by Nowick Gray
I
blindly grabbed the nearest knob and it came off in my hand. In a rage I flung it at the mirror at the far end
of the hall, where it created a shattering explosion of shards. One small but deeply-seated sliver I had to remove
from my own wrist. And then, with blood on my hands, I boldly marched through the swaying door without so much
as a peek through the doorknob's empty hole.
Morning dawned through misty, drizzling sleet. Visibility, if you chose to call it that, was practically nil as we got up and peered out the cabin windows.
We dressed for wet weather, packed up the rest of our things, and sat down to a hearty breakfast, mulling over the prospects before us. It did not look good. If Faron had been disoriented in clearer weather on the way up, what would it be like now?
Matt had a suggestion. "Maybe, Will, you could go partway down with them, until Faron got started on the trail. Or I could come too if you want, and help with the load."
Good basic idea, I thought; but there were other factors to consider. I looked at my watch. "Gee, I don't know. Would we have enough time left to get to Columbiana for our four-thirty phone call? If we miss the guy in the company office, we won't know where the new camp is, and we miss work tomorrow. Also, isn't Harris going to send help looking for us if we don't show up tonight?"
"They might start worrying. But really, it shouldn't take us more than two hours to get to the road, then another hour's walk to the truck."
"Okay," I said. "Let's say five hours to Columbiana, to be safe. It's after nine now. If we left right away that would give us no more than an hour to go down with them on their side, another hour to come back here. And we still have to get on coats, and boots, and Suze's things."
Faron spoke up now. "I think I'll be fine. I made it okay carrying everything uphill. Maybe, Will, you could walk down with us just to where we met you on our way up."
Somehow I knew that Faron's self-reliance would assert itself here. I readily agreed to this plan. Now I could be helpful to her (and we could say our little family farewell alone together out in the wild and whirling elements) without jeopardizing my schedule.
Matt deferred to our decision, saying flatly, "I'll stay and finish cleaning up. Then we'll be ready to go when you get back."
Ten minutes out of the cabin, we were all three soaking wet. Faron's down coat and Suze's polyester were slick with the freezing rain; Faron's hair streamed out from under the edges of her soggy wool hat; and both their faces gleamed with the shiny glow of the exercise and the glaze of sleet. We couldn't see very much at all: traces of footprints here and there in the patchy snow along the ridged rock; white air.
We followed our noses some ten minutes further, and then I turned the backpack over to Faron. She looked around uncertainly, trying vainly to recognize some landmark or sign of her passage the day before. We were now past any leftover footprints, and visibility remained negligible. I tried to offer some final guidance before turning them loose.
"We know Bastille's over that way. So down there a little farther to the right, that deep draw goes down toward Tumbler Creek, and then your trail must be somewhere farther right, pretty much downhill from here."
"Yeah, I guess so. But it comes straight up the hill a long way from where it follows the contour. If I don't find where it starts up high, I'm not likely to find it until way down below."
"Well," I persisted, conscious of time ticking away, "we lost the trail on our side and just bushwhacked uphill. And I guess we'll do the same on the way down. If you just head straight down you're bound to end up on the trail eventually--or if not, you'll come out on the road, or down to Tumbler Creek itself. Either way you'll know where you are."
"That's true . . ." Faron still seemed uncertain. "I did tell Ron that if I wasn't back by seven he was to come out looking for me." She looked intently into the white haze. "This ridge here looks kind of familiar," she ventured, putting on a bright face.
"Are you sure you'll be okay, now? I could still come down with you part way, a little more, if I would be any help."
But by now I already knew that her mind was made up.
"No, that's okay. We'll be all right, thanks."
We stood and held each other close, our cool cheeks firmly pressed together against the sleet, for a long moment meant to last until another reunion--another time and place, home.
I left them and turned back up the ridge to the cabin. When I looked back, Faron and Suze were gone into the clouds below.
