Chapter 6
“WAIT UNTIL YOU see this,” Sierra told Cal proudly. “Molly, sit!”
Molly sat.
“Amazing,” Cal said. “Is she ready for the circus?”
“Shut up. This dog is in recovery. She needs patience and affection and lots of positive reinforcement.”
“What has she chewed up lately?”
“She’s had a good week,” Sully said. “She only chewed up a pair of leather rappelling gloves that were hanging on the bottom hook over there by the door and a pair of my socks that were sticking out of my shoes on the back porch. Oh, and she got a paperback but it was ready for the recycle anyway. That’s all we know of. If we x-ray her, we might find a ton of stuff.”
“So, Sierra has a new toy,” Cal said with a grin.
Sierra didn’t care one bit if they made fun of her as long as they were very sweet to Molly. Everyone treated Molly like a precious gift and it was obvious in the dog’s behavior that she’d never experienced anything like it before. She was a lovable pest. She leaned against people for a pat, brought people gifts—usually one of her toys but sometimes something she’d stolen—laid her head in their laps and sometimes just sat in front of someone, anyone, and barked until they gave her some attention.
Sierra had a new friend and she thought her adorable. That first week she’d been in a panic that Molly might wander off and get lost, but as it turned out there were two secret weapons at her disposal. First, as Sully pointed out, Molly had that special dog’s nose and could find her way back to the campground as long as she hadn’t gotten too far away. And second, Beau was only too happy to go get her and bring her back.
Beau was doing as much to train Molly as everyone else. And Molly might be a little bit in love because she hung close to the Lab.
When Conrad showed up on the weekend, Sierra knew word had traveled far and wide.
“So, this the mutt you wrestled for?”
“You watch your mouth!” Sierra said. “I don’t think there’s anything but golden in her! Do not offend her or she won’t like you. She has shown excellent taste so far!”
Connie clicked his teeth, dangled his hand at his side and Molly wagged her tail enthusiastically and went right to him, nudging his hand for a pet.
“She might have a little slut in her,” Sierra muttered.
“The best of us do,” Connie said, crouching to give the dog a serious scratch.
“Isn’t she beautiful?”
“I guess she’s kind of good-looking,” Connie said.
“She’s my first dog,” Sierra confessed.
“Seriously? You didn’t have dogs growing up?”
“There were dogs on the farm, but they were outside dogs, barn dogs, not dogs that slept on the bed. My grandma would have chased them out with a broom if they got in the house. My brother Dakota kind of claimed one of them and that dog followed him everywhere. It was all we could do to keep him off the school bus.”
As she recalled, those times they landed back at the farm when she was very young, they lived in the bus. Her grandparents had a small farmhouse and couldn’t really take on six extra people, so through spring, summer and fall, they continued to sleep in the bus, but would eat their meals and shower and use the facilities in the house. In winter they all crammed in the house together. When she was eight and Cal was sixteen, they took up permanent residence at the farm because Grandpa had passed. Space was found, though not much more than they’d had before.
Sierra went to get Molly’s leash off the hook in the back of the store. When Molly saw it, she got all excited, the only dog in the history of the world who was free most of the time and got excited by the leash. But she was smart and she knew it meant she was going somewhere. Beau ran to Sierra’s side immediately; he liked to go along, but Beau didn’t need a leash. “Would you like to join us?” she asked Connie.
“I’ll just hang out with Sully for a while,” he said. “You and your little friends have fun.”
“We certainly will,” she said, heading across the yard for one of the trails.
* * *
Connie went into the store and found Sully stocking shelves. “Need a hand?” he asked.
“I got it,” Sully said. “Grab a cup of coffee.”
“Holler when you’re ready for boxes from the storeroom. You know I like to show off my big muscles.”
“Just seen you show off the one between your ears, son,” he said. “Besides, there don’t seem to be any pretty young women around at the moment.”
“I’ll just practice, then.”
Connie positioned himself at the lunch counter where he could visit with Enid and be handy when Sully started toting big boxes of supplies out of the back storeroom.
