The Marsh King's Daughter(76)

I shudder. I push the images away and lie down in the muddiest place I can find. Roll until every inch of me is covered, then wade through knee-deep water along the trail so I don’t leave footprints while I look for the best place to set my ambush.

A moss-covered log lying across the trail looks big enough to hide behind. The way it sags in the middle tells me it’s mostly rotten. My father will know better than to step on it. He’ll have to step over. When he does, I’ll be ready.

I break a sharp branch off a pine and stretch out along the opposite side of the log, my ear to the ground, my makeshift spear beside me. I feel my father’s footsteps before I hear them: faint vibrations in the waterlogged soil beneath the trail. The tremors are so slight, another person might think it was only their own heart beating, if they felt them at all. I hug the log closer and tighten my grip.

The footsteps stop. I wait. If my father suspects he’s walking into a trap, either he’ll turn around and leave me lying in the mud or he will lean over the log and shoot me. I hold my breath until the footsteps start up again. I can’t tell if they’re moving away from me or toward.

Then a boot crashes down onto my shoulder. I roll out from under it and jump to my feet. Dash forward and use all of my strength to jab my spear into my father’s gut.

The spear breaks.

My father yanks what remains of my useless weapon out of my hands and throws it aside. He raises his arm, points my Magnum at me. I dive at his legs. He staggers and puts his arms out for balance. The Magnum falls. I grab for it. My father kicks it into the pool of water beside the trail and plants his boot on my handcuffed hands. No hesitation—I grab that boot and lift his foot off the ground. My father crashes down beside me. We roll, grapple. I work my arms over his head. The handcuff chain presses against his throat. I pull back as hard as I can. He gasps, takes my knife from the sheath at his waist and jabs and slices backwards at anything he can reach—my arms, my legs, my kidneys, my face.

I pull harder. The Glocks in the back of my father’s jeans press against my stomach. If I could grab one, I could end this in an instant, but with my handcuffed arms around his neck, I can’t. At the same time, with me pressed tight against him from behind choking him with the handcuffs, he can’t grab a Glock and finish me. We’re as stuck as a pair of bull moose who’ve locked horns. I picture my family walking this trail days or weeks from now and finding our decaying bodies frozen in one last embrace. I pull harder.

Then a dog barks. Rambo is running down the trail from the direction of my house, legs pumping, ears flapping.

“Attack!” I yell.

Rambo runs up and clamps his jaws around my father’s leg, pulling and snarling. My father roars, stabs Rambo with the knife.

Rambo bites down harder. He rips, tears, shreds. My father screams and rolls. I roll with him. The moment my father is on his stomach I yank my arms back over his head and grab one of the Glocks and shove it in my father’s back.

“Hold!” I order Rambo.

Rambo freezes. He keeps his grip on my father’s leg, but there’s a shift in his demeanor. He’s no longer an animal tearing into his prey; he’s a servant obeying his master. It takes a special breed and a lot of training for a dog to stand down like this in the heat of battle. I’ve seen lesser dogs so overcome with bloodlust as they tear into an elk or a bear, they completely ruin the hide.

My father doesn’t move as I kneel on top of him. He knows better than to twitch.

“The knife,” I say.

He flings my knife into the pool of water beside the trail.

I get to my feet. “Stand up,” I order.

My father stands, puts his hands over his head, turns to face me.

“Sit.” I wave him toward the log.

My father does as I say. The defeated look on his face is very nearly worth everything I’ve been through. I do not mask my disgust.

“Did you really think I’d go away with you? That I’d let you anywhere near my girls?”

My father doesn’t answer.

“The handcuff key. Toss it over.”

He reaches inside his jacket and tosses the key into the pool of water after my knife. A useless act of defiance. Cuffed or not, I can still shoot.

“We had a good life, Bangii-Agawaateyaa,” he says. “That day we went to see the falls. The night we saw the wolverine. You remember that, Bangii-Agawaateyaa.”

I want him to stop saying my name. I know he’s only doing it to try to control the situation the way he always does, even though he has to know he’s lost. Only . . . now that he’s called up the memory, of course I can’t help but see it. It was sometime after I shot my first deer, but before Rambo came to our ridge, which would have made me around seven or eight. I’d woken up out of a deep sleep with my heart racing. I’d heard a noise outside. It sounded like a baby crying—like I imagined a baby might cry—only louder. More like a scream. Like nothing I’d ever heard. I had no idea what it was. Animals can make terrible sounds, especially when they’re mating, but if this was an animal, I couldn’t put a name to it.

Then my father appeared in the doorway. He came over to my bed and wrapped my blanket around my shoulders and led me to the window. In the yard below, silhouetted in the moonlight, I saw a shadow.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“Gwiingwa’aage.”