Descent: A Novel

by Tim Johnston

  An hour after school, an hour before dark.

  Do you want to go somewhere? he said. Pen stilled and denting his finger in a dull bite.

  She turned as if surprised. Her hair a lifeless drapery. Eyes backed into shadow.

  We could go to the store, he said.

  No, sweetie. Parts of a smile came to her face and she turned back to the window. Do you need money? she said, lifting the water, sipping.

  He shook his head. She held the glass to her chest.

  It’s still there, she said, more to herself than to him.

  The twenty-seventh of February, this was. Two days after her nineteenth birthday. The two of them had been back in the house for three months. His father was in Colorado, in the same motel room where he and the boy had lived.

  The boy got into his jacket and his crutches and went out the back door and over the icy pavers to the metal building and unlocked the door and stood a minute at the threshold staring at his father’s desk, his breath mushrooming into the trapped cold. The woman in her skirt. Her bare legs. Getting up to smile, shake his hand. A client, his father said.

  When he emerged from the metal building he seemed to move along on strange implements: elaborate clattering fusions of crutch and shovel and yard rake. In this way he came around to the front of the house and to the curb and he swung down into the street under the black arms of the sycamore where he and Caitlin used to climb and he looked back. The window was empty.

  It was a red squirrel, spread-eagled as if to embrace the road, the world, preserved by cold, skull crushed. The county said they’d come but they didn’t.

  He stood in his crutches looking at it. Why didn’t you stay in your nest, stupid?

  He set the rake tines over the body and the square-point shovel behind the plush, riffling tail—but some clinginess would not let him rake the body into the shovel and instead he had to work the blade spatula-wise under the tail and under the little hind feet and along under the belly and finally the head, prizing that up with a small ripping sound. He took the rake and crutches in one hand and bent on his good leg and lifted the weighted shovel and held it level while he got the black bag open, and then he spooned the shovel carefully in and tilted until the stiff body dove splashing down into darkness. He bread-spun the bag and put a knot in it and got on his crutches again and looked back and the window was empty.

  What could he tell her that would help her?

  What did he know?

  He knew everything up until the moment he was hit, was in the air, was watching himself in the air, as if he would not participate in such a thing, was struck again, and there was nothing to know but the brilliant new pain of brokenness.

  As for the rest.

  It rolled on despite him, without him. Things he shouldn’t know, couldn’t know, but that were no less true for that. As if something more than his knee had been changed in that slamming instant. As in the comic books he once loved: the ordinary made fantastic by fluke cataclysm, by the weird laws of accident.

  It felt like shame. Like crouching outside the basement window listening. You couldn’t say what you knew without saying how you knew it: I crouched. I listened.

  And who would believe him, anyway? Not even himself. Least of all himself.

  What happened up there, Sean?

  Only what I’ve told you. Only what I’ve told you.

  12

  She took the turn and he didn’t call out to stop her and she ran on down the unpaved road, forty, sixty yards before looking back, and then running backward a few strides and then stopping and running in place, hands on hips—and she’d taken two steps back toward the road when he came laboring out of the shadows, heaped over the handlebars, and he didn’t call out and she turned and ran on and did not look back again.

  The light grew thinner here. The forest lusher and wilder the higher they climbed. As if they were entering a peculiar kind of wildness that thrived on altitude and lack of oxygen. It must have occurred to her to wonder what purpose such a road served and where it might lead. The instant before she stepped on it a lizard the size of a man’s finger twitched from the red silt and slashed away into weeds.

  Afterward, she would believe she’d known it was coming. She would believe she’d seen and not seen something back in the trees. Heard the low breath of it, or smelled it, or merely sensed it back in there, just out of view. Or maybe it was only that it seemed, later, like the sort of thing that would have to happen on such a road, in such woods. In any case it came, monstering through the trees at an incredible speed, crushing deadfall, the whip and scream of branches dragged on sheet metal and then the suddenly unobstructed roar that made her wrap her head in her arms, the sound of tires locking and skidding and the thing slamming into what sounded like the sad tin post of a stop sign and then the meaty whump and the woof of air which was in fact the boy’s airborne body coming to a stop against the trunk of a tree.

