think it was yours,” Jack said. “And don’t complain to me—there’s no way to decorate that tree without a cherry picker. I’m going to have to rent one before I see Mel using ropes and pulleys to get to the top. Mike, meet Marcie—Marcie, say hello to Mike Valenzuela.”
“How do you do,” she said, sticking out a hand.
He took it, smiled and said, “Pleasure. This was his idea—the big tree. Trying to impress his wife. She requested a large tree—he had us out in the hills a full day till he found the biggest tree we could take down in one piece.”
Just a little embarrassed, Jack interrupted Mike, “Marcie here is looking for a marine who dropped out after Iraq. Show him the picture, Marcie.”
She pulled it out again and once again explained the possible changes in his appearance since the photo was taken.
“Don’t know him,” Mike said.
“But he might be so different …”
“Don’t know the eyes,” Mike said.
She let out a heavy sigh. “Any ideas where I might look?”
“Well,” Mike began, scratching his chin. “I haven’t seen him, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been seen. There are a lot of people out in the mountains who have been there for years and they aren’t real sociable—maybe one of them has seen him.”
“Can you tell me where to go?” she asked.
“I can give you a couple of markers,” he said. “More important, I’d like to tell you a few places to steer clear of—there are some illegal growers out there who get real territorial. Real unfriendly. Sometimes their property is booby-trapped.” He pulled a large napkin out from under the bar, brought his pen out of his shirt pocket and drew a line on the napkin. “Here’s highway 36 …” In ten minutes, he had drawn a rough map of a half-dozen cabins in the mountains where people lived—people who just might have seen Ian Buchanan. As well, he listed three locations she should avoid.
The cabins Mike X’d on the map were located down abandoned logging roads, sometimes gated, snuggled behind trees and shrubs, impossible to see from the highway. A lot of that mountain property had been homesteaded and logged. Once a property was logged, the owner had to wait another thirty to fifty years to log it again. It became an acreage full of oak, madrone, young fir and pine fifty to sixty feet tall—real pretty, but not mature enough for logging.
“I’ve been roaming around back in there, just checking it out, just to know who’s out there. There are a couple of old men living alone out in the sticks and a couple of old widows. There’s a man and woman combo or two, even a family of five. But so far, no single thirty-five-year-old male.”
“Maybe he’s not single anymore.”
Mike shook his head. “Pretty sure there’s no one in that age group; not with those eyes. Even with a beard.”
“Believe him,” Jack said. “He used to be a real cop, LAPD, before he was Andy of Mayberry where we have almost no crime.”
“Nice,” Marcie said. “No crime and a big tree. I take it you’ve never done a big tree like that before?”
They both laughed. “Twenty-seven feet,” Jack said. “We thought we were so manly, finding us a big one like that, till we had it down and almost had to rent a flatbed truck to bring it back to town. We tied the limbs tight and dragged it behind a truck. And that wasn’t the hard part. Standing it up took a day.”
“Two days,” Mike corrected. “We got up the next morning and it was lying in the street. Frickin’ miracle it didn’t fall on the bar and crush the roof.”
She laughed at them. “Why now? You’re trying to show off for your wife?”
“Nah. Now was the time. We just lost a comrade in Iraq and one of the local boys—a real special one—went into the Corps. We thought it would be good to erect a symbol, a monument to the men and women who serve. Next year, I think we look for a slightly smaller symbol. Cheaper and easier on the nerves. But I’ll go over to Eureka and find a cherry picker for rent and get it done. Melinda and the other women have put a lot into making it a perfect tree.”
“It’s a pretty awesome tree,” Marcie said, growing a little melancholy. She really wanted to find Ian before Christmas. For some reason, that seem crucial.
As she was leaving, the sun was lowering and the bar was starting to fill with locals. It was already getting too dark to venture into the back woods to check out the few cabins Mike had told her about. It was time for her to find a place to park for the night, somewhere safe and not too far from a service station for her morning rituals of peeing, face washing, teeth brushing. She’d start again in the morning, though she wasn’t feeling optimistic she’d find her guy. She’d been disappointed so many times. At this point in her search, crossing all the places off her list meant as much as striking pay dirt.
But before going to her car, she approached the tree, partially decorated to about twelve feet. She got up close and looked at some of the ornaments. Between red, white and blue balls and gold stars were patches—the kind you’d wear on a uniform—from various Marine and other military commands. She touched one reverently; 1st Battalion, 8th Marines; 2nd Battalion, 10th Marine Regiment; 1st Marine Special Operations Battalion, all laminated to protect them against the outdoor elements. Airborne Division, Sniper Squad, 41st Infantry Battalion. Her throat got tight; her eyes blurred.
This was exactly why she was determined to find Ian Buchanan—because these men never forgot, never walked away. There had to be powerful reasons for him to leave his military brothers, his Corps, his family, his town. You don’t save a comrade’s life and then ignore him. Ian Buchanan was given both the Bronze Star and Purple Heart for carrying Bobby through sniper fire to medical transport. He took two bullets and kept going. He was not a man who gave up. So why? Why give up now?
Two
Marcie’s thirty bucks—$28.87, to be exact—lasted another thirty-six hours. Twenty-five of them went in the gas tank; she could hardly afford the gas even with the great mileage she got in her little green bug. Three dollars for a loaf of bread and two apples and she finished off the peanut butter. Then she went back to that little Virgin River bar and asked if she could use the phone to make a call to her sister—she’d almost exhausted the phone cards because she wasn’t supposed to be gone this long, but there was a little time left on one. Erin, seven years older than Marcie, had taken charge of the family long ago, and she was growing extremely irritable by Marcie’s time away.
The cook, a guy they all called Preacher, let her into the kitchen.
Marcie called Erin and, though it made her stomach clench, she asked for money. “Call it a loan,” she said. She lied and said she was getting so close, that Ian had been seen.
“We had a deal, Marcie,” Erin said. “You promised you’d only be gone a couple of weeks and it’s been a month. You didn’t even come home for Thanksgiving.”
“I couldn’t. I explained about that. I had a tip—”
“It’s time for you to come home now and think about another way to find him.”
“No. I’m not stopping. I’m not giving
