Blood Ties

by Sigmund Brouwer

  “Intelligence brought you up the hill?” Clay knew he was being set up.

  “No, intelligence led me to insist on packing both knapsacks. I loaded yours down with everything heavy I did not wish to carry.”

  Clay snorted. He set his pack down. “Have any idea where we’re going?”

  “Away,” George said. “That seemed safest.”

  “Any other ideas?” Clay was glad for the banter but could not escape the desperate sensation of time – measured in Kelsie’s heartbeats – sliding away while he could do nothing but run.

  “We rest,” George said. “We talk. For I have been thinking about something peculiar. Tell me again about the night you were shot by the person you thought was Nick Buffalo.”

  Clay did.

  “It looks different now,” George said. “You know Nick didn’t pull the trigger. You know it was someone else. Tell me again, how did that someone else arrange it to look like Nick?”

  Clay repeated Fowler’s speculations. “The reports showed sawdust in the grassroots. Fowler guessed – and I agree with him – whoever did it cut a hole in the back of the cabin. Say he’s got Nick’s body in there. He runs back to the cabin, starts shooting like it’s Nick shooting. Then he lights a fire and leaves out the back.”

  “Do you think he carried Nick up to the cabin that night while you were chasing him with a bloodhound?”

  “No. He’d definitely have placed the body there ahead of time.”

  “What would have happened if hikers carne along? Or ranch hands? If they found Nick’s body in the cabin beforehand...”

  “Slim chance,” Clay argued, “since most people thought the cabin was haunted. Or,” he continued, “maybe he covered the body with a blanket.”

  “To me, my friend, this does not sound like a person who leaves things to chance.”

  Clay was forced to agree, half-amused at the surgical precision of George’s thinking.

  “Let me ask you something else. Do you think this person carried Nick’s body all the way up to the cabin?”

  “No,” Clay said. “Too much work. Impossible at night. Also, there’s the chance of someone seeing him during the day. If he was

  smart, he’d try to get Nick to meet him there.”

  “So...”

  “So Nick knew him.”

  Sonny Cutknife? Rooster Evans? Or someone else?

  “Looks like it,” George agreed. “Now after the person killed Nick, if he didn’t leave the body in the cabin, where would he have stored it?”

  “Not on the hillside,” Clay said. “What are you thinking?”

  “Is my cabin modern?”

  “No. I’ve got to rattle the outhouse before I go in there, just in case a skunk’s inside.” Clay smiled. “You thinking he kept the body in the outhouse?”

  “Where did you stay last night, and why did we decide it was a safe place?”

  It hit Clay. Root cellar. Few were the people of this generation who might know an old trapper would have a root cellar.

  George smiled at the look of comprehension on Clay’s face. “The root cellar.”

  “The cabin site might be a nine-hour hike from here. Are you willing to risk the time it takes on the off-chance our guess is right?”

  Clay nodded.

  “You told me earlier that we are after a predator,” George said.

  Clay nodded again.

  “Do predators not have lairs?” George asked. “And if we find his lair, will we also find Kelsie and Taylor?”

  4:15 p.m.

  Something brushed Kelsie’s hand. She woke from her nap with a violent lurch, expecting from the depths of a dream the man with the hooded face to be looming above her.

  “Cowboy, me,” Taylor said. He looked up from where he was licking her hand and gave her his usual grin. “Love me. You.”

  She pulled her hand away and wiped it on the blanket. “Play. Go. Leave me alone,” she said, shivering with the afterrush of adrenaline. She pointed at the kitchen. “Go.”

  Taylor shrugged and hopped down from her bed.

  He hummed as he walked. It was a lurching gait that had often embarrassed Kelsie in public places. It had taken Taylor over a year to learn to crawl, nearly four years before he walked. Whenever she took him somewhere, which was seldom, she felt pitying glances from other parents.

