The animal came to her. He couldn’t have been older than two years. She rubbed his ears and the feeling made her happy. He had no collar. “Whose boy are you?” she asked and looked around for the owner. “So, where the hell am I, eh, fella?” she asked the dog. She left Zed standing on his rein and walked with the dog toward a gentle slope. She felt strong, loose, and she gained the crest of the ridge without becoming winded. She looked down at a verdant and amazing valley, a valley she had never seen before, junipers and scrub on the hills, hardwood trees along and between two moderately fast-flowing rivers that became one slowly twisting body. There was a beaver dam on a creek and birds everywhere.
The dog pranced around her. Norma watched the shepherd, listened to his bark, observed the way he slightly favored his left front paw. Just like her Zach. She felt excited and frightened by this. She had watched Zach grow old and die and yet this animal was just like her young pet. She scratched his neck and turned him over and there was a scar on his belly, a scar from when he’d been cut by barbed wire when he was a young pup. Zach. This dog had the same scar. Norma felt dizzy, lost, then happy. She stood, turned, and looked down at Zed grazing.
Her mind didn’t exactly race, but it made many stops. She was lost, that much she accepted. The weather was so very different here. She understood that there were often microclimates that were observably different from adjacent ones, but this was so much more. The dog was remarkably similar to her Zach, but it couldn’t be him. But it was him. And if it was him, then where was she? If it was Zach, then what else was possible? She stared back at the rivers below. The jagged white of the fast water appeared to spell something, but of course it didn’t. Zach was dead. Zach was dead, she kept telling herself. But this dog had Zach’s scar. What else was here? She slipped out of her jacket, sat, and the dog lay down beside her.
She found herself searching the air for a familiar scent, any familiar scent. There was none. She stared. She listened. She imagined trout in the water below her. She imagined the whistling of her husband as he fished. She imagined the footfalls of her daughter coming up the hill behind her. She tried to smell her. Somehow she knew that if she smelled her child, she would be real. She put her face to the dog and sniffed. She couldn’t tell if he smelled like Zach.
Time was getting away from her. The sheriff had the helicopter up now. Neighbors were no doubt on horseback searching for her. Braden was pacing the yard, useless to do anything else. Then it occurred to her that the light was not changing, the sun was where it had been when she first rode into this place. She was frightened suddenly, but then the feeling was gone and she was empty, but not really, as she expected something, someone. She was ashamed to think it, so she said her daughter’s name. “Nathalie.” She said her husband’s name. “Howard.” No scents followed the breeze to her. No whistling, no singing, no whispering, no footfalls. But the dog was here. Zach was here.
Norma looked down at Zed and at the way they had come in. The horse whinnied and stepped nervously. Norma stood and the dog lay still and remained still while she walked down the slope to the meadow. The dog raised only his head as she peered up at him from Zed’s side. She checked the cinch and mounted. She sat there for a few minutes, then turned the horse and headed back.
She found the gap in the wall and rode through and came out under the falls, the water shockingly cold, to find it snowing, to find the air frigid, the sky a steel gray. From the falls she knew the general way home, though she still considered herself lost. She rode for nearly an hour, when above the trees she heard the distant chopping of a helicopter. The noise grew closer but there was no way she could be seen in the dense forest. The snow fell harder and her bones complained. What she realized was that she was disoriented, not simply because she was lost, but because she could not reasonably process where she had just found herself. In fact, the awareness of her feeling adrift made her feel more so.
She came to a clearing and someone called to her. A man’s voice, hoarse with the cold air and concern, found her and she held up.
“Norma!” It was Dan Hilton.
“Hey there, Dan,” she said. “I suppose I’ve gotten a lot of people worried. I’m a little cold.”
“Where’s your coat?” he asked. He had his parka quickly off and put around the old woman.
“I don’t know,” she said. She hadn’t realized she’d forgotten it at the lake. All of a sudden her disorientation was real and profound.
Dan spoke into his two-way radio, but Norma didn’t hear any of what he was saying. “Let’s get you home,” he said to her. “You okay to ride or you want me to lead him?”
“I’m okay. Let’s go.”
Norma followed the man down a familiar ravine, up over a ridge, and then she was looking down at her pastures. The snow was falling heavily. In the yard were parked a paramedic’s vehicle, a sheriff’s car, and Braden’s Nissan. Pat Hilton and her daughter were there also.
Braden ran out to meet her. “Mrs. Snow, are you all right?” He turned to Dan. “Mr. Hilton, is she okay?”
“I think so,” Dan said.
In the yard, the medic and the sheriff’s deputy helped her down from the saddle. “Easy does it,” the medic said.
Pat hovered close. “You’re going to be fine, dear,” she said. “Just fine. We’ll take good care of you.”
Norma looked past Pat at her daughter, standing near the medic’s truck with her arms folded across her chest.
“You gave us a scare, Mrs. Snow,” the deputy said.
“I’m sorry,” she said, absently.
“Well, let’s get you in the house,” the medic said.
