After a while, it started to snow. I kept going. I was wearing my warmest thermals and I was covered in Gore-Tex, and I had enough food in the pack for three days. And if Mom and Letty drove up in the snow and couldn’t find me because I’d come back down, they’d really start freaking. So I headed on up, except that as soon as I could, I cut over to the road. I didn’t see any fresh tire marks, which meant they were still behind me. I tromped along, checking the GPS every once in a while to make sure the signal hadn’t moved, and then I heard a horn and turned around and saw headlights.
It was Dr. Mills. “Hey, Mike. I drove by your house when I got off work, and your mom said you’d headed up here.” I scrambled into his truck; he had the heater blasting, and it felt good. “I hope you don’t mind that your mom didn’t come. My old truck can take the wear better than that fancy Suburban she has, and there’s only so much room in here.”
There was still plenty of room in the front seat. I glanced back at the flat bed: Dr. Mills had brought a carrying case, but of course on the way down, we’d want to be able to have Bobo in front with us, where it was warm. The part about Mom could have meant just about anything, depending on whether it was his excuse or hers. If it was hers, she could have been hoping that Dr. Mills would run a male-bonding father-figure trip on me, or she could have still been waiting for the doctor to call, or she and Letty could have been trying to force David to stay in the house somehow. Or all of the above. If it was his-I didn’t want to think about what it meant for him to be saving wear on her SUV, or not wanting her in the truck at all. Dr. Mills is married. I didn’t want to think about him driving down to Carson.
So I looked at the handheld again. “He’s in an old mine up here,” I said.
“Mmm-hmmm. That’s what your mom told me. How long since he’s moved?”
“Not since the satellites came backup,” I said, and Dr. Mills nodded. He stayed quiet for a long time, and finally I said, “You think he’s dead, don’t you? That’s what Mom thinks.”
The snow was coming down harder now, the windshield wipers squeaking in a rhythm that kept trying to lull me to sleep. Dr. Mills could have told me he didn’t want to go on; he could have turned around. He didn’t do that. He knew I had to see as much as I could. “Michael,” he said finally, “I’ve been a vet for fifteen years, and I’ve seen plenty of miracles. Animals are amazing. But I have to tell you, I think it would take a miracle for Bobo not to be dead.”
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady.
“With coyotes,” he said, “usually it’s quick. They break the necks of their prey, the same as cats do with birds and mice. So unless Bobo got away for a few minutes and then got caught again, he wouldn’t have suffered long.”
“Okay,” I said, and looked at my hands. I wondered how long it would take me to break David’s neck, and how much I could make him suffer while I did it. And then I thought, there goes David again, making me want to do something stupid, something that would only mean I was hurting myself.
It took us ten more minutes to get to the mine, and by then the snow was coming down so hard that we could hardly see a foot ahead of the truck. We got out and started walking toward where the mine should have been, snow stinging our faces. It was really cold. I couldn’t see anything but snow: no rocks, not even the scrubby pines that grow up here. And within about ten feet I realized that the mine entrance was completely buried, and that even if we’d been able to find it, we’d probably need to dig through five feet of snow to get to Bobo.
“Michael,” Dr. Mills yelled into my ear, over the wind. “Michael, I’m sorry. We have to go back.”
I tried to say, “I know,” but my voice wouldn’t work. I turned around and headed toward the truck, and when I was back inside it, I started shivering, even when the heat was blasting again. I sat in the front seat, with the empty space between me and Dr. Mills where Bobo should have been, and shivered and hugged myself. Finally I said, “You get warm, just before you freeze to death. If the coyotes didn’t kill him-or if he went up on his own-”
“He’s not in pain,” Dr. Mills said. “That’s a cliche, isn’t it? But it’s true. Michael, wherever he is now, he doesn’t hurt. I can promise you that.” And then he started telling me about some poem called “The Heaven of Animals,” where the animals remain true to their natures. The predators still hunt and exult over their kill, and their prey rise up again every morning, perfectly renewed, joyously taking their proper part in the chase.
I guess it’s a nice idea, but all I could think about was Bobo, shivering, hiding his head under my arm because he was scared.
