Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
Wolf
Wolf had got to know Camellia better on the long drive down. She was a natural optimist, but he thought the phone call from her ex had let some of the air out of her balloon.
The further he’d driven, the more her buoyancy had returned, though. She walked briskly, with a bounce in her step. He liked her. It felt good being around her.
The landscape held more boulders than trees.
Rock formations that protruded from shrub-scattered patches of all but barren ground seemed to rise higher the farther they hiked.
They’d passed a fork in the trail, where the other way had veered downhill.
Their route went up. There was a water spigot right at the fork, the last one before their site, according to the colorful map.
The air was hot and dry, and it smelled different than the air back home. Something inside Wolf drank it in, and he wondered if his lungs remembered it from when he’d been a baby. It felt that way. There was a sense of relief, like a weight rising from him. What was that?
Maybe it was because his ancestors had come from here.
“Whoa,” Camellia said. She’d stopped in the trail. He walked up beside her and stopped as well.
They were at the top of a cliff, with a sheer drop to the river far below. Across from them stood an equally high cliff. The river had split the stone, and its face was an earth-tone rainbow, with stripes of red and brown and black and tan, and bits that sparkled when viewed from certain angles.
Camellia moved closer to him and clasped his upper arm in her hand. “This is just…wow. How far down is the river, do you think?”
“A thousand feet?”
“Look how small those people are!” She pointed.
Far below, at a spot where a strand split off from the river, a group of people had gathered. One of them held something that wafted smoke.
“It’s some kind of ceremony,” Camellia whispered. “She looks Native.” And just as she said it, the woman far below paused and looked up, right at Wolf.
He raised his hand, and she raised hers back.
And then she bent near the water’s edge and the smoke stopped. When she rose, everyone in the group hugged her and each other. Then they got into some waiting canoes and floated around the bend into the faster moving waters.
He watched them until the last canoe was out of sight.
Camellia squeezed his arm. “Wolf, this was a really good sign.”
“Maybe it was,” he said. Then he turned her way “But I don’t want to camp up here. What do you say we look for a site down below, near the river?”
She pulled out her phone, tapped it several times, and shook her head. “No signal. I can’t book a different site, or even see which ones are taken.”
“If somebody shows up, we’ll just say we read our map wrong, apologize, and move on,” he said. “No harm done. I really want to go down there—near where those folks were. Let’s head back to the split and take the righthand fork this time.”
“You got it.” She reached for the bigger bag. “My turn to carry this for a while. Especially since we’re heading downhill.” She slung it over her shoulder and trudged off ahead of him.
Willow, Big Bend National Park
Willow had braided sage and sweet grass into a thick bunch that produced ribbons of fragrant smoke when it burned.
She’d held it up in honor of her ancestors, as she whispered a plea for their help in finding out what had happened to her brother.
As the smoke rose and twisted, she turned to each of the four winds, repeating her gestures and words.
The air had been still, but a brisk gust swept down the cliff faces and rode the river, buffeting them all. She was facing west, lifting her gaze and her smudge bundle as one.
At the top of a cliff stood a man. He had long black hair, blown by the wind, very much like her own.
He raised a hand. She started to raise hers, then a burst of wind threw red dust into her eyes, and she had to squeeze them tight and cover her face.
She knelt to extinguish the burning smudge and splashed some river water into her eyes to rinse the grit away.
When she looked again, the light had shifted, and man was no longer in her sight.
“I think my brother must be dead,” she whispered so softly only Drew could hear.
“Why?” Drew whispered back, her blue eyes wide and round.
Drew had been sticking super close to Willow since she’d learned about her lost sibling. Willow knew her littlest cousin was trying to play big sister, and it touched her. “I think I just saw his spirit.”
Drew frowned. “You mean that guy who was standing up on the cliff?”
“You saw him, too?” Willow asked.
“Sure, I did. That was no spirit. That was just a hiker, taking in the view. It’s a national park, Will.” She put her hands on Willow’s shoulders. “Are you okay?”
Willow looked up at the cliff again, then sighed and nodded. “Yeah, I’m okay. I’m glad we did this.”
