Doug Allyn - v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

We stood around some, after that, both me and Red looking at Horne, waiting for him to get on with it. Anson plunged his hand into City Creek and dragged out a cooler. “Have one,” he commanded, thrusting a bottle of his favorite near beer in my direction.

“I don’t generally drink alone,” I replied. Red must’ve thought that was pretty funny, ’cause he guffawed and got his own bottle from the cooler. Anson just got red in the face.

“This guy Torvilson is a troublemaker,” Horne blurted out.

“Trouble for who?” I asked, taking a swig. The stuff was cold, that’s all I can say.

“Think I’d let a murder go by on my watch?”

“Isn’t your territory, way I hear it,” I answered.

Hadley chimed in, “Torvilson came in with some cock-’n’-bull story about those kids being murdered. If it was true, do you think we wouldn’t care?” His complexion was suffused with an ugly angry glow, no wonder people called him Red.

“Chief,” I turned to Horne, “what do you want from me? You know I got a living to make, just like you. But I haven’t got such a heavy load. I don’t want to add to yours, but I’ve got to make my way.”

Hadley grabbed my arm. “They were just kids and they all died. Nothing’s going to bring them back. Torvilson calls me every day.” Anson gently pulled him away.

“There’s nothing to this,” Horne continued, “but anything you find out, you tell me first. I don’t want this Torvilson doing anything stupid.”

“Like hiring me?”

“Like taking matters into his own hands.”

Anson and I, we looked at each other. Hadley wasn’t part of this; I don’t know why Horne brought him. It wasn’t necessary for me to speak, we knew each other that well. “Thanks for the beer.” I gave him a half salute. “It almost tasted like one.”

I spun on my heel and left them there, two rubes drinking near beer by City Creek.

Next morning I trekked up to the ranger station out at Henefe. I’d finally turned the old pre-war Chevy in for a later model. The Buick Super purred along the road and I was glad I’d let the top down. The air was still cool and fresh. It would stay that way for a while in the shadow of the Wasatch.

The ranger station didn’t turn out to be much to look at and neither did Edgar Benson. He was kind of a short ugly guy who reminded me of a toad, fat and all puffed up with his own importance. He didn’t like giving out information. Probably he didn’t have any and didn’t want to admit it.

“The inquiry is ongoing,” he repeated for what must have been the tenth or eleventh time.

“Look, I just want to help put this thing to rest,” I replied. “Got any kids?” I asked, trying to find some common ground with this guy.

“My personal life is no business of yours,” he retorted stiffly and I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere.

“Thanks for nothing,” I said and withdrew as best I could. I got back in the car and drove on north. Thought I’d go take a look at the site. Sure wasn’t going to ask permission from the sourpuss I’d just been bantering with.

Hardscrabble was about an hour’s drive from Henefe and when I got there I realized I couldn’t take the car all the way in. I was wearing city shoes, but the going didn’t look all that bad. There was a path leading through a small stand of pine trees that had surprisingly survived the firestorm. I thought I’d walk a ways in.

As soon as I got round a bend in the path the ground opened up to a little valley. There’s where they got caught, I thought. They were walking out of the Wasatch after successfully fighting a fire up at Mahogany Ridge. They were tired and hungry and all they wanted to do was reach the road. It was their bad luck that a lightning strike had started a blaze in front of them.

“It started just about where you’re standing.” A voice behind me spoke aloud the thought that was running in my head. I just about jumped out of my skin.

“You shouldn’t sneak up on a body so,” I said. “Might like to get you killed someday.”

Red Hadley gave me a deadpan look and shrugged his shoulders. “I wasn’t particularly trying to be quiet,” he replied. “You seemed pretty wrapped up in your own thoughts.”

“Can’t say I particularly expected to see anyone around here. ’Specially you. I thought you were solidly of the act-of-God school of thought.”

“Got curious, that’s all. Thought I’d see how you were doing.”

“You mean Anson Horne wanted to see what I was up to, don’t you.”

He shrugged and looked past me to the other end of the valley. “Yep,” he said, “I guess it started just about here. Nothing but burned-out stumps this side of the creek bed. Those boys weren’t expecting to meet fire between them and the road. They had a radio, but nobody’d reported it.

“Funny thing about fire,” he continued. “I like near froze to death once. Never was so glad to see a fire in all my life. It felt like I could just plunge my feet into it up to my knees and it wouldn’t hurt me none. Didn’t do it,” he added, “got more sense.”

The floor of the valley sloped upwards from where we were standing. I took a deep breath and started the climb. The stillness of the air had a weight to it, making it hard to pull it into my lungs. It seemed to want to wrap me up the way a spider does before it sucks you dry.

The dry grass crackled under my feet and broke the spell. The going wasn’t bad but the soil was loose. I was taking my time, but a flat-out run would sure be hell. And that’s what they were doing, those six boys, a flat-out run, with the fire roaring and howling at their heels.

Hadley stuck to me like glue. We walked for a while without talking before we came to a marker of sorts, a concrete cross about four feet high. It looked out of place in this wild setting.

“There’s a cross for every spot where they found a body. Here’s where Morris bought it,” Hadley commented. “He was only sixteen.”

Baumgartner, Dorn, Green, Morris, Torvilson, and Taglia. I knew from my research that Morris had been the first boy to die.

“How d’you know so much?” I inquired.

“Torvilson spent nearly every day for close on to six months at the station. Kept ragging on us to do something. There isn’t any little detail I don’t know from that man. Morris lied about his age,” he continued as if impelled to tell me everything he knew. “This was his first jump.”

I looked up the valley and could see four more crosses strung out ahead. Morris had finished last in the race that nobody won. We kept on walking. We were going at a slow pace, but by the time we got to the second cross I was exhausted. The incline that had seemed deceptively gentle at the mouth of the valley was tying the muscles of my legs into knots. At the base of this cross someone had laid flowers. Even in the heat, they still retained their shape.

I thought that Hadley would start a lecture about whichever poor kid this cross represented, but he was silent. I guess he was as breathless as I was.

“Someone’s been here,” I finally managed to get out, “and not too long ago by the looks of things.”

“Torvilson,” Hadley muttered. “It’s Torvilson’s cross,” he said in a louder voice. “It doesn’t do to dwell so much on the past.” He turned on his heel and started back down the valley.

I looked up to the head of the valley, then back at Hadley’s retreating form. The shadows had shifted some, and then I saw it. High on the rim of the valley, alone from the rest of the crowd, the sixth cross stood outside the edge of safety. I guess when you’re running from red death a miss is as good as a mile.

The folly of man hit me like a blow. The bodies had been taken elsewhere. The entire valley was an empty graveyard of hope. The crosses were cruel reminders that young men don’t always get to be old ones. My only comfort was that the crosses that disfigured the fire-scarred valley would eventually crumble away. Hadley was right. Sometimes it’s best to leave the past alone. “Rest in peace,” I whispered and followed the policeman down.