The Dead Season (8 page)

“Cisco,” I supplied.

“Excellent.” As he spoke, his eyes swept the surroundings, counting students, checking details. “The bus will take us to the trail head, about five miles north. I’ll explain a bit more about procedure on the way. Basically, we hike four to six miles daily with a skills-building exercise in the middle of each day. The students must be responsible for themselves and their own well-being, and the staff should intervene only in a case of life or death. They will set up their own tents, dig their own fire pits, cook their own food. You are here in an educational capacity only.”

Just as I drew a breath to inquire what, exactly, about a winter wilderness hike would
not
be considered life or death, he turned to the group and called, “Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please.”

The boys looked up anxiously from the inventory of their belongings, and the girls, looking cold and miserable, turned to him. “This is Raine Stockton,” he said, “a wilderness survival specialist, and her search and rescue dog…”

He looked questioningly at me and I supplied again, “Cisco.”

“Right. Ms. Stockton will be delivering several lectures and demonstrations about the wilderness experience during the course of our expedition and will be on hand to answer questions and supervise your progress. Ms. Stockton.” He surprised me by turning to me and inviting, “Perhaps you’d like to share a few wilderness survival tips before we start out?”

There were, of course, a lot of helpful things I could have said… if only I’d had an hour or two to prepare. As it was, with a half dozen pair of skeptical eyes turned in my direction, I decided to take a page from Rachel’s book, in which brevity was a virtue. I met the gaze of each onlooker with calm certainty, because as any dog knows, it’s important to show confidence when you find yourself in a position of leadership. I rested my hand lightly on Cisco’s head and I said simply, “Don’t feed my dog. Don’t tease my dog. Double-knot your bootlaces and keep your socks dry. You’ll be fine.”

There was a beat of silence in which I could sense Paul staring at me, waiting for me to go on. When I did not, he rubbed his hands together again and declared heartily. “Well, then. Let’s get underway.”

~

The boys were still stuffing socks and underwear back into their packs when Paul cranked the engine of the bus, and they barely made it onboard before the doors closed. The twenty minute drive over bumpy roads was made even more excruciating by Rachel’s lecture on standard-trail procedure. There was nothing wrong with her facts; it was simply that they were delivered like a drill sergeant’s orientation to new recruits. I tuned her out and, with Cisco panting happily on the seat next to me, I took out my phone and texted Melanie. It was Saturday, and only a few minutes past seven a.m., but I knew she would be up. Anyone with a new puppy would be.

I’m off to the wilderness. Everything ok with you?

In a moment she typed back,
Teaching Pepper to speak today.

Follow Me is more important.

“Follow me” was what we called puppy heeling at Dog Daze and was the first step toward teaching a dog to walk reliably at his owner’s side both on and off leash. In class we practiced to music, and played “musical sits” by seeing which puppy could sit the fastest when the music stopped.

She already knows that.

She wouldn’t
really
know it for at least another year, possibly two, but Melanie got her stubbornness from her father and I knew when to pick my battles.
Send me a video.

OK. Grandma’s taking me to the
P
ancake
H
ouse for breakfast. Bye.

I was scrolling down to check my messages when someone tapped my shoulder from behind. “We’re not allowed to have phones,” Heather whispered, leaning close.

I twisted around in my seat to look at her. “I’m staff,” I reminded her.

She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. It’s a rule.”

I drew my brows together in cautious incredulity. “That’s crazy.”

She shrugged.

“We’re going on a dangerous hike. What if there’s an emergency?”

“I think Paul has a phone in his pack.”

I was willing to bet that whatever phone Paul had wasn’t as reliable as mine. I started to turn around again. “Luckily, so do I.”

“Just don’t let Rachel see it,” Heather said. “She’ll confiscate it.”

I smothered a chuckle. As ambivalent as I had previously been about the phone, I was now quite determined that the only way anyone would get it away from me would be to pry it from my cold dead fingers. “I’d like to see her try,” I said.

Nonetheless, as the bus made a turn and began to slow to a bouncing stop and Rachel turned to face our direction, I discretely turned the phone off and returned it my backpack.

“The first thing you will do when you leave the bus,” Rachel announced clearly, “is elect a hike leader for the day.”

“I nominate the pooch,” one of the boys called out, and there was a lot of giggling and a few catcalls that made Cisco’s ears prick forward.

“The leader will not be a member of the staff,” Rachel went on as though she had not been interrupted. “He or she will be responsible for the safe and timely arrival of every member of the expedition to our night camp site, five miles up the mountain. The leader will coordinate setting up the camp, preparing the evening meal, and making certain everyone is properly provisioned for the next day’s journey. He or she will designate tasks and keep his or her  group on course. Your leader will make decisions that directly affect your welfare, ladies and gentlemen, so choose carefully.”

“I nominate my man Jess,” Pete called out.

“I nominate Lard-Ass,” one of the girls added, and her seat companion grinned and elbowed her in the ribs.

“That will be one demerit, Miss Caruthers,” Rachel said, and the girl who’d made the unfortunate “lard-ass” remark quickly lost her smile.  “Our nominees are Lourdes Montego and Jess Nesbit.” Rachel distributed papers and pencils to each of the kids as the bus came to a halt in the cleared area beneath a high-voltage tower. I studied the terrain and was able to discern a faint foot trail snaking off to the west. “Write down your preference and pass it to me as you exit the bus.”

