“You mean what should you do if it sees you? Throw your hands over your head. Hold still. Whatever you do, don’t try to run. But you’re not going to see it. Just lay the trap.”
Holt fervently hoped the beast had skipped town of its own accord. How long did wild bears live? Ten years? Twenty?
“No Pomeranians will be eaten on my watch, sir,” Holt said. He’d hung up the phone and headed for the woods.
A bird fluttered past him, perching high in the trees. Holt craned his neck. The dense branches blocked so much light that ten a.m. looked more like dusk.
Why hadn’t he brought Copper? His canine chum would be welcome company. Holt crept through the brush until he came upon a clearing large enough to lay the trap. He bent down, unzipping the bag.
A branch snapped like gunfire. Holt jumped. He drew his pistol, aimed it at the trees. The branches a few yards to his left thrummed, leaves bungeeing. Holt quickly replaced his gun. Hadn’t that article said that hikers should clap their hands, make noise, if they encountered a bear? That it was best not to sneak up on the animal, make it feel trapped?
Holt continued unzipping the bag. He sang as loud as he could about bad moons.
He made it through the song three times before the trap was set, and he hustled out of the woods, blinking at the sun.
Interview with Mira Wohl, Willamette University cafeteria, October 2, 2010
From Flight Risk: The Robert Jackson Kelley Story
“Listen, I know firsthand what happened. I knew him. I mean, it’s a small island. We went to elementary school together. Half of what people are saying now is totally made up.
“You gotta picture this. The plane’s crashing through the trees. Branches breaking, birds flapping away. Rattling like the wings are gonna tear off. Robert’s about to eat pine. His life’s flashing before his eyes like in the movies. He’s wondering what God will look like.
“Bam! The plane hits the ground. It’s a steaming hunk of scrap metal.
“And he just walks away.
“They found pieces of the plane for miles. I know somebody selling them on the Internet now. Robert was just an annoying kid from the trailer park, and now everything he ever broke is for sale.”
JULY 1998
911 dispatchers didn’t make a lot of money, but they had to “keep their heads,” as Deb always said. That she could stay calm on the phone while people were bleeding to death and clutching their chests and pleading with her to help amazed Robert. Particularly when she was freaking out about the dishes not being done and the trash overflowing in pungent heaps, or screaming at him to slow down and focus. Think about what he was doing, for Christ’s sake.
Robert imagined her talking to Officer Holt, giving him directions to the bank robbery or the four-alarm blaze. Ten-four, he’d say. Over and out, Robert’s mom would reply.
The operators shared their strangest calls, and Deb came home with plenty of warnings.
“I ever catch you fooling with a BB gun, I’ll break it in half,” she’d say. Or, “Don’t let any idiot kid talk you into a stupid stunt like cannonballing off a roof into somebody’s pool.”
She didn’t seem to realize she was giving him ideas.
Two Sundays a month his mother worked a second job, mucking out stables and exercising a wealthy couple’s horse. His mother was a horse person. She didn’t do the job for the money, which was menial, but for the chance to ride. She had some friends who were horse people, too, and Robert noticed that a lot of horse lovers resembled their prized animals in some way: the prominent teeth, the knobby limbs. His mother’s blond ponytail. As if they wanted to be horses.
If Robert could be any animal, he’d be lazy, happy, tail-wagging Hulk.
Or a bird.
Those Sundays Deb would try to get Robert’s father to come by and watch him. Robert Senior almost always said no, and Deb would slam the door behind her. In that case, Deb just left him with Hulk.
Robert had only met his dad seven times. The first three times, they played checkers and ate potato chips at the trailer while Deb mucked the stables. The fourth time, Robert Senior took his son to the Pine Tavern and let him wing darts at the black-and-red board. The fifth time was only for a few minutes, until Deb kicked Robert Senior out of the trailer, screaming and red-faced for reasons Robert didn’t know. During the sixth visit, Robert discovered his father was a war hero.
“Operation Desert Storm! Stormin’ Norman!” his dad crowed. “You ever hear of him?”
