by Sonja Yoerg
“Looks like you’re first,” Linda said to Liz.
The construction inspired confidence, as cables had been strung horizontally at both waist and knee level, and reinforced vertically every four feet. She placed her hands on the lateral cables and stepped carefully onto the wood slats. The bridge undulated. She concentrated on staying centered and walked with measured steps to minimize sway. Far below, foaming torrents of water exploded against boulders.
“Take your time,” Dante called over the roaring current. “I’m in no rush.”
Two-thirds of the way across, she spotted a pair of sunglasses lying on the bridge. She crouched slowly to pick them up, aware she was risking losing her balance, but feeling compelled nonetheless. Before her hand touched the glasses, she knew they were Brensen’s. He was never without them. She examined them in her hand, and a shadow of apprehension passed through her.
“Liz!” Dante’s shout was nearly drowned out. “What’s wrong?”
She tucked the glasses into her shirt pocket and, hands on the cables, carefully pulled herself up. As she rose, her attention snagged on an object near the water’s edge. Something dark blue, on top of a half-submerged log. An arm. Beyond the log was a boulder. A hiking boot, toe pointed to the sky, protruded from behind.
Her stomach rolled, and she gripped the cables more tightly.
Paul shouted, but the river carried the words away.
Her mouth went dry. She scanned the riverbank ahead, searching for anything out of place. There wasn’t much vegetation on this side, and few places to hide. Level with the bridge was a campsite with picnic tables and two bear lockers. Empty.
Dante and the others were calling to her, their voices increasingly frantic. The bridge rocked—someone stepped onto it—and she bent her knees to absorb the wave. It had to be Dante, or maybe Paul, coming to see what the problem was.
“Stop!” she shouted at the top of her lungs, and continued across, keeping her focus on the tower in front of her, and a strong grip on the cables in case the bridge moved again.
She stepped off the bridge onto the landing, checked her surroundings again, and turned, placing a hand on the cable supports to steady herself. Dante was halfway across, his face dark with concern. She avoided glancing at Brensen—if that’s who was lying in the river—because she feared she’d alarm Dante and cause him to lose his balance. He stared straight ahead, walking more briskly than she expected, and was soon at her side.
“What’s wrong? Why did you bend down?”
Liz led him down the wood planks and onto firm ground. She glanced over his shoulder. Linda was crossing.
She fished the glasses out of her pocket. “Aren’t these Brensen’s?”
“I think so. But why—”
“I saw something from the bridge.”
“What ‘something’?”
“Someone. In the river.”
“Doing what?”
Her mouth was cottony. She gripped Dante’s arm. “Lying there.”
“What? We should go help them! Show me!”
Her throat closed and a wave of nausea flooded her. “I think it’s too late. I—”
“Too late?” He grabbed her shoulder. “Liz, we must look!”
He was right. All she’d seen was an arm. And a foot. But she didn’t want to look. Because she already knew.
Linda appeared behind Dante. “What’s the matter?”
Dante undid his hip belt and dropped his pack. “Someone’s lying in the river.”
Linda gasped and turned to Liz, who pointed downstream. Dante headed off. Liz ditched her pack and jogged to catch up to him. As they picked their way down the boulder-strewn embankment, Liz kept an eye out for movement in the woods to her left.
Liz directed Dante. “A little farther downstream.”
They rounded a small stand of pines and stopped short. There was a hiker in a blue shirt, a few yards from shore, face down in the water. His pack lay twisted off one shoulder, as if it had come off, or been torn off, when he fell. It was a silver-and-red Osprey. Brensen’s. Liz’s heart raced and she shivered. Brensen’s free arm—the one she had seen from the bridge—lay draped over a log, bent at an unnatural angle.
Dante took a step forward. “Dios mio! Brensen! Brensen!” The actor lay unmoving. “He looks dead!”
“I know!”
“Should we make certain?”
