A Virgin River Christmas (27 page)

“Nothing wrong with having more than one choice, man. We should probably park along the road up here pretty soon and go back on foot.”

“There’s a road that’ll take us almost straight back around the hill another couple of miles—it’ll get us farther in there. Tell me about this boy? Why would he do this?”

Jack turned and looked at him. “Ever have a dog?”

“Yeah,” Ian said. “Velvet—a black Lab.” Velvet had been his best friend when he was a kid. The old girl made it till she was fourteen, till her back was so slumped and her hips so painful, it hurt him to look at her. But he couldn’t let go; seemed like he had a long history of that. He was seventeen to her fourteen when he heard his father’s early morning curse while he was getting ready for school and he knew—Velvet had had an accident in the night. She was tired and weary; she couldn’t always remember to do the right thing. “That dog has to be put down,” Ian heard his father say.

Afraid he might come home from school one day to find her gone, he cut school and went alone to the vet and held her while she drifted off, painless. He couldn’t stand the thought she might go alone; he wouldn’t put it past his father to take her, drop her off, leave her to die by herself. God, her face was more peaceful and rested in death than it had been for the last year of her life. Seeing that, it should have made him feel glad for her, relieved—she wasn’t going to last much longer anyway.

He couldn’t let Velvet go alone. He had needed the time to say goodbye, and he didn’t want to come home and find her gone. He needed to be with her—like Marcie had needed to be with Bobby. He swallowed hard.

But his memory drifted back to Velvet, remembering the whole loss, how it tore him up. He’d gone off to private places where he could cry like a girl, unable to let his parents or friends see he had that amount of emotion.

“That mountain lion’s been bothering their property—stalking,” Jack said. “The dogs have been running it off, keeping it away from the goats and hens.”

“How old was the kid’s dog?” Ian asked.

“I don’t know, exactly. Six or eight—a border collie, a herder named Whip. They had a half-dozen farm dogs, mostly herders, outdoor animals, but Travis raised that one himself. He picked her out of a litter and for a while she was a 4-H project. Goesel said he couldn’t keep the damn dog out of the kid’s bed. You know farmers and their dogs—they don’t get overly sentimental as a rule. I don’t know how the cat managed to get to the dog—they usually aren’t looking for that kind of a fight.”

Ian ground his teeth. “Think I’d go after the son of a bitch, too.”

“Yeah,” Jack said. “Yeah, I had a dog growing up, too. Big dog—Spike, no kidding. He was almost a perfect animal. But he let my sisters dress him up. That used to make me sick, I’m telling you. The way he let himself be humiliated like that.”

Ian shot him a look and a big grin. He was picturing a German shepherd in a tutu and a disgruntled teenage boy. A laugh shot out of him.

“It wasn’t funny,” Jack said.

“I bet it was,” Ian said. Then he pulled off the road at a sharp left. “Gimme a minute here.” He jumped out of the truck, got some tools out of the box in the bed and went around to the front. He loosened up the brackets on the plow hitch, pulled the plow with all his might to angle it, then lowered it and tightened the brackets. It wasn’t the kind of plow fitting that had hydraulics inside the vehicle to move the blade, it was all manual, old and old-fashioned—but it got the job done. He threw his tools back in the box and got behind the wheel.

“I don’t see a road. You see a road?” Jack asked.

Ian laughed. “I know where the road is.”

“How?”

“I can feel it. Relax.”

Jack braced a foot against the floorboard, a hand against the dash and said, “I’ll relax when we’re not in a ditch. Go slow.”

Ian laughed at him. “So,” Ian said, maneuvering slowly, “if the kid’s smart, we’ll be looking for some kind of recent tracks, shelter, or…”

“A body,” Jack supplied.

“If he was lost, he might’ve followed the river or the road. About the time night was falling, he might’ve seen any one of several old logging roads,” Ian said. “You’re not going to see the road with the snow, but you’ll know it’s there by the tree line. Like I’m doing now.”

“I’m not convinced there isn’t a big hole right in your path, hidden by snow. You could go slower,” Jack said, tense.

“You could relax. I’ve been all over this place.” Then after a bit, he stopped the truck. “Want to head out from here?”

“Let’s do it.”

