On Location

by Elizabeth Sims

  He was, in short, still a gay Hollywood actor.

  I loved him so much.

  I saw him now confronting his limitations.

  He was confident in the woods. He could orienteer; he could climb and spelunk and haul half-dead guys with broken legs up from dangerous ledges unroped. He could reduce dislocations and set bones.

  He was tremendously brave.

  Yet I could see the fear in his hooded eyes, in the stiffness of his shoulders, as the reality of what he and George were about to do hit him.

  This wilderness stuff is one thing. Confronting bonechopping kidnapping criminals who carry guns and axes was another.

  He was feeling it like a brick between the eyes. There in the lantern light George could see it too.

  I had gotten Daniel into this. I had asked him to accompany me to these woods and he had done so without a second's hesitation.

  Earlier today, he had helped Joey to stand on one leg for a few minutes, leaning on him, to keep his circulation up. Joey didn't like it—he moaned with the pain—but he did it.

  Daniel was a hero.

  He was my friend, and I realized that I could not expect him to go with George, who knew his way around violence.

  But he would. For us, he would put himself in a different kind of danger than he'd ever dealt with before. And I could also see, just below the surface, that he would do it to avoid the remotest possibility of George thinking him a wuss.

  As the guys discussed this incredibly delicate situation on their hands, I pictured them coming upon the loggers' encampment and this bone-chopping leader simply executing Kenner with a bullet to the brain before they even had a chance to do anything.

  I pictured them creeping along and suddenly being picked off by some three-toothed wilderness sniper.

  I considered urging George to go alone. But Daniel wouldn't allow it, and although George would do it, and even might insist on that plan himself, a solo guy in the woods approaching a stranger's camp is like a guy hitchhiking alone: a warning sign, not what you want.

  Excusing myself, I walked silently to Badger Cabin.

  Joey's and Petey's snoring rocked the rafters.

  "Yes, I'm awake," Gina muttered in answer to my soft question. "Who could sleep in here?"

  I knelt to her, and we had a brief, whispered conversation.

  —-

  In the dawn's grayness, I turned over in my creaking bunk (Petey having graduated to his own) and felt ready for coffee. Gina moaned alarmingly. "Ohhh."

  Daniel and I sprang to her side. My sore muscles screamed. She gripped her head with her good hand. "It hurts so bad, oh God."

  "Where?" questioned Daniel. "The side of your head?"

  "Ohhh," groaned Gina, "I feel like I'm gonna vom."

  I grabbed a bucket and held it to her.

  She retched weakly, but nothing came up.

  Daniel, pale, muttered to me aside, "The headache and the nausea together all of a sudden—she could have a slow-bleeding contusion. A brain bruise."

  "That's really serious, right?" I asked anxiously.

  "Yeah. Yeah." He checked her eye tracking. She did not follow his finger well at all, but "her pupils are equal; that's puzzling if she's got cerebral bleeding. Gosh, I don't know."

  Gina retched again, then sank back.

  Daniel looked at me like, Now what?

  Oh, fuck waves were coming off him all over the place.

  I said, "Here's what we do. You and George go for Kenner this morning. But hurry." My voice faltering, I added, "I'll be able to look after my sister. Right, Gina?"

  She reached out, but not to me; she gripped Daniel's arm. "Don't leave me. For the love of God don't leave me." She drew him close and rasped, "Rita doesn't know what she's doing. You're the only one with real medical skills, in case something...happens." She whimpered, "I'm scared, please don't leave me, Daniel."

  Reading his face, I knew he was picturing Gina dying on our hands. Then he was picturing Kenner getting chopped to smithereens.

  Calmly, I said, "I have an idea."

  I sure as hell better have an idea; I laid awake half the night figuring out the details.

  Chapter 24 – Rita in Disguise

  "Ready?" George asked cheerfully.

  "Almost." Today was not going to be a picnic, though he and I were pretending otherwise.

