THE AROMA OF PINE AND CEDAR FILLED EVERY BREATH AND Gabriella sucked in great lungfuls of it as she followed the winding road into the mountains. The air was a feast of crispness; it smelled so clean it must have been scrubbed with lye soap and hung out on the line to dry.
U.S. 285 had led her along the valley floor in front of Mount Princeton for eight miles to Nathrop, where HWY 162 peeled off to the right and began to wind up through Chalk Creek Canyon between Mount Princeton and Mount Antero. As the road curved along beside the creek, massive chalk cliffs reared up on the south side of Princeton, towering 1,500 feet into the cloudless sky.
“Those are called Moon Cliffs,” Gabriella told Ty, shouting so he could hear her above the wind in the open jeep. “You can read a newspaper outside from the reflected glow off them when the moon’s full.”
A full moon. Twelve days away.
The road followed the creek higher and higher up the canyon. Mount Antero reared up above the road on the left and filled the whole sky, bald and snowcapped above the tree line.
After a 45-minute gradual climb, they rounded a curve and came upon the little town of St. Elmo. Named a National Historic Site, the resurrected ghost town rested at an elevation of 10,000 feet. It had been a mining camp in the late 1800s and its buildings were authentic period structures, wood frame, with raised wooden sidewalks that stretched for four blocks along both sides of Chalk Creek Canyon Road, which formed the town’s main, and only paved, street.
Gabriella could see houses down a handful of side streets—small adobe structures mostly, with dirt yards. She was surprised that anybody actually lived here full-time. By September, the upper reaches of Princeton and Antero were snow-clogged and many valleys like this one were impassable. Skiers didn’t come here, though. The resorts and striking Colorado slopes were on the other side of the Mount Massive Wilderness Area—an hour and a half north in Vail or three hours away in Aspen.
There were cars, pickup trucks and SUVs parked in front of businesses, along with several jeeps she suspected were rentals and other battered, mud-splattered jeeps she was certain weren’t. Some of the vehicles obviously carried tourists, easy to spot with their cameras and binoculars dangling around their necks, or holding cell phones out at arm’s length to frame and capture digital images. But the locals were easy to spot, too. Hispanic, many of them, some Native American, they chatted, two or three together here and there, dressed in not-a-fashion-statement frayed jeans, well-used Stetsons and scuffed and muddy cowboy boots.
Gabriella pulled her jeep to a stop in front of a building flanked on one side by the dry goods store and on the other by the apothecary. A hand-painted sign on the front proclaimed St. Elmo’s Mercantile, Established 1885. The proprietor, a man named Pedro Rodriguez, was the man Gabriella had driven more than a thousand miles across seventeen states to see. He held the key—literally—to her future. If what James Benninger had said in every Christmas card in the past five years was true, the owner would welcome Gabriella and her family, supply them what they needed and give them directions, maybe even a hand-drawn map to direct them to St. Elmo’s Fire, snuggled in a hanging valley on Mount Antero 11,673 feet above sea level.
Gabriella opened the jeep door and got out, then turned to help Theo clamber out of the backseat. But he stepped down unaided and shook off the hand she’d placed on his elbow.
“You’ll know I need help standing up when you see me falling down. And you’ll know I’s ready for the Reaper when I stay down there cause I like the view.”
“A little grumpy, aren’t we? You’re just afraid I might find out you’ve got a heart of gold.”
“So does a hard-boiled egg.”
Ty and P.D. had already bounded up the steps to the wide wooden sidewalk in front of the Mercantile. Gabriella couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen the boy’s eyes lit with so much joy. He must feel like he’d left the real world to take up residence in a cowboy movie. She and Theo joined him and pushed open the door and set the bell above it jingling. P.D. didn’t have his guide dog sign hung around his neck but Gabriella suspected this was a place where animals were as welcome as people.
The interior of the store was dim and shadowy, the array of merchandise on the shelves an eclectic hodgepodge of items. What appeared to be a well-stocked small supermarket filled the whole left side. Theo headed that way, likely searching for licorice. In the center was a Southwest souvenir shop like those they’d passed every fifty miles since they crossed the Oklahoma border into Colorado. Ty had pleaded with her to stop at Injun Joe’s Wampum or Crazy Harry’s Rattlesnake Ranch or the one with a twentyfoot-tall purple Tyrannosaurus Rex out front that advertised Indian rugs, turquoise jewelry, pizza and Chinese carry-out.
