The Dogs of Winter (20 page)

She put her things into her truck which was parked near the foot of the stairs and went to the dock. It was not her way to be friendly
with strangers, but she was curious about these pictures and what it was Drew wanted with them.

“Hello,” she said.

The man turned slightly but did not get up or look her in the eye.

“It went well?” she asked.

He looked toward the water, giving her to understand that things had not gone well at all.

“We lost the boy,” he said.

She was aware of a coiling in her belly, of a shadow placed above the water.

“What boy?” she asked.

He stood then, and turned to face her. It looked to her as if he had been crying, for his eyes appeared puffy, ringed with red, though she supposed the wind and sun and salt might account for these things as well.

“The Indian boy. The one Drew hired to take me out.” His voice broke and she decided she had been right, that he had been crying.

“That’s terrible,” she said. “It’s awful. Do you know his name?”

“David Little.”

She knew the name. He was from upriver. He couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen.

“That was the boat?” she said. “The boat Drew got to take you out?”

Fletcher nodded.

Kendra felt sick. “It’s not even a boat,” she said. “It’s one of those rubber things. Drew used it once to float some lumber down the river. David helped him.”

Fletcher said nothing. The wind chop lapped against the wood.

“How did it happen?” she asked.

“We got out okay, but the kid lost power. There was some sort of problem with the engine. We got caught inside on a big set . . .” His voice trailed away.

“And you’re okay.”

The man just shook his head. “I had a wet suit,” he told her. “I knew what to do.” He looked at her with his red-rimmed eyes. “I was with him,” he said. “In the boat.”

She saw then that he believed it was his fault. Kendra knew better. The truth fell upon her as might a blow. “And Drew?”

“I don’t know. I mean, he’s okay. I just don’t know where he is right now. I assume he’s getting help for Sonny.”

“Sonny?”

“One of the pros. Some of the Indians saw what happened. There was a fight on the beach.”

Kendra found herself pacing the weathered landing. She looked toward that place where the darkening river disappeared among the folds of the hills, winding its way inward, toward the heart of the reservation, the home of David Little. She was aware of the photographer watching her, and she stopped to look at him.

“I just keep thinking there is something I ought to do,” he said. “I mean, I was the last person to see the boy alive. It seems to me I should go to his family, that I should tell them . . .”

“What?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Kendra looked on him with some pity. Though it struck her that there was something of the fool about him as well, with his rubber suit and his red-rimmed eyes. She’d seen that he was favoring a leg when he’d gotten to his feet. Probably he had been hurt in some way. Well, she thought, he’d come on a fool’s errand and he’d been found out. There was blood on his hands now and he would have to live with it. Her pity derived from the perception that he would not do so without remorse.

Drew, on the other hand, would already be planning his next session. She thought briefly of asking the photographer if he’d gotten his pictures, and if he had, did he think them worth the price. But there seemed little point in chastising him further. Drew was the one she should ask, and yet even as she imagined this exchange she could feel some resolve hardening within her. For she had put such questions to Drew before and could by now guess the answers before the asking.

She moved quickly then, across the mud and into her truck. When she had closed the door, she saw that the photographer was walking toward her. She could see him in the rearview mirror, his hand raised as if to beckon her back, but she saw no need for
further talk. She started the truck and drove away, gravel pinging in her wheelwells, her windshield covered by the mists which rose from the river, and it seemed to her as if something was in the air. Energy flowing downhill. She saw it in the flight of a deer. An owl before dark. “
No bueno,
” she said. And again, “
No bueno,
” as the river rushed to the sea.

•  •  •

She went along a winding dirt road, deep into the reservation. An orange light churned among the trees, dusting the rusted cars, the gutted appliances, the moldering house trailers. In time, she lost the sound of the river. She came around a curve where the road she was on intersected with another.

The junction was marked by a weedy lot and a rambling wooden structure, a company store. There was a sign above the roof: “Ted’s Bucket of Suds.” There was a pair of well-used pickups parked in front. Kendra pulled in beside the other trucks and parked.

She had never been in this store, and, in fact, she had been warned away from such places. They were not, she had been told, frequented by whites, nor were whites welcome here. Still, she was feeling reckless. It was the death of the boy. She felt unclean, compelled to place herself in harm’s way.

As she got out of the Toyota, she could see there was something dead in the bed of one of the trucks—a dog, or perhaps a coyote, its fur burned away to reveal bone, a death’s mask of interlocking fangs. Her passing raised a cloud of flies, some of which seemed to come right for her, circling her head, trapping themselves in her hair. As a consequence, she fairly stumbled up the sagging steps, swatting at the air as the flimsy wooden door banged shut behind her.

With the closing of the door, she found herself confronting a handful of Indians. The men were standing along a counter behind which another Indian operated a cash register. They were all looking at her as if she were an object of great curiosity, and, in fact, she supposed her entrance had gotten her off to a poor start. A dingbat from the woods.

She made an effort to compose herself, to go about her business. At which point it occurred to her that she had no clear idea of what
her business was. She had come in because she had supposed she shouldn’t. There was really no more to it than that.

She felt them watching as she started through the store. She seemed to be headed toward the cooler. The floor fell away beneath her feet at a ridiculous angle. Fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed above her head. There were no windows in the room, though beyond the screened door, she was aware of the late light in the dusty lot. She felt the men watching as she passed among the shelves, which were made of rough pine slats, sparsely stocked with a variety of canned and paper goods.

By contrast, she found the cooler filled to overflowing. A cornucopia of alcoholic delights. She selected a bottle of white port wine. It was a an idiotic purchase. She believed she’d heard Drew joke about drunken Indians, white port and lemon juice, and, in fact, she got some of that as well. She found some in a plastic yellow lemon not far from the wine. She took these things to the counter. There was sweat in the palms of her hands as she fumbled with her wallet. The men watched. No one spoke.