Conrad Boyle was thirty-three and had grown up in and around Timberlake. For a while his family lived in Leadville when they’d found a good rental house there. Then they moved back to Timberlake when Connie was in first grade and his mom and dad had divorced. When his mom remarried, they’d stayed in that house and his stepfather moved in with them.
Connie wouldn’t call his growing up years hard, but they were at least inconvenient and at times very difficult. First off, his father and then his stepfather had both been brutish, angry men while his mother was a kind, hardworking, even-tempered woman. To this day, Connie didn’t understand why his mother couldn’t find better men to marry. And if she couldn’t, then why didn’t she just live as a single woman?
“You’ll understand someday, Connie,” his mother, Janie, said.
Right then and there he decided that if he didn’t find a good woman, one with whom he had mutual respect and happiness, he wasn’t going to do it. He did not ever come to understand, as his mother promised he would. His mother might not be gorgeous but she was certainly attractive, had a nice figure, a pretty smile and a sunny disposition. Both his father and stepfather were verbally abusive and while they did work steady, they did as little around the house as possible, yet their demands seemed constant. Conrad, you get that garage cleaned yet? Help your mother in the kitchen! I never saw anyone as lazy as you! That’s your yard, kid—every Saturday come hell or high water! Why the hell ain’t that driveway shoveled? You’re a fucking idiot. If I can put food on the table you can at least keep ahead of your chores!
To add to Connie’s misery growing up, he was small. Hard to believe, looking at him now. He was small and he had a girl’s name—everyone always called him Connie. Even if he corrected them and said, “It’s Conrad,” they’d still call him Connie. He felt like a boy named Sue; he had to defend himself a lot. There were guys in his class who had the shadow of a beard in sixth grade, but his growth didn’t kick in until he was fifteen. It was like that summer between ninth and tenth grade his feet grew from size seven to eleven. Testosterone descended on him and he shot up. Thank God.
His mother divorced his father when Connie was six and his stepfather when Connie was seventeen, not quite finished with high school. He had a half brother, Bernard, who they called Beaner, ten years younger than Connie, and with that second divorce, his mother got a job in Denver and took seven-year-old Beaner with her.
Connie stayed in Timberlake and moved in with his buddy Rafe’s family even though they had five kids. It was where he’d been hanging out whenever he could anyway. Rafe’s mother, Margarite Vadas, said she’d always kind of wanted six kids so it was perfect. And at the Vadas home, Connie found the kind of family life he admired and wished he could emulate. Carlos Vadas, a cook and outdoorsman, loved kids. It was a revelation to Connie that just the simple action of enjoying one’s family could make home life nearly perfect. It wasn’t flawless, it wasn’t without its tense or grumpy moments, it certainly wasn’t without arguments—just the fights over the bathroom alone could be staggering. But it just wasn’t challenging all the time. No one held a grudge and the single most important thing—no one seemed to walk on eggshells or brace themselves for the next blowup. He never once heard Carlos Vadas complain about the work of feeding his family or ridicule his children or call them names.
The Vadas kids, like all kids, could be lazy about their chores and Carlos would say things like, I think someone wants to go to homecoming and have a new dress, but she doesn’t like doing the dishes. I think that’s not the way it works, does it? Or, I hear someone wants to use his mama’s car on the weekend but he isn’t so interested in mowing and trimming, do I have that right? And of course everyone got in trouble sometimes. No phone, then. Maybe if you have no phone you have no opportunity to make plans that will only get you in trouble. Or, You don’t like that curfew of midnight? I think you will like eleven better, yes?
Connie realized he developed an idea of the kind of life he wanted from the neighbors, it was as simple as that. Carlos and Margarite were not as attractive as his mother and father had been yet were far more affectionate. They were always playing on the same team when it came to the kids. Connie wanted that—a wife he could love and depend on into old age.
He had wanted that until he thought he had it and had lost it in a most miserable and humiliating way. Now he was trying to figure out what kind of life he could have instead.