The Mercantile’s souvenirs included the classics: T-shirts that proclaimed I HEART Colorado or My Parents Went to Colorado and All I Got Was This Stupid Shirt. Rubber tomahawks, Indian bows with stoppers instead of arrowheads on the arrows, cap guns, slingshots, Indian drums topped with stretched rubber instead of animal hides and Indian headdresses made from dyed chicken feathers. For the more discerning shopper, the back wall featured turquoise and silver jewelry, genuine handmade Indian pottery and rugs and Pendleton blankets.
And a huge section of rocks.
Gabriella was instantly drawn there. She gazed at the kinds of minerals she’d grown up with, housed in cases and on shelves in a special room in her childhood home. Glittering pyrite—fool’s gold; deep purple fluorite octahedrons; flaky, milk-colored mica that looked like shaved glass; dense blue apatite; shiny black squares of galena and slices as big as a saucers of quarter-inch-thick granite, striped with black and reddish brown veins, polished to a finish as smooth as a granite countertop.
And of course, blue, white and purple aquamarine—some polished into semi-precious stones and others in the natural, crystalline state her parents had found on the mountain.
“Mom, come look at this,” Ty called. He was standing with P.D. at the counter of a small post office on the far wall of the Mercantile next to a bank of post office boxes and a small array of mailing paraphernalia—first class envelopes, small boxes and brown wrapping paper. A mini laundromat—three washers and three dryers—occupied the wall on one side of the post office and on the other side stood swinging doors like those in an Old West saloon. Gabriella could see what appeared to be a family room beyond the doors, likely the living quarters of the proprietor.
Ty was talking to a rugged Hispanic man with a thick black mustache who stood behind the post office cash register. A dark-haired girl was down on her knees petting P.D.
“Check that out, Mom.” Ty pointed behind the counter to a life-sized poster beside a collage of snapshots under the banner Wall of Honor. The snapshots were of grinning fishermen displaying trout of every variety—rainbow, brown, cutthroat—and every size.
Gabriella smiled at the poster. It showed Napoleon Dynamite—one of Ty’s all-time favorite movie characters—with his hair a curly red fuzz-ball and his arm draped around the shoulder of a smaller, dark-haired boy on whose upper lip sprouted something that approached a mustache. Both wore t-shirts that proclaimed “Pedro for President.”
So did the man behind the counter.
“His name is Pedro, too,” Ty said, and nodded to the man, who extended his hand.
“Pedro Rodriguez. I’m happy to meet you, ma’am.”
Pedro was tall, broad-shouldered and barrel-chested, a sturdy man whose unibrow shaded direct brown eyes. The bright smile that lit his face like a halogen bulb revealed perfect teeth beneath the black broom of mustache. His features were craggy, not traditionally handsome but rugged and strong. Gabriella was embarrassed to discover that if she’d had to describe him in one word, that word would have been “sexy.”
He looked her dead in the eye when he shook her hand, took in her face as a whole rather than a collection of pieces with one side slathered in makeup that camouflaged but didn’t completely hide her deformity.
“This is my daughter, Anza—Esperanza,” he said. “In Spanish, that is Hope.”
“I’m Gabriella … Underhill.” She didn’t think he picked up on the pause. Even after using it for two weeks, the fake name didn’t flow easily off her tongue and she was always afraid Theo and Ty would forget it altogether.
The girl stood and Gabriella got a good look at her as they shook hands. Her hand was small and soft, but her handshake was firm—no dead fish on a stick.
“Your boy tells me you’re going to be spending the summer at St. Elmo’s Fire,” Pedro said.
“Mister Rodriguez says—”
“Pedro ees fine, son.” The man’s Spanish accent was the musical kind where every word is linked to the next in a melodious daisy chain.
“Pedro says that St. Elmo’s Fire is the only cabin on the whole mountain, Mom! On the only road on the whole mountain. And there’s a creek there with a waterfall and trout and at night the moon shines on the chalk cliffs, which aren’t really made out of chalk and—”
“Breathe in there somewhere, Ty,” Gabriella said, “before you pass out.”
At that moment, she was acutely aware of Ty’s little boyness. As evidenced by his exuberance, of course, but more apparent by what failed to light a fire under him than what did. Ty paid no attention at all to the young woman smiling beside her father. And any male human being who didn’t stare at the girl slack-jawed was clearly pre-pubescent. Or a blind eunuch.
