Reagan's Ashes

by Jim Heskett

  Reading about elves and dragons and trolls almost felt like an escape. She wanted that.

  Holding his book and smelling his scent on the t-shirt made her wish she could pull Spoon out of her bag so he could wrap his arms around her. She wanted to feel the bulge of his biceps, to smell the shampoo in his hair and to kiss the blond stubble on his scratchy cheek. She wanted to cling to him and feel his solid weight pushing back.

  When she was younger, she loved packing up the family van with mom and dad, traveling to Yosemite or Yellowstone or anywhere they would take her. She became enamored with sleeping under the stars and making s’mores and listening to Dad’s stories about growing up and the crazy things he and his friends had done.

  Two years ago, after dropping out of college and enduring her time at that horrible place, she came home to Dad’s house after to rest and regenerate. The backpacking trip around the Tonahutu loop had been Dad’s idea, and she agreed to go more due to surrender than choice.

  They hiked into North Inlet after dawn and watched the sun paint the mountains in front of them in yellows and greens. The sharp contrast of the craggy peaks against the green fields brought tears to her eyes. Many things brought tears to her eyes back then in her fragile state, but the pure beauty of the park became special in a way it hadn’t before.

  They made camp in the evening on that first day and Dad sent her out for sticks skinny enough to use as marshmallow skewers. When she came back, he was staring at the blue flame knifing the air above the camp stove.

  “What’s on your mind, Dad?”

  He shook his head, smiling a distant and sad smile.

  “Tell me, please?”

  “It’s just work. Someday, sweetie, when everything calms down a little bit, there’s some things I’ll need to tell you.”

  She was not used to hearing this level of melancholy in his tone. He was a man who liked to laugh and make everyone else laugh. He liked to play pranks and give funny gifts for birthdays and holidays.

  “What things?”

  He didn’t take his eyes off the flame. “It’s difficult to express. When you’re young, everything feels like an opportunity. The whole world is open and it feels like everything you do is part of your grand destiny. Meant to happen, or something like that. Then, you get older, and you realize that you could have just as easily turned left when you turned right, and your life would have been different. Not everything is how people say it is, that’s all.”

  This last sentence had stuck with her ever since that evening. She’d thought he was referring to Anne, as Reagan suspected that she’d been having an affair and they would soon divorce. Which didn’t bother Reagan one bit. Anne had never gone out of her way to accommodate her husband’s daughter.

  Reagan turned a page in the book and felt a dryness on her lips. Couldn’t remember if she’d brought any lip balm, so she started to root around the top of her pack, then dug through to the bottom. Her hands fell on the duct-taped urn, and she pulled it from the pack.

  She turned it in her hands, thinking it strange that she hadn’t considered the urn all day long. Nestled between her sleeping bag and tent, all that remained of Dad traveled along with her, every step. Dad was always present, not like an empty casket, but a real thing she could hold in her hands.

  After unzipping the tent, she set her pack on the ground outside to free up some room inside, then zipped it back up. She held the urn up to the headlamp’s light, watched the rays of the LEDs bounce off the shimmery surface, then pulled the urn to her chest.

  When the urn moved, something clicked.

  She held it out and paused. There was definitely some kind of click.

  She moved it around again, and it wasn’t a click, but more like a clinking, like the sound of metal on metal. As far as she could tell, the urn was solid wood. She’d heard that sometimes bone fragments remained after cremation, but the sound wasn’t bone. Definitely metal. How could metal get inside there?

  She peeled back the duct tape, careful not to make too much noise since her cousins were in a tent a few feet away. Her heart rate hitched a few notches. The tape came off in interrupted screeches, leaving strings of glue on the brown polished surface.

  When the duct tape was gone, she placed her hand on top of the urn, and then froze. Panic welled up inside her as she realized she was about to witness the totality of the sweet man that was her dad. Ash. Bone chips. A hundred and eighty pounds reduced to ounces.

