Whippoorwill (23 page)

But in his haste to reach shelter, he took a wrong turn. On the mountains, in a storm, with visibility less than ten yards, it was understandable. It came close to being fatal.

One minute Henry was on solid ground and running and the next thing he knew the ground had disappeared from beneath his feet. In the space of time it took to take a breath, he’d fallen off the mountain.

He knew when he hit the first tree that the fall would be bad. Instinctively, he tightened his grip on his gun. Later it would occur to him that he should have let it go and grabbed at a tree, but now it was too late. Everything had been set in motion. Down, down, down, he fell, bouncing from bush, to tree, to rock, every jolt racking his body with pain.

And then as suddenly as it had begun, it was over. The cessation of motion was almost as startling as the fall had been. He lay for a moment, shivering from shock and assessing his injuries. Rain hammered upon his head. He groaned and tried to move then passed out from the pain.

Much later, it was the sound of rushing water that brought him to his senses. This time when he opened his eyes, the thought crossed his mind that, if he could have reached his rifle, he might have given some thought to shooting himself now to get it over with.

The best that he could tell, he’d gone feet first into a dead fall, and was now wedged between it and some rocks, sort of like forcing a square peg into a round hole. One arm was folded up beneath him while the other was over his head and caught in the gap between two large rocks.

The weight of his body and the momentum of the fall had driven him deep into the morass. One leg pained him terribly, the other he couldn’t feel or move at all. His rifle was underneath him and the water in the nearby creek was only a couple of yards from where he was trapped. And it was rising. By his reckoning, he had an hour, maybe two before he drowned.

Henry hadn’t planned on dying today, but unless a miracle occurred, it was going to happen. He kept telling himself that he’d lived a full life and that if he had to die someplace, then Plenty Valley was the place it should be. He’d been happier here than anywhere he could remember. But he also hadn’t lived to be sixty-three years old by being a quitter. He began to struggle, yet no matter how hard he tried, could not pull himself free. It crossed his mind then how sad old Parson would be when he found his body.

A shaft of lightning cracked nearby, followed by the scent of sulfur and something burning. The fire soon went out, but in spite of the rain, the scent stayed with Henry. He wondered if he would be sniffing sulfur
and
brimstone where he was going.

An hour passed, maybe more, but it was hard for him to tell. All he knew was that his right ear was full of rainwater and it was getting on his nerves. And though the horror of the rising creek became more and more apparent, the continual downpour had offered Henry an opportunity that hadn’t been there before. The dead fall beneath him was shifting and getting looser by the minute—so loose that he’d been able to reach down to the point that he could feel the sight on his gun. With a little more effort, he moved his hand along the barrel until he had a good grip, then he pulled. At first, the gun wouldn’t budge. He pulled again, and to his joy he felt it give. He continued to pull, easing the barrel up out of the limbs until the trigger was beneath his fingers. While he didn’t know how this would help him, he felt better for it all the same.

But the sense of satisfaction was short lived. When water began lapping at his moccasins, he started to curse. By God, he wasn’t ready to die after all. In a sudden fit of rage, he screamed Parson’s name.

***

Parson hadn’t stopped at Three Pines. Even as he was telling himself that he’d never find Henry in all this rain, he was moving through the trees and up the trail he knew Henry favored. Within seconds, the rain became a blinding downpour—each raindrop splattering like a rifle shot on the canopy of leaves about his head before catapulting to the ground. The sound was deafening. Over and over, he called Henry’s name as he went, but the words were thrown back in his face. A verse from an old church song popped into his head—something about being lost and then found. He started to pray.

“God, one of Yore sheep is lost. I’m a tryin’ as hard as I know how to bring him in, but I reckon I could use Yore help.”

Less than a hundred yards in front of him, a shaft of lightning suddenly struck a tree, shattering it into thousands of pieces. Parson dropped to the ground on his knees, his eyes wide and filled with awe.

“Oh Lord, oh Lord,” he moaned, trembling in every muscle of his body. “I heard you but I just ain’t sure what that meant.”