Connie had stayed on in Timberlake, taking a few college courses, joining the volunteer search team and training until there was an opening in the fire department and he tested right alongside his best friend, Rafe. They were both twenty-five when they were hired and it seemed they were junior firefighters forever. When he was twenty-seven he met Alyssa. She was cutting hair in Timberlake and she was hot. She was tall and leggy, big breasted with long, thick dark hair, dark eyes and ruby lips that were full and delicious. Connie was suddenly needing a lot of haircuts. They began to date and Connie fell in love—hard; he’d found the one. He’d bought some land just outside of town, a beautiful acre in the foothills, not even half-paid for. While he and Alyssa talked marriage and children, he began to build her a house. Well, he was having it built, but he took great pride in being involved and helping. It was a small house to start, but it was designed for future add-ons. Within two years they were living in it and planning a wedding.
And then things went south. Alyssa grew moody and distant. He knew something was wrong but she denied it. Yet there were red flags all over the place. She wasn’t in the mood for sex, there was whispering into the phone, he caught her crying a couple of times—she blamed everything on her hormones. He decided to do something really nice for her so he took her car and washed it and detailed it to surprise her...but he found a pair of her sexiest panties under the seat. He put them on the kitchen table and asked her just what the hell was going on.
“Where’d those come from?” she’d asked.
“Under the front seat of your car. Care to explain?”
She had claimed they’d been pinching her so she’d slid them off and stuffed them under the seat, out of sight and forgot about them. Then she’d laid into him for taking her car without telling her, and she was furious.
Connie was getting desperate. He was close to asking Carlos for advice when it became unnecessary. He took some personal time from work one afternoon and went home with some flowers for Alyssa and a hope they might straighten some things out, but there in his drive was the car of a fellow firefighter, Christian Derringer. He was a little older than Connie, married with a couple of little kids, and he was a whore. He was a screw-around and didn’t have any conscience about it.
Connie found them in the bedroom. He grabbed Chris by the ankles, dragged him through the house and out the front door, hefted him up and tossed his naked ass into the snow. All the way Alyssa was screaming, clutching a sheet to her naked body, raging at Connie.
And right at that moment all of Connie’s ideals and preconceived notions collapsed.
“I’m going back to work,” he told her. “I’m filing a complaint with the captain and while I’m there, you move out. Be gone when I get home.”
“This is my house, too,” she yelled. “You can’t throw me out!”
“Oh yes, I can,” he said. “We’re not married. Thank God.”
“I’m keeping this house!” she screamed. “At least half of it.”
“Sue me,” he said.
His captain had talked him out of filing a formal complaint but he did move Chris out of Connie’s unit. For a couple of years it was kind of hard to tell whether Connie would pull Chris out of a burning building. They were never going to be able to work together again, but they were still from the same small town. Connie gave him a real wide berth. He sincerely hoped Chris would never be trapped on a ledge somewhere when Connie was on duty.
The drama divided the firehouse. There were those who sided with Connie and thought he’d gone easy on the bastard. “I might’ve killed them both,” Rafe said. Rafe was the gentlest man in Timberlake. And then there was the other team—they were kind of a mishmash. Some thought Connie should’ve taken out his wrath on Alyssa and not Chris; some thought Chris was just screwing around and it shouldn’t be such a melodrama. “Get over it already! You dodged a bullet!” they’d say to Connie, like Alyssa was the only one at fault. And some thought all was fair in love and war.
Chris had invaded Connie’s territory and Connie hated him for it. But he took the high road. He gave himself a reasonable period of time, maybe about six months, then decided Alyssa and Chris were in his past, they were dead to him. His secret was he might never be over it, not as long as he could remember what it was like loving her while she was loving him. But as far as others could tell, he had moved on.
Of course Chris stayed married, kept running around on his wife, and Alyssa was still cutting hair in Timberlake. They couldn’t help but run into each other and after a year or so Connie told her he wasn’t angry anymore.
“Connie, it’s the biggest mistake of my life,” she’d said with tears in her eyes. “Can’t we try again? We weren’t married, after all.”
And he had said, “No. I can forgive you for what you did but we won’t be trying again.”
Connie dated quite a bit. Hardly ever the same girl for three dates, always a beautiful girl. He had no trouble getting girls and no interest in being tied down. He half wanted half feared getting that feeling again—that lurch in the heart, that dazed brain, the fuzzy vision and lightness in the head. Rationally, he didn’t want to believe his one and only chance was Alyssa who would be so coolly and easily unfaithful. Emotionally, he had no interest in going through that again. Was it even imaginable that he would trust again?
