The Dogs of Winter (31 page)

“What are you trying to tell me, Doc?”

“I’m trying to tell you I didn’t come up here to get shot. Travis said there was going to be trouble. I would say that guy on the cliff was trouble, and I would say it’s time we got off their land.”

“I’ll tell you what you came up here to get,” Harmon told him. “You came up here to get pictures.”

“These pictures must mean a lot to you,” Fletcher said. “You’re willing to risk getting everyone shot to get them.” He might have mentioned his willingness to risk the life of a boy in a Zodiac in huge surf as well, but he didn’t. The light in the big man’s eyes dissuaded him.

“What I want with pictures is my business,” Harmon told him. “Peters told me he had a whole shit load of guys could do the job. I asked for you. We’re in the window, man. You know how long we could wait for that again?”

Fletcher was saved from further conversation by Robbie Jones. “You said you could get us there,” Robbie said. “As far as I’m concerned, you’ve been jackin’ us off since we got here. How do we know we get around that point, there’s not gonna be another point, and then another? I’ll tell you something else. I’m gettin’ a little sick of Pop-Tarts and soybeans. And I’m getting a little sick of your bullshit too.”

Drew Harmon shifted his attention to Robbie Jones. He picked up one more chunk of driftwood. He stood for a moment, as if he might do something with it other than commend it to the flames. In the end, this is just what he did, but he had gotten Robbie Jones’s attention. “Let me ask you something, dickhead,” Harmon said. “Where were you when I was paddlin’ out at Himalayas? ’Cause I sure as fuck didn’t see your scrawny ass out there.”

Robbie looked into the fire.

“How about Avalanche?” Harmon asked. “What’s that, man? I can’t hear you. Log Cabins, maybe?”

For a moment the two men just stared at one another. “You got two choices,” Harmon told him. “You can stand up and be counted, or you can fade into the crowd. Like your buddy, Sonny what’s
his name, ’cause I already forgot and so will everyone else. As for you, Doc,” Harmon turned his gaze on Fletcher once more, “you got no choices. I brought you up here to take pictures, and you’re sure as fuck going to take them. And I don’t mean this penny-ante shit you took out there today. You ain’t leavin’ until you’ve gotten us, on these boards, in waves that are going to blow some minds. You had a shot at the river mouth and you fucked it up. Now I’m gonna get you into some more, and you’re gonna get it done. You understand what I’m telling you?”

Fletcher glanced at Robbie Jones. The boy continued to stare at Drew Harmon. The trouble now was that a challenge had been issued, and R.J. was not one to back down from a challenge. Harmon had the kid’s number and Fletcher supposed that in the end, the two would chase each other round the next point and keep right on going. You followed the whole thing long enough, one might even get northern lights. Certainly one would have cold and deprivation. If Fletcher was right about the man on the cliff, one might well expect payback and early death as part of the bargain, though it was not his intention to continue this insanity long enough to find out, and he looked at Drew Harmon, for the man was still waiting on an answer. “I understand perfectly,” Fletcher said.

“That’s good,” Harmon told him. “I’d hate to see our friendship come to a bad end.”

•  •  •

They argued one more time that night, over the placement of their camp. Drew wanted to move it out, away from the cliffs that he said were dangerous. Fletcher did not want to camp in so exposed an area. In the end they compromised, moving north, then building their fire among a clump of large rocks that Fletcher felt might minimize their exposure.

When they had finished with what passed for dinner, Drew took up his log book and pen. Fletcher watched from the sleeping bag he’d placed in the slight overhang of one of the rocks. The big man was still bare-chested, sweating before the fire in spite of the cold, his hair spread in a great blond mane upon his shoulders, his expression impassive. He worked this way for some time and the
camp was silent, save for the scratching of Drew’s pen and the crackling of the flames, together with the incessant excretions of the sea.

