Stuart Brannon's Final Shot

by Stephen Bly

  Not far away, in cool and protected, open shade, they saw a spotted owl and nest in a stovepipe-like cavity formed in the top of a large conifer, the top broken off.

  At the high promontory’s rim, they admired the shoreline vista and noticed where landslides had fallen into the ocean. The Lewis and Clark expedition hiked here one hundred years before to barter with locals on the other side for meat from a beached whale. Now Tillamook Rock Lighthouse flickered its light a little more than a mile away, with a sixty-two-foot tower on a basalt rock islet.

  “No way to get there except by crane to lift you up,” Tanglewood said as they stopped to catch their breath. “The keeper’s marooned.” He sent a wave towards the islet.

  A raven cawed: Cr-r-uck. It flew straight overhead, then showed off with an acrobatic soar, tumble and barrel roll.

  “Cr-r-uck,” Tanglewood echoed back. “Hate those birds. They’re tricksters, sneaky, plenty selfish… but plenty smart too.”

  They scoured for any evidence of Tom Wiseman’s presence.

  “That’s it. Down there. The large bay Bueno described,” Brannon said.

  After a careful climb down the other side, they rescued floating packages with medicines, bundles of oilskin-wrapped papers, jerky and rotting leather; also assorted arrowheads and fishing barbs. Playful sea lions poked their heads from the water to inspect them as starfish clung to a rock in a tide pool.

  A quick look at the papers revealed advice on preventing malaria and yellow fever.

  Sylvia reported from them. “This is astounding. It says here that twenty-two thousand workers in Panama died of malaria and yellow fever from 1881 to 1889. There’s an article that claims mosquitoes are the cause of malaria. Wear long sleeves and pants. Use nets at night while sleeping. Don’t put legs of hospital beds in tins of water. They protect from crawling insects but the stagnant water breeds mosquitoes.”

  Rebozo grabbed the packet. “I’ve watched men die of malaria. And one woman of yellow fever. It’s not pretty. It can happen anywhere, even Washington D.C. Epidemics scare me. They erupt so sudden. Kills so many, real fast. They are no respecter of persons, by age or gender or social standing. Makes you want to erect a gigantic screen around every city that’s vulnerable.”

  Brannon stared at Rebozo. The man does have feelings for more than himself. He debated whether to pry or not, but he wanted to know more about this chameleon man. “The woman? Was she someone close to you?”

  “My mother.”

  “Look here,” Sylvia hollered, “a compass buried in the mud.” She dug until it broke free.

  “Is that your father’s?” Rebozo asked.

  “No, he never had a compass that I remember. Didn’t need one. He had a sixth sense about direction on land and he never contracted sea fever as a disease.”

  Brannon examined an early 1800s Georgian English compass. I’ve seen one like this before. “Keep this with the other items,” he said. One of his prized possessions. It belonged to his grandfather.

  “Don’t turn around, but there’s someone watching us,” Rebozo said.

  “Are they armed?” A spear skid over the rocks and stuck in the sand, six feet from Brannon.

  “I believe so,” Rebozo said. “Flee to the trees.”

  After the report of a rifle, a bullet whizzed near Brannon and spewed sand. “Get down.” Brannon scanned the tree-lined cliff.

  “Someone’s running up there along the edge,” Rebozo called out.

  “Looks to me like the old Indian who rides the stallion’s mares,” Brannon said.

  “Good eyesight,” Rebozo commented.

  “It’s Catcher-Of-The-Sun.” Tanglewood started for the trail.

  Twenty-six

  “All of you stay here,” Brannon ordered.

  “But I know him. He’s my grandfather’s friend. I can help you,” Tanglewood said.

  They scaled up the side behind Tanglewood, kneeled behind some bushes, then raised up and scouted for their attacker. Tanglewood took the lead as they climbed over brush, fallen logs and busted through cobwebs.

  I can’t keep up this pace much more. The guy with the rifle better appear soon.

  As if in answer, another shot was fired, but no bullet whizzed by them. “I think he shot in the air,” Rebozo said. “Let’s get closer to make better contact.”