So we drove on down the mountain, and pretty soon the snow stopped coming down so hard, and when we got back down to the developments, there was hardly any snow at all. You could still hear the construction equipment, and gunfire far off. Maybe the target shooters had moved farther down to get away from the snow. Dr. Mills hadn’t said anything for a while, but when we started hearing the guns, he looked over at me.
Don’t, I thought. Don’t say it. Don’t say anything. Just take me home, Dr. Mills, please. Don’t say it.
“I never told you,” he said, very quietly, “how sorry I am about what happened to your dad.”
I stared straight ahead, thinking about Bobo, thinking about the hiker who’d died on Peavine. I wondered how long it would take the snow to melt.
When Bobo was a kitten, Dad used to dangle pieces of string for him. He always dangled them just high enough so Bobo couldn’t get at them, and he’d laugh and laugh, watching Bobo jump. “We’re going to enter this cat in theOlympics, ” he said. “Look at him! He must’ve made three feet that time!”
Bobo had lots of toys he could play with anytime he wanted, balls and catnip mice and crumpled-up pieces of paper I’d toss on the floor for him. But the minute Dad dangled that string, he’d stop playing with the stuff he could catch and go after the thing he couldn’t have.
“Just like you,” Mom always told him, watching them. “Just like you, Bill, jumping at what you’ll never be able to get.”
“Aw, now, Sherry! Why can’t we have a Lexus? Why can’t we have one of those fancy home theaters, huh?”
I thought he was kidding. Maybe Mom did, too.
When Dr. Mills dropped me off at home, David was gone, which was a good thing, because I don’t know what I would have done if I’d had to look at him. Mom and Letty were still there. They tried to talk to me.
I didn’t want to talk. I went straight up to my room and took off all the Gore-Tex and went to bed. I didn’t want to think about what we didn’t need anymore: the toys and the litter box and Bobo’s food and water bowls. I knew I’d have to throw it all away. Mom had told David he had to get me another cat, but how could I get another cat? David would just let it out again. When I got into bed, I remembered that the handheld was still in my jacket pocket, and somehow that hurt more than anything else. I pulled my pillow over my head and turned my face to the wall. The pillow blocked out a lot, but I still heard the phone, and I still heard the jangling bells when Letty left, and I still heard them again when David came in.
I couldn’t block out the sounds of him and Mom yelling at each other, no matter how hard I tried.
I got up and tried to do homework, but that just made me think about how I was going to have to go to school on Monday morning. I tried to read, but all the words seemed flat and tasteless, like week-old bread. So finally I just sat on my bed, staring out at the casinos. They looked so small from here, little boxes you could pickup and throw like dice. And then I heard a coyote, off in the other direction.
Being good is one of the smallest boxes there is: Mom knows that, and so do I, and so did Dad. Mom was the only one who never complained about it, but what did I know? Maybe she hated it as much as I did. I didn’t see how she could like it. Maybe she felt like Dad said he’d always felt, like the walls were closing in on her. “If I could just get outside,” he always told me. “Working in that damn casino, no daylight anywhere, all those people watching you all the time, you just want to go outside and take a walk, Mike, you know what I mean?”
After Dr. Mills drove me up to the mine, I knew what Dad meant. I sat there with the walls closing in on me, and I couldn’t breathe. I needed more room. I wanted to be outside with the coyotes, running around the outside of the boxes, invisible. Even if you try to watch a coyote to see what it’s doing, even if you try to track it, it will disappear on you. It will fade into the grass, into the sagebrush, into shadows.
And you’ll know that wherever it is, it’s laughing.
Sunday was quiet. David stayed in front of the TV, and I finally got my homework done, and Mom cleaned the house, humming to herself while she worked. She had to be on antibiotics for ten days, and she couldn’t work until the infection was gone. “Ten-day vacation,” she told me cheerfully, but she didn’t get paid vacations anymore than she got anything else. All it meant was ten days’ pay out of the nursing-school fund.
Once I asked her what would happen if the Lyon County sheriff’s office saw her transmitter signal outside the