I had a strange feeling of uneasy hesitation as I opened the cabin door--was it a premonition of some disaster, a bad decision, a wrong turn on the forked road of this fragile labyrinth we call life? I turned and gazed off into the vague and formless western sky. Was it too late to go back and help them find the trail? My hand still clutched the latch of the cabin door. Yes, too late. I would go on ahead, and trust that it would be all right in the end.
The packs stood ready by the bunks, and Matt was putting plates and bowls away. I thanked him for doing the dishes.
"Oh, no problem," he said. "How'd it go? Did you manage to find the trail?"
"Oh, no problem," I wished I could say. Maybe, I thought, Matt should have come along with us after all. I told him the truth. "Not exactly. But I think we got to the right general area. Faron said it looked familiar."
Matt looked somewhat dubious, and concerned. He didn't know what to say. I told him what I'd told Faron, that if necessary she could head straight downhill.
"Yeah, that makes sense," he said, nodding slightly. "I guess so, anyway. If you thought they were going to be okay . . ." His voice trailed off, and his eyes fell to the floor. He turned to the packs. "Okay, I guess we'd better get going ourselves then, eh?"
Within minutes down the east side from the pass, the air was clearer and drier. Evidently the foul weather was expending itself against the western bulwark of the pass and the adjoining ridges that formed the height of land along the spine of the Purcell cordillera.
Matt commented about Faron's strength and courage; I bathed in the glow of appreciation and respect for her. And I hoped that the trip had been worth the effort for Matt, who hadn't enjoyed quite the rewards I had.
The ground was still slick and slippery. But once we'd picked our way down the mud-and-shale slope just below the pass, we could walk in fairly full stride.
We reached the truck with time to spare, and drove on past Columbiana into Inverness. It was still only four o'clock when we phoned the company office for directions to the new camp location. Then I phoned Faron.
There was no answer. Still perhaps too early. Her descent was about the same distance as ours, with a similar drive to get home from the foot of the trail. But she was no doubt slower with her doubly-heavy load.
Matt and I decided to stay for an early but much-needed supper in Inverness. I was worried. We talked about what we could have done but didn't--because I was so concerned about earning an extra day's wages. Wagering two lives, my life, for a hundred dollars. We agreed that Faron had likely had trouble finding the trail, and Matt reminded me of the obvious--that she would have taken extra time to find it.
Still, I hardly tasted my lasagne. Matt ate fish and chips with similar disinterest. He was concerned about hypothermia if they strayed across the mountainside too long, especially under the threat of coming darkness. I phoned again right after supper. Still no answer.
Next stop was Belford, two and a half hours away on the highway toward Carston. The rest of the crew had ended up "camping" at a ski-lodge called the Purcell Condo. Plans had changed slightly. No more propane showers that ran fire-and-ice; now we could relax after work with whirlpool hot-tubs, color TV. There was a pay phone in the lobby.
Matt went to find Harris to check in with him. I phoned home again and once more got no answer. It was after eight o'clock; it would be dark in another hour. Surely, I thought, Faron should have been back home by six or seven. Maybe she stopped at Ron's on the way home and got invited for supper.
I phoned Ron's place. No answer there, either. So I tried Faron's sister and close neighbor, Sandra. She told me Faron hadn't been heard from, and that Ron had phoned a half-hour ago to say he was organizing a search party. They would go up right away. By now they had probably left.
I said I'd drive on to meet them and join the search. Sandra started to tell me not to worry. My voice started to choke as I thanked her and quickly hung up.
Matt had vanished down the faceless corridors, the neat rows of nameless doors standing innocently at attention (one of them reserved for me). I knew Matt would be concerned and would likely want to come with me, but I wasn't about to start knocking on doors to look for him now. I was out the big glass doors of the lobby and on the road. Let them figure out where I'd gone.
