Holding Lies (25 page)

But it wasn't the boulders that had brought them this high.

They limped their way farther up the ridge, toward a rock outcropping there. Between Hank's knee and Walter's waves of pain, it took them almost an hour to walk what couldn't have been a mile, and by the time they arrived, the sun was setting over the distant ocean. Long columns of light traversed the valley, orange in the dusty air.

“The cave is this way,” Walter said, paying the view no attention.

Sure enough, a cave as tall and long as Hank's living room extended into the rocks. The ground here was a powder of dirt and fibers, and the air smelled of musk and urine. Stick figures lined the walls, and a dozen rocks on the cave floor were charred black from ancient fire. Walter had never said a word about this cave, not in thirty-something years. From the pristine appearance of the place, maybe Walter was the only person who knew it existed.

He shrugged his day pack to the rocks, and began going at the cave floor with his wading staff. Hank tried to help, but Walter waved him back. “This is my doing.” The man was more delicate than he'd been just a week before, that much was clear. He was panting hard and cringing against the pain. He'd loosened in a way, these last few weeks, the skin under his jaw hanging lower now, the muscles in his forearms less pronounced—like he was decomposing from the inside out. But he wasn't feeble, not hardly. When he encountered a pumpkin-sized rock in the cave floor, he used that wading staff to dig under and then lever it from the hole. A seventy-nine-year-old man displacing a rock that must have weighted fifty pounds. He wiped the sweat from his brow.

Soon he was looking into a substantial pit in the cave floor, maybe two feet deep, and he kneeled over his backpack and extracted the shoe box. The skull was there, in the packing peanuts that had encased it for so many decades. The whole skull fit in Walter's open hand; it must have been a child's. Walter placed it in the bottom without ceremony, then stood, looking down into its empty eyes.

“I found a lot of things here, Hank. More than I could ever put back.” He reached an arm to the cave wall for support. “I sold most of
it. Rich fucks in new cars and khaki hats used to come around to buy bones and other things, but bones mostly. I don't know what they did with them, sold them to museums or something, but they'd pay good money. I found three skulls here, sold two of them. Thought I'd keep the third as an investment.”

His jaw quivered, and he squinted against tears. “That's how I thought of it. As an investment.”

“You were just a kid. You didn't know any better.”

“I knew well enough. I've known.”

Walter pulled dirt over the hole, and sat, his hands balled into tight fists. “You don't know everything I'm sorry for.”

Hank sat too and put his arm around this man who'd shunned affection his whole life. “You're a good man, Walt. I know you, and I know that.”

Walter was shaking now, and Hank felt microscopic under these paintings of people and elk and fish. Walter had always been the resolute force in this wobbly world, the only person Hank knew who didn't have a private doubt. He was more than Hank's mentor, he was proof. And now the cave walls expanded outward and upward and Hank said what he could only hope was true: “You've made a difference.”

H
ANK ARRIVED AFTER
dark at Caroline's place, pushed open the gate, and drove too fast across the field. He didn't know what to expect, another man's truck maybe, but instead, there was nothing, not even a light on in the place. Samson and Delilah were tied to their posts, which was how Caroline left them when she was working or running errands in town.

He left the truck running and walked to the door, the dogs jumping tight to their chains. “Shut it,” he hollered. They were barking like he was a common stranger, for fuck's sake.

The new ring was in his pocket, and he held it to the moonlight. Just a shiny reminder of something that didn't need remembering. It balanced nicely on the doorknob, and he made it halfway back to the truck before turning back. He'd pawn the ring and use the money to help Walter.

This was a fucked-up world for sure, but what he didn't know was whether it had always been like this or whether something had happened, something that sent everything spiraling into discordance. He had always thought—no, he'd always hoped—that there were seasons in a person's life like there were seasons on the river, a time of ease and plenty and a time of doubt and hardship. And since no calendar could help identify these seasons, a person could never really be sure where
they were in the cycle. But now, now it seemed more likely there weren't any seasons at all, just a wheel of pain, circular and pummeling, and try as you might, you'd never clear it, you'd never move on.

