stand being alone. Sitting on the damp new ground cover, looking at the mule ears pushing up from the ground the snow had finally left, he could rest for a second. Mikey swished his little pole through the water and Callie wandered around, and Danny wished like hell that none of it had happened.
He should have thought up a better cover story. Like, a kidnapper was after them and their parents wanted them to hide out with Danny for a few days, that would have been so much better. But he never seemed to have time to plan right. He’d get the germ of an idea about how to handle something and the next thing he knew, it blew up into something awful.
They had spent the morning hours finding and setting up a camp. He liked this location, with the tents butted up against the rocky caverns that kept hibernating bears cozy in winter. He got on his dead phone twice and pretended to check in with George and Darryl. “Yeah, we gotta stick it out tonight all by ourselves, something came up,” he had told them.
He’d give old George a real call pretty soon, when it was convenient. Good old George, called him a loser, then begged him to do his dirty work, then stiffed him.
“But we don’t have anything orange,” Mikey was saying, peering into the small fishing kit.
“We got worms, though.” Danny brought out the night crawlers he had picked up in town, and showed Mikey how to thread one up the shank of a hook, leaving some dangling over. “Use a number six hook for this bait, and blow ’em up with a worm blower.” He showed the kids how. “Another trick is using sugar cubes on a bigger hook,” he said. “That’s the method in clear lakes like Emigrant and Margaret. You fix ’em on the line with rubber bands. You got to cast real carefully, but when they melt in the water, the rubber band comes loose and the worm looks real natural. Or you can always try grasshoppers.”
“I’m hungry,” Callie said.
“That’s why we’re catching fish, Callie. To eat. This is Outdoor Camp,” Danny said.
“I’m cold.” She hugged her little sweater tight.
“You can’t be cold. It’s eighty degrees!”
“I am.”
“Well, sit down here in the sun. That’ll warm you up.”
“No.”
“Then go back there in the tent and get your bag to wrap up in,” Danny said, working to keep the meanness he felt out of his voice. “Go on.”
“No.”
“Fine.” He ignored her and worked on getting Mikey set up. After a few minutes, she went back to the tent. She came back wrapped up in an old sweater of his mother’s he had brought along.
You would expect that the one who would be hard would be Mikey. Although he was little, he was nearly thirteen and seemed on the ball, but he bought Danny’s every story. Callie was something else. She doubted every word, and wouldn’t let up, wanting to call Jolene. He let her drive the big black Explorer a few feet up the jeep trail, but even that just scared her. She cried when they came to a big rock and he made her go over it anyway. She had to learn, didn’t she? Fear was no protection. You had to do what you had to do.
He felt sure this time, he would get action. They had food, bait, and plenty of fuel. All the Siesta Court Bunch had to do was pay him what they owed him and he would go to Arizona or Montana and get lost. If it took the kids to get their attention, okay.
He didn’t want to think about what would happen if he didn’t get his twenty thousand. He had been stupid, giving the whole down payment to Coyote. But Coyote knew the ridge mountains, Coyote could get the kerosene in a way that wouldn’t point at Danny, and Coyote was company, like the Lone Ranger and Tonto.
Coyote turned dangerous with his loose lips, though. The whole thing would have been much more fun with Wish. But he had known early on that Wish wouldn’t follow him anywhere anymore.
A chill settled over the stream and around them. Callie went a little way away to pick wildflowers. “Remember what I told you about the bears. Stay in sight,” he reminded her. Working bait on a hook, with Mikey happy beside him, butt firmly embedded in the loose dirt, Nikes kicked off, Danny couldn’t help thinking about when he first arrived in Carmel Valley to live with his
You did everything right, you tried to be a friend to people, someone they could call on for help. In return, you got cheated and put down. Those chiselers on Siesta Court had reeled him in with their grand plans, acting like his good buddies, not a single one with the balls to see the thing through except him!
And then they turned on him. Stiffed him. Whined, Oh, we never asked you to set those other fires! We never meant you to kill anyone!
Well, they had put toes over the line when they had hired him to burn across the river and decided to break the law. They went from being respectable to being criminal, and there was no way to go back ever again. You couldn’t wipe the slate clean once you took that first little step over.
Not that they understood that at first. Those developers made these guys feel little, and they didn’t like the feeling so they broke the law and felt like big shots all of a sudden. There was plenty of celebrating about that!
But when things got tough, and one crime led to another, then everything was Danny’s fault, right? They had wives, kids, jobs. No need to pay what they owed! No, they were just bastards and hypocrites.
His dad used to say people were no damn good. Danny never believed it when he was a dumb kid. Well, he didn’t have enough experience with friendship then to understand how right his dad was.
That was before Wish turned up in Carmel. For a few weeks Danny was happy. They did everything together.
This thought made him clear his throat and spit. Wish turned against him like everybody did and tried to leave him flat in the dust, more alone than ever.
Wish was always bragging about his classes, how hard they were, or his great job working with a detective. He could never understand that Danny’s life was different, and headed somewhere different. School was not for him. A long, slow drudge life working at the auto shop wasn’t going to cut it either.
