The Ice Sings Back, page 6
Chief closed the notebook, nodded firmly, looked at Jonas, then May, with eyebrows up. She responded to the summons, walked towards him. He unfolded a large map onto the hood of the bush truck.
“Do a hasty search,” he directed May and Jonas, pointing to the map. “Head down Scott’s Trail to the PCT to Harlow Crater. There’s an OHEWS cabin on the east side, with a narrow spur trail easy to miss off the PCT here,” he tapped the map. “If you get to here, you missed it, so flip around.”
They both marked the points on their own maps.
“OHEWS is manned, but radio comms aren’t picking up last night or this morning. A woman runs the station, but she might be out doing field work, or her makeup or something. According to Corvallis, if she’s not at the station, she’s likely out on Millican or Black Crater. With the rain yesterday and last night, that seems unlikely, but because the cabin isn’t responding, speculation is pointless. Get to OHEWS ASAP, get the radio working, see if she’s got any information on the child, then radio in for a report and a new mission.”
May nodded in confirmation, heart pounding, and he turned away from them to issue directions to other team members. She collected her gear from the back of the ambulance, shouldered her pack, radio checked the communications center, and then followed Jonas out of the buzzing parking lot, across the highway, and onto the trail. At least twenty people were hubbed up around Command, and the immediate quiet that descended upon them as they moved into the forest was a relief.
The light was grainy in the moments before sunrise, the first birds of the morning stirred with halfhearted chirps. Everything was wet, and May was glad she’d waterproofed her boots the week before. The sound of dripping was the soundtrack to the fast pace Jonas set.
A mile in, May was vibrating, couldn’t handle the silence. She stopped, kneeled, pretended she had to tie her boot. Wished there was some type of narration that went with this search to fill her in on all the subtext.
“Hold up,” she called, flapping her shoelace about. Jonas turned, saw her crouching over her shoe, stopped.
She fussed for three seconds, then, as she rose, voiced the questions buzzsawing in her brain. “What did Chief mean?” she asked. “About the other incidents?”
Jonas rotated, hiked away from her, water pants whispering. He gave no indication that he’d heard her. May tamped down the annoyance that surged in her, hurried to catch up, for once grateful for her long legs and wide stride.
“Wait, Jonas!”
He slowed, turned, looked back at her.
“You seem to know everything that goes on,” she said, making sure her voice came out admiring. She gave him her best appreciative gaze. Worried she was piling it on too thick.
His eyes cut a gray-blue and the lines around his mouth tugged low. He looked handsome in the pale morning light.
May wondered briefly if he was going to ignore her. But then he drew a breath, opened his mouth. “Amelia Kane is not the first person to disappear in the Three Sisters,” he said. “In fact, it seems like women and girls go missing out here all the time.”
4
THE
SCIENTIST
Goddammit!” Ros Fisher spat viciously, ducking the muck and gravel flying at her. “Fuck you! Intrusive igneous dirtbag!”
The black truck spun, hurling waves of mud as the driver screeched the tires and yanked the vehicle out of the pullout.
Ros flipped her middle finger at the disappearing taillights and wiped angrily at the coarse particulate mud coating her face, jacket, pants. She should report that vehicle to ODOT. Would report it, she decided.
She spat silt out of her mouth. Whatever. Kids in jacked-up trucks doing donuts in pullouts. Not the first time, not the last time. It just reinforced why Ros chose to live at a remote Oregon Cascades field station. She turned away from the road, assessed the supplies stacked at her feet, now also coated with fines and grime.
She leaned down and wiped the wooden boxes into reasonableness before jamming everything into the pack she’d brought. Taking a deep breath, she heaved it up onto her back, adjusted the wide canvas straps that dug immediately into her shoulders. Ros had been using the station’s original 1950s era government-issued external frame pack to haul supplies back to camp since she started the job. Each time, she cursed at how uncomfortable it was. She’d tried a few times to use her modern hiking backpack, but the items at drop-off were unpredictable and often unwieldy. Ros found it easier to take the external frame and suck it up for the eight-mile return.
