When She Flew (10 page)

“You
hate me
,” Nina said, voice shaking, incredulous.

“For god’s sake, Nina, I love you.” How did the kid not see that? “I just want you to make the best decision, for god’s sake. You can have the baby and put it up for adoption, if you want to. You have choices, Nina. That’s all I’m trying to say.”

Nina ran past her into the kitchen. After a moment, Jess could hear her on the phone, pleading with her father to rescue her from this evil monster that hated her and was trying to make her abort her baby.

Jess stalked to the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet, trying to calm her anger before talking to Nina again. By the time she opened the door and walked back out into the living room, Nina was packing and Rick was on his way to pick her up. At the time Jess thought it was for a cooling-off period, but Nina never came home again.

After Teo was born, Rick moved the three of them four hours north to Tacoma, to be closer to his family, who would help take care of the baby when Nina went to school and, later, to work. Whoever the father had been had either fled from the responsibility or had been shut out, as Jess was, stripped of the privilege to be a mother, a grandmother. And every day, still, she tried in vain not to think about all she was missing.

10

I
woke with a jump, drool on my cheek, and Pater put a hand on my shoulder.
Shhh,
he said very quietly. We could hear them, far away at first, down by the big creek. A man and a woman talking and crunching their feet down on all of our beautiful plants. We’d have to replant when they left. I wiped my face and hoped they wouldn’t turn up our way, but their voices got closer. We could hear them slip and splash and curse, and then laugh.

“We sure aren’t going to sneak up on anyone like this,” the man said.

Pater pocketed his knife and slid down lower against the tree. We barely breathed as we listened to them.

Suddenly the woman said, “Oh, my god.” The sound of her voice made chills run up and down my body; I even had goose bumps on my neck and my cheeks—everywhere. She sounded scared, like she’d found something horrible, but she couldn’t have. It was just our forest, just our home.

“Police!” the man’s voice called out.

I gasped. I’d thought these were the people who’d seen me by the trail.

We barely breathed. We were up and over the ridge, and they were down in our camp, but it felt like they were right there. If we could hear them so well, they would be able to hear us.

“Everyone out here in front of us, now, hands in the air!” the man shouted.

My stomach cramped. I suddenly had to go to the bathroom, really bad, but I stayed silent next to Pater, who’d closed his eyes. I think he was praying.

We heard them walking through our camp, remarking on everything we owned like they were in the Columbia Museum of Natural History or something, looking at dioramas of cave dwellers and native tribes.

“This must be how they refrigerate their food.”

“God, do you think this is where they bathe?”

“Look, a stove!”

“How on earth do they keep everything so clean?”

It was like they expected us to be filthy creatures that ate raw squirrel meat or something. I tucked my head down and burrowed into Pater, just to feel his arms protecting me.
Please
, I prayed,
make these people go away and leave us alone
.

When Sweetie-pie flew out and made the man scream, Pater and I smiled at each other, me trying hard not to giggle. Then we heard another voice, like from a television, and the woman talking to it. She was on a radio, and we stopped smiling. There were more coming. They weren’t leaving anytime soon.

After a while the chopper went away for good, and I was glad, because I know Pater hates that sound. He hates a lot of sounds—sounds that come from big machines, trucks backfir ing, and jackhammers breaking up sidewalks in town. When we have to walk past them, he gets a mean look on his face and plugs up his ears, walking so fast to pass them that sometimes I have to run to catch up. He doesn’t talk to me until we’ve gotten somewhere quiet again, and then he’ll look embarrassed and ask me if I’m hungry, or thirsty, or if I need a restroom. Pater doesn’t like me to see him that way, but I know it’s from the war. He wasn’t that way before he left.

We used to have a book with photographs in it, pictures of all kinds of things: me as a big-eyed baby with a weird stand of dark hair right on top of my pink head. A young Pater and Crystal standing on skis in the snow in parkas and gloves, leaning forward on ski poles. Crystal’s dark hair was blowing completely sideways, but they were smiling. There was a picture of my grandpa and grandma Wiggs sitting on a couch, two-year-old me between them grinning like a monkey.

There was also a photo of my grandparents’ big house near the reservoir, and a picture from when Crystal and Pater took me swimming there when I was very young. I remember that day, certain things about it, anyway. Most of the other pictures became my memories, but this one I remembered first, and could add details to, like the way the day was so hot, the smell of suntan lotion on my arms, the feel of the wet towel on the sand and me lying on it, digging my bottom and heels and elbows down to make an impression that fit only me. The sound of Crystal laughing and the beer bottle clinking against her teeth. Pater running into the water like a crazy man, waving his arms and acting funny for me and Crystal. He was funny before he went to the war.

Nothing scared him back then.

He went to the war soon after that day at the reservoir. Crystal and I lived with Grandma and Grandpa Wiggs for a while, but she always fought with them, and then we moved into one of Crystal’s friends’ apartments in Glendale, but they fought, too, and then we lived in a motel room in Aurora, and then there were too many places to remember. Just like with the pictures: some I remember the smells and sounds and what it was like to be there, and others I just can’t remember anymore. Who would want to remember them, or the people who came every night, or the sounds when it was dark?

There was a sound I always loved, though, and I imagine it every night before I go to sleep. When Crystal wasn’t sick, she’d lie beside me on the couch or floor or wherever I was sleeping and put her arm around me and whisper, “Sweet dreams, kitten.”

