Wild Life (9 page)

Erik stood blinking in the glare of the flashlight beam, too astounded to respond. Quill remained by his side, growling low in her throat.

“Seems it's my lucky day,” the man went on, sounding both pleased and amused. “Buddy asks me to come out this way, check on some horses. So I'm heading back and I see a light and what looks like smoke coming from this old barn. I'm thinking to myself,
That just isn't right
. So I come in here and what do you know?” The man gave a snort of laughter. “Thanks, kid. I sure can use the five thousand bucks.”

Erik hadn't moved except to put his hands up to shield his eyes. From behind his hands he said, “Five thousand bucks?”

The man lowered the flashlight and said, “Yeah. So put out that fire and grab your stuff. Time to stop playing Davy Crockett and get on home to your momma.” In a more kindly tone he added, “I bet you could use a home-cooked meal by now, couldn't you, son?”

Erik said tightly, “I'm not your son, and my mother is in Iraq.”

The man smiled. “Oh, yeah, I remember now. It was your grandma on the TV, the one who put up the money, wasn't it? You know they got one of those Amber Alerts out on you?”

An image of Oma, weeping on TV and begging for Erik's safe return, flashed through his head.

“The old man—that your grandpa? He was plenty upset.”

Yeah, I bet,
thought Erik, imagining Big Darrell's fury.

The man waved the flashlight around, saying, “Come on, now, you've caused enough trouble. Put that fire out and let's get going.”

Thoughts were racing through Erik's mind like tumbleweeds across the prairie. Five thousand dollars? Oma and Big Darrell didn't have that kind of money. Look at their house. They couldn't even afford to fix the porch steps. There was no way he was going to let himself be hauled back by this stranger and make his grandparents pay to get him back. It was too late to fix the fact that he'd run away, but he could sure as heck decide how and when he was going back. And he was going to do it on his own, not be handed over like a lost wallet.

He figured his best chance of escape was to pretend to give up and surrender to the idea that he was being taken back home. With a shrug, he mumbled, “Okay,” and used a stick to spread the remains of fire. Then he stamped the embers out and began gathering his belongings, starting with the shotgun.

Before Erik knew what was happening, the man reached out and grabbed the gun from his hand. Grinning, he said, “I'll hang on to this for now, if you don't mind. I don't want you getting any funny ideas.”

“Hey! You can't take that! It belonged to my uncle,” Erik cried. At the sound of his raised voice, Quill began to bark.

“Quiet!” the man commanded her. To Erik, he said, “Keep your pants on, kid. You'll get the gun back once I've got you home and the money's in my pocket.”

“Don't worry, I'm not going to get any ‘funny' ideas,” Erik said, making himself sound meek and resigned. “I'm ready to go back now.”

The man nodded approvingly as Erik picked up his pack. “That's the way, kid.”

They walked in the light of the flashlight beam toward the barn door. Every one of Erik's senses was on full alert, waiting for just the right moment to make a move. The man pushed the door open into what felt like a different world from the warm, cozy barn. It was pitch-dark. Snow was still falling, driven sideways by the screaming wind.

The flashlight beam landed on a pickup truck about twenty yards away. Erik was pleased to see that the man had driven right up to the barn wall and parked, meaning that he'd have to back up before he could come after Erik, giving Erik a couple of extra precious seconds to get away.

“Go on, you and the dog, get in the front seat,” the man hollered.

“Okay,” Erik yelled back. When they got near the truck, he opened the passenger side door as if to get in, but as the man walked around the rear of the truck to the driver's side, Erik took off. Quill followed, barking with excitement.

As Erik fled into the blowing snow and darkness, he heard the man shouting angrily, but the words were snatched away by the wind. Then the flashlight beam swept wildly through the night. It caught Erik's back for a brief moment, but he dodged to the side and was soon beyond its range.

As he stumbled blindly on, he envied Quill, who seemed to have no trouble at all navigating obstacles and uneven ground in the black of night. Erik remembered his dream of—when was it, two nights before?—in which he, too, had run smoothly and effortlessly on four legs.

He looked back to see that the truck was moving, its headlights cutting a swath of light through the darkness. They moved in an arc as the man drove in a circle. But the truck couldn't follow through brush and rocks, fences and ditches. When Erik dared to slow down enough to look back, he was elated to see the lights of the pickup fading in the distance. He paused, bending double to catch his breath, then allowed himself a small smile of satisfaction. They had escaped!

