West of Here (52 page)

After dark, he busied himself to avoid the hunger. He dug a pit and fashioned a smoker around it with river rocks and fir boughs, though he had nothing to smoke. He constructed a gangly bed frame four inches high, lashed with salal vines, and crossed with thin green cedar boughs to combat the groundwater. He hung the rain tarp inside the shelter above his bed. He washed his socks and hung them over the fire to dry. He nested and renested his pans. He organized his fishing tackle. He emptied every pocket of his fancy pack of pennies and lint and burs. His fingernails were down to nothing. But in the end there was still the hunger, black and eclipsing. As a last resort, he consumed creek water by the quart to fill the hunger balloon and was awakened in the night by explosive diarrhea.

Though the rain finally let up by morning, Timmon’s fortunes only worsened. Further weakened by dysentery and fever, he could not summon the will to mobilize himself. He could not bear to face the barren Elwha another day, could scarcely bear the thought of gathering wood for a fire, or boiling water, or least of all tramping around in the wet foliage looking for movement. Instead, he lay on his back and stared up at the rain tarp until his eyes felt heavy, though not with sleep. In his feverish apathy, he could scarcely even rally his self-contempt. So he was a big fat bust in the wilderness, same as he was in civilian life, so what? None of it seemed to matter. He wasn’t even hungry anymore. If he died there in the middle of nowhere — or in a room at the Wharf Side for that matter — who would really care? He wouldn’t even miss
himself
— if
that
wasn’t a good measure for the value of his life, what then?

The urgent and burning chill of dysentery finally stirred Timmon into action early in the afternoon. Scrambling free of his sleeping bag, he scurried out of the shelter, clipping the doorway on his way, thus caving in a small portion of ceiling. He couldn’t make it halfway to the creek before he was forced to drop his pants not three feet from the smoker, where he squatted gurgling for fifteen minutes in his own sweet stench, bathed in a film of sweat, too weak and miserable to even swat at the cloud of mosquitoes enveloping him. When it seemed he was empty of everything he’d ever eaten plus half of his
stomach lining, Timmon staggered back to his shelter, stepped over the collapsed portion of ceiling, and fought his way stupidly into his sleeping bag. There, he lay on his side staring at the small square of light that was his doorway, unable to think of anything at all until sleep came for him.

He was awakened by a trilling. He opened his eyes to find a chipmunk standing in the doorway. “Tweeeel tweeeel,” it said.

“Get lost,” groaned Timmon.

The chipmunk was doing funny things, things Timmon didn’t know chipmunks could do, making its head bigger and smaller.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Timmon said.

The chipmunk was definitely fucking with him. “Tweeeel tweeeel,” it said, its head the size of a grapefruit.

Pulling himself upright, Timmon’s world began to spin. Inky black shapes played at the corners of his vision. The chipmunk trilled once more, its distended head about to burst.

“Fuck me,” Timmon said as he felt himself slipping down a dark hole.

And for the better part of untold hours, he flashed in and out of this feverish state of semiconsciousness, dreaming in nonsensical fits, staring open-mouthed at the caving thatch ceiling with no thought in his head. Twice, he rolled over in his sleeping bag and pissed himself. At times, the world upended itself, and Timmon looked down at his prone figure from the ceiling without recognizing the gaunt grizzled face staring back up at him. And though he felt on those occasions the faint stirrings of something between pity and disgust, these impulses were fleeting, soon blotted out by a swelling of vertiginous blurry space, which popped like a bubble full of black spots and swallowed his consciousness. There was no telling how long the delirium lasted. There was no telling at first whether it was morning or evening when the world broke like a fever, and his senses awakened this time to the trilling of a thrush and a weak gray light slanting in through the doorway. Outside, the rain was little more than a mist. The awful churning in his stomach had given way to a raw emptiness that seemed to feed upon itself. With a ragged and prolonged
moan, he tried to undo the knot of panic in his chest. Working his way into a sitting position, he perched on the edge of his makeshift bed, buried his face in his hands, and began to weep. He wept slowly at first, with the dim hope that tears might somehow bring comfort, that some benevolent force in the universe might hear his plea and respond soothingly. But when he found no comfort, his crying came fast and pinched and desperately uneven, punctuated now and again by falsetto whimpers, not unlike those of a child in distress. Finally, his grief reached such a pitch that it drove him to his feet, and he paced the muddy floor in circles, alternately balling his fists and pulling his hair. He spoke in snatches, unable to finish a sentence, not knowing what he was trying to say.

