Step step. Yes. Now stand. Draw back, aim, breathe.
But no. Something on the other side of the valley. A noise.
The deer take off, mother first, fawn right at her heels, leaping high over the alder and small dogwood, darting back in the direction they came, their fluffy white tails disappearing and reappearing as they bound out of range.
More noise, then. A ways off, still, but loud. Rustling and thrashing. Scotland. I hand the bow to Finch, lean down slowly and grab the .243. I press my pointer finger to my lips and signal to Finch to keep quiet. It’s thick on the far end of the valley, and though we can’t see what’s coming, we can see the tall tops of the alder and dogwood shifting, their silhouettes bending and shaking. I could fire into the air, which would send a message.
But then a voice, singing. Not Scotland’s. No— It dawns on me: he would never be so loud.
Coming closer and closer and suddenly, she’s there. Emerges from the thicket. A young woman. A girl. Hard to say, exactly—not sure I’m a good judge of age and I guess maybe she’s somewhere in between. Thin and pretty and wearing a large blue backpack. Tripod tucked beneath her right arm. Big, fancy camera slung from her neck. The wind picks up and the girl’s hair blows across her face. Long and red and lustrous as it catches the sun. She comes closer, still singing, but then she stops, leans over, takes off the backpack. Slides it off her shoulders and rifles around in there and then sets it up against the base of a maple.
She is too close. Much too close. A hundred yards away, maybe less.
I press my hand against Finch’s chest to hold her still, and I feel her heart thumping against my palm. I glance at her face. Not afraid. No, enthralled. Rapturous. For a minute the girl just stands there: listening, looking. Waiting. My mind starts bounding ahead because Finch and me, we cannot be seen. Cannot.
The girl sets up the tripod, presses its legs into the ground. She screws in the camera, spinning it round but looking up and around as she does. Next, she leans down, peers through the viewfinder. Pans left, right, snapping photographs. How long is she there, adjusting the lens, looking, taking everything in? Seems like hours, Finch and me frozen there in the tree, hearts racing. The girl stands up from behind the camera, looks in our direction, raises her hand to her brow. She tilts her head.
Dear God—is she looking at us?
FOURTEEN
At last she turns and packs up her gear. Straps the tripod to her backpack, slides the camera over her neck, and heads off west of us, crossing onto national forest land, disappearing into the pines.
I drop my hand from Finch’s chest. Right away, a loud and unnatural sound starts thundering through my head: like standing right next to a train but worse.
“Coop, you all right?”
I grab Finch’s hand and hold it. Throat tight, no words, just noise and the sun that is starting to sink, so unbearably bright and everything—trees, cliff, cattails—spinning and blurred.
“Did she see us? Cooper, are you okay?”
I shake my head, hold up one finger. I realize I better get out of that tree, so I turn and start climbing down, quick.
Breathe.
At last my feet touch the ground, and I let the rest of myself drop. Finch is there, too, must’ve scrambled down right after me.
“Cooper, it’s happening.” Finch leans down, her face close to mine. “Can you hear me? Your face is white and you’re sweating.” She looks around, fishes out a canteen. She twists the cap off and holds it to my lips, but I can’t drink.
Fear, pungent and metallic in my mouth, sour and burning. My heart is roaring now, pumping so hard my chest feels like it’s in a vise. Everything is hot hot hot; everything is too close. Tree, sky, air, all of it pressing down. I stand and tear off my jacket and stumble, foot catching on a root and then I’m facedown, on the ground, the grass in my teeth, and I’m shaking and so afraid.
* * *
“Panic attack,” Dr. Shingler said, years ago, when I sat at one of my appointments at the VA hospital and told her how sometimes an overwhelming sense of fear would take hold of me, make the world spin hot and vicious, like some kind of brush fire licked by wind and bursting into something bigger. I resented that term, “panic attack,” because it sounded like a name some hoity-toity person in a white jacket had made up. But the truth is, it did ring true. It felt like I was under attack, like the world was caving in on me, like I was trapped. Plus, if there is one thing I have learned in this life of mine, it’s that the mind is the cruelest of all weapons. Battles, skirmishes, they did their mean work and then they were over, but the wounds on the mind remained: scabs, welts, pockmarks. They never really went away. They could come back, strike again.