The evidence of the splintered tree was impossible to ignore. Shaking in every muscle, he got to his feet. Maybe God was telling him not to go any further. Then he nodded his head. Yes, that made sense. He picked up his gun and started retracing his steps. He walked and walked until he’d lost all sense of direction, and still couldn’t bring himself to stop.

Just when his hopes were all but gone, he heard a cry through the storm—like a ghostly wail coming up from the depths of hell. He yanked off his hat so that the splatter of raindrops upon the leather would not detract from what he heard. It could have been anything, but every instinct he had told him it was Henry. He stood without moving, straining to hear, praying it would come again.

And it did.

At that moment, hope sprung, bringing with it a new set of fears. Even though he could hear Henry’s voice, it was impossible to tell the direction in which it was coming from.

He shouted with rage, shaking his fist at the elements that were tearing through the mountains. Rain plastered his long, graying hair to the shirt on his back and matting his beard to his chest like a tattered lace veil. His eyes glittered with anger as he fought back a sense of frustration. Somewhere out there his partner was hurting. That made Parson hurt, too.

He turned in a circle, listening, listening, trying to get a fix on the direction, and in doing so, his rifle bumped against the trunk of a nearby tree. To him, it was like God giving him a quick thump on the shoulder to remind him it was there.

He stared down at the rifle then started to grin. Without hesitation, he lifted it to the sky and fired off a round. Although the sound was muffled by the rain, he knew it would carry far better than his voice. A few moments later, he heard what sounded like an echo of his own shot off to his right.

He started to run.

***

It wasn’t until Henry heard the shot that he started to laugh. He shouted at the mountain, and the storm, and at fate.

“By God, ain’t none of you gonna get old Henry yet!” He started to yell then, knowing that Elmer would follow the sound of his voice. “Help! Help! I am here!”

Water was up to his waist and rising and he knew now why the dead fall was so large. The curve in the creek was a natural snare for anything caught in a flood. Already a new batch of debris was being added to what was already here. But he needed to be found before his bones were added to the pile.

Time passed and Henry had shouted until he was hoarse. Still he wouldn’t quit. Water was up to his chest now and licking at his chin like the cold, taunting tongue of a woman. He stifled his fear and turned it all into rage. With one last monumental surge, he let out a roar.

“Noooo!”

Water tugged at his legs, at his shirt, yanking and pulling with the force of the flow. An eddy of foam swirled into his line of vision and then up his nose. Startled by the sudden and uninvited intrusion, he gasped and then choked when a mouthful of water went down his throat.

“Sweet Jesus,” he moaned, wildly eyeing the rising flood. It was going to be too late after all.

And then he heard Parson shouting his name and he started to cry, his tears mingling with the rain as it fell.

“Here!” he shouted, laughing and spitting as water lapped at his cheeks. “I’m here!”

Moments later, Parson was above him, hacking at limbs with the hatchet he wore at his waist as he shouted Henry’s name.

“It’s me, Henry, it’s me! You hold on now, old friend, you hold on.”

Henry choked and spit and then did as Parson suggested. But it wasn’t faith that he was holding on to just then, it was life. Completely submerged now, he was holding his breath.

Parson was shaking with rage. He hadn’t come all this way to be too late. He chopped and hacked like a man gone mad, tossing away limbs, digging through the submerged dead fall and praying as he’d never prayed before. Just when as he thought it was all over, he felt buckskin beneath his fingers. With a mighty grip, he braced his feet against the limbs on which he was standing and pulled.

Henry’s body gave, but not enough to come free.

Parson groaned and then took a deep breath as he went under water, frantically shoving and pulling at the limbs still holding Henry down. When his lungs were full to bursting, he came up then, sputtering and gasping and fighting for air. His hair was in his face and his beard was wrapped around his neck as he took another deep breath and went back for more. This time when he grabbed hold of Henry, his grip was solid.

God help me.

Parson pulled and Henry popped free of the debris like a cork in a bottle, bobbing to the surface of the flood. Parson’s jubilation foundered at the sight of Henry’s pale and waxen face.

“No, no, no,” he moaned, and began thrashing through the water and limbs, dragging Henry’s rifle and inert body as he went.