  A haze like atomized blood rolled uphill and beyond it sat the car—or truck or jeep-thing—come to rest perfectly broadside to the road like a barricade. Completely still and soundless.

  Sean was not in the pink haze of dust. Was not on the road anywhere. She saw the bike, the incongruent orange of it far back in the green and she knew the boy was there too because of course he would be where the bike was. But then something moved in the foreground and it was an arm, lifting as if in lazy hello from the scrub growth at the base of the tree, and she went to him with a barb of irritation in her heart—you are ruining my run—and then she said, Oh, shit, and dropped to her knees beside him, the pink haze all around her like the tinted air of dream. When she saw his leg her heart slid coldly. The purple balloon of knee and the lower leg folded at some exceptional angle.

  Shit, she said, shit.

  But no blood that she could see, no flowing blood anywhere for her to stanch with her hands or tie off with her top. He began to lift his arm again and she said Don’t. Don’t move. Lie still. Did you hear what I said? There was a stink in the weeds, as of some animal marking territory. Then she looked at him again and the stain she thought was sweat in his shorts had spread and was spreading and she placed her hand on his shoulder and said, Oh, Dudley.

  Don’t, he said, and she withdrew her hand.

  Sean? Can you hear me?

  His eyes were hard shut. A claw mark on his face had begun to weep scarlet beads. The helmet strap was sunk in the fold of his chin. The helmet was on his head. It seemed to nod.

  Don’t do that, she said. Don’t move your head. Don’t move anything, okay? She laid her hand on his shoulder again and with her other hand she unzipped and rooted inside the pack until she felt her phone. The feel of this small familiar thing, undamaged, poured relief into her heart. Just relax, she told him. You’re gonna be fine, and she thumbed the keypad and she watched the little window for the signal.

  It won’t work, said a voice behind her, and she gave a small hop and a cry, there on her knees, like a crow.

  He stood just behind her. Having arrived without sound. Inhumanly large, in that first view. Rubbing his neck one-handed like a man who’d been working long hours and had taken a break to come check on them, this girl and this boy by the side of the road. The movement of his hand on his neck made a fleshy, intimate sound, and part of her mind dwelt on that. On the fact that she could hear it so clearly.

  There’s no reception up here, he said. There never is. He raised his other hand and showed her a small black phone, as if this were proof.

  She peered at her phone. She redialed and watched the screen and watched the man at the same time.

  I came out on the road and there he was, he said. Right in front of me like a deer. I didn’t believe it. A kid on a bike, up here. Son of a gun. What are the odds?

  He took a step and dropped to his haunches all in one motion, and this new position—or the sudden, easy way he achieved it—changed him from an upright giant to a man with a much lower center of gravity, one for whom squatting was per
haps the more natural position, like an ape. He sat studying the boy through yellow lenses.

  How you doing, little brother? he said, and she nearly said, Don’t talk to him. He smelled of pinesap and gasoline and sweat, and his existence took something away from her. After a moment of only feeling this, she knew what it was: it was her sense of herself as the eldest. The strongest. The one in charge.

  And yet . . . he might be an expert on injury, on proper mountain procedure. It was his outfit: the pressed and tucked-in khaki shirt, the glossy black belt, the new-looking blue jeans and good hiking boots and the clean tan baseball cap. She looked more closely at the belt for gadgets and pouches, at the shirt and cap for insignia. She looked beyond him at the car or jeep-thing blocking the road but nowhere found any sign to tell her not to watch him, not to be ready.

  You got knocked pretty good, didn’t you, little brother?

  The boy didn’t move. His eyes were shut. The inflamed red of the scrape on his cheek had spread to his entire face and neck. It was the color he turned when he was very angry or embarrassed.

  I think he’s out, said the man.

