Jonah parked the truck off the road to the Gore and got out, gasping for breath, trembling. There was no going back now. No one who would understand his justification for keeping the girl. They’d think he’d taken her from her home, they’d believe it like they believed in God.
Jonah pulled his coat collar up against his cold neck. The temperature had dipped. A wind kicked up. It threshed the treetops, the branches clattering. Vultures arced in the sky over the distant trees over near the cabin.
A blue jay heckled him from a spruce branch as he scrambled around to the passenger side to retrieve the girl. He had a grip on the truck’s door handle when he heard it.
An ATV.
Throttling up the road behind him.
The girl looked at Jonah through the truck window. He put a finger to his lips, shhhh. Motioned for her to hunker down.
She did.
She’d run off for a reason, and she wanted to stay run off. They would leave together. Start fresh. Soon. Very soon.
The ATV gained on him, the deafening blat of its exhaust and reek of its toxic fumes polluting the still mountain air. The rider was fat, bearded, a slow look in his eyes.
He brought the ATV to an abrupt stop and slung mud and snow on Jonah.
Jonah stepped toward the ATV.
The rider gawked at him. “Hey,” he said.
Jonah said nothing.
“Know where there’s trails up here?” the rider said.
“No trails. Not for those things.”
“No trails?” The rider torqued the throttle. The engine revved. The tailpipe puked exhaust.
“That’s right,” Jonah said.
“Maybe I’ll just make my own trail then.” The rider revved the engine louder and spat a wad of chew into the snow.
“You don’t want to be doing that,” Jonah said.
“Why’s that, Pops?”
“I live up here.”
“You own the land?” The rider pressed a thumb to the side of one nostril and blew snot out of the other nostril, slung the snot from his fingers. “I don’t think so. We’re gonna log up here. The whole mountain. Come spring. Knock ‘your’ cabin flat with a skidder.”
The logging company would be relentless, pressuring him. The searchers would find their way here too. No place was safe. He would not be here long anyway.
“It’s not spring now,” Jonah said. He wished he could see his truck behind him, see if the girl was keeping herself hidden. If she so much as peeked over the edge of the window . . . “And I don’t want to hear those things.”
“Well, Pops, if you don’t own the land, you don’t have a say now, do you?”
“Do you own it?” Jonah said.
“How’s that?”
“Do you own it?”
“No.” The rider blew snot out of his other nostril.
“Then since neither of us owns it, but one of us lives on it, I’d say the one who lives on it has more say than the one who doesn’t. Wouldn’t you say?”
“Listen, Pops.”
“I ain’t your fucking Pops.”
“I ain’t hurting nothing.”
“You’re hurting my fucking sensibilities.”
“Your what?”
“My fucking sensibilities, my aesthetics, my peace of fucking mind.” Jonah’s blood was hot with rage. His teeth ached with it.
“I don’t know what—”
Jonah stepped in close to the rider. “Listen to me,” he said. “You listening? I am telling you just once.”
“Jesus,” the rider said.
“Jesus doesn’t have a say in this. I did my praying once when it counted most and—I’m telling you this once. Turn that fucking contraption around and do not come back up here. Not ever.”
“You got no fucking right.”
“Right? Right don’t matter. Only what I’m about to tell you matters. You come up here again, I will shoot you fucking dead.”
The rider blinked. “Hey. Listen—”
“You listen. What I say is the truth. Sure as you sit your fat ass on that fucking thing. You come up here again, I will shoot you dead. But first, I will wound you, so when I come over to you and look you in the eye as you lay on the ground blubbering and confused about how it ever came to this, you’ll know it came to it because you didn’t fucking listen when you should have, pretty much I guess how you’ve lived your whole useless fucking life.”
The blood sang in Jonah’s veins now. Magma blood. He’d kill the man. He would. He was nearly blind with rage he could not suppress.
The rider revved the engine.
“Get the fuck out of here,” Jonah said.
The rider scowled, but he engaged the ATV and backed up and drove off.
Jonah watched the ATV ride back down the road out of sight, standing there until he could no longer hear it.
Then he sagged to his knees with relief, choking for air. The rage had overcome him so swiftly, he’d felt he might black out.