27
The course that Wally set for Beth was steeper than the one she would have chosen. She rode Hastings, and Herriot trotted behind her. The wolf, again, had vanished. As the sun peaked and then began to sink, Beth came up the mountains behind Burnt Rock through a recovering burn area. Ten years ago, when Beth was an adolescent, a lovesick and irresponsible forest ranger—someone with no excuse—had burned her ex’s letters in a campfire. Sparks of bitterness escaped the pit with the help of a summer wind.
Until this day, Beth had forgotten about that incident, which made headlines across the country. For ten years the earth had been gradually reawakening in bursts of greens among the black matchsticks of firs and pines. It would take a few more decades before all visible evidence of the scorching was erased, but even then the earth would be able to tell its story in the layers of rock and rings of trees.
The promise of restoration was mixed up together with the permanent proof of death. Beth supposed that a person might look at this scene and call it hopeful, while someone else might look at the same place and call it tragic. The burn wasn’t planned and, according to prevailing opinion, never should have happened.
But what if the same blaze had been set off by a lightning strike or a drought? Such triggers raised flames in these mountains every year, and most of them went unnoticed. Was a fire destructive only when caused by a careless person, and beneficial only when scheduled, and neutral when considered to be an “act of God”? Was any event better or worse than the other?
Beth’s mind wanted the world’s causes and effects to make sense, and she was frustrated by the idea that they might mingle in such a sloppy way.
Some of the blackened tree skeletons stood, and some had fallen to create a maze for anyone passing through. Hastings wasn’t impeded by any of it but carried her on sure footing exactly where Beth’s compass and Wally’s map instructed them to go.
The aspen here flourished, because aspen were not individual trees, but a unified organism that grew from a single taproot. This root was protected deep underground from even the largest, most devastating fires, and it was constantly sending up vibrant shoots while other plants struggled to be reborn from seeds in the charred soil. The great irony of the aspens’ natural durability, Beth often thought, was that the wood itself was too soft for most construction purposes. When these trees were harvested, they were used to make matchsticks.
The group climbed out of the lower elevations that the aspen preferred. It took several hours and more frequent rests for Hastings, who felt the altitude as much as any human might, though he was fit to endure it. The long-needled ponderosas too eventually yielded ground to the spruces—the dusty-blue Colorados and the yellow-green Engelmanns, the hardiest of trees in this oxygen-deprived air. The undergrowth also thinned out, and Beth could see the timberline on the peaks behind the shorter slope she scaled. Even now, in August, remnants of last winter’s snow caked the mountainsides’ shady crevices.
And then they reached a ridgetop, and the ground fell away as if it had been chipped off by God’s chisel. Beth found herself looking down onto the old mining village that was Burnt Rock, which she guessed to be about two miles away. A modern paved road wound up the mountainside and into Burnt Rock from the southeast. She saw fresh paint on restored facades, and colorful signs that shouted out to tourists of opportunities to pan for gold or tour a mine or ride a mule or experience a miracle.
That last one caught Beth’s eye, but she couldn’t make out the details that would explain the meaning.
She saw a hotel, and what she presumed was a post office, and a long string of conjoined shops lining the main drag. The street was like the center vein in a narrow brown leaf, with more slender veins branching off to the north and south, unpaved routes that led to free-standing buildings and boxy, haphazardly arranged homes and cars. A few multipassenger vans were parked in a wide lot at the far end of town. She spotted one building that might be a stable, with mules rather than horses ambling in the corral.
Directly beneath her at the base of the cliff was a squat building with a roof like a wagon wheel turned on its side, the hub a large domed skylight. It might be a church positioned to keep watch over the town.
To the left of Beth was a path that led downward by first going away from the sheer drop. Mercy took this route.
Herriot did not. Facing away from Mercy’s path, she barked once at something Beth couldn’t see. It was a vocalization like her intruder-alert bark, but something about it was different. She stood at attention, ears and tail erect.
“C’mere, girl,” Beth said, and she clicked her tongue as she turned Hastings toward the trail.
Herriot bounded away from her.
“Herriot! Come!” This time Beth whistled. Her dog responded with three short barks and a plunge through a tight stand of spruces, and then she was silent.
“Herriot!”
On the trail, Mercy had come back into Beth’s view and seemed to be waiting for her.
“Your girlfriend’s run off again,” she said to the wolf.
The wolf appeared uninterested in this revelation. He turned around and resumed his walk. Beth took a deep breath, sent up a prayer for Herriot’s safety, and followed Mercy.