She was not thanked for her purchase and she did not thank anyone in return. The things she bought were not bagged. She collected them in the crook of an arm and went with them into the light. The blood burned in her face. The truck’s door swung shut behind her with a hollow pop. A child’s toy. She lurched from the rutted lot, grinding gears, the bottle of white port rolling across the seat to bump against her thigh.

•  •  •

She worked that evening along the shoulders of an old logging road, moving in series of elongated curves that took her some ways into the forest, then back to the road, so that it was the road which guided her. It was a steady uphill climb.

The first time she had worked this location, she had gone only about a quarter of the way to the ridgeline before turning back, exhausted. Tonight, she would not stop until she had reached the top. There was a grove of redwood there, the arrow-straight trunks made unearthly in the moonlight, and a high meadow from which she would be afforded a view of the river.

She took pleasure in these things, in her knowledge of the landscape, in her ability to make the long climb. They were small victories, yet hard won. And now there was even a check, a sign that she might make a go of things here after all. The thought came to her as she cut the stalks of several reeds, taking them with a sharp knife close to the ground, then adding them to her bag. She thought as well of how these things so gathered might change with the season and of how a circle of events might be so cast and of how one might place one’s self within this circle. Then she thought of Drew, and his wanting to go to Chile.

The notion was suddenly as transparent as a child’s story. But then these were her finest moments. Maybe it was nothing more than the endorphins, but she was granted a certain lucidity here. The voices were down there. Chile, for Christ’s sake. There was no way she was buying that last-frontier routine. She knew what he wanted. He wanted a home and a family, on his mother’s land. A house made of redwood with a view to the sea. What he wanted was here. He had said so too many times. And even though she had miscarried, the doctors had told them there was no reason they could not try again, no reason they could not succeed. And there was no reason for Drew to suddenly bail and run to Chile. No reason she could think of, except one, and there was nothing pretty about it.

She had come now to the redwoods. She rested her back against a trunk and drank some of her water. She had told him Chile would take money and he had said he could raise it. There was no money in the property they owned. Selling it would only pay off the creditors. It had something to do with the pictures. She was sure of it. Why else would he have invited these people? Why else would he have risked the boy’s life in the open ocean? And what if he managed it? she thought suddenly. What if there was money? She saw him in a doorway, flushed with light, a pair of tickets in his hand. And what if she said no? The idea struck her as a bolt from the blue. She righted herself and hiked the rest of the way to the meadow with its view of the river—a fixed ribbon of light among the trees, as breathtaking as she had imagined it. The sight consoled her. Why, if she were to work through the fall, she might be ready by Christmas.
At which point, it occurred to her that she’d best stop and think these things through. “Ready for what?” she asked.

The answer presented itself as an auditory hallucination. The voice was located somewhere above her right temple, but she knew better than to look. “Time for you to leave,” the voice said. The voice was vaguely familiar and she decided it was the shaulin priest from the beginning of the
Kung Fu
television show. She made this connection with some disappointment. Moses had Yahweh and burning bushes. She would have to make do with television.

She was back at the truck before she thought to question this occurrence. The voices weren’t supposed to be up here with her. Theirs was the world below. It was the deal they had struck. She found the bottle of wine she had purchased at the reservation store on the seat where she had left it. She broke the seal and took a drink. It was ghastly stuff. One could see at once how it might rot the brain. Still, she thought, a celebration was called for, in spite of what she had heard, and she thought once more of the plan which had come to her on the ridge—that by Christmas she could have plenty of arrangements. It was true, she thought. It was a thing that could be done. If Drew went to Chile, he would go alone.

It was hard to imagine it beyond that. She had, after all, never really been on her own before. It was hard to image how Drew would react. She drank and drove, scarcely aware of what she was about, flushed with an excitement she found difficult to trust. She seemed to recall reading somewhere that one in her condition might experience the onset of an episode as euphoria. But then, as near as she could remember, no two doctors had ever been willing to agree on exactly what her condition was. One had prescribed tranquilizers, another, intermuscular shots of vitamin B
₁₂
. Her father had favored seances and exorcism. But once he had made them swords out of wooden toilet plungers and they had hacked at tree limbs and called them orcs and celebrated a great victory. She supposed he was not all bad. In a fortnight, he had killed himself in a barn.

•  •  •

Eventually Kendra came within sight of the river once more. In fact she came upon it quite suddenly, as the logging road she had
been following ended abruptly after a steep descent among manzanita upon a two-lane strip of asphalt. Once arrived at this intersection, she was some time in placing herself, for she found that she had exited the woods at a point much further east and north than she had anticipated. But then the logging roads were like that, one never did quite know where one was. It made for a good number of surprises. The trick, she had learned early, was to make sure one entered their red-dirt labyrinth with a full tank of gas.

Still, she was quite taken aback to find just how far inland she had come. Nor could she recall at just what point she had erred, or at what nameless intersection she had borne right instead of left. Perhaps the wine had something to do with it. Perhaps it was the ruminations, or the rush of excitement which had accompanied her newfound resolve.

At any rate, she was here now and the course, at least, was clear. She put the river on her left and pointed toward the coast. She had no sooner completed this maneuver, however, when she saw that she was not alone on the road. Almost at once, a pair of headlights filled her rearview mirror. The lights startled her for one did not expect company at this hour and her first thought was to distance herself from them.

For the moment, however, she held speed, examining the lights, first in the rearview mirror and then in the side mirror, as it seemed to her there was something peculiar about them. Upon further examination, she saw that it was not the lights themselves, but rather the thing they were attached to that was peculiar.