Boundary waters

48

How long he’d been running, Cork couldn’t say. An hour? Three? He felt as if he’d been tortured for a century. Each stride was like drawing a rusty saw blade across his shoulder. He moved no faster than a rapid walk. The old road hadn’t been used for logging in years and was overgrown with rye grass and wild oats and timothy. Two swathes of crushed stalks straddled the center as if two huge snakes had passed there, side by side, an indication that a vehicle had traveled that way recently. Forest service, Cork guessed, or maybe mushroomers. He tried to keep to one of the swathes. Whenever he strayed, his feet tangled in the tall grass and threatened to trip him. Another fall would put an end to what little resolve he had left.

Under a blue-white sky and a brilliant autumn sun, the North Woods had warmed again. Cork was soaked with sweat. He knew if he kept on this way he’d dangerously dehydrate. It was rapidly becoming a question of which of the hellhounds that pursued him would bring him down first.

He had to think about something besides the pain, something to drive him on. He pulled up the image of Grimes fallen among the dripping raspberry vines. Next, he conjured the giant with the shaved head and saw him again, laid out under a gray sky, leaking dark red blood onto wet rock. Dwight Sloane materialized-a good man-with a hole blown clear through his body and the knowledge of his own death rising up into his brown eyes like water in a spring. Cork imagined Elizabeth Dobson, dying alone, afraid. He saw these things clearly, the tragic images falling over his eyes, blinding him to the trail in front of him, curtaining him from the beauty of the woods around him. He was deep in death, slogging through a quagmire of blood. It was like one of those awful nightmares when he tried to run but his feet would not move. And ahead of him, beyond the reach of his hand or voice, he could see Shiloh. She stood in an empty room, in the silence that was the music of death. He saw her turn toward an opening door where light burst through like the flash of fire from the muzzle of a gun. A shadow darkened her face. He heard her screaming.

And the screaming broke through his vision. He was seeing the trail again, and the blue sky and the evergreens. The screaming became a horn honking at his back. He stumbled to a halt and turned around.

A black pickup nearly half a century old rolled slowly to a stop and a head crowned by a wild rag of white hair poked out the driver’s window.

“Hell’s bells, if it ain’t Corcoran O’Connor.”

Cork recognized Althea Bolls, a widow who’d lived alone in a cabin in the Superior National Forest since the pickup she drove was new. He hobbled to her truck.

“Lord, boy, I’ve seen roadkill looked better’n you.”

“I need to get to Allouette.” His throat was parched, and the words came out thin and brittle as autumn leaves.

Althea patted the good arm he rested against her door. “Sure, I’ll take you. You just get yourself in this truck before you fall right over.”

Cork got in the passenger side. On the seat next to Althea were a pair of Leitz binoculars, a copy of Palmer’s Handbook of North American Birds, and a notebook. Althea was head of the local chapter of the Audubon Society and often made excursions into the deep woods to chronicle the birds. She shoved the truck into gear and lurched forward. “There’s coffee in that thermos there on the floor,” she said. “Help yourself. Sorry I didn’t bring anything stronger. Looks like you could use a snort. What happened to you anyway?”

“Long story,” Cork said, and, for everyone’s sake, left it at that.