'Uh-huh.' He pointed to his pack, which he'd tossed in the backseat.
'Your father didn't fill you in on what we're doing, did he? It was supposed to be a secret.' Nate just grunted, a 'no' from the sound of it. 'Well, we were going fishing, but you can stay home. Really, it's OK.'
'I wanna go,' he said, making it sound like a groan.
''I suppose you don't like trout fishing,'' she said casually as they entered the National Forest. 'So would you like to leave the fishing poles in the car or take them with us?'
'I don't care,' Nate said, looking straight ahead.
Something has got to change, she thought. She went to the back of the car to get her pack. 'We were going to scout places to fish. That was my big surprise. But I guess we don't have to do that.'
Nate's eyes flickered at her for just a second. ''We could take the pole,' he said.
'Who would use it?'
'Well. Um. I would.'
The boy squelched his enthusiasm masterfully, she thought to herself. Poor kid.
Soon they started up a steep incline through the forest, mostly second growth that had filled in since the early 1900s, the redwood trees some four and even five feet thick at the base. They climbed quickly, Nate with his head down and a determined look on his face. After a time the path came to a rushing stream, then followed it up the hillside. Eventually they came to a fork in the trail. To the left the trail continued alongside the stream, toward a waterfall, from the roaring sound in the distance. To the right the trail moved off into the trees, up the mountain. 'This way,' Maria said, pointing left.
Finally they came to the end of the trail: a small gorge with a roaring cascade at one end, which sent a cool mist floating through the rays of sunlight pouring down from overhead. Spanning the gorge was a thick log, which from the look of the damp green stuff covering it would be quite slippery to walk across.
'Pretty nice place, huh?' Maria whispered, looking at the crystal-clear water from the falls as it poured over some boulders in the gorge below. A shiver of pleasure ran through her; there was nothing like this, the feeling of being closed in by lush green-the trees, the moss, the lichen.
'It's like a magic forest.' Nate pointed his finger. 'That'd be a good place to fish.'
Looking downstream, Maria saw a still pool off to the side of some rushing waters, covered over by a couple of old, fallen logs. Perfect place for trout to hide. 'Yes, it would,' she said. 'But to get down there, we'll have to cross the log.'
Together they looked at it. An old Doug fir, it was over one hundred feet long, the topside worn smooth and slightly flat, and pockmarked by burrowing bugs and the spiny, sharp cork boots that loggers wear. Four feet through at the big end, nearest Nate and Maria, the log spanned a chasm fifty feet across and perhaps forty feet deep at the center.
'Well?' Maria asked, smiling.
Nathaniel looked at her, wide-eyed. 'I don't know,' he said, bewildered. 'How?'
'Well, you could walk or crawl.'
Nate peeked down at the rocks in the stream far below. 'Are you going too?' he finally asked.
'Of course,' she said. Maria recalled the feeling she'd had the first time she had to cross a sheer drop like this one, which could kill with one slip. A sensation of a cool draft, even if there is no wind, the feeling of lightness that is an adjunct to dread.
'If you go, I'll go,' Nate said. 'I think.'
Maria smiled. A tough guy-sort of-just like his dad. 'I have a safety harness in my pack. You can put it on, and it would catch you if you fell. I will be right with you. You can do it, Nate. I'll show you how and I won't let you fall.'
'OK.'
Maria quickly removed two harnesses. Then she donned some Gore-Tex climbing gear and helped Nate into some rubber pants.
''You do this a lot?'' Nate watched as her fingers adjusted the harnesses.
'Yup.' She snapped a tether from her harness to Nate's.
'Sit,' she said after leading him to the log. Following her instructions, he climbed up on the natural bridge, straddling it.
'Look at that tree on the other side,' Maria said. 'Stare at it. Don't look down.'
She sat immediately behind him, Nate almost in her lap. Then, picking him up, she scooted him forward. 'Look at the tree,'' she said, encouraging him to repeat the movement on his own.
Within minutes they were across. When they stood, Nate turned to her, respect in his eyes.
'We did it,' he said, a tinge of excitement in his voice.
'Yes, we did. And it took two of us. So you would be making me feel safe if you promised not to do that by yourself. OK?'
Nathaniel nodded.
Then they fished. Assembling a small collapsible rod, she taught him how to use a fly with a barbless hook and a bobber. Small trout took the fly repeatedly. After reeling them in, Nate and Maria released them. After they'd reeled in a half-dozen small trout, Maria led Nate to a pool near the base of the falls. The shore was crowded with huckleberry and thimbleberry, so they had to crowd past the many spiny stems and damp, leafy branches to get to the creek's edge. There she pointed to a log that angled across the pool's edge, above a back eddy that made the foam move upstream past an old alder log.
As they neared the log, Maria hunkered down, indicating to Nate that he should do the same. Together they crept the last few feet to the log and the deep pool beyond it. Even with the roar of the falls, the place had a tranquillity that they didn't want to disrupt with shouting, so they gestured as if sharing secrets.
Standing behind Nate, Maria placed her hands over his, then gently cast the fly near the falls, letting the fly drift down the stream's center and into the eddy, where it moved back up past their log like a tiny float in a parade. It was a special caddis fly, with gray wings and a tiny silver strand around its furry body. Jutting out from the body were little whiskers that stood the fly on the water, each whisker making its own tiny dimple in the glassy surface. Without warning, a swirl appeared where the fly had been, and the reel began to sing as the line peeled out across the creek. Nate shrieked. 'Keep the tip up,' Maria said calmly in his ear, reaching to tighten the brake on the reel. Then the line went slack. 'Reel quickly,' Maria urged.
As Nate took up the slack, the fish once again swam for the far side of the creek, bending the slight rod in a half circle and eliciting another cry from Nate. Then the eighteen-inch-long silver-sided monster exploded from the water, shook its head, and dropped the fly as easily as a child spits out a pea.
'Oh man!' Nate shouted, his face lit with excitement. When Nathan's enthusiasm had about peaked for one day, they packed up their stuff and due to the ease of descending made much better time. They wound down the trail in the quiet forest, hearing only an occasional scampering, the blowing of a startled deer, and the mad whir of a blue grouse.
'I'm going to the outhouse,' Nate said.
The park service maintained a pit toilet at the other end of the lot. She nodded as Nate trotted off, then turned to load her stuff into her Cherokee. She pulled an apple from her pack and leaned on the tailgate, watching a red-tailed hawk. A nondescript blue van pulled into the lot and parked one space over. Nate was taking a while. Walking to the driver's-side door, she opened it and reached down to pick up her tennis shoes, thinking she would remove her boots.
The sliding sound of a van door made her realize with a start that someone had been taking their time in getting out of the van. She was unlacing her boots when she felt a hand on her shoulder. Then suddenly she was assaulted by searing pain in her eyes and nostrils. Her lungs felt as though they were being filled with a thousand angry hornets. As she felt her knees buckle, strong arms grabbed her. Burning mush filled her chest; terror gripped her mind. Something horribly confining, even suffocating, was over her face, and she was suddenly, vaguely aware that she was lying down.
'Where's the kid?' she heard.
'Forget him. Let's get the hell out of here.'
Soon she calmed enough to realize that the cloth bag over her head was tied at her throat, that her hands and feet were tightly trussed, and that she was on the floor of a large moving vehicle. Then she thought of Nate, the engaging smile under his cowlick.
