often calling out a sighting.
“Yellow warblers at three o’clock. Orioles in the sycamore you’re just passing.”
Carter, not wanting to break his stride, would catch a quick glimpse and move on.
“Poison oak on the side of the trail. Veer to the left.”
Carter knew a fair amount about flora and fauna, but Del, he knew, was a walking omnibus. There wasn’t a bird or a plant or a critter that Del couldn’t spot at a hundred paces, and reel off everything about it from its common name to its scientifically accurate title. He could tell you what trees grew where, what birds nested in them, which nuts and berries were edible, which ones would kill you. Once, Del had been bitten by an adult rattler out west — two hours’ drive from the nearest hospital — and he’d lived to tell the tale. He still had the scar on his thigh to prove it.
“Now that’s what I call a fixer-upper,” Del said as they came up on an abandoned and boarded-up shack nearly hidden by the trees. Carter heard him leaving the trail to explore it. “You think I could afford it?” Del called out.
Carter pulled his water bottle out of his backpack, took a couple of swallows, then joined Del. The place looked like something from one of the Grimm Brothers fairy tales, with dilapidated wooden walls, a broken-down porch, splintered boards crisscrossing the window. Del stood in the shade and gathered his long white hair into a tight knot that he then bound with a thick rubber band.
“Doesn’t look like it was ever a ranger station or anything like that,” Del said. “It’s just too damn peculiar.”
Carter read the fairly predictable graffiti on the boards. SM LOVES MJ, with a heart around the initials. THE SAND-MAN RULES! (Whatever that meant.) A backwards swastika. (Like most young, would-be Nazis, this one was too dumb to get the symbol right.) In the shadows within, all he could see were cobwebbed rafters and the frame of an old wooden rocking chair.
That was rocking.
Carter lifted his shades and peered in more closely. Now he could see more — a filthy mattress off in the corner, a glass and a pewter plate beside it. A dusty lantern hung from a nail. But there was no one inside.
“You thinking of making an offer?” Del said. “’Cause I saw it first.”
“No, it’s all yours,” Carter said, still scanning the single small room. “But I think it might be occupied.” The chair had stopped rocking, and was now as still and deserted as everything else.
“Occupied by what?” Del said, stepping up next to Carter and looking into the gloomy interior. “I don’t see anything.” He moved to his left and examined the rusted lock and chain that hung from the hasp. “Guess we’ll have to call the real estate agent if we want to take the tour.”
“Guess so,” Carter said, moving away from the window. He didn’t know why exactly, but he didn’t want to hang around here anymore. He wanted to get back out of the shade and into the sunlight — even the hazy sun that was all the day had to offer.
“A waterfall sounds good right about now,” Del said.
“Don’t get your hopes up,” Carter said as he waded through the tall grass and back onto the trail.
The ascent was steeper from here on up, and though it was a joke compared to the real wilderness climbs that Carter and Del had made, you still had to watch where you were going. The trail had rocks and roots and sudden declivities, and every once in a while there was a story on the evening news about somebody who’d been bitten by a snake or even — though this was extremely rare — attacked by a hungry mountain lion. Thinking back to Central Park in New York, Carter remembered plenty of mugging stories, but no mountain lions or rattlers.
Most of the time, they had a ravine on their left, with a slow-running brook spilling over mossy stones. Carter was encouraged to see that, even if it wasn’t much, there was actually some water still running in it. Maybe they would find the waterfall operational, after all. Only one other person had passed them coming down the trail — a wiry guy using a ski pole as a walking stick, who’d said something in German. Otherwise, the day was so hot and muggy, the sky so overcast, that everybody must have gone to the beach or the movies.
Carter plowed ahead, and gradually the sound of the water running in the brook began to increase. A good sign. The path wound through shady patches of overhanging trees, oaks and sycamores, and then into open stretches of hot dusty soil, where the canyon suddenly rose up on both sides, its flanks covered with scrub and chaparral and clumps of yellow wildflowers. The air was scented with dry mesquite and sage and, alarmingly… smoke.
Carter stopped and, shielding his eyes with one hand, looked across the canyon. He couldn’t see any flames or even any smoke, but if he listened carefully he could hear what sounded like a helicopter’s blades.
“A brush fire?” Del said, drawing up beside him.
“Sounds like a chopper—”
“Or an airborne tanker.”
“Yeah, on the other side of that rise.”
They stood silently on the open trail, waiting. “Everything’s so dry this season,” Carter said.
Del, nodding, said, “Perfect conditions for a catastrophe.”
After a minute or two, and without another word, they pushed on, the trail reentering a heavily shaded stretch. Up ahead, they could hear the promising sound of falling water. The year before had been a wet one, and the runoff must still have been sufficient. Carter ducked his head to avoid an overhanging branch. A pair of lizards skittered across the trail, their long blue tails shining.
About a hundred yards up, there was a cool, shady clearing, and a narrow little footbridge across the now rushing stream. But what Carter saw was confusing. That girl, the blonde one in the Juicy shorts, was sitting on the ground, with her legs splayed out in front of her. Her boyfriend was hanging his head over the rail, spitting, or vomiting, into the brook below.
Carter’s first thought was, How’d these two kids get up here ahead of him? And then he remembered that there was a shorter, more direct trail, which they must have taken.
His second thought was more worrisome. Standing in the shadows, closer to the rock face where Carter could now see a torrent of clear water racing down a gorge and spilling under the footbridge, was a big man with light blond hair, cropped short in the military style. He was smiling broadly and brandishing a wooden staff. He said something Carter couldn’t hear, and another man, whom Carter hadn’t seen, stepped out from behind a tree. The second man answered, and they both laughed.
The girl, looking dazed, just sat there.
Instinctively, Carter crouched down, and when he turned to warn Del, he could see that Del had already moved off the trail and into the shade and had his own finger to his lips.
Something was very wrong with this picture… and Carter wanted to know more before he gave himself away.
The man with the buzz cut sauntered over to the boy, who was spitting what was now clearly blood into the water. “Lose any teeth?” the man said, almost solicitously.
The boy shrugged, like he didn’t know, but kept his head down.
“Next time you might.”
The man turned around to face the girl. “You know better now, right?”
She didn’t answer him, either.
The other man, in a short-sleeved shirt that revealed some sort of tattoo on his forearm, picked up a fishing bag and said, “C’mon on, Stan. Let’s get going.”
But Stan didn’t look ready to leave. Stan looked as though he were just getting started.
“You’re not bad looking,” he said to the girl. “You know that, right?”
She nodded, once, barely perceptibly.
“So what are you doing with this piece of shit?”
She had no answer to that one — and by now Carter had seen enough. He glanced over at Del, who lowered his head in assent, and Carter stood up, and in a loud voice said, “Hey, it’s right here, Del! That waterfall!”
He barged into the clearing, making as much of a commotion as he could, and strode onto the little bridge, next to the Hispanic boy.
“You take a fall?” he said, putting his hand on the kid’s shoulder and steering him away from the guy named Stan. “Let me take a look at that.”
With his eyes, he swept across Stan and his tattooed partner, making damn sure they knew he knew what
