Blood mountain, p.6
Blood Mountain, page 6
“A couple of day hikers found a heart attack victim on Blood Mountain about half an hour ago. Heavyset guy, midfifties, best guess, looks like he collapsed out there,” Frank explains.
A dozen questions leap into Makayla’s mind. “Alive?” she asks.
“Touch and go,” Frank says. “They found him about ten feet off the trail. Called nine-one-one, who in turn reached out to DEC Central. We extracted him via hoist operation. The helicopter transported him to County General.”
Makayla says, “You could have called me sooner.”
Frank replies, “Yeah, well, you’ve been putting in a lot of hours. Figured you might need your rest.”
Makayla asks, “How long was he out there?”
Frank says, “Well, I’m hoping you can help us figure that out. Right now we’ve got more questions than answers. Looks like he had a heart attack, probably while off-trail watering a tree. Took a big bump to the head. Seems they found him when he was in the process of crawling back. Pretty bad shape. Rained on, bitten by insects, clothes damp and covered in mud.”
“Must be a hard guy,” she says. “Not many heart attacks make it off the mountain.”
“That’s true,” Frank says. “When they reached him, they say he lifted two fingers like a peace sign, rolled over, and passed out.”
“A peace sign? Some old hippie?” Makayla muses. “He was alone? You contact the family yet?”
“Not so simple,” Frank replies. “Haven’t made a positive ID. Guy had nothing in his pockets. No wallet, not a thing. You know how it is—these hikers don’t want to risk losing their American Express card in the woods. His backpack had a sweatshirt, compass, water bottle, three peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Plus safety matches in a waterproof case.”
Makayla eases down on the brake, puts the big red Ford into park. “I just pulled up to Sally’s. I’m going to grab an egg sandwich to go. I’ll drive over to the trailhead. I assume this guy left a car in the parking lot.”
Franks says, “They didn’t find keys among his effects.”
Makayla thought that over. She’d have a look-see for herself. “Well, he got to the trailhead somehow. I doubt he rode in on a moose. Let me order my breakfast, Frank. I’ll catch you up later.”
“How long?” he asks.
“Forty minutes if I hurry,” Makayla replies. “And I’ll be hurrying. I’ll let you know what I find out.”
“Listen, Brooklyn. I would have asked the search-and-rescue team to do it, but they were a little preoccupied with saving this man’s life. Make sure you review the trail registry. See if this guy filled out an itinerary. Maybe he wasn’t alone—you know what I’m saying.”
It was a new thought. Makayla pondered it. Possible, she decided. Heart attack off the trail. Overweight male in his fifties. Likely a slow hiker. Maybe his fellow hikers took off ahead of him. A classic mistake. Hikers of mixed abilities often get separated in the wilderness. It can lead to serious problems. But why wouldn’t they call it in after they discovered he was missing? It didn’t add up.
No, she thought. Almost definitely alone.
25
[GONE]
Even before she fully wakes, Grace knows.
She knows it in her bones.
He’s gone.
And it scares her. Not for being abandoned. But the thought of Carter wandering off on his own frightens her to the core. She pictures his soft cheeks, long eyelashes, and skinny body. He hasn’t even started middle school yet. Her little brother wants so badly to be the hero.
Without another thought, she cries out in her loudest voice, “Carter!” It burns her chest. Her voice does not echo back. Instead, it is swallowed by the wildness, absorbed by the trees. No answer. She is alone.
Yet in the wake of her cry, new sounds reach Grace’s ears. Birds in the trees, singing their songs; fat wrens hopping on the ground, pecking for bugs, worms, grubs. Scissor-tailed warblers swooping low, darting from branch to branch. Busy with their unfathomable lives. Grace listens to their music as they chatter back and forth. It reminds her of a recent family vacation, trying to follow the conversations in a Quebec restaurant. What are you saying? She tries to guess.
And Grace decides it’s this:
Good morning, good morning, good morning to you!
Roused by the birds, Grace pulls herself up to sitting position. Like a bedside nurse, Sitka watches the girl intently. Grace runs her tongue across her teeth, wishes for mint toothpaste. She polishes her teeth with the top of her shirt. She examines the scrapes, cuts, and bruises along her body. Breathing is still painful. Best to move slowly, deliberately. Is her darkened ankle actually larger? It has ballooned up to the size of … a balloon? Grace laughs at her little joke, a snort through the nose.