They exited the truck at the same time. Ian took a rifle out of the rack in his truck and a flashlight out of the glove compartment. Jack was digging around in his duffel.

“I only have one flare gun, but I have an extra stocking mask and a scarf—put this around your neck. We’ll start down this road together, but when we separate, if you find anything, just fire a couple rounds. With me?”

“Gotcha.” Ian buttoned up his jacket and thought,
I didn’t have any reason for the long underwear this morning, damn it.
He wrapped the long plaid scarf around his head and neck, partly covering his face. He missed the heavy beard right now. “See, I think the dog wasn’t as scrappy as the other dogs because she was a little spoiled by Travis,” Ian said, speaking as though he knew Travis and the dog. “That could’ve been working on him at the same time.”

“I know,” Jack said. “How’s your flashlight? You need batteries?”

“To tell the truth, I’m not sure.”

Jack pulled some extra batteries out of his duffel as well as a hand gun he tucked in his waist. He tossed Ian the batteries, then two bottled waters that Ian put in each pocket. They walked down the road, looking right and left, and hadn’t gone far when Jack said, “Okay, I’m going this way into that stand of trees.”

“I’ll head this way,” Ian said, and they separated.

Ian walked toward the river, eyes trained on the ground, on the landscape, and occasionally up into the branches just in case that big cat was having a little game of hide and seek. And he thought some about the kid remembering himself at sixteen; he’d been a hothead, devoted to a few things in his life, and his dog was one of them.

He’d also been pretty angry with his father in general. His dad was a passive-aggressively cruel person—he wouldn’t leave a tip, drove real slow in the passing lane, withheld affection. Every birthday card or holiday gift was signed “Mom & Dad” by Ian’s mother. Every word that came out of the old man’s pie hole was a criticism.

After Velvet, Ian had stopped pretending it didn’t matter; he was bigger and stronger than his father and got right up in his face, giving it back to him, something he soon realized was tearing his mother up. His mother begged him to lighten up, let it go, ignore being snubbed or criticized virtually every minute. “How do you stand it?” he had railed at his mother. “He should kiss your feet, and he acts like you’re his slave!”

And his sweet mother had said, “Ian, he’s faithful and he works hard to support us. He might not be romantic or doting, but he gave me you. If that’s all I ever get from him, it’ll always be the world to me.”

Not enough, Ian remembered thinking. Not enough. Joining the Marines seemed like a smart and safe way to go—got him the hell out of there and to a place where he could be in touch with his mother and not have to put up with his father.

Then came his mother’s death, then more active duty leading up to Iraq. His father was the only family Ian had left and he was woefully inadequate. After Iraq, after a few scrapes that even he knew had all to do with some PTSD, he feared he was turning into the old man. There were random fights with guys he had no real quarrel with. Things set him off and he just lost it. Even if the Corps could look the other way for a while, Ian couldn’t. He’d been a strong leader who’d turned into an asshole who just couldn’t cope. That’s when he got out, hoping he could get back to the man who was admired. Followed.

And Ian’s father said, “You are no son to me if you quit. If you run away.”

Ian said, “I never was a son to you.”

Talk about a standoff.

He scanned the ground, looking for any sign of the boy—broken shrubs or tree limbs showing that someone had passed, marks on the ground including drops of blood, recent footprints in the snow.

He also thought about Marcie. When she’d infiltrated his life, his first thought hadn’t been that she was beautiful and sexy. In fact, his twentieth thought wasn’t even that—she was sick, pale, listless…frankly, homely as a duck. Vulnerable and anything but pretty. Still, it wasn’t the pretty that got to him when she started to get a little color on her face—it was the pure contrariness. The fight in her—he’d always appreciated anyone with that kind of gumption.

She was just about well in less than a week and her eyes had started to regain that little spark that said she’d have her way, speak her mind and damn the consequences. How more like him could she be? He was able to appreciate her and give her credit—though not out loud—without getting captured by her.

Then slowly, he began to
like
her. No matter she fully intended to get in his business and mess up his life, she had a kind of drive that he couldn’t help but admire. She wasn’t doing any of it just for herself, but for herself and everyone from her dead husband to his family to Ian…to his cranky, isolated father whom Ian had been absolutely determined not to be like…but was.

