Chapter 10: What He Saw

Nobody stopped us leaving.

The pack parted on the creek bank and let us walk through them, up the slope, back to the truck.

I felt every one of their eyes on my back.

Ross drove down the fire road without a word.

At the bottom, he pulled over by the highway and turned the engine off.

He sat with both hands on the wheel.

He was shaking.

I'd never seen a man that size shake.

"Okay," he said. "Okay."

"Ross."

"Give me a second."

I gave him a minute.

A logging truck went by and rocked the cab.

"I weighed one of them," he said finally. "In March. The one I found dead."

"I wrote one hundred forty-two pounds in a state report and I signed it."

"I know."

"Was that a person?"

"Yes."

He closed his eyes.

"Somebody's kid."

"Somebody's kid," I said.

He started the engine.

We didn't talk again until Spokane.

At the motel, he followed me into my room without asking.

He went into the bathroom and came out with a wet hand towel and the little first aid kit that was screwed to the wall above the sink.

"Sit," he said.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

He knelt on the carpet in front of me and turned my right hand palm up.

The cut from the trap lever went straight across it, deep and dirty.

He cleaned it slowly.

His fingers were thick and chapped and very careful.

"Tell me," he said, without looking up. "All of it. Start wherever you want."

So I did.

I told him about the mechanic I'd met at nineteen, who came into the diner every morning for a year before he asked my name.

About Bodie being born.

About Nash's mother, and the tin box, and the letter.

About Friday morning. The black cars. Wait for me.

And then, because he was kneeling there not looking at me, I told him the rest.

"I've done this before," I said.

He looked up.

"Last time, I waited. Three years in that house. I wrote him forty-one letters. I lost the diner job when I got sick. They turned off the heat."

His hands had stopped moving.

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