Donny whispered how he hated the Japs and never wanted to be captured by them-they knew how to make you talk. I told him about the Inquisition and all the tortures they’d invented for getting confessions.
They had this one thing called the press, I said. If you were accused of a crime and didn’t make a plea, the King ordered you to lie down. Then he piled rocks on you until you confessed the truth or got crushed.
How big were the rocks? Donny asked.
I don’t know.
What if you had thirty-what if you had a hundred-no, wait, what if you had a thousand rocks on you and then you decided to tell the truth?
You could, I said. But if you said you
Donny hesitated, and I thought I understood.
I know, I said.
At the next camp, only two people were around, a man and a woman, who were sitting naked on a rock in the river when we first arrived, but kept to themselves afterward. Donny and Mr. Cheetam fished for a while but quit after Donny's hook got caught in the trees too many times. Mr. Cheetam said, Don’t worry about it, Donny. It's no good down here. Higher up the water's colder and we’ll catch tons of rainbows, maybe some Dolly Varden.
We ate a great meal of dehydrated chicken tetrazzini and pilot biscuits and chocolate for dessert. Donny and I shared more smokewood. Now and then we added sticks to the fire and the light breathed out and made a circle around us. I love getting away from it all, Mr. Cheetam said.
He tipped back his flask and in the bright curved silver I could see the fire flaming up.
Once upon a time, Mr. Cheetam said, there was a boy and girl who were very much in love.
Where was this? Donny asked.
Oh, Mr. Cheetam said, it doesn’t matter, does it? Love's the same everywhere you go, so let's just make up a place.
How about the Eurekan Territory? I said.
O.K., Mr. Cheetam said. The Eurekan Territory, that's where they were in love. It was a small place, and everybody knew everybody else, so eventually people figured out this boy and girl had a thing going. You know what a thing is, right?
Donny said he did.
Good for you, Mr. Cheetam said. Well, this thing was frowned on by everyone. People took different sides, against the boy, or against the girl, everybody blaming everybody else. But the boy and girl were madly in love and you can’t stop love, not when it's the real thing.
He went to his pack and pulled out a big bottle and refilled his flask. When he came back he said, You know what that's like, to have a real thing?
Donny said, Yeah, I know.
I mean really real, Mr. Cheetam said.
How real? I said.
Mr. Cheetam ignored me. To hell with what anybody thinks, these kids, these lovers, said. So one night the boy meets the girl on the edge of town and they drive up a dark winding road to a lover's leap. They can see everything from up there, but they’re not looking. No sirree, Bob. The boy and the girl sit in the car, spooning, as we used to call it back in the day- making out, and listening to love songs on the radio, until one of the songs is interrupted by a special bulletin. A prisoner has escaped!
Does the prisoner have hooks instead of hands? I asked.
Yeah, Mr. Cheetam said, that's the guy.
How’d you know? Donny asked.
I knew because the story wasn’t true. The girl hears something outside, and the boy says, Oh, baby, baby, don’t worry, we’re way up here above everything, we’re safe. The boy tries to get at the girl, and the girl keeps hearing something outside. Eventually it's no fun, and they go home. When the boy opens the door for the girl to drop her out he finds a hook clawing and banging at the door handle, just clinging there, ripped right off the prisoner's arm.
Mr. Cheetam didn’t scare me, but Donny was scared.
We were quiet for a minute, and then I told them about when my dad was driving in his car. The other car came out of nowhere, I said. And my dad was hanging half out the door. His foot was stuck under the clutch and his head was banging on the road. He was dragged about two hundred feet. He was in the hospital for a month. My mom died.
No one said anything, so I added, That's a true life story.
You don’t think mine was? Mr. Cheetam asked. He looked at me strangely and winked.
Well, I said, yeah, I do. I know it is. I heard about those lovers before.
Mr. Cheetam stood up, stretched, and fell down. Donny and I looked at each other, then we got in our sleeping bags.
Your dad sure enjoys whiskey, I said.
In the middle of the night, Donny said, Hey, you hear that?
Come off it, I said.
I swear I heard something.
There's nothing out there, I said, but Donny went over to sleep in his dad's tent anyway.
We reached a sign that pointed different ways: the High Divide and the Low Divide. We took the high, up and up. There were fewer trees, and we climbed on loose rock called scree, and the air was thinner. Donny had an ugly blister on his heel and complained, and Mr. Cheetam got impatient with him. Just pull yourself up and get going, he said. Don’t fall behind.
Finally we crossed a field full of pink and yellow wildflowers, and at the far end, where the path ended, was a lake. The surface was perfectly clear and placid and we could see ourselves.
Here we are, Mr. Cheetam said.
Skinny-dipping, Donny said.
First things first, girls, Mr. Cheetam said, so we hopped to, setting up camp and scrounging enough wood for the night.
Donny and I stripped naked and jumped off the cliffs. No one else was around but when we swam and shouted and splashed our voices bounced back and forth off the rocks. Ricochet, we yelled. We dove and dove. Then we lay on a hot flat rock. I noticed that Donny had hair on his balls and he probably noticed so did I. You want to smoke a stogerooni? Donny asked. Nah, later, I said. We were stretched out and quiet: blue sky, yellow sun, white mountain-everything was perfect but Donny got antsy doing nothing for so long and took another dip. He came up fast and said, A fish! I saw a fish! And he got his fishing pole and caught a rainbow, like pulling a prayer from the water.
Good work, Donny, Mr. Cheetam said.
The fish wasn’t all the way dead yet and Mr. Cheetam had to slap its head against a rock. Blood came out the eyes. The knife blade sank into the skin with a ripping sound. What do we do with the guts? I asked. Toss ’em in the lake, Mr. Cheetam said. We don’t want any animals coming into camp. Bears? Donny said. It's not impossible, Mr. Cheetam said, but not likely, either. Maybe the Sasquatch, Donny said. Mr. Cheetam said to shut up about that damned Sasquatch. It's time you grow up, he said, shaking Donny's arm. Jesus, Donny said, rubbing himself.
Mr. Cheetam wrapped the fillets in foil and set them on the fire. It was soft out now, not dark but not light, either. Our shadows were weak around the fire, and Mt. Olympus was tinged pink and purple, and the wind died down.
Hey, I said, what about the Quinault?
Yeah, the Quinault! Donny said. You said I’d get to walk across it.
Oh crap, what was I thinking? Mr. Cheetam asked himself. You already did and I forgot, God damn it!
We ran back through the darkening wildflowers. We found a little stream about a foot wide and three inches deep that you would never think was a river but it was. There's your mighty Quinault, Donny, Mr. Cheetam said. Donny asked if we built a dam would the river dry up below and Mr. Cheetam laughed, saying, No, I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. We bent down and drank and splashed our faces in the water. We listened to the little river, trickling in a whisper. It was almost like nothing.