Robert shook his head. They were ensconced in the elder Robert’s pickup, slurping down thick milkshakes and munching on salty Arby’s fries, staring into a night sky that skimmed the beach like a drawn stage curtain. Deb had slammed through the front door earlier that evening and been confronted with a pile of Hulk’s shit curling on the carpet. She had noticed the mess in time not to step in it, but instead had mashed a tender foot onto one of the five hundred or so Legos Robert had dumped out of his plastic tub to build the world’s tallest tower. She had hobbled to the phone and demanded Robert Senior come get his son right this goddamn minute. And surprisingly his truck had rattled up, and he’d hoisted Robert onto the front seat.
“Stormin’ Norman Schwarzkopf,” his dad repeated, nodding his head reverentially. “Shoulda run for president.”
Robert still didn’t know who Schwarzkopf was, so he pictured Shaquille O’Neal. Robert Senior was just about as big and could lift Robert Junior over his head with one hand, his tree-trunk arms bulging. He’d drop his son back on the ground, the boy red-faced and out of breath.
“I’ve never told you about Desert Storm?”
Robert shook his head. He didn’t think so, but sometimes, even when he thought he was listening, he didn’t remember what teachers or his mom said. A forgotten homework assignment, a skipped chore, a missing shoe or key or pencil: each lapse ambushed him anew. Maybe his dad had told him about Desert Storm and he just didn’t remember.
Robert Senior gulped his milkshake, his cheeks ruddy beneath the brim of his camouflage cap. “I was fresh out of basic, rarin’ to go. Head shaved! Still in my twenties! Can you picture that?”
Robert grinned and shook his head. He got his own head buzzed every June, but his dad always had a mess of shaggy blond hair.
“I got sent right to Kuwait. You know where Kuwait is?”
Robert looked out the window. White tents dotted the beach. Someone must have been having a party. Must be rich people. At every party Robert had gone to, they just ate brownies the kid’s mom made from a mix and chased each other around the yard. Or played video games, if the kid had them. Robert shook his head again.
“You know where Egypt is?”
Robert nodded, even though he didn’t.
“You’re so quiet! Whose boy are you?” Robert Senior elbowed him in the ribs. “Say ‘Yes, sir.’”
His side smarted. “Yes, sir.”
“Anyway, the USA gets there and we’re prepped for a long fight, but the Kuwaitis treated us like heroes,” Robert Senior continued. “Miles of desert and surrendering Kuwaitis. They’d give their guns right over, smilin’ away. You’d bring some lollipops and pencils for the kids. They’d hug your legs.” He slurped his milkshake. “So the Iraqis had gotten a prisoner. Daniel McQuaid. Sweet-lookin’ kid with a wife and a baby, and while the Iraqis are getting their asses handed to them, they’re broadcasting video of Danny McQuaid, saying America is the great devil and praise to Allah and all that garbage. You can tell looking at the tapes that Danny McQuaid hasn’t had a wink of sleep in weeks. He’s got two shiners and they’ve probably got electrodes hooked up to his balls.”
Robert Senior used the end of his straw to shovel the thickest parts of his shake, so Robert Junior did, too.
“One day we’re sailing through the desert, waving to the Kuwaitis, when we come upon this cave. And lo and behold! It’s Danny McQuaid,” Robert Senior said. “He’s surrounded by Iraqis, but me and my guys open fire. McQuaid was so weak I swung him over
my shoulder and carried him, like I used to carry you to bed. Guns were blazin’ behind me. We get out of the cave and there’s sand blowin’ in my eyes. Can’t see anything, but I get old Danny to the chopper and back to the USA.”
Robert couldn’t recall his father ever tucking him in, but that must have been because he’d been too young to remember.
“They don’t release the soldiers’ identities in cases like that. Some people don’t want all the press. I know I didn’t. McQuaid got all the attention. After the war I just wanted to come home and live with your mom, but you know how that turned out.” Robert Senior shrugged. Robert had only ever seen his parents argue. They’d gone to high school together, but the trailer was so definitively Deb’s—her sweaters and jeans strewn about, her boots slouched by the door, her Bud and Diet Coke cans littering the kitchen, her Marlboro Menthols and fluorescent pink lighter stashed with her keys on the windowsill over the sink, her horse wall calendar, her grandmother’s hand-crocheted afghans slung over the secondhand sofa, Oprah and Law & Order blaring on the television. Robert couldn’t imagine his dad ever living there.