Though voluptuous in a peasant blouse, Esperanza Rodriguez was modest and demure, with a head of glossy black curls, a china-doll face, and warm, brown skin as clear as morning light. She had the kind of plump, moist mouth men grow stupid about, pouty lips that were red without lipstick and brown, doe eyes with obscenely long eyelashes. Beside a girl so strikingly beautiful, Gabriella felt like a troll under a bridge.
“Not the only road, son, the only jeep trail. There’s a road up the other side of the mountain for prospectors. Folks have staked claims to about every square inch of that side of the mountain to mine the aquamarine.”
Gabriella found her voice and hoped she hadn’t been caught gawking.
“You have the key to the cabin—right?”
“Not just the key but a warm welcome to go with it for Jim’s mystery guests.”
Gabriella’s gut clenched into a knot and she had to struggle to make her question seem more surprised/bemused than desperate/frightened.
“Mystery guests? So what’s Jim been telling you about me?”
“Oh, he didn’t call you that. It was … I … a few years ago, five or six I guess, he said he’d invited someone to stay at the cabin whose family spent a summer there back in the 80s.”
“We were here when I was seven … almost eight years old.”
“He talked about it a time or two after that, never mentioned your name though, and I …” Pedro grinned and Gabriella noticed how comfortably a smile fit on his face. “Well, I got to thinking of you as his ‘mystery guests.’ Before he left for Sudan, he called and said he’d invited you to stay the whole summer and if you showed up, to give you my spare key to the cabin and the gate, and to play host for him, make sure you have everything you need.” His smile grew wider. “As I’m sure you know, Jim”—pronounced with a long “e” sound in the middle—“may be a little … scattered … but he ees an amazingly gracious man!”
Gabriella felt the knot in her stomach slowly relax. This was the last hurdle. She had no idea how much Jim Benninger knew about her. He obviously knew her name and her parents’ names, but did he put it together with the famous Garrett Griffith, or somehow link it to Rebecca Nightshade? And how much had he shared about her and her family’s connection to St. Elmo’s Fire with the person who kept the key? If Jim had given out her identity, poured out her whole story, maybe—at least as much of it as he knew—it would have been too dangerous for her to stay here. She’d have been forced to move on and find another hiding place, take Theo’s advice and throw a dart at the map.
She first heard from the Rev. James Benninger in a Christmas card in 2005—the first Christmas after Garrett’s death. Getting that card was the only thing she could remember clearly about that Christmas. It shone like a single, bright star in the black depths of her grief.
She’d never sent out cards, thought it was crassly commercial, and over the years most folks had marked her name off their Christmas card lists, too. She remembered the envelope lying by itself on the table by the front door, addressed to Gabriella Griffith in care of Phillip and Natalie Griffith at her parents’ old address on Old Boston Road in the Whitehall neighborhood of Pittsburgh. The family had lived there until Grant’s death and then moved away. But years later, Garrett bought the house—said it was the only place they’d ever lived that felt like home. He could have afforded a mansion, but he lived for years in that modest house. Died there, too. After his death, she couldn’t bear to sell it, just left it empty. Mail delivered there was forwarded to her address.
She’d only opened the envelope because of the address. She remembered sinking down to the floor and staring at the picture on the front of the Christmas card—a stunning photograph of St. Elmo’s Fire. Not the simple, rustic cabin she remembered but freshly painted and beautiful with the unchanging rise of mountain behind it and the waterfall in the background.
Written inside the card in a fluid script not usual in a man’s handwriting, was a message:
You don’t know me, Gabriella. My name is Rev. James Benninger and I pastor St. Stephen’s Presbyterian Church in Biloxi, Mississippi. I purchased St. Elmo’s Fire in Colorado ten years ago and have gradually been renovating it ever since.
The next line kicked her heartbeat into a loping gallop.
When the carpenters tore off the roof to add a second floor, they found a box of items in the crawl space of the attic that had belonged to previous owners or tenants. One of the things in the box was a bunged-up family Bible in which a little girl named Gabriella Griffith wrote a diary and drew pictures during the summer of 1982. The final entry sent me digging into your family’s connection to St. Elmo’s Fire and I learned about the horrible tragedy that occurred at the end of that summer. I am so sorry for your loss.