  She closed her eyes and opened the urn. The clinking wasn’t in the base of the urn but on the top end of it. She carefully set the lower part of the urn on the tent floor, then gingerly took her hand away once she was sure it was steady. She didn’t want to look at the contents if she didn’t have to.

  The lid was a curved half-dome on the top and a flat circle on the bottom, two inches tall and four or five inches in circumference. She shook it, and the top clinked with every jerk of her hand. She explored the object but found no break in the wood. Then she tapped the bottom. Hollow.

  She tapped harder and could hear the clinking. There was something inside the lid of the urn. Like a secret compartment. Her chest pounded.

  She cupped the lid in her palms and placed her thumbs on the flat bottom, then pushed. There was a click, and the base depressed a fraction of an inch and then rose. She tried to push the now-detached bottom of the lid, but it wouldn’t move. Then she noticed tiny grooves along the sides. She placed her fingers on the edges and twisted, and it came right off.

  Squished inside the lid was a slip of paper, a key, and a piece of tape that had fallen away.

  A key.

  She took the key from the lid, pinched it between two fingers and held it to the light. Small, silver, with no markings. Too small to be a door or car key. Probably something like a lockbox or safe key.

  Pulses of confused yellow energy shot through her. Who could have put a key in a secret compartment inside the urn that contained Dad’s ashes? None of this made sense.

  Shuffling came from outside the tent, and her hand flew to the headlamp dangling from the tent roof, covering the beam with the palm of her hand. Darkness. She was perfectly still, holding her breath. She waited ten seconds, fifteen seconds, but no new noises came. She relaxed.

  And then she looked at the piece of paper folded into a tiny chunk and stuffed inside the lid. Written in Dad’s scratchy cursive was a single, capital letter R.

  Dad had somehow done this.

  She removed the note from the lid and ran her fingers over the surface of the paper. When she’d read the letter he had written her at the memorial service yesterday, she’d assumed it would be the last ever communication from Mitchell Darby. Now, in her hands, she held new information, and a new way to communicate with him. Even if the conversation was only one sided. She wanted to read the note, but she also wanted to save it. If she didn’t read it now, she could still savor one last exchange with him. One last way to delay the end.

  A wave of sadness swept through unlike anything she’d experienced since before the dark times in Austin. Inside this note were Dad’s hand-written words. She could see the shadow of ink through the folds of the paper.

  Crushing, blue sadness. Sadness so stark it threatened to turn black.

  She stuffed the note into her pocket and replaced the lid on the urn, trying to keep the sounds of her weeping at a volume low enough that Dalton and Charlie wouldn’t hear.

  When the urn was again secure, she picked up the key and curled into a ball on top of the sleeping bag.

  She turned it over and over in front of her face.

  “What do you unlock?” she whispered.

  Wednesday

  CHAPTER TEN

  6:50 am

  Dalton and Charlie collected the Camelbak bladders and water bottles before sunrise, and then hiked a short distance to the creek spilling out of Granite Falls to make the day’s filtered water. Dalton knew from previous experience that while the mountain water might look clear and clean,
it contained so many different kinds of animal shit that one gulp could leave you in the fetal position for days.

  He shuddered as they hiked, and he and his brother both expelled air from their mouths in clouds of frozen vapor. Since it was July, he was completely unprepared for the frigid temperature. Perpetual cold and a lingering lightheaded feeling from the increase in altitude made him crabby.

  He was also a little nervous about telling Charlie the real reason they were here. But Dalton knew if he played it right, Charlie would fall into line.

  The spray from the foamy white water rushing over the falls reached them from over a hundred feet away, so they stopped when Dalton felt the mist in the air. The wooden sign next to the creek read “LOWER GRANITE FALLS STOVES ONLY.”

  “Do you want to hold the bottles, or do you want to pump?” Dalton asked his brother, emphasizing the second option.

  Charlie pointed at the Katadyn water filter pump in Dalton’s hand. Charlie’s lips were quivering and he was shuffling from one foot to the other. “Do you know how that thing works?”

