The Cat Dancers

53

Cam pocketed the binocs and scrambled right down to the edge of the cliff, windmilling his own arms to stop himself as he felt loose gravel slide out from under his boots. He got down on his hands and knees and looked over the edge, but he could see nothing but the river as it crashed along its rocky course in the canyon. He felt suddenly exposed on this jutting, narrow ledge. Still down on his hands and knees, he backed away from the edge before standing up. His heart was pounding and he realized he’d been holding his breath. He had to get down there.

Down where? He hadn’t even seen where they went in. If they went in, and weren’t both smashed on those huge boulders lining the river’s tumbling course. He picked up the binocs and went back to the edge to sweep the opposite riverbank, looking for any signs of Kenny’s red parka or the tawny body of the cat.

Nothing. Not a sign of anything but that solid black current, grinding away at its evolutionary task.

He rocked back on his haunches, trying to decide what to do. He had to go down there. Had to look. Directly below the cave, and then downstream. The river wasn’t deep, except where it poured into geologic holes, and there were plenty of big rocks midstream for things to hang up on.

Daylight was coming on, and the cat was probably dead or so badly injured that it presented no danger, nine lives not withstanding. A hundred feet could smash the life and breath out of any animal hitting water. He had no illusions about finding Kenny alive. What the cat hadn’t done to him, the fall probably had.

“Hold that thought,” Kenny had said. What the hell was it with these guys? Did being a cat dancer mean you really did want to die? It was almost like one of those guys who, when surrounded by cops with guns drawn and pointed, went for his. “Suicide by cop,” they called it. NAFOD: no apparent fear of death.

He made his way down the slope, following what he thought was the same trail they’d come up the night before. Or this morning, actually, he thought. His heart was heavy. Kenny Cox had to be dead. He wondered what signs he’d missed all these years, how many times he’d ignored Kenny’s furious rants about how the bad guys were winning and how the lawyers and the judges were killing America in their cancerous pursuit of fees and power.

He paid no attention to his surroundings as he went down, half walking, half stumbling across the slope, starting small avalanches of loose rock and coming close to spraining an ankle several times. By the time he reached the river, he was sweating under all the layers of clothing. The sun wasn’t visible in the canyon, but the sunlight was, painting the rocks and trees with vivid color in the pristine mountain air. He stepped out onto a large boulder, wondering if it had come down from the mountaintop and how long ago, and surveyed the river.

Still no sign of Kenny or the cat. All he could do was head downstream, taking periodic looks from any rock high enough to give him a vantage point. He kept getting stuck among the boulders, climbing around some and over some and then finding that he couldn’t go forward at all. He was half-tempted to jump into the river and let that powerful current take him downstream to the mouth of the canyon. And freeze to death halfway there, he thought. Then he saw something red about a hundred yards downstream.

Cam yelled Kenny’s name and tried to hurry, but he only got himself stuck again. He had to backtrack, splash through pools of icy water, climb a rock to see how to get farther downstream, and then get down and do it all again. Twenty minutes later, he was close enough to use the binocs. He couldn’t be sure, but it looked like Kenny was still in his parka, crumpled up against the face of a huge boulder in a tiny backwash of the river’s main channel. He yelled again that he was coming, then set out again to navigate the maze of tumbled granite.

When he finally reached Kenny, he had to slide down the side of a boulder to reach the little sandy beach. Kenny lay in a sodden heap on the wet sand. The river was much louder down at its edge, a constant reminder of its unrelenting power. He realized that there was no way back up except to climb the wet rock. He knelt down to examine Kenny.

The cat had done tremendous damage. Kenny’s face was clawed, as was the material of his parka. And his hands-Cam had to close his eyes for a moment. Kenny had his knees drawn up tight into his stomach, and the bottom of the parka was redder than the top. His face was a pasty gray, almost white, and his mouth was open slightly. Cam was sure he was dead, until Kenny’s chest jerked with a shallow cough.

“I’m right here, man. I’m right here,” Cam said, loudly enough to be heard above the rushing water. He wanted to lift Kenny’s head off the wet rock, but was afraid to move him. Kenny opened his eyes, blinked, and then tried to focus.

“I’m right here, Kenny,” Cam said again, feeling helpless. Right here, and there isn’t a goddamn thing I can do for you, he thought.

Kenny’s eyes rolled out of focus for a moment and then came back to look at Cam.