And then suddenly, one day, no auto-repair shop job.
While he was still looking for a job, he would see ads in the paper sometimes and would think, That job’s perfect for me. Well, this job was perfect.
Set a fire.
He knew something about that. He liked the work.
Tell that to smug Wishy-washy, who didn’t want to talk to him anymore. Or don’t tell it, a smart decision after all. Danny had wanted to call him a few times and let him know he had it in the bag. He had worked things out. Great things were in store, etc. But something made him hesitate, maybe a sense of self-preservation. Wish wouldn’t approve. Danny knew that. He didn’t like thinking he cared about Wish’s approval, but he did think about how good he would feel showing up with a new car and a pretty girl beside him someday at that run-down old house Wish lived in in Pacific Grove.
“Go get another job, Danny,” Wish had said, after the repair shop closed. Same old conversation a hundred times until one day Danny looked into the eyes of his old friend and former admirer and saw-
Disgust. Yeah, disrespect and contempt for everything he was. Old Wish couldn’t hide his feelings from Danny.
That was when Danny got the idea that Wish could die in his place up on Robles Ridge. He would lure Coyote up there the same day, two birds, one can of kerosene.
Okay, a couple cans.
Wish looked enough like him to pass for a few days so he could stay off the scope until he made the men pay his money, and Wish was handy, and Wish wasn’t a friend, not anymore. He had entered the world of Danny’s enemies.
What did Wish know, with his cushy existence, that mother of his always there to back him up instead of dying slowly in a rotting cabin with her wasted husband? In real life, Danny didn’t waste his time pointing unloaded fingers at his enemies. When old friends turn on you, that’s such a big hurt, you do stupid things.
In real life, when George and the rest announced after he set the second fire all by himself, Hey, you’ve gone too far, blah blah blah, and said they wouldn’t pay him, he put on the pressure, real pressure.
When he heard Wish survived the fire, he got anxious and confused. He had set things up right and it should have worked. The police, finding the two bodies, would be satisfied that they had their two arsonists. He thought back to that day, convincing Wish to go when he didn’t want to go, getting that drunk, Coyote, up there so he could shut his big mouth at the same time.
He should never have hired Coyote to help him on those first two fires in the first place. He’d given him the whole down payment so he could keep it clean and keep all the rest. Then, up there on the ridge that day, the fire went the wrong direction when the wind came up. He took too long whacking Coyote and changing clothes with him and then he couldn’t get the Doc Martens off Coyote’s feet. How he’d managed to get the pants on him over those boots he’d never know. And he’d really hated sacrificing his concho belt.
By the time he got back to Wish, the fire was so intense he had a few bad moments thinking he might not make it out himself. So he hadn’t hit hard enough with that rock, or been thorough enough, checking to see Wish was dead or near enough. He flashed to grabbing Wish for just a second from behind, the terror that Wish might somehow turn around and look him in the eyes.
Still, all he needed was his money now, and he’d go find some big mountains far away, and it wouldn’t matter that a few things went wrong.
One thing for sure, he’d keep on with the fires.
Fire was the most intense, rushing gusher of relief. Fire filled the emptiness inside him, and he felt fulfilled, caught up in his destiny, active, happening. Productive, destructive, unbelievably powerful.
Born to burn, Danny thought to himself, but he felt hollow and terrified and thought again, now they’re all after me. And there was this surprise that kept pushing up from inside, this dismay, that he had killed Coyote and Donnelly and that woman; if he thought a lot about it he’d hate himself. Later for that, he’d get crazy at some motel out in the desert when he was safe and cry and shout it out and find a way to live with himself.
Next to him, Mikey thought he caught something and in his excitement, tangled the line on a log. They spent a long time disengaging the line and getting him set up again. Danny took the opportunity to mentally talk himself down.
“I don’t think there are any fish in this stream,” Mikey complained.
“Well, we won’t know if we don’t give it time, will we?” Danny asked, proud of how patient he acted with these two pains in the ass.
They moved downstream and Mikey started fishing again. Now Danny was jumping out of his skin with boredom. He hated waiting, but waiting was what was called for right now, and his patience would be rewarded, he was sure of that. He would sneak out later that night and make some calls… get things arranged, finish with the kids, and be on his way to the Big Sky Country. Lots of Natives there. He’d go to powwows and get with the People: he was half Washoe, he would be accepted.
Callie chose that moment to return, both grubby little hands holding bouquets. “Smell this,” she said, shoving some yellow flowers under Mikey’s nose.
“Coconut,” Mikey said, eyes closed. “Tropical.”
“They look like some primroses Grandma planted,” Callie said. “They aren’t open yet. Maybe they open at night like jasmine?”
“I’m hungry,” Mikey observed.
“You didn’t catch any fish?” asked Callie.
“No problem,” Danny said, reeling his line in. “We’ve got other food.”
“I thought you said you knew how to fish,” Callie said.
