Burning Bright - By Ron Rash Page 0,41
make things all right, like a concussion to make the ranger forget what had happened, or the ranger hurting bad enough that shock made him forget. Jesse tried not to think about the snapped bone being in the back or neck.
The van’s back doors closed from within, and the vehicle turned onto the logging road. The siren was off but the beacon drenched the woods red. The woman ranger scoured the hillside with binoculars, sweeping without pause over where Jesse sat. Another green forest service truck drove up, two more rangers spilling out. Then Sheriff Arrowood’s car, silent as the ambulance.
The sun lay behind Clingman’s Dome now, and Jesse knew waiting any longer would only make it harder. He moved in a stupor of exhaustion, feet stumbling over roots and rocks, swaying like a drunk. When he got far enough, he’d be able to come down the ridge, ascend the narrow gorge mouth. But Jesse was so tired he didn’t know how he could go any farther without resting. His knees grated bone on bone, popping and crackling each time they bent or twisted. He panted and wheezed and imagined his lungs an accordion that never unfolded enough.
Old and a fool. That’s what the ranger had called Jesse. An old man no doubt. His body told him so every morning when he awoke. The liniment he applied to his joints and muscles each morning and night made him think of himself as a creaky rust-corroded machine that must be oiled and warmed up before it could sputter to life. Maybe a fool as well, he acknowledged, for who other than a fool could have gotten into such a fix.
Jesse found a felled oak and sat down, a mistake because he couldn’t imagine summoning the energy to rise. He looked through the trees. Sheriff Arrowood’s car was gone, but the truck and jeep were still there. He didn’t see but one person and knew the others searched the woods for him. A crow cawed once farther up the ridge. Then no other sound, not even the wind. Jesse took the backpack and pitched it into the thick woods below, watched it tumble out of sight. A waste, but he couldn’t risk their searching his house. He thought about tossing the pistol as well but the gun had belonged to his father, his father’s father before that. Besides, if they found it in his house that was no proof it was the pistol the ranger had seen. They had no proof of anything really. Even his being in the gorge was just the ranger’s word against his. If he could get back to the house.
Night fell fast now, darkness webbing the gaps between tree trunks and branches. Below, high-beam flashlights flickered on. Jesse remembered two weeks after his great-aunt’s burial. Graham Sutherland had come out of the gorge shaking and chalk-faced, not able to tell what had happened until Jesse’s father gave him a draught of whiskey. Graham had been fishing near the old homestead and glimpsed something on the far bank, there for just a moment. Though a sunny spring afternoon, the weather in the gorge had suddenly turned cold and damp. Graham had seen her then, moving through the trees toward him, her arms outstretched. Beseeching me to come to her, Graham had told them. Not speaking, but letting that cold and damp touch my very bones so I’d feel what she felt. She didn’t say it out loud, maybe couldn’t, but she wanted me to stay down there with her. She didn’t want to be alone.
Jesse walked on, not stopping until he found a place where he could make his descent. A flashlight moved below him, its holder merged with the dark. The light bobbed as if on a river’s current, a river running uphill all the way to the iron gate that marked the end of forest service land. Then the light swung around, made its swaying way back down the logging road. Someone shouted and the disparate lights gathered like sparks returning to their source. Headlights and engines came to life, and two sets of red taillights dimmed and soon disappeared.
Jesse made his way down the slope, his body slantways, one hand close to the ground in case he slipped. Low branches slapped his face. Once on level land he let minutes pass, listening for footsteps or a cough on the logging road, someone left behind to trick him into coming out. No moon shone but a