  Sean, said Caitlin. Sean, open your eyes.

  The man said, Let him sleep. His body needs it.

  She gave the boy’s shoulder the smallest shake. Sean, open your eyes.

  I wouldn’t do that, said the man.

  He’s my brother, she said flatly, without looking at the man.

  All the same, he said. He squat-walked one step forward and from there reached and pressed two fingers into the flesh of the boy’s throat.

  His heart’s going like crazy, he said. After his hand was back out of view it occurred to her that he wore a gold ring. He’s just traumatized, said the married man. Help me get him into the truck.

  No, she blurted, don’t touch him.

  Okay, he said, okay.

  His neck could be injured. She turned to him. Do you have a blanket or something?

  A blanket?

  Something we can cover him with? In case of shock?

  Shock? It seemed a new word to him. He didn’t move. Then he said: I’ll go look.

  When he was gone she tightened her grip on the boy’s shoulder and pressed her free thumb to the keypad again. Come on, God damn you. She shook the thing. She held it at arm’s length in every direction. She raised it high over her head.

  Go, said the boy.

  What? Sean, what did you say?

  A door slammed and the man’s boots came gritting back toward her. How had she not heard that, his boots in the dirt, earlier? He carried a thick square of cloth, military in color, and when he snapped it from its folds it released a rich kind of animal smell. He floated it down and got into his monkey-squat again to help her tuck it around the boy.

  Wait. She peeled back the blanket and reached into the pack again and found the boy’s phone and brought it out and pressed it into his palm. The fingers closed slowly around it like a dying spider. Sean? she said. Nothing. His eyelids were shut but not at rest, the delicate skin busy with minute twitchings. As if he were a small boy again and she were watching him, waiting for him to talk in his sleep (so she could tell them at breakfast, them trying not to laugh and the boy burning red).

  The man stood behind her, a little to the left, and after a moment Caitlin pushed up from the dirt and began to brush fine pebbles and grit from her knees. She continued brushing after there was nothing but the red impressions in

  her skin.

  Okay, said the man. We best get going.

  She turned to him. She was a tall girl, five eight, most of it legs, and in his boots he stood no taller.

  I’ll drive you on down to where your phone works, he said. Drive you to your folks, if you want. Or the sheriff. Whatever you want.

  And what? she said. Leave him?

  He’ll be all right here. Nothing will touch him. The man hung his hands on his belt by the thumbs and gave her a kind of smile. Don’t be afraid, he said, and until that moment she hadn’t been.

  I’m not afraid, she said. It just doesn’t make sense. You can drive down until you get reception. Call 911, tell them where we are.

  He stood looking at her with the yellow lenses. Maybe you misunderstood me, he said. I’m offering to take you down where you can make a phone call. Heck, I’ll drop you in front of the sheriff’s office if that’s what you want. But if you send me down there alone, well. That’s likely to be the end of it, far as I’m concerned.

  Her face, she believed, was a perfect blank. She stopped herself from lifting her phone again. When she spoke, her words sounded to her like stones dropped into sand.

  What’s that supposed to mean?

  It’s supposed to mean that I hit this kid with my vehicle and I may not feel like getting sued by his daddy.

  She crossed her arms and uncrossed them.

  You’d really be in trouble then. If you left, she said.

  No, he said. I’d just be more careful.

  I’ve seen you. I’ve seen your car.

  Miss, do you have any idea where you are?

  She stared into the yellow lenses. What kind of a woman was waiting for this man? Slept in his bed?

  Fine, go. Go down the mountain and go to hell you white piece of shit, we don’t need you.

  Please, she said aloud. Please.

