The Survivor

Chapter 59

During the drive back to his father’s cabin, Nate’s muscles hummed with energy. The weakness remained, sure, but the current of adrenaline seemed to be recharging them. He passed a few outsize forest ranger trucks, a fancy Jag, a minivan or two, but mostly the canyon roads were quiet.

When he arrived, Janie, the kids, and his father were playing Pictionary before the fire as Casper slumbered on the hearth. Janie’s head snapped around at Nate’s entrance, her face gentle and sorrowful; amid the greetings they shared a private understanding. He had just run a few errands, nothing more. And tonight he’d run a few more.

He quickly excused himself to the bedroom, the game raging at his back, Jason’s booming voice drowning out the competition: “It’s a cat a cat with a wig dogs playing poker the Cat in the Hat chimney sweep CHIMNEY SWEEP!”

Nate peeled off his clothes. His foot dragged across the bathroom tile, which did not bode well, and he had to take extra care stepping over the lip of the tub. In the shower he leaned his head into the stream as if trying to shove through it, warming his tendons and joints as a prophylactic measure against the strain to come. He spoke the mantra in his mind: I can still feel this. My nerves still function. My muscles still work.

After an appropriate delay, Janie appeared. He heard the door click, and she sat on the sink, and they shared in each other’s company silently. After, he shaved, brushed his teeth, and dressed slowly, meticulously, Janie sitting on the quilt, knowing. He pushed buttons into place, threaded his belt, smoothed down his jeans over his socks, his hands trembling slightly but obeying.

The board game had broken up by the time they emerged. Jason and Cielle were out front on the porch swing, Nate’s father cleaning dishes.

Nate found two cans of Campbell’s tomato soup in a cupboard and cranked off the tops with a rusty opener. He cleaned the jagged circles of metal, dried them on the thigh of his jeans, and slipped them into his pocket. As he walked out, leaving the open cans full on the counter, his father just looked at him. Janie followed him to the front door, his father and Casper trailing.

Stepping onto the porch, Nate could feel his heart like a fist pressing up toward his throat. Jason picked quietly at his guitar, and Cielle sat sideways against one armrest, reading a vampire book, her feet wedged into him for warmth. Distracted.

Nate regarded her for a moment, the beat in his throat intensifying, then leaned over and kissed her on the forehead. A fine mist had come up, dappling the nodding leaves framing the porch. The Jeep waited, parked right off the steps. The sky grew darker by the second. He could feel the soup-can tops pressing into the meat of his thigh, and he thought of the brutal use he intended for them. Soon. Too soon.

“I’m gotta go take care of a few things,” he said.

Jason looked up. “Want me to drive?”

The thing was, the kid was serious.

“If you run into Brobocop,” Jason continued, “you might wish I was there.”

“Right,” Nate said. “Yellow belt, green stripe. Jeet Kune Do.” Jason started to protest, and Nate held up a hand. “Kidding. I know, I know, tae kwon do. Chillax.”

“Just sayin’. I got your back.”

“I know, Jay,” Nate said. “Thanks.”

He brightened. “Jay,” he repeated. “Right on.”

Nate’s father lingered near the Jeep, peering through the rear window. The barrel of an assault rifle poked up, barely in view. Nate saw the old man’s posture wilt, his down-bent face loosening with realization, and something in his own chest gave way a little.

Cielle spread the book across her knee. “Where you going, Dad?”

Nate’s father stepped in front of the window, blocking the rifle from her line of sight. Nate gave him a tiny nod of appreciation, and his father looked away, his mouth bunching.

Nate turned back to his daughter. “Just need to handle some business with the people who are after us.”

“Like when you got all mad at those guys at the bank?”

“Oh, honey,” he said, “I haven’t gotten mad yet.”

Her extraordinary brown eyes, set off by those long lashes, took his measure. “Is it gonna be okay?”

He remembered a trip they’d taken when she was four, their airplane shuddering over the Rockies. He’d been convinced they were going to drop out of the sky, but he’d told her it was all fine, that’s just how airplanes flew sometimes, and she’d gone contentedly back to her coloring book while he and Janie had white-knuckled their armrests and braced for a plummet.

“Yeah.” He smiled down at her. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Satisfied, she returned to her book.

Her take-it-for-granted faith in him was the most precious gift she could have given him.

He stepped from the porch into the mud, and his father came up off his lean on the Jeep. They regarded each other, his father’s face shifting as he grappled whatever he was feeling back under control.

Nate said, “Dad, I want to tell you how much-”

“Don’t you have somewhere to be?” He squeezed Nate’s shoulder once, gently, then lowered his head mournfully and moved inside, the screen door banging after him.

Janie stood in the mud with Nate, before the Jeep. The mist had given over to a faint rain, her blond wisps turning dark at the points. Focusing to make sure his hand listened to what he was telling it, Nate put the key in the door.

“Bye, Dad!” Cielle called out from the porch swing. She waved, flashed a big smile, then went back to her book.

“I’m gonna tell her to come over,” Janie said. “You should get to hug her at least-”

“No,” he said. “This is perfect.”

A few guitar chords vibrated the air around them, Jason working out the progressions of “Blackbird” on the porch behind them. Janie pressed her fist to her mouth, and her shoulders rose, but she was fighting everything down, not wanting Cielle to see. Nate lowered his hand to her as if asking her to dance.

She took it, her flesh cold and wet in the rain.

Water ran down her face, mixing with tears. The delicate lines of her collarbone, visible beneath her soaked T-shirt, rose and fell with her quick breaths. A smile tugged at her mouth but didn’t quite take. “See ya around, Husband.”

“Catch you on the other side, Wife.”

She stepped into his kiss, and he gripped her narrow shoulders, raised and trembling against the cold. He savored the feel of her full lips and then pulled away, and they touched foreheads, the rain making them blink. Those translucent blue eyes. Her wide, lovely mouth. The sporadic band of freckles against her milk-white skin.

“I was drowning,” he said, “and you saved me.”

He tore himself away, climbed into the Jeep, and drove off, wiping at the wetness of his face. He didn’t look back, because his self-control would not withstand another glimpse of her.

Around the bend he became aware of Casper galloping beside the Jeep, still favoring one front paw, and he skidded over in the slush and climbed out. He walked back, and they confronted each other in the road.

“Sit,” he said, and the dog obeyed.

Nate put down his hand. “Shake.”

Casper offered up a muddy paw.

Nate said, “Stay.”

Casper’s square head pulled back regally on his muscular neck. The yellow of his eyes shone through the brown, intelligent wrinkles furrowing his forehead, and it seemed in the way it has seemed for centuries between men and dogs that he understood precisely what was being said and what was not.

Casper withdrew his paw, let it drop to the wet earth.

Nate straightened up. “Good boy.”

He kept the muddy smudge on his palm, not wanting to wipe it off. In the rearview he could still see Casper there, sitting in the down-slanting rain, watching him drive away.