He led the descent down a very shallow Z-shaped trail. At one point she thought the trail might bypass the town entirely, but then a sharp left turn offered to put her in the right direction again. A signpost told her that if she didn’t turn, her present course would take her up to a mine called the Caged Bird.
The next leg of the trail was no more steep, but much longer, and as she passed through a thick stand of Engelmann spruce, she lost sight of Mercy. The trees and the setting sun darkened her way considerably. But Hastings’ good sense of direction didn’t falter, and he brought her onto a single-lane dirt road, which was something of a driveway. To her right she was at eye level with the building she’d looked down upon from the cliff.
A landscaped welcome at the top of the road seemed at odds with its naturally rugged surroundings. A sculpted path of pea gravel, flower beds full of blooming annuals, and molded plastic benches bearing placards with donors’ names invited her into the Burnt Rock Harbor Sweet Assembly. The drive appeared to make a loop around the building. A dusty 4x4 was parked at the side of this sign, in front of a lattice-covered walkway.
The wolf sat under the shelter as if he’d been waiting for her.
A piercing shriek came out of the building and sent Hastings backward three or four paces. Beth uttered calming sounds to him, though the sound had washed away the beauty of the place like a flash flood.
There was another cry, less piercing this time and angry, but also longer, more agonizing. Thickened by sadness, like a wail.
The wolf turned and padded toward the entrance of the building.
Beth followed him. She tied off Hastings at one of the split-rail fences bordering a high-altitude garden.
One of the double doors stood open. The thick wood panels bore carved designs, and the one that was closed bore a crouching mountain lion poised to leap onto a horse carrying a young woman. The image gave Beth shivers.
The wail poured through the open door. That kind of sadness in this “sweet harbor” made as much sense as all those fire-blistered tree skeletons upright in the blooming green earth.
The lobby of the church looked like a museum, dim and with track lighting illuminating art on the earth-toned walls. Beth passed through it without noticing any details. When the scream came this time, she was sure it belonged to a woman, and it was a scream of anger and protest and grief. It was exactly the scream she herself had put into Jacob’s ear when he found her wandering along the highway after her father’s death.
The round room seemed to be a sanctuary, with six sections of pews coming out from the center like the arms of a snowflake. One of the aisles led directly from the passage where Beth stood to the center of the room, where a low rail encircled a pit with a low-burning gas flame in the center. Directly in front of it, a woman with her back to Beth had collapsed onto her side. She appeared to be alone. One of the woman’s hands still gripped the rail, elevating her right arm. The left was a pillow for her tilted head. Her keening filled the room.
For a fraction of a second the form appeared to be a fallen antelope rather than a woman, and then the vision vanished. But it was enough to propel Beth to her side. The carpet along the aisle had been stained with a dark drip.
Beth knelt beside her at her shoulders, which jerked with each hiccupping sob. Touching her might be a shock, so Beth refrained. Still, the woman sensed her and reacted immediately, but with no physical strength; she held her breath and turned her head toward Beth. Her eyes were swollen and red, and still filled with tears, and fine strands of silky black hair crossed her face.
“Let me help you,” Beth said. “What’s wrong?”
The woman’s voice was a whisper. “Everything.”
“What can I do?”
“Nothing.”
“Are you sick?”
The woman released the rail, and her arm flopped to the ground. Beth wondered how the woman had come here alone in this condition.
“Can I get someone for you?”
The woman licked her lips and drew the back of her hand across her eyes. “Is God around?” She cleared her throat and sharpened the edge on her voice. “Because I’d like to talk to him about a few things.”
Beth said, “I don’t know everything about God, but I think a church is as good a place as any to find him.”
“This is no church,” the woman said. “No miracles for anyone but Mathilde.”
“Can I pray for you?”
“If I die. Not before.”
It was such a strange and terrible thing to say that Beth reached out and touched the woman, as if holding on to her shoulder could prevent her from leaving the material world. Her clothes were hot as if the skin beneath it boiled, and the woman flinched.
“Your hands are ice!” she cried out, but she didn’t brush Beth’s hand off or try to roll away. In just a few seconds the tension in her arms began to release, one muscle fiber at a time. Perhaps she was too spent.
“Is there a friend—”
“He left me.”
It sounded like abandonment, though it could have been much less. He left me here to fetch the doctor.
There was no ring on the woman’s left hand. But there was blood coating her terribly thin legs, which looked like toothpicks protruding from her black skirt.
The woman reached up and put her hand on top of Beth’s. Her breathing leveled out.
“This helps,” she said.
“What’s your name?”
“Nova.”
“That’s pretty.”
