West of Here (56 page)

“Of course, I won’t be. I’m just grateful you’re okay.”

“It’s all right if you’re mad. You should be. It was stupid.”

“I won’t be mad, I promise.”

Curtis turned from the window and looked her in the face. “Well, the thing is, when I was … I don’t know exactly if … When’s the last time you were at Wal-Mart?”

“Last week.”

“And?”

“And I bought a case of Diet Coke. What is this about?”

“So, I mean, Wal-Mart was there?”

“Of course it was there.”

“Everything was okay? It wasn’t, you know, burned to the ground or anything?”

“Curtis, what are you talking about? Honey, just relax. Whatever happened is over now.”

Curtis sank back into his seat, faced the window once more, and fingered the scars running up his arm. They felt cool beneath the surface.

AUGUST
2006

The week before school started, Curtis met Coleman in his office. Coleman’s ponytail was even longer than Curtis remembered it, held in place with an agate-studded leather band. Even Coleman’s face seemed to have taken on an Indian roundness. What was it called? Crowder was always going on about it in biology — osmosis?

There was a new print hanging on his office wall — when you looked at it one way, it was a pack of wild horses running across a prairie, and when you looked at it another way, it was a head and shoulder silhouette of Chief Joseph. There was a name for that, too, the art docent told him — not a palindrome, but something else. Beneath the image there was a Chief Joseph quote: “The old men are all dead. It is the young men who say yes or no.”

“Are you writing about your experiences at all?”

“Drawing some.”

“Anything you want to share?”

“Nah.”

“And what about the home front? How’s that going?”

“Good, I guess.”

“Your mom?”

“She’s working at a new place. She’s talking about going back to school or something.”

Setting the paper weight down, Coleman fingered its glass edges thoughtfully.

“Can I ask why you changed your mind about the Jamestown position?”

“I don’t know. It seems cool. And it would look good on a transcript, maybe, right? Isn’t that what you were saying?”

Coleman smiled, nodding his head. “It’ll look dynamite on a transcript,”
he said. “But you understand it’s just an internship, right? There’s no pay.”

“That’s fine.”

“There’s a stipend, though — for lunches and transportation. The casino’s got a great buffet. Just stay away from the Swedish meatballs.”

Coleman fished a green organizer out of his desk, riffled through some paperwork until he found what he was looking for, and slid a paper across the desk to Curtis. “Fill this out, and I’ll submit it with a letter of recommendation.”

“Thanks, Mr. Coleman.” Curtis took the paper, and turned to leave.

“And Curtis.”

Curtis looked over his shoulder.

“Keep it local.”

AUGUST
2006

Krig sat alone at a two-top by the window, looking across the lot at Murray Motors, where he thought he saw Rhinehalter out in front of the showroom, cupping a cigarette against the rain. But a glance at the bar revealed Jerry in his usual spot. The guy was a spook. Krig did a double-take out the window nonetheless, half expecting to see Rhinehalter both places at once — but the smoker had fled. Krig couldn’t tell if the ’89 Seville was $2,450 or $3,450. A rip, either way. Tobin drove a Seville senior year. What a pile.

Checking his watch, Krig saw Rita still wasn’t due for another five minutes. He’d been a half hour early. Of course he was early, he was always early for dates! It
was
a date, right? Rita initiated the whole thing, which was particularly surprising in light of the fact that she’d quit High Tide, which Krig viewed at the time as the final nail in the coffin of their romantic possibilities. So was it presumptuous to think this was a date? Maybe things weren’t on ice after all. Hadn’t she said that bad timing had been the whole problem? So there you go — everything was different now. Curtis was back to normal, better than normal from what she’d said. Randy was out of her life for good. Maybe she’d had a few weeks to reconsider; maybe leaving High Tide had helped her see that she could do worse than spend the rest of her days with Krig. The fact that she hadn’t cashed the check yet might suggest a change of heart as well. Maybe she’d decided to stay. Was he foolish to be hopeful — foolish to think that the three of them might share some kind of life together in P.B.? Maybe rent a house west of town, something with a decent yard and a view of the strait, maybe use the six grand to buy an old RV to go camping on weekends, or a boat, or hell, put it toward Curtis’s college fund. Why
not? Krig made a decent living. J-man had even been hinting about a promotion lately. Hell, maybe they could even buy a place, get a loan and all that.