Inside, the medic took off his gloves and gently felt Norma’s face and neck. He checked her pulse, took her temperature, and measured her blood pressure. Pat brought in a cup of tea.
“That’s good,” the medic said. “She’s cold. Suffered a bit of exposure out there. Another blanket, too.”
“I’ll get one,” Pat said.
“I need to ask you some questions, Mrs. Snow, okay?”
Norma nodded.
“Do you know who I am?”
Norma studied the man’s face for a long second. “Yes, you’re the boy who rode the goat.”
“What was that?”
“You’re the boy who fell off the goat,” she said.
Pat was back with the blanket. “What in the world is she talking about? Is she delirious?”
The medic laughed. “No, I rode in the goat race when I was a kid and I had a pretty good wreck. Broke my clavicle.”
“You didn’t have a beard then,” Norma said, smiled.
“No ma’am, I didn’t. I was eight.” He stood and began to put away his sphygmomanometer. “She’s all right. Pretty cold out there, Mrs. Snow? How’d you lose your coat?”
“Can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s out there somewhere.”
“Remember why you took it off?”
Norma shook her head.
“Well, the thing now is to keep covered up and stay warm. Keep drinking hot liquids.”
“I’ll see to it,” Pat said. “I’ll get a hot water bottle for her feet.”
“That’s good.”
Dan came into the house with some wood and went about making a fire in the stove insert. “We’ll get it toasty in here,” he said.
The medic put his hand on Norma’s shoulder. “I’ll swing by tomorrow morning and check on you.”
“Thank you,” Norma said.
“I’ll stay with her,” Pat said.
“No, you won’t,” Norma said.
“Norma.”
“You heard me. I’m nobody’s baby and I live alone and that’s how I will live tonight.”
“It might be advisable to have someone stay with you, ma’am,” the medic said. “Just to be on the safe side.”
“No.”
“Ma’am? You might be a little disoriented.”
“Do I seem disoriented now?”
“Braden, he can sta
y,” Dan said.
“Hell no,” Norma said. “Thank you all for everything, but I’m warming up now and I feel just fine. You’re Dan. You’re Pat. You’re the goat boy and that wall of beef out there is Braden. It’s Thursday and it’s snowing and I got lost. And though that might be stupid, it’s not a crime.”
“All right, Norma,” Dan said, putting his hand on Pat’s back and starting her toward the door. “Keep the phone beside you in case you need to call. You’ll do that for us?”
“Okay.”
“And I’m going to call and check on you,” Pat said. “So, answer.”
Norma nodded.
They left and Braden came into the house.
“I brushed out Zed and put him away,” he said. “I made sure he got him some extra grain.”
“You put his blanket on him?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“The blue one?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Thank you, Braden. Thanks a lot. You can go on home now. Sorry I took up your day.”
“I told my wife. I told her I’m staying here tonight.”
“No, you go on home. I’m fine. The doc said I’m okay. Now go.”
“At least let me make you some food,” he said.
Norma looked at his face. It was a kind face. She nodded. “Scramble me a couple of eggs, that’ll be great.”
Braden smiled. “Bacon?”
“Sounds great.”
While Braden banged around in the kitchen, Norma stared at the fire behind the screen. She had fooled all of them. She was as disoriented as she had ever been in her life. She was swimming.
“I’m going to make you some biscuits, too,” Braden called. “Would you like that?”
“That would be nice.”
She could not remember the place she had visited well enough to describe it to herself. She only knew that she had been there. She remembered the dog. She remembered the warmth. She wished Zed could talk, could tell her something about where they’d been. She knew one thing. She would not saddle up in the morning and ride back to that place. She would not follow those tracks. She would not ride again.
Norma Snow felt warm inside. She watched the fire, the flames hovering over the alder log. She listened to the popping and the hissing. She imagined the snow falling on the cattle. She let the blankets slide down from her lap. She was warmer still. The fire grew cold.
Exposure
Benjamin Taylor’s fourteen-year-old daughter was basically insane. This was what Benjamin thought as he studied the clock in the kitchen. It was nearly four thirty in the morning. On a normal night, he would have been asleep, cracking an eye at his bedside clock and enjoying the idea of another half hour of sleep. Emma had gone out, she said, with her friends Cathy and Tanya, to a movie in town, driven by Cathy’s mother, she said, but Benjamin hadn’t been there when she’d been picked up. He’d had a strange feeling about it when she’d called him on his cell phone. He’d been down at the stables finishing up the last of the chores. He’d asked what she was going to do about dinner and she’d said not to worry. She was fourteen and, lately, was fond of telling him not to worry. Benjamin’s wife had left long ago. It had taken him six years to realize that he had been no good for her, in fact, bad for her; six years to understand that she had abandoned them as an act of survival, but still he was angry she’d gone. Now he sat and waited for his daughter. The cell phone she’d talked him into buying her went directly to her voicemail. He hated her outgoing message. She sounded like a kid trying to sound like an adult.
Three days ago at the grocery market, she had refused to get into the truck and ride home with him.
“Come on, Emma, I don’t have time for this foolishness.”
