by Hunt, Jack
“Leave me here. He’s right, I probably won’t make it. You’ve got a full life ahead of you, a job, prospects, and mine is winding down.” He coughed hard again, this time it was a full coughing fit. He couldn’t control it and she had to get him some water. Once he had settled, she kept hold of his hand.
“That’s where you’re wrong,” she replied.
“How so?”
“I missed the job interview.”
He sighed. “Oh, God. That’s my fault.” He shook his head.
“No. It’s fine. I chose to come here.”
“You were convinced to come here,” he replied. “There’s a difference. I would have never asked if I’d known it was going to screw up your life.”
She shrugged. “It already was.”
He shook his head. “But I contributed. All these years working, building, toiling away, all for what? I lost your mother, I’m about to lose the business, but worst of all — I lost you.”
It was the first time she had heard her father open up.
“I never wanted to move away, Dad.”
“Of course you did. You hated Alaska.”
“No, I love it. I didn’t care about advertising or making my mark in California. I left Anchorage because I figured you didn’t want me around.”
His gaze dropped.
There was a long pause before he spoke again. “It wasn’t that. I didn’t want myself around, Kara. After losing her I… I didn’t know how to cope. I tried but I wasn’t very good at it. And… I figured that she’d spoken with you that night about the argument over the business and well… the way it played out, I didn’t think you wanted to stick around.”
“Well, I’m here now.”
“And so am I. But God, I wish it had been me in that car and not your mother. Hell, she would have done a better job raising you. She was good at talking to you, I… well, it should have been me —” He looked up and breathed in. “It would have been me, had...” He trailed off, looking thoughtfully at the wall.
Kara frowned. “Would?”
He met her gaze. “The night she died we were both meant to drive you home, but I got into an argument with her and Frank over the first Callaway offer. He’d been riding me for weeks. He didn’t like the input Indi was giving and things got heated between him and your mother, so I intervened — knocked him on his ass. I tried to get him to calm down but he was ready to throw in the towel.” He exhaled hard then coughed again so she gave him more water.
“Look, we don’t need to do this now.”
“Yes, yes we do. Just give me a minute.” He took a few breaths, struggling to breathe. “So, I uh… I stayed behind to smooth things out and had your mother drive you back.” He paused. “I knew you had your learner’s permit and I told your mother not to let you drive.”
“Yeah, because you didn’t have any confidence in me.”
He smiled. “It wasn’t that, kid, I just didn’t want to see you get into an accident and get hurt, and…” She was beginning to understand. In all the years she’d known him, she’d never heard this. It wasn’t that he was uncaring, hell, he’d been a good father but it just wasn’t his way to open up. “I never blamed you, Kara. I blamed myself.” He rubbed his forehead and groaned from the pain. “I drank to forget but the next day I would wake and it would all come flooding back in, the grief, the failure, the blame, and seeing you only reminded me that I’d let both of you down. So I kept myself busy. I know it was the wrong thing to do but it’s all I knew how to do back then.” He shook his head. “I know it doesn’t count for much now, but I’m truly sorry.”
She nodded, chewing it over.
He smiled and gripped her hand.
“So where do we go from here?” she asked.
He blew out his cheeks. “How about we get out of this mess first?”
Right then, Frank entered, holding the door wide. A gust of wind blew a layer of snow in. He looked over, holding the empty liquor bottle. “Touching,” he said before closing the door and crossing to the table. “You can take the bunk above your father, I’ll sleep here,” he said, setting the candle down and clambering onto the table.
31
That night, good sleep wasn’t to be had. By morning, Kara felt the full extent of exhaustion. She’d spent most of the evening monitoring her father as his health gradually got worse. His continual coughing had made it almost impossible to rest. She’d been lucky to get a few uninterrupted hours. She’d close her eyes for ten, maybe fifteen minutes only to be jerked awake by another fit of coughing.
Frank, on the other hand, slept off his drunken stupor and awoke on that fifth day by rolling off the table. His body hit the floor with a loud crash, startling her.
Kara placed a hand on her chest and breathed in deeply trying to steady her rapid heart as Frank clambered up, bleary-eyed, holding his head. “Whoa, that was some strong liquor.” He yawned and stretched his arms. “You sleep okay?”
“Sleep?” She scoffed, shaking her weary head. Kara leaned forward and checked her father’s pulse, it was dangerously weak. He was burning up. She took a thick cloth from a bowl on the bedside table and wrung it out before placing it across his forehead.
“Dad.” His eyes opened. “It’s morning.” He gave a slight nod then closed his eyes again. After the umpteenth time of being woken up, she’d decided to just sit beside him, and doze in intervals of whatever she was granted. Rising from a chair beside the bed, she ambled over to the door, tugging at the skin beneath her eyes, widening them as she strolled past Frank to head out and dunk her face in the river.
She took the rifle with her because when they arrived last night, she’d seen a slew of unset steel bear traps outside on the porch, more than the usual. Then again, it was a trapper’s cabin. Still, it had made her question how often the former inhabitants had black bears roam up to the cabin. Another encounter was the last thing she wanted now that they were so close to getting home.