The guides came back, and it was time to go. They all got back into their canoes, and as they paddled away from shore, Willow felt oddly reluctant to leave. She kept looking back through tears. Her cousins were all watching her now, not just Drew. The family was worried.
As they rounded a gentle bend, she could see how rough and fast the water became up ahead. They were going to ride the small stretch of rapids. The shuttles to take them back to their van would be waiting on the other side.
As she looked at the white water, she thought that even if her brother had survived this far, he wouldn’t have made it any farther.
“Shoot, my phone!” Maria-Michelle cried.
Willow turned to see her cousin’s phone bounding away from her in its plastic zipper bag. “I need that phone!” she cried.
She wasn’t being dramatic. She was the town vet.
Her being without her phone was not an option.
Being the Brand man nearest, Baxter sprang into action, bracing his arms on the sides of his canoe and vaulting over the side into the water.
He let out a hoot, so it must’ve been cold, sank out of sight, but then popped up again.
The water rushing past him was neck deep, and he was dang near as tall as Ethan. Still, he half-swam, half-waded toward the phone.
The phone, however, was faster.
“It’s not going far!” the guide from the boat they shared said.
Everyone angled their boats into a small strand that split off from the side of the river, and Baxter continued wading into the calmer shallows.
“See?” the guide called.
Sure enough, the air-filled baggy floated straight into that gathering of garbage on the shore. There were pieces of clothing, a shoe, a backpack with its straps torn off, multiple beer and pop cans, and dozens of other things.
“Everything that doesn’t sink winds up here,” said Graham, the guide between Trevor and Orrin.
Willow sat in her canoe, which was resting in the shallow inlet, and stared at the pile of garbage in the water along the shore. “This must be where they found the blanket,” she whispered on tight vocal cords. “Maybe the baby washed up here, too.”
“Baby?” Lupe sounded so stunned it made Willow turn to look at her. Her eyes were round and horrified.
“I’m—”
“Writing a screenplay,” Drew filled in.
Willow said, “Yeah. Writing a screenplay.” What a joke.
She could barely stand to write arrest reports.
Then she looked at her cousins all around her, and for a second just appreciated that they were all around her.
Each acknowledged in silence that they’d heard the lie and would support it.
“A baby gets swept away in a flash-flood, and somehow, survives.”
“Right,” said Trevor. “So the first bit of research is to find out how that could’ve happened and whether it’s even possible. Right, Willow?”
“Exactly, Trevor.”
“I thought you were a police officer.” The guide was concerned. She probably feared she was aiding and abetting some baby-dumping ring.
“Deputy sheriff.” Not the same thing. “The writing is…a—”
“Side gig,” said Drew.
The guide frowned, looking at her colleagues as Baxter grabbed the phone and waded back to the boat. He handed it up to Maria-Michelle, then climbed back in his own canoe, while Ethan and their guide Matt kept it upright.
“Thanks,” Maria said. “But now you’re soaked.”
“He’ll be okay,” Lupe said. “It’s only another twenty minutes to the van. You all ready?”
Everyone looked at Willow, including Baxter, who was soaking wet. “Let’s go then.”
The current picked up, and then the roar of the water got too loud for conversation as the cousins were swept into the rapids.
Wolf
Wolf gathered wood for a small fire, and Camellia laid it up over dried grasses and weeds and lit it with a lighter. Fires were forbidden in the park at certain times of the year, but not just then.
The fire licked at the dried-out driftwood they’d gathered along the river’s edge, where they’d pitched their tent.
Wolf settled into the squatty camp chair beside it.
The thing was canvas with a wooden frame, its legs were only six inches long, and it folded smaller than your average umbrella.
There’d been two of them in Camellia’s “everything we’ll need” bag.
There was a tiny village with a few more amenities nearby. They’d hiked out to a diner there to grab sandwiches for their dinner.
His beautiful companion was sitting in another chair beside him, her long legs stretched out in front of her, crossed at the ankles. He liked the way the fire lit her eyes and told himself he shouldn’t.
At least she was starting to relax a little bit. Maybe because there’d been no further sign of Earl or his Blazer, and because they were far from Hobbsville. He thought she felt safe. And that might be partly because he’d kept his feelings to himself and she was starting to trust him.