“It’s a pointless name for an ugly life,” Nova said, and Beth felt all of the woman’s heartbreak in those words. She felt protective, maternal, even though she was the younger of the pair. She wondered if Nova’s parents had picked the right name for her.
“You need a doctor,” Beth said. It would be difficult to get this woman into the 4x4, if that was her car outside, but Beth could go quickly and come back. “Where can I find one?”
“I’m a doctor,” said a voice at the back of the sanctuary.
Beth stood. A severe-looking woman with pale features and dark, shining hair that stroked the bottom of her chin was coming down the aisle Beth had just traversed seconds ago. Her walk was more of a stalk, a weighty pounding of feet designed to make a pouting child feel powerful. She aimed herself at Beth. She carried a large purse.
Beth immediately disliked the doctor and simultaneously thought that it was unfair of her to make the judgment. But Beth disliked her heavy footfall. And she hated the distrustful look the woman shot at her, as if Beth had broken into her house to steal jewelry and secret files.
“I don’t know you.” The doctor said it like an accusation.
“The door was open,” Beth said, and then felt like a child. She shouldn’t have to defend her presence in this public place.
“Who are you?” the woman demanded.
Beth might or might not have offered her name at that point. She was thinking of asking for the doctor’s name first—an ID, credentials, all kinds of ridiculousness in a setting like this. But none of it mattered, because Nova started shrieking like the terrorized star of a horror flick, and she grabbed hold of Beth’s leg with both hands and started kicking out at the doctor.
“Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me!”
Beth tried both to calm her and to pry Nova’s fingers off of her boots. The sick woman’s screams drowned out all of Beth’s soothing words, and the doctor didn’t have a chance of getting close. Nova’s energy was fierce but brief, driven by a supply of adrenaline that had already been tapped. Beth’s was just kicking into gear. Should she protect Nova from this “doctor” or hand her over?
Where was Mercy to show her what she should do?
“This is your fault, you monster!” Nova screamed. Already her legs had given out, but she’d scooched herself off a spot on the floor that was an awful, sopping crimson.
The doctor’s attention had shifted from Beth to Nova, and her demeanor switched just as quickly from hostile to placating. The light in her eyes brightened and the lines of her brow smoothed out. Perhaps she was as protective of Nova as Beth felt. If Beth had walked in on a stranger with a sick friend, she might have reacted similarly. But Nova’s reaction made little sense.
“Nova, Nova,” the doctor cooed, ignoring Beth now. “I’m so sorry about your baby.”
A baby! All the blood looked freshly terrible.
“Get away!”
“Nova, honey, let me help you.”
The doctor had set her purse on a pew and withdrew a very small syringe out of her bag. She uncapped the needle and then held it slightly behind her, so as not to frighten Nova any further.
“I don’t want your help, Catherine. I’ll sue you!”
“But you’re bleeding,” Beth pleaded. She got down on her knees next to the frantic woman.
“Let us help you,” the doctor said, and in that “us” Beth understood that whatever the truth of this battle was, she and Catherine had just joined ranks, and Nova would soon come out on the losing side.
Nova grabbed Beth by the shoulders now and pulled their faces close. “You help me,” she said, and the words were a burst of hot air across Beth’s cheeks. “Not her.”
As Nova begged, Beth sensed Mercy crouching behind her, invisible as he had been the day the antelope lay at her feet, baring his teeth just a little and pushing her forward into a great mystery. Beth placed her hands atop Nova’s and closed her eyes and began to pray.
The doctor said, “Dotti sent me to find you, honey. Dotti . . . and Garner.”
Beth lost the thread of her prayer right away. Garner sent this woman? How many men named Garner might live in a town of four hundred people?
“They’re so worried about you.” The doctor’s words, falsely sweet, were like a knife slicing Beth and Nova apart. Beth felt Nova release her and spring backward, away, to her perceived escape. Nova’s fear of the doctor strengthened her.
She was scrabbling, a blind crab. Catherine rushed her. Nova saw the needle this time. Her screams started all over. She pushed away.
The back of Nova’s head connected with the hard seat of a wooden pew and she sagged against it instantly, her spine forming an uncomfortable curve.
Beth gasped. Catherine sighed and knelt to inject the contents of the syringe into Nova’s arm.
“If people would just accept my help,” the doctor muttered without looking at Beth, “their lives would be so much simpler.”
She emptied the contents and looked up at Beth as she capped the syringe and returned it to her bag. “You can go now,” she said, unaware of the wolf sitting directly behind her in the shadow of the pews. His eyes glinted.
“I think you should accept my help,” Beth said.