“Hoo-ah,” he croaked, and tried to grin, not quite pulling it off. “Pocket.”

Cam didn’t quite hear him. “Pocket,” Kenny said again. “Camera.”

Good God, Cam thought. All this, and he wants to know if he got his fucking picture-his “face.” He looked down at the parka and saw a small lump in the right-hand slant pocket. He reached into the pocket gingerly, got his fingers on the camera, and felt some squishy things under the material-things he didn’t want to feel. The camera was attached to the inside of the pocket with a nylon lanyard. Kenny groaned in pain as Cam unclipped and withdrew the camera. It was one of those little throwaways and it was soaking wet.

“I got it, Kenny,” he said. “It’s right here.” He held it up so Kenny could see it. Kenny focused on the camera and then back on Cam’s face. He was trying to say something, but no words were coming out.

“Don’t try to talk, man,” Cam said. “Just hold still. I’ll get us some help.”

“No. Fucking. Way,” Kenny gasped. “I’m done. All done.” He grinned again, and for a moment Cam saw the Kenny of old. “One face too many.” His chest heaved in a wet cough and he blanched white with the pain.

Cam sat back on his haunches and tried to think of what to do. Little wavelets swept into the pocket from the main river and then went back out tinged with pink. Kenny’s lips were working again.

“Bomb,” Kenny said. Cam bent closer.

“What, Kenny? Bomb? What about a bomb?”

“Bomb,” Kenny said again, visibly weaker. “Not us.”

“I know, man,” Cam said, putting his hand on Kenny’s broken head. “You told me that, and I believe you.” He wanted to ask who, if not them, but he was too choked up to care right now. Kenny Cox was leaving the building, and there was nothing he could do about it, not out here, and probably not even back in the world.

Kenny said something, but Cam missed it. He bent down to hear. “Not us. Them. Tell McLain. Look in the mirror.”

Cam blinked. Had he heard it right? Look in the mirror? Kenny’s left hand came up and grabbed Cam’s right hand. He squeezed tightly, surprising Cam with the strength of it, and then his head flopped back and he was gone.

Cam pried Kenny’s lifeless hand off and stood up. Kenny seemed to shrink before his very eyes, and then Cam noticed that the water seemed to have risen in the little pocket. The sodden hood of Kenny’s parka was being tugged by a current that hadn’t been there before. Cam looked around. He was surrounded by fifteen-foot-high boulders, but the sunlight in the canyon was much brighter. Was it his imagination, or did the river sound different? And what could change that quickly out there to make it rise?

He looked around again. It was definitely rising. Water was swirling around his boots and coming close to floating Kenny’s body. He wanted to get Kenny out of here, up onto the dry rock above, but there was no way he could get himself and two hundred-plus pounds of dead body out of this little pocket. He zipped the tiny camera into his own pocket and began to wedge his way up the slippery rock. When he got to the top, he discovered that the rock he was on was now an island, separated from the shore by a six-foot-wide ribbon of swiftly flowing black water. The river was definitely wider now, casting other streams parallel to the main current throughout the rock-strewn canyon. He didn’t wait. He slid down the other side of the rock he was on and dropped into the water, which fortunately turned out to be only knee-deep. He struck out for the next rock, trying to ignore the vise of cold gripping his lower limbs. He got to the next rock and then the next, finally scrambling up onto a wide sandbar covered in baseball-size gravel.

He sloshed across the gravel bar and five feet up onto what looked like the real riverbank, which was littered with shattered dead trees and muddy tufts of flattened grass. The main current was now invisible behind the bigger boulders, but it was definitely making more noise, and he could hear the sound of smaller rocks being cracked against bigger ones as the current reclaimed more and more of its channel. He felt a cold wind rise as he sat down and pulled off his soaked boots and socks. He looked west and saw the edge of a black cloud building up over the high ridge about six miles away. He thought he saw a curtain of rain sweep out of it, but it was probably sleet. Somewhere upstream, it was probably raining. Not good.

He wrung out his wet socks as best he could and then put them back on, fighting with his boots to get them laced. He had to get back down the canyon and across that line of boulders at the elbow before they, too, became submerged and trapped him in the canyon. He had no illusions about what could happen: There were clear signs fifty feet above him of how high the river could run, and it would be even higher in the narrow defile below. He got up and started downstream as fast he could go, trying not to look at that dark horizon forming above and behind him as he threaded his way through the boulder field and the snags.