“I did meet the president, though. George Bush. Shook my hand, thanked me for serving my country with such bravery.” Robert Senior nudged his son. “That’s what you should do. Enlist.”
Robert’s milkshake was just about gone, a melting mound of chocolate. “I want to be a policeman.”
Robert Senior laughed and shook his head. “A cop? Uh-uh. Not you.”
Why not? Robert didn’t ask. Maybe his dad just didn’t like cops.
When he was a bit older, Robert realized that was the longest conversation he and his father had ever had.
Then came that seventh time. The last time.
Interview with Mira Wohl, Willamette University cafeteria, October 2, 2010
From Flight Risk: The Robert Jackson Kelley Story
“When you’re a kid, everyone’s always asking, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’ I usually said actress. Sometimes singer. When I got a little older, my dad kept trying to convince me I wanted to be a news anchor. I even went through a phase where I thought I wanted to be president. But I always knew I wanted to be famous. I wanted crowds and lights and cameras and autographs and couture dresses and magazine covers and all of it.
“But for now anyway, Robert’s the most famous person I know. And he got that way by running away. By hiding. He disappeared and so we could decide he was whatever we wanted him to be. And what we wanted was for him to never get caught.”
AUGUST 1998
Rapping on his window woke Robert up. Robert Senior peered in. Robert tossed his blankets aside and scrambled out of bed. He struggled with the window, his race car–covered pajama top riding up his tummy as he tugged, but finally he got the frame pulled about a quarter of the way up. Cold night air rushed into his closet-sized bedroom.
A thin rivulet of blood ran down the bridge of Robert Senior’s swollen nose. His knuckles were scraped raw. Sweat and liquor pinched Robert’s nostrils.
Robert Senior looked hurriedly over his shoulder. “The cops are looking for me. I borrowed one of their cars. You should have seen the sheriff’s face! Got them good.” He chuckled and swung a thumb behind his shoulder. “Left it a ways back there. Think I hit a deer.”
Bright lights flashed over both of them, illuminating Robert Senior’s swollen, rubber Halloween mask face.
“They’re coming for me, boy!” His eyes lit up. His face flushed. He drummed on the windowsill, chuckling again. “I’m gonna have to make a run for it!”
“Run, Dad!” Robert yelled.
Robert Senior grinned at his son. He reached out and ruffled the boy’s hair with a sweaty palm.
Then he crashed into the woods, and Robert never saw him again. He never told Deb he’d spoken to his father that night. And when Deb said a few weeks later that Robert Senior was in jail in Seattle, the maximum-security prison this time, Robert decided she was wrong. Robert Senior was camping in the woods, where there was less trouble to get into.
* * *
Holt and O’Shay recovered the sheriff’s cruiser at the edge of the trees, its door flung open. Glass from a smashed headlight littered the asphalt. Scratches clawed the driver’s-side door. Holt reached inside to turn off the lights, still splashing blue and red over the trees.
A boot, Rob Kelley’s own dirt-crusted Timberland, lay on the cruiser floor. Like Rob had gnawed it off to free himself from a trap. Holt took a slim digital camera from his holster and began snapping photos. A long shot of the boot, tipped over, laces still tied. Close-up of the tread, to compare with any footprints they might find.
“Oh, shit,” O’Shay swore. Holt hustled over to the front of the cruiser, where O’Shay had been surveying the damage.
A body was splayed near the middle of the road.
Holt’s peripheral vision shrank. An arm, snapped and bent. A wrinkled hand, fingers stretching toward the car’s front right wheel. The head turned away from him, mercifully, so that all he could see was white hair sprouting beneath a ball cap.
Something gleaming in the road, a white island in a sea of maroon. A tooth.
Holt lunged backward and hung his head over the grass. He gagged and heaved, and finally spat bile into the dirt. O’Shay called for an ambulance, though they both knew it was far too late. Then he took the camera from Holt. When he was done taking pictures, O’Shay covered the body with a blanket from the cruiser’s trunk.
