''But Mother said… She said he might not ever have come back.'
'It's probably what your mother believes. She warned him not to go. There was bitterness in her when he was killed. A bitterness that he didn't listen to her. You remember the day your father left, don't you?'
'Yeah.'
'You thought he was angry with you.'
'He yelled. He pounded my wrists on the sink.'
''So you thought maybe you were part of the reason he went away.'
''I don't know.' So much had changed in just a few seconds. 'Why didn't someone tell me?'
'You were young. Your mother didn't want you bitter with hate.'
'But my mother said he left.'
''Your mother is a good woman, but stubborn, hotheaded. Your father would have come back. They would have talked. Everything would have been fine. He went away once before in the spring of the year. Sometimes you know how your mother gets.'
'Yes. But I asked her-'
'And she told you all the time that he went off mad and got himself killed.'
'But I didn't know… I mean… I thought…'
'You thought you were the reason he left, that maybe you had done something. And he was never coming back. I promise you that your father loved you and never would have left you.'
Kier thought about what Grandfather said. The kids at school, always wanting to know why he didn't have a dad, said things. This was all such a relief. Or at least it seemed so at the moment. If only someone would have told him sooner.
'What happened?'
'FBI man got anxious. He thought your father was someone else. Two Indian men started fighting, and the FBI man shot in the night. He killed your father, who was trying to stop the fighting, trying to calm the situation.'
'What happened to this FBI man?'
''Nothing. And nothing will ever be done. They claimed that one of the Indians your father was trying to stop had a gun. There was an investigation… testimony… but in the end they said the bullet was lost before it could be tested. The government people swore no one from their group fired a shot.''
Kier sat and stared at the pool, at his own eyes, promising himself that he would never make his father's mistake. He would never trust the white man's police.
As the years passed, Grandfather's explanation seemed to raise more questions than it answered. And the words never answered the need of his psyche to know why. Not why his father had died, nor why the FBI man was never punished, but why he could never touch his father's heart.
Chapter 13
When young lovers make their lodge together, they must build fires in the rain.
' You can see why I might have a problem with the FBI.' Kier poked the fire and tossed on another log. 'It's why when I turned eighteen I became a gun-toting, paramilitary radical.'
'But you became a vet, an educated man. How…?'
'Let's not argue. You asked me. I told you.'
'True enough. We'll come back to it later.' She would bide her time.
After they were warmed by the fire and rested, Kier rose. 'Now for the hard part. Getting our little house together. Pick up the small end and help me carry this thing down the canyon. We'll leave the supporting tripod here for another trip. It'll be heavy even without that.'
Jessie let her amazement show as Kier began to separate the tripod from the rest of the structure.
'You're going to leave this fire?'
'A lot of people know about this cave. Tillman's guys may trick somebody with some story or other, and ask where I might go. They probably won't come tomorrow or the next day even, but I still want a margin of safety when we sleep.'
She stared incredulously out into the night.
Around the face of the bluff and about one hundred yards down the hill, there was a dense stand of young fir. They walked in the beam of a flashlight. Kier had tramped a clear trail in the snow past the stand, but instead of staying on the trail, he lifted the skeleton of their shelter into the trees and directed Jessie to jump off the trail to the base of a young fir. She did as directed, landing in a large hollow in the snow created by the sapling's overhanging branches. After Kier had also jumped, they pushed their way into a thicket of intertwining limbs, then proceeded, with great effort, to carry the skeleton down through the trees two hundred yards to another overhanging rock face, where the forest looked more open. They proceeded down the rock face for a half mile. There, Kier uncovered a small cave largely concealed by snow. Clearing out the drifts, they placed the makeshift tent under the rock and out of the weather.
After returning with the tripod and backpack, they repaired the structure from damage suffered during the move. Then they cut boughs from nearby trees, lashing them onto the structure until a foot-thick green coat covered the outer framework and the inside floor. Digging down in other spots, Kier began scraping up fir and pine needles, leaves, sticks, and vines. Soon he began piling the fluffy mixture over the exterior boughs. Jessie, her fingers freezing even in her mitts, tried to emulate Kier, who worked like a man possessed. loosing all track of time, she only stopped flinging debris when she felt Kier's hand on her back.
''Now I understand your strategy. We work our asses off to keep from freezing to death,'' she said.
'We need more sticks and boughs and any heavy chunks we can find. Let's look for a windfall,' Kier said, guiding her back into the forest.
'Quantico was like Disneyland compared to this,' she muttered.
She studied the terrain in the faint beam of the small flashlight. The snow was still falling but, thankfully, the wind had died. Weird shapes appeared like surreal sculptures, the snow molded over the skeletal remains of downed trees, plants, and boulders.
Suddenly, she realized she was totally disoriented. Barely able to stand, she looked for Kier's light, saw it disappearing over her left shoulder. She felt a stab of panic shoot through her belly. Struggling to move through a tangle of trees, brush, and vines, she cursed herself for being weak. Knocked loose like some ghostly dust in a horror film, snow showered from the trees around her. Surely, if she was calm, she could find her way back without Kier. But even as she thought it, she continued chasing the receding light. Unconsciously, she began running.
By the time she forced herself to walk, the light was coming back toward her. Kier had turned around. In seconds, he had seemingly floated over the forest floor in a few large bounds. Then his face was near hers. His hand on her moss-padded shoulder felt good.
'We're almost done,' he said with a rare smile. 'I'm sorry I got so far away from you.'
'Oh, no big deal. You actually like this place… this..?' She waved her arms.
''More than a few people have the same attitude toward New York.'
She said nothing more.
Kier led the way back to a big blowdown-a tangle of old branches and wood hunks where two large trees had fallen in the forest. Several backbreaking trips, dragging large branches and bark chips, were required before they had the materials to armor their hut. When they were finished, three to four feet of fluffy debris were sandwiched between two layers of boughs, all covered over with heavy branches and sheets of bark.
'Only one thing remains.' He took her by the arm and led her back up the mountain.
'Yeah. You gotta bury me.'
