The Serpent's Bite (3 page)

There had been an element of real danger in the earlier trek, although Harry had not dwelled on such possibilities during his introductory remarks then. She did remember one caveat: the necessity of holding the reins of the horse, which, he pointed out, was the horse's preprogrammed steering mechanism. If the reins are dropped and the pressure eases, he warned them, the horse might suddenly feel out of control and panic, exposing the rider to be dangerously unseated by low branches or bucked off by a sudden burst of speed. And, of course, she could not eliminate from her bag of fears, an encounter with a hungry predator like a grizzly.

A ranger had visited their campsite on their earlier trip and, with deliberate relish, recalled a then-recent episode involving a grizzly that had devoured a half-digested peanut-butter sandwich in the belly of a female trekker, in a lip-to-stomach nosh that killed the poor woman. She had never forgotten that story. On that previous trek they had encountered evidence of grizzlies but, thankfully, no intimate visitation.

A lightning strike also presented a danger. A bolt could be attracted to a horse, which, as Harry explained then, was ninety percent water and ten percent metal, making it a prime target for a strike. When a thunder-and-lightning storm intruded, they had been forced to dismount. As it turned out, they had been lucky, since a bolt had actually felled a nearby tree and missed their party by a mere couple of feet. She did not relish Tomas's weather prediction of an impending rain.

The most dangerous event was their return to civilization through the ten-thousand-foot Eagle Pass, with its twenty-three narrow switchbacks traversing sheer drops into deep canyons. Some of the path was so narrow that Harry had ordered them
to dismount and lead the horses by their reins. Her mother had been close to hysteria, but they managed, through false bravado and encouragement, to keep her moving. More than once she had stopped, closed her eyes, and squatted on the trail, unable to proceed without considerable cajoling on their part.

A misstep meant a fall into a canyon hundreds of feet below and certain death. Such apparent danger had salted the earlier adventure, especially in retrospect, and kept it in Courtney's memory along with the now legendary sense of family bonding that had become a quintessential event for her parents.

Thankfully, her father had eagerly agreed that the Eagle Pass adventure would no longer be part of the new trek. That earlier trek had, indeed, been a family-bonding experience, a powerful and nostalgic loving memory, and forever a conversational focal point. For her and Scott, the experience was far more explosive than mere bonding. Their parents hadn't a clue to what had been unfolding right under their noses.

Apparently her father still believed strongly in the bonding power of the old memory, and Courtney clung to her speculation that this new trek was designed as an unabashed attempt by him to bring the broken family back together and undo the corrosion that had set in since. For her it was strictly business. Show me the money, Daddy. For that, she would act the part of a loving, caring, devoted daughter, contrite over past offenses and eager to repair any misunderstanding. She was convinced that Scott would play his own assigned role in this little drama for less contrived reasons.

In pursuit of comfort and authenticity, she had come well prepared, with padded bicycle pants to cushion her crotch and butt, a straw cowboy hat with a stampede string, cowboy
boots, long underwear, a miner-type flashlight that fitted over her forehead for tent reading, mosquito spray, extra supplies of sunblock, and plenty of ibuprofen and vodka.

Her father had called her out of the blue, catching her on her cell. At first, as she had done on his previous attempts to contact her, she was tempted to hang up. But years had passed, and she had always held out hope of a change in his attitude and generosity. Perhaps, as had been her prediction and her wish, he was obviously resurfacing for an important reason. She hadn't heard his voice in four years but its tone had lost none of its authority.

“Don't hang up, Courtney,” he said. “Hear me out.”

He quickly sketched out his proposal.

“Too weird for words, Dad,” she told him initially. He persisted, selling hard.

“It'll be fun…like last time.”

He had made more-than-two decades sound like yesterday.

“Almost, but not quite. Just six days instead of ten and only one camp instead of two like last time. Surely you remember.” He was purring with good will and excitement. “I've lucked out and gotten a tentative booking with the same outfitter, Harry McGrath. He's still in business and apparently in great demand. He had a cancellation. He gave us a great time then. Remember? Maybe it will give us a chance to get to know each other again.”

