Jaguar (36 page)

A flash of light vaporized both of the priest’s eyes and in the same instant his skull was engulfed in white-hot fire. Within seconds the peculiar fire consumed all of the priests, leaving only their porcelain bones, each inside its own halo of blackened stone.

But Crow Crow
Crow nailed them together,
Nailing heaven and earth together—
So man cried, but with God’s voice.
And God bled, but with man’s blood.

—Ted Hughes,
Crow

Maryellen wrestled the wheel and her pickup slewed down the muddy ruts of the driveway. A hump of black muck scraped the truck’s underbelly and tugged once, twice as the back wheels spun. She gunned it and lurched astraddle the ruts, nursing the pickup along in the early morning drizzle barely faster than she could have walked.

“Please let the bridge be there,” she prayed. “Please let the bridge be there.”

She didn’t know what kind of god to pray to, anymore. They all looked so petty and so human.

The cabin was still visible in the rear-view mirror when she could no longer tell the driveway from the muddy outflow of the stream. At this point the drive crossed an old logging road, and the water beyond looked too deep for the pickup. It didn’t matter; the bridge was gone.

She pounded on the dashboard.

“Dammit!” She pounded again. “Dammit!”

She swiped at the tears that betrayed her frustration.

“Think,” she ordered herself. “Just think for a damn minute.”

A shot slapped the side mirror off the truck in a spray of glass, and reflex popped the clutch and cranked her wheel to the right. Her tires spun smoke and hot muck. The old truck wallowed for an eternity before grabbing enough traction to make the turn into the woods. Maryellen stayed as far down in the seat as she could as she guided the truck up the steep grade. A spider-web of logging roads crisscrossed the hillsides around her. Most dead-ended in the hills, two led out.

Which two?

The rut she was on led upstream, and she knew that another bridge crossed only about a mile upstream. That bridge was higher, and crossed a deeper part of the canyon, so maybe it would still be good.

But if she went back to the valley, what would she say? That her father wanted to kill them?

“It’s not his fault,” she whispered, and prayed that it was true.

She glanced over her shoulder and saw that Eddie was curled up into a tight ball, bouncing in the bed. She saw no sign of her father or his car.

One of these roads runs all the way to Oregon,
she thought.

Going back to the valley meant bigger trouble, that was clear. If they tried to run and hide, they’d be caught. The pickup would give them away on the highway. If they could stay in the hills, below the snow line. . . .

She remembered a trip with her father, coming back from Portland, when they’d tried logging roads all the way and got through. She had been eleven then, and had slept all the way.

Which ones dead-end?

She couldn’t remember. Maryellen had fished here with her father a few times, but never far from the cabin. She never seemed to know how they got where they got, it was one of the mysteries of her father. He knew these hills as well as he knew his rifle, and she didn’t know them at all.

“No,” she said to herself, “we’ve got to get to town. He’ll just track us down out here.”

Maryellen reminded herself that she didn’t know her father any better than the roads—at least, she didn’t know this maniac that he’d become.

The Jaguar.

She shuddered with the chill that his name conjured in her spine. She knew this had to be the Jaguar’s doing. He hadn’t been able to get inside herself or Eddie, but he’d found a way to her father. The Jaguar had broken through in his long hunt and it was his breath from her father’s mouth that sent the ice down her spine. He must have known they’d planned to hunt him out to free Rafferty and the Roam.

“He found us, Eddie,” she said. “Now what do we do?”

She approached the lip of a gravel slide that nearly filled the bare track of a road and stopped the truck. She leaned her forehead on the cool steering wheel for just a moment.

“Too many people falling apart,” she said. “I should have known.”

Maryellen knew the secret of classmates falling hysterical in second grade. Her dream-burglaries, her petty trespassing cost her classmates sleep, and the lack of sleep changed them. Maryellen and Eddie had figured that out separately, but by then incredible damage was done, much of it to themselves.