He climbed back into the truck and turned off
Cornell '77
. There was just the barking and growling of the dogs, and that huge and vacuous night sky.

The pictograph was still wrapped in its tarp in the bed of his truck—it was the one item he and Walter hadn't had time to replace—and he considered running it up to the hot springs now, just to be done with it. But it was dark and the thing was heavy, and he wasn't in the mood any longer for setting things right.

*

C
AROLINE'S TRUCK WAS
parked beside Annie's rental in his driveway, and through the window, he could see them laughing as they worked at the stove. And just like that, wholeness and direction seemed once again attainable; maybe spring was on its way.

They had a glass of Grenache waiting for him when he pushed through the door. “Thought you'd gone lost on us,” said Caroline.

Annie kissed his cheek. “Ever heard of a cell phone? Caroline told me not to worry, but jeez.”

They were making spaghetti with the last packages of bear meat Caroline had in her freezer. “Did you know,” Annie exclaimed, “Caroline shot this bear herself?”

Sure he did; he'd helped her butcher it. The bruin had three times busted into her trash cans, despite Samson and Delilah barking up a storm, and the fourth time she met him with the .270. That was a year back, and since, they'd been enjoying bear bratwursts, bear burgers, and bear burritos once or twice a week. “Pork of the woods,” Caroline was fond of calling it.

“Pork of the woods,” Annie said now. “Got to try it once at least.”

Caroline kissed him as she handed him a head of lettuce and a knife. “Get chopping, that garlic bread will be ready soon.”

It wasn't long, though, before Annie got a phone call, someone from work. She pulled on a fleece and took her glass of wine outside.

Caroline was telling him about her day. She'd taken new clients out, two women from a fly-fishing club in Seattle. They'd really hit it off, invited Caroline to come speak at their next club meeting, do a little fishing in the Sound. Hank was doing his best to listen, but it was Walter that he was thinking of now: at home alone, and with all that pain. Caroline kicked him in the bum. “Are you even listening?”

Hank pulled the knife across the leaves. “Walter. A new cancer. He probably won't make it until fall.”

She didn't say a word; she stopped stirring the sauce and wrapped her arms around Hank's waist and pressed her head against his back. For a long moment, she stayed there.

“You okay?” she whispered.

“You know,” he said, turning and letting her take him in her arms.

“I'm so sorry.” She laid a kiss on each of his eyes, and pressed her forehead against his.

*

T
HEY WAITED FOR
Annie to finish, the food going cold on the stove. Finally, Annie poked her head back inside and said, “Sorry, why don't you go ahead without me. It's an emergency. I don't know how long I'll be.”

So they ate just the two of them, listening to the rises and falls of Annie's voice through the screen door.

“I think they call it a BlackBerry,” Caroline said. “Everyone has one now, I hear.”

“Poetic,” Hank said, gulping some wine. “Blackberries invade and take over so thick nothing else can grow.”

“Oh, you.”

Caroline had moved her chair around to his side of the table, and they ate with their arms touching. He could smell the oaring sweat on her skin and the faint remnants of sunscreen. She refilled his wine
glass, then her own. Something about her proximity now reminded him of her empty house, the dogs barking at him, the loneliness of that vast night sky. And then the bitterness was all he could feel. Walter was going to die.

She kissed his neck and slipped her hand into his lap. “How's this for a little distraction?”

She didn't return his calls. She went cold on him sometimes for no reason. And he lived knowing that she might leave at any moment. He lifted her hand from his lap and said, “I don't need distraction.”

She frowned, and went back to her meal. “Okay.”

What he needed was permanence and warmth and the knowledge that she at least would always be there. He was too old to go on like this. Too tired.

