The Dogs of Winter (17 page)

“Those fuckers packed my bro, man.”

Travis watched as the kid bent quickly to collect a rock.

“You have to understand that this is their land,” Travis told him.
He was doing his best to remain calm. He was aware of the man on the ground watching him. “All they want right now is for you to leave. They wanted to hurt your friend, they could’ve shot him by now.”

This seemed to give the boy pause. Travis turned to the other man. “Are you all-right?” he asked.

“Twisted my ankle. It’s not that bad. Just how do you propose to get us out of here?”

“I have a boat,” Travis told him.

“What about the guy on the beach?” the man asked.

“Drew is down there now. I give him the signal, they will let him get your buddy into town.”

“How do we know this isn’t some trick?” the bald surfer said.

“If it was a trick, I’d be packing and you’d be dead,” Travis told him. Having said this, he crossed the bowl and went up into the rocks from which the kid had shelled the beach. He could see the truck and the men below. He waved his arms and shouted. In time he saw Drew Harmon stand up in the bed of the truck, the rifle held aloft in one hand.

“That Harmon?”

Travis turned to find that the kid had followed him into the rocks, that he was squinting toward the beach.

“Yes it is. You’d been payin’ attention to what you were shooting at, you might’ve seen him sooner.”

“Yea, an’ get myself shot,” the kid said.

Travis left his perch and went to look at the other man’s foot. The guy was already pulling on a bootie, but Travis could see the ankle was swollen and starting to bruise. He supposed the man was right, that it was no more than a sprain. Still, he thought, it might be necessary to give him a lift to the boat. He said as much to the kid.

When he got no answer, he turned to find the boy struggling back into his wet suit, still on the rocks. He had put the wrist rocket on the ground, but now, with the wet suit zipped, he picked it up once more. When he saw Travis looking at him, he said, “What?”

“Your friend,” Travis told him. “We may need to give him a lift.”

The kid laughed. “You can lift him,” he said. “He’s no friend of mine.”

Travis performed a slow double take. He looked once at the man on the ground, as if some confirmation of these words were needed, then back at the kid. He was in time to see the boy’s hands at work with the wrist rocket. He could guess what was coming. He was just too slow to do much about it. The rock itself was invisible. It came as a flash of light, a settling into shadow, as the stiff winter grass rushed to meet him.

F
letcher witnessed the stoning of the Indian with no small amount of horror. He saw the man bring a hand to his head and he saw his knees buckle. The man wobbled and went down. He dropped to one knee before rolling onto his side and then his back.

Fletcher turned to Robbie Jones.

The youth was standing with the wrist rocket dangling from one hand. “Wasted that fucker,” he said.

Fletcher was silent with disbelief.

“I’m outta here,” Robbie told him. At which point he sprinted across the grass and disappeared among the trees.

Fletcher watched him go. It occurred to him that perhaps he’d best go as well. If anyone else were to come upon this little scene, they might well assume Fletcher had felled the man himself. Things might go badly for him. But there did not seem to be anyone else around, and Fletcher could see that the man was already attempting to right himself. Fletcher finished with his bootie and got to his feet.

The man who had identified himself as Travis McCade was a thickset man with black hair starting to gray at the temples. As Fletcher reached him, the man had managed to bring himself to a three-point stance. He was supporting his head with one hand, the elbow braced upon his knee.

Fletcher asked if he was all-right. When there was no response, he moved closer. He reached to touch the man’s shoulder. When he did this, the man shouted. He brought the hand that had been on the ground up in a kind of backhanded swing. The blow grazed Fletcher’s cheekbone. Fletcher leaped backward, tripped over a rock, and landed on his ass. The man, pulled off balance by the force of his swing, made a kind of pirouette on one knee and landed on his ass as well. There followed a moment in which the two men, so seated, regarded one another across the grass.

“You’ve got to believe me,” Jack Fletcher said. “I had no idea he was going to do that.” He could see the other man trying to clear his head, blinking and grimacing. He saw as well the man was possessed of a silver front tooth, which flashed now and then in the sunlight.