I hope I am not invading your privacy by contacting you. But given the significance the cabin has in your life, and the obvious strong feelings you must have about the time you spent there, I thought you might like to visit sometime, and I want you to know you are welcome to stay at St. Elmo’s Fire anytime you would like.
This is my address and phone number. (I got your address from a blank check in the Bible. I hope someone in your family still lives there to forward this on to you.) Give me a call to arrange a time when the cabin is free.
And may the blessings of this special season soothe your heart and restore your soul.
God bless,
Jim Benninger
She’d certainly needed a soothed heart and restored soul that Christmas, but it would have taken more than a Christmas card—however kind and sincere—to assuage her pain. She’d stared at the photo through her tears, then threw the card away and never thought about it again.
Another card arrived the next Christmas, and every Christmas after that. The message in each of them was different, but they all contained the same offer to visit St. Elmo’s Fire. She had thrown every card away, never wrote down Rev. Benninger’s address or phone number or made any effort to get in touch with him. But she had grown to anticipate and enjoy his cards—seeing the changes in the cabin—the new second-floor deck, new wraparound porch, the trees in the aspen forest taller.
The card this past Christmas varied from the usual message, however. Rev. Benninger said that he and his family would be working at a refugee camp in Sudan from March until October, 2010.
“We won’t get to enjoy St. Elmo’s Fire at all next year,” he wrote. “So there’s no need for you to schedule a time to visit. In fact, the cabin is yours for the whole summer if you want it. I’ve asked my good friend Pedro Rodriguez at St. Elmo’s Mercantile to give you a key. If you are able to come, he will take good care of you and your family!”
He also ended his message differently.
“Ever since the first of November, you have been in my thoughts often. I have learned over the years not to question it when the Lord places someone on my heart. Perhaps you have some need I don’t know about, some need St. Elmo’s Fire might meet. I urge you to take advantage of my offer and spend time there. The beauty of creation all around cannot help but draw you closer to the Creator.”
Since the first of November … Yesheb had shown up in her life on Halloween.
When she decided to run, to hide, she instantly thought of the cabin, as if it had been waiting in the back of her mind for her to summon it. She had never made any connection to Rev. Benninger. She’d never mentioned him to anyone and had thrown away all his correspondence to her, including the card last Christmas. Her family had traveled the country like gypsies every summer of her childhood. There was no record of where they’d gone, no possible way to connect her to a single cabin where they’d stayed once almost 30 years ago. St. Elmo’s Fire might be … an answer to prayer.
“We’ll need directions, too,” Gabriella said. “I’m not sure I could still … find it. Maybe you could draw us a map.”
“You will not need a map. Head down Chalk Creek Canyon Road for another four miles until you come to a big house on the left. It ees not your typical mountain cabin, it looks like … well, you will see for yourself. Steve Calloway, Dr. Steve Calloway, lives there—a retired GP—and the trail up the mountain runs right beside his place. You can’t get lost on the trail because like I told the boy,”—he reached out casually and ruffled Ty’s curls, and Ty didn’t seem to mind a bit!—“the trail doesn’t even show up on maps, except the most detailed ones for hikers.”
“People hike up the trail?” Gabriella didn’t mean to sound so alarmed but she could tell Pedro picked up on it.
“Not that I know of. There’s nothing on this side of the mountain to hike to.”
“But, the aquamarine …”
“Years ago people looked for aquamarine up there, but that was before they found huge deposits of it on the other side of the mountain. And prospectors can’t take a jeep up the trail to St. Elmo’s Fire—there’s a gate on it that’s locked when Jim’s not here and I’ve got the only key.”
Pedro smiled again, such an engaging infectious smile, Gabriella found herself smiling back. “I’m the St. Elmo’s Fire gatekeeper/custodian/maintenance man/tour guide/service department/technical support and concierge. Mostly I check on the place, keep it in good repair and make sure it’s stocked with supplies for Jim when he comes.”
Before Gabriella could say anything else, Pedro’s eyes turned to a woman approaching the counter with a handful of mostly wilted wildflowers.
“Hóla, Contessa,” Pedro said. “What have you got there?”
The woman had salt-and-pepper hair in a windblown frizz and wore a man’s suit jacket over an Indian-design long skirt. With sparkly bangles of jewelry hanging off her everywhere she could dangle something, she looked like a gypsy fortune teller. Or a Christmas tree. If Gabriella had met her on the streets of Pittsburgh, she’d have thought she was a bag lady.