To no one’s surprise, Jess was elected leader four to one, with the one vote for Lourdes, presumably, having been cast by herself. Grinning and posturing, Jess drew himself up and declared, “I’d like to thank the Academy, my loyal fans, and that sorry excuse for a father who banished me to this pimple on the flabby white butt of the world and made all of this…” He gestured broadly to the desolate landscape surrounding. “Possible. I promise to be a wise and benevolent ruler. I promise a chicken in every pot… or is that pot in every chicken… or is that pot in every backpack…”

But his time the kids were hysterical with laughter, and even I was having a hard time repressing a grin. I pretended to check the straps of Cisco’s backpack so no one could see. I used to hang out with kids like Jess in high school, and they were never as much trouble as they liked to pretend they were. Some of them grew up to be pretty good guys.

Some of them ended up in jail.

Paul Evans hoisted his backpack, fastened the straps, and said to Jess, “I hope you know how to read a trail map and a compass, young man, because if we don’t reach the first campsite by dark, your loyal fans will be sleeping in the dirt, and I doubt you’ll be quite so popular in the morning.”

Jess gave a cavalier shrug and replied, “How hard can it be? It’s walking.” He lifted his arm over his head and called, “Onward, peasants!”

And after a start like that, where could the day go but down?

CHAPTER
SEVEN

T
he trail started out on an easy slope, and with the rising sun at our backs, the exercise was just enough to take the edge off the cold. At first, the kids bunched up together in a fairly predictable manner with the two boys in front, joking and fooling around, Tiffanie and Angel in the middle, complaining about the boys, and Lourdes trailing sullenly behind. Paul walked with Cisco and me for the first hour or so, filling me in on procedure and the day’s curriculum, which really was just an elaboration on what Rachel had told me: do my job and stay out of the way while they did theirs. He just had a more personable way of explaining it.

“Today is about teamwork and cooperation,” he said, “and they’ll need it all to get to the camp site on time. At the end of the day the team leaders will evaluate everyone’s performance on both a personal and a group basis, and you will weigh in on survival techniques—how any mistakes they made today might have been corrected, what they can do to avoid similar problems in the future, that kind of thing. Remember to keep it instructional. Our purpose is to give them tools they can use to make tomorrow’s journey more profitable. That’s the whole philosophy behind New Day—looking toward tomorrow.”

“Sounds good to me. But I don’t imagine I’ll have too much to say about what went wrong.” He shot me a questioning look and I explained, “If you make a mistake out here, you’re going to know it. The best plan is not to make any mistakes at all.”

“That may be,” he agreed, “but just remember, the only way these kids learn is by making mistakes. We don’t interfere.”

I was not entirely sure about that. At Dog Daze, our philosophy was to set them up for success. Sure, if a dog made the wrong choice, he would suffer the consequence of
not
getting a tasty treat. But we believe that learning comes through success, not failure, so we do everything possible to make sure the dog gets more rewards than not. Of course, I did allow for the very slim possibility that what worked with dogs might not work with teenage humans, so I said nothing. After all, my degree was in wildlife biology. Paul was the accredited crisis intervention counselor, whatever that was.

We decided I would deliver a lecture on wilderness search and rescue on day three and provide a demonstration on day six. Day five, the midway point, was when we were expected to reach the camp lodge, which was kept stocked with emergency supplies and a battery-operated two-way radio. There the kids would be rewarded with a chance to shower, a meal that was not freeze-dried, and an opportunity to refill their water supplies from a source that had already been purified. He told me that the power company had set up the lodge—which was really little more than an open-air pavilion with electricity for line workers— and New Day kept it operational year round. In the summer a specialist in art and music therapy would be brought in and the group would spend a day or two there, but this time of year its use was strictly pragmatic.

“We like to stagger the positions of the staff members while hiking,” he added. “You won’t always be able to keep everyone in sight, particularly as the trail gets more rugged, but make certain you always know the position of the child in front of you and the child behind you. One staff member always brings up the rear, but we rotate that position during the course of the day to allow for everyone’s individual pace. Any questions?”

“I’ll need a trail map,” I told him.

He looked at me blankly.

“A trail map,” I repeated, thinking he hadn’t heard. “No one gave me one this morning.”

He frowned a little. “Oh, well. I’ll have to check when we stop and see if I have an extra one.”

He excused himself and increased his pace, leaving me in the middle of the pack between Angel and Tiffanie, with Heather bringing up the rear behind Lourdes. The boys were striding briskly along in the front, talking about cars.

I stepped off the trail to allow Cisco to relieve himself, and splashed water into his collapsible canvas bowl. Heather paused beside us as Cisco was lapping up the last of the water, and he looked up at her with a friendly wag of his tail. She obliged him by petting his head. “Good luck getting that map,” she said. “I overheard you talking. He only has one, and that goes to the day leader.”

Once again, incredulity crossed my eyes. “Every hiker should have a trail map,” I said. “What if we get separated? What if someone gets lost?”

She shrugged. “That’s the point. Don’t.”

I said, “Did you hear what happened this morning? Somebody put a bottle of booze in Cisco’s backpack.”

Heather seemed unsurprised. “That sounds like something Jess would do. I don’t know how he would have gotten his hands on alcohol, though. We’re pretty much on lockdown from the time the kids enter the program until they do the hike.”

“It wasn’t Jess. He was nowhere near Cisco, and I was watching the other boy, Pete, the whole time he was petting him.”

She said, “It might have been Rachel.”

I stared at her.

“I heard her arguing with Mr. Evans about hiring you,” she said. “She has kind of a reputation for being jealous of female staff members. Maybe she thought she could get you fired before you even started.”

“Terrific,” I muttered. It was never a good sign to start a new job by being hated by the boss’s wife.

She gave me a sympathetic shrug and moved on ahead, leaving Cisco and me to take up the rear position with Lourdes.