Abandon (2 page)

The snowflakes stand out like white confetti in the child’s hair. “They’re all gone,” she says, no emotion, no tears, just an unaffected statement of fact.

“Even your ma and pa?”

She nods.

“Where’d they all go to? Can you show me?”

She takes another step back, reaches into her gray woolen cloak. The single-action army revolver is a heavy sidearm, and it sags comically in the child’s hand, so she holds it like a rifle. Brady is too surprised to do a thing but watch as she struggles with the hammer.

“Okay, I’ll show you,” she says, the hammer locked back, sighting him up, her small finger already in the trigger guard.

“Now hold on. Wait just a—”

“Stay still.”

“That ain’t no toy to point in someone’s direction. It’s for—”

“Killin. I know. You’ll feel better directly.”

As Brady scrambles for a way to rib up this young girl to hand him the
gun, he hears its report ricocheting through the canyon, finds himself lying on his back, surrounded by a wall of snow.

In the oval of gray winter sky, the child’s face appears, looking down at him.

What in God’s—

“It made a hole in your neck.”

He attempts to tell her to stable George and the burros, see that they’re fed and watered. After all the work they put in today, they deserve at least that. Only gurgles emerge, and when he tries to breathe, his throat whistles.

She points the revolver at his face again, one eye closed, the barrel slightly quivering, a parody of aiming.

He stares up into the deluge of snowflakes, the sky already immersed in a bluish dusk that seems to deepen before his eyes, and he wonders,
Is the day really fading that fast, or am I?

Her watch showed five minutes to seven, which meant it was five to five, mountain time. She’d sat in this parking space for twenty minutes, and he was probably about to leave, thinking she’d decided not to come.

The hostess showed her toward the back of the brewpub, which at five in the afternoon stood mostly empty. Peanut shells littered the floor, crunching beneath the heels of her black pumps, and the reek of brewing beer infused the air with a yeasty sourness. The hostess held the back door open and motioned to the only occupied table on the patio.

Abigail stepped outside, smoothed the Cavalli skirt she’d paid way too much for last year in Milan.

The doubt resurfaced. She shouldn’t have come. No story was worth this.

He sat alone with his back to her at a west-facing table, with the town of Durango, Colorado, spread out before him in its high valley, specked with the icy yellows of cottonwood and aspen, enclosed by pine-wooded hills and bare shale hills and, farther back, the spruce forests and jagged peaks of the San Juans.

The sound of the patio door banging shut caught his attention. He looked over his shoulder, and at the sight of her, slid his chair back from the table and stood—tall, sturdy, wavy silver hair, dark blues, and dressed like something
out of
Backpacker
magazine—plaid Patagonia button-up shirt tucked into a comfortable pair of jeans, Livestrong bracelet, Teva sandals.

She felt that knot constricting in her stomach again, noticed his left hand trembling. He seized the chair he’d been sitting in to steady it.

“Hi, Lawrence.”

She knew he was fifty-two, but he’d aged even better than his photo on the history department’s Web site indicated.

No handshake, no hug, just five seconds of what Abigail ranked as the most excruciating eye contact she’d ever held.

Easing down into a chair, she counted three empty pints on the table, wished she’d had the benefit of alcohol to steel herself for this meeting.

She rifled through her purse, found her sunglasses. It was Halloween, and though the air carried a chill, at this elevation the intensity of direct sunlight made it pleasant to sit outdoors.

“I’m glad you came,” Lawrence said.

A waiter costumed as a hula dancer approached the table.

“Want a beer, Abigail?”

“Sure.”

“They have a bunch of different—”

“I don’t care. Something light.”

He said to the waiter, “Bring her a Rock Hopped Pale.”

“Right on.”

The whistle of a steam-powered locomotive blew somewhere up the valley. Abigail saw the plume of smoke in the distance, heard the chugging palpitations of the valve gears as the train steamed south through the heart of town.

“I don’t have any backpacking gear,” she said.

“Scott will outfit you.”

“Who’s Scott?”

“Our guide.”

The silence, uncomfortable as it came, crawled under her skin.

“Pretty town you have here.”

She couldn’t help thinking this didn’t feel anything like she’d imagined it would. Having run countless versions of this moment through her head, they’d all carried more gravitas. She would scream at him. She’d hit him. They’d break down and cry together. He’d apologize. She’d accept. She wouldn’t. Now she understood none of that would happen. They were just two people sharing a table, trying to limp through the awkwardness.

“I’m curious,” she said. “All this time, and now you contact me.”

“I’ve followed your journalism career, subscribe to all the magazines you regularly contribute to, and I thought this . . . expedition . . . might be good fodder for your—”

“But you haven’t been interested in helping me since I was four years old.”

Lawrence slugged back the rest of his dark beer, stared at the mountains, wiped the foam from his beard.

Abigail said, “That came out more angry than—”

“No, it’s fine. You’ve got standing to be as angry as you want.”

“I’m not, though.”

The patio door opened and the waiter returned with Abigail’s pint and another round for Lawrence.

When he’d left, she raised her glass.

“Lawrence,” she said, “here’s to our past. Fuck it.”

He grinned. “That easy, huh?”

“We can pretend.”

They clinked pints and Abigail sipped her golden beer.