11

J
ess and Jenkins climbed back down the rope ladder and joined Takei in scouring the encampment, making notes and diagrams, taking rough measurements. What could they find that would tell them where the camp’s inhab itants had gone? Jess had looked through all the clothes and books before she came down from the tree, hoping to find clues, loose papers, but there was none. The person behind all this was ingenious. A survivalist, no doubt, or someone who’d been in the military. Jess held hope that he wasn’t a sexual deviant, wasn’t the sexual predator they’d been looking for recently, and so far nothing indicated he was: separate sleeping areas, and no—well—no stains anywhere, no porn. Nothing gross. Everything was tidy and clean, considering it was all out-of-doors.

It was 20:38 when they heard the others above them, uphill, the unmistakable freight-train sound of six boots crunching and sliding down on rock and dirt and woody flora, the grunting, breathless conversation of men not accustomed to such strenuous conditions.

“Oh, yeah, they heard us coming all right,” Jenkins said.

Jess wondered how far away the inhabitants were by now, and if they’d ever come back. She shook her head and walked toward the sounds of the other officers. They were descending a steep ridge southwest of the camp, and she wondered how she and Jenkins and Takei had gotten ahead of them. The others had been headed north when they parted.

“Ah, Christ,” a weary male voice said, followed by the unmistakable sound of bodies suddenly sliding and scrambling down the tangle of vines and brambles on the steep face of the ridge. Finally they came into view.

“Sarge, over here!” Jess waved.

He was red-faced and muddy down one side, as was Z, but Larry looked relaxed and happy, his tongue lolling to the side of his mouth as he picked his way carefully down the hill.

Z looked at her and smiled sheepishly. He was handsome; she’d give him that. He couldn’t be over thirty-five. She didn’t return his smile. That was the last thing she needed: another crush on someone she worked with. She’d been through that, on both sides of that, too many times to think it would ever be anything but a bad idea. The police force was like the dating service from hell, officers dating and mating indiscriminately; even married officers wanted to participate.

She turned away. They’d find their way now.

As she rejoined Jenkins and Takei, a human scream tore through the woods, followed by loud, desperate cursing. The three of them grabbed their weapons off their backs and ran north toward the sound, just past the camp.

A male voice yelled, “What the fuck is this? What the fuck?” The sound came from above them, where the hillside was vertical, and there was Greiner, lying nearly upside down, his foot and leg caught in a trench that had been dug in what looked like a stone wall, though it was just the earth cleared of foliage.

Everett, Z, and Larry were closer now but still descending. They’d stopped and drawn their weapons, too.

“It’s okay!” Jenkins shouted, lowering his shotgun. “It’s just Greiner. He fell.”

“I didn’t fall. I’m caught in some kind of booby trap,” he cried. “Goddamn it! What the fuck is this?”

“Oh, man,” Takei said quietly.

Jess looked at him, then back at where Greiner had fallen. “Oh, no,” she said. “Oh, god.”

Jenkins climbed toward Greiner to help him down, not seeing what he was climbing through on the vertical face.

“I guess it’s them,” Takei said.

Greiner’s leg was stuck in the upper-right quadrant of the biggest swastika Jess had ever seen—maybe twenty feet across—carved deep into the earth.

Once Jenkins had Greiner’s boot unstuck from the swastika, he helped him slide down to the bottom, then checked his ankle and leg. “It’s not broken,” he said, “but you’ll probably have a pretty good sprain.” Jenkins helped him to his feet, took his arm, and Jess realized how small David Greiner really was. He came only to Jenkins’s armpit. Granted, Jenkins was well over six feet, a gentle giant, and it was clear he had kids from the tone of his voice. “Can you put weight on it? Does that hurt?”

“What do you think?” Greiner said, but he let Jenkins help him downhill to join the others.

They’d all gathered near the shelter that housed the camp kitchen. Takei pointed out the tree house, the latrine, the garden. They couldn’t see the pools from where they stood, but Takei explained how they’d seen the tarp first, then the way the rock wall had been used to divert the creek for refrigeration and bathing. Jenkins and Jess showed them their diagrams and explained what they’d found so far.

“Okay, then,” Everett said, folding his arms over his chest. Any hesitation or vulnerability Jess had witnessed earlier in him was gone. “Girl plus adult male plus encampment plus goddamn swastika equals dig-in time. We’re here for the duration, folks.”

No one objected. Jess gave silent thanks to the men around her. She blew the breath she’d been holding out into the silver dusky air—the same air the girl had breathed, was breathing maybe. Jess closed her eyes, as if to try to feel her presence in the forest.

The tug deep inside her abdomen was so forceful that Jess opened her eyes. No, this girl wasn’t Nina, but she would find her, and do the right thing by her, no matter what.

They broke into pairs to search the surrounding area before it was completely dark.
Maybe they dropped something in their hurry
, Jess thought. She imagined bread crumbs, Hansel and Gretel; if the girl was being held against her will, she might think to leave something behind.

Z had found a way to pair with Jess; she wasn’t sure how it had happened. She’d have normally teamed up with Jenkins, but it seemed Greiner had taken a liking to his rescuer. She switched on her Maglite, and the three of them, Larry in the lead, headed away from the others in the murky dusk, moving generally north by northwest. At nearly 21:00, it was going dark. Jess hadn’t eaten since a quick sandwich at lunch, but she wasn’t hungry.