“I’ll find my own way.”
He was sitting behind the wheel, his door propped open with his foot, and she was standing at the open passenger window.
“What kind of way?” It wasn’t really a question, but he felt he’d stepped badly nonetheless, entering a negotiation with a child.
“A way.”
“Get in the truck.”
“No.”
A woman stared at them as she walked from her SUV to the grocery market door. He made brief eye contact and the woman shook her head. He didn’t know whether she was disapproving of his parenting or offering commiseration for having to deal with a recalcitrant teenager. Either way, he didn’t care. “Emma,” he said, feeling helpless saying it.
Emma gave him and the empty passenger seat a long look and in that moment he realized that he had little leverage. His stern issuance of her name was a bluff. Just what could he do if she walked away? But she didn’t walk away. For whatever reason, Benjamin wasn’t questioning, Emma climbed into the truck. They headed back out to the ranch together. There he would prepare dinner. That night there would be pork chops and rice and broccoli, and she would retire to her room and sit on her phone. But before that there was the ride home.
“Are you mad at me?” Benjamin asked.
“You always ask me that,” Emma said.
“I guess I do. Are you?”
“What do I always tell you?” She looked out the window at the Tasty Freeze, where she and every other teenager in Lander went at night and on weekends. It seemed like a throwback, but yet it wasn’t.
“What do I always say?” she asked.
“You know, I miss your mother, too,” he said, the words feeling stupid. He was already cringing at her response.
“Have you been watching talk shows again?” She laughed. “You don’t miss her. She’s not dead. She left us. And I can’t believe you sucked me into this dumb-ass conversation.”
Benjamin kept his eyes on the road. They rolled past the Target store on the edge of town and started up the hill before the descent into the valley.
A vehicle’s wheels stirred the gravel of the yard. By the time Benjamin was outside, the car was just bouncing taillights and Emma was ten steps from the door. He studied the back of the car.
“Who was that?” he asked.
“Friends.”
“I won’t ask you if you know what time it is.”
“Good.”
“Have you been drinking?”
“No.”
He stood in front of her on the porch. He thought better of asking to smell her breath, but he looked closely at her eyes.
“No,” she repeated.
He believed her or wanted to believe her. It came to the same thing, so he did not challenge her. He took a long breath.
“Well,” she said.
“Go on upstairs and get some sleep.”
“That’s it.”
“We’ll talk in the morning.”
“Right.”
That “right” pushed him over the edge. “Maybe you won’t need much rest.”
“What?”
“Since you won’t be going anywhere this weekend.”
“I’m supposed to go to Cathy’s on Sunday,” she said.
“Afraid not. Cathy won’t be having guests anyway. I talked to her mother.”
“You didn’t.”
“Around midnight a weird thing happened. I became worried about my fourteen-year-old daughter. So I called the person she said was giving her a ride. Guess what? Apparently, Cathy told her I was driving tonight.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah, I’m angry that you stayed out so late, but you’re being grounded for lying.”
Emma said nothing else, but stormed into the house and up the stairs. She did not slam her door and he knew that her failure to do so was meant to annoy him. Knowledge notwithstanding, it worked.
He sat at his kitchen table and tried to figure out not what he had done wrong but what he might do right. He decided he needed some time with his daughter, as simpleminded as that sounded, alone and away from their house. He would offer his corny attempt at some kind of remedy and she would laugh, but he would force the issue. He would make her go hiking with him. He would not go to work and he
would drive her into the Winds and hike up to Burnt Lake. She would complain loudly at first and he didn’t look forward to hearing that, but then it would get better. She was his daughter, so of course he loved her, but he actually liked her. He imagined that somewhere inside her she felt the same toward him.
The next morning Emma walked into the kitchen to find the counter covered with sandwiches, water bottles, and fruit. Benjamin watched her as he mixed peanuts and chocolate chips in a plastic bag.
“What’s all this?” she asked.
“An outing,” Benjamin said.
She looked at the mix in the bag. “Not a hike.”
“Yep. I thought we’d go up to Burnt Lake. We used to go there a lot. Remember?”
“I remember.”
“We need some time alone and we can get some real privacy up there.”
“We have privacy here,” Emma said.
“You know what I mean. Besides, here you have the phone and your computer. Smoke signals. So, go get your hiking boots on.”
“You see, there’s a problem.”
Benjamin stared at her.
“No boots.”
“I know you have hiking boots,” he said.
“Yes, that’s true. But I don’t have hiking boots that fit. I’ve been doing this thing called growing, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Well, we’ll leave a little earlier and pick you up a pair at Lark’s.”
“Really, Dad?”
“Really.”
“You’re serious about this,” she said.
“I am indeed.”
Lark’s was a feed and tack shop that also had a large boot department. Most were ropers and Wellingtons and paddock boots, but there were some hiking boots as well. Emma hated all of them. “I can’t be seen in these things,” she said. “My feet look big enough as it is.”
“That’s because you have big feet,” Benjamin said. “Own it.”
Half an Inch of Water: Stories Page 6