  “Be careful. That might have been a trick,” Brannon warned. “I’ll cover your flank.”

  “You’ll shoot me where?” Rebozo raised his revolver in the air and shot high in the trees.

  They waited. No return volley.

  “Hey, old man. We don’t want to hurt you,” Brannon shouted. “What do you want from us?”

  The man grunted something, very close to them. They peered around. His face was rough, course, the color of burlap. He sat on a large circle of moss, only yards away, his long, thin legs pulled up in front of him, his rifle crooked between his knees.

  “We’re looking for a man,” Brannon called out to him. “He is a U.S. Marshal. He’s been missing more than a week. Did he come here to Tillamook Head?”

  The wizened, weathered Indian kept a steady gaze on them, but kept silent. He held the rifle steady, his narrowed eyes intent on Brannon.

  “Let me talk to him. He’s afraid,” Tanglewood said.

  Brannon scooted over to give the youth more room. “Afraid of what?”

  “Perhaps that the deeds done here will be blamed on him.”

  Tanglewood approached the old man and they crouched down to talk. Brannon caught some words but couldn’t understand. He guessed it was the old Clatsop language. They communicated with both speech and body language, the marvel of one human conveying the contents of one’s mind to another. Then they stopped talking and sat in silence.

  Why the quietness? To figure out how to tell us what was said? Or an ancient ritual of some sort, to let the words and their meaning settle between them?

  Tanglewood scrambled towards them, but the old man stayed put.

  “Why did he throw his spear? Why did he shoot at us?” Brannon asked.

  “To chase us away? To get our attention?” Tanglewood shrugged. “The old chiefs dream many dreams.”

  Am I like an old chief? Are we getting so close to the next world that this one and the other start to blur together?

  “Catcher-Of-The-Sun says that he did not see what happened,” Tanglewood briefed them. “He considers this place his own, even though he doesn’t stay here all the time. Our people have lived around here for maybe a thousand years, you know.” Tanglewood took a deep breath. “He says more than a week of days ago he arrived to find two bodies… one sprawled at the foot of a rock cliff and had been shot, the other trapped in a thicket of fallen trees, like a crevice. That man had tried to get free, but was not able. He died there.”

  Tanglewood bowed his head, as though in respect for the loss of life, the lifting of spirits from this place.

  “Where are they now?” Brannon inquired. “We didn’t see any bodies on that bay.”

  “They must be there. The old man says he tried to protect the bodies for days from the birds and other creatures, but could not keep it up. He did not want to move them, so their story would remain. But no one came.” Tanglewood stopped and they all tried to process what he was saying.

  No one came.

  But we got here as soon as we knew where to find him.

  “Finally, he was forced to bury them, without their personal belongings, as would be the old custom. He was concerned that the story be evident in the here and now, rather than they take their possessions into the afterlife.”

  “Ask him to take us to the graves,” Brannon said. “We must know if one of them is Tom Wiseman.”

  Sylvia gulped a breath, as though preparing for a hard truth.

  “Are you all right?” Brannon asked.

  She swished out the oxygen. “I knew I must come.”

  The elderly Indian led them back to the beachside. At the south side, rocks had been stac
ked, a makeshift memorial, like Brannon had done for many fallen along numerous trails. He began to roll away the rocks.

  “Surely you’re not going to dig them up?” Rebozo questioned.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “I’m thinking of the dignity of the dead. There won’t be much left to distinguish and we can surmise all the evidence we need right here.”

  “That’s convenient.”

  Rebozo gave him a puzzled look, then studied the ground, the cliff, the distance from the shore. “From what I gather here and the placement of the articles we purloined earlier, this is my assessment.” He spun around several times, then raised a licked finger in the air.

  Who does this guy think he is kidding?

  “One man somehow tripped and rolled down the incline, maybe unconscious or breaks his neck. A third man lunged towards the other, who lost his balance. He fell back into that knot and pit of trunks and branches… up there… is knocked unconscious or maybe trapped. The third man surveys the scene and rides away.”

