Trapline

by Mark Stevens

  “No,” said Allison, on her feet faster than she thought possible. “No way, no how, doesn’t matter.”

  “Hear me out,” said London. “I’ve been working on this project for years.”

  “You can keep working without me.”

  “You don’t even know what it is.”

  “I don’t need to know what it is,” said Allison, already turning toward Sunny Boy. She took three steps, stopped.

  Turned back.

  “It doesn’t matter. Doesn’t matter a lick what it is. If you want to ask me questions about anything that happened before, during or in the long period after, the answer is no. And it’s not I’m sorry, no. It’s no.”

  “It’s a book about the lives on that plane,” said London. “It’s part tribute, to those who survived, and those who didn’t. It’s about how key people reacted and how they were able to act and think in extreme circumstances—”

  “Save it,” said Allison.

  “There are survivors who credit you for getting them to shore, for making sure they overcame the moment, for minimizing panic. The water was—”

  “The water was what?” said Allison, already furious at herself for taking the time for the media distraction, furious at Kerry London for the ruse, furious at herself for being in this spot. London’s prodding forced her to flash on the images from those surreal moments, when something taken for granted and ordinary and routine flipped dark and frightening, when a moment of dread—collective dread among all the passengers, they all felt the plane struggling for altitude—turned black. The earth had leapt up, something it wasn’t supposed to do, and delivered an awful smack. And everything came apart.

  Allison gasped, recalling.

  “It happened. It’s over. Done. You asked. I said no. I know I’m unnecessary—”

  Surely every of one of her fellow passengers had focused every ounce of mental capacity on one question: how do I survive this?

  “Well, actually, you played a major role,” said London.

  “Please,” said Allison. “It doesn’t matter what any of the others are saying. This isn’t for me. You’re taking an accident and exploiting it to line your own pocket. I think re-victimizing the people who went through it, making them relive every moment is flat out wrong.”

  “Just looking to portray the best of human character in challenging circumstances,” said London.

  He appeared relaxed, unconcerned. Worming his way to this moment had been the hard part. Everything else was cake. Allison felt utterly betrayed.

  “Besides,” he added. “Nobody else has reacted this way.”

  A short, sharp breath forced its way past her tightened mouth.

  “I’m getting on my horse and I’m going back down,” said Allison. “If you want to ride, I strongly advise that you not say one more word about this. If you do, I’m taking my horses with me and you two can walk. Your choice.”

  London looked at his cameraman. If he looked sheepish, it was only a touch. The cameraman put his fists side by side and made circle motions like he was holding the reins at full gallop.

  “I think you’ve made it clear,” said London. “But can I ask one more question without being told to go take a flying leap?”

  Allison stared at London. His eyebrows were in the up position, all anticipation. He was used to getting his way.

  “I’ve got a million things to do,” said Allison. “All of them better than this.”

  “One question,” said London.

  Allison held his pseudo-innocent gaze. “Make it quick.”

  “If the book helped others—and by the way all the profits from the book deal would go to the nonprofit that works on improving airline safety—if it helped someone else in any small way, in how to act, how to survive the most challenging situations, wouldn’t it be worth it, to give up a little bit of—”

  “Of what?” Allison snapped. “Privacy? Were you going to say privacy?”

  London stood. Maybe he’d seen a monster. “Yes,” he said.

  “Just because we’ve been through something doesn’t make it open season on what we might think or say. It was an accident. Some of us happened to survive. I can tell you one thing—we feel incredibly fucking fortunate. There are no words for how I feel. You have all of time and the entire world of tragic accidents to do what you feel you need to do with your premise, your theme. Find someone else. I survived, I reacted. I did what I did. You feast on carnage. You smell blood. If someone will cry and remember, if you make them go through the whole experience again, re-live every freaking fucking moment with the cameras zooming in, hoping for a tear drop or a flood, that’s what you’re after. You don’t care about privacy.” Her words came steady and sure—she required no extra emphasis. “You don’t know the meaning of the word.”

  London’s expression hadn’t changed. He looked a bit like he might have enjoyed the tirade. But he kept his mouth shut as she turned and went to retrieve Sunny Boy.

  She piled recriminations on herself for the distraction, for not staying focused, for everything.

  “Okay,” muttered London behind her back. “Guess the answer is no.”

  twenty-four:

  tuesday evening

  The vigil was organized by a loose confederation of immigration reform groups, some from Denver. Bloom spotted two buses from New Mexico, one from Arizona. A prayer circle had been held the night before, but this one was going to be the big one. For show.

  The day had already been a monster, but the pint-size staff at the Post-Independent had been told they would be stretched far beyond normal hours to stay on top of the rolling story. Bloom didn’t mind. He felt the adrenaline, relished the challenge.

  The idea was to follow the route Tom Lamott had walked before he was shot, from Sayre Park down to the footbridge, but it was hard to imagine how this swarm would make its way to the pedestrian bridge in an orderly fashion or in any way confined to the sidewalks.

  Half Hispanic, half white.

  One thousand people? At least. The park, a full city block, is packed. Milling throng.