“I’m tryin’ to save your ass,” Travis said at length.

“I can see that,” Fletcher told him.

“Christ.” The man got slowly to his feet. “Where is he?” he asked.

Fletcher nodded toward the trees.

Travis looked in that direction, cursing beneath his breath, then setting off at a slow jog.

Fletcher followed, limping along as best he could.

It did not take long to reach the edge of the island and soon the two men were looking down on the aluminum skiff.

Travis appeared greatly relieved to see it. “I was afraid the fucker had stolen my boat,” he said. He turned to the currents of fast-moving water which swept past on either side of them. “Where do you think he went?”

“Swam for it, I imagine.”

“In that?”

Fletcher nodded.

“Christ. He’s drowned, most likely.”

Fletcher disabused him of the idea. It was his opinion that any
number of things might one day claim the miserable little fuck. It was just that the sea was not among them.

Travis worked his way down to the skiff. “Come on,” he said. “You get in, I’ll cast us off.”

Fletcher remained where he was. When Travis had gotten the line out of the tree, he stopped and looked back at Fletcher. “You coming?” he asked.

“I need to know something,” Fletcher said.

The man just looked at him.

“That kid that took me out . . . Do you know . . .” He stopped as Travis looked away, then cleared his throat and went on, seeking to master his voice as he did so. “I just thought . . . As long as Drew was still out there . . . that he might still find him.”

“He’s gone,” Travis said. “Your friend found nothing.”

Fletcher looked to the trees on the north bank where earlier that morning he and the boy had dropped the surfers. It might, he thought, have been in some other lifetime, so long ago did it seem just now, and he looked upon the darkening trees, their limbs set like those of supplicants before the sun, and he listened to the sound of the big waves detonating on the outside reef. Huge Heart Attacks in epic conditions. The thing he had come for. The thing that was to have put it all right.

“Come on,” the man told him. “You want out of here, let’s do it now.”

•  •  •

They went in silence for some time after that, Travis reading the river, guiding them smoothly before the current. It should have been him, Fletcher thought, watching the man before him. It should have been him, in this boat. He would have gotten the pictures. The boy would still be alive. “That boy,” Fletcher said at length. “Did you know him?”

The man was silent, watching the water, as if the question was an unwelcome distraction. “David,” he said finally. “David Little.”

“I’m sorry,” Fletcher said. “I’m sorry about what happened.” He was thinking of what Robbie Jones had said to him, that he had lost the boy, and he was wondering if he had. “The magazine said there
would be someone here with a boat. I didn’t know it would be a kid. I didn’t know the boat would be a Zodiac.”

“The magazine?”

“
Victory at Sea.
It’s a surfing magazine. They hired me to come up here, shoot the place. They said Drew could get us in.”

Travis studied the river in the autumnal light. “Yeah. Well, I would say, he got you in.”

“The boy . . . David . . . He lived on the reservation?”

“David was Hupa. His people are further up the river. He could have gotten himself shot just being down here.”

“How’s that?”

“Fishing rights. Yuroks have the mouth. Hupas have what’s up there.” He gestured with his chin toward that place where the river faded among the shadows. “Someone could have thought he was fishing.”

“Why would he risk it?” Fletcher asked. “Why would he try taking that thing out in that surf?”

Travis shook his head, as if he thought this a stupid question. He rubbed his thumb against the insides of his fingers in a gesture which suggested money. “Why do you think?” he asked.

“The magazine wasn’t paying him. I suppose Drew could have offered him something.”

“It wouldn’t take much.”

“His folks are poor?”

“Take a look around you, man.”

They were come now out of the shadow and into the sun that lit the eastern bank. Drew Harmon’s landing loomed before them, its deck low enough to be washed by the small whitecaps driven before the wind.

As they drew near, Travis reached out with one hand to pull them even with the dock. The aluminum hull, still carried upon the river’s current, rubbed against the old wood. Fletcher was aware of the other man looking toward the trees, toward that place where the roof of the Harmon’s trailer might be seen as a piece of reflected light.