In time, however, Drew put down his book. He looked first at Robbie Jones, then at Fletcher. “There was a tribe of Indians lived out here once,” he told them. “Where we are, right now. I can’t tell you their name, nor can anyone else, as it was a name known only to themselves. At one time, the tribe was quite large. They made their living off the Smith River just north of here. But as the tribes around them caved into the white men, these Indians continued to fight until there were only five of them left. Two men, two women, and a child. This much is known, for one of the women was captured by a group of hunters. The hunters attempted to barter for her release but were themselves killed, with the exception of one man. This was the story he told, that there were five and no more. For he had seen them come down on the camp, one woman with a papoose and two men, all with their skin blackened and their hair singed down to the scalp.”

Drew stared into the fire as he spoke. “They lived here, on these beaches,” he said. “They walked from stone to stone so as not to leave footprints that might be followed. They left nothing behind them, no fire rings, not a broken twig or a charred bone. Can you imagine that?” He looked up then, as if in expectation of some answer. Receiving none, he went on. “They lived among the rocks for twenty years, and they were never caught, and they never surrendered, and they were never found.”

“What happened to them then?” Robbie wanted to know.

Drew sighed. “That should be obvious,” he said. “When they’d had enough, they died. But since they were never found, they must have done it themselves. I think one must have disposed of the others, cremated them perhaps, as that was the custom, then took the ashes and swam out. The sea took him and he was the last of his race. Sometimes I think maybe that’s what’s wrong with this place. It was them. They put something on it.”

Drew poked at the fire with a stick.

The others watched him in silence for some time.

“They should’ve all done that,” Robbie said, as if he had been giving the matter some thought.

“Done what?” Drew asked him.

“Fought to the last man, the last woman, the last child.”

“That’s what you would have done.”

“No quarter. No mercy.”

“No man can say what he would do in those circumstances,” Drew said. “Who can say what the world would even look like to such people?”

He raised his eyes to look at them, for till now he had been staring into the flames. They found his face lit from the underside, hollowed out by shadow, as if what they saw there was not flesh and bone but that which lay beneath flesh and bone, and it occurred to Fletcher that he knew this man for the first time. He’s like me, Fletcher thought, a middle-aged man, afraid of what was to come. And yet, even as he thought this, he was aware of a chill running along his spine, for there was another thing there as well, a coiled thing that brooded, barely contained, a thing of which to be afraid.

When no one had proposed an answer to his question, Drew Harmon took up his book and began to write in it once more. Robbie Jones withdrew into his sleeping bag, where he lay with his back to the fire. Fletcher remained where he was, in the shadow of the black rock already dripping in the fog that had rolled in to blanket the night. He thought of the boulder field which lay behind them and the dreary northern reaches which lay ahead. He thought of this place now in light of Drew’s story. One could almost see them there, he thought, that party of five, hovering and crouching in their nearly disembodied life among this wasteland of wind and stone. What ghosts must have stalked them. What memories. Twenty years and not a footprint in the sand and nothing to mark their passing, save a story told by the likes of Drew Harmon, who, like all men, could only tell stories that, in truth, were about themselves. This was a story about the man Fletcher had glimpsed above the fire, and of the coiled thing poised to strike. It told, he concluded, of how the one would destroy the other, and if he had any brains left he would take steps to avoid being its witness, for it was also his belief that when the time came, bystanders would prove expendable. As a consequence, he chose to abstain from his pills. On this night, pain would be his ally. When the others slept, he would make his move. What happened after that was anybody’s guess.

T
ravis McCade was afforded his first glimpse of an attainable landfall along that ragged collection of rock and beach that formed what he liked to think of as the sole of the great boot, well north of the point, miles from the sandy beaches upon which he had expected to find the surfers.

Things had gone badly from the start. His craft, laboring beneath its absurd load, had behaved more sluggishly than he had anticipated. Groundswells pushing at him from behind were apt to wash over the rear deck, at times sinking it altogether. For a while, he’d managed to compensate for this inconvenience through a careful regulation of his stroke, one which allowed him to actually ride each swell for a short distance before it passed him by.

No sooner had he arrived at this strategy, however, than a second, even more serious obstacle had presented itself. The cliffs, he discovered, were not getting any closer. Rather, they were sliding to his right. In fact, he was caught upon some great movement in the
water around him. Had he been at the river’s mouth, he would have taken it for an outgoing tide. In the bay, in the lee of the hoof, answers had failed him, and there was nothing for it but to stroke and curse, as the mysterious current pulled him from his path of sunlight and into the fog.