Rita arrived right on time, clutching a flat colorfully wrapped package in one hand. She looked great, rested, Krig thought. Her hair was up, and one sexy little wisp had escaped the bun and hung down over her face. She was wearing heels and a silky red dress that looked Asian to Krig. As she sat down, she smiled sweetly across the table at him, but a little sadly, he thought. Already, his heart began to sink.

“Here,” she said, sliding the package across the table. “I got something for you.”

“My birthday’s not until October.”

“It’s not a birthday present, silly. It’s just a token of my appreciation. It’s from Curtis, too.”

The thought that Curtis should appreciate him had never occurred to Krig. If anything, he’d always feared that Curtis would resent him. Probably, she was just saying that — probably, Curtis didn’t even know about the gift. Deliberately, Krig began to unwrap it.

“Oh, go on!” she said.

He tore back the wrapping to reveal a DVD:
Sasquatch: Legend Meets Science.

On the cover, cast in not-so-crisp relief against the Bluff Creek riverbank, was the familiar digitally enhanced female form of the P.-G. Bigfoot: tits sagging, arms swinging, lips like hot dogs.

“The most comprehensive and conclusive inquiry to date into the Bigfoot phenomenon,” blurbed
Willamette Weekly.

“I noticed that videotape of yours is all squiggly from all the pausing you do,” she explained. “This one pauses automatically frame by frame throughout the whole clip. It’s got all kinds of special features — a whole extra DVD — including a Roger Peterson interview.”

“Patterson.”

“And a segment on the Skookum thingy.”

Krig ran his fingers over the DVD cover. “Thanks,” he said, with a forced jauntiness. Why was he disappointed? What did he expect? And
really, it wasn’t the gift that was disappointing but the presentation, the implication — real or imagined — that the gift belonged to the past, to something they would never share again. But why had she dressed up — simply to torture him? Why wouldn’t she wear a baggy sweatshirt? Surely, she’d intended to impress him. The thought of it heartened Krig momentarily.

“I’ve got something else, too,” Rita said, fishing around in her purse, from which she produced Krig’s check. She slid it across the table, facedown, the seam fuzzy from all the folding and unfolding. “I think that was the single nicest thing anybody has ever done for me, Dave. But I can’t take it.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

“It’s just a loan. You’re not taking anything.”

Rita sighed and gave Krig something of a pleading look. Suddenly she didn’t look so rested. The wisp of hair hanging over her face seemed more tired than sexy. Even her red dress seemed to have lost a little of its shimmer.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I thought at first that money might be some kind of solution, a ticket out. But now I see that the stuff in my life that needs fixing can’t be fixed with money — and it especially can’t be fixed by running away.”

Krig straightened up in his chair. “So you’re staying?”

Rita glanced down at her menu, then up at Krig, then back down at her menu. “Yeah. I think we are.”

“Does this mean that maybe you and I … ?”

Rita sighed, and looked at him pitiably, with her lower lip pouty. “No. Dave, no. And it’s nothing personal. Really. It’s like I said before —”

“But the timing is different now.”

“It’s still wrong. Don’t you see? I need to stand on my own two feet. I need to concentrate on supporting Curtis.”

“So cash the check. Nobody said you had to leave town to take the money.”

“I don’t mean support him financially, Dave. I mean be there for
him one hundred percent — with no distractions. I owe him that. At least for a year.”

Krig slumped slightly in his chair and diverted his eyes.

“Look,” Rita said. “I didn’t come here to get your hopes up. I just wanted to thank you.”

“So why are you all dressed up?” snapped Krig, surprising them both.

Rita cast her eyes back down at the menu. “I’m going dancing with a friend.”

“What friend?”

“He’s just a friend.”

Krig’s jaw tightened. His tongue tasted like brass. “No distractions, huh?”

“He’s eighty years old, Dave! He’s just a
friend.
”

“Friends,” said Krig. He sharpened the word into a little arrowhead.

