The Spirit

Moon is wanted! The Canadian police! Concealing a fugitive! Martha wiped her hands on her dress as Jason made a great show of thinking.

“No. That’s about it. As you know, Mr. Drake, the lodge is on the east face of the mountain and the town’s on the north face. They’re just around the corner, so to speak.”

Drake reached into his drawer and clanked Jason’s traps onto the table. “I’m not about to forget that lodge. If this damn-­fool story of yours gets out and I hear somebody’s fallen into a sinkhole and he’s carrying all sorts of guns and nets you hunt Bigfoot with, then somebody in this office right now is going into the slammer for setting traps without permission, smoking in the woods, malicious mischief, and packing a handgun without a license.” Gunmetal eyes speared through Jason.

“You don’t have to threaten me,” said Jason, blood filling his face. “I can keep my mouth shut. And I have a license.” He showed it to Drake.

“Issued in Kansas for a Colt Python. Is that a Colt Python on your hip, Mr. Jason? I know this isn’t Kansas.”

“It’s a thirty-­eight, and it didn’t seem to bother the dealer this morning,” Jason replied tightly through clenched teeth. “And I carry it because these animals are dangerous.”

“I reckon he’s even more dangerous since you shot at him. I reckon that went for Jameson, too. We’d all be a lot better off if folks didn’t shoot at everything they saw.”

Jason made a little choking noise.

Drake suddenly smiled and clapped him on the shoulder. “Now hows about a beer?”

Jason pushed open the glass door and stalked out of the office. Martha followed, leaving Drake with a flick of her shoulders and a grimace indicating that she thought Jason as peculiar as he did.

Jason paced around the car in an absolute fit of rage, kicking the tires, slamming his fist on the hood, and slugging the ventilator window so hard he dislodged it, jostling his wounded arm in the process.

“You sure get mad, Mr. Jason,” said Martha as his anger fragmented away kick by kick, leaving him weak and frustrated, leaning against the door. “I hope you never get mad at me.”

He pointed a finger at the Ranger station. Spittle was in the corners of his mouth. “That—that—talking to me like that!”

“Why shouldn’t he? He knew you were lying about something.”

“I did not lie to him!” Jason blazed.

“Of course you did. You didn’t mention Moon once.” She was sorry they had left her car at the lodge. She was not certain she wanted to ride with him. He exhaled and yanked the door open.

“I’m okay. Really I am. Get in.”

She hesitated.

“Go on. I won’t kill you.”

She slipped in and sat as far from him as the front seat would allow. He punched on the radio, and they caught a weatherman cheerfully predicting catastrophe: “. . . low-pressure front moving down from Canada . . . snow flurries in Vancouver . . . This is breaking a few records, folks.” Jason reached for the dial.

“No, listen a minute,” said Martha.

In plain English, a storm was whiplashing down the spine of the Cascades, a storm of such proportions that the parts broken off by the mountains were blizzarding cyclones with a potent fury all their own. Jack Helder was going to get his slopes tested with real snow sometime this weekend.

Jason stopped at the Silver River bridge. He got out of the car, leaving Martha inside, and walked it from one end to the other, peering down at the water below.

He had not spoken on the way up. In a way she was grateful that he had not invited her into his thoughts. She tried to sort out her thoughts about Raymond Jason. He could be classed as forceful, organized, tenacious, and altogether admirable. Except that she sensed something missing from him, a little chasm in his character, a lack of something necessary to complete his personality as originally designed. The chasm had to be filled in somehow. With rage. Or habitual isometrics.

Or with a spirit. That was it! She caught her breath. Raymond Jason was a carbon copy of John Moon. Two jungle creatures, two acolytes on a thousand-­mile pilgrimage in pursuit of God only knew what. Carry it one step further and Jason would be just as schizoid as John Moon.

He was leaning over the bridge, looking down to where the supports were sunk into rock. White water foamed through the gorge and down a terrace of rocks.

“I wish I knew what Lester’s Bigfoot was doing down around here,” said Jason, climbing back into the car. “It can’t be fish. There isn’t a calm spot on the river for miles. And there isn’t much game in the woods.” His anger was completely dissipated.

“Why didn’t you tell Drake about John Moon?”

“Because he’d have shipped him off to Canada. I think Moon’s innocent, essentially. I don’t think he really knew what he was doing when he shot down that copter.”

“He’s still wanted, though.”

“Yes,” Jason admitted, a small vein swelling in his temple.

“A lawyer would get him off.”

“No, they’d jail him, lawyer or not.”