The re-supply was a coarse smear on the map, a narrow dirt pullout near the McKenzie summit of Highway 242 that had a sizable wooden padlocked box set discreetly into a mound of lava. Because Ros could rarely predict her daily schedule at the station and the drop-off wasn’t made at a consistent time, she almost never saw the Forest Service delivery guy who drove the re-supply for all the research stations in Oregon.
Ros surveyed the pullout, noted the large puddles. It had rained the night before and the usual mix of vibrant ash, pumice, and rhyolite in the pullout had transformed into a gray-vomit slog. That was what likely had attracted the kids in the black truck, the chance to do a little volcanic mudding. She hoped uncharitably that the sharp fines would erode the alternator wirings and leave the kids stranded somewhere far from coffee.
She smiled briefly at the thought, then chided herself for being such an old curmudgeon.
The kids probably hadn’t even seen her.
Ros sighed, felt her wet toes squish around in her boots. The wet socks were what she was most pissed about. She’d gambled that her hiking boots would last one more season, but both boots were already worn flat. The right sole had completely separated from the leather at the flex point of the toe, and the left heel lugs had been sanded down to nubs. The mini tsunami from the truck had washed over her boots and soaked through their cracks. Everything felt gritty, wet.
Typically, Ros looked forward to re-supply day.
Just about every second Tuesday Ros hiked or skied the eight miles to the pullout, heart beating in anticipation at what she’d find. Sometimes the Forest Service staff sent extras, like chocolate, or beer, or books. But even the regular stuff like food or equipment was exciting. Ros recognized that other people probably didn’t get so excited at the sight of a new voltage meter or channel locks. But she did.
It reminded her of when she was a kid squirming to be allowed to walk down the driveway to the mailbox where she’d hope to see her name splashed across an envelope. That had never happened, but Ros still carried the optimism forward to re-supply day.
This re-supply, despite the rampaging truck, was a good haul. Along with the standard two weeks-worth of food, four novels she’d requested, and new ten-gallon water drum to replace the one that had finally cracked, the re-supply also included four three-inch diameter PVC pipes.
The pipes were five feet long each and stuck up from the top of her pack like a set of antennae even a spruce sawyer beetle would stop and admire. Ros had some winterization scheduled for the meteorological equipment she monitored, and she’d been waiting for over a month to get the last of the piping to finish the work. She was excited.
Ros scanned the pullout one last time before clicking the chest strap on her pack in place and turning for home. Her boots scrabbled on the loose regolith as she walked briskly away through the medial space between the old lava flow and the forest, and then along the inconspicuous trail south.
Five steps across the basaltic andesite lava, rain started to drip from low clouds. A quick glance told her they were cumulonimbus. Ros stopped as soon as the first drops splattered on her shoulders, maneuvered out from under a tree, turned her face up to the sky. Squinted.
Were the clouds vertically developed or uplifted?
Dark and ragged base, but uniform gray interior extending thousands of feet up into the atmosphere. She smiled at herself; she was wrong. They were nimbostratus clouds. Ros could make out just a few shreds of pannus clouds just below the primary base. She liked nimbostratus clouds—to her they were ponderous, slow clouds that released precipitation over a steady, hours-long duration. They were predictable.
Fat drops washed down her face, cleared away some of the muck. Ros felt her sour mood splash away, her internal isostasy settle into balance. Her thoughts meandered at will, unsorted, unstratified, and Ros was content.
The area needed rain, and it would lessen the sharp volcanic fines that got everywhere during the hot, windy summer season. Rain would collect in the tanks and save her several water collection trips. Rain meant fire season might be over. Rain also meant fewer hikers.
Ros’s field station was tucked up in a small gorge on the east side of Harlow Crater, with a view through the trees of Millican Crater and Black Crater and all the forest burns in between. Both peaks hosted extensive monitoring equipment as part of the Oregon High Elevation Weather Station—OHEWS—network. The acronym served as a single name for both the cabin where she lived and worked and all the surrounding data-gathering centers she controlled.