  The man sighed. Look, he said. Here’s the situation. Stay here with little brother and roll the dice on me making a phone call, and maybe he goes into shock and dies in front of your eyes, okay? Or, after I’m gone, try and run down to where you can make a call yourself. You could ride that bike, but I doubt it, from the looks of it. Or come with me and be down within range in ten minutes. I’ll let you out the second you have a signal, that’s what you want, and the sheriff or daddy can grab you on the way up. Now that’s the deal on the table, miss, you can take it or leave it but you need to decide quicklike. He began patting his

  pockets—jeans, khaki shirt—looking for cigarettes or keys or some other misplaced thing. Have yourself a minute to think while I get this vehicle straightened out.

  He walked away and she looked up the road and then down the road. Treetops swooning in a high wind. Sunlight spilling bough to bough to reach a random spot on the forest floor. Or not random at all, she thought, but the same boughs, the same spots of floor, day after day, the sun on its fixed course and every bough fixed in its place and nothing random about it but the eyes seeing it from this particular vantage at this particular hour of the day. She saw the face of the Virgin, and the memory of that place—the white aspens, the hard chill of the bench, the smell of chocolate and the sound of his desperate chewing—took hold of her like a memory of girlhood and left her heartsick.

  She knelt and touched his shoulder again.

  Sean, I have to go. I have to go down where I can get a signal, and then I’ll be right back, with Mom and Dad. With an ambulance. Then we’ll all go back down together. Okay? All you have to do is lie here and I’ll be right back, I promise.

  She began to rise, and stopped. He’d said something.

  What? she said. Sean?

  Don’t, he said.

  Don’t what?

  Don’t go.

  You want me to stay?

  No.

  What do you want me to do?

  His slack, red face. Nothing in his eyelids but the tremblings of dream.

  He said something else, hoarsely, weakly, and she leaned closer. What? she said, nearly as weakly, and held her breath, watching his lips.

  13

  The old Chevy that his son had left him still had good kick in the mountains, but Grant was content not to pass the logging trucks and other rigs laboring up the steep switchbacks. He lit a cigarette and watched the range rear up around him, the patterned thick walls of pine and more pine and now and then a copse of yellowing aspen like a blight on the green. At the top of the pass was a paved lot, a scenic overlook, a refuge from the harrowing turns—irresistible to a family from the plains who had ne
ver seen such country before.

  Why do they call it the Continental Divide if it’s not the exact middle of the continent? his son wanted to know. Standing with their backs to the view while a stranger aimed the camera, found the button. Because, said his daughter, this is where the water changes direction. On the eastern side the streams and rivers all flow to the Atlantic. On the western side everything flows to the Pacific.

  Looking out, each of them, as if they might see these streams and rivers running obligingly toward their endings.

  Grant drove to the far end of town, to the Black Bear, and parked, and made his way to the counter. I am starving, said Sean. How shocking, said Caitlin. A few faces looked up—looked again, then bent to their sandwiches, their soups. Waylon Reese appeared from the kitchen, raising his hand in an automatic wave, but then came forward with his hand held out. He asked Grant how he was and Grant said he couldn’t complain, and Grant asked after Waylon’s family and Waylon looked away at something and said they were fine, they were all just fine.

  He’d been one of the good ones, Waylon Reese. Free sandwiches and coffee for the sheriff’s people, the government men, the volunteers. He’d hauled his whole family up into the mountains, Julie and the two boys, to help look. He’d kept the poster up at the Black Bear long after others in town had taken it down.

  A good man who now flipped to a fresh page on his little pad and, staring at it, said, “What can I get you, Grant?”

  A CAR HONKED AND he looked up. The light was green.

  He accelerated around the corner and drove down the old street, past the school playground, the town hall, until he reached the sheriff’s building. Inside was the woody, dusty, faintly sour smell of a church. The groaning floorboards, the rack of shotguns aligned ceilingward like organ pipes. He looked over the head of the young deputy to the bulletin board and felt his heart fall out of him—his daughter’s face, there amid the postings. Her good teeth, her sun-squinted eyes. Black hair whipping away as if she were in full sprint. It was the picture taken at the top of the divide by a stranger. Grant and Angela and Sean, mountains and sky, all cropped out. He had looked on it a thousand times and it never failed to kill him.