Liz nodded, then regretted it. Her legs felt encased in hard plastic as she stepped across the rocks and squatted on a flat stone near Brensen’s head. She took a deep breath and shook his shoulder. Water splashed over the toe of her boot.
A fly landed on the nape of Brensen’s neck and climbed over a fold in his shirt. A white smear of sunscreen coated the edge of his ear. Precaution for the long run.
She balked at turning him over and exposing his face. Instead, she reached for the wrist that lay on the log. The skin was paler than the moon. Her fingers found the spot between wrist bone and tendon, but could not find a pulse. His skin felt cold, but so were her fingers. She closed her eyes and swayed, as if she were on the bridge. Behind her, she heard Linda sobbing.
Paul appeared and knelt beside her. “Jesus Christ. What the hell happened here?”
“He’s dead.” A hoarse whisper was all she could manage.
“It certainly appears that way. Are you okay?”
She swallowed, afraid if she spoke she would burst into tears.
Paul regarded her steadily, but she could see he was rattled, too. “Let’s just get him out of the river, okay?”
She nodded, took a deep breath and steeled herself.
“Here, help me turn him over.”
It wasn’t that simple.
Paul straddled two rocks and struggled to lift one end of Brensen’s pack out of the river, but could only raise it a few inches. “I think his arm is caught on something.” He sat back on his haunches. “Dante! Can you give us a hand?”
Dante crossed to them, and he and Liz raised the waterlogged pack. Paul, grimacing, pulled on Brensen’s shoulder with one hand, and reached underneath to free the arm, the frigid water rising to his armpit. Liz glimpsed Brensen’s face. A rough gash sliced diagonally across his forehead, the edges ragged. His nose was broken and bruised, his lips bloodless. She looked away.
The arm broke free and flipped out of the water, hitting Paul in the face. Paul stumbled, splashing water everywhere, then regained his balance. Liz and Dante yanked the pack out of the way, and dragged it to shore.
Paul crouched with Brensen’s torso propped against his knee. The dead man’s chin had fallen onto his chest, as if he were napping on a bus. Paul stared at Linda, his jaw set. “I don’t suppose we can leave the poor bastard where he is.”
She wiped her nose with her sleeve and shook her head.
“He’s soaked. It’ll take all of us.”
Her face crumpled. “Paul, I don’t know if I can.”
“Darling, you can. I know you can.”
The men lifted Brensen by the shoulders and each woman hoisted a leg. Even with four of them, they had trouble negotiating the slick rocks and rushing current. Dante refused to look at the corpse and tripped twice, bringing everyone to a halt. They finally deposited Brensen on the sparse grass between the river and the trail. Liz’s breath hitched in her chest as she went to Brensen’s pack, unsnapped his towel and laid it across his face. They stood over him without speaking for a moment. Linda was hunched, crying. Paul pulled her to him and led her away to where they had left their packs. Dante dropped to his knees next to Brensen, clasped his hands to his chest and murmured a prayer. The sight of this simple, honest gesture overwhelmed Liz, but she couldn’t leave. Instead she gazed ahead at the bridge and the river, the image swimming before her. The rushing of the water droned in her head.
Dante wavered as he got to his feet. He t
ook her hand and they joined the McCartneys at a picnic table. It was past lunchtime but no one got out their food. Linda slumped over the table, head on her arms. Paul rested a hand on her back. Away from the dead body, Liz’s head cleared a little. She studied the bridge and the woods, intent.
Dante handed her a water bottle. “What are you looking for?”
“Our friends the Roots.”
“You think they did this?”
“It’s possible. They didn’t exactly take a shine to Mr. Hollywood. He broke the code.”
Dante nodded.
Paul glanced downstream. “Of course, where we found him is also consistent with falling off the bridge.”
Liz pointed at the structure. “I know it sways, but it’d be hard to fall off without help.”
Linda raised her head. The creases in her face had deepened since the morning. “Remember, Brensen had a concussion not three days ago. He was falling over his own feet.”