As soon as the woman spotted P.D. she issued a little squeal of delight and got down on her knees in front of him. He endured her “ohwhat-a-pretty-doggie-you-are!” stoically. His guide-dog training had disciplined him to sit quietly under the gushing ministrations of dogloving humans.
The woman straightened up finally and answered Pedro’s question.
“Just painting out in the meadow above Buffalo Creek—still life.” Gabriella noticed paint smears in various hues on the woman’s hands and clothing. “Larkspur and loco weed—blue and purple—and a touch of red king’s crown.”
The woman noticed Gabriella for the first time and gave her a silly little wave that animated the bracelets on her arm in a jingling, clattering dance.
“Oh, excuse me—I didn’t mean to interrupt,” she said, then flashed a be-friendly-to-tourists smile. “Hope you enjoy our mountains.” She turned her attention back to Pedro as Theo hobbled toward them. “And when I saw these golden asters and blanket flowers—oh, Pedro! The yellows and rusts must have been blended by angels from a celestial pallet …”
Theo leaned toward Gabriella.
“Couldn’t find no licorice,” he muttered, then whispered into her ear. “Bet the only angels that screwball knows is Hark and Herald.”
Gabriella flashed him a behave! look.
“… and I had to stop and pick a bunch for Angelina,” the woman continued. “She seemed to like the smell of the Indian paintbrushes I brought her last week.”
“Gracías. I am sure she weel enjoy them.”
“Why don’t you put them on her pillow,” Anza said, and turned toward the double saloon doors with the paint-splattered artist in tow. When the doors swung open briefly to admit them, Gabriella caught a glimpse of an elderly Hispanic woman working at a long table in what appeared to be a large living room-kitchen combination. Something else in the room caught her eye, but then the doors swung back shut.
“I apologize for the interruption,” Pedro said. “You were asking about hikers and I was assuring you there were none. Anything else you would like to know?”
“Just us!” Ty said to Theo. “There’s nobody but us on the whole mountain, Grandpa Slappy!”
Gabriella cringed. They’d agreed to leave references to their past life—like Slap Yo Mama Carmichael—behind them.
But Theo was quicker on the uptake than she expected. Extending his hand to Pedro, he said, “Name’s Theodosius X. Slapinheimer.”
Gabriella burped out a giggle she managed to disguise as a cough. Theo’s face remained expressionless.
“Growing up with a name like that, I just mailed my milk money to the school bully.”
Gabriella was grateful for the rumble of Pedro’s laughter so she could let go of her own.
“My friends call me Slappy,” Theo said, still deadpan. “You can call me Mr. Slapinheimer.”
“Theo!”
The whole exchange blew right by Ty. The boy had other things on his mind.
“And the cabin is waaay up on the side of the mountain, Grandpa Slappy—and the only way to get to it’s a rutted jeep trail!”
“Goody,” Theo said.
“As you can see, Ty’s grandfather is less than thrilled to be here.” Gabriella struggled to keep a straight face. Slapinheimer? “He’s never been in the mountains.”
Pedro didn’t patronize him.
“The mountains aren’t for everybody; some people hate it here. As for me …” The halogen smile lit his face again. “This ees as close to heaven as I will ever be on earth—literally as well as figuratively. My mother used to tell me God had to work nights and weekends to create the Rockies.”
Theo softened a little.
“Maybe that’s why He brought us here—so He could show off.”
“Maybe so.” Then Pedro turned back to Gabriella. “I am not going to lie to you, Mrs. Underhill. That jeep trail, it ees a bear. Seven switchbacks and lots of overhangs and drop-offs.” He fixed her with a pointed, anxious look. “You sure you can handle it?”
What choice did she have?
“Bring it on.”
Pedro studied her for a moment, then continued. “I keep the cabin stocked with the essential nonperishables—canned goods, salt, pepper, sugar and bottled water.” He stopped, turned to Theo. “About water. Be sure to—”
“One more person tell me ‘drink lots of water,’ or ‘yeah, but it’s a dry heat,’ I gone smack ’em!”
“Same go for ‘the air ees very thin up here’?”
Theo nodded.
Pedro addressed Gabriella. “Just a reminder for you, then.” With that thick mustache, she could see a full-on smile, but a mischievous little grin was harder. “Do not expect to do what you always do. You will tire out quickly. Sit down and rest or we will be sending a medevac helicopter to pluck you off the mountain.”