Her hips and ribs ache. Her ankle actually feels okay, so long as she doesn’t put any pressure on it. What an awful night’s sleep. Grace reaches for the backpack, pulls it close. She finds the Advil bottle, rinses down three tablets with water. Her heart sinks when she sees that Carter has left three energy bars, the Mylar emergency blanket, her flannel, the spare socks, the medical kit, and the knife. He took only one energy bar, his extra shirt, and a water bottle. Hopefully he snagged the moleskin for his blisters.
The dressing for the deep gash in her leg had peeled off in the night. Grace tentatively pokes at the wound. The skin appears inflamed. She fears infection. Hard to keep anything clean out here. Grace treats it again with peroxide. It doesn’t seem to help. The edges of the gash are turning black. Not cool. She rolls the gauze around her calf, holds it in place with a piece of duct tape. All she feels in that spot is a pulsing throb, as if her heart had migrated to a new part of her body. The blood pumping: ba-thrum, ba-thrum, ba-thrum.
This activity causes Grace to grow dizzy. A headache behind her brow announces itself and reverberates like a symphony’s clanged cymbal. She feels instantly nauseous. Shuts her eyes from the light, waits. Suddenly she pitches to the side, retches convulsively with little in her stomach. Grace gags and dry-heaves. As her stomach muscles contract, the stabbing sensation at her side returns, like a blunt knife twisting into her rib cage. Grace finally spits, wipes her mouth. “Ohhhh,” she groans, miserably. “Mama.”
And still the birds make music.
Agitated and upset, Sitka steps away to venture into the near woods.
I’m alive, Grace reminds herself. It’s not nothing.
Her mind drifts to her mama, the bravest person Grace knows. And her best friend. Each year, Grace’s mother’s condition gradually worsens. Her body grows weaker; her muscles atrophy. Multiple sclerosis has taken away so much, left her confined to a wheelchair, limited her in so many ways, yet Grace has never once heard her mother complain. Instead, she smiles her dimpled smile, manages to bake something elaborate and delicious every weekend, diligently goes through her exercise routine each morning, and cruises all over creation in her motorized wheelchair. Unstoppable.
Grace decides to rest for a while. Take a breather. The headache will pass. Later she’ll need to refill the water bottle. That should be fun.
26
[ON THE RIM]
Carter’s day begins with purpose and determination. And more than that, for Carter: a sense of freedom and a chance to prove himself. So much depends on him. The air is hot and soupy. He finds a trickling streambed and gulps handfuls of cool, clear water. Tops off his water bottle; sets his hat backward. The sun’s up there lost in the hazy, overcast sky, but he doesn’t think to locate it.
He makes his way to the ridge’s rim where Grace first tumbled. From the vantage point of his ascent, Carter can easily recognize how it was a false summit. Not nearly to the top, so much still obscured. The limited view provides him with no answers. He dumbly stares out at the simmering countryside. Carter can almost imagine wiggly lines of heat, like in cartoon drawings, rising from the treetops to the sky. He feels a shuddering thrill to be alone in this place, hundreds of empty miles radiating out in all directions. Big peaks here and there. Valleys below. Ridges across. No roads, no cabins, no signs of human activity. Carter is not disappointed. He expected this. He remembered Grace’s initial reaction, the discouraged look on her face before she went down. For a moment there, watching her fall, he thought she had died.
Carter pauses to chew the last bite of his energy bar. He needs to keep going. Get to an even higher spot where he can get the best possible overview, pick a direction, and stick to it. Still he lingers. Two hawks ride wind currents, surfers in the sky, the tips of their wings making microadjustments. Carter needs to remember this spot. There’s no point going for help if he can’t lead them back to Grace. He cannot fail. It all looks like an undifferentiated mass of leaves to him. He notes a sheer rock face across the way, the conical summit of a high peak, the expanse of wide valley below. A group of white tree trunks—aspen? birch?—the words are vaguely familiar. He builds a cairn, something he’s seen before, though he does not know the word. It is a small pile of rough stones. Obviously man-made. He tucks the bar wrapper under the top rock, a little flash of yellow to catch someone’s eye. Along the ridge to his right, he spies three deer grazing farther along the rim. He could target them with a well-thrown stone. One deer lifts its head, turns to regard him. Carter does not move. Just watches. The deer turn and ride off on spindly, brown legs. A mother and two fawns.