Not likely.
* * *
Sierra had to keep reminding Molly to stay with her; she had to keep reminding Beau, for that matter. Beau was a trailblazer—he liked to get out ahead of them and nose around. She wasn’t sure what she’d do if Beau cornered an elk buck or a bear. She had the small canister of mace in her vest pocket but she didn’t think it would do much good on an angry bear. She had dog treats in the other pocket and her water in her backpack.
She kept telling Molly how good she was, how well she was doing, stopping every so often to work on voice commands. They were starting to experiment with “Down!” She had to add a little incentive, a gentle push on the head until Molly was in the down position. And she couldn’t help but fantasize her dog becoming the best trained dog in the universe. Of course Sully only said, “Let her get to be about four years old and you might really have something. Those goldens are the best-natured dogs.”
The walks, at least one a day and sometimes two if she didn’t have to work at the diner, were good for the dogs. They were both less trouble, calmer. Well, except for bunny chasing. She probably shouldn’t have, but she hadn’t been able to resist letting Molly join Beau on a little chase. It just filled Molly with such joy. But Molly’s chasing days were now done. The problem came when the dogs had actually caught one. Beau, being older and better trained, just loped off to find Sully and present his catch and Beau soft-mouthed his catch so Sully could just release the bunny, usually back behind the garden shed. But Molly had brought Sierra a bunny that had been mortally bitten. “Oh God, what do I do now?” Sierra had wailed, horrified.
“Dig a hole,” Sully had said. “City girl.”
Well, she was the farthest thing from a city girl, but there were parts of this country living that were alien to her. And difficult. But it was still better than the life she had lived before.
Out here, on one of the many paths and trails that led into the mountains, it was easy for Sierra to let her mind wander. Gratitude was almost automatic, something that was a struggle under other circumstances. When she was out here in nature, she could think about how lucky she was to be alive. When she’d been struggling in the city, in rehab, at work, it was too easy for her to feel sorry for herself. Addicts had the market cornered on self-pity. They were experts at it.
She and the dogs were well out in the wilderness on a very good, well-traveled trail when it happened. She stepped in a hole, her ankle twisted and she heard it crinkle almost like tissue paper—crunch, crunch, crunch.
“Shit,” she said as she landed on her butt. Molly immediately began licking her face. “Not now, Molly,” she said. She sat there a minute, trying to assess the damage. It didn’t really hurt. But she knew it was probably time to go home so she called Beau, who came trotting back to her.
“Sorry, kids, but I think I might’ve sprained my ankle. At least.”
She hoisted herself up and stepped gingerly on her right foot and pain shot up her leg to her knee. “Whoa,” she said. “Damn!”
She took a few careful steps, only able to set her injured foot on her toes. She bit her lip and went slowly and carefully. She was only a half hour out from the campground so if she went slowly, carefully, she could get there. She could probably slide on her butt and it would only take her... Hell, it would take most of the day. She took ten slow steps and the pain brought tears to her eyes. “Holy macaroni,” she said to her companions. “Too bad one of you isn’t a horse.”
Ten minutes and maybe a hundred steps later she sat on a boulder. She rolled down her sock and looked at her ankle. It was already swollen and was turning a very unhealthy color. She decided she’d just wait a while, someone would be along. There were lots of hikers around. Then she heard thunder. “Perfect,” she said.
In five minutes she felt the first drops. As far as she could remember, there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky when she set out on her hike. And now there would be no hikers coming along. It was going to be a long, wet afternoon waiting until someone noticed they’d been gone too long.
* * *
Connie moved to the front porch with his coffee cup. Personally, he loved the rain. But it was a little inconvenient around a campground. People were driven indoors and most of the time that meant a tent. A couple of campers came jogging across the grounds to the store; they might buy snacks to help them hunker down in their tents or they might decide the porch was a good place to wait it out.
It wasn’t long before Sully was on the porch, holding a cup of his own. He just sat down and watched the rain make a mess of the grounds. Surprisingly, it was only the two of them on the porch.