“So why’d you come?” Lawrence asked. “To be honest, I never expected a response to that E-mail.”

“Funny, I was just sitting out in the car, building the nerve to walk in here, and trying to answer that question for myself.”

The sun ducked behind the mountains and Abigail shivered, the rocky slopes and snowfields blushing with alpenglow.

They all turned at the sound of her footsteps, her eyes gravitating first to her father, then to the man standing beside him, who came only to his shoulders. His head was smooth-shaven and his beard, just beginning to fade in, matched the gray of his deep and thoughtful eyes.

“Emmett Tozer,” he said as they shook hands. “Guess you could say we’re responsible for this outing. Lawrence was nice enough to agree to take us out, share his expertise.”

“Abigail Foster, freelance journalist.” She turned to the woman holding Emmett’s arm. “June Tozer?”

June’s face lighted up and she took Abigail’s hand in both of hers. “Pleasure to meet you, Abigail.” She stood just over five feet, with a streak of white running down the middle of her chin-length brown hair. A sweet energy seemed to exude through June’s fingers. It made Abigail’s arm tingle, as if a gentle current were passing through.

“And I’m Scott Sawyer. I own Hinterlands, Inc. I’ll be your guide for this trip.”

Abigail shook the calloused hand of the beautiful man in a Phish T-shirt and torn khakis, instantly liking what she saw, a feeling she sensed he reciprocated. He was young, his hair bleached, probably just shy of thirty, and she discerned beneath his faded clothes the body of a seasoned outdoors-man.

They rode up toward the mountains in the dark, and Abigail was dreaming again before they left the city limits of Durango.

She slept soundly, and when she woke, the Suburban was ascending a steep, rocky road. Scott and Lawrence talked in the front seat, but their conversation seemed muffled. She swallowed. Her ears popped. The sounds of the straining engine and tires crunching over rocks came rushing in. Abigail sat up, rubbed her eyes. The dashboard clock read 6:01
A.M
. The sky had lightened into dawn, and they were climbing through a canyon, the one-lane road following the path of a stream.

Scott finally pulled over onto the edge of a meadow and parked beside a dinged and rusted Bronco that had long ago ceased to be one discernible color. But despite its state of disrepair, it had somehow managed to drag a trailer up the road. Abigail climbed outside after Emmett and June, heard the chatter of a stream.

They huddled between the vehicles, their breath steaming, the air redolent of spruce.

The driver’s door of the Bronco squeaked open, and a man stepped down into the frosted grass. He was tall, his beard thick save for a few bare spots, his walnut hair drawn back into a ponytail.

Scott said, “Meet Jerrod Spicer, my trustworthy assistant. He’s an excellent outdoorsman, so you should know you’re all in capable hands.”

Jerrod let slip a yawn, said, “Sorry. Still waiting for the coffee to kick in.” He walked to the back of the trailer, unlocked the doors. “Gunter, Gerald, time to go to work.”

Abigail smiled when two llamas stepped down into the meadow and began munching on the grass. She approached them, reached out to pet the black one, but it pulled away, affronted by the familiarity.

“I’d rethink that, Abigail,” Scott said. “Gunter spits.” He opened the back hatch of the Bronco. “Now if you’ll step over here, we can start getting you all fitted for your packs.”

As Abigail watched Scott cinch down the llama packs, she heard a car coming up the canyon. A moment passed, and then a hunter green Ford Expedition appeared around the bend. It veered off the road and pulled up onto the meadow, a rack of sirens mounted on top, S
AN
J
UAN
C
OUNTY
S
HERIFF’S
D
EPARTMENT
emblazoned on the driver’s and passenger’s doors. A woman climbed out and approached the group, which had gathered by the llama trailer. She was petite and pretty, with bright, friendly eyes and long brown hair split into braided pigtails.

“Morning,” she said, and tipped the brim of her Stetson. A sheriff’s star
had been embroidered into her black parka. “Y’all about ready to shove off?”

“Yep,” Scott said, pulling the strap to tighten the hip belt of his pack.

The sheriff pointed to Scott, said, “I see you’re taking a fly rod. You wouldn’t mind letting me have a peek at your fishing license?”

“Not at all.” Scott walked down to the sheriff and pulled his wallet out of his fleece pants. He flipped it open. She nodded.

“Y’all look like you’re headed in for the long haul.”

June said, “Well, we’ve got a ways to go. . . . How far did you say, Scott?”

“Seventeen miles.”

“Yeah, a seventeen-mile hike into this old ghost—”

“What’s your name, Sheriff?” Lawrence asked. “I feel like we’ve met before.”

“Jennifer. And yours?”

“Lawrence Kendall. Get down to Durango much, Jennifer?”

“Not if I can help it.” She cocked her head. “Where’d you think we’d met?”

“I don’t remember, but you look familiar.”

“Don’t think we have, and I’m pretty good with faces.” She addressed the group: “Well, I assume you all purchased backcountry insurance.”

“They did,” Scott said. “I’m the guide. I insisted they buy it.”

“Where you taking them?”

“Grizzly Gulch.”

“I thought she said you were headed to a ghost town. There are no ruins in Grizzly Gulch, at least that I know of.” She leveled her gaze on him, unblinking.