The Other Oregon

by Steve Anderson

  “It’s okay. It’s true.”

  “You could have told me,” she said. Her eyes had darkened and lost all shine.

  “I care about you,” he added, though it was too late. At least he’d said it.

  She gave a sad little roll of her eyes.

  “I’m going there. To the brown part on the map,” he said. “Well, it’s mostly brown.”

  “Now? How? You’re crossing mountains. You don’t even have a car.”

  “I’m renting one.”

  “You don’t have the money.”

  “It’ll be an expense.”

  Emily had stepped back. Her arms had crossed her chest. This was how she did her thinking. He waited it out, staring into his bag.

  “I could go along,” she said.

  “That’s a nice gesture, but you hate sitting in the car,” Greg said. She hated when he said this even more, but he needed to deflect her. He’d had the response prepared.

  “You’re taking your bike, I bet,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “But not me.”

  “I can save on gas that way,” he added. “With the bike, I mean.”

  Emily glared. “A nice gesture?”

  “I didn’t mean it like that. Plus, I don’t even know if there’s good cell reception.” Greg tried a smile. “So, it’s all yours, make yourself at home,” he added as a wisecrack, take the heat off a little.

  Emily blurted, “It’s my fucking apartment.”

  “I was joking. It was a joke. Come on.” Greg opened his arms and, having to step over his bag, went in for a hug. Emily backed up to the door, shrugging off his embrace, but he followed her. She let him touch her upper arms only. “Look, I got to get something going,” he said.

  “You do have something going.”

  Normally, this would have been the point where Emily leaned into his chest, and they had that nice hug, a make-out, maybe get naked eventually. But she held her ground, kept her back pressed up against the doorframe.

  “We’re not even going to talk about it?” she said. “About, what I talked about?”

  “I can’t. I just—I have to go. We will though. After, we will.”

  8

  Donny could be alive, Torres had said. They had reason to believe it. Finding Donny was a long shot, but Greg had to pursue the possibility. And he had to do it without the FBI. He didn’t have any choice. Special Agent Torres could never know what he and Donny knew.

  Cruising in the right lane, lost in thought, he worried about worst-case scenarios. What if Torres knew about Donny being alive all along and was only using Greg’s curiosity to snag him? His last phone call with Torres had been so easy. Was Torres simply testing his reactions?

  Greg had picked up a silver Toyota Corolla from a car rental agency tucked into a small downtown lot. He was waiting there when they opened in the morning. He had mounted his bicycle rack on the trunk, pulling the straps tight, then set his bike on the rack, fastened that with bungee cords, and secured it with a U-lock. His long bike had protruded from both sides of the car and made the rack sag under its weight. So he cinched everything tighter, leaving the rear wheel higher than the front, all lopsided and out there like from some hunter’s big kill for all in his path to see. You will know me by the trail of chain grease and bungees, he had joked to himself, trying to find some amusement in any of this. He hadn’t slept much, so he got a coffee for the road, making do with a non-local roaster. He had driven south and connected with the I-5 freeway, trying to wake up and divert his thoughts by wondering why more rental cars weren’t hybrid or electric and why bicyclists didn’t have insurance. Missed opportunities like these usually came to him when his nerves were being tested, reminding him that a person could never anticipate every little failure no matter how hard they tried.

  Soon I-5 South shed its city exits and connecting highways. The last malls and subdivisions gave way to open farmland as I-5 continued on as one long trim path along the floor of the Willamette Valley. Greg passed through Portland’s urban growth boundary, the croplands stretching out on both sides for miles, reaching all the way to the hills rimming the horizon. This would be the heartland of Cascadia, he had written in his book, where everything from hemp to sugar beets would flourish and keep them autonomous, dependent on no foreign entity.

  Right now, though, he could give a shit. He mulled over how his secret mission could play out, the same penetrating analysis he used for research and writing now creating a world of infinite possible missteps to consider. He had to assume Torres might know something of what he and Donny had been up to, or at least he surmised it. All those years ago, Donny had come into town a fresh face. He fled from it a confident criminal only after getting to know Greg. That was a fact.

