When She Was Bad

1

The road to La Guarida curved downward to the canyon floor, then turned due east, narrowing to a rutted dirt track that ran alongside and a few yards above the south bank of Little Bear Creek. The going was easy enough at first, but when the redwood canopy closed in overhead, Irene rediscovered two things she’d forgotten about the wilderness at night: how bright and numerous were the stars, and how utterly dark it was in their absence.

For the next three-quarters of a mile or so, she and Pender allowed themselves the luxury of flashlights. Walking single file between the ruts, shielding the beams with their palms, they could hear the creek chuckling and murmuring below them to their left; to their right loomed the south wall of the canyon.

“Pen?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you think we’re doing the right thing?”

Pender was in the lead; he moved to his right and let Irene catch up. “You’re probably too young to remember the Davy Crockett craze.” With Irene walking the hump and Pender in the rut, their heads were almost level.

“Before my time. I’ve heard about it, though.”

“It was huge. When I was around ten, myself and every kid I knew, we’d have killed for a coonskin cap.” Pender dropped into line behind her and unzipped his windbreaker.

“Anyway, this one time, I remember I’m lying on the living room rug watching Walt Disney on our old Sylvania Halo Light, it’s the episode where Davy tells his friend Georgie that his motto has always been Be sure you’re right, then go ahead. And my father, he’s an ex-jarhead, Semper Fi to the max, he’s sitting behind me in the armchair we always called Daddy’s chair, smoking his Camels and drinking his Genny-that’s Genesee beer-and I hear him grumbling, ‘Nobody was ever surer he was right than Ol’ One-Ball’-which was the only way he ever referred to Hitler.”

“Smart man, your father,” said Irene, smiling to herself-she was trying to envision Pender as a ten-year-old, but the only picture that came up for her was a fat bald kid in a coonskin cap.

As the canyon widened, the creek curved away to the northeast, while the road continued to hug the canyon wall for another quarter of a mile before branching off. Irene stopped when they reached the fork, holding up her hand like a scout on point. They switched off their flashlights.

“The cabin’s that way,” Irene whispered, pointing toward the wide, grassy lane sloping downward to their left, descending through the trees toward the faintly audible murmur of the creek.

“How far?” Pender whispered breathlessly, bent over like a winded football player with his hands resting on his knees; little points of colored light, the kind you see when you rub your closed eyes, were swimming in the blackness.

“Maybe a hundred yards to the clearing, then another, I don’t know, fifty, sixty feet to the house?”

Pender gestured toward the other, narrower fork. “Where does that lead?”

“All the way up to the ridge-on a clear day, you can practically see Japan.”

“But is there a way to get back out to the highway?”

“From the ridge? Only by jumping off the cliff-it’s several hundred feet straight down. Other than that, this road is the only way in or out.”

Excellent, thought Pender-not having a back door to cover greatly simplified the mission and improved their prospects. And more good news: he was starting to get his second wind. “Wait for me here,” he told Irene. “I want to scope out the cabin-I’ll be back in a couple of minutes.”

“Forget it, I’m coming with you.”

“Laak fuck!” That was a little Caribbean-ism Pender had picked up on St. Luke. “Remember, you agreed to let me call the shots.”

“Actually, I believe all I said was that it sounded reasonable-that’s not the same as agreeing.”

Pender glared down at her. “Of all the goddamn childish stunts,” he whispered fiercely. “This is not a game here, Irene-I’m not going to debate with you.”

“Good choice,” said Irene. “Come on, let’s get going before the moon comes up.”