“And good morning to you,” Frank said, noting her lack of enthusiasm. “I guess I’ll put the coffee on.” He yawned and shuffled over to a can of instant coffee.
Outside the sky was a gunmetal gray, threatening bad weather. A blustery breeze whipped at her clothes as she checked that the rifle was loaded, then slung it over her shoulder and wrapped her arms around her body, feeling its chill. It was almost nine-thirty. She’d wanted to get started earlier but with Frank out cold, and her father finally managing to fall asleep in the early morning, she’d opted to nab a few hours.
The cabin was around a hundred yards from the mist-shrouded water’s edge, mostly hidden by the forest. Small snowdrifts covered an outbuilding, and several paths led away in different directions around the property. The chaotic noise of rushing water got louder as she approached the bank. She dropped down to a crouch and splashed a few handfuls of ice-cold water onto her face, then rolled her head to work out the tension while she contemplated the day’s challenge.
A nervousness roiled in the pit of her stomach as she observed the churning waters and dwelt on the thought of putting in the canoe that morning. Roughly thirty miles of continuous flowing water was all that stood between her and civilization. The same monstrous glacier-fed river that had taken the lives of many an adventurer seemed imposing up close, warning her not to enter.
Returning to the cabin, she found Frank pouring out coffee.
“He looks far worse than yesterday,” he said, handing her a cup and glancing over his shoulder. She nursed the cup with both hands, blew the steam from the top, and nodded, taking a sip.
“I gave him some more ibuprofen a few hours ago.”
They both studied him. She felt helpless.
Changing the mood quickly, Frank shifted gears. “Right, well, I’m thinking pears for breakfast. Sound good?” She took out her Leatherman to hand it to him but he turned and reached for a kitchen tool. “I found the can opener.” He winked and tapped the air with it, full of energy, more than she had. As the can turned, and he work
ed it open, Frank continued. “You still set on taking him downstream?”
“Like you said, he isn’t well. The sooner I can get him back, the better.”
“It will just be you out there paddling. You think you can handle that?” he asked while opening the can and dumping the sloppy contents into two bowls.
She shrugged, unsure.
He eyed her, picking up on that uncertainty.
“Are you sure you don’t want to…”
She raised a hand to stop him. “Frank, no. Look, thank you but I’m taking him this morning. We’ll send back a helicopter immediately.”
He inhaled deeply and released it as he plunked himself down on the bench. “That is if you make it.”
“We’ll make it,” she said firmly. She set the cup on the table and scooped up her bowl. It was like Frank wanted to drop seeds of doubt in the hope she’d change her mind. She crossed the room and offered a spoonful of pears to her father. At first, he turned his face away but she persisted. He chewed slowly and as he swallowed he had another coughing fit. Immediately he brought up a hand to cover his mouth and Kara noted flecks of blood covering his hand. She couldn’t take it anymore.
“Right, I’m getting the raft ready.”
She snatched up the rifle again on her way out.
Kara slung off the tarp from the red canoe, and hauled it out, dragging it down to the bank of the river. After making sure the spray skirt was in place, and that there weren’t any holes, she nudged it onto the water. Keeping a firm grip, she observed for a minute or two, making sure that no water was leaking in. Satisfied, she dragged it back up, then went to gather the lifejackets and paddle.
One was missing.
A lifejacket.
She frowned, she could have sworn it was there last night. Kara crouched down, looked under the tarp again. Nope. There was only one. Confused, she headed back in to ask Frank if he’d picked it up. Shouldering the door, she said, “Frank, you haven’t seen…” Her words trailed off into almost a whisper as she walked in on Frank kneeling beside her father, the wet towel — the same one that had been on his forehead — now clamped over her father’s nose and mouth as he struggled beneath it.
It was like the world stopped. “What the…?”
Frank’s head jerked around, a look of shock, caught in the act.
Instantly shucking the rifle off her shoulder, Kara brought up the barrel just as he got up and made a move toward her. “DON’T!” she bellowed, warning him to not take another step. She adjusted her grip and drew a bead on his chest.
Hands slowly rising, fingers stretched wide, Frank talked in a calm voice.
“Now Kara, just lower the gun… you’ve got this wrong, I was—”
“I know what you were doing. How could you? HOW COULD YOU!?” she cried. Her eyes darted to her father who’d managed to shake the cloth from his face. It fell to the floor and Frank looked back.
“He’s not going to make it, Kara.”
“So you thought you’d put him out of his misery, is that it?”
She couldn’t believe it. It was like a nightmare.
“I didn’t make it all this way to die out here.”
“I told you we will send a helicopter.”
“If you make it.”
“We will.” She gave him a steely gaze.
“I have kids and a wife waiting for me. I need to get back.”
“And I told you, you will.”
He shot back, with venom in his reply, “You can’t handle that river by yourself, Kara. You’re not strong enough!”
“But you are? Huh? Is that why there is only one lifejacket?”
Frank pursed his lips, glaring at her. She tightened her grip on the rifle.
“What were you going to do, Frank, kill me next?”
“You don’t understand.”
