Chapter 5: The Bear Can

"It's a lens," I said.

I pinched the seam and felt along it.

There was a wire, thin as fishing line, running under the binding tape to the vent pocket.

Inside the pocket, sewn flat into the mesh, was a battery pack the size of a matchbook and a little board with a green light.

The grandson stared at it.

"Nana changes in there."

"I know, honey."

I've set up a thousand tents.

I've patched flies with dental floss in a sleet storm and resewn a vent at midnight by headlamp.

This wasn't field work.

The stitching was even, tight, machine-straight, in thread dyed to match the nylon exactly.

Somebody had opened this seam in a shop, with a sewing machine and a spool bought for it, and closed it again perfectly.

"These tents came to the trailhead in sealed boxes," I said. "I watched them cut the tape."

"So?" the grandson said.

"So they did this before day one. Weeks before."

By then Huck was behind me, and the grandmother, and the Butte sisters with their headlamps on.

"Every tent," Huck said quietly.

"Every tent," I said.

I took out my knife.

We went tent to tent in the rain, waking the families who'd just gotten back to sleep.

I found the lens in every fly, in the same seam, under the same vent.

The Spokane exes stood shoulder to shoulder for the first time since we'd met, watching me cut.

"Was it on the whole time?" the ex-wife asked.

"Since you pitched it."

"Three nights," she said. "We fought for three nights."

"About what?" Huck said.

"About him," she said, and jerked her thumb at her ex-husband. "Everything about him."

"She's not wrong," the ex-husband said.

I cut out ten lenses, ten wires, ten battery packs.

I cut a neat square around each one so the stitching stayed on the fabric.

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