When Erik finally paused to rest, he tried to reason out what the man might do next. With no kid to present for a reward, would he just go home and forget the whole thing? Or would he tell the police where he'd seen Erik, figuring the information might be worth something? Might he try to get some money from Oma and Big Darrell for Uncle Dan's gun? The possibilities ran circles through his head until he gave up trying to guess. All he could do, he figured, was decide on a plan of his own.

To his relief, he realized that the storm appeared to have blown itself out. The cold front that had swooped in so ferociously, bringing the snow with it, had passed. One by one, stars began to show themselves, and a three-quarter moon became visible. After a while, Erik was able to spot the Big Dipper and, from there, to find the North Star.

He'd been running south. Now he would follow the star and head north. He reached down and hugged Quill to him, hard. Then he stood up and started walking.

Using the stars, they walked through the night, and when the sun rose they kept on, moving steadily north. When Erik was thirsty he ate snow, and Quill did the same. Quill's energy never flagged in the clear, cool air, though Erik felt his own pace slow from time to time. With no gun and no food, they didn't stop to hunt or eat or sleep.

Quill scrounged food wherever she could: dead mice and moles, scat from various animals, things Erik couldn't identify and wasn't sure he wanted to. Oddly, he didn't feel hungry. A vague but strong sense of purpose gripped him, driving him to retrace his steps back to where he had started.

As he walked, it seemed to him he was seeing the life of the prairie with great sharpness and clarity. He stopped to watch a coyote hunting in the grass for mice, pouncing, chasing, pouncing and chasing like a kitten at play. When the coyote finally looked up and saw him, it went slinking away. He watched a marsh hawk soar low along the ground and dip gracefully to catch a mouse in its talons, and saw a red-tailed hawk drop from the bare branches of a lightning-scarred tree to snag a pheasant from the grass below. When they came to a wide area of rolling hillocks, they spooked a covey of sharp-tailed grouse. Erik heard, for the first time, their alarm call,
Ooo-ooo-ooo, ooo-ooo-ooo
, as they flew over the next rise and disappeared.

Night fell again and still they kept on. Erik's eyes became accustomed to the darkness, and he was aided by the light from the moon and the flames of one of the gas fires burning at an oil rig on the outskirts of Fortuna. When he recognized the barn and corral where he had gotten water his first night out, he felt proud that he was on the right track, that he was finding his way.

And then, several hours later, he came to the straight line of trees bordering the side of his grandparents' farm house. He approached, and the house itself loomed before him. When he walked around the corner and stood for a moment at the porch steps, he saw a bluish light coming from the downstairs window. Creeping closer, he peered in and saw Big Darrell sitting and watching the snowy picture on the old television set.

The sight of his grandfather caused him to stop, his heart thudding nervously. He watched for several moments, wondering what Big Darrell, who kept farmer's hours, was doing up at what had to be close to two o'clock in the morning. Probably he was too angry to sleep, and was contemplating what he'd do when he got his hands on Erik at last.

Quill, perhaps anxious either to go inside or move on, let out a little whine, and Big Darrell, startled, lifted his head to listen. He stood, walked to the door, and opened it, gazing blindly into the darkness for a moment. “Dan?” he called in a low voice. “Dan?” Then he shook his head and rubbed his eyes and peered closely at Erik, who must have appeared to him as nothing more than a shadowy shape. “Erik, is that you?”

“Yes,” Erik said, climbing up the stairs, mindful of the broken step Oma had warned him about the first night he'd come. It seemed a very long time ago. “It's me.”

He reached the porch, Quill following, and stopped, facing his grandfather. Before he could say anything more, Big Darrell gathered him in a clumsy embrace, made more awkward by the pack on Erik's back.

In the silence afterwards, Big Darrell said in a voice so low Erik had to strain to hear, “I lost one boy. Didn't think I could stand to lose another.”

Erik was too stunned to speak. To his relief, he was saved from answering by Big Darrell, who cleared his throat and said hoarsely, “I expect you could use some food.”

“Aren't you going to yell at me?” Erik asked. He was sure that's what his parents would have done, once they'd seen that he was safely home. It was certainly what he'd expected from Big Darrell.

“I'll leave that to your grandma,” Big Darrell said with a tired smile.

In the porch light, Erik saw the weariness etched into Big Darrell's face, and understood for the first time how much both of his grandparents must have suffered while he was gone. “I-I'm sorry, Big Darrell. Was Oma real upset?”

“I'd guess she lost two pounds for every day you were gone.”

Erik winced. “What about my parents?”

“We were going to tell them in the morning.”