  I wanted to spend a few minutes communing with my boy. It was eight-thirty in the morning—Sunday morning, it occurred to me, the idea of days of the week even having names anymore striking me as absurd. I had just completed a very busy hour scurrying around the camp, preparing. The sun, behind uncertain clouds, had turned the sky white and the lake silver, and you could just barely see shadows. Isn't that amazing, I thought—to realize you haven't seen a shadow in days and days. The landscape looked different, more 3-D. Petey had been aware of that, being such a keen observer.

  I plunked down next to him as he sat cross-legged on top of the picnic table, curious about his drawings. He'd been "taking bearings" with his telescope, drawing, climbing, exploring, living the kind of existence that anybody—boy, girl, tadpole—would envy. My heart, for all its trouble lately, had a happy, glowing place in it for Petey.

  I was proud of him; he'd been a terrific team player. He'd learned how to stay calm, and he was getting fairly wise about the dangers of this world. Too young?

  There had been no way to prevent him from seeing Joey's and Gina's injuries and their suffering, but hey, that's life too. Moreover, both of them were being quite stoic, and Joey was really coming along. The gashes on his head and thigh were starting to heal, and Daniel said that the fractured lower leg bones seemed stable for now.

  It was all right. At age six, before we'd even gotten here, Petey was already quite experienced when it came to unusual events.

  He was in the middle of drawing a new picture when he heard me approach. He flipped his sketchbook closed.

  "What are you drawing, honey? Let me see."

  "No."

  His flatness shocked me. The other day he'd asked for more "regular black pencils," which happened to be unobtainable in the wilderness, though Daniel was able to give him the stub of a Ticonderoga #1 he'd found in his kit somewhere.

  Petey had enthusiastically shown off his pictures to me before, realistic drawings of ravens, a dead frog, the vista across the lake—I loved his free outline of the mountain ridges beyond—all the nature pictures interspersed with ones of muscly guys lifting big rigs over their heads, the figures crude but a hell of a lot better than the stick people most little kids draw.

  Having had my gag reflex pressed to the max by L.A. parents boasting of their children's extraordinary gifts, I'd resolved when Petey was still in swaddling clothes to keep his talents in perspective.

  That said, I realized that my boy did seem to have a flair for drawing. To my cautious gladness, he hadn't been whining at all for his (damn) ScoreLad, which I'd made sure had stayed home. Could he possibly be...outgrowing it? O happy day.

  But now he was refusing to show me a picture.

  "How come, honey?"

  "I'm not showing this to anybody till it's good and ready."

  "Yeah? OK. How come?"

  "Because it isn't finished." He seemed grim, and I realized he'd been quiet since last evening.

  "Is anything wrong, honey?"

  He shrugged. "You look weird."

  "I do, don't I? It's just for fun."

  He gave me a fishy look. Kids always sense more than they can understand. In fact, I was staking everything today on the alterations I'd made in my appearance. But I couldn't get into that with him.

  I asked, "May we borrow your telescope today? It'll help us on our mission."

  "OK." He handed it over.

  "Thanks, honey. See you later. Gimme a kiss?"

  "No." He turned his back.

  Oh God, he's freaked out. He knows.

  Well, if we don't come back, Daniel will make sure he's taken care of. Good educa
tion, good start in life. Petey would grow up to be discerning in underwear brands and musicals.

  What the hell kind of thoughts were those?

  What kind of mother would leave her beautiful child and walk off into a dangerous situation armed with nothing more than a costume, a rusty hatchet, and her wits?

  This kind of mother.

  Me.

  Look at yourself, Rita.

  Yeah? So what?

  Life, I realized with a sort of slamming sound inside my head, amounts to more than playing it safe for the sake of the kids.

  I loved what George and I were about to do. I was confident. I didn't want to die today, and I felt we had a more-than-even chance. But we had to have guts, and we had to be ready to improvise.

  As he and I set off hiking along the brink of the Harkett River north toward where the Quilmash came in, I was silently grateful that neither of us had yet said something idiotic like, I sure hope this works.