“They can do that, can they?” Theo asked. “Come get you off the mountain?” Pedro nodded. “Good. If I die up there, I don’t fancy being a snack for the bears, a little dark meat to vary they diets.”
Pedro laughed again and Gabriella watched Theo thaw to something like room temperature. The old man loved it when people laughed at his jokes. She suspected Pedro had figured that out.
Reaching into his pocket, Pedro fished out a key ring. Gabriella noticed that every key was meticulously labeled and Pedro saw that she noticed.
“I am only a leetle OCD,” he said. “Not enough so I label my sock drawer or arrange the soup cans in the cabinet in alphabetical order.” He removed a key from the ring and handed it to her. “This key unlocks the gate as well as the cabin. If I were you, I would get on the road as soon as possible. There ees a thunderstorm almost every afternoon this time of year. They do not usually last long, but they can be fierce—lightning, hail and enough rain to make the roads slippery. And that trail ees hard enough to get up dry.”
Gabriella purchased a few basic perishables—bread, milk, lunchmeat and Lucky Charms for Ty. Ty bounced out the door like he was riding a column of turbulent air. His feet only touched the ground a time or two between the store and the jeep. Theo had retreated to his perpetual state of ill humor; Gabriella was sobered. And … okay, admit it, concerned. Pedro’s warnings awakened her gnawing anxiety about Theo. He was stronger than most men his age, but he was seventy-four years old. Would the thin air bring on heart problems? Would the ride up the mountain scramble his internal organs?
“Theo,” she said before she started the jeep’s engine. “You don’t have to go with us. I can give you some money and you can vanish wherever you—”
“We done been over this. You two goin’ up that mountain, Theo goin’ up that mountain. So let’s get to it—you heard what Pancho Villa said. There ain’t no top on this thing and I done took me a shower today.”
As they headed down Chalk Creek Canyon Road toward the trail up the mountain Gabriella noticed white and gray clouds moving in over the mountaintops to the west.
THEO SAT IN the backseat with P.D., who was snapping at the wind that flapped his ears. The old man had placed two sacks of groceries between him and the animal and hoped the breeze would blow off some of the dog hair the walking fur machine had slimed on his shirt on the ride to St. Elmo.
He sighed, closed his eyes and had a brief but intense conversation with God.
Are you sure you thought this one all the way through, Lord?
Far be it from me to tell you how to run the universe, but Theodosius X. Carmichael climbing up the side of a mountain … that sound right to you?
I know it’s not like you asking me to leap over the Snake River Gorge on a jet-propelled motorcycle, but just so we clear on this—I would rather face down a serial killer with a sinus infection and poison ivy on his privates than ride up a hiking trail in this jeep!
Amen.
Oh … and I hope you was plannin’ on lookin’ after us ’cause I gone keep my eyes squeezed shut the whole way.
When they spotted the house set back from Chalk Creek Canyon Road in a grove of aspen trees, Gabriella understood why Pedro said it wasn’t a typical mountain cabin. Actually, it was more a compound than either a house or a cabin, a collection of half a dozen small buildings surrounding a big one. All the buildings were made of red stone and shaped like Indian cliff dwellings. Painted in yellow below all the windows were Hopi Sun designs, a circle with three uneven lines—two short and one long one in the middle—extending out from the top, bottom and sides. A sign proclaiming “Heartbreak Hotel” formed an archway in a stacked-board fence that zigzagged out of sight into twin aspen groves on the sides of the gravel driveway leading to the big building.
A tall, white-haired man with a hatchet-thin face and wire-rimmed glasses stood beside the gate as if he were expecting them, and with a sweeping gesture of his Stetson invited them into the compound. There was no way to ignore the invitation without being rude, so Gabriella turned down the driveway and parked next to a battered vehicle with “Lotions, Potions & Deadly Elixirs” printed on the side. It looked like the Libyan terrorist van from Back to the Future.
P.D. hopped out the window onto a well-tended lawn—must water it every day for it to be so green—framed by a rock garden, yucca plants and flowering cacti. The dog dashed from one new scent to another, in doggie heaven from all the olfactory delights. The three humans climbed down out of the jeep as the man walked from the gate to greet them.
“Pedro called and said you were coming,” the man said. His tousled white hair fell across his forehead into eyes magnified into big, blue marbles by his glasses, and he wore old jeans and scuffed cowboy boots. “I’m Steve Calloway. I hear we’re going to be neighbors this summer.”