“You didn't tell them yet?” Erik asked incredulously.

Big Darrell shrugged. “There didn't seem any point to it, not until we knew something for sure. There was nothing they could do, all the way over there, and your grandma didn't want to upset them. She kept saying—hoping, really—that you'd come back.”

Erik shook his head in wonder. He was relieved that he wasn't in big trouble—with his parents, anyway—and deeply puzzled by the apparent change in his grandfather.

He started to follow Big Darrell inside, then paused, looking down at Quill, who was sitting and waiting patiently. “What about—” he began.

Before he could finish, Big Darrell surprised him again by saying, “The dog, too. I don't need to ask if
she's
hungry, not if she's like Elvis was.”

Sitting in a chair in the warm kitchen seemed unreal to Erik after his days and nights outdoors. To add to the unreality, Big Darrell was acting—nice. He had allowed Quill into the house without blinking an eye. He and Erik were having a normal sort of conversation. After so much time spent talking to no one but Quill, all of this was making Erik feel a little punchy. “Oh, she's hungry, all right,” he said. “You got any dead moles? Rabbit poop?”

Big Darrell laughed, a deep hearty sound Erik hadn't heard before. Then he glanced toward the ceiling and said, “I hope I didn't wake your grandmother. I think she might finally be getting some sleep.”

They didn't say anything for a while, as Big Darrell moved from the counter to the stovetop to the toaster, his brow knit with concentration. Watching him, Erik guessed that Oma did almost all the cooking and that the kitchen was unfamiliar territory for his grandfather. But Big Darrell worked carefully and methodically, and the mouthwatering smells of sizzling butter and frying eggs and ham soon filled the room.

The quiet felt comfortable, not at all like the charged and hostile silence that had surrounded Big Darrell before. Erik was glad for the change, even if he didn't understand it, and he was so tired he almost dozed off sitting at the little oak table. When the food was ready, Big Darrell filled two plates, slid one onto the floor for Quill and placed the other in front of Erik, along with a glass of milk.

Quill gulped her food, and so did Erik. When he'd finished with a large swig of milk, Big Darrell said, “I need to tell the sheriff's office you're back.”

He made the call, saying that Erik was back, unharmed, and thanking them for their trouble.

After he hung up, he said, “The dispatcher says he can't believe nobody found you sooner. There have been a lot of folks looking, you know. We weren't sure whether you'd run off or gotten lost. The sheriff asked if maybe you got in a car with somebody and headed back to New York. We just didn't know what to think.”

“I'm sorry. I thought—well, I don't know what I thought. I didn't have much of a plan. I just—”

“—wanted to get away.”

Erik nodded.

“The day you took off, I came home to find the house empty. Do you know your grandmother actually got in the truck and drove off to look for you?”

“She did?” Erik asked in amazement. “But she doesn't drive…”

“Not for thirty-four years, she didn't. I guess she does now.” Big Darrell actually grinned as he said this, and Erik grinned back.

“She's the one who figured you didn't want to be found. She believed you'd come back when you were ready, and I guess she was right.” Big Darrell was quiet for a moment. Then he let out a huge yawn and said tiredly, “I think we'd both better hit the sack.”

That sounded like a wonderful idea to Erik. But before he slept, there was something he needed to confess. Big Darrell didn't seem angry, but he didn't know everything Erik had done. “A man found me and wanted to turn me in for a reward,” he blurted.

Big Darrell nodded. “We got a call about that.”

“I got away from him, but he—he took Dan's gun.”

“We heard that, too. Seems the fellow showed up at the sheriff's office, thinking he'd get a reward for returning it. They set him straight about that. We'll be getting the gun back.”

Erik let out a sigh of relief.

Big Darrell was headed for the stairs. “We can talk about all that tomorrow,” he said over his shoulder. “You're home safe, that's the main thing.”

Erik and Quill followed, and Big Darrell paused outside the bedroom on the left at the top of the stairs, the one that had belonged to Dan. The door was open. “Good night,” he said.

Erik stood still, unsure what to do.

Big Darrell added, “It's a boy's room. Your grandmother says you should have it.”

“You're sure?”

Big Darrell nodded.

Erik stood in the doorway for a moment before going into Dan's room. He was very tired, and when he looked around, he wondered if he might already be asleep and dreaming. The photograph of Dan that had been on the dresser was gone, along with the Purple Heart and the dog tags. On the wall instead of the flag was an old painting of a hunting scene.