  Brannon picked up a black leather scabbard with a bayonet knife they had missed before, tucked down between the piled rocks. Smooth wood grips. Sixteen inches. It was stamped “artilleria Fca de Toledo.” “I do believe this is Tom’s.”

  “Yes, I have seen one like that. It could be my father’s,” Sylvia said.

  Rebozo examined it. “Spanish. Pommel and Cross guard. Could be from the war. Perhaps there was a struggle over this and someone was stabbed.”

  Rebozo continued to study the terrain. “Maybe the man who fell on the beach was dead or soon would be. The other was trapped. The third man can either shoot them or ride out of here, innocent of all or any charges. Good riddance. A very good day.”

  Only the man who was here would be able to relate such a scene. Or he’s an imaginative guesser.

  Brannon tried to control his rising frustration that edged on anger. “Keaton, ask the old man whether one of the men had thick, gray hair and wore a badge.” He studied the knife and a leather case. “And ask about this knife, does it belong to him? Rebozo, you knew the French-man. What would identify him?”

  “He had very curly hair, quite dark, and a thick, curved mustache that swerved up on both sides.” He rubbed his own thin mustache. “Oh, yes, and the few times I saw him he wore a sort of ribbed sweater with rolled neck under his suit jackets. I think the coastal air felt chilly to him.”

  Tanglewood conversed with the old man and there was much bobbing of the head. He turned back to Brannon and Rebozo. “He affirms the descriptions. He also explains that the knife was on the beach after he found the men. He used it to dig the graves.”

  “There’s a chip on the handle I don’t remember,” Sylvia said.

  “That could have happened with the digging,” Rebozo remarked.

  When Brannon, Tanglefoot and Rebozo finished clearing the spot of rocks, they looked over at Sylvia. She insisted they dig.

  “It won’t be a pretty sight,” Brannon warned.

  “But I must know if that is my father buried there.”

  “I will do it,” Rebozo offered. “I have examined the dead before, but Sylvia must promise not to look. I will do my best to describe in palatable terms what I see.”

  “Do you not want me to look either?” Brannon’s tone was derisive. He tried a different tack. “I’ve witnessed body decay before too.”

  “You still don’t trust me, do you?”

  They dug deep in the sand while Sylvia paced the beach with Catcher-Of-The-Sun. She tossed shells and pebbles over the lapping waves. A majestic osprey soared above the water, spotted a fish near the surface and plummeted to seize the prey with its talons.

  Finally, they uncovered two bodies, side by side, wrapped in a buffalo robe. Rebozo carefully lifted up the robe. The odor almost overpowered them. Sylvia ran over before they could object, then wretched until she crumpled.

  They studied the bodies, as Rebozo turned them gingerly over. Parts of them revealed only skeleton, the flesh eaten away. “Well, I was wrong on at least one score. DeVache was shot and killed, probably by Wiseman.” He held up a Colt revolver with custom pearl handles.

  Brannon feared that nausea would overtake him too. “I guess the old man couldn’t resist burying them with something.”

  Both Brannon and Sylvia definitely identified the gun as Tom Wiseman’s. Sylvia could hold back no more. She began to sob.

  How Brannon longed for this good friend to rise from the dead, greet them with his ever-friendly, “Howdy,” and offer them a cup of strong, boiled coffee from his campfire. He fought back the rage that it would not be so.

  “Looks like your friend had a broken leg and possibly a few broken ribs. There’s also evidence he may have tried to cut off his leg, to free himself from his trap.” Rebozo glanced at Sylvia, but she had stumbled away again, too far to pay attention to his assessment, wiping the Colt revolver in her hand with her skirt. “And this is DeVache, as far as I can tell. We’ll have to contact his family.”

  “Do you know any of them or where they live?” Brannon asked.

  “I used to. I’ll check back at the hotel.”

  Catcher-Of-The-Sun approached Sylvia and beckoned Tanglewood. “He wants to make sure you put the gun back,” the youth said. “So your father will have a weapon to fight the adversaries in the next world.”

