“Vinnie,” I said. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“I need to do this, Alex. Tom was here. He slept here. I can feel it. Being here might help me find him.”
“If you’re gonna spend the night here,” I said, “then I’m staying, too.”
“Me, too,” Guy said.
“You’re not staying here,” Maskwa told him. “You’ll come home with me, and help me get ready for tomorrow. Go get two of those sleeping bags from the plane. And two flashlights.”
Guy put up a small fight about it, but eventually gave in and climbed up into the plane to get our supplies. Vinnie thanked Maskwa a couple of times for everything he had done.
“We will find your brother,” Maskwa said just before he left. “I promise you.”
We stood there and watched the plane take off. As it cleared the trees, it banked and circled us once and then headed south. We could still hear the sound of the plane, long after it disappeared.
Vinnie started walking around the clearing, collecting sticks. The trees were close on all sides, with the edge of the water just a few yards away. It was so small, this cabin site, a tiny speck in a huge wilderness.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Making a fire.”
I helped him build a teepee-shaped pile of wood. He put some birch bark in the middle and lit it with a match. The bark burst into flame.
“Best fire starter there is,” he said. “It’ll even burn when it’s wet.”
“I’ll remember that.”
An hour later, the sun was going down and painting the sky in deep shades of red and orange. Vinnie and I sat by the fire, eating more salami sandwiches and finishing off the Coke and beer.
“It’s a nice sky,” Vinnie said. “Tom probably sat right here and watched it.”
“What you said about feeling him here, do you really mean that?”
“Yes,” he said. “Don’t you believe me?”
“I’m not saying I don’t.”
“Tom and I used to fight a lot when we were kids. My grandmother told us we shouldn’t fight because we had the same blood in our veins. We were part of each other. I didn’t really listen to her back then. I wish I could talk to her now. She’d know what to do.”
“You’re doing everything you can.”
He put some more wood on the fire. A dry pine log crackled and sent sparks into the air. The sky got darker.
“It’s getting cold,” I said. “We should get some sleep.”
“You go ahead. I’ll put out the fire.”
I went in and got one of the pots off the stove, cleaned it out as well as I could and then went down to the lake to fill it with water. I heated the water on the propane stove and washed my face. Then I unrolled a sleeping bag on one of the bottom bunks and climbed in, with my coat balled up as a pillow. I lay there awhile, listening to the night, wondering when Vinnie would come inside.
I must have dozed off. I woke up some time later in total darkness. I grabbed the flashlight off the floor and shined it around the room. Vinnie wasn’t there. There was a scraping sound somewhere close to me. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. It sounded like-
The wall right next to my bed. Something was scratching the wall, but it wasn’t big. It was the slightest sound, like a whisper. Here, then here, then here-all over the wall.
No. It was inside the wall. I put my ear against it and listened. I heard the scraping noise like it was being done a thousand different ways, and then I heard a thousand little squeaks.
I got up out of the sleeping bag. The wooden floor was cold beneath my feet.
“Vinnie?”
There was no answer.
I went through the main room, out the front door. Vinnie was sitting there on the porch, facing the lake.
“I’m right here,” he said in a quiet voice.
“What are you doing out here?”
“I’m listening.”
There was a quarter moon in the night sky. Silver clouds raced in front of it. And then a darker cloud, rising from behind the cabin, that broke up into a thousand dark pieces.
“Oh shit, those are bats,” I said. “My God. They must live inside the back wall. You should hear them in there.”
He put his finger to his lips and shushed me. I listened to the wings fluttering and the high squeaks.
“I’m sure they were hibernating,” he said. “We must have disturbed them.”
“Doing what? We haven’t made any noise.”
“Something woke them up.”
“Yeah, well, I’m gonna hibernate a little bit myself,” I said. “You should, too.”
“I’ll be in,” he said. “Go to bed.”
I went back in and climbed into the sleeping bag. The bats kept moving around inside the wall. I tried not to picture them, crawling all over each other and flying out into the night. A thin layer of plywood was the only thing separating them from me.
I heard Vinnie come in and take the bunk next to me.
“You didn’t have to stay here,” he said.
“I’m in this far, Vinnie. I’m gonna help you see it through.”
“I don’t understand you,” he said. “Why are you doing this?”
“I made a promise to your mother.”
“You know that’s not the only reason.”
“Don’t worry about it. Just get some sleep.”
“I know you don’t like to talk about it,” he said, “but there’s something inside you that makes you do things like this.”
“Yeah, it’s something.”
“I’m serious, Alex. You can be a real pain in the ass, but underneath it all you’re the most loyal person I’ve ever known.”
“Vinnie, I don’t have that many friends, okay? It makes me want to hold on to the ones I’ve got.”
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. That sounds good to me.”
“Okay then.”
“I’m glad I’m one of them.”
“Me, too,” I said. “Now shut up and go to sleep.”
He settled in and said good night. I listened to the bats in the wall for a while, and I thought about what he had said.
He’s right, I thought. Vinnie can see right through me.
I finally slept for an hour, maybe two. Then suddenly I was awake again. There was another noise in the room, this one a lot louder than the bats.
“Vinnie, what is that?”
I heard him sit up. His flashlight came on, blinding me.
“It’s in the other room,” he said.
We both got up at the same time. When he shined the light at the front wall, we saw an enormous face looking at us through the window.
“Go on! Get out of here!” Vinnie yelled. He went into the front room and banged two of the pots together.
“That was one big bear,” he said. “Did you see him?”
“Yeah, Vinnie, I saw him.”
Vinnie pushed the front door open and went out onto the porch. I followed him. We could hear the bear crashing through the brush.
“Alex,” Vinnie said, his head back. “Look.”
I looked up at the sky. The quarter moon had gone down behind the trees. The clouds had disappeared. It was so dark up here, so far away from any other kind of light. It was just the stars, every star in the heavens, the great expanse of the Milky Way spread out above us.
I stood there with my friend, watching the sky.
Until the sound came. A lonely, inhuman sound, far off in the distance. It was joined by another. And then another. The sound rose and fell, stopped and started again.
“What the hell is that, Vinnie?”
“I think those are more bears, Alex. Black bears.”
“Black bears? From what planet?”
“Shh, listen,” he said.
We stood there under the stars and listened to the wailing of the bears. If I lived a million years, that sound was something I’d never forget.
Chapter Twelve
There’s nothing like waking up in a cold, filthy cabin, a hundred miles from anywhere, with no running water and nothing to eat but salami and bread.
When I looked over, Vinnie’s sleeping bag was empty. I pushed myself up to a sitting position, feeling the stiffness in my neck, and my shoulder, and my back. After that, I stopped counting.