27
[CLUES]
There are five vehicles parked in the woodland lot, including Makayla’s truck. This is the head of the trail, the starting point to the peak of Blood Mountain, eventually back down to Crater Lake, and any other of about twelve different, increasingly far-flung destinations. All in all, not the most popular spot in parkland. Hard to get to, mostly. Not a high-profile summit. The park is a vast, interconnected web of trails, spurs, and dead ends. In the spaces between and outside that network of trails—the peaks, ponds, bogs, pastures, and lean-tos—there remain dense, secluded areas that only the most austere backcountry hikers have ever laid eyes upon. Makayla thinks of it this way: Land as it used to be. Still a few places in this country that have been left unspoiled. It’s a sprawling park, and some parts are as wild as the cry in a wolf’s throat.
Most hikers are pretty responsible about filling in the registry. Time of arrival, number in party, destination, day hike or overnight, that kind of thing. If somebody’s lost, this information provides the first, best clue as to where they were headed. It gives the search focus and saves valuable time. Otherwise the search-and-rescue team is just throwing darts in the darkness. In those cases it becomes, once reason overtakes hope, a search-and-recover team, faced with the unholy task of filling a body bag and carrying it down the mountain. Hopefully it won’t come to that.
Without a name to match to the book, it’s guesswork for Makayla to accurately know who’s who. She runs her finger down the columns, sees nothing but day hikers for the past week. Three of them today. Six yesterday. She turns to contemplate the parked cars. One of them, she’s 98 percent certain, is the victim’s. She walks over, thinking how it rained pretty hard two nights ago. Ground still damp in lower depressions where there would have been puddles just yesterday. Only one car has a damp leaf still stuck to the front windshield wiper. Makayla lowers to her hands and knees, studies the ground. She reaches under a yellow Volvo and feels the dirt. Bone-dry. Bingo. This car, she figures, has been here since before the rain.
She rises, wipes her hands against her pants. Makayla leans against the window, peers inside. Big car for one guy. Why would one man, traveling alone, drive such a big car? The driver’s seat is pushed way back, which adds up. They said he was about 250 pounds. On the back seat, there’s a blanket and a candy wrapper. She sees an open paperback, spine up. The cover features a picture of a red dragon. Teen fantasy. It worries her.
It worries her a lot.
The doors are locked.
Standard procedure says it’s time to pass this over to the state police. Makayla thinks about the possibility of two hikers lost up there on the mountain. A driver, and someone in the front passenger seat, and someone else—almost surely a teen or tween—in the back. Three people total. Did she have probable cause to search the vehicle?
Makayla steps back, slowly circles the car. She spies a flat rock that’s out of place, just inside the driver’s front wheel. She reaches down, lifts the rock, and lo: one set of car keys. Makayla smiles to herself. It’s good to be queen. She recalls a phrase she’s heard before: “Ask forgiveness, not permission.” Better to act now and risk breaking a rule than to wait and lose valuable time. She presses the key fob, and the lock springs open.
She pops open the glove compartment. It’s jammed with registration papers, old maps, work gloves, a tire gauge, some sort of silver cylinder—Makayla realizes it’s a whistle—and a screwdriver. Beneath it all, she finds a wallet and a cell phone. Yeah, this is the guy. He’s from downstate. David Taylor. Access to the phone is blocked, needs a fingerprint to open it. Damn technology. There’s another phone in the side pocket of the front passenger door. Dead batteries. Cell phones start roaming for a signal out here and it kills the battery, real quick. Nothing’s easy. She reaches back and picks up the paperback, flips it open to the inside front cover. There’s a name printed in what appears to be a young person’s handwriting: CARTER TAYLOR, MS. TURO.
Another thing: the car smells like dog. Sure enough, there’s hair on the back seat. Black and gray, medium length. Shepherd, maybe. She flips down the visor for the front passenger seat. Down drops a pair of cheap sunglasses. Kind of funky, though. Judging by the shape and style, almost definitely a girl’s. “Not good” just got worse. Now she’s thinking: two kids.