In school, or among family, or with her few friends—the same wierdnesses, the same personality changes erupted when she’d been dreaming inside their heads, and so she’d stopped. Taking their sleep made them crazy. And being crazy hurt them, she knew that, now. Maryellen remembered how her father looked last night, how hollow-eyed and driven he’d looked the day he beat up Eddie.

The dreamway insanity had to be the Jaguar’s doing. Maryellen learned not to make the people closest to her crazy. Eddie had learned the same hard lesson. So, for that matter, had Rafferty and Afriqua Lee. Maryellen knew that she hadn’t been dreaming her father’s dreams. Eddie would have confessed to her out of principle if he’d linked up with her father on the dreamways.

That left the Jaguar, whoever he was, safe in his bed somewhere, trying to kill them by using her father as skillfully as her father would use his rifle.

He, and his rifle, were somewhere behind them and she knew better than to think that he’d give up a hunt.

The slide left a pile of gravel in the roadway from the uphill slope on her right. The slope dropped away about a hundred feet to her left before disappearing over the lip of the canyon and into the foaming roil of the stream. Halfway up the misted hillside, the roar of the swollen river drowned out her pickup’s noisy engine.

The bridge is good!

Just a short distance past the slide, the road dipped down the slope to meet the wooden bridge that squatted with its skirts in the current.

Maryellen looked back again at Eddie, limp as a bag of laundry beside the spare tire. She considered bringing him into the cab, then thought better of it.

“You’ll have a better chance back there,” she said, as though he could hear. Talking to him made her feel less exposed, and not so much alone.

She took a hard look at the churning river, and swallowed. Nobody would have a chance down there. But if she didn’t admit it. . . .

She put the truck in compound low and nosed around the lip of the slide. She had to drive off the road, downslope of the slide. The wheel spun out of her hands as though snatched by a giant. The hood of the truck dropped away and the back end of the truck lifted into the sky. The whole slope plunged away with the road.

The old truck rolled once, twice, then skidded to rest in some scrub firs and brush at the brink of the canyon.

Maryellen had grabbed the wheel in mid-roll, out of reflex, and held tight at arm’s length until the last of the loose gravel stopped skittering past her. She was conscious of the greater roar of the river and the fact that she sat on the ceiling of the upside-down cab. Her wrists hurt. The ravenous stream ate at the bank just a few feet away.

How long . . . ?

A crow sounded its hoarse alarm somewhere nearby, then another, a dozen.

“Eddie!” she whispered. “Oh, Jesus, Eddie!”

Maryellen crawled out the broken windshield and fought for balance as the mucky gravel shifted under her. She crawled under the upturned bed, but Eddie wasn’t there. She didn’t see him near the truck, so she scrabbled the slope on her hands and knees, calling his name. The river swallowed everything.

The crow found Eddie first, face-down in the gravel, half-buried. The right side of his face looked smashed where he lay on it, and the gravel was bloody under his scalp where a chunk of it peeled back to expose his skull from his right eyebrow to his ear.

He was breathing, and when Maryellen tried to move him to a more comfortable position he let out a terrible moan. His right shoulder was lower than it should be, and a piece of metal from the bed of the truck protruded from his right elbow.

“I’ll get you out of here, Eddie,” she whispered. “I promise, I’ll get you out. . . .”

A crow dove at her so hard that its wingtip brushed her hair, and she flattened over Eddie out of reflex. Looking up from the hollow, Maryellen saw her father huffing out of the treeline above her. She scrunched down even farther and was sure he couldn’t see them behind the gravel and the brush.

The sky was full of crows, as were the branches of the trees where the road came out of the woods to cross the slope. Her father batted at them with his rifle barrel and, in spite of their attacks, stopped cold when he reached the slide. She watched his eyes follow the tire tracks, the fresh gravel slide and the raw scar that the truck had made.

He scanned the slope once and his gaze went back to the truck. He took a couple of hesitant steps, glancing back down the road and then across the slide to where the road picked up. He straightened his shoulders as though he had all the time in the world, then began gingerly picking his way down the slope to the truck. He held his rifle as ready as his balance would allow.