  Because it had to work.

  Angry-Zeus clouds roiled among the towering peaks, threatening to overcome the scrim of high white sky. I hated to even think it, but it felt like snow was coming. I watched the drizzle anxiously, looking and feeling for the sharper, heavier wetness that signified sleet.

  What George and I were doing was exactly like the astronauts boarding the first moon rocket, or Jonas Salk injecting himself with the polio virus: if it worked, we'd be heroes; if it didn't, we'd be dead.

  Well, Kenner had walked into these treacherous woods in appalling conditions trying to find his brother and my sister, not worrying about his own safety.

  I'd simply misjudged him: he'd seemed so casual as to the whereabouts of Gina and Lance back in my apartment in West Hollywood, I thought then that he didn't care. Well, we'd both been stunned by his mother's revelation of Lance and Gina's engagement.

  I tripped on a stick and in catching myself felt the deep soreness in my body from yesterday's pounding in the river. The zingyness of my excitement compensated for my lack of sleep.

  We paused at a deadfall zone, a swath of trees blown over by some insane wind, now a hazardous melee of trunks and tops and snags perhaps a quarter mile long.

  "Quicker to go around it," George said, and I agreed.

  We took no care as to the noises we made when approaching the place where the Harkett River met the Quilmash. The land began to slope downward.

  He said, "I can't believe you were willing to leave Gina, now that she's so sick."

  He hadn't gotten it yet. I told him, "I have a feeling she might improve quite a bit after we've been gone about an hour."

  "Oh, my God."

  "Yeah."

  "You guys are good."

  "Yeah."

  "You could tell Daniel was scared last night."

  "It was just that I couldn't ask this of him, on top of everything he's done already. I felt I needed to—step up."

  "Needed to?"

  "Wanted to."

  George just smiled.

  That he could smile at a time like this. God, I loved him. Gina had told us what this Alger had said about being able to ford the high-running Quilmash upstream from the encampment. So we at least knew which side the camp was on. We found the ford and waded in. It's amazing how hard it is to keep your balance in fast water. The penny-in-your-mouth taste of fear surged through me as the cold current cut through my jeans into my shins. I focused on the opposite bank.

  I felt better when we clambered up the low bank and continued toward the growing sound of the big rapids where the two rivers crashed together.

  George now began chattering aloud about what he was seeing and hearing, in keeping with our goal of appearing unsneaky.

  "There's another raven, that makes seventeen so far today. Now listen to that little call—that's a spruce warbler. You know, my favorite animal in Bambi was the owl. Wise old owl, he never got his hands dirty. Like a mandarin, he didn't have to. Then I grow up to be an ornithologist, isn't that something?"

  I made no comment.

  "Watch that branch," George cautioned. "Huh, guess I don't have to tell you to watch it in the woods, eh, Sacagawea?"

  I took the lead in the hike, in keeping with the role I'd assigned myself.

  Presently our ears picked up something different from birds: human voices, arguing.

  We stopped immediately. Since the voices went on, evidently unaware of us in spite of our efforts to be obvious, I signaled that we should be quiet, to listen. George nodded. We continued slowly and silently as possible. I placed my feet carefully, rolling heel-toe. George moved as deftly as a salamander, dislodging neither twig nor stone.

  "Who says I don't?" demanded a female voice that sounded like it'd been born pissed off. "You're the boss until things start going to shit, right?"

  "Things are not going to shit! I've got everything under control." A hulking guy voice that used volume in place of reason. Somehow I felt I knew the voice, and I realized that it reminded me of Ed Burris's voice back in Wisconsin—the leader of the hoody gang of brothers Gina had sometimes hung out with. The voice of a guy smart enough to raise a lot of creative, attractive hell but too dumb to avoid getting busted from time to time.

  "Yeah, well, I ought to go along and follow Alger," said the female petulantly, seeking to be convinced otherwise.