“What about his forehead?” Dante said, squinting to shut out the image. “Could that have happened when he fell?”
“Sure,” Paul said.
Liz shrugged. Paul’s hypothesis was as valid as hers and she was too upset to debate it. They couldn’t establish cause of death sitting there, but they did need a plan.
Hands trembling, she pulled the map out of her pocket, spread it on the table and pointed to their current location. “We’re fifteen point four miles from Roads End, where I think there’s a permit station, which may or may not be open. Cedar Grove is another six miles.”
“So at least another day’s hiking in that direction,” Paul said.
“Right. But the Rae Lakes ranger station is seven miles this way.” She indicated south on the JMT.
“Isn’t that where we were going anyway?” Dante said.
“Yes.”
“But the ranger may not be there.”
“They’re not innkeepers,” Paul said. “They patrol the trail.”
“They pick up trash,” Linda added. “And help hikers in trouble.” Her voice caught.
Paul gave her a sympathetic look. “How much farther from Rae Lakes to civilization?”
Liz added up the mileage for each segment. “Exactly twelve miles to the Onion Valley trailhead. Then we could hitch a ride into Independence.”
“So, that’s our plan. But you and Dante don’t have to hike out. Two people are more than enough to report a dead body.”
That depends on how you think it got that way, Liz thought.
Dante turned to Liz. “Paul’s right. We haven’t got far to go.”
“True.” She held his gaze, acknowledging his commitment to finish the hike. “Let’s see what happens at Rae Lakes, okay?”
Paul pulled the towel off Brensen’s head and took a photo to show the authorities. Liz opened the actor’s waterlogged pack and removed a tent.
“What do you want that for?” Dante said.
“To wrap him up. A winding sheet.”
“We’re going to bury him?”
“No. We’re discouraging the animals.”
Dante blanched and sat heavily on a rock. “Don’t tell me anything else.”
She slipped the tent from its sack and positioned the orange rectangle next to Brensen. The four of them lifted him onto it, everyone looking somewhere other than at his face. Liz shook out the fly and draped it over the body. Linda retrieved the guy lines from a small pouch that had fallen to the ground. Paul hoisted the head end of the bundle, then the foot end so the women could loop the lengths of cord around it in four sections, tucking the fly under the body. A wave of nausea rolled through Liz each time her hands contacted the solidity of Brensen’s flesh beneath his sodden clothing. She drew the last length of cord around his ankles and crawled away to a rock where she hugged her knees to her chest. Paul tied the knots while everyone looked on. Dante closed Brensen’s pack, propped it against a tree and stood back from the others.
Brensen lay encased in his orange nylon shroud. They’d done everything they could. But despite her desire to leave this tragedy behind, Liz was reluctant to leave. It seemed wrong to abandon him here where it would soon be dark and cold. She choked back tears and chewed her lip. It made no sense to be troubled by the vulnerability of the dead.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
She hadn’t noticed the sky. Lost in thought about Brensen and alert for the possibility of encountering the Root brothers, she hadn’t registered the gradual loss of blue until an hour and a half after they left the bridge, and Brensen’s body, behind. Hunger had overcome the shock of his death, and the four of them stopped to eat in the shade. Liz tipped her head back while taking a drink and saw the clouds, already tall and thick, blocking the sun.
“Is it me, or is it getting humid?” Dante said, plucking his shirt away from his body.
“It’s sticky, all right. Could turn into a storm.”
Dante nodded at the McCartneys, resting nearby. Linda was lying on her back with her arms across her face. Paul was studying a map. “Are we waiting for them?”
“It makes sense to talk to the ranger about Brensen together.”
Linda unfolded her arms and rose with labored movements. She noticed Liz and Dante watching her and managed a weak smile. “You kids ready to rock?”
The trail insisted they make up all the elevation gain they’d lost that morning. Up they went, through the heat of the afternoon, pausing only to filter and drink water. They came to Arrowhead Lake, clogged with algae and sedge around its margin, the water an unnaturally vivid green. Liz doubted it would have been safe to drink even after filtration. They continued past the lake without a word, bearing the heat and grief individually.