By this point, he had been able to hear the sound of breaking waves, leading him to the conclusion that should he continue as he was, he would most likely be sucked directly into the impact zone of the huge waves wrapping around the point. With this in mind, he’d been forced to give up the beaches of Big Sandy altogether, to dump the gear he’d lashed to the deck, and to paddle for the open ocean in the hopes that he might get around the rocky toe of the boot, then make land somewhere along the heel.

•  •  •

It was the plan that had gotten him here, stroking now for all he was worth toward some minuscule, rockbound cove, a mere sliver of sand before whose shimmering surface the fog passed in tattered translucent rages, carried upon a cold north wind as might the vestments of some holy gown torn violently asunder.

He paddled on, his kayak pushed hard against a sudden outcropping of stone, and then another, but him keeping his seat, feeling a wave beneath him and renewing his efforts, in hopes of catching it, which, in fact, proved to be his final act in this theater of ignominy. For the wave was steeper and more hollow than he had imagined, and once in its grip, he found himself unable to hold any kind of line. He dug hard with the end of one paddle, but to no avail. The rear of the kayak swung around toward the beach leaving him sideways, to be sucked up the face then pitched from his boat, dumped hard on a rocky patch of wet sand. The kayak landed on top of him.

For a moment, he was completely stunned and could do nothing more than push away his craft, then lay gasping for air as the white water swirled around him. It was only when he tried to stand, however, that the enormity of this calamity was revealed.

The pain hit him like a brick. He could not say where it had been hiding till now. His knees buckled. The wet sand rushed to meet him once more. This time he stayed put, racked by nausea, unable
to say at once exactly where it hurt, for the pain seemed to issue from all quarters with dazzling intensity. In time, however, he looked to his leg.

What he saw there was enough to bring back the sickness—a bulge the size of a baseball straining the black skin of his wet suit, just above his right ankle. The sight panicked him. Surely, he thought, he would die here, and for some time he lay as he had fallen, on the rocky beach, like a thing already dead. With additional time, however, he began trying to think it through, to fight through the pain, to take some stock of his situation.

The kayak was at his side, still attached to his leg by way of his leash, and he was able to take inventory of the things he had saved. Stuffed into the small storage compartment was a day pack containing his parka, his running shoes and sweats, a folding knife, and one small bottle of water. He took some consolation in these things. The dry clothes would serve him now, better than any gun, better even than food. If he could get himself dry and off the beach, perhaps, he thought someone would come, perhaps he would live after all.

•  •  •

An hour later and Travis had gotten himself among the rocks just above the cove. He had managed, with the aid of his knife, to get out of the wet suit and into his sweats, and it seemed to him now there were two things he might do. He could stay where he was, or he could try for the bluffs. In either case, his only real hope was that someone would come looking—when his father had been back long enough, when Travis had failed to show.

In the end, he decided on the bluffs. He had come some distance already and if he could make it to the top, he would certainly be easier to find. Also, it was a thing to do, for he had concluded that labor might serve to take his mind from the pain, as if in pitting himself against the rocks, it was the pain itself against which he fought.

He paused before starting out, thinking once more about why he had come, about his desire to find the girl. He thought too, of the figure he had hoped to cut—the errant protector borne upon the sea. There was, of course, little he could do about any of this just now, save stare into the splintered cliffs before him, lost for some
time in simple wonder at how easily a man might die in pursuit of such folly.

•  •  •

The tide rose quickly with the darkening of the day. And though he had managed to get into his dry clothes, Travis soon found he was getting wet again. He had picked a shelf of rock not more than twenty feet above the beach as his first goal, but the going was tougher than he had imagined, moving like a crab across the rocks, dragging his broken leg behind him. It was discouraging work as well, for he saw that there was no way he would ever reach the bluffs. His condition was deteriorating. The shelf seemed to recede even as he reached for it, and he was seized once more by the belief that he would never see the morning, that this is where it would end, in this rookery for birds, lost on a fool’s errand. It was with this in mind that he at last gained the shelf and came upon the body.