  Candles flicking like fireflies.

  Nearly breezeless.

  Bloom found a pickup truck where the white candles emerged from stacks of cardboard boxes. When you want to find organizers, Bloom knew, you look for the mess tent or supply wagons.

  Luis Tovar was right near the center of the action, but off to the side of the core activity. He was a barrel-chested man with a round face, puffy cheeks, and a white-gray, carefully groomed moustache. Bad knees forced an ungainly walk. His years as a high school and college wrestler had taken their toll. Surgery to fix them hadn’t gone well.

  Tovar was the voice of calm among Hispanics in the valley. He lived in a big house downtown with his wife and two girls. He commuted to Grand Junction, where he was the thoughtful History and Hispanic Studies professor who preferred context and dialogue to demonstrations. Reporters had him on speed dial for a good quote. He said what the establishment liked to hear and not necessarily the flame-thrower comments that lefties hoped he would deliver.

  “Señor Bloom,” said Tovar. “¿Cómo está?”

  Tovar held an unlit candle. Around him, a tight circle of friends and supporters mingled and chatted quietly, mostly in Spanish.

  “Muy bien,” said Bloom. “¿Y tú?”

  “Bien,” said Tovar. “But very much wishing we weren’t here. Your articles have been good, by the way. And I heard today a major shift in the police work, changing the place where the shots were fired. News alert on my mobile from the Denver Post and they credited the P-I.”

  “First time for everything,” said Bloom.

  “A hunting guide helped them?”

  “It didn’t take her all that long, either,” said Bloom, happy again to think about the sure presence of Allison Coil. “Maybe they are getting clos
er now.”

  Tovar smiled faintly. “Let’s hope,” he said.

  “What are you hearing?” said Bloom.

  Square, silver-rimmed glasses added to the professorial air. His black hair was streaked neatly with rivulets of gray. A cotton Guayabera shirt, white on ivory embroidery down both sides, topped clean blue jeans and brown sandals. His attire nodded to Mexican heritage but it wasn’t in-your-face.

  “Everything,” said Tovar. “And nothing. Nothing new.”

  “What would you say is the general attitude among the Hispanic population, you know, about the shooting?”

  Bloom hated the question as soon as it was out. He sounded like a rookie.

  “There is no general attitude,” said Tovar. “There is no Hispanic monolith. We don’t move in lockstep.”

  Tovar had a way of stating things that didn’t make it sound condescending or patronizing.

  “But this was a jolt, make no mistake,” Tovar added. “This was a mini 9-11 and I mean only in terms of ugly message, of course, not the scale of the horror.”

  Not the scale of the horror.

  A thousand white candles sending one message.

  The mass of protestors headed out but Tovar stayed put. Bloom felt the urge to go with the crowd, decided to linger.

  “Look at the history of immigration,” said Tovar. “At least, look at the history of immigration policy in this country. Look at the number of mixed messages, enticing immigrants one decade—sending them back the next. Look up the Bracero program. Look up investor visas. Look up Operation Wetback. Look up the Border Industrialization Program and on and on. Welcome mat put out, welcome mat yanked away.”

  Bloom remembered doing a college paper on Benjamin Franklin and recalled he had argued against immigration from Germany because he didn’t think Germans could assimilate. “So what are people saying tonight?”

  Tovar mulled a response. A young female protestor suddenly stepped up and touched her burning flame to Tovar’s cold wick.

  “Gracias,” said Tovar with a smile. He dropped the grin, thought some more. “I suppose more than anything that our hearts are with Tom Lamott, what he stood for. This is a vigil, but we don’t want any vigilantes, if you know what I mean. We don’t want to point fingers.”

  Those funneling from the park into the thick mass of the walk itself kept strolling by, candles flickering, but Tovar made no move. Bloom told Tovar about the ICE vans, the group of Mexicans whisked away.

  “Like street sweepers cleaning trash,” said Tovar.

  “Who knows where they are taken?” said Bloom. “That’s what I don’t get.”

  “Is that the story you want?” Tovar smiled broadly, looked sideways at Bloom. Light from the candles made Tovar’s teeth glow. They were razor straight, blindingly white. One was capped silver. “You really want to go up against the big boys?”

  “Don’t people know what happens?”

  “In some ways,” said Tovar. “It’s racial profiling on steroids. And it used to be that the immigration people were one function, one agency by themselves. And now they are all merged under one big house, with Homeland Security. They can punch your ticket back to Mexico in less time than it takes to snap on the handcuffs.”

  From everything Bloom had gathered, Glenwood Springs was tolerant on the issue of illegal immigration. There were pockets of radicals, but you didn’t get the sense that this issue was a driving force in the business community or among political leadership, not that there was much difference between the two in a small town. In any town.

  “Nobody minds?” said Bloom.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Tovar. “But the mood has shifted and I think many know what they are up against, so there is a bit of acceptance. All the security paranoia, you know, it’s all rolled into a big ball with the terrorism issues.”

  The throng spilled over into the street, television cameras and photographers and reporters following. Traffic crawled.