  Some parents, she knew, institutionalized their Down’s syndrome children. That would have been her choice. She’d mentioned it in passing to Clay once. Clay’s response had been unnerving silence, followed by his leaving for a long walk. The subject had never come up again. While Clay loved his son, to Kelsie, Taylor was a stigma. Somewhere deep inside, Kelsie believed if she had not allowed men to die because of their love for her, Taylor would have been born a normal child.

  She also knew the high marriage-failure statistics on couples with handicapped children. If Clay hadn’t been so enduring – something she loved him for but was often helpless to show – their marriage, too, would have ended in divorce. As it was, it hadn’t been good for a long time.

  Lying in bed, Kelsie thought about Clay and wondered if they could find passion again. If she learned to stop using work as an excuse not to face what she didn’t like about herself...

  Kelsie laughed bitterly, loud enough that Taylor stopped and looked back at her. How could she think about a future? This was her life, an apartment prison. Her cellmate, Taylor, was the one person she’d spent years trying to avoid. Kelsie had no illusions. This was probably the best it would be. Sometime soon, she and Taylor would not be alone.

  The clattering of cupboards interrupted her brooding.

  “Taylor,” she shouted.

  The clattering stopped, only to be replaced by the discordant strains of a harmonica.

  She sighed and got out of bed.

  She was helpless in many ways in this prison, but there were a few things within her control. She walked to the kitchen area and found Taylor sitting cross-legged on the floor there. He pulled the harmonica from his mouth at her approach. He gave her another

  grin.

  “Is that the only expression you have?” she snapped. “An idiot’s grin?”

  The grin faltered at the tone of her voice. “Cowboy, me?”

  She reached down and snatched the harmonica from his hand.

  “I’m equally sick of this,” she said. She threw it on the countertop and jerked Taylor to his feet. “I’m putting you in bed, and that’s where you’re staying.”

  He stumbled along behind her. At his bed, the narrow one near the bathroom, she pulled the covers back, lifted him onto the mattress, and covered him.

  “Sleep, you,” she ordered.

  “Sleep, cowboy,” he agreed.

  As soon as she turned her back on him, he jumped out of bed and followed her.

  “Taylor...” she warned in a low voice. She took his hand and repeated the entire process.

  “Sleep, me,” he agreed once again.

  This time she made it to the couch in the living room before he reappeared.

  “Taylor!” Once again, she put him in the bed.

  Once again, he agreed, “Sleep, me.”

  She was on the couch, leaning forward with her head in her hands when he tugged on her sleeve.

  She exploded. “You stupid, stupid child,” she screamed. “Surely you can’t be that retarded that you don’t know how to sleep!”

  He regarded her with serious eyes. “Cowboy, me?”

  “Retard. Retard, you,” she said. “Hear me? Retard, you.”

  He flinched at the volume of her screams, but he didn’t back away.

  She drew a breath, and in that brief, quiet moment, Taylor spoke.

  “Retard, me?” He stepped up to her and hugged her leg.

  She stared down at his head. Retard. The word pierced her. She’d called her son a retard.

  He reached up for her hand. Numbly, she let him take it. He kissed her hand. “Make better,” he said. “Love me. You.”
/>   A tear ran down Kelsie’s face, then another.

  There’d been a morning, so long ago it seemed like it had happened in a book. It was shortly after her mother had died, when Kelsie still daydreamed and thought romance was forever. Kelsie had been back of the barn. The air had become completely still, the way it got before a storm. She had heard distinctly one plop of rain on the hard earth. Then the second plop. A third. She saw at her feet the dark splotches of those first few large raindrops. For some reason, the moment had seemed magical, as if she'd been given a great lesson she couldn’t understand. She’d been given the privilege of hearing – out of all the rain that would burst forth in a thundering deluge – the very first three drops.

  One tear. Two. Both fell on Taylor’s upturned face. He smiled and licked at them with the extended tongue peculiar to children with Down’s syndrome.

  Before, seeing yet another sign of his handicap would have revolted her.