“Renew auld acquaintance,” she said, with a touch of sarcasm.

If he caught the implication, he tactfully ignored it.

She turned it over in her mind. Perhaps it was the moment she had been waiting for.

“Maybe we can be a family again,” he said.

She knew he believed it implicitly. This had always been his perception of what family meant, handed down from his own parents who had brought him up, an only child, in what was apparently a cocoon of smothering love. In his mind, it was all about Mom and Dad and the children, devoted, caring, one for all, all for one, an impregnable family fortress. Had she once believed that as well?

Somehow it had all gotten diluted by false expectations, by disappointment and disillusion, by passion gone awry, by dreams gone haywire, by bad luck, and by economic necessity. She prided herself on her insight into her father's psyche but had miscalculated her own ability to manipulate his generosity. Was this an opportunity for a second chance to play the loving daughter and invade his pockets?

“I'm not sure, Dad.”

She decided to play hesitant and uncertain. Not too fast. Show restraint.

“I haven't been on a horse since that time,” she said, stalling, searching her mind for further options, seeking just the right word and truthful gesture to react to this sudden reentry of her father into her life after four years. His attitude seemed enthusiastic with no sign of either hostility or remorse, as if nothing had occurred to break the old fatherly bond. Her sense of time vanished, and she felt like the dissimulating teenager again, Daddy's perfect innocent angel, the promising ingénue, a role she had played with gusto and great early results.

Her opening gambit was to show daughterly concern.

“You sure you can hack it, Dad? I mean healthwise.”

She remembered vaguely that he had been diagnosed for high blood pressure, a condition that supposedly caused his mother, her grandmother, to die early of a cerebral hemorrhage.

“I've been working out like a demon. I'm in terrific shape.”

“Doesn't high altitude affect high blood pressure?”

“Under control,” he answered. “I take pills.”

Her solicitousness seemed a knee-jerk reaction. Why such lingering concern for his health when her fondest wish was otherwise?

“You're over seventy,” she said.

“Not by much,” he corrected her.

She knew he was being disingenuous. He would be seventy-five in December.

“I wouldn't broadcast that,” he said. “Granted that the outfitter has a sixty-years age limit. Besides, I'm fit as a fiddle. And I don't look my age.”

“You could be taking a risk.”

She hoped he would interpret her concern as genuine. Actually it opened up possibilities.

“I can handle it,” he murmured. “Old is not as old as it used to be.”

She supposed it was meant to be a joke, and she giggled appropriately.

“What about Scott?” she had asked, deflecting the conversation.

Her brother, younger by a year, thirty-seven now, was locked in another compartment of estrangement, although he did contact her occasionally. What they had in common was the same complaint: their father's unwillingness to open his purse and the status of their inheritance.

At one time, their father had been generous, more than generous. As an older dad with a lucrative business, he had the means to be generous. Then, abruptly, his businessman's experience kicked in, and he had closed the spigot. For their own good, he had alleged. Granted, he might have been right, especially in the case of her brother, whose passion was more commercial than artistic and, to be honest, a lot less intense.

For Courtney, her obsession was her ambition. She yearned for celebrity status as a movie star, knowing she had the drive and talent, although she had passed what was the traditional age of breakthrough in the twenties. So far, she had not made much of a career dent, which did little to dampen her determination. There was the occasional tiny television part or extra role in a commercial crowd scene and the occasional free turn on one of the many live stages in Los Angeles.

Still, despite all the setbacks, all the failures, all the rejections, all the pain of not being called back from auditions, and the lack of getting a respectable agent or manager, she remained unalterably committed to her pursuit, no matter what. Unfortunately the lack of her father's funding was a devastating setback for her career plans and the maintenance required for her to keep going. Giving up was not an option.