  From the capital—luckless, neglected Salem—Greg headed east on Highway 22 and passed more vast farmlands. Soon the dark contours rimming the horizon swelled before him, rising up as forest and mountains, and the land around seemed to darken to match it. Greg still found it hard to believe that Donny, dead or alive, could have been involved in a militia movement—basically, a violent-minded form of fantasy reenacting but with real bullets and homemade bombs. Donny hadn’t been political, had held few grudges, and he hadn’t worshipped money that much, all of which muted the need to play with guns or bombs or threats to society. Force just wasn’t his brand of persuasion. Reenacting wasn’t Donny’s style, not the Donny he knew. Role-playing was, though. Acting. By the time Greg had cut all ties with Donny, Donny was far surpassing Greg’s aspirations for him. He could already talk a guy or girl out of or into anything. Greg didn’t doubt that Donny might have known sketchy people, but it was probably just to survive.

  As the miles behind him mounted, keeping him sheltered, the anxiety smothering his chest gave way to an open buzz of curiosity. How could they have found out about Donny being alive? Someone must have told them, and it was probably someone close to Donny, or someone who had been. Greg knew of only one such person. Could it have been someone like Leeann Holt, wherever she was?

  So now here comes Greg, asking around, feeling things out. What would Donny be like now, and how would Donny treat him? How would he face Donny? Greg wondered what he would find out about Donny and what that would tell him about himself. He didn’t want to rediscover those things he had tried so hard to suppress. He had been conniving. He had cheated, cold-heartedly. He had taken a dear life like others kill a spider.

  But, what if Donny had told one of these people he knew—just one—about the things he and Donny had done years ago? What then? He wondered how he could keep Donny quiet.

  Near Sublimity, he turned off for a used tool store that he’d Googled then erased from his browsing history. There he bought a shovel, a pick, a cheap headband flashlight, and gloves. Paid in cash.

  After Sublimity, after Stayton, the dark contours rising up ahead consumed him as he followed Highway 22, driving alone for miles. Thick tall pines and firs walled both sides of the road, the low gray clouds obscuring their true height, the light dim like a permanent dusk. He was driving deeper and ever higher into the forested Cascade Range halfway to Pineburg.

  On the passenger seat, he had a detailed map of this area containing precise topography and all forest roads and actual names for every tiny lake. He’d bought it at REI along with their cheapest high-top hiking boots, with cash, wearing sunglasses and a bucket hat like a casual bank robber. On the map, he thought he’d already found that little road from so many years ago. He’d know the spot when he saw it. How could he forget it?

  As he climbed into the mountains, patches of defiant snow lined the route. Was it some freak new early-October snow, or left over from last winter? He had no clue. He drove on, trusting his phone map more than the paper map. Then his phone was losing network coverage fast, first down to 4G, then barely on Edge. The network dropped away. Phone service cut out. But he didn’t need any map now. He felt a sharp twitch in his stomach, and the muscles in his neck began c
ontracting as if he had a GPS built right into his chest. He was close. He just knew it.

  He turned into the narrow forest road, the lane dim as if muddy but with just enough gravel to give him some hope that he wouldn’t get stuck. More splotches of snow showed along the underbrush among the dark tree trunks. The trees cleared ahead, revealing a lake so small some would call it a pond. The clearing could barely fit a couple cars the size of Greg’s or, as he recalled, one large pickup truck.

  He parked, got out, and looked back toward the highway. He couldn’t see it or hear it. So that was good. He stepped over to the bank, looking out. The opposite bank was no farther away than the length of a soccer field. The water looked murky, darker than the trees’ shadows themselves and got little daylight with so much tree line crowding its banks. A draft from the trees made little ripples on the surface and gave him a shiver. Sticks and stems and soggy bushes rose from the water’s edge, looking skeletal like the carcass of some unknown lagoon creature.