“There’s going to be a wet girl and two wet mutts coming along pretty soon,” Connie said.
“Yup,” Sully agreed. “They won’t melt. The dogs’ll love it.”
“They’re gonna track up everything—house, store, everything.”
“Yup, I hate that part.”
Ten minutes later Connie said, “You’d think she’d be making tracks. Rain and all.”
“Hurrying won’t make her less wet,” Sully said.
Ten minutes later Connie said, “You suppose she holed up under a big tree, waiting for it to pass?”
“Likely,” Sully said. “You waiting around for her or something?”
“Nah, I should probably just go. Unless I can lend you a hand?”
“I got nothing to do I can’t get done. We’re going over to that barn for supper, me and Sierra. I’m closing the store at six thirty.”
“I ought to make a run by that barn one of these days, see how it’s coming along,” Connie said.
“If you can tell, you’re a better man than I am. They keep squawking about all the progress they’re making and it still looks like a barn under construction to me. I reckon we’ll be eating at that indoor picnic table.”
Connie laughed at him. “I built my house, you know. I mean, I had some help. I had a general contractor, mostly for looks and for getting inspections. But I did a lot of the work.”
“Oh, I know,” Sully said. “Can’t remember you talking about much else for a couple of years.”
“I love that house,” he said. He hadn’t thought he could do so well and he’d poured himself into it thinking one day he’d be telling his sons he’d built the home they lived in; his wife would tell her friends she picked out every detail from faucets to door handles.
Shortly after the house was done, he threw his woman out for cheating right in his own bed. He bought a new mattress and all new bedding. For the next year Connie had hardly said a word about the house.
The rain eased up to a dribble, ready to stop. “She’ll be along now,” Connie said.
“You are waiting for her,” Sully said.
“Well, I wasn’t but now I am—she and the two dogs have been missing in the rain for quite a while now and I’ll just feel better knowing she got back. That they all got back. That’s a nice little dog she got herself.”
“Molly isn’t little,” Sully said. “She’s sixty-five pounds at about a year old. She’s going to be a nice size. I’m betting eighty pounds, seventy of which will be hair.” He whistled. “Between Molly and Beau, we’ll keep Hoover in business.”
“I’ll be getting out of here before the dog washing starts,” Connie said. And about five minutes later there was the sound of barking. “Here she comes, then.”
“Better run for your life,” Sully said. “Gonna be messy.”
“I’m not going anywhere till I see her,” he said. “Bet she looks like a drowned rat. I know it’s an easy laugh, but come on.”
Then Beau appeared looking like he’d been through combat, mud up to his ears, hair slicked down and soaked. He pranced in front of the porch, barking and Sully stood up from his chair. “Where is she, Beau?” he asked. And Beau answered by barking and prancing. “Holy Jesus,” he muttered, going into the store quickly.
Connie followed him, watched as he gathered up bottled water, the first aid kit, rain slicker, some energy bars and dog biscuits as incentive.
“What are you doing?”
“Going to get her,” he said.
“No, Sully,” Connie said. “I’m going. Will Beau take me?”
“I don’t know. I suppose he might—he’s back and he’s riled and he’s soaked to the bone. I don’t think he woulda left her. Unless he had to.”
“I’m going, Sully.”
“Why? Why you?”
“I’m a paramedic, for God’s sake. If she’s hurt, you think you can carry her? I have a better first aid kit in the truck. I have walkie-talkies. You should stay here in case she comes back and you can radio me. I’ll try to get Beau to take me to her.”
“He ain’t trained in that, you know. But I have sent him off to get Molly when she wanders a little far and he could manage that.”
Connie made tracks to his truck. He loaded up his backpack, changed his shoes for boots, put a rappelling rope over one shoulder, put on a harness and grabbed an extra in case. He wasn’t sure he’d have to lower himself down a hill or cliff but if he did have to he wasn’t going to come back for that stuff. He checked his GPS unit—charged.
Sully was on the porch. “Want me to call the search group?”
“Let’s see what Beau gives me first,” he said. “I have a feeling he knows what he’s talking about.” He handed Sully a walkie-talkie. Then he looked at the dog, gave him a pet and said, “Take me to her, Beau.”