  Now? Drained of her defenses, she saw him differently for the first time. This was her son, her only son. His walk, his humming, his joy, and yes, even his large, ugly tongue, all of it belonged to her son, the son who was holding her leg.

  The third tear fell. And the pent-up rain finally burst. Without shame she pulled Taylor to her and held him in return.

  9:00 p.m.

  As darkness fell, Clay and George looked for a campsite. They estimated there was less than a mile left to reach Mad Dog’s cabin, but with night upon them, they knew a search for the root cellar would have to wait until morning anyway.

  George chose the meal as his responsibility; Clay chose shelter. As George assembled a fire, Clay found a knocked-down sapling. With a hatchet, he lopped off the branches then set the long pole chest-high in the crotches of two trees some ten feet apart. Clay unfolded a sheet of plastic from the knapsack and tied it over the support pole. Next he set a line of rocks across the back of the sheet so that the plastic formed a primitive roof, angling downward from the pole. It would not shield them from a sustained storm, but for what they needed, it was sufficient.

  For his part, George was efficient. Clay enjoyed watching the old man work. George had hiked at a steady pace all day and showed no strain of fatigue. Food, a pasta mix from a freeze-dried package, was ready by the time Clay had unrolled the sleeping bags onto the earth floor beneath the shelter.

  They ate in silence sitting cross-legged on the ground. They let the hush of the wilderness drop upon them with the darkness.

  George had left a pot over the fire to boil water. When both had

  finished eating, George suggested coffee.

  “Decaf?” George asked. “You need sleep. I could see it in your face all day.”

  Clay managed a smile. He knew George was right, but did not expect sleep to come any easier than the night before, decaffeinated coffee or not.

  “Decaf,” Clay said.

  Again, extended silence. Clay was on his third cup of coffee before George spoke again.

  “You and I,” he said. “We’ve had many such nights like this, yes? We trade thoughts and speculations on many matters. We puzzle at the ways of God, seeking to increase our understanding of Him.”

  Clay sipped his coffee. He knew George well enough. The old man drank in silence, too, waiting until he had properly framed his thoughts to begin. Clay wouldn’t interrupt until George asked him a direct question.

  “I think, my friend, you and I are like babies playing with pebbles on the beach, unaware of the existence of the ocean, let alone the infinite wonders hidden in the depths. Life and this universe is an unfathomable mystery. Even scientists will tell you that the more answers they find, the more questions are raised. And where is God in all of this? We try to decide. You and I push our pebbles around and arrange them and take comfort in holding them, but our intellect simply does not have the capacity to understand God and this mystery.”

  Clay stared at the glowing embers of the dying coals. His wife and son were gone, in the hands of a monster. He was virtually helpless against that threat. Another ten hours would pass before he could take what little action was within his power. Ten hours that could be an eternity of unimaginable terror for the two people he loved most. And after that? Clay had no guarantees that any of his efforts or the authorities’ efforts would ever lead to finding Kelsie and Taylor alive. Chances were just as good that their bodies would never even be discovered. Clay had never been in the grips of such black, unrelenting despair.

  “Listen to me,” George said.

  Clay lifted his head.

  “Clay, sometimes I tremble when I contemplate my own death. It is not something far away and vague to me. It is not an intellectual exercise. Someday soon my heart will stop beating. When I die, will I go into a void of nothingness? Or will I find the face of God and answers to the mystery? After a lifetime of choosing to believe I have an eternal soul, I still face doubts daily. Has everything I’ve done been nothing but the flailing of mesh dissolving into ashes? Or will I be released from the prison of this body to roam the heavens?”

  “And?” Clay’s voice was soft.

  “This mystery of life and death and the beyond is so overwhelming that after a lifetime of searching for truth, I have had to return to the faith of a child.”

  George’s voice dropped. “I have to accept that I’m so little I can’t understand my Father’s ways. I have to trust with the blind faith of a child. He and Love wait beyond in a way I can only dimly glimpse now. That blind trust, after a lifetime of straining to understand, is the only strength and peace I can take into the face of death.”