I didn’t think … But what about? … It’s not supposed …

His breathing came faster and shallower, his pacing grew progressively more erratic, until he was dancing a desperate stooping jig around the inside of the shelter. And when he wound himself so tight that he could get no tighter, he snapped, scattering in every direction at once. Swinging his arms about wildly, he tore and kicked and raged at the walls all around him, pulling apart all that was lashed together, yanking anything that resisted his force. And indeed, the entire structure fought back, turning his own strength back on him, seizing his lean arms as he assaulted it, blinding him with its needled fingers, hopelessly entangling his legs as it toppled, limb by limb, all around him. Though he made quick work of the demolition, he did not tear his house to the ground; he wrestled it into submission. And when at last his blind rage had played itself out, Timmon collapsed in the heap of wet branches that remained. Wiping his burning eyes with a tattooed wrist, he began to laugh. And he laughed so hard that he began to cry again.

“Tweeeeeeeel tweeeeeeel,” said the chipmunk from his perch overhead.

“Troooooooooool,” said the thrush.

Drip, drip, drip, came the forest.

By the time the laughter and tears subsided, Timmon felt shucked, as though everything had been scooped out of him, and in the absence
of everything, a calm soon washed over him as he set to building a fire. And when the fire burned hot, he leaned into it and slowly began to wind himself back up until he felt something like a man again.

Half-starved and better than half-beaten, he passed several hours in front of the fire, plumbing the very depths of his being for a persuasive reason to go on living, groping for any incentive to stay or any inducement to go. If not to be left alone, what did he want, then? Maybe the opposite —
not
to be left alone; whether locked alone in a car on a rainy Chicago street; or locked alone in a cell, a ward of the state; or merely locked in the prison of his own selfish design. What if, at the risk of betrayal, at the risk of being forsaken, he had the balls to be penetrable again; the balls to connect with someone, or something, or some otherness instead of being tough or repellent? What if he had the balls to give a shit, to decide
not
to know better? Could he free himself from the burden of experience, could he ignore the overwhelming evidence and convince himself that somebody actually cared or something actually mattered? If so, then maybe, just maybe, he’d have the balls to be innocent again.

In the end, after all the plumbing and searching, it was the thought of two cheeseburgers and some dry socks that prevailed. Timmon began his preparations with grim determination — nesting his pans, folding his tarp, winding his ropes, scrupulously avoiding any speculation as to what sort of fresh start thirty-six bucks might actually stake a man to in Port Bonita, or anywhere else.

AUGUST
2006

The wind was starting to pick up and Franklin folded his arms for warmth, rocking ever so gently back and forth. Here and there a tree creaked in the darkness. And high above Franklin’s head, the treetops swished restlessly. He stared into the fire, as he had for hours, distractedly at first but then fixedly. Franklin worried little for his own safety anymore. The fear was gone. Even the thought of another bear was not at the forefront of his anxieties. Tillman’s whereabouts was a matter of even less concern. His sole concern now was Rupert, alone out there in the wilderness. He’d happily spend the rest of his days in bachelordom living in that crappy apartment behind Bonita Lanes, if only to have old Rupe back — no girlfriend, no Tillman, no sterling record, and definitely no more camping. Just he and Rupe, like always. The M’s on UPN 11. Takeout from Ming’s Royal Garden. Evening walks around the parking lot beneath the flickering streetlights, Franklin humming Joe Walsh, Rupert lifting his leg at every tire. He’d taken it all for granted. Now the thought of life without Rupert was too desolate to contemplate. But worse was the thought of the old boy suffering somewhere in the darkness, dying some slow, agonizing death, wondering, even as he heaved his last ragged breaths, where his keeper was. How lonely that river would sound to old Rupert.