As I stopped in town first for gas and a thermos of coffee, I considered the futility of an after-dark search. Yet something had to be done; Faron and Suze couldn't be left out there in weather like that. If they were conscious and lost, the search party might locate them by voice. Yes, it was definitely worth trying, in nighttime hours that might otherwise see them go over into irreversible darkness.
I barreled down the highway, trying to imagine what could have happened. I blamed myself, of course, because it would have been so easy to go down with them to the trail. And now? Maybe Faron had turned an ankle and just needed to sit tight and stay warm until help arrived. Or maybe a bear--I put that thought out of my mind. No, she must have simply lost her bearings and wandered . . . through the sleet and fog, both their coats soaking through to the skin, Suze stoic with the cold rain streaming down her cheeks as the tears would if she hadn't been holding them back, in her blind trust in Faron to lead them back to the truck and home.
I pictured Faron trying, with increasing desperation, to guess which way to go, whether to veer left or right. If she headed too far left, she stood the chance of bypassing the rise of the trail altogether and ending up in the untracked vastness beneath the glaciers. So probably she would angle to the right. But that way she might also miss the upper trail and would end up instead high above its lower contour, separated from it by hundreds of feet of steep, slippery brush. So she'd have to backtrack, and by then she'd be exhausted from trying to keep her footing on the alder stems that covered the ground like millions of greased rails--not to mention the sixty pounds of load taking its toll on her shoulders, leg, back, spirit . . . Suze's patience meanwhile would have surely worn thin and given way to moans and whimpers, at the least. If she had considered making the child walk, now Faron would realize that under such conditions, that would be even worse than carrying her.
So she would perhaps consider an attempt to return to the cabin. Her pride and determination to forge ahead would be a force against such an option--as would the prospect of hiking back uphill still lost, ever more fatigued, with darkness fast approaching.
In fact the night was fully upon us by now, and for a while on the road my mind was as blank and black as sky and coffee coursing toward dawn. It was three-thirty when I hit the turnoff to home, and with impulsive hope I decided to drive in as far as Ron's house to see if they were back. But his car was gone, and the house, as I peeked and called inside the front door, empty.
Back on the road up to Tumbler Creek, my heart sank to a new and frightening depth. I could envision it all now: the trucks parked at the bottom of the trail; heading up in the early light, suddenly alert and energetic, shouting as I go. The blinding glare of fresh snow on the ground. An answering shout, muffled by snow and distance, way off to the left, off the trail that continues up and to the right. Scrambling across the contour, through the upper reaches of alder, the patches of juniper shrub and walls of slick shale. The repeated calls coming at me from a slightly higher elevation as I cross.
"We found her," I finally hear--and the way I hear it, it doesn't sound encouraging.
Then, I see Ron bent over Faron's still form, blowing air into her mouth. Useless, mouth.
Suze, somewhere else, downhill. Cold, useless.
How? (Why is too painful, full of me.) How?
Sometime later, entering my empty house at home, my living tomb, I see in the darkness: Faron, trembling with exhaustion, hefting Suze off her shoulders and down onto the ground. The child waiting while the backpack is discarded. A startled cry and Faron turning to see our daughter rolling down the hill like a tumbleweed.
A scream from Faron--Suze is strangely silent now, still rolling away out of sight through the wet alder. Faron jumps up, slips back to the ground and scrambles on her stomach, knees and elbows, grappling holds with numb hands on numbing roots . . .
Her foot catches on a root and she, too, tumbles head over heels, but her head comes down on the first roll against a large, round rock.
When she wakes up the rain has stopped. Suze is gone. Faron can't move, but realizes, gradually, that that's okay. Then she feels a breath on her neck and turns to find Suze, warm and dry as a newly bathed and powdered babe, snuggling in her original nakedness up to her own naked body: and the two of them lie in the spring flowers, the sunshine relaxing their pale, supple flesh into one, with the milk and breath and blood flowing between them again . . . mother and child.
DREAMBOX--To return to cabin Press 