  “You have a reason for telling me this,” Clay said. “You have a reason for telling it to me now.”

  “Think of a rope, my friend. You can believe the rope is strong, but how will you know unless you test it? Not until you are hanging from that rope over an abyss will you know whether it was worth trusting.”

  "Now I’m hanging from that rope?”

  George nodded slowly. “It is in the set of your shoulders and the fear in your face. You are hanging from that rope. As am I. It is my own death I contemplate. It is the death of your wife and child that you contemplate. The reality of what we believe is tested by these realities.”

  George rose abruptly. “I am going to my sleeping bag now. I hope as you watch the fire, you will find peace in this. If what we believe is true, then death, no matter how horrible, is not the end. If death is not the end, then all of our lives’ sorrows will pass into joy. I pray we find Kelsie and Taylor. Yet if we don’t, you will not be gone from them long, nor them from you, because there is the other side of the curtain of our life on earth, a place where these sorrows will be forgotten. If you do not believe this and trust this as a child holds his father’s hand along a path in a dark forest, your faith is meaningless. If you do trust this, there is nothing more valuable on earth than your faith.”

  George patted Clay on the back, then shuffled toward the shelter.

  Clay stared at the fire. His despair turned to tears, and with his

  tears, finally, carne the lifting of a burden.

  Much later, when he crawled into his sleeping bag, he slept without the nightmares that had haunted him since Taylor’s disappearance.

  10:21 p.m.

  Kelsie remembered a gangster movie, one that had almost introduced a phobia into her life. In the movie, the assassin had slipped into the office of his victim. He was armed with a simple garrote – two short handles of wood, connected by a four-foot length of piano wire.

  Execution had been simple and horrifying. His victim was sitting at his desk, concentrating on paperwork. The assassin soft-shoed himself behind the victim, looped the wire into a circle, dropped it over the victim’s head, and yanked the wooden handles in opposite directions. Brutally quick and strong, the assassin exerted so much force that the victim’s head had been partially severed from his body.

  Ever since seeing the movie, Kelsie had been uncomfortable with strangers sitting behind
her in theaters, on airplanes, or anywhere else. The image of the garroted man would flash into her mind, and she would shudder at how easily the method worked and how little chance the victim stood.

  Now, she realized, if she could, she would garrote the man to protect Taylor and herself. She began to devise a plan. Instead of piano wire, she would use a length of string. Instead of wooden handles, she would use one of the sturdy, hard rubber knives on each end.

  She did not expect that the string would actually cut through the flesh of her captor’s neck. She did expect to be able to pull tightly enough to strangle him, however. If somehow she could get behind him and if somehow she was able to loop the garrote over his neck, she would fight with all her fury. Nothing would shake her from his back until he finally fell.

  That was her plan. All she needed was a length of string strong enough to handle the pressure. She did not find string, of course. But that would not stop her.

  She took a dish towel, moved to the couch, and began pulling at the fringed edges.

  Taylor sat at her feet and hummed with contentment. Occasionally, Kelsie would stop her work and drop her hand to rub his shoulders. Taylor needed touch far more than he needed words.

  Thread by thread, Kelsie intended to weave herself a line that would not snap. It did not bother her that the task would take patience and consume time. She was glad for something to do. She was certain that if she did not find a way out, there would be years of time, in here, ahead of her.

  11:46 p.m.

  “Bobby...”

  The old woman’s voice broke the boy’s spell of terror. He stood, averting his eyes from the skeleton on the bed.

  “Bobby...”

  The top of her head, blond wig grossly twisted, appeared at the level of the attic floor. The boy looked around for something he could use to strike her.

  He saw nothing.

  “Bobby...” Her slow ascent reminded him of the zombies in his horror books.

  He looked around wildly again. He saw the skeleton. He reached for the weapon, grabbing it before his revulsion could defeat the instructions from his brain. When he lifted his right hand, he was holding a thigh bone.