  “Shouldn’t there be a process—a process everyone knows about, a process we can see?” If he was really doing his job and if he was really intended to compete with journalism’s best, Bloom wondered, should he be gathering such marshmallow opinions?

  “Sure,” said Tovar. “Of course. Some are back home in Mexico before their families here even know they’re late for dinner. Not quite, but that’s the way it seems.”

  “So where?”

  “If you see another of these vans, don’t let it out of your sight.”

  “You got that right,” said Bloom.

  “There are those here who have been through everything. Someone might be willing to talk, but you have to understand the level of trust in your public institutions. That includes newspapers, of course.”

  “Our ratings are better than Congress. And maybe lawyers as a whole.” Bloom smiled to show the sarcasm.

  “Take comfort in that if you must,” said Tovar.

  “You are not walking tonight?” asked Bloom. “Or are you waiting to bring up the rear?”

  Tovar sighed, looked around. “Only an observer tonight. Watching and thinking.”

  “I want to meet these people, the commuters,” said Bloom. The vigil was at a crawl. “I have this feeling there would be anger. Some outrage. People being snatched off the streets, suddenly captives and no due process.”

  “Now I see your problem,” said Tovar.

  “Problem?” said Bloom.

  “Okay, your perspective,” said Tovar. “You think of these people as taxpaying American citizens who are legal residents, that they understand they can fight for something here to change, that they have a voice to advocate for something,”

  “No,” said Bloom. “I believe government and the justice system should be open and every individual should have a chance to have their case heard in open court.”

  Tovar held his candle in his beefy fist and the light flickered off his broad face.

  “You think these illegals feel comfortable,” said Tovar. “But every step in this country—every minute—they watch out. They are on alert. They are all in prison even before they are picked up. It’s not that big a transition.”

  twenty-five:

  wednesday morning

  “I’m calling to see what you’ve come up with. What anyone has come up with.”

  She had reached Chadwick on his cell phone after a series of aggravating chats with clerks and other cops who had to be cajoled into making the effort to locate an individual officer in the middle of what was still a high-alert situation.

  “Still no ID,” said Chadwick. “No one has contacted us, either. And the sticks and that stuff that covered the body is on its way to that lab in Wyoming and I’m not sure we can—”

  Allison cut him off. “The more I think about it, the more I know there’s something wrong with the whole picture, the whole mountain lion scenario, everything about it.”

  Certainly her credibility was in reasonable shape, given the bullet shell in the bush.

  “I can place a call.”

  “And can you find out if there’s any information on the body? Anything?”

  She turned Sunny Boy to face the early morning sun. She’d left at dark, her system on overdrive and her head chasing itself in ugly circles, one furrow of recriminations for letting herself fall into the reporter’s trap and another for how she’d treated him.

  “Sure,” said Chadwick.

  “This hasn’t been setting right all along.”

  “I would think the ME would have something soon,” said Chadwick.

  “What’s soon?” said Allison. An awkward delay in the signal. “But this guy was a person, too—and he was a person not that long ago. Somebody was expecting him.”

  Had she sounded pushy? Not a bad thing.

  Allison said good-bye, thanked Chadwick and turned off her phone. She m
ight check messages soon, she might not. She’d made the call because she had to. The rest of the day was built for maximum solitude and minimum civilization.

  Sunny Boy walked like he was wearing ankle weights, looking for the right gear. Maybe he was channeling her heavy, black vibes. She’d give herself another couple hours of brooding before challenging her heart to open up. She wasn’t ready. She wanted to wallow in her shit. It had been a long night. She tried a large tequila and then a second that was more like a double and then another. She insisted on sex, which Colin happily obliged, and she insisted on talking afterward, not falling asleep. She told Colin about Kerry London and Colin listened and asked questions, but he didn’t get it, not down deep. A second round of romping with Colin, this time even sweatier and more determined. More goal-oriented. Love was in the room, but it cowered in the corner and didn’t ask to be recognized. Colin had to know this session wasn’t about him. She took control, stayed on top, used his shoulders for grips, buried her nose in his warm neck, helped herself to as much as she could take. The sex was selfish and gritty. She still couldn’t sleep. She’d spent an hour on the couch. Colin slept soundlessly. Chamomile tea had the same effect as espresso. She spent another hour outside on the mini porch, watching the stars and letting them blur into personal constellations, all the fire-folk sitting in the sky. Gerard Manley Hopkins. One of her father’s favorites. It surprised her how the line came roaring back. Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes! Too many exclamation points for the moment. There were no elves off in the woods. She couldn’t feel their eyes. She kept seeing Kerry London right before he said the word airplane. He may as well have cut out her stomach with a ballpoint pen.

  Flake-doves sent floating forth at a farmyard scare!

  Ah well! it is all a purchase, all is a prize.

  When she had finally accepted the sleeplessness, an hour before dawn, she slipped out quietly and left a note: “I’m scouting. Will you and Jesse clean today and start putting together a supply list? P.S. Tell Trudy I’ll catch up with her tomorrow. P.P.S: I love you. P.P.P.S: I promise to let you run the show next time. Thanks for being my punching bag.”