The trail to her cabin was a lightly trafficked spur that ran east off the Pacific Crest Trail. Sometimes hikers came up the trail if they saw her porch light or heard the generator, but generally people steered clear.
When she did have random visitors, they were usually curious day hikers or people down from Lava Camp. Ros tried to be friendly and open to them, but to her it seemed obvious that if a person decided to take a job staffing one of the most remote field stations in the Pacific Northwest, they wanted to be left alone. Ros preferred living without unannounced guests.
Or, she had.
Of late, Ros had been feeling hostile pricks of loneliness, the type that came upon her suddenly and stabbed so hard sometimes she felt like doubling over in pain. It was as if the solitude she’d coveted for so long was no longer enough, as if the life she’d carefully shaped was weathering at the edges. She worried her loneliness could only be cured by further, more immersive loneliness. Or by quitting her job.
She wondered if the work was getting to her. The week before, she’d talked up a Doug fir like it was a colleague.
Perhaps soon she’d go down, get some face-to-face interactions with people who could talk back. She’d skipped her last three cycles out, had preferred to stay in the cabin and read. But now, Ros felt like she needed people.
She hiked on, hummed along with the raindrops careening into the lava. Tried to remain good humored even as the plastic pipes caught on every tree branch she ducked and she lurched back and forth beneath their snags like a drunk train. Tried not to focus on the fact that the water drum had decided to take on an inch of rain for every foot she hiked. Or that it was pouring hard enough now to strangle frogs. Instead, she focused on the lava and forest and clouds and rain, and by the time she’d scrambled up the last lip of trail to her cabin, she’d almost managed to right her little ship.
The loneliness lingered, murmured and flowed downstream quietly in the background.
Ros dropped her pack onto the porch with a satisfying thunk, unlatched the door, and stepped into the cabin. Propping the door open with a loose brick, she simultaneously stripped off her wet, filthy clothes and stirred up the coals in the wood stove. Shirtless, in panties and wet wool socks, she shuttled back and forth out to the porch to bring in splits of wood to feed into the stove. Within moments, Ros had a roaring fire.
She stood in front of the hot flames, removed the rest of her clothing, and poured water from the counter jug onto a rag and started wiping down her puckered skin. Ros appreciated her body in the fading light, how it gleamed every shade of brown imaginable, from her bronzed copper face to the skin below her elbows and above her collarbone that looked just like sun-soaked umber. Her torso and legs were shaded what a fellow graduate student in chemistry and casual lover had once described as “near-perfect siderite.”
After her bath, Ros pulled on warm dry cotton sweatpants, a soft t-shirt, and zipped up a fluffy down jacket. She dried her short curly hair with two passes of the towel. Each stroke brought her mood to keel, and by the time she was bathed, dried, and clothed, she was back to even.
Glancing at the clock, she saw it was nearly three in the afternoon. There wouldn’t be enough daylight to carry the pipes and other winterization gear up Black Crater. Besides, it was pouring glacier rain. Ros decided she’d start the project tomorrow. She reached, flicked on the gas stove to heat water. Now was time for coffee.
Moments later, ceramic cup of coffee in hand, Ros wandered out through the open cabin door and leaned on the porch banister. She took in the cool air and the rain glazing the surrounding trees, outhouse, generator, equipment, radio tower, and sizable lava stacks. As she scanned the clearing around the station, her eyes caught on movement and her breath stalled.
Two people were at the forest’s edge. One was sitting, the other, standing.
“Fuck,” Ros mumbled, gripped the ceramic cup harder. Scrutinized them.
Why hadn’t they come straight up to the cabin? Why were they skulking? She took a forced breath, drew up her scant social reserves. It had been a long, physically demanding day and she was tired. But it might be good to have some human interaction. She knew she was lonely; she’d been admitting at least that truth to herself for weeks.
Or months, if she was for once actually honest with herself.
“Hi there,” she called out, feigning a brightness she did not feel. She stepped to the edge of the porch. The two figures shifted immediately. The seated person stood.
“Hello!” one called back, a man’s voice, deep, resonant. They moved away from the trees into the open area around the cabin. As they got closer Ros saw the second person was a woman. An exceptionally tall woman with thick dark hair who looked utterly bedraggled, sodden from head to boots.