When there was nothing but hard ground at their feet, Parson dropped the rifle, rolled Henry onto his belly and started pounding on his back. Over and over, harder and harder, he pushed and he pummeled while the rain continued to fall. A minute passed, and then another and Parson never knew when he started to cry.

“Wake up, Henry Wainright, wake up! You can’t go and leave me like this.”

Henry came to just as Parson’s fist hit the middle of his back. One minute he was spitting up water and the next he was gasping for air.

When Parson saw Henry kick and then vomit, he leaned back on his heels and smiled. There in the rain, on the banks of a flood, he gave thanks to the Lord on whom he’d called.

When Henry could breathe without fear of inhaling more water, he rolled over, relishing the feel of rain on his face. There wasn’t a place on his body that didn’t hurt, and he was pretty sure he’d busted some ribs. But he was breathing and for now it was enough. He looked over at Parson who was still in the throes of a prayer.

“Damn it all, Elmer, save that for when we ain’t got nothin’ better to do. I got water in my ear. I busted some ribs. And I’m so damn wet I might never have to take a bath again. Let’s find us a place to get dry.”

Parson stood then, his eyes aglow with a passion that Henry wished he could share.

“Can you stand, Henry?”

Henry groaned. “I ain’t for sure, but I’m ready to try.”

Parson held out his hand and Henry grabbed it. Moments later, he was on his feet and fighting a wave of nausea.

Parson put a sheltering arm around Henry’s shoulders. “Lean on me, old man. With God’s help, we’ll find a way.”

Henry leaned.

***

Within days, the episode had become a thing of the past. Henry’s ribs soon healed, their lives slipped back into the same old routine, and they began to fell trees in preparation for their winter cabin. They cut mountains of firewood, stacking it to cure. It was nothing they hadn’t done every year for as long as either man could remember, but in their joy, they became complacent. It was a luxury they couldn’t afford.

A PROMISE MADE IS A PROMISE KEPT

The moon was at twelve o’clock high and the two old trappers were snoring in their bedrolls when a sound came out of the forest that sent them scrambling to their feet and tossing wood on the dying embers of the fire in wild abandon. It was a sound to put the most experienced of woodsmen on the alert, and it set the horses into a frenzy. Their two geldings whinnied in fear, snorting and pawing at the ground as they tried to escape that which now stood at the edge of their fire.

Henry ran to steady the horses as a low huff, accompanied by a belly-deep grunt, drifted through the darkness. Something was disturbing the carpet of rotting leaves beneath the trees, sending the musty scent of decay and danger into the air along with a keening roar.

Bear!

Henry’s belly rolled with fear. “Oh shit,” he muttered, and tied the horses’ leads a little tighter as Parson began flinging all their kindling onto the fire at once. “Where the hell did he come from? I ain’t once seen bear sign this far down.”

“Tell that to the bear,” Parson grumbled, as he began searching his pack for extra ammunition. Henry quickly did the same.

They smelled him before they saw him. By the time he shuffled into the light of their fire, they had their guns in hand, at the ready and aiming toward the bear coming into their camp.

“Think we oughta make a run for it?” Henry asked.

Parson studied on the idea about a second too long. “I think we shoulda’ done that when we heard him, not after we saw the whites of his eyes.”

Henry cursed and spit. “Them damned eyes don’t look none too white to me. They’re burnin’ red as the devil, or I’m a son-of-a-gun.”

The bear rose on his hind legs, swaying back and forth like a drunken sailor unaccustomed to land, and at that moment, Henry spied a dark, patchy stain running down the big bear’s belly. “Looky there, Parson. He’s done been shot and ain’t figgered out how to die. No wonder he come in on us like that. Ain’t no tellin’ how long it’s been since he ate.”

Parson shivered. “Is there any of that stew left? Maybe we could pitch it over to him and change his plans a mite.”

Henry had a sudden urge to pee. “Hell no. There ain’t never any leftovers around here. You eat ever dang thing that ain’t bitin’ back, and you know it.”

Parson inhaled slowly and took aim. The bear went down on all fours and came at them at a lope.

“Henry, if we don’t get out of this one, it’s been a hell of a ride.”