The Wild

Page 28

“It’s a recent development,” Hal said.

Jack took a deep breath, his smile faltering. “Can you spare a few minutes?”

“Of course. What—?”

“I’m leaving tomorrow. Before I go, I mean to talk to Merritt. I thought it might help if you were there. A face he’ll let himself see.”

Hal nodded, glanced back at his desk, and then reached into his pocket for a key. “Stay, Dutch,” he said to the dog, then looked at Jack. “He’ll be at the bar by now. If we hurry, we can get him before he’s too drunk to see either of us.”

Jack didn’t expect Merritt to be the only one in the bar, not in a place as blanketed in lost hope as Dawson, but still it startled him to find the place murmuring with life, ale and whiskey flowing freely. It would be much louder, and much busier, when night came on and the darkness reminded lost souls, and even those still hopeful, how far they were from home. But, still, there were twenty-five or thirty people in the bar, a handful of them eating the meager fare the place offered because they couldn’t be bothered to seek a proper meal elsewhere. They’d put down roots in the place.

Roots. The word put images of Leshii and his beautiful daughter into Jack’s head, and he shook them off like cobwebs. The sooner he left the vast emptiness of the north behind, the better.

“In the back,” Hal said, nodding toward the farthest corner.

It seemed strange to Jack that Merritt would take up a post there, at a small round table on the opposite side of the room from the actual bar. He would have to get up and trek over to the counter to order himself another drink, and there were plenty of stools to be had within arm’s reach of the bartender. He seemed almost to be hiding, there in the corner, and there in his glass, as well.

Hal led the way and they threaded through the tables, passing men mostly sullen and women falsely garrulous, all of them waiting for something to happen to shake them from their stupor and trying not to wonder what would become of them if nothing ever did.

Jack craved simple, unaffected, genuine laughter, and he knew he would find it back home in California. But he would not have earned it until he had thrown the heavy gray cloak of this place from his shoulders. He wanted an ordinary girl with bright, intelligent eyes and a smile both shy and full of promise. The Yukon held some of the greatest beauty he had ever beheld, but it was an uncaring place, and he yearned for a warm Pacific sunset.

But not yet.

“Merritt,” he began, as they approached the table.

Hal held up a hand to stop him from saying anything else. The kid who was no longer a kid slid into the chair opposite the man with the shaggy red beard, who had once been Jack’s friend. Jack hung back, watching, and after a moment, Merritt looked up at Hal.

“Thought you got yourself a job,” Merritt said. He cocked his head as if he weren’t entirely sure Hal was there.

“I quit early today,” Hal said. “Figured I’d come over and see if you wanted to have some dinner with me.”

Merritt ran his fingers through his overgrown beard. “Bit early for dinner.”

“But not for whiskey?”

That actually got a smile out of Merritt, but it lasted only a moment before it became a sneer. “Never too early for whiskey. Not here, so far from the world.”

“This is part of the world, Merritt,” Jack said.

Hal shot him a look meant to silence him, but Jack had run out of time to wait for Merritt to recover from the trauma he had endured. He grabbed a chair from another table and dragged it over, and now the three of them sat together. Merritt, as always, seemed not to see him.

Jack rapped his knuckles on the table. Merritt flinched.

“There you go,” Jack said. “I’m not a ghost.”

“I don’t know who the hell you are,” Merritt said. “But you watch yourself in here. Man could get a knife in the belly as easy as a drink in this place.”

Jack smiled. Progress. Merritt wouldn’t look him in the eyes, acted like the chair had just dragged itself over and nobody sat there, but he had responded. That was a start.

“Merritt, you’ve got to stop,” Hal said. “You’ve gotta see. It’s—”

“Hush,” Jack said.

Hal clammed up and gestured for him to continue.

Jack reached out and grabbed Merritt’s arm. The big man recoiled at the touch, the chair scraping on the floorboards, and his chest started to rise and fall with ragged, panicked breaths. But Merritt didn’t go for a weapon.

“This is part of the world,” Jack repeated. “It may not be a pleasant part. Ugly things happen. Maybe things that seem impossible. But you haven’t stepped outside the world. You can go back to houses and restaurants and shops, to cities and towns, to the friends and family you left behind. I can take you back, Merritt, if you’ll let me.”

Merritt gave Hal a desperate sort of smile. “I’m gonna get another drink, Hal. Can I buy you one?”

“Look at him, Merritt,” Hal said, pleading. “Just look at him. It’s really him. It’s Jack.”

Merritt roared then, rising up with such force that he knocked over his chair, and amber liquid sloshed out of the glass on the table.

“Goddammit, kid, Jack is dead! Don’t you listen? Don’t any of you ever listen? It got him. Gobbled him up just like the rest!”

Nearly everyone in the bar turned for a curious glance, but only a quick one. Really, none of them cared if violence erupted as long as it didn’t involve them.

Jack started to rise, reaching for him, but Merritt lifted a shaking hand to his face. He gave a quiet laugh that set Jack’s teeth on edge and made him fearful that he had been wrong—that Merritt might be truly deranged after all, not just scared and heartbroken. Then Merritt righted his chair and sat back down, a horrible sadness on his face. He wiped at his eyes.

“I’m sorry, Hal,” he said. “I know how you hate to be called ‘kid.’”

“It’s all right,” Hal said.

Merritt rapped the knuckles of his right fist against his skull. “No, it isn’t. It’s all just like broken glass up here, now. And I don’t like to talk about…about him. I let him down, Hal. Those bastards, William and Archie, they killed Jim and I blamed Jack for it, when all he’d done was stand up to them. He tried to be my friend, tried to look out for me even after they took us, and I turned my back on him.”

Then he just stopped, clamping his mouth shut, lips pressed together. A single tear ran down Merritt’s face as he reached for his glass. With a thumb he caressed the glass, but he did not lift it to drink, only gazed off now into that middle distance, into nothing, maybe into a past where he blamed himself for the horror that had befallen him.