“Why are you acting this way?” she said.

“What way?”

Krig thought about saying it. All of it — about the house, and the yard, and the happily ever after. He thought about saying that he loved her, that he wanted to take care of her, that he wouldn’t get in the way, he promised.

“You’re acting like a jerk,” she said.

Couldn’t she see how this was hurting him? How could she not see it? She had to see it.

“Go to hell,” he said, regretting it immediately.

Rita stood without a word and swiped the stray hair from her face. “I’m sorry, Krig, I really am,” she said, and turned and walked away.

Krig didn’t watch her go. He looked at his menu intently as if he were really considering the prime-rib dip. Coleslaw or potato salad? He could feel Rhinehalter’s eyes on him, he was sure of it. He heard the swinging door close as Rita made her final exit; he kept his eyes glued to the menu, feeling Rhinehalter’s curiosity. What fucking business of Rhinehalter’s was it, anyway? Krig thought about calling J-man but remembered it was date night. He and Janis were probably out at
the Regal Seven seeing some chick flick. He thought about driving out to the bluff, clearing his head, looking at the lights, putting things in perspective, but somehow he couldn’t muster the wherewithal to stand up and begin the journey. Hard as it was to believe, the truth was, he didn’t even feel like draining his beer.

APRIL
1890

Bright and early on the morning of April 6, the party broke camp in a businesslike fashion and set out in search of the Quinault. The pale light from the southeast and the waning chill of dawn seemed to promise spring. Spirits were cautiously optimistic as they began their trek up the steep face of a mountainside soon to be known as Barrier Ridge.

Within the hour, the weather took a turn for the worse, as low cloud cover crept in from the leeward side of the Baileys. Mather’s men soon had to contend with poor visibility as they crossed the path of yet another recent avalanche. The slide had cut a wide swathe through the timber and left in its wake a rutty snowfield cut through with shallow gulleys and uprooted trees. In single file, they ascended slowly at roughly thirty degrees for the better part of the day, until they reached the slope above the destruction, where they began switchbacking toward the summit.

Leading the way, the filthy length of his ragged headband dangling in tatters, Mather plodded onward, step by crunchy step, even as his thoughts reached backward into the past — thoughts of flagstone hearths, and perfumed women, and that aching restless compulsion for discovery. He made no effort to govern these recollections but let them run their course like windblown clouds. He saw himself, a child, holding his baby brother at the foot of an endless prairie as darkness began to fall, and amber was turning to gray, and he saw himself again at his brother’s graveside, where beside him his father clutched a wilting hat as he looked toward the horizon. At night, shadows playing on the wall, and his mother’s forgiving face, drawn in the lamplight. And then came the prairie again, suffused with hot light and laughter and, somewhere beyond the flatness, the promise of a future.

By noon they had gained thirteen hundred feet in elevation and paused to look back over the Elwha, which they could barely glimpse through the cloud cover.

“Perhaps we’ve seen the last of her after all,” commented Mather.

The terrain ahead of them, though nearly free of snow, was most formidable, a broken ascent of bare ledges and outcrops, studded and splintered with jagged basalt, riddled with stunted trees struggling to maintain their hold on the cliff face. However, the men did not linger long enough to be daunted but began instead to secure their loads and ready their lines. The dog, now a lusterless bag of bones and a pair of dark pleading eyes, could not be coaxed forward. When confronted with the cliff, she took only a few nervous paces, whimpering twice without looking up before she lay on the ground at the foot of the escarpment, where she lowered her head onto to her forepaws and stared shiftlessly straight ahead.

“Sitka. Up girl!” said Mather.

But the dog did not lift an eye.

“Up!”

This time the dog slowly exhaled, but her black eyes were frozen. When she finally blinked, it was sluggishly.

Mather issued a staccato whistle, and still the dog would not budge. Runnells approached her as though to rouse her, but Mather stopped him with an outstretched arm.

“No. Leave her in peace.”

“We could hoist her with ropes,” Reese suggested.

Mather shook his head grimly and ran a hand through his shaggy beard. “No. She’s out of fight.”