“You PCT hikers?” Ros asked, staying just under the roof edge and dry from the rain. “Isn’t it a little late in the season?”
“Nah,” the man called back. “We’re just doing the Oregon section. I’m Trick.”
“Ah. I’m Ros, nice to meet you.” She surveyed them over the rim of her steaming mug as they moved farther into the clearing.
Trick looked like he’d just stepped out of an REI catalogue. Had a mat of dark beard that covered his face like tree moss, a sunburnt face, and brown eyes that locked immediately with Ros’s.
The woman was kitted out in solid black rainproofs that clearly sluiced all water directly into her boots. She stepped around the man, looked at him, then at Ros. “I’m Ash,” she said, a smile tinged with weariness lighting up her face.
“You both look awfully soaked. Want some coffee? I just made a pot and have enough to fill an underground tank.” Ros gestured up onto her porch. “If you want to dry off a bit.”
The man stepped in front of the woman as if the two were playing checkers. “Thanks Ross,” he said.
“Not Ross. Ros, like Rose,” Ros corrected automatically.
The man smiled. “Sorry. Ros.” He gestured back to the forest edge. “We got here a little bit ago but decided not to bother you.”
“Trick,” the woman said, tone sharp.
“You were, uh, less than dressed,” he explained, looking at Ros with a mix of appreciation and something else she couldn’t quite put her finger on.
“For fuck’s sake,” the woman whispered.
“Okay.” Ros kept her face blank, tone neutral. She considered for a moment telling the hiker to get the fuck off her property, but then looked again at Ash and saw the exhaustion carpeted over the other woman’s face.
“I’ll get some coffee,” she responded finally, flatly. She turned, went inside, poured two more cups. Took her sweet, plodding, glacier time.
When she went back out, the two hikers had taken shelter on her porch, their packs chucked into a haphazard pile by the steps. Ros handed them each a coffee in silence, noted their non-reactions to her gift, then stepped back. This was her cabin, and she didn’t have to force conversation.
When no one said anything, she picked up a few splits from the wood rack by the door, went inside without a word, fed the stove. Set a pot of water onto the burner to boil. Reached for vegetables out of cold storage, began chopping. Stir fry for dinner? Or steamed veggies and pasta? She mulled the merits of each dish as she hacked at a carrot. Her ears were tuned for voices outside, but she focused on the mundane tasks before her.
“Thank you for the coffee,” the woman’s voice rang from the doorway.
Ros looked up and turned, took in the wet black hair knotted into a bun, the rips in the waterproofs. The woman’s eyes were skirted with huge dark circles. Her cheekbones were like pedestals supporting folds of corrugated skin, reminiscent to Ros of solidified pahoehoe. Ros hadn’t seen someone look so tired since she was in graduate school.
“Sorry about Trick.”
Ros raised an eyebrow, pressed her lips together. So what if she was in her panties earlier? It was her cabin.
“He’s using your outhouse. Without asking. I’m sorry.” The woman coughed. “He can feel like a bit of a…” Her voice faltered for a moment. She seemed at a loss for words. “A transgression,” she finished weakly.
Ros glanced at her, watched her lips shape words, noted the slight smear and dribble of the pronunciation. Wondered if the woman had a speech impediment. There seemed to be a tremor in her neck, shoulders.
“The sea has not advanced,” Ros responded.
“What?”
“A geology term,” Ros explained. “Transgression.”
The woman looked at her blankly, then leaned heavy against the door. Ros felt compassion flair inside her mouth.
“Ash?” Ros verified, and the woman nodded. “Come, sit. You look like you’ve been in a bear fight; just wrung out.”
Ash smiled gratefully. “I am.”
Ros had seen that the woman was tall, but watching her stride through the cabin, Ros was struck by her sheer dimension, the width of her gait. But despite the space she commanded, Ash had a calm presence, a grace to her movements as if she might have been a dancer. Ros watched—almost mesmerized—as Ash moved towards and sank down into the wooden chair nearest the open door.
