John would now be, let's see, going on fourteen. That would put him in high school. Jesus, it was hard to think of that tiny, helpless human as a gawky teenager. Probably the boy would be living with his mother in some comfortable California suburb, if Jones correctly read the direction Beverly was going. He would have an upwardly mobile stepfather who wore a three-piece suit to work and fired up the backyard barbecue on weekends. Well, what was wrong with that? What if John had stayed here? What kind of a life would he have had with a ragged hermit for a father, living in the woods?
"A damn good life, that's what," Jones muttered aloud. As he had many times in the past, Jones regretted that he had not fought to keep his son. Probably he would have lost, but at least he would have tried. He grunted and bit down hard on the pipestem, consigning the doubts to their place in the closed off attic of his mind.
He got up again and laid a big chunk of fir on the coals. In a moment little flames licked tentatively up the bark. The log was still moist, and it would burn slowly. It would probably last till morning. Jones went back to his chair and sat down, listening to the sizzle and pop as the fire probed at the pitch pockets in the log. He closed his eyes and let himself dream.
As always, his dreams were of Beverly. In his heart he had known from the start that she was not for him. Living off the land had sounded to her like an adventure. Like the six months she spent in the Peace Corps, teaching the Tanzanians things they had no desire to know. She never really saw it as a true lifestyle.
She was happy enough in the commune, where there were other people around to sing folk songs with while they held hands in a big circle around a campfire. Having a shopping center with a big Safeway nearby didn't hurt, either. Jones tried it for a while, but that scene was not for him. Living in one of those hippie communes was like using somebody else's bathwater.
Then as now, Jones was his own man. He did not join movements or march for causes because it was trendy. He did it because he believed. And if he stopped believing, he stopped marching. Why lock yourself into something that no longer made sense?
Beverly, now, she had grabbed on to every hip liberal cause that came around. But if her beliefs did not run as deep as his, Jones didn't give a damn. She was so achingly beautiful it still brought a lump to his throat. He had loved her blindly and uncritically from the moment he had seen her sitting naked under the sun, her shining yellow hair spread like a veil down over those wonderful breasts.
Sexually, she had been everything a man could ask. Something out of an adolescent's erotic dreams. She knew instinctively where he wanted to be touched and how. She could carry him to dizzying heights of desire, then, when he thought he must surely lose his mind, she would bring on his climax, prolonging it to a point where he lay drained, spent, helpless, and happier than a man should be.
Maybe once a month now Jones would go down to the bars around Saugus and Newhall and find a willing woman. There were always a few strays hanging around the bars. He stayed away from Pinyon. Too many people knew him there. He did not want a relationship; he wanted sex. And that was what the women he met in the bars provided. But even in those momentary bursts of passion he could never stop thinking of Beverly. Most of the time he figured it was just too much trouble to hike all the way to Saugus. Then he let his right hand be his woman.
Gradually his massive head fell forward, cushioned by the mat of red beard, and the giant slept.
He awoke at dawn, startled with the sense that something was not as it should be. Instantly he was on his feet. His eyes darted around the gloomy interior of the cabin until he spied the blanket-covered form on one of the cots. Then he remembered. The boy.
While Jones watched, the boy stirred as though he could feel eyes upon him. He came fully awake all at once, like an animal sensing danger. From the boy's expression, Jones thought for a moment he would try to run out the door.
"Hey, easy, son. It's me, Jones, remember? You're safe here."
For the first time since he had found the boy in the trap Jones saw the semblance of a smile on the young face. Thin, and not firmly in place, but undeniably a smile.
"I forgot where I was," the boy said.
"Can't blame you. I wake up the same place damn near every morning, and I still forget sometimes."
The boy started to sit up. Jones said, "You'd better not move around too much with that ankle."
The boy looked down at the hump where the blanket covered his right foot. "Ankle?"
"Don't tell me you forgot about that, too! Maybe it's just as well. At least you got some sleep."
"Was my ankle hurt?"
"I'm afraid it was. Hurt pretty bad. I'd better have a look at it."
While the boy watched curiously, Jones peeled back the blanket, exposing the foot, still tightly wrapped in the bandage he had fashioned. Very gently the big man untied the torn strips and unwound the clean white cloth.
"Holy shit!"
"What's the matter?" The boy struggled to sit up while Jones held his right foot up off the cot, examining it.
"I don't believe what I'm seeing."
He had expected the swollen and discolored skin, torn by the steel teeth, the shattered bits of bone, snapped tendons, ligaments, blood, pus. What he saw was fresh, unbroken skin on a foot that moved this way and that with no apparent discomfort to the boy. The only sign of his terrible wound was a faint patch of shiny pink scar tissue where the trap had bitten through the flesh.
"I flat don't believe it," Jones said again.
The boy sat up, bracing himself with his hands, and looked curiously from his foot to the face of the big man.
"Doesn't it hurt?" Jones said.
The boy shook his head.
"Not at all?"
"Nope."
"Can you stand on it?"
Still handling the foot gingerly, Jones put it back on the canvas of the cot. The boy swung his feet out to the wooden floor and stood up. He took several steps away from Jones, then back. He jumped up and down. He did a little impromptu dance step.
"Well, I'll be damned."
"Feels fine," the boy said.
Jones sat on the edge of the cot, staring down at the boy's feet. "Either you are the fastest-healing son of a gun the world has ever seen, or we've just witnessed a miracle."
"Maybe it wasn't hurt as bad as you thought."
Oh, yes, it was hurt all right, Jones thought. Nothing in the world of medicine was going to save that leg much below the knee. He was not likely to make a mistake like that. He opened his mouth to say as much, then saw the strangely pleading look on the boy's face. The boy did not want to hear just now that there was something very strange about him.
"Maybe you're right," Jones said. "Anyway, you appear to be in fine shape this morning. You ought to be able to walk into Pinyon with me. Save me a load."
The boy looked up. "Do we have to go?"
"Course we do. Somebody's going to be looking for you."
"I doubt it."
"Sure they will. You've got folks, haven't you?"
"I-I don't remember."
"Well, they'll remember. And they'll be damn worried about you."
"I could stay here with you."
"No way. That's all I'd need is to have a big-ass search party come crashing in here and find me with a runaway boy. So far the local people haven't called me a kidnapper or a pervert, but all they'd need is something to put the thought in their heads. I'm taking you back, boy, and that's final."
The boy was silent for a moment. Then he said, "Does it have to be today?"
"Well..." And immediately Jones cursed himself for weakening. The boy's face lit up with a smile, a real one this time.
"I don't eat much, Jones. And I can help around here. I can cut firewood. I can help with your garden. You've got a leak right over the door. I'll bet I could fix that."