Chapter 6 #3
“This is the spot you described, yes,” she said. “You said something was found near here? That would make sense, as the current dumps refuse near here all the time.” She nodded at the spot a little further upriver. Its shore was brushy, no clear finger of ground like there was here.
“They say the river takes its garbage out here,” said one of the other guides.
Drew winced a little at that description and sent a worried look at Willow.
“Even if he somehow survived this far,” Willow said softly, giving voice to what they were all thinking, “he couldn’t have made it much farther.” She looked at where the water became raging white-water rapids, with boulders winking in and out of the depths.
“What’s out here?” Drew asked, looking inland.
“Big Bend National Park.”
Drew looked at Willow, and their eyes held for a moment before Will gave her a subtle nod. This was the spot then. “If you guides could give us some privacy?” Drew said, “I’ll text you when we’re ready to move on.”
“No signal,” Lupe said. “We can come back in twenty minutes. Is that enough time?”
Again, Drew looked at Willow, who already had tears in her eyes. Then she said, “Twenty minutes should be fine,” in a gruff voice.
“Okay. See you in a little while.” The guides peeled away from the little group of cousins. Drew watched as Willow opened her backpack and took out a small pouche, a bundle of herbs, a lighter, and an eagle feather.
Wolf, Big Bend National Park
Wolf steered the pickup through the campground’s entrance. They’d stopped off at a grocery store nearby, where everything was overpriced, and got a few supplies—boil-in-the-bag meals and drinking water among them.
They drove up to the gatehouse, and a uniformed woman with curly orange hair and a friendly smile said, “Welcome to Big Bend. Can I see your reservation?”
Camellia passed her phone to Wolf, and he held it out the window. “Oh, nice spot. You’ll have a view of the river from there.”
“I thought it was on the river,” Camellia said.
She leaned across Wolf to say it, and his hand rose without his permission.
He stopped it halfway to stroking her hair.
What the hell kind of an impulse was that?
They were friends. He’d promised. She was afraid of men, thanks to Earl.
One false move on his part, and she’d tell him to hit the road.
Even now, she didn’t trust him. Not really.
He recognized it, because he’d been raised by a woman who trusted no one, and he trusted very few people himself.
Camellia and her mom were a rare exception to that. He wasn’t sure why. He hadn’t decided to trust them; he just did. It was a gut-level thing.
And not the only one. The more he was around Camellia, the more he wanted to be around her.
“Mmm, it’s sort of on the river,” the ranger said. “Great site though, as long as neither of you sleepwalk.” She laughed softly as she handed a one-sheet map out the window. “I marked your route.”
“Thank you, um, Sally,” Wolf said with a quick glance at the ranger’s name badge. He took the map and passed it to Camellia, who’d returned to her own side of the car. Sadly.
Stop it.
“You have a great stay, folks.” Ranger Sally waved them through the open gate. He drove slowly over the paved paths, following directions to a parking area with a sign: “No motor vehicles beyond this point.”
“Guess we walk from here,” Wolf said as he parked the truck.
“We’ll have to reconfigure our things a little,” Camellia said, hopping out.
She had a bounce in her step as she went around behind the pickup and climbed right up into its bed.
Then she found a seat and unzipped the gigantic duffel.
“There’s room for some of the food we picked up in here, and we can stuff the rest into our backpacks.
Here, hand me one of those grocery bags from up front. ”
He did, and then watched as she fit things into the packs like she was playing Tetris. She moved the soft items—bread and chips and the like—into their smaller packs, the ones that held their clothes, and zipped them in with care.
“That should do it,” she said, passing his backpack over the side. “We can take turns carrying the big one. She pulled her own bag’s strap over her shoulders, then hopped out of the truck again, reaching back for the larger one.
He beat her to it. It wasn’t all that heavy, which surprised him since she’d said it had “everything they’d need.” He hoped she was right.
He locked the truck, then followed her. She’d spotted a wooden stand, covered to protect it from the weather, with a book on a chain, and several pens in a cup. “SIGN IN STATION: TENT CAMPING.”
Beside the station, there was a faucet labeled “potable water.” He paused to fish his empty canteen out of his pack and filled it. “Hand me yours,” he said. “Save our bottles for when we need them.”
Camellia did, and he filled it, then passed it back to her. “There should be another tap near our site,” she said, pointing at one of the smiling blue droplet symbols that dotted the map.
She wrote her name in the sign-in book and passed him the pen.
He leaned in, wrote his first name, then stopped with the pen hovering over the page.
Camellia said, “Your last name doesn’t feel real to you right now, does it?”
“Trouble,” he said. “It’s just a fancy word for trouble. At least my first name means something.” He lifted up his arm as he said it, and he saw her notice the bracelet there.
“Wait…is that the bracelet from Cilla’s journal?” He nodded. “How?” she asked. “It was so tiny!”
“A Native fellow had a stand outside the gas station the other day. Looked to be a hundred years old. Said his name was Turtle.”
She repeated the name softly.
“He was selling jewelry. I got the notion to show it to him. Well, that old man took it right outta my hand and started picking its strands apart. Then he grabbed a couple lengths of cord and somehow wove them into what was already there.” He turned his wrist slowly, showing off the intricate braids and knots, then twisted it back to the moonstone with the wolf head engraving.
“Wolf means something to me. It was attached to me when the river spat me out.”
“Oh, no, that’s not what the river did,” Camellia said. “The river gave birth to you. Your second birth.”
He didn’t meet her eyes, but her words touched him so much his throat got tight. She had a perspective that was lighter than his, more positively focused.
He was still staring at where he’d written his name in the book.
“Even without a real surname, you know who you are.”
“An Indian who’s never gone camping?” he asked, meeting her eyes at last. “Native American, I mean.”
“I think you get to say Indian if you want to.”
He lowered his head. “I don’t even know what tribe or clan or anything about my people.”
“We’re going to find out, Wolf. We’ve barely got started.”
“You really think there’s anything here to find?” He looked around, like there would be an answer out there amid the scrub brush and boulders.
“You know what?” she asked. “Just leave your last name off. And when we find your origin story, we’ll come back here and you can write it in then. Now let’s get a move on, so we can set up camp before dark.”
He nodded and put the pen down. “I like the idea of coming back here to write my real name, if we find it.”
“When we find it.”