  “No, that’s when the battles are finally over.” The statement gave her strength to walk over, take the knife and scabbard from Rebozo, and tuck it with the bodies. She kept the revolver.

  “The old man says this is not the first time bodies have been buried here,” Tanglewood informed them. “It’s been used as a gravesite for others, many times.”

  “But they’re lost and forgotten,” Sylvia said. “There’s no markings anywhere.”

  On the way back, Sylvia tried to speak when she wasn’t sobbing. “I can’t believe he’s gone, that I’ll never see him again.” She wiped her nose and weepy eyes. “Papa didn’t deserve to die that way.”

  Brannon wanted to comfort her, but didn’t quite know how.

  “There won’t be a birthday party, just him and me. It’s like reliving the horror of Wills’ death again and losing my mother. Does God hate me so much he destroys every person near and dear?”

  Brannon couldn’t think of a quick or helpful answer.

  “I want to scream, ‘God, are you really here?’ ”

  I want to say, “God is good and just. He can be trusted. Look at God’s story, the whole of it, and you’ll know God’s heart, that He is here.” But it’s not the right timing. And… how long did it take me to get to that place?

  She whirled and stomped and flung out her arms. Brannon feared she’d lose control. “I’ve got to figure this out,” she said. Her cheeks swelled. Her chest heaved. She looked like she’d explode.

  Brannon attempted a response. “Life is unpredictable, but not random. God’s ways cannot always be explained, because we’re part of His story, attached to a bigger drama. In the meantime, sometimes what we care about the most, we lose. But it’s temporary. We can have hope that it’s all returned, only better.”

  Her voice got husky. She filled with somber resolve. “I will figure out some honorable way to transport Papa back to the ranch in Arizona.”

  Brannon hated to intrude on her very private grief, but he felt he must give some fatherly advice. “It might be better to leave his body on this bay with the rocks marking the spot and erect your own special tribute at home, with the rest of your family and friends.”

  She burst into tears again. When the sobs subsided she declared, “I will kill the one responsible for this atrocity. An eye for an eye. That is justice.”

  Or is it sometimes revenge?

  Brannon attempted an awkward hug. She slung her arms around his chest and squeezed tight.

  Twenty-seven

  Brannon and Sylvia caught up with Rebozo and Tanglewood who had tromped on ahead.

  As the four hiked
over fallen logs and roots spread out aboveground and kicked through ferns with their treasures back to the beached canoe, a storm brewed. Foam topped the ocean waves that bubbled towards the shore. Dark clouds gathered overhead, piled in stacks, then collided into a massive rift. Raindrops sprinkled, then pelted into hail. Thunder rumbled and lightning bolts streaked on the horizon. One display of earth as a great coughing, sputtering machine.

  Sylvia unfolded the large shawl around her waist to cover her head and the beach items. Brannon tamped down his hat. “Rebozo, about your mother, where did she get yellow fever?”

  “Where else? Panama.”

  “Why was she there?”

  “We both were… to visit my father, one of the workers for the passageway being dug by the French.”

  “But you’re not French.” Brannon meant it as a statement, but immediately considered a doubt. I don’t know all the cultures of France.

  “I’m a mixture, what some in the States call a breed. I was born in Philadelphia, lived part of my childhood in Colombia. My father’s work took him all over the world, and my mother and I with him. The President was impressed with my travel résumé. Also, I have an innate sense of detection. He found that very useful.”

  “Is your father still in Panama?”

  “Yes… and no. It wasn’t the disease or squalor or sanitation standards that got him. He was eaten by an alligator.”

  Sylvia glared at Rebozo. “You shouldn’t tease about such a thing.”

  “I’m not joking. That’s the most accurate thing I’ve told you.”

  “So you confess that everything else is a lie?”

  “O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!”

  She glowered at Rebozo again. “Okay, Romeo, I don’t think that was a reference to my beauty.”

  When they slid down Hack Howard’s trail and back to the tiny beach, they discovered the waves had beaten the canoe against some rocks and cracked the hull. Plus, the girls were gone.