“Do you know who it is?” Holt asked.
“No. Could be a vagrant. No ID.” O’Shay pointed at the trees. “Rob’s that way. I just know it.”
“He told me he was a marine,” Holt said. A sour taste oozed down his throat. He peered into the woods. Broken pine boughs marked where Rob must have dived into the forest. Holt ran a hand down his own stubbled cheeks. Those needles must have torn up Rob’s face, his bare arms. Holt turned back to O’Shay. “Maybe he has survival training.”
“That’s bastard’s no marine!” O’Shay yelled. “He’s a drunk with a kid he doesn’t support. I’ve been hauling him in since he was fifteen years old. He disappeared in Seattle for a few years, probably making a complete pain in the ass of himself there, too. But he tells all kinds of stories about what he was up to. He’s a war vet. He’s a middle-weight boxer. He’s been crab fishing up in Alaska. I used to think I could help him. Don’t ever make that mistake. People like him just drag you down with them.” O’Shay spat toward the trees. “At least now he’ll have a true story to tell in jail.”
O’Shay returned to the car and popped the trunk. Holt took a few steps toward the trees. The curtain of needles could certainly hide a man. After all, it still held the bear that Holt had failed to trap.
He tried to forget this second fugitive lurking in the forest as O’Shay tossed him a thick jacket and a pair of gloves, and they parted the trees.
Interview with Brad O’Shay, Pine Tavern, October 9, 2010
From Flight Risk: The Robert Jackson Kelley Story
“Before that night, Rob Kelley was a drunk, an obnoxious one who’d get himself fired from shitty job after shitty job and try to tell you he was Batman after he’d had a few. But he was harmless. There were about a dozen other guys on this island just like him, warming seats in this tavern every night. I never thought that son of a bitch would cost me my job. Cost somebody his life. You talk to James Holt about any of this?
“He won’t talk? Doesn’t really surprise me.
“That night, Rob’s practically falling off his stool, and he starts talking about the Gulf War. Barely making any sense. Going on and on. I’m off duty, technically, but around here the sheriff’s shift never really ends. I have the cruiser. Usually do. I try to shut Rob up. Tell him to go home, get some sleep. Eat something. Of course he doesn’t listen. Never did.
“Gets to be the time of night that Rob retires to the drunk tank. But he doesn’t want to go quietly this time. We scuffle a little bit. Nothing major. He can�
�t hit the broad side of a barn at this point, but he’s nothing if not persistent. So we tangle. But my keys are sitting by my beer, and damn if he doesn’t grab them. He’s grinnin’, ornery, so pleased with himself. He runs off and hops in my cruiser. There are people who’d say I should have shot him right then. But that’s not how the law works. I gotta call in for backup. By the time they show up, Rob Kelley is gone.
“Took all my men, plus SWAT from Seattle, to finally get him. Snipers were leaning out the windows of the high school gym. After all, the man was a wanted murderer.
“After three days in those woods, his fingertips were black. Broken nose, too. I heard he lost two toes. And still he tried to run. But we were ready for him. Tased him.
“Can’t run forever. Like father, like son.”
NOVEMBER 1998
Robert liked first grade. He liked the busy hallways, teeming with other kids like darting fish. He liked the cafeteria’s warm, crunchy tater tots and cold milk cartons. He liked the library with its shelves and shelves of books, liked to pull one free, flip through it, put it back, grab another. He liked his teacher, Ms. Milhauser. He liked her tiny silver earrings, the way she let the kids shout along when she read Green Eggs and Ham, and how she let them take as long as they liked at the water fountain. He liked her even when she moved his seat away from the window, even when she tapped his paper and quietly said, “Focus.” He liked gym, how the kids’ sneakers squeaked across the shiny floor. He was always the fastest, and he never got tired.
* * *
At home, Robert found a dirt-streaked beer bottle near the mailbox, its Coors label peeling and flaking like sunburned skin. Coors, he vaguely remembered, or perhaps decided, was what his father always drank.
Flight Risk Page 2
