series and was so excited for her to read it, she couldn’t say no. Before Dad died, she’d read the first two hundred pages. Since then, she’d read two hundred more, but remembered none of it. When her eyes glided over the words, she might as well have been reading a Planned Parenthood pamphlet.