He took her hand and kicked free his chair and got down on his knees, and Caroline said, “Right here? Hank, how naughty—” But she fell silent when she saw the ring.

“Caroline, I want to share the rest of this life with you. I love you, and I want springtime forever.”

All she said was, “Isn't that Annie's ring?”

He explained how life was so confusing but that love like theirs could order things and that he didn't want to lose her and that he'd been waiting to propose all summer and that he loved her and would do right by her and she'd never regret this. “You won't, I promise.”

She got down on her knees with him. “Hank, I can't.”

“Why not?”

“We just can't.”

“Why the fuck not? That's not an answer.”

“I've been married before, Hank. I'm not interested in being married again. I like what we have. It's perfect. Why mess with it?”

“‘Been married before,' that's just an excuse. You married a prick. Please. Take this ring. Say yes. Make us family.”

“Hank.” Caroline held his hand in hers. “We both know you.”

“What does that mean?”

“Have you ever been single? How many total months have you been alone since you moved to Ipsyniho?”

“Plenty. What's your point?”

“My point, Hank,” Caroline said, rising to her feet now, “is that I know your pattern. We both know it. You latch on to whichever woman is giving you the most affection in that moment.”

“Is that right.” He rose to his feet. “You got a pattern too. Ditch whichever man you're with for no reason, just because things have become intimate and serious, because if you leave, then there's no chance he can leave you. You're afraid of love.”

“I'm not sure you know what love is, Hank.”

“This ring,” he held it up for her to see again. “This ring says that I'll never leave you. That I'll be with you through heat and freeze. That I love you.”

“That's what you want it to say.”

“What's the problem with marriage?” he roared.

“I don't have a problem with marriage,” she said, while gathering her things. She stopped at the doorway. “Trust, Hank, that's what I'm unsure about.”

*

B
Y THE TIME
Annie came back inside, Hank had the kitchen cleaned, minus one plate. He was scrubbing the specks of brown between the sink and the splash tile. Not even baking soda and vinegar was working.

Annie apologized for missing dinner.

He threw the sponge in the sink. “Oh, you're done?”

Annie took a tentative bite of the meat. “It's 2.00 a.m. back there. Even attorneys need sleep. Thanks for saving this. I'm so hungry I could eat … a bear.” She laughed, and Hank took deep measured breaths. It was pinching in again, the drowning, and he knew there'd be no sleep tonight.

None of this was Annie's fault. He was pissed about Caroline and about Walter and about it all, and the last thing he wanted was to trouble Annie. Especially since they only had two days left.

She poured a glass of wine, and said, “So I have some bad news. I've got all day tomorrow, but I have to leave by eight thirty to catch a red-eye home. I've already switched my reservation.”

He pulled hard on the last of the wine, and set the empty glass on the counter.

“I'm sorry I have to leave early,” she said. “I could stay a month and still feel like I was leaving too soon. Like I was just getting my feet wet.”

Hank whispered all he could muster: “What do you want to do tomorrow?”

She shrugged while chewing an oversized bite of bread. “What do you want to do?”

He headed for the door. “I need a cigarette.” Like a fish needs water.

The flash of the lighter, the clarity of the first draw. The drowning ebbed, if only for a moment.

And so this was it, how he would spend his life. Alone and clinging to women who were perfectly content without him. The smoke filling his lungs, this world's truest companionship.

Annie slid open the door and joined him on the porch. “Can I?”

He handed her the pack and the lighter. “Don't start this. You don't need it.”

“I want you to take me fishing,” she said. “Not like I'm your client. I don't want a tour of the river. But like I'm you.” She inhaled and broke into a hacking cough. “I'll never understand the attraction,” she said, handing him back the cigarette.

“You don't want to fish.”

“I do. But I don't want to learn
how
you fish. I want to learn
why
you fish.” She laced her arm around his, leaned her head against his shoulder. “Will you take me?”

“Four too early?”

She shrugged. “I haven't been sleeping much anyway. To be honest.”