Scott Nicholson - The Gorge

McKay helped Farrengalli wrestle the second raft ashore, tipping t he water out and dragging it beside the first. Lane stood on shaky leg s and inspected it. “See, no damage at all. Built to withstand the wor st that nature has to offer.”

“Is that the ad copy or did you improvise?” Bowie asked.

“Maytagged your asses,” Farrengalli said.

Lane ignored Farrengalli’s taunt. “I have complete faith in our pr oducts, or I wouldn’t bet my life on them.”

“But what about betting our lives?” Bowie asked.

“Hey, there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” Farrengalli said. “ If a couple of you clowns buy the farm, then there’s more glory for me.”

“Hey, man, this isn’t a canned episode of Wild Life with Natalie,” McKay countered. “This is reality. I’d like to see you handle that spill.”

“No sweat, Golden Boy.” Farrengalli puffed out his chest, as if ex pecting another physical confrontation. Raintree stepped between them, sensing Dove would do so if he didn’t. “Let’s eat, gentlemen. Accordi ng to the map, we’re about halfway to Babel Tower. Two more hours on t he water and we should reach our campsite.”

Farrengalli glared at Bowie. “You going to let Geronimo here give the orders from now on?”

“That wasn’t an order,” Bowie responded. “Let’s give Mr. Lane a ch ance to recuperate, and we could all stand some refreshment. If you do n’t mind, that is.”

“Bush-league bullshit,” Farrengalli said, stalking off toward the edge of the woods.

“He’s going to be trouble before the trip’s over,” Dove said to Bo wie.

“He was trouble before it even started. Okay, folks, crackers and dried fruit; then it’s time to catch some serious hair.”

Raintree gathered his backpack, noticing Dove and Bowie sat down t ogether to share their rations. He went into the woods away from Farre ngalli, wondering if the sylvan glade would offer up the vision he sou ght. A large part of him felt foolish. Vision quests were archaic, los t in the early nineteenth century, vanished like the buffalo and elk. Nowadays, vision quests were offered as vacation retreats, a week in t he desert or the high mountains with a self-proclaimed “spirit guide” who accepted cash, traveler’s checks, or credit cards. Like the sad ol d men who made their living posing in ceremonial headdress for tourist photographs, Raintree was just another sellout. He’d traded on his im age and heritage as much as anybody, a cigar-store Indian with good te eth and muscle frame, blessed with a lithe form that might in another time have wrestled grizzly bears and cougars.

Farrengalli clearly hoped someone would die on the journey. Raintr ee didn’t care. He didn’t know which was worse.

But he wanted to succeed. He would do it for his people, though th e Cherokee had changed along with the rest of the civilized world. The

White Man took their lands but later made good by granting gambling c asinos. The Great Spirit had abandoned its people yet again, but then rolled sevens after they had given up all faith.

He rummaged in the medicine bag. A couple of the black, a white, and maybe one of the yellows for good measure. Raintree looked toward the sky, up where one of the White Man’s gods was supposed to dwell on a golden throne. He saw no sign of such a god, but a few clouds had drifted from the northwest, high cumulus with swelling, gray underbellies. All part of the Great Spirit, along with the forest, the river, the rocks, and “Where the fuck is everybody?”

Farrengalli. A force of nature unto himself.

Raintree was about to return to the others along the riverbank when he saw a creature drifting high off the cliffs, perhaps a half mile away.

A hawk? A feathered brother that would fulfill his quest and provide him with strength and knowledge?

No, its wings were too awkward for that of a hawk, its flight uncertain. This creature angled against the wind as if it had been thrown off the rocky heights and expected to fly or drop like a stone. It flew as if it had no direction, no purpose.

Raintree squinted against the veiled sun, trying to make out the winged form. Eagle? They were rare in the mountains, he’d heard, but liked to nest in pairs near water, so it wasn’t impossible. He’d never seen an eagle in midair, but suspected its flight would be majestic, not crippled. Falcon? Not as rare as eagles, but again, such a bird of prey would project more strength in the air. This was more likely a vulture.

Even from this distance, though, the creature projected a non-avian aspect. Whatever it was, its lower body was dense, not built for aerodynamic grace. It appeared to be gliding, its wing-like projections held out stiffly from its trunk. It cut a slow, lazy ellipse, a darker speck against the clouds, and then it disappeared among the distant treetops.

Seconds later, Raintree realized what he had witnessed, but could only smile to himself. The Great Spirit played tricks when delivering visions, and those who sought too hard often engaged in flights of fancy.

The thing had been a man.

Flying without a plane, hang glider, or parachute.

Raintree touched his medicine bag. Psychedelic mushrooms, jimson weed, foxglove, and belladonna were natural paths to visions. But Raintree didn’t want the natural path. He craved the finest that modern drug companies had to offer, in clean, easily digestible pill form. He had been saving the best stuff for some unforeseen sacred moment. Maybe visions came when least expected, and made so little sense the seeker had to dream on them for weeks or months or even years to understand their meaning.

Or, perhaps, he had imagined the whole thing.

Raintree unfolded himself, rose, and headed back to the rafts, anxious to finish the journey, no longer so curious to suffer sacred visions.

Despite what Ace thought, Clara Bannister wasn’t from old Yankee money and she wasn’t an uppity bitch. She’d been raised in a mobile home in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father had been an automotive mechanic as well as a preacher, and had briefly been on the pit crew of Indy 500 champ Al Unser. In between sermons, he ran his own garage and raced the dirt tracks. Her mother worked the counter at the Dairy Queen, attending night school at the local community college, taking five years to get a two-year degree in physical therapy. Not enough money to make it out of the trailer park, but they had instilled a strong work ethic and a passion for success. And a whole severe slate of morals.

Sometimes, she wondered if her overachieving nature related to those roots. Such a beginning wasn’t humbling. It was embarrassing. In junior high, once she was old enough to know better, she loathed catching the school bus with the dirty-kneed, runny-nosed brats from the neighboring trailers. She deserved better. In her off-the-rack Kmart jeans and thrift store blouses, she was always four years behind the trends, but the real cruelty was that she’d been granted just enough intelligence to be painfully aware of her condition. She didn’t fit, even though she pursued the usual outsider fields of band, theater, and art. Even among the losers, she came up lacking.

But there was one area where genetics paid off: rides. When the other juniors were sporting about in pre-owned Hummers and Toyotas, her dad put her behind the wheel of a lovingly restored 1969 Camaro. Such cars were the fuckmobiles of their era, and Clara did her best to uphold that reputation. Clara had never derived as much self-esteem and satisfaction as she did when chauffering some boy around the downtown square a few times before parking in the alley and rutting with him in the backseat, leaving him spent but her bright-eyed and eager for the next pickup.