“If you see Mrs. Harmon, tell her to stay in tonight. Tell her to stay off the river.”

Fletcher nodded. “You think there will be more trouble?”

“I would say you could go to the bank with that.”

The boat continued to bob on the spangled water. Travis put a finger to his head. He was sporting a nasty-looking welt above one eye where the rock had creased him. An inch to the left and the thing might well have fractured his skull. Fletcher watched as he scooped water from the river and splashed his face with it. When he had done that, he looked over the shack at the landing, the empty stairs leading into the light.

“You don’t suppose that shithead who nailed me could’ve made it back here yet, do you?”

“I don’t see how.”

Travis let his breath out slowly. “I must be getting old,” he said. “You see the fucker, tell him to stay clear of the reservation.”

“I will,” Fletcher said.

“I should say the same to you. I sincerely hope this is it. No more pictures.”

“It’s not likely,” Fletcher said. He put a hand upon the wooden dock. “I want you to know I feel real bad about what happened out there today.”

Travis only nodded.

“I realize there’s nothing I can say. Still, I keep thinking . . . wondering, I guess . . . if I should say something to the boy’s family.”

“What?”

“There must be some tradition here,” he said at length. “Some way the tribes had of dealing with accidental deaths.”

“The guilty party would present himself to the family of the one who had been killed. The family might do one of two things. They might kill this person. Or they might work out some method of making recompense. The guilty person might work for them as a servant for some period of time. He might give them something . . .”

Travis broke off. In fact, he was not quite sure why he was saying any of this. What was the point? “Look,” he said. “I know you feel bad. But believe me, there is nothing you can do here except cause more trouble. The boy’s family is from up the river. It’s another world up there. You would not be understood. You’d be lucky if you got back in one piece.”

“No recompense?” Fletcher asked.

“Chances are, you’d never get the chance to find out.”

Fletcher suspected what the man said was true. What did he know of these people, or they of him? “It’s a tough one to walk away from,” he said.

Travis looked toward the river, in the direction of the sea. “Just tell the girl,” he said. “Tell her to stay in tonight.”

Fletcher said that he would. He could see the man was anxious to be gone. And why wouldn’t he be? Bad karma, after all, was not something people generally rushed to embrace.

T
ravis watched the photographer limping across the wooden deck as he drifted once more upon the current. He sincerely hoped the man could be counted upon, that he would find Kendra Harmon and deliver the warning. He hoped as well that he had discouraged him from going off in search of David Little’s family. It was an absurd notion, and he could not imagine what the man could possibly hope to gain by it.

The image reminded him of Kendra Harmon inquiring after the
hee-dee,
and it seemed to him for a moment that white people were forever requiring things of Indians. First, their homes and lands. And now their benediction. It was vision quests and absolution they wanted now, as if come to some bankrupt place of their own making, it was time to turn to the gates of the city, to the desolate reaches beyond, time to seek their enlightenment among the lepers. Travis wished them luck.

As he moved back down the river Travis thought of a story Frank
had picked up from an old medicine man on the lower Elwa. The medicine man had worked out a scam for the
wagays
who came to him in pursuit of their vision quests. He made blood runners out of them. He told them they had to take off their clothes and run naked through the woods. The funny part was, they did it. Through nettles and poison oak, over sticks and stones, ran themselves bloody then went round quite pleased with themselves while the natives laughed behind their backs. Eventually some idiot ran into a ravine and killed himself. The old man gave up his racket. Said he hadn’t realized how insane the
wagay
really were. “Crazy sons of bitches,” he told Frank. “Gives you to understand how they came to fuck everything up in the first place.”

Travis hoped that his blood runners would show more sense. But already the day had been a close call. Had the
wagays
not made it to the island . . . Had Drew not been able to protect their friend . . . Had Travis himself not been there to fetch them . . . An abyss yawned before him. And this was only the beginning. He was certain of that. It was why he had not taken the time to tie off the boat and look for Kendra Harmon himself. Because time was set against him now. There was a storm brewing, and if one could not exactly control it, one might at least track its progress. One might take precautions.