It was impossible to say how much time passed. Franklin hardly budged from his place except to stir the coals. He’d grown so accustomed to the roar of the river that it no longer registered. The wind had died down again by the time a stirring in the underbrush demanded his attention. Clutching his big stick, he looked up just in time to see Rupert amble out of the brush and into the firelight, panting heavily, exhausted, but apparently unharmed. He set his square head on Franklin’s knee and looked up at him, his jowls dangling
saliva, his big sad eyes looking grateful, and Franklin’s heart all but took flight.

The next day, following a breakfast of Funyuns and cold Chunky soup (the jagged edge of a basalt wedge having cleaved the can open quite handily), Franklin and Rupert broke camp and set out in search of the second red
X,
the site of the alleged theft near mile 16. If, in fact, Tillman was responsible for the theft (and it was certainly more plausible than the cock-slap scenario), then the second red
X
represented the last signpost on Tillman’s trail. That’s where things got sticky. From there, it was anybody’s guess which way Tillman fled. But knowing what he knew about Tillman — that he was a runner — Franklin knew that Tillman would never turn back on his own tracks unless he had to. Tillman would keep moving forward.

Franklin figured that he’d better move fast —
four-cans-of-Chunky-soup-and-a-half-bag-of-Funyuns
fast — if he wanted to catch up with Tillman. He hiked with renewed vigor in spite of his blister as Rupert bounded along in front of him, nosing around and lifting his leg and wagging his nubby tail. Like Rupert, Franklin was awake to the world, at once enamored and suspicious of the mysteries surrounding him. Never had his senses been quite so alert. Nothing escaped his notice. He glimpsed every bird flitting in the understory, noted the trickle of every water source, the slightest temperature drop when the trail dipped into a gulley or the sun ducked behind a cloud. On several occasions he even paused to sniff the air like Rupert. Once he thought he smelled grape jelly.

Early in the afternoon, midway across a wooded bluff some five hundred feet above the river, Franklin and Rupert arrived in the vicinity of mile 16. Two hundred yards up trail, Franklin located the scene of the crime, marked by a tattered remnant of yellow tape; a small clearing just off trail in a hollow. A crude fire pit. A tent slab. A rope strung between trees. And there, tossed aside in the ferns just outside the clearing, having either been overlooked or simply ignored by the investigation, Franklin discovered a GoLite frameless backpack and a cheap aluminum skillet.

They proceeded south along the ridge, switchbacking up the steep
incline over rutty terrain, until the trail emerged above the treeline on a bald narrow crest facing west. Nothing had prepared Franklin for the terrifying splendor that greeted him there. Across the wedgeshaped valley below him, beyond yet another narrow green valley, a jagged row of snowcapped peaks were strung out in a crescent, surrounding one mountain so broad and massive that its craggy white face dwarfed the others. A shiver ran up Franklin’s neck at the sight of it all. Suddenly the middle of nowhere seemed boundless. Somewhere out there was Timmon Tillman, and the odds of finding him suddenly seemed impossibly slim. Still, Franklin was determined to search as long as the Chunky soup held out. Without further pause, he began wending his way down the bald face of the ridge toward the tree line, three hundred feet below.

Late in the afternoon, Franklin and Rupert reached the bottomlands once more. So narrow was the valley that the sun could not find an angle in, and an autumnal chill settled into the still air. On a high bank overlooking the Elwha, the trail forked, with paths heading upriver and downriver respectively. The downriver course offered the wider passage, snaking along the bank toward the foot of the long valley. The upriver trail was clearly the more rugged course, switchbacking down into the rocky canyon a hundred feet to the river. Franklin felt in his bones that Tillman would have taken the rugged path.

At the bottom of the canyon the trail met with the river at a fastrunning slough, where a wide tree had been felled and notched, bridging the rapids. Rupert made the crossing jauntily, pausing midway to lift his leg on a gigantic knot, and waited at the trailhead, wagging his nub. Franklin crossed the gigantic log like a tightrope walker, arms outstretched, holding his breath, looking straight ahead at all costs, as he tried desperately to ignore the roar of the boiling rapids. He sped up the last five or six steps, and upon reaching the far side, stopped to pee, while Rupert rooted around in a clump of ferns. Just as Franklin concluded with a delicious shiver, Rupert lit out of the brush clutching something in his jaw: the remnants of a paperboard package. Zipping his fly up, Franklin liberated the package from Rupert’s slobbery jaws.