The Reckoning by Peter Bodo

Author:Peter Bodo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: FICTION/Action & Adventure
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2012-06-01T00:00:00+00:00

Billy felt carefree walking back to camp across the rolling, tawny landscape, carrying a hefty stringer of three trout. He’d done well; it didn’t matter about anything else. He wanted Clay to see the fish in their full splendor, so he hadn’t even cleaned them.

It was afternoon, and it looked to be clouding over again. A light wind was blowing; it carried the scent of the wild land, and it filled Billy with an acute awareness of the emptiness all around him. The sensation was comforting; if the forces at work all around him were indifferent or cold, they also demanded no accounting or explanation. You were what you were; that was all of it.

He navigated by the smoke of their fire, but as he got closer he was surprised to see the volume of billowing smoke. His father was cooking again, Billy thought. It would save work later.

But as he approached the big willow, he felt uneasy. There was no sign of the elk. He began to run and he soon came across some articles, including his toothbrush strewn about. His first thought was grizzly bear.

The elk’s head and neck lay right on top of the smoldering fire; the smell of burning hair and flesh was very strong. Vultures circled overhead, and ravens sat on the naked branches of a dead cottonwood overlooking the scene.

“Pa!”

Clay lay just on the other side of the willow, surrounded by stony rubble and their two ransacked backpacks. As Billy ran up to his father, Clay groaned and moved one of his legs; the toe of his boot drew a little line in the dirt.

Clay’s voice, barely audible, was raspy. “That you, son?”

Billy fell to his knees. “Pa, Pa. What happened?”

Clay lifted his head slightly. He tried to push himself up with one arm, but it slipped out from under him, and when his face hit the dust, hard, he whimpered.

The boy was horrified when he saw his father’s face. The right side was heavily bruised, and his eye was swollen shut. On the left side, his jaw was puffed up, giving his battered face a grotesque symmetry. He had bloodstains all over his jeans and some was matted into a dark patch on the back of his head.

“Water. Lord … Please.”

The boy scrambled around and found one of their bottles; it lay leaking where it had been tossed.

“The painkillers,” Clay whispered, lifting his arm in an attempt to point.

“The campfire?” Billy asked.

“Yep,” Clay whispered.

Random items from their packs, including Clay’s maps, had been tossed in the fire; Billy almost immediately saw the amber plastic vials; two of them were a molten mass of plastic, the third had melted and caved in from the heat, but the half dozen pills inside seemed to be intact. He rushed back to Clay with the painkillers.

“Easy, boy.” Clay winced, tapping gently at his side to indicate some sort of injury.

Gradually, Clay rolled over, up against the exposed roots at the base of the willow. Billy got under him and cradled his father’s head in his lap as he fed him a painkiller and some water.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.