  George and I huddled next to a soft-needled sapling whose young green seemed to glow against the vibrant ochre of the forest floor. We kept listening. I touched one of the sapling's branch tips with my finger. So alive.

  I'm going to miss this place, I realized with surprise.

  "You do that and I'll kill you." The guy grunted and spat. I smelled stale woodsmoke, as if a campfire had just smoldered out. "We get that money, even half of it, even a tenth of it, you'll be kissing my hairy ass from here to Las Vegas."

  "Everybody's abandoning us!"

  "Good! The more for us!"

  The conversation devolved a little further, and George touched my sleeve. Time to reveal ourselves.

  We stood and moved forward, slowly and noisily.

  "Do you know the spotted owl is the only species," George asked in a clear voice, "that mimics the call of the mockingbird?"

  "Who's there?" said the female.

  We moved to the edge of their clearing and stood side by side, him smiling, me stone-faced.

  "What in the hell?" said the woman to me. "Which casino did you excape out of?"

  I gave her a cold look and folded my arms.

  Filter-tipped cigarette butts littered the clearing like mashed beige bugs.

  She looked to George for a clue, then to her guy.

  The guy was the tall ape-man who had chased Gina into the river.

  I wanted to spring at him and gouge his eyes out.

  "Hey, civilization!" exclaimed George, sweeping his arm like an explorer showing something to the fellow with the camera. "Uh, may we come in?" Without waiting for an answer, he strode up to them, hand extended. "I'm Tom Webber, University of North Dakota. This is my assistant, Mary Two Loons. We're doing fieldwork!"

  George wore Petey's telescope around his neck and carried a small notebook and pen. He had shaved and put on Daniel's navy watch cap, pulling it down over his ears. He also wore Daniel's parka instead of his own, which he'd worn yesterday when we'd glimpsed this ape-man on the other side of the river—and he, perhaps, had glimpsed us.

  George looked and acted like a semi-rugged, clueless scientist.

  And I? I figured that to be safe, I'd needed to change my appearance drastically today. Moreover, we needed an excuse as to how we'd found this camp. Which we'd keep in abeyance, for now.

  I'm a natural blonde, a paleface from prairie country.

  This morning, my plan required that I borrow Petey's brick-colored "painting stone" and grind some off, making a paste with water. I split the paste into two parts and added some fine black dirt to one portion. This I mashed into my wet hair. I combed it through, wiped my head on a Camp Saskee-wee-wit T-shirt, t
hen combed it again.

  I checked myself in my tiny mirror. Now my hair had a reddish, mixed-race appearance.

  Using a bit of T-shirt as an applicator, I then covered my face, neck, and hands up to the elbows with the original bronze-toned paste. I rubbed it in, then rinsed most of it off in the chilly lake, leaving only the trace of the color. I checked myself in my mirror again and turned to George.

  "I don't know," he'd said. "You do appear somewhat Native American. But I don't know."

  "Wait; you don't have nearly the full effect." I went to the storeroom to continue to assemble my look.

  Over my synthetic long underwear top I put on two of the moldy flannel counselor shirts I'd found. Over those I laid—yes!—the raccoon pelts. I draped one over each shoulder, yoking them together with shoelaces through the eyeholes. The tails dangled down my back.

  Then I went to the toolshed. I'd been there to retrieve something already, and now I needed one more thing.

  Wrapped in his canvas shroud, Lance was no longer himself. The death-odor came up, which even if it's faint as in this case, if you've smelled it before, you recognize it instantly. In case you've never been around a decayed corpse—which I regrettably had—the closest thing is the greasetrappy, rotten-meat smell from the drains and floors at a substandard hash house. Which I also knew.

  I'd expected the odor to be worse, but I guess George was right about the cool conditions helping. The temperature on the floor of that shed was probably forty degrees max, maybe only thirty-five. A propane deep freeze would've done the trick, but you can't have everything.

  I grabbed the hatchet I'd spied lying on a stack of plywood and got the hell out of there, slamming the door behind me and exhaling hard.