David Dun - Necessary Evil

"So you're going to marry an expectation instead of loving a person. It makes poor Willow sound like a political statement. God. I thought I was cynical."

"Ah. So you know all about Willow."

"Well, Claudie told me. I'm a snoop at heart. That's why I'm a cop."

"So now you've decided I'm not in love with her when you don't know either of us."

"We got naked in the same hut. I know you."

"Well, let me explain my side of this."

"Go ahead."

"I guess," he said, sighing, "I don't quite look at my relationship with Willow the way you and Claudie do."

"Let's leave Claudie out of this."

"Okay, the way you do. You know the saying about 'stir-the-oatmeal kind of love'? It's not Hollywood, but it's caring." He watched her with eyes that pleaded for her understanding, even as he supposed it was something that she did not intend to give.

"You see there, you've just admitted it. This is some dogeared old affection that's like friendship. It's not really love."

''It's what I want. I'm not looking for anything else. Anything glamorous."

He heard her take in a deep, ragged breath. "So that's it. Okay. I can respect that. I suppose there're a lot of happy families out there stirring the oatmeal. Personally, I'd rather be passionately in love, howling at the moon, screwing my brains out till we knock the bed over."

Kier thought about that and realized that nothing good could come from continuing the debate.

"I judge from the long, Indian-like silence that we've exhausted that topic. Let's try another unfinished topic."

She leaned closer against him, placing her hand on his chest. He surmised that the rummy, frivolous feeling that accompanied exhaustion was relaxing her. He took hold of her shoulder and pulled her tight. She let her body meld to his.

"Back there on the cliff you were starting to tell me about your boyhood fears of the TV bear. I interrupted you."

"Well, it wasn't just the TV bear. To this day when bears come to a camp in the night and they wake me, my heart races for a few seconds. Like when I was a child."

"Kier afraid of a bear?"

"No. I'm afraid of things that I can't control. It just happened that the TV bear captured my imagination when I was young."

"How about love? You can't control that. Or the pain of it.”

"Never thought of it that way."

"Maybe it's time you did. I still remember certain very powerful emotions from my growing up. When I was a little girl, I always wanted my daddy's attention."

"Every little girl wants that."

"Yeah, but this was a big deal in my life. Really big. He wasn't the cuddling type. Never touched me. I'd sit for hours and daydream that I'd found a way to impress him. I have these memories of getting all excited about something, trying to tell him, and him not even looking up from the paper."

Kier held her close, but said nothing. She put her head on his chest.

"Is it something to do with your dad, that you're upset about?"

"No, it's not."

"Let me ask a question?"

"Okay."

"Why were you visiting your sister?"

"I'm not up to this yet."

"Can't talk about it?"

"Not now. Tell me about Willow."

"What's there to say? In a couple months we'll get engaged, get married, the whole thing."

"Did you ever tell Willow all this… this stir-the-oatmeal and native-loyalty stuff?"

He made no immediate reply. As he thought about her question, he was not searching for an answer, but searching for a reason. He could not think of one, except the anxiety that accompanied the thought.

"No."

"Well, I pray for the poor woman's sake that you do before you propose."

" The view definitely takes your breath away."

They looked out over several hundred thousand acres of snow-covered rock and timber. Rock under snow and ice made blue-white mountains stretching to the horizon.

"It looks as good as a Bierstadt," she said.

"You can't feel the solitude in a painting."

"You don't freeze your ass off or die from exposure in a museum," she said. He caught himself frowning. "Oh, all right. But it would be a hell of a lot easier to appreciate it over a hot cup of coffee."

Man Jumps cave emerged far enough down the mountain to be below the sub-alpine forest and in the true fir belt. By the look of the trees, they stood at 5,500 feet, maybe slightly lower.

Below them grew the mixed conifer forest with its Douglas fir, white fir, ponderosa pine, sugar pine, and incense cedar.

"We're up in the true fir, aren't we?" Jessie said. Obviously she was beginning to discern the different species, which served as a primitive altimeter.

To reach the forest from the mouth of Man Jumps cave they had to go laterally along a narrow rock-strewn ledge that followed the face of the cliffs for about a thousand feet.

Kier knew she was trying to look unafraid, even calm, but her head nodded an involuntary "yes" when he asked if she'd like to ride on his back.

"I should walk on my own," she said.

"You don't look like you believe it."

"I'll walk."

"And I'm stubborn?"

A foot or two wide most of the way, the ledge was just sufficient for walking, but narrow enough to be painfully tenuous, bordered as it was by a breathtaking vertical drop. Fractured rock and a dusting of snow along the ledge added to its already treacherous texture.

They moved single file, roped together so that if Jessie fell, she would get a second chance, provided Kier was surefooted enough to hold her. If he fell, they were both dead. Brooding dark clouds hung in the mountains, their tentacles reaching into the valley, portending more bad weather to come. As they walked, he tried to keep her talking in order to keep her mind from the fear. To a degree it seemed to work. Either that or she was becoming more accustomed to heights.

"The cabin is close, just under some Douglas fir down on that ridge. The way the air is warming, I'd expect these next clouds to drop buckets of rain in the valley. Melt the snow. Make it impossible for them to follow us down the mountain."

"I'm growing to hate this business of leaving footprints everywhere we go. I'd just love for the snow to melt. And food. I have this wishful vision of the cabin with plates full of spaghetti and meatballs. Does this cabin have a table and chairs? Can we get something to eat?"

"Table and chairs, it does have. Food, we will get any way we can."

"Why don't you people leave food?"

He found himself smiling. "If we left food, you might be sharing your bed with a bear. Besides, we like to keep it fresh and kicking."

"What is it that'll be kicking?" She set her foot beyond a large loose rock and reached to the wall for support.

"Beaver. Beaver tail is excellent, although I hate to kill them."

"Tail. Oh God."

"Well, there's also cattails. Use the rhizomes on the cattail for flour, young ones for something like asparagus, and the heart, which is hard to describe, maybe like a rich potato. And bulrushes. They're sweeter than the cattails. There's arrowhead there too. Like yam, sort of. Those are all things we can get quick. From the sound of it you'd like an early lunch."

"Well, at least it's food."

"The water there is the key. The creek is dammed up by the beaver, and the pond makes a lot of food for everything."

The ledge came to an end in a rushing stream that plummeted thirty feet down a chute seemingly too treacherous to walk. At the base of the near-vertical drop the stream hit a gentler slope that by the look of it could be traversed.

"I know you won't walk in the snow, so I won't remind you."

''Yes, that way we can pretend you don't think I'm an idiot."