In the late afternoon, they arrived at the first of the Rae Lakes. The dark clouds rendered it a deep aquamarine, the water so clear Liz could perceive sharp edges of submerged rocks thirty feet out. The bizarre curved peak of Fin Dome rose from the lake’s distant shore.
A mile farther they reached the turnoff for the ranger station, and minutes later approached a log cabin set upon a stone foundation. Liz didn’t bother to remove her pack before ascending the steps to the narrow porch. She felt the emptiness of the cabin even before she called hello. When no one answered, she knocked.
Dante came up beside her. “They’re gone?”
“And there’s no note. They’re supposed to let hikers know when they’ll be back.”
Liz gave a thumbs-down signal to Paul and Linda, who were waiting a short distance away, and wondered whether she ought to add the ranger to the list of people she was concerned about.
She suggested camping at the cabin, in case the ranger returned, leaving unsaid how much safer she would feel next to this sturdy building in a thunderstorm. But there was room only for two to sleep on the porch and no patch of ground in the vicinity flat enough to accommodate a tent.
They broke up in pairs to search for campsites. After a half an hour, the women found a small secluded site, well away from the lake edge and the trail, partially protected by a stand of whitebark pines.
Linda leaned against a tree trunk. “Do you mind if we take this one? I’m not feeling so great.”
Liz laid her hand on the woman’s forehead. “You’ve got a fever.”
Linda sat on a log and straightened her injured leg. Liz rolled up the pant leg. The flesh around the wound was swollen and red. Droplets of white pus oozed from between the stitches.
“It started itching this morning. I should’ve said something to Paul, but I was hoping it’d just go away. He’d have been so worried. Then the whole thing with Brensen—”
Liz touched the inflamed skin and Linda flinched. Liz put her hand over her friend’s. A fat raindrop landed on her knuckle. “I’ll go find Paul.”
The men had located a site fifty yards away, on the other side of a rocky knoll, wedged between a
cluster of boulders and a shoulder-high granite bench. After learning of Linda’s condition, Paul agreed they would sleep there, as it promised better protection from the elements. Liz led the way to the other campsite.
Once the three of them rejoined Linda, Paul knelt in front of her. “Let’s have a look, darling.” He inspected the wound and gently rolled down his wife’s pant leg. “Tequila and acetaminophen this evening, and then, I think, an early start. Twelve quick miles, some antibiotics and a pizza, and you’ll be as fit as a fiddle.”
“You’re fretting, Paul. Don’t. I’ll be fine.”
Liz said, “Do you want us to go with you? Just in case?”
Linda and Paul spoke at the same time. “We’ll be fine.” They laughed lightly. Linda added, “If our situations were reversed, we’d keep going. It’s only a few more days.” Paul nodded.
Liz said, “We haven’t really had a chance to talk about it.” And her own thoughts on the subject had been muddled. She scuffed her boots in the dirt. It seemed wrong to be concerned with finishing a hike when someone had died, although nothing anyone did or didn’t do would bring Brensen back. Yet the decision was before them. Maybe all she needed was distance from it. A night’s sleep. A new morning, a fresh section of trail. It sounded simple, suddenly, to leave what had happened behind them, to continue as before. Even the specter of the Root brothers had become oddly familiar, as if they were an integral part of the JMT experience, and she might find their names (“Root, Payton; Root, Rodell”) in the index of the guidebook. She didn’t mention them again, however. They seemed to haunt only her.
Raindrops fell, widely spaced, splatting on the ground. The air grew dense.
Paul said, “We’d best get our tents up.”
Dante pulled his wallet from the top of his pack, handed Paul a business card and shook his hand. “In case we don’t see you in the morning. You know where to find us in the meantime.”
“Thanks, mate. We’ll expect a photo of you two on the summit.”