The joint financial issue with her brother, and the only real discussion between them on the rare times when they talked by telephone or communicated briefly by e-mail, was how to get this spigot reopened. So far they had both failed miserably. Courtney had bolted. Scott had not, maintaining a tepid telephonic relationship with his father. But then, he was always the weaker and needier sibling.

There were other matters between them that were buried too deeply to ever resurrect in dialogue, although she knew they were ever present in their consciousness and, like all histories, could never be erased.

“Scott is coming,” her father told her on the phone. “But it's all contingent on your presence.”

“Why mine?” she had asked, playing the innocent.

“It's either a family thing, or it's not.”

There it was again, the family thing, a good sign. She wondered if it meant that he had succumbed finally to the guilt of separation. She had hoped it might kick in again one day.

Many times, down on her luck and desperate, she had invoked family ties, but he had ceased to respond as Big Daddy with the checkbook, which had become her not-so-secret characterization. Often she had begged, cajoled, tried every arrow in her quiver of manipulation, but the string had run out finally in a conversation she had with her father at her mother's funeral. That had been the breaking point—until now.

Her father's reaction to her plea had struck her as an odd disconnect. He was a man to whom charity was gospel. Often he would help a homeless person, dropping paper money in his cup, and his list of contributions covered a large array of causes. In his lexicon of compassion, it meant “giving back,” a posture getting increasingly difficult for her to understand. His politics were liberal, and his feeling for others, she supposed, genuine. He was vocally against persecution, injustice, and unfairness in all its forms.

And yet, from her perspective he had become far less sanguine about “charity” for his children. She did acknowledge that it was an unfair presumption, since he had been tremendously
supportive and generous to both his children in the past. But she saw herself now in her midthirties practically destitute. He had cut her off, her brother as well. For a man who bled for the underdog and thought of charity as “sharing,” she characterized his attitude toward her financial well-being as cruel and unjust, and she had dismissed him as a fucking hypocrite.

She knew, of course, that she was hardened by failure and disappointment, and there was some limit to parental supportiveness, but her dream of becoming a movie star was still as strong and obsessive as ever and permitted no surrender, no negativity, and a ruthlessness that she felt absolutely necessary.

By blood and tradition, she considered her father's money her and her brother's entitlement. She had grown up with the certainty that sooner or later it would be theirs. He and their mother had, in the days before her death and their estrangement, often reiterated that he had made arrangements to divide his estate between her brother and herself. Could he ever muster the will and endure the guilt of cutting them off from their inheritance? Hell, he had already cut off her enabling stipend, why not the other?

What she wanted was to get her hands on some of it now. Before their estrangement she had tried every trick in the book to get him to increase her stipend, to gift her more money, to settle a regular lifelong lavish income on her. Not to part with it in the hour of her greatest need was heartless, selfish, and mean-minded. Pursuing her dream needed nourishment and heavy maintenance, financially and emotionally. All right, she had not succeeded, not yet, but her dreams and ambitions were as fresh as ever. The spotlight and celebrity beckoned. She knew in her heart that they would come to pass.

Perhaps she was spoiled by memory. Once he had been proud of her choice, had encouraged her. Always the dutiful father, he had attended all her high school and college performances, fueled the dream, kept her going. In an odd way, she had long ago acknowledged that his and her mother's cheerleading was partially responsible for enabling her pursuit of this obsession.

During her student days, she had played many of the Shakespearian female roles and had been heralded as a brilliant talent with an assured future. Her Lady Macbeth was dubbed “extraordinary” by a stringer from the
New York Times
who wrote a compendium of reviews of student productions. She had also gotten standing ovations for her Juliet and Desdemona. She knew in her gut she had the right stuff and was dead certain that one day she would grace the giant screens of moviedom. She deserved it.

Critics in her school newspapers and later reviewers of small live theatrical productions had lauded and lavishly praised her talent and beauty. By any standard she knew she was a beautiful well-made woman, tall, curvaceous, sexy, naturally curly-haired, with large hazel eyes peering at the world over high cheekbones.