  He handed the water filter to Charlie as they knelt on the grassy bank next to the creek. “Fat end goes in the water. Other tube goes in the bottle, then pump. That’s it.”

  Charlie unspooled the tubes protruding from either end of the filter and dropped the tube with the weighted end into the water. He grasped the pump with one hand and pulled up the lever with the other. Dalton took the other tube and inserted it into a water bottle.

  As Charlie started to push and pull on the lever, the weighted tube end danced as it sucked water into the filter and spat it out through the other tube, which slowly filled the water bottle.

  Dalton studied his little brother. Ran a tongue around to soothe the dryness in his mouth. “You having fun out here?”

  Charlie’s eyes darted around the trees overhead and the water below him. “I gotta say it’s beautiful. Yesterday, I saw two deers, all those moose, and so many different kinds of birds I couldn’t even count all the kinds. But—holy moly—I’m seriously cold right now.”

  “You’ll feel better once we get out on the trail.”

  Charlie nodded without a reply.

  Dalton steeled himself and put on his Charlie-Convincing Face. “I told you that there was a special reason we needed to come out here on this trip with Reagan.”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said, not taking his eyes off the lever as he pushed it up and down.

  Dalton switched water bottles as one neared full. “That thing of Uncle Mitch’s that Tyson is looking for? He told you about that, right?”

  Charlie pumped faster. “Yeah.”

  “He thinks it may be out here. He also thinks it may be back in Denver, so he’s going to look for it there, too. But we’re supposed to look for it out here.”

  Charlie stopped pumping for a second, but still didn’t look at Dalton. “I don’t understand. Why would a bunch of money be in the woods?”

  “He thinks her dad stashed it and Reagan knows where it is. We’re supposed to watch her until she finds it, then do whatever we have to do to get it back.”

  Charlie’s mouth dropped open and he shook his head, making his jowls bounce back and forth. “Oh, no no no. This is not okay, Dalton. This is why you made me come with you? I told you I didn’t want to do that anymore.”

  Time to recalibrate. “Look, Chuckles, everything’s cool. It’s not hers, anyway. If she finds it, we’re just going to take it from her and give it back to him. We’re not doing anything out of bounds here.”

  “I don’t know about this. Besides, it’s crazy thinking it could be out here. Why would Uncle Mitch stash all that money in a national park?”

  Dalton sighed and changed out a water bottle for a Camelbak bladder. “Because, he knew Reagan would come out here and get it. The letter for her at the funeral? The slippery motherfucking thief had it all planned out.”

  “Hey now, don’t call Uncle Mitch names like that. Even if the money is out here, we don’t even know what to look for.”

  “It’s probably in a briefcase or a sealed package or something. Whenever we see it, it’s going to be obvious. Look, we have to find the money. What do you think happens if we come back to Tyson and don’t have the money?”

  “You know he doesn’t like it when you call him that,” Charlie said, frowning.

  “Why do you think Tyson would care what I call him?” Dalton rubbed his jaw, trying to soothe his clenched muscles. “Whatever. I don’t think you understand the gravity of this situation here and how much trouble we’re going to be in if we come back empty-handed.”

  Charlie stopped pumping and glared at his brother. “I don’t care. You lied to me.”

  Dalton remained as still and even as possible. He could maybe handle Reagan alone, but it would be so much easier with Charlie’s help. “No, I didn’t lie to you. I just didn’t tell you everything up front. It’s not the same thing.”

  Charlie pushed out a few breaths like steam escaping the nose of a bull. Dalton watched as his brother’s lips moved, which meant the kid was thinking.

  “What would we have to do?” Charlie said, his face flat and cumbersome.

  “It’s easy. Just watch her. She may have even gotten it already and stashed it with her stuff. I’ll find some way to go through her pack and check. But if she doesn’t have it yet, we wait until she gets it.”

  “And then what?”

  “Then we take it.”

  “You make it sound so simple, Dalton. What are we supposed to do if she doesn’t want to give it to us?”