“No, I understand perfectly. It all makes sense now. Not filing a flight plan, getting my father to do the pre-check knowing his memory was bad. Very convenient. The comment Paul made about the missing map and survival kit, and then the missing PLB, the ELT that didn’t have an aerial, and was damaged.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then Callaway and Paul show up a few hours later. How did they know exactly where we were?”
“I sent in a mayday.”
“How? The wires below the radio were torn out.”
“You’re confused.”
“Am I?”
He took a few steps forward and she warned him again.
“It was damaged in the crash, Kara. Now enough. Put the gun down.”
“When you let go of Paul in the river, was he even dead?”
“I had no choice and you know it.”
“Like when you pushed Callaway into the waterfall?”
“I didn’t do that, that’s bullshit.”
“Certainly made for a great distraction. Like the fish that found its way into my father’s stretcher but was gone when I looked.” She stopped and studied him, trying to decipher his reasoning. What did he have to gain or lose?
“The debt you mentioned,” she said. “Callaway knew about it, didn’t he? That’s why you were pushing to get my father and me to sign. Wasn’t it?”
“The business was about to go into bankruptcy. I was trying to save it.”
“No, you were trying to save you. When the business was thriving, and Callaway first put the offer on the table, you wanted my father to sell. You didn’t care about the business and my mother knew that, didn’t she? What did she find out, Frank? Huh? What was she going to tell my father? Because it sure got you got mad, the night of the crash.”
“She was interfering. She had no idea of how to run that business, neither did he, I was the one running it. Doing all the work, handling the books, seeing the real numbers. All he wanted to do was fly, well, flying doesn’t pay the bills and neither does cutting off clients because they don’t mesh with conservationist ideology.”
“So what was the arrangement you made this time, Frank?”
He lowered his eyes, was it his way of revealing his betrayal, or was he unable to face his guilt? He met her gaze again, his eyes drifting to the gun and the trigger. “You won’t squeeze it.” He took an experimental step forward to test his theory.
She fired a round near his feet then lifted the gun.
“Don’t test me.”
“Who was there for you when your mother died? Huh? Me. Jacqueline. Not him.”
Her eyes darted to her father who was struggling to breathe. They exchanged anxious looks. “He’s never cared about anyone except himself,” Frank said.
“That’s not true.”
“Look around you, Kara. We’re here because of him.”
“He trusted you to fly that plane. Don’t you dare blame him!”
He nodded. “Fine. You got me.” He slumped down onto the bench.
“Where is the other lifejacket?”
“Under the tarp where the firewood is.”
She scoffed. “With both of us out of the picture, the business would go to you, wouldn’t it?”
Frank clapped and gave a sarcastic smile. “I guess you got it all figured out. Bravo. You have no clue.”
“Well, I don’t need to know. You can explain it to the cops.”
His eyes lifted and met hers, they were no longer full of care as they had been in the years gone by, now they were dark, holding secrets that he refused to give up. “And I was going to give you a hand lifting him into the canoe. I guess this means you’ll have it do it yourself,” he said, rising.
“Don’t…” she warned him again.
Hands raised, he chuckled. “Come on, Kara. I’m going to toss some more wood in the stove. If I’ve got to wait it out here by myself, I at least want to be warm.”
Kara eyed the firewood hatchet beside the stove. “Oh, no. I don’t think so. Outside,” she demanded.
“But it’s cold.”
“Outside!”
He didn’t move.
“I swear, Frank, I will squeeze this trigger.”
She arced around him, keeping the gun level as he began to move. He scowled as he passed and approached the door. With his back turned, he said, “All these years. All these years and this is what it comes to.” He shook his head and stopped a few steps from the door.
“Outside.”
He placed his hand on the door and closed it. “I don’t think so.”
“Open the door, Frank.”
He turned and made his way over to the table. “Let me finish my damn coffee.” He picked it up and went to take a sip and then in an instant, he tossed the cup right at her as he lunged forward. The suddenness of being splashed with hot coffee nudged her back, causing the gun to go off in her hand, a round entering the ceiling. Frank slammed into her, grabbing the rifle, and wheeled her around. They fought for control, slamming into the table, the wall, and shelves. Books and cans clattered across the floor. She tried to knee him but missed. Kara tightened her grip, refusing to give up the rifle while he drove her back against the door almost effortlessly. Then he used his strength to force the rifle up underneath her chin and lift her off the ground. It was his will against hers. Kara’s boots clawed the air. Like squashing a bug by sliding a swatter across a wall, he slid her sideways, driving her into a cabinet that crashed to the floor. One hand came off the rifle and he struck her in the gut so hard that it knocked the wind out of her.
Collapsing, she bent over, struggling to catch her breath. It came out in short wheezes.
“You just wouldn’t listen, would you?”
As Frank chambered another round, she bounced up, shouldering his gut and knocking him over the table, buying some time. Kara dashed out the main door, flinging it wide. A round erupted, the snap so close. Too close. Unable to wrestle the gun away, and with fear driving her, she sprinted around the west side of the cabin into the forest, hoping to at least gain some distance, enough that she could think. Right now she was acting on pure survival.
“Kara!” Frank yelled. “I never wanted it to go this way.”
