Drake moved out from behind the tree and went on. The trail he followed faint but still there.
He came up a small rise and crouched to survey the forest beyond. Evergreen trees and sword fern; a full minute passed before he saw the brown tarp, colored the same as the forest floor.
Circling to his right he came on the tarp from uphill. The plastic stretched over several support branches that ran down from a larger bough that had been nailed crudely into two trees about eight feet apart. The tarp making a kind of lean-to, with one side open to the forest and the back side shielding the small residence from the creek.
Drake tried the radio again and got nothing but static. He waited and tried it again. Still nothing. He was about two hundred feet off with a clear view to the open side of the lean-to. A blue bucket that looked to contain stream water was there. Inside he thought he could make out the roll of a sleeping bag and a few more items.
He raised the rifle again and searched the area. There was nothing to be seen and he ran the sight back over the lean-to, appraising those items that he hadn’t been able to make out with his naked eye. A rechargeable lantern with a crank sat toward the back, several tins of food, a couple magazines, and one book that Drake couldn’t see from his angle, and then around the edge of the sleeping bag Drake saw something that made him drop the sight from his eye, refocus, and then put the sight back.
There was a kind of metal box, bright red with only the battered corners showing beyond the rolled sleeping bag. He rose from where he’d crouched with his rifle and came on toward the lean-to, checking his blind spots every few steps. Once even stopping to sweep the forest when, far off, he heard a stick break, and then the forest go silent again.
He came to the lean-to with the rifle raised. Nothing more than what he’d seen through the scope. With the barrel of the gun he nudged the sleeping bag and then dragged it away, revealing the red toolbox beneath, the paint scored away in places to reveal the gray metal. Rust showing in other places where the box had sat in the elements.
He’d seen this box before. Or at least he’d seen one like it. He crouched and ran a hand across the metal. The same dings and dents he remembered. A few new ones that he didn’t.
Feeling something behind him he turned and watched the forest. No movement but that caused by the wind. When he was sure he was alone he let the rifle down onto the floor of the lean-to and with both hands he raised the edge of the toolbox and looked inside.
Empty. Nothing in the thing at all.
He rose and scanned the forest floor looking for a sign. The water in the bucket was fresh and clear and the pine needles were wet in places where the water had slopped over the edges and stained the earth.
Far out somewhere he heard another branch break and he was running, following the sound as he weaved through the trees, letting his feet navigate the uneven dips of the mountain. He moved farther from the creek, stopping once as he fought to catch his breath; he couldn’t hear the water anymore. Nothing but forest behind and ahead of him, nothing except brief glimpses of the sun through the trees above to tell him his direction.
At some point he dropped the bag, the backpack falling behind him as the slope began to run downhill, the rifle now solely in his hands. He was another five hundred feet on when he thought of the radio inside but he didn’t stop or go back. Up ahead something crashed through a thicket of devil’s club and he saw the green, maple-like leaves swaying.
He raised the rifle and sighted but only the leaves were there to dance in front of him. He went on, coming to the thicket, and then he was through and out into bright sunshine. The light blinding him as he took a fall over a young pine lying lengthwise across his path.
He came up holding his knee and gritting his teeth. The pain intense and the fallen pine only one of thousands that lined the clear-cut mountainside he’d emerged onto. He bounced up onto his good leg, still holding the rifle in one hand, and balanced himself with the other.
Somewhere below he heard a rock fall, tumbling through space, and then clapping into another, where it shattered into several smaller pieces. He raised the rifle. The running figure of a man visible through the scope as he jumped one tree stump and then vaulted the fallen trunk of another. Drake called out, telling the man to stop, his voice carrying in the open space. But the figure kept running, a backpack bouncing as he went. The bald crown of skin and the sun reflected in a glare.
“Stop,” Drake yelled, letting the voice carry. He held the rifle, the butt to the meat of his chest, just below his shoulder, and his eye searching down the scope.
The man didn’t stop. It was more like he slowed. One foot in front of the other, his pace slackening like an old coal train shifting away its power. The man standing there, backpack over his shoulders, sweat showing now on the back of his neck. The beginnings of a mane of hair grown in around the edges of his scalp. And Drake knew it before the man turned around. It was his father. And he knew, too, what had been in the red toolbox and what his father had meant when he’d written Morgan to take care of his half.
Drake knew it all now.
He held the rifle, sweat beading on his forehead and creating paths down his skin, waiting for his father to turn around. And then when he did, Drake felt his finger tighten on the trigger. He felt the tension there. The way the trigger yearned for release.
Patrick stood looking back at him. A hundred yards away. And then he raised a hand and waved. He didn’t say anything, he just stood there looking back at Drake, white hair grown in around his face and at the sides of his head. And Drake watched—he watched the hand go up high over his father’s head. He watched the palm open, the fingers extend, and it was like his father was saying hello, or saying good-bye, only Drake didn’t know.
The hand stayed that way for a long time, outstretched above Patrick’s head until it, too, fell away and Patrick turned downslope.
For a few seconds more Drake watched as his father moved away over the open landscape. The rifle still clutched into the meat of Drake’s chest. The crosshairs following his father, Drake knowing for the first time in a long time that whatever this was—sighting his father through the scope of a rifle—it simply wasn’t his job anymore.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The first wolf pack to be documented in Washington State in sixty years occurred in 2008. As of March 2014, there are thirteen established wolf packs in the state. Under Washington’s wolf management plan, a pack of wolves is defined as two individual wolves traveling together. Three of the thirteen packs now roam the eastern slopes of the North Cascades. And one additional pack can be found just outside the U.S. border at the end of the North Cascade range in Canada.
I am in no way an expert on wolves. But like many in the state of Washington I have watched their population grow, wondering what will happen to the wolves as their territory meets that of the ranchers, farmers, and others who now populate lands once inhabited by wolves and other large predators. In 2012 the deaths of seven calves and one sheep in the northeastern part of the state, along with many injuries to livestock in the area, were attributed to wolves. The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife ultimately killed seven members of the Wedge Pack in northern Stevens County.
The return of wolves to Washington State remains part of a critical debate.
FOR OPENING THEIR mountain home to me I want to thank Alan and Susan Rogers. You gave me much needed time not only to begin this novel, but also to finish a draft a year later. To James Scott and Taylor Rogers Scott, thank you for making me feel like family. I owe you both more than I can ever say.