  Dalton narrowed his eyes. “Then we convince her. This is two hundred and forty thousand dollars we’re talking about here. We’re going to do what we have to do so we can bring home what’s ours. It may get messy, so you need to be prepared for that.”

  Charlie dropped the water filter pump and stood up. “No. No, no, no. This isn’t going to be like it was with that guy in Boulder. No way am I doing that again. You promised.”

  Dalton rose to his feet to look Charlie in the eyes. “The Boulder guy was a mistake, you’re right. I could have handled that better.” He pointed at the water filter. “Pick it up, please. We’re almost done here.”

  Charlie hesitated for a second, then did as he was told. He spent a few seconds silently mouthing some words to himself. “I don’t know about this.”

  “You’ve seen the first Die Hard movie, right? Did John McClane want to spend his Christmas in L.A. fighting the terrorists? Hell no. But he did what he had to because it was the only thing to do.”

  “This isn’t Die Hard.”

  Dalton was beginning to lose his patience. “What do I have to do to get this through your thick motherfucking skull? This has to be done.”

  Charlie looked at him, surprisingly stone-faced. “I need to think about it, but whatever happens, she doesn’t get hurt. If you want my help, that’s the deal. If anything goes beyond talking, I don’t want any part of it.”

  Dalton nodded, although he had to believe that when the time came, Charlie would do what was required of him and choose to be on the right side. Disappointing Tyson was not an option.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  7:05 am

  Reagan woke several times before the sun came up, and each time, the first thing that popped into her head was the key in her right pants pocket. Usually, in the backcountry, she couldn’t sleep for more than an hour or so at a time. Creaking trees, the wind rustling the fabric of the tent, little animals scurrying around the campground: all of these things disturbed the quiet. But she usually got right back to sleep. Especially if she’d hiked hard enough on the trail during the day.

  But last night, sleep had not come easy or often. When the sun finally started to lighten the walls of the tent, she sat up and estimated she’d slept no more than three or four hours total. The tension in her neck and hips had turned into full-blown soreness. There was an emergency kit, but given that Dad had been using the same one for a decade, she doubted t
hat it still contained any aspirin or ibuprofen. Should have checked it before leaving Denver.

  She stretched and got out of the sleeping bag, shivering. She dressed quickly, throwing on Dad’s over-sized Carhartt hoodie and his thick fleece gloves. She wondered if he had ever washed these things, and doubted it. He wasn’t the tidiest person. Didn’t matter, she liked the idea that some of him was touching her.

  She sniffed the inside of the hood, and the scent was vaguely familiar. Faded sweat, a hint of cologne.

  The burning in her bladder motivated her, and she unzipped the tent. Some rain had fallen during the night and the ground was moist, but not soaked as it often was. Near the tent, piles of animal scat like over-sized M&Ms with the shells removed had blossomed. Probably deer. She snatched her boots from the tent vestibule, shook them to dump out potential spiders, and then put them on.

  “Hey guys, sun’s up.”

  No response. She walked to their tent and shook it. “Sun’s up. Let’s go.”

  Again, no response. They needed to get up and hit the trail because today was the longest of the trip. Tomorrow would be the shortest day, distance-wise, just to lakes Nokoni and Nanita then back, but tomorrow was also the day she was releasing Dad’s ashes. Hard to say if she could handle a long day on the trail after all of that.

  She made the short hike to the privy over tall piles of snow sprinkled with tree bark chips and pine needles like confetti, and when she returned, the brush through the trees rustled, then came the sound of voices. Dalton and Charlie emerged from the trees, holding all of their full water bottles and Camelbak bladders.

  “Thought we’d get a jump on the day, and make things easier for you,” Dalton said, smiling. Charlie would not look at her, his eyes on the ground and his head low.

  Reagan was impressed. She had not expected this.

  Dalton dumped all of the water bottles except for his and walked to his pack. They had all left their gear outside last night, resting up against the trees.