He climbed into bed with Quill curled up beside him. He didn't know how long he'd slept when he was awakened, not by a sound, but by the peculiar sensation of being watched. He opened his eyes to see the outline of a figure standing by his bed.

“Oh, Erik!” Oma whispered. “I didn't mean to wake you. I had to see for myself, here you are! Safe and sound and—”

Her voice broke then, and Erik could hear that she had begun to cry. He got out of bed and hugged her, patting her back the way he remembered his mother doing when he was little. He felt awkward doing this, but the darkness helped. He was surprised by how glad he was to see her.

“Oma,” he said in a small voice. “I'm really, really sorry.”

He felt a shudder pass through her small body, which felt even more frail and birdlike to him than before, and he was filled with remorse. “I guess I wasn't thinking about—anything—or anybody—but myself.”

After several moments, Oma took a deep breath and pulled away from his embrace. There was enough light so he could see her looking into his eyes. “You had your reasons for running off, I expect. Did you find some answers?”

Erik was surprised again by her question. He nodded.

“The Lord works in mysterious ways, Erik. I hope I never again have to go through anything like the last five days. But something wonderful has happened, and it couldn't have happened without you running off the way you did.”

Erik shook his head, confused. “I don't know what you mean.”

“You running off—it changed Big Darrell.”

Erik pondered this. “He
did
seem different. Nicer. Not so scary.”

“Not so
scared
,” Oma corrected.

“Big Darrell, scared?” Erik scoffed. “Of what?”

Oma hesitated, seeming to wonder how to begin, or perhaps if she should begin at all. “I don't know, Erik, maybe you're too young to understand this…”

“I'm not.”

Oma nodded thoughtfully. “No, I expect you aren't. Well, now that I've gone and woken you up…” She sat on the side of the bed and patted the mattress next to her. Erik sat, and Quill joined him. “You see, Erik, when we lost Dan, it—it's an awful thing to say, but at first I didn't think I wanted to live anymore. I had your mother to think about, though, and my church and my friends to help me, and slowly I learned to cope.” She paused, then said sadly, “But Big Darrell wouldn't let anybody help him. He closed himself off from everyone, even your mother and me. I've tried hard to understand it, and what I think is that he was”—she hesitated—“protecting himself. Trying to make sure he'd never be hurt like that again. Do you see? If you don't love anything, you can't feel the pain of losing it.” Oma sighed, then murmured, “That's the problem with grieving. The dead can begin to matter more than the living.”

She touched Erik's shoulder and smiled. “Your momma couldn't stand to be around Big Darrell, the way he was so quiet and angry-acting all the time. She left as soon as she could, and it was like we lost her, too. When she sent you out here to us, I can't tell you what it meant to me. Having a boy around the house, and a dog—it brought a lot of old feelings back. Then when you left”—she shook her head—“I couldn't bring myself to tell your momma. I didn't want to worry her when there wasn't anything she could do. But also I—I couldn't bear to have her think we drove you away, too.” She sighed. “And for Big Darrell, it was as if he was losing Dan all over again.”

Erik recalled the man who'd caught him in the barn saying that “the old man was plenty upset.” At the time, Erik had been sure that meant Big Darrell was angry. He shook his head and said again, “I'm really sorry.”

“Well, I'm not,” Oma said firmly.

“But—it was awful, for both of you.”

“It was,” Oma said, patting his hand. “But it was wonderful, too. It brought Big Darrell back.”

Oma gave his hand a squeeze and got up, saying she wanted Erik to get lots of sleep, and he was left to contemplate what she had said. Every bit of it felt confusing.

He had expected to be punished, even felt he deserved to be punished. And yet, for reasons of their own, Oma and Big Darrell had forgiven him.

At the same time he felt remorse for putting his grandparents through such worry, he treasured the days he had spent on the prairie with Quill. He didn't regret any of what he'd experienced, even the bad and scary parts. He even felt a weird sort of pride that he'd been wily enough not to be found by the searchers, and that he'd come back on his own.

He had wanted to make big, real decisions that had consequences and, out alone on the prairie with Quill, he had. They had survived, and that felt good and important. But what he did mattered here, too, in the world of people and family. And he had never imagined that such a momentous change as the one that had taken place in Big Darrell could have come about because of something
he
did.

He thought of the question posed in his mother's drawing of the geese:
How will you live your own wild life?
It was a good question, after all, even for a kid. But it was one he'd have to keep asking—and answering.

There was one part of it all that he did understand clearly, the part about being afraid to lose what you love. Because he loved Quill, and now he had to give her up, and he didn't know how he was going to bear it.