  This little lake was probably ignored on regular maps because it bore few fish. Greg hoped so. Because it wasn’t looking as deep and smothering as he’d expected despite all the murk. He turned to his left and saw a trail—that trail, narrow and close to the bank. He heaved the shovel and pick onto his shoulders and headed off down the path. He wore the headband flashlight just in case and flicked it on at first, but then his eyes adjusted and he didn’t need it. He probably should have waited for dark, but that could take hours—and what if someone else came?

  At times the trail took him deeper into the woods where the moss fought for every inch of underbrush and fallen log. To him, a city kid, it smelled something like a suburban Christmas tree farm, but it was all musty with mold and moss as if slowly rotting from some invasive bug. He stopped once or twice, to listen, but not sure what for, and only found silence except for a faint, muffled trickle that seemed to come from everywhere. He imagined this was what the inside of a sponge sounded like to an insect that had found its way inside the soggy maze, through fear or flight or just inbred stubbornness. Something about that made him snicker, and he didn’t like the malice he was feeling.

  Less than twenty minutes later, he was standing on the opposite bank of the lake. He could make out the silver of his Corolla just inside the trees and told himself that was a good sign since he could see from here if anyone was coming, though what he would do with such information, he didn’t want to know. Pretend he was a lost lake buff? He was wearing dark jeans and a faux-vintage army jacket and told himself that his trendy camouflage was better than none. He did have the hiking boots on. But so what. He tried not to think about what he would do if a person came and got suspicious. His mind went there anyway, like an elevator on free fall, and only when he saw himself bashing a man’s head in with a rock and holding his unconscious head under water and snickering about it did he shake himself out of it with a jolting shiver.

  He stepped back inside the tree line. He stared at underbrush.

  This, here, it had to be the spot.

  He kicked away at underbrush, working in a circle. This didn’t seem to dig up much dirt and it jammed his toes inside his boots, but it didn’t take long until he hit something. He kicked some more and used a fir branch to brush away the loose dirt.

  A rock appeared, embedded in the dark earth, about the size of a football. He brushed at the rock and could see bits of neon orange that had once had the brightness of highlighter, faint and fading fast now, just enough left to leave a spot no bigger than his fist. It was the spray paint from Donny’s truck—construction marker paint.

  He wondered if Donny had ever been back here. The underbrush gave no clues, but wouldn’t Donny have scraped off the orange if so?

  Less than a half hour later, he was digging away. He had dug out the rock with the orange markings, and he was sweating, panting.

  A half hour after that, he was sitting on the edge of the shallow pit he’d dug, still holding the fir branch he had used to brush away at the dirt, like that archeologist he’d briefly dreamed of becoming when he was eleven. His sweat had cooled, he shivered a little, but he didn’t care. He stared down into the pit.

  Just enough light made its way down through the layers and layers of branches to illume the white contours of bone that protruded from the dirt in relief. A face, half of a skeletal face, stared up at Greg, its mouth open. Other contours showed that the body was curled up as if sleeping—the arms bent upward with the hands at the chin and the legs pulled up high, the thick knee bones meeting the elbows. He and Donny hadn’t placed the body like that thinking it was somehow more comfortable, or even respectful. It was the only way it fit in the hole they dug.

  Greg had come to make sure it was still there. That no one knew. He stared a minute longer. Then he shoveled the dirt back in, stomped it down. He replaced the rock, heaved on some more dirt, stomped that down, and brushed it smooth. He gathered all the underbrush and set it all back over, brushing that out too. He carried over handfuls of wet snow, his palms stinging from it, and laid it around so that the snow would melt leaving the spot looking more natural. All he could see of the spot was three splotches of snow. It would do. He warmed his hands inside his pockets, then pulled out his phone and used the flashlight to survey his work in one, two bursts of light to make extra sure.

  On the way back he sensed a warm surge of pride in his efforts and forced himself to instead feel something pensive, something wistful, anything. He gazed up at the sky where the trees gave way above the lake. The clouds had broken, and he saw a smear of blue. This only gave him relief.

  At the car he banged his cheap boots together to get the mud off, slid them inside a plastic shopping bag. He placed this in the car. As he slipped his retro running shoes back on, he gazed again at the sky, but the clouds were back already. He pulled away, screwing up his eyes for the highway.

