"What do you weigh?" Helicopter pilots were the only people on earth who got an honest answer to that question. Few were willing to die for their vanity.
"A hundred and thirty-one."
"Get on board."
As Paula was buckled in, John nudged Hayhurst. "Maybe she can hang up her spurs, make an honest man of him."
"It'd save him a fortune, that's for sure," Joseph replied.
Pepperdine had been right; everyone had known but Anna.
The helicopter departed in a frenzy of wind and noise. Left again to themselves, quiet descended on the group, hilarity of relief evaporating as their losses began to sink in.
"That was some story Hugh was telling," Neil Page said. "How much of it's true?"
Anna pressed her cocoa into Jennifer's hands and poured another for herself before squeezing onto the cooler close to the other woman. Jen would need any comfort that could be offered in the next couple of minutes. Short couldn't but have noticed Stephen had not come back. Anna guessed she was afraid to ask why.
"It's true more or less," Anna answered Page.
Lawrence shook himself as if a goose walked over his grave. "They'll never find his body in that soup," he said.
Anna made no comment.
"I doubt they'll even try." LeFleur swirled the cocoa in his Styrofoam cup. "That area is too unstable, too unpredictable. I'd be damned if I'd go out there in a little rowboat and try to drag that lake. It probably goes clear down to the center of the world."
Jennifer's head was sunk between her shoulders, her injured foot propped up in front of her. "Stephen?" she asked quietly.
"Hugh said he lost the fight and fell in that thermal lake," Page said bluntly. Anna shot him a dirty look.
"My fault," Jennifer said in a whisper so low only Anna could hear. "I should have left well enough alone."
"It wouldn't have made any difference," Anna said firmly and wondered if she was lying. She liked to think she would have figured it out anyway but there was no way of knowing.
To block everyone's pain including her own, Anna thought of home and heat and Frederick Stanton. Unconsciously, her hand went to her mud-caked hair. "How do I look?" she asked Jennifer. "I look like shit, don't I?" Jen didn't even hear. "Drink your cocoa," Anna ordered, and Short put the cup mechanically to her lips.
Neil Page rummaged through the pockets of his brush jacket and produced a rumpled pack of Harley Davidson cigarettes. Shaking one partway out of the foil, he offered it to John. LeFleur looked dumbfounded, a man seeing the Holy Grail. "You had these all along? You son of a bitch," he said, but he took the cigarette, snapped off the filter and fumbled for a light.
"There weren't enough," Neil said, unperturbed.
Anna stared at the men lighting up. All those times Neil had been sneaking off to smoke so he wouldn't have to share.
"You bummed John's last cigarette," she said, suddenly remembering.
Neil's hand, cupped around his lighter, froze for a second, then he flicked the lever and sucked in a lungful of smoke. "Forgot I had my own," he said.
Harley Davidsons. Len Nims had been smoking Harley Davidsons the morning he'd come to the medical unit tent. Page had robbed Len's corpse for smokes. Anna looked away.
The helicopter returned for a second load. Anna, Jennifer, Neil and Lawrence were loaded into the back of the Bell Jet. One of the medics stayed behind with Joseph and John to wait for the last trip.
The shriek of the engine blotted out all else and the machine lifted into the air. To the east the sun burned through in a blinding flood of life and Anna felt resurrected. Joy permeated her bones, dissolved aches, tempered cold. It was grand to be alive.
Short, crumpled in the seat next to her, her foot bare and splinted with pillows, propped on the bench opposite, experienced no such lifting of the spirits and Anna felt an overwhelming rush of pity. Grief over the death of her brother would be softened by time. Guilt over the horrible demise of Stephen Lindstrom would not. Jennifer had been to the thermal lake. There would be nightmares. As Garrison Keillor said: "Guilt is the gift that keeps on giving."
Anna looked away from the young woman's despair, stared out the window. The sky was touched with a thousand shades of peach and silver. Below, in the shadow of a distant ridge, the rising tide of light picked out a glowing spot of color.
"Want to see something pretty?" Anna shouted impulsively in Jennifer's ear.
Jennifer barely shook her head.
"Come on," Anna insisted. "It's beautiful."
"No." Jennifer mouthed the word soundlessly.
"Look, damn it." Putting a hand on the back of Jennifer's neck, Anna dragged the woman halfway across her lap, directing her eyes out the window. For a moment Jen stared without seeing. "Look down, the far ridge," Anna yelled.
Then Jennifer saw it, a tiny speck of bright NoMex yellow working its way purposefully toward the rising sun. She shot Anna a questioning look and Anna nodded.
Jennifer laughed. "God, but that's gorgeous." She looked a moment longer then straightened up, smiling.
"I told you," Anna shouted. A moment later she leaned over and yelled: "Frederick's meeting me. How do I look?"
"Like shit."
"You're a pain in the ass, you know that?"
"I know," Jennifer shouted back. She took Anna's hand and held it till they'd landed.
The End