Eddie moaned again, and stirred, but Maryellen pinned him down with her body and muffled his mouth with her hand.

He can hear us up there,
she thought.
Once he gets below us, the river will be too loud.

Her father passed within twenty feet of them, but his attention was on the truck and his precarious footing.

When he gets to the truck, he’ll track me back here,
she thought.
What can I do?

She searched the gravel for a fist-sized stone, and in a moment had a pile of about a dozen set within reach. She knew it was no match for his rifle, but it was all she had and she felt she might get lucky.

The crows had at him in a renewed attack, forcing him into a barely controlled run down the slope. At first Maryellen thought he would slide right past the truck, over the edge and into the river. She had been holding her breath, and now tried to catch up in short, silent gasps.

He slid right up against the bed of the pickup, rocking it slightly. He scanned underneath as she had done, then checked the cab. The crows kept at him, and he batted at them again. When he turned from the cab, his gaze followed her tracks upslope. She was sure that he couldn’t see her yet. He was downslope, that was to her advantage. She gathered her stones in close.

She trembled so bad she was afraid she couldn’t throw at all, and she held her breath again when he leaned against the pickup and sighted at her down the barrel. She hugged Eddie and herself as far into the gravel as they could get.

Eddie cried out, louder this time, but she didn’t try to shush him. With the din of the nearby water, it couldn’t carry far.

The shot went wild, or perhaps he’d been aiming at a crow. The river drowned out its puny little pop. She grabbed a couple of deep breaths and risked a peek.

Her father and the truck were both gone. A dark, damp scar of mud was all that remained.

Now, instead of being afraid of her father, she was afraid
for
him.

She thought that maybe it was a trick to get her out in the open, so she hesitated to expose herself. She was well upslope, and had a wide view, and saw no sign of him. The crows, so thick and aggressive a minute ago, now circled lazily overhead calling among themselves.

She crouched on her knees and felt the tremor of another huge section of bank giving way. She made her way to within a few yards of the slide.

The undercarriage of the truck was all that she could see, wedged in some rocks about a hundred feet downstream. Mud and brown water churned through the burst-out windows and door. No sign of her father.

“Daddy!” she called, “
Daddy!
” But he was gone.

And it was her father who saved them or, at least, her father’s body. A forest service road crew found him wedged between logs in the wreckage of the old bridge and mounted an upstream search for survivors.

They found the upturned pickup and told Maryellen later how they found her and Eddie. She had built up a nest of branches under Eddie to keep him off the mud and gravel. She carefully tore the right sleeve away from his injured arm and bandaged his head with it enough to stop the bleeding. Eddie cried out sometimes whether she moved him or not, but his breathing stayed strong.

She thought of starting a fire to attract attention, but the cloud cover was still low and she didn’t have any matches with her.

Nobody up here, anyway,
she thought.

But she knew she had to keep Eddie warm and she had to get him dry, so she decided to hurry back to the cabin.

“I’m going to cover you up, Eddie,” she told him. “I’m going back to the cabin to get some blankets and stuff to start a fire. I’m going to cover you up with branches. If I can find the keys I’ll bring the car. I love you, Eddie.”

She was pulling cedar boughs from branches when she saw the forest service truck across the river. She was numb by then, and never did remember flagging them down. The rest of the day was a blur.

The road crew had a first-aid kit, blankets and coffee. They wrapped Eddie up, improvised a litter out of a tarp to get him off the slope and into the back of their truck. He cried out once, when they wrapped him in the blankets, then he was still.

They only had two blankets, and she insisted that they use them both for Eddie.

“You need one as bad as he does,” the crew chief said. His name was Bob and he had red hair, and looked barely older than she was. His blue eyes looked scared and his face was so pale that his freckles looked like paint splatters.

“You’re wet, cold, and up here with just your shirt and jeans,” he reasoned. “You wouldn’t want him to wake up asking for you and find out that you’d died of pneumonia, would you?”

“He needs them,” she said. “He’s fighting very hard right now, and he needs all the help he can get.”

She refused to ride in the truck’s cab, too.