Jeff Posey

Nine times out of ten, nothing at all happens. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred. Even more rare than that, maybe. But then there’s that one time when the ordinary becomes extraordinary and nothing is ever the same again.

In his memory it began with the horned toads. He emerged from the hillside cloaked with mature aspen, their leaves clacking together in jets of mountain wind that slid down-slope, and walked onto a steep open meadow where the trail turned sharply away from Fourmile Creek toward Pagosa Peak. There, in the sunlight, all over the rocky trail and the thin grass on either side were dozens, hundreds maybe, of baby horned toads the size of his thumbnail. He caught a half-dozen and held them in his hand, surprised that the things could survive much less reproduce at above nine thousand feet, and that’s when he heard it … a woman’s voice followed by a thud and two men laughing.

“No,” she said. Not a scream. Not even hysterical or insistent. More of a casual request. Cream with your coffee? No? That ordinary.

Followed by a thud with a liquid-hollow sound. Like if you dropped a cantaloupe but it didn’t burst. A surprising sound with a kind of musical resonance to it that would logically be followed by relief that the floor wasn’t covered in sticky melon pulp. And then two men laughing as if dropping melons amused them.

Jesse craned his neck, the skin of his face and chest suddenly prickly hot, and saw where the grass had been flattened, making it reflect more silvery in the midday light, where more than one person had left the trail and dropped toward the creek. Then he saw movement through the trees. A glimpse of white flesh.

He dropped into a squat, his knees stabbing pains of protest, and scattered the baby horned toads. Logic told him, begged him, demanded even, that he go back to the trailhead and find the sheriff. But, of course, he wouldn’t. Unthinkable. He’d retained his childhood sense of justice, and when his indignation spiked, he would run headlong into a brick wall if that seemed necessary.

In his mind’s eye, he located them along the creek, saw where the aspen sloped to the thick undergrowth of the streamside, and he duck-walked back the way he had come, then thumped quickly through the aspen trees down to the nearly impenetrable brambles along the creek, and crept upstream toward them. The rushing water masked the sound of his approach. It had become all visual now. The rushing water masked their sound, too. Movement would give him away before anything else.

He saw a softball-sized river stone and lifted it, the heft feeling good in his hand. He found another. One in each hand. Balanced.

When he saw them, he became a cat. A stalker. Patient. Careful. Slow.

Close and sudden he saw a raven-haired woman, her arms tied with a cord and looped over a tree limb above her, her pants down exposing a shiny mass of pubic hair against cream-colored flesh, her shirt ripped to expose firm breasts with small, dark nipples.

Jesse swallowed. Rape. Bastards.

Two men stood beside the woman, both unbuckling their pants. The woman, he realized, looked glassy eyed. Blood ran from her nose. She did not struggle. She had already done her struggling. Now, he imagined, she just waited for it to be over.

In a heap to the side he saw another man lying still. His head was misshapen. His eyes staring open. Flies on the wound, and his nostrils, and his eyes. Dead, Jesse thought. Dead. Who were these men? At least they seemed unarmed. Nothing in their hands at the moment anyway. One of them pawed the woman’s breasts.

If I rush in, Jesse thought, and crash a rock into one’s head, then I can focus on the other. They’ll be paralyzed by surprise. He would just walk up, he decided, and slam the rock in his right hand into the face of the first man to look at him. Then take care of the other with the rock in his left hand. He realized how shaky and weak he felt. He forced himself to breath. Deep. Over and over. Hit them hard, he said as he breathed. Don’t miss. Don’t hold back. Bastard rapists deserve to die.

He stepped forward and something hit him on the back of the head, hard and big, vicious. His body rang like a tuning fork, his vision narrowed to a pinpoint, and sound rushed as if he’d been swept into the roaring creek. Coherent thought floated away from him and he marveled that it was so easy to die.

When his vision returned, he thought there must have been a third man, even before he thought I’m alive. A sob came from his mouth. He felt shaky, on the verge of uncontrollable tears, then he retched and coughed and spat. His hands seemed to float on their own, they shook so badly. He lay back and breathed, just concentrate on breathing, he thought, and his mind cleared as suddenly as the baby horned toads had appeared.

He looked around. The dead man lay there. It’s real, then, he thought. He remembered the girl. The men. The third unseen man. They’d gone. The girl with them.

With the balance of a drunken man, he stood, his hand on a tree trunk, his brain burning from blunt force trauma and his mind churning. They took the girl. This man is dead. He thought in simple declaratives.

The back of his head ached and it felt as if it had something thick and numb over it, covering the ache. Swelling, he thought. He touched it. No blood. But no feeling in it either.

He released the tree trunk and stood on his own. Their tracks clearly showed. He followed them up to the trail, where he stopped. They’d fled toward Pagosa Peak, deeper into the wilderness.

And that was the moment. Not the ones before. Those were merely inciting events. And thoughtless reaction on his part. But at this moment, he had a choice. Left to the trailhead and civilization, to the police, to his own bed. Or right to pursue bastard rapists and the girl.

There was no decision, really. He knew what he had to do. What any man should do.

Turn right. He did. Toward Pagosa Peak. He scanned the trail for sign. Broke into a slow jog. He became what he had never been. A role he had always managed to avoid. One that his logical brain rejected.

He became a hunter of men.