“Looks that way,” Gabriella said. She introduced herself, Ty and Theo uneasily, eager to disengage from the conversation and be on her way. She’d seen the doctor give her scar a quick once-over and knew he wasn’t likely to forget it.
Ty pointed to the van.
“What’s an e-lix …?”
“Elixir. Old-fashioned medicine that made well people sick, sick people sicker and killed more people than it cured,” Steve said. “Some folks in St. Elmo painted that on the side of the van once when I was out of town—because it’s kind of a traveling drug store/first aid station. I don’t have a shingle hanging on my door, but it’s a hike from here out to Buena Vista for folks with medical problems.”
Theo gestured toward the buildings. “This a hospital?”
Steve laughed. “No, it’s more an old-folks camp. All my retired friends come here to go fly fishing. A bunch of city boys descend on the mountain every summer, strip it of vegetation and all other life forms, leave it a barren wasteland and fly back east. I’m from Cleveland. Where are you from?”
“Pittsburgh,” Ty said, though their cover story had them hailing from Salt Lake City. “You a Browns fan?”
“You mean a fan of the greatest football team that ever put on pads?”
“The Browns?” Ty shot a glance at Theo, who nodded almost imperceptibly and the boy went for it. “You know why the Browns are like a possum?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Because they play dead at home and get killed on the road. You know why they’re not like a dollar bill? Because you can get four good quarters from a dollar.”
Dr. Calloway staggered backward in mock pain, holding onto his chest. “You’re killing me, boy! You’re killing me. Bury me with the oldest of the old up above St. Elmo’s Fire.”
“There’s a forest of bristlecone pine trees in a boulder field between the cabin and the peak,” the doctor said. “Bristlecone pines are the oldest living organisms on earth.”
“So there might be a tree up there that poked out of the ground the year Grampa Slappy was born?”
“That’s some serious old, boy,” Theo said.
“Actually, there might be a tree up there that sprouted from a pine cone when Julius Caesar became the emperor of Rome. A bristlecone pine tree can live up to 4,800 years.”
Even Theo was impressed by that.
“When my granddaughter was little, she called them Jesus trees. There might be a tree up there that …”
Gabriella wasn’t listening anymore. At the mention of the bristlecone pines, her mind flashed on golden light. A sudden hum filled her head like the sound an old refrigerator makes when the compressor kicks on, and she was at once in two worlds. The childhood fantasy world of The Cleft was a golden overlay on reality, coloring trees, the sky, Dr. Calloway, Ty and Theo in rich amber shades, golds and different hues of warm brown. The Cleft’s golden light was brighter than she had ever seen it, a blazing sun so brilliant her mind squinted in the glow. The sense of peace was more profound, too, a joyous bubbling in her soul that was like exhaling a breath long held, unclenching fingers long squeezed into a fist, allowing cleansing tears to flow in sweet relief. A long, gentle ahh in her heart.
With the sensation of a final puzzle piece slipping effortlessly into place, Gabriella suddenly understood. The fantasy was so powerful here because she was closer to its source! She had dreamed it up here when she was a little girl! Her Wonderland, her Narnia, the fanciful creation of a sad little girl to make herself feel better—The Cleft. It was created here on this mountain!
“Mom!” Ty waved his hand in front of his mother’s eyes. “Earth to Mom. Do you read me?”
She focused and flashed a smile that was warm and sweet, wafted upward from the dying embers of the golden glow in her mind.
“Read you loud and clear, Mr. Spock.” She held up her hand in the V shape of a Vulcan salute.
“Your face looked blanker than a wino’s bank statement,” Theo said. “If we gone do this, we best get at it, ’less you can get Scottie to beam us up to that cabin.”
“Maybe not Scottie …” Dr. Calloway said. He looked toward Chalk Creek Canyon Road. “At the risk of mixing TV show metaphors, will Speedy Gonzales do?”
They all followed his gaze. The rumble of the approaching jeep clearly indicated it needed a new muffler. Pedro was at the wheel, wearing a straw cowboy hat pulled down low over his brow. He turned off the highway onto the trail but didn’t drive into the compound, just stopped and called out to them.
“I told Steve to stall you while I got someone to watch the store,” he said. “Thought I would tag along if you (pronounced “choo”) don’t mind. I want to make sure everything is all set at the cabin.”
No, you don’t. You want to make sure we make it up this trail to the cabin alive.