It was when she defied her classy big sister and came back to his dusty little cabin that he fell. Aw, damn, what determination she had to be with him, to see it through, whatever it was she felt she had to do. Even she didn’t seem entirely sure what she was doing there—but she wasn’t ready to give up on him. And she had this insane idea that everything could be all right! Somehow, she was going to pull him back into the man he’d been to her dead husband; the brave leader, the fearless and committed man. Not someone who just dropped out of sight and isolated himself out of a kind of self-hatred. Into the man his father had never had the sense to be proud of.

Oh, God, I can’t have turned into my father so soon!

He forced his mind back to Travis Goesel, scanning the ground, the shrubs, the lower branches of the trees. He looked at the old watch that still worked. He’d been trekking without a sound from Jack for two hours and it was approaching four o’clock. They only had two more hours of daylight at the most, so he called, “Travis! Travis! Make a sound! Move something!”

He walked a little faster, scanned the terrain with concentration, and it came to him that it was good to belong to something. Even though Jack was out of sight and the other men where on the west side of the farm, he felt as if he was a part of a unit of men who had a purpose again and, until Jack piled in the truck with him, he hadn’t felt that in a long time. He’d been so anxious to sever himself from the pain of war, he’d forgotten how much the pleasure of brotherhood filled his soul. This, he had to admit, had all occurred because this feisty little redhead had come into his life. She forced the issue. She pushed him out of his cocoon while he was still raw, growing new skin.

If she’d left her disabled husband in the hands of his family three years ago to come after him, would she have succeeded in pulling him up out of his self-indulgent withdrawal any sooner? Probably not. He’d licked his wounds for such a long time that he got used to the taste of his self-pity.

Ian grew wearily cold, craving long underwear. He’d been out in the woods for hours. He ate snow rather than drink the bottled water, in case he found the boy and needed it for him.

Then he saw a smear of blood and some tracks, partially covered by a new blanket of snow. By the width and weight of the trail, it was the cat, wounded. He followed the trail just a short distance, realizing the cat was dragging itself heavily. A moment later Ian realized that Travis would have intelligently gone in the opposite direction to this bloodied trail. So Ian did also.

Ian made it to the river and was looking left and right along the edge as night fell. He’d have to head back to the truck soon, at least to confer with Jack and discuss the plan for searching at night. Part of such a plan would have to include long underwear and dry socks. But he just couldn’t make himself stop.

Darkness fell in earnest. He shone the flashlight on his watch and saw it was nearly six o’clock and he yelled for the millionth time. “Travis! Travis!”

Then as the light from his flashlight fell upon the snow, he noticed a drop of blood here, a drop there. Travis was hurt and doing just what Ian expected a smart kid to do—he was following the river home. Using the flashlight to scan the ground as darkness thickened around him Ian saw something. Not far away from the river’s edge was a pile of dead pine needles and brush, covered with a little new snow. A mound. It didn’t look like much, but he gave it a slight kick with his boot and when some of the debris fell away, he saw a sleeve. He was instantly down on his knees, digging. In mere moments he uncovered a boy, his face white, his lips blue, his eyes closed. Ian shook him vigorously, not knowing if the boy was dead or alive.

“Travis! Travis!”

The boy’s eyes finally came open, and he blinked not knowing where he was. He smacked his dry lips. He looked up at Ian with a dazed expression. “Sorry…Dad…”

“Aw, Jesus, Travis!” Ian said, relieved beyond words that the boy was alive. “You’re going to be okay, buddy.” Then he rolled him carefully onto his side and saw that the back of his jacket was shredded and he was bleeding. The damn cat had got him from behind but, thanks to Travis’s clothing, the mauling had not gone deep and, with the help of the snow, his bleeding had been stanched.

“You get him, son?” Ian asked.

“I don’t think so. I’m sorry, Dad.”

He was delirious, probably more from cold than his injury. Thank God he’d buried himself under dead leaves and pine needles to preserve his body heat. “I’ll get you outta here, son, hang on,” Ian said, now running on automatic. He stood and fired twice into a thick tree—three shots were the signal that you were lost, two was a standard response from a search team, and one shot could be mistaken for a hunter. You never sent a bullet into the air with the possible outcome of it returning to earth to find a living person or innocent livestock.