Chapter Eleven
Eleven
The rest of the drive to Trentham Gorge was quiet. Micah kept his attention on the road, driving the unpredictable route by memory. I surprised myself by realizing that even after all this time, I could have done the same.
He hadn’t said much after telling me about the day he found Johnny, and I didn’t ask more questions. I was afraid that his answers might give teeth to the pain already writhing inside of me. I was already walking a tightrope of what I wanted to know and what I didn’t. But it seemed to change by the day, the hour, even the minute. That was the way of grief, I was realizing. It was a barrage of pain that was so unbearable that it made you numb. And then out of nowhere, something made you feel again and the cycle started over from the beginning.
Raindrops dotted the windshield as we drove deep into the gorge, and after a while, I noticed Micah giving a series of concerned glances up to the darkening sky. I followed his gaze to the gray clouds visible through the canopy. If the weather didn’t hold, we’d have to stay the night. The roads we’d come down weren’t safe when there was runoff, and it wouldn’t be the first time we’d gotten stuck out here.
“Just like old times, right?” I said, my voice a little uneven.
The gorge was something like a rite of passage for teenagers in Six Rivers. Once you got to high school the legends about the place found their way to you, and before long a new generation of kids with their driver’s licenses were spending their Saturdays making the trip to the swimming hole.
I looked into the back of the truck, where Smoke was still curled up on the pallet bed that took up what little space there was. It looked like Micah had the camper stocked with gear and food, but that’s not what made me uneasy.
I reached over the back of the seat, my hand sinking into Smoke’s fur in an attempt to anchor myself. I’d honestly never liked the idea of being way out here in the middle of the night. The forest seemed to come alive in the dark, like I could feel its eyes following me. Hear its thoughts. That had been one of the things I was glad to leave behind.
When the rocky walls of the landscape began to pull apart outside my fogged window, I reached up, wiping it with the sleeve of my shirt. The cliffs that hugged the road gave way, opening into a huge, gaping vein chiseled into the earth.
From what I’d learned about the CAS project, this place made sense. Owls needed vast, biodiverse hunting grounds with plenty of prey and cover, and the gorge was just that. Towering walls rose up from the narrow ravine with a sea of trees on either side. Ferns grew in the maze of cracks on the cliff face, with boulders peeking out of the brush. The enormity of it all only grew greater the deeper we descended down the muddy road, the stones and tree trunks getting wider and taller by the second. It was beautiful, but that word in itself didn’t do it any kind of justice. The gorge was like an unraveling seam in the universe, a portal to a new realm where nothing else existed.
The farther we maneuvered down the switchbacks, the more I could feel it. Johnny seemed to press through the cracks in the truck, like the pressure of water leaking in. Way out here, there wasn’t a single soul to feel it, except me. I glanced at Micah from the corner of my eye, watching him carefully for any sign that he could sense it, too. But his attention was on the road.
He steered around the little rivulets dragging divots in the mud, and I tried not to count them as they multiplied, ignoring the fact that the rain was falling harder. Micah seemed to be doing the same, not bothering to acknowledge it when he finally had to turn on the windshield wipers.
Once the road began to level again, he pulled off at a gravel turnout, where a wooden marker was driven into the ground. When the engine cut off, the sound was replaced by the patter of rain on wet stone and the babble of water in the ravine. I stared out the window, eyes fixed on the trailhead.
“You want to wait and see if it lets up?” Micah leaned forward to look up through the top of the windshield. The fog was thickening, curling in the air until the deep, saturated colors of the forest paled.
I opened the door of the truck in answer, afraid that if I had any more time to sit and think about it, I might change my mind. My boots hit the ground and my eyes slowly lifted to the cliffs far above. They only seemed to reach farther away the more I looked at them.
When the crack of gravel sounded behind me, I flinched, turning to see Micah standing at my back. There was a blue raincoat in his hands, and he was already wearing his own black one, the hood pulled up over his beanie.
“I had an extra in the back.” He held the blue one out to me.
I took it, slipping my arms into the sleeves and zipping it up. The smell of him wrapped around me, like the warmth of summer piercing through the cold.
“Thanks.”
The rain was still picking up, the incessant tap of it hitting the canopy high above us in a sound that reminded me of waves pulling from the sand on a beach. Micah and I looked at each other, both thinking the same thing. There was no way we were getting out of here before nightfall.
There were many times that we’d either chosen to spend the night or were forced to, drinking around a fire and camping in our cars. A night just like that one was when Griffin Walker died. That’s why I’d been so unnerved when Johnny had told me that this was one of the locations he had included in the project. I hadn’t understood why he’d ever want to return to this place.
I looked at Micah. “Did you ever come back here? After what happened to Griffin?”
His mouth pressed into a straight line. “Just once.”
I nodded, understanding. The day he’d come to find Johnny had been the first and only time he’d ever returned.
“Ready?” he asked.
