The Serpent's Bite (6 page)

“I don't understand it,” she persisted. “Why are you hoarding your wealth? What purpose does it serve? You have two needy children. Why withhold what you have? It's disgusting, controlling.”

If she was trying to bait him, it wasn't working. He seemed too exhausted, obviously bruised badly by her mother's death and the long period of her illness. Yet she could not summon up any remorse for her conduct and her words. She wanted to tell him how much she hated him but held back. Stay on the guilt track, she urged herself, calming.

“You wanted the truth,” she muttered.

“If you were a parent, Courtney, you would understand. I did give you plenty of money, and it went down a rat hole. You
sold your condominium, and I put an enormous sum into that failed—”

“Not that again, Dad,” she interrupted, raising her hands. “That's history. It was a business decision, and we all lost. It happens every day.”

“A business decision?” he remonstrated. “I know the difference between a business decision and an emotional decision. I supported you. I showed my devotion and my love, yes, my fatherly love, in a most tangible way. I put my money where my heart was.”

“That's all you think about. Money. You know how that makes me feel? Like a commodity.”

Again he sighed with resignation and ran his fingers through his still-thick, steel grey hair, shaking his head in a gesture of hopeless surrender.

“What's the use? You just don't get it, Courtney.”

“I get it all right,” she snapped back. “My father is a miserable miser.”

“Name calling? Is that what it comes down to?”

Her rage was breaking through his despair, and she sensed that there was nothing she could do to stop it. It was time, she thought, for giving him both barrels of her rage.

“You are a shit, Dad, a fourteen-carat shit. Tell me, are you planning to ever use that money you've squirreled away?”

“You're right about one thing. It is
my
money. Not yours. Your mother and I worked hard for it, and I'm not dead yet.”

She had the feeling that he was husbanding his energy for one last gasp.

“Why must you hurt me like this? I am so disappointed in you, Courtney. I used to be so proud. Now what I see before me
is a bitter, angry, desperate human being with not one vestige of feeling left in her soul. I can't believe you are my daughter. Your mother would have been appalled and disgusted by your remarks. She was the greatest advocate for her children. Half for each. She had insisted that our will give you each equal shares. Tell you the truth, I've kept that promise. No other behests. I will honor my pledge to her. And you weren't there when she needed you in her last hours. She always defended you, and I am baffled that you could have stayed away during her last days. Your name was always on her lips. Now I'm glad you were never there. You spared her the knowledge of what you had become.”

“She was your flunky. You used her.”

“My God! I don't believe this.”

“You will someday,” she blurted.

A new thought had emerged. She had bungled her role, but she was sure he got the message. Perhaps in time, she hoped, he might find his guilt again.

The echo of that confrontation had never disappeared from her thoughts since. Spent, frustrated, and angry, she had left him and gone to bed in her old room redolent with memories, some of which she dared not dredge up. It was a troubled sleepless night and in the morning, unable to summon the grace for an apology, she crept out of the house like a retreating thief.

But any vestige of remorse quickly dissipated, and by the time she reached Los Angeles and her dingy studio apartment, her anger had returned. She had, she knew, drawn her line in the sand. When the check for ten thousand arrived in the mail a few days later without a note, she was furious. She took it as an insult, a slap in the face. She cashed it, of course, and in defiance used some of it to treat some of her fast-track acquaintances to
a bacchanalian orgy of alcohol, sex, and drugs in her apartment, labeling the episode as an act of vengeance against her father.

***

Such memories rumbled through Courtney's mind as they moved upwards along the trail, with Bubba occasionally losing concentration and falling behind, which meant that when he regained his moorings, he would gallop forward to fall in line with the others. This sudden movement had a similar affect on her, and suddenly she, too, regained an interest in her surroundings, and the horses moved forward.

As they ascended, since the trail led ever upward, but never below eight thousand feet, she began to see some of the permanent residents of this alien world. A bull moose looked at them curiously from a stream where he was taking refreshment. A fawn darted away after observing them for a few moments. Harry passed information behind him, pointing out red squirrels and what he called pocket gophers. Lifting his arm, he noted a bald eagle in graceful pursuit of a midmorning meal.

They forded streams and moved through meadows and forest areas where signs of the big fire of 1988 remained. During these passages through blackened spires, Harry offered lectures on how the area was regenerating, pointing out fireweed, spirea, snowbush, and lapine, names that barely penetrated her consciousness.

“Look how high the lodgepoles have grown. Hard to believe this area was burned to a crisp years ago. Nature always wins.”

For brief moments, as Courtney's memory of the earlier trip expanded in her mind, warm sentiment began to poke its way through the ice of her rage, and she found herself longing to
return to that time when hope and optimism still had strong currency.

Unfortunately such pleasant feelings were transitory, and her thoughts returned to the single-minded focus of her life. Whatever the difficulties, she would submit cheerfully to her father's whimsical attempt at rebonding with his children. Keep your eye on the money, she told herself.

A
t one point after about three hours on the trail, the first mule on the pack train refused to cross a stream. Tomas dismounted, grabbed the lead, and pulled hard to get the mule to move. Filling the air with angry Spanish invective, he could not get the mule to budge. He pummeled his rump and kicked the animal's legs, all to no avail.

“Pull harder, you idiot,” Harry muttered. “Fuckin' dumb Mexican. Pull the sumbitch.”

Although he seemed to be making an effort not to be heard by those mounted behind the mules on the other side of the stream, his voice carried.