  Only after he was back on the road a few miles did he realize: He hadn’t even thought of scraping off the last of the paint.

  Sometime later he pulled over next to a dense stretch of forest, pulled out the shovel, pick, gloves, and headband flashlight and tossed them high and deep into the trees, the handles knocking at tree trunks like so many discarded bones. He drove on. He drove miles of dim, wet Cascade Range highway, way up high. It snaked through dense forest before delivering him downhill.

  He hadn’t meant to dig it up, not all of it. He was just going to check on it. But he could not help himself.

  His phone coverage returned. Emily had called. Her message said she was just checking in to see how far he’d gotten.

  Greg called her back. Her voice had that quiet calm it always had when she’d been alone in her workroom with her designs and sewing machine.

  “Where are you now?” she asked him.

  “Way out here,” Greg said, trying to imagine how far he had gotten if he hadn’t stopped. “Highway names keep changing, all two-laners. It’s starting to look more like desert, at least to me. Few hills. Brown. Not much green. It’s another world. Definitely the other Oregon.”

  “Iowa can get like that,” she said. “Know what you should do once it’s dark? Check out the stars.”

  “I will. You okay? You seem quiet.”

  “I’m okay. Just reading. Started a new novel.”

  He imagined she had been talking with her friends about him and so seriously that they had tea at home instead of drinks out. He being the issue to be discussed. He had always thought he could be a form of parent and guide for a younger girlfriend like Emily, but with Emily he could see that it was and always would be the other way around.

  “Sure you okay?” he said.

  “Yes. I’m sure. You know me.”

  This was not the best conversation to be planting the seeds of lies to come. And yet Greg found himself welcoming the intrigue of it. This was that part people didn’t know about him, not these days, the part he had tried so long to shake. He liked to double down and didn’t give a shit about what it could bri
ng. Screw it. In breaking this compulsion, or trying to, he had wondered long and hard if maybe it was just the doubling down itself that he liked. The risk of utter destruction could be as much of a high as the prospect of total happiness. He’d read that about gamblers somewhere. It had nothing to do with winning. It was all about the rush of pushing it.

  All he knew was that the best lies had kernels of truth in them.

  “Listen, I might not get much cell reception where I’m going,” he said.

  “So you told me. Where is this place?”

  “Central Oregon, practically Eastern. It’s called Pineburg. There aren’t too many pines there, I’m guessing.”

  “We got the pines,” she said.

  “That’s right.”

  “Your bike okay?”

  “Yep. Still there.”

  A silence crept in. He added:

  “Listen, Em, I’m sorry. I just don’t think I’m ready.”

  “I’ve been thinking about it too,” she said. “I don’t think you are either.”

  He didn’t know what to say. She was right, of course, but to declare it like that? It initiated the threat of closure, and he wasn’t ready for that either.

  Mumbled cross talk followed, each promising to check in soon.

  After he hung up, Greg realized he hadn’t even asked her what the novel was. And why would he? He had only called her back to give himself an alibi, to use her for an alibi. She would remember he hadn’t asked. It would have been a better alibi if he had asked, he realized too.

  The other Oregon beyond the valley began to reveal itself: The mountain highway delivered him down into that very flatland he had fabricated to Emily. He thought of tossing out his boots along the road and assured himself some hitchhiker or poor vagabond would find them and put them to good use. But it might also be littering. At the first roadside minimart, he parked on the secluded side of the store, went inside, and bought a pepperoni stick and was glad to buy it from a tired-looking Korean man who, he told himself, hadn’t even looked at him and would never identify him. People like that didn’t want trouble from anyone, not even cops. He assured himself this wasn’t racist. He dumped his boots in their bag into the garbage can by his car. And he drove on, thinking, sure, this was all overkill, worrying about covering his tracks from twenty years ago, but he had to be wary. It felt good again, too, like uncovering a secret but in reverse, and he let it warm him. The pepperoni stick was a nice meaty treat he never would have picked out back home.