I nodded. “Take me to where you found him. The exact spot.”
Micah started up the trail without a word, and I couldn’t tell if he was afraid for me or for himself. Smoke stuck close to my side as I followed, and we walked down into the open mouth of the gorge until we reached the water. We took the trail that ran alongside it, crossing the ravine at the enormous skeleton of a great fallen redwood. All around us, the brilliant greens glowed bright where they were interspersed with red bark and jet-black rock. I found my hands instinctively reaching toward them as I passed, pressing a palm to the rigid skin of an ancient tree or letting my fingers graze the delicate fronds of a fern. Everything was so… alive, making it feel impossible that anything could ever die here. But maybe, in a way, nothing did.
Johnny was steeped in the descending haze, gathering like a storm in the narrow valley as we walked. As soon as the black-and-white marbled cliff face appeared, my heartbeat picked up. My feet stopped midstride, eyes following the veins of brilliant color. At the top, a gnarled oak tree was growing, roots exposed, into the crevice of stone. Small clusters of leaves adorned the dwindling branches like last, gasping breaths.
The longer I stood there, the smaller I became, until the vision of them cracked and shifted, replacing the memory of the first day the channel between me and my brother broke open. I could still see Johnny up on those cliffs, dropping down to the ravine below as the steep walls of the gorge flew past. I could still feel my pulse sync with his, the stomach-dropping feeling pulling me beneath the surface of the water.
The sweet smell of earth filled my lungs and then I exhaled, breath fogging in the cold. With it, the memory faded, but I could feel Johnny so close now that at any second, I was sure that I’d catch another glimpse of him in the trees.
Micah turned with the ravine once, then again, before he parted from the trail. The rush of water grew dim as I climbed the slope after him, and his steps finally slowed. My feet stopped a few paces behind his, and the icy air seemed to suddenly rush beneath the rain jacket, finding my skin.
Micah reached up, rubbing his face before he cleared his throat. He kept his back to me. “This is it.”
I stepped around him carefully, my gaze falling on a patch of sagebrush that stretched through the trees.
“This is where I found him.”
That single word punched a hole in my chest again, breathing back to life the gaping cavern within me. They’d found him. Because he’d been lost. Alone. Because he was gone. The singular, all-consuming gravity of the fact that Johnny was dead came rushing back, like a wave that had pulled far, far from shore.
My eyes moved over the trees, the sound swelling in my ears. From this position, there didn’t seem to be a good vantage point of the gorge, and if anything, it was heavily obstructed. It might make sense if there was a specific subject that nested in this area, and it would be difficult for me to locate with my own naked eye, not knowing what to look for. But Johnny hadn’t had his camera or his field notes that day. That was still the thing that didn’t add up.
Maybe he’d gotten into an argument with a hunter out here. Maybe he’d stumbled upon someone poaching or won a hand of poker against the wrong group of loggers. The scenarios had been running through my mind for months, like flipping through a deck of cards. There had to be more to all of this. There had to be some kind of explanation.
“Can I have a minute?” I said, hoarsely.
Micah didn’t look sure that he should leave me, but his arm brushed mine as he turned back toward the trail. I waited for his steps to get farther away, and when I couldn’t hear them anymore, I walked toward the tangled underbrush, eyes fixed to the spot Micah had pointed to. There was an almost indiscernible shape there, like the forest had grown back over the imprint of footsteps and cracked twigs and crushed ferns.
I knew the exact place that Johnny had lain, because the earth under my feet was drumming with it. Like the steady but quickening beat of my heart. I could almost hear it.
Slowly, I sank down to my knees, finding the soft, damp soil. My hands pressed into it, the smell of sagebrush breaking open in the air. This was where my brother’s soul had been loosed from his broken body.
I lowered down in the shallow depression, chest rising and falling as I turned onto my back and let my gaze lift to the towering treetops. It was the same. The same image that had blinked open in my mind the day he died. A patchwork of swaying light breaking through the canopy. I hadn’t imagined it. It was real. That flicker of sun beyond the branches was the last thing Johnny saw. And somehow, it had traveled through time and space to find me.
Slowly, the rest of the picture was filling in. The pressure in my chest, the sound of footsteps. A distinct, metallic click. I could hear breathing. Deep, labored breaths as the feeling of warmth pooled on my skin. And when I heard the voice, it was threaded in the wind.
Johnny.
The warped, distant tenor of a woman’s voice sounded in my ears as my body became heavier. And that was all. The crunch of footsteps trailed away, the light above blurring, and my hand found the phantom hole in my chest. I pressed my fingers there, feeling the exact place the bullet had struck him. How long had he lain here? How long had it taken for his heart to stop? For his vision to go dark?
A hot tear slid down my cold temple, disappearing into my hair. I could feel him in the dirt. The wind. The piney scent of the trees. Johnny was gone, but he hadn’t left this place. He hadn’t left me. Not yet.