Makayla remembers the three sandwiches in the father’s backpack. He was carrying food for all of them. He had the waterproof matches, too. And the map. She recalls the detail from his discovery, how he flashed his rescuers a peace sign. Two fingers. Maybe he was trying to say something else. Two more, up on the mountain.
They haven’t come down yet.
Time to call dispatch. A lot of wheels will start turning. Makayla needs to stay rooted to the scene until she can pass it over to the next ranger in charge. More will trickle in. They’ll organize a command post, possibly at the volunteer fire department in town. Maybe bring in the van to establish a mobile command post here. Call in the volunteers, start marking up the grid maps, coordinate the search. It won’t be until tomorrow morning when they’re fully operational. Makayla looks up at the sky, checks the height of the sun, studies the clouds. She aches to get up that mountain, start running trails. Thinks: If those kids have been out there more than twenty-four hours, the dogs won’t be any use at all. The trail’s gone cold.
28
[WAY-FINDER]
Carter pushes himself too hard on the ascent and now pays the toll. The hike leaves him hunched over, hands on his knees, gasping for oxygen. Two nights on the hard ground and three days without proper nutrition have left him drained, near empty. He shakes his head, mind sputtering.
He slugs down water. Waits.
His heartbeat slowly regulates.
Carter rises and looks around. The view opens up: wider, farther, more expansive. He spots a lake an incalculable distance away. It looks far, but doable. From these heights, it’s hard to tell. He holds out an arm and traces the pathway: go down and bend around, then straightaway. Is that his lake? Crater Lake? Where they were supposed to go? He can’t know for sure. Carter’s brain struggles to perform an impossible task—to form a mental map of the route from the car. He wants to rediscover the trail. How did we get here? In his fantasy, he yearns to stand on his tippy-toes to see his father impatiently waiting by the car down below. Imagine that.
To his right, one tree stands in the forefront, like a proud sentinel, taller than the rest. More elegant, more perfectly proportioned. Almost as if it doesn’t belong. A lone survivor from a stricken tribe. The tree takes the general shape of an umbrella, with wide-spreading limbs and a few low-dropping branches that seem to wave at him in greeting. Come, Carter, the tree says, I know the way.
Carter is surprised.
The way-finder knows his name.
Carter walks, limping slightly from blisters on his right foot, to the great tree. The gray-green bark at its wide base is furrowed with deep grooves. His head tilts back in wonder. Must be fifty feet tall, a hundred years old, maybe more. Somehow he senses, like never before, that he is in the presence of an ancient, mysterious, living creature. An alive thing. Hey, Tree. His right hand reaches up, fingertips almost touch the lowest branch. Carter impulsively jumps, catches hold, swings his legs, hoists himself up.
He begins to climb.
Rises branch by branch.
He exhilarates in the texture of the rough bark in his hands. His arms straining, reaching; his back muscles heaving. Timbers creak and groan, and still he climbs. He comes to a spot where two branches split off and upward, forming a V shape. Carter finds that he can lean against the trunk, his feet propped against each limb, and comfortably relax. He’s a lookout in the crow’s nest, a pirate’s skull-and-crossbones flag blowing in the breeze, searching the riotous green sea. Shiver me timbers!
The view stuns him. The land is laid out like a map draped across an uneven table. Off in the distance, beyond what he accepts to be Crater Lake, he discerns a dirt road needled through the wilderness like a faint thread. So far away, but at last a lodestar for his wanderings.
I am not lost, he thinks.
I am right here.
This is the gift he receives from the tree.
A small, low-flying plane angles past. Carter waves uselessly. No one can see him. Carter’s attention turns to the tree itself. The leaves are oval with saw-toothed edges and silver-green undersides. A bug inches along a limb. Carter wonders if it has ever touched the ground. Its entire life spent in this aerial wonderland. A wind sweeps across the valley. The wide canopy moves; debris patters down. The upper trunk, the great ship’s mast, sways in the swells. Carter is not afraid. He feels as if he is nestled safely inside a lost kingdom, a palace of secrets. Does the tree know I’m here?