The more Tomas strained, the more he kicked, the more stubborn the mule became.

“Donno shit,” Harry said, cursing under his breath. He jumped down from his horse and roughly pushed the Mexican out of his way. Tomas slipped and landed with both feet into the stream. Recovering, he moved back onto the bank, his pants wet to the knees.

“He ‘fraid to move,” Tomas said.

“I told you to put him in the rear,” Harry muttered. “Stupid ass fuck.”

“You tole me put him in front, Señor Harry.”

“You calling me a liar, dumb spic?” Harry spit out, between clenched teeth.

“No, Señor Harry,” Tomas said.

“Brains in your ass,” Harry mumbled. “Bring the others up,” he ordered. Tomas stepped into the stream and managed with some effort to get the two mules behind the stubborn one to move forward.

“What's happening?” Temple called from the rear.

“Young mule won't move his ass,” Harry shouted. He watched as Tomas led the two mules across the stream, leaving the stationary mule standing in the stream.

“Now what?” Scott asked.

“See if he'll follow the leader,” Harry said, pulling on the mule's lead. Tomas attended to the two mules, making sure the burdens they carried were secure. It took the better part of an hour and much frustration on Harry's part to get the mule to finally move. “Dumb as shit,” Harry muttered, throwing a glance at Tomas, as if he had been the cause of the situation.

Scott watched, noting that Harry's treatment of the Mexican was both mean and racial, despite his earlier remarks on Tomas's qualities. It struck a sour note and from the expression on his father's face, a predictable reaction of disgust. Repeated instances of such conduct would trigger his father's zealous liberalism and could switch emphasis and derail the prospects of a happy outcome for himself and his sister.

It was bad enough that he was a reluctant participant in this repeat trek through the wilderness, however abridged, but he could do with less extraneous baggage. Yet, despite the loathsome hardship and discomfort that lay ahead, Scott could not deny the ultimate goal, if achieved, would be worth the suffering. All right, he agreed, twenty-odd years ago it had been a blast, but that was then and this was now.

His knees, weakened by basketball and jogging, were killing him. They were not more than three hours into the trek when he had to pop three more ibuprofen. He hadn't realized that his position on the horse would be harder on the knees than the behind. When his sister had called him in Seattle, he had confirmed his participation.

“I hated the idea but I sure as hell said yes,” he had told her. “I assume you did as well.”

“Of course. He put it on the basis of a family thing. You, me, and him, together in the wilderness.”

“How do you read it?”

He was conscious of the old deference surfacing again, the inescapable first response behavior pattern between them. Resist, he warned himself, remembering what had happened when he got too close to the flame.

“He wants his family back, his two little kiddies. He's in reevaluation mode. Who knows? Could be the guilt thing has finally kicked in.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Impending doom. Acting before it's too late. This is not out of the blue. He must have given it a lot of thought. He wants to recapture something of that earlier time.”

“It seems pretty obvious.”

“As long as it spurs him to open the old checkbook, I'm all for it,” Courtney chuckled. “Despite all the wilderness bullshit.”

“Seems a long way to go. Not exactly creature comfort–friendly. But if it does the job, I suppose we should take the medicine.”

“That's what I say,” she said with a giggle. “It came as a shock, hearing his voice after four years.”

“Surprise, surprise. I thought you two were over.”

“Blood is never over, brother mine,” she said, then began a long pause.

Scott guessed she was giving him review time, offering blanks instead of words. Although they communicated sporadically via e-mail and telephone, he hadn't seen her since his mother's funeral.

Then she spoke again.

“Whatever the reason, I figure he needs this shot of nostalgia to get in touch with his sense of paternity. Maybe make tangible amends.”

He knew what she meant.

“Maybe. But then, you've got to admit that both of us have gone to the well too many times. Look at it from his point of view. He's got two losers for kids.”

“Same old Scott,” she shot back. “Life on the downside. Grow-up time, Scottie. And speak for yourself. I'm still in play, kiddo.”

He ignored her rebuttal. He knew better than to argue, knowing her obsession with stardom and celebrity was still very much intact, and her burning ambition was as hot as ever. But then his motives were different, weren't they? Years of therapy hadn't quite worked it out. He had tried for years, by distance and thought control, to extinguish her influence on his life, a futile effort.

“Hell, I thought this last time I was on my way,” he continued. “My dot-com was rolling up pretty good numbers, then bingo, the bottom fell out. How do you tell a guy that put up millions that it wasn't my fault?”

“It's never your fault, Scott.”

“Shit, look who's talking!”

He hated her in this mode.

“Hell, Scottie. You could have avoided all this crap by just going into the business. Make a bundle. You still can.”

“I'd rather cut my wrists.”

He had thought often about doing just that.

“Better than the bankruptcy courts,” she muttered.

“Do you have to?”

“Sorry.”

“I have a talent for bad timing. But I'm not over yet. In fact, I'm noodling a new deal. No more high tech. Restaurants. Food. Basic industry. Everybody has to eat. It's a small chain of Italian restaurants, very viable. I can get in for about a million five and paper.”

“I don't want to hear it, Scott. I've been listening to your pipe dreams all my life.”

“Don't start, Courtney. No heavy stuff, remember.”

“Ditto. No heavy stuff.”

She had promised years ago to keep the past between them sealed. He felt a brief nag of memory of their puberty games, then let it pass. It was too precarious.

“Are you in shape for this trek, Courtney?”

“In shape? Story of my life. I work out two hours a day. Hell, got to look good for auditions.”