Peter Heller - The Painter

FLASH FLOOD! I screamed it, as loud as I could, and saw him startle, bolt for the door handle and jump into his car.

That was all. Reflex. I slammed the accelerator and the truck roared, bellowed I remember just like a beast. The rear end fish-tailed and we must have slid into a shallower shelf of rock because the whole thing grabbed and tore into the bottom and gunned as if shot out of the water, tearing into the gravel of the far bank and lurching, almost like an animate—an animal—up the ramp of the far side, slamming up onto the bench as the roar swallowed the entire world and I felt it whomp the rear end, the wind and spray of it, and the hard rain hit at the same moment. A fierce wind rank of rot and death and mingled with clean mud and water tore through the cab and pummeled my face and I felt the ground shudder and the flood pass behind us.

I was shaking, just like a poplar, uncontrolled. Pulled the emergency brake hard and shoved the door and stood on the mud, and shook, and turned, and searched the near dark now of the far bank as if I could conjure him out of it. Why did I think: Please, oh God, let him be there?

He was. The car was on its own bench on the far side. Oh, man, lights still off but it was there, up at the lip of the sand ramp that had descended to the creek. Where he had been seconds ago was now subsumed in foam and clotted wood, sticks and logs circling there in an angry vortex, in the eddy formed by the rock, what would have been his own mudwater grave. I shook. I winced down my eyes to see more but didn’t. Didn’t see him, couldn’t, his shape anywhere, he must’ve been in the driver’s seat watching also.

Then the headlights flicked on, I could hear over the wash and tear of current against the new-ripped bank the uptake of the engine and the lights swung back into the turnaround, lit the piñons and pushed forward in a tight arc and then nothing but taillights rising slowly up into the black backdrop of the trees. He was gone.

I stood and shook and it rained on my bare head, somewhere in there I had lost my hat, and I cried like a baby. Bawled. Not sure for what. For everything. Shook and howled and the rain came down hard and the lightning exploded right on top of the thunder and rolled away, shook me to the roots, and I knew.

I knew: that whatever I was, my soul was no more substantial than a tattered leaf, one of those torn off a streamside tree in the flood. That I was nothing, that whatever I had done in my life amounted to just that, shreds no heavier than leaves, and that also whatever I had done, I had done it like a blind storm-ripped thing, or like a blind animal nosing from scent to scent and was whomped and carried most of my life by the wrath and high spirits of a power without malice, and that I had done my best and loved my daughter. I had loved her. I had loved Alce the best I could, the best I knew which was nothing to brag about, but I had loved her hard, as hard as a heart could, as hard as this flood tonight. I loved you.

I wept and I said it over and over, I loved you. I loved you.

The storm might have lasted two hours. I stood in the downpour and filled with cold water like a cracked shell. I shook apart. And then I could no longer feel anything except that I was freezing, to the bone, and that whatever pieces of me were left were shivering now with hypothermia. I thought of what Mitchell my doc friend had told me about dying that way, and I would not. I would pull into the partial shelter of some big juniper and pull out my sleeping bag that might or not be soaked, and unroll it in the truck bed under the topper and try to sleep. Sleep till morning and let the creek subside and cross it again and go home. To the hotel. To a meal and a hot bath.

I did pull in under a big old cedar, to buffer the impact of the rain on the topper’s roof, if nothing else, and crawled around in the back and found the milk crate in which I kept the sleeping pad and bag and they weren’t there. And remembered: they are in my rucksack, still stuffed in there from my last brush with Grant. Okay. I felt around for the pack, felt up in the front corner where it often ended up and nothing. Where the fuck? I was kneeling, shivering on all fours in the back of the truck, the rain whipping against the camper shell, knees hard on the corrugated bedliner, thinking back, tracing. And then it hit me: I left the pack. That night. I left it behind the boulder, the big rock I had dived behind when I thought Grant would plug me. I left it.

I froze there on my knees and went over it again: remembered that I had taken it with me out of the trees, and down the grass hill as I ran zigzag, expecting to be torn apart by a bullet any second, and dived for the boulder, and taunted Grant, what I thought would be him and was instead an already cold corpse, and then I charged him, charged my truck and I left the pack. Oh my frigging God. Left it behind the rock like a calling card at the scene of a murder. And then I laughed. Like a maniac. I laughed so that it rebounded in that tight dark space and shook me harder than the cold. I laughed because I had thought I was such a wise guy, covering up all the signs with the little shovel and dirt, washing the truck the next morning, replacing the windshield, felt almost like a pro, which had creeped me out. Well, I need not have been so proud of myself nor so creeped out. I was a stone cold amateur. I had left a sleeping bag right there like a DNA-covered flag. I was an idiot. No different than I ever was. God.

Something about that realization warmed me. The return to my old dumbass self. I found the tattered wool sweater I sometimes wore fishing in the crate with my gear, and I stripped my sopping shirt and tugged it on and it was wet but it warmed me instantly. In my wet vest I found a fruit and nut bar and tore open the cellophane with my teeth and devoured it. Better. And then I curled up and the shivering subsided and I went dark. Don’t even remember falling asleep, just went blank and woke with the loud chortling sound of water and the scream of a robber jay and the descending six note call of a canyon wren. I crawled out of the covered back of the truck and blinked. The sun streamed through the heavy branches of the juniper, already warm. The creek ran low in its bed and clear. Like nothing had happened, except that there was a pile of dead wood wracked against the bank on the far side, dropped there in the eddy that had formed where Jason might have died.

I didn’t give him a second thought, don’t know why, he didn’t seem right now my biggest worry. What was? I felt lighter, the way I had last night after burying the gun. Was that just yesterday? Already seemed like another life. Except that this time the relief wasn’t from getting rid of some hardware, some incriminating thing, this time I felt washed clean somehow and unburdened of something bigger.

I waded across and spent a few hours dismantling the tangle of driftwood blocking the ramp, enough to get through. I was thirsty and drank straight from the creek, fuck it, I was sure I’d already had giardia, then I started the truck and turned around and nosed into the stream which ran easy and clear, and crossed it on the old ford. And the rough road out of the canyon was mostly already dry, amazing, and I chugged and churned up it like any happy hunter. I was starving.

They were waiting for me as Irmina said. Three squad cars. Two were Jeeps. I saw the bar lights reflecting red and blue in the hotel windows before I turned in to Don Gaspar and I thought they looked festive. Perpetrator’s holiday. Wheezy leaned against one of the SUVs drinking coffee and talking to Sofia. Sofia. Huh. Steve was there, too, in conversation with a uniformed officer, high ranking by the look of the stripes. It was like homecoming. Only ones missing were Sport, Willy.