The Chamonix Chronicles — Episode 8

Still about three years ago …

“I thought a Chamonix never lied?” Tracey’s chin dipped, and her right eyebrow rose a half inch above the other. She sipped whisky from a juice glass. Hard alcohol was a rarity for her, and the fact that she didn’t even take the time to find a tumbler made Niko gird up for this conversation more than he did before talking to the sheriff.

“Chamonix’s never lie, but this is different.”

“You didn’t break a law before, but you have now,” Tracey said as they sat on the porch and watched the bears at the fish-table.

“He saved my life. I couldn’t break my word. Look at Bob the Bear — he is chewing on the hose again.” Niko grabbed the air-horn and blasted it. The bears scurried into the bushes.

“So let me get this straight?” Tracey sipped and leaned forward. “You lied to the police to save the privacy of some random bearded man who lives in the woods alone, miles from any person or road?”

“Yes. That is exactly correct.” Niko nodded as if that cleared everything up.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why did you lie about that?”

“He asked me to.”

“He said that?”

Niko paused. “Well, no. But it was implied. I inferred — “

“You inferred that while he held a rifle to your head and sent you back into the wilderness by yourself with nothing?”

“We had an understanding. And he gave me a few French granola bars.” Niko smiled. “They were delicious. Reminded me of Paris. You remember that night at Sacré-Cœur? Then the hotel after?”

She didn’t smile. “I can’t believe you can even talk like that right now.” Tracey took a deep breath. “I just spent a month searching the wilderness for you when everyone said you were dead. That thought was too painful to even consider. So it is with as much love as I can muster that I ask, how can you can be so stupid?”

“We had an understanding.” Niko threw his hands above his head.

“An understanding?” Tracey’s voice raised up an octave.

“You weren’t there. You can’t understand.”

“Sometimes you say the dumbest things. Lying to a police officer is a crime, and Bernard and Andrea accused you of some serious negligence. You don’t need any question marks about your integrity right now.”

“Everyone knows a Chamonix never lies.”

“Damn it. This is no time for jokes,” Tracey stood up and turned her back on Niko. “This guy you are protecting — do you even know his name?”

“He wouldn’t tell me his real name. He just said to call him Baptiste. He had a French accent.”

“Why didn’t he help you get back home?”

“He did. I was about dead when he found me. It was just like when you found me. He took me back to his cabin and fed me, and he let me rest there.”

She turned back to Niko. The glass was nearly finished. “Then you woke up one day and he had a gun on you and said you had to leave.”

“Yes. Yes, he did that.” Niko nodded and stopped smiling. He could see his attempts to lighten this conversation were out of place. “A plane buzzed overhead, and then he got spooked and sent me on my way. He didn’t have to say it, but he was hiding.”

“Hiding from what?”

“I don’t know. He just got really anxious after he heard the place, and he said he couldn’t do anything else for me. He used the word ‘impossible’ and then muttered some things in French. So I thanked him, and I left. What else could I do? I was a guest.”

“A guest? You didn’t get drunk at a dinner party and overstay your welcome. You almost died out there.”

“I know. But I could tell Baptiste was very serious about privacy — life or death serious, and he trusted me enough to let me leave. He didn’t have to help me. He could have shot me or left me out on the river, and no one would know anything about him or me. But he didn’t, so I’m not going to tell anyone, except you, that I ever met him, ever. I won’t betray that trust.”

“So that’s it?” Tracey’s voice was soft now.

“I didn’t lie to you. I just left that part out to everyone else.”

“Aren’t you curious as to why he is out there or why the sheriff cares about it?”

“All I know for sure is without his help, I would be dead. Beyond that, I figure it is better for me to know as little as possible.”

“Well, you’re good at that.” Tracey’s face softened a little as she looked at Niko. Not a smile, but no longer a frown.

“I’m still mad at you,” she said. “And you better hope no one else finds out about this,” Tracey put the finished glass on the table, and she walked inside.

Despite all that happened, and all the crap there was to figure out, he was happy to be back right there sitting on the porch, watching the bears, breathing, existing, even arguing with Tracey. He thought all of that was over. He was sure that he was going to die on the ATV trail. The only emotion to it that really surprised him was just how much he could miss things that had not yet happened.

And now he had it all back, and that changed things for him, changed the way he moved through the day. Each moment, even the unpleasant ones, were sharper, honed down to a thinner blade that cut with greater ease.

* * *

No longer three years ago, back to 2012 …

Niko was awake in bed, staring out of the window as Tracey breathed audibly next to him. He saw his phone flash in the darkness. A text from Bayless.

Any decision?

Niko had just promised Tracey that he wouldn’t return to the Nagadan and that he wouldn’t guide Bayless. Even as he spoke the words — adding the finger crossing his heart for effect — he knew he was going out there.

Chamonix’s never lie … maybe that was never true, he thought. She can’t agree to it, and I can’t avoid it though.

As he lay awake that night he recounted his trip on the Nagadan three years before. He thought of his time struggling in the wild, his time with Baptiste, his rescue, and the investigation. The Sheriff cleared him of any legal wrong-doing. Bernard attempted a civil suit, but his lawyers were wise enough to know that any chance they had on a negligence case was outweighed by the fact that Bernard had tried to kill Niko.

Some urged Niko to press assault charges against Bernard, but Niko said, “I can’t sue a man that has just lost a child.”

So, an odd truce emerged, one in which both sides felt so ashamed of their own actions that they simply remained silent. People in town seemed to either believe Niko’s account or they found further investigation to be too tedious, and the incident was pushed out of the local conversations — a difficult time to be forgotten.

Under it all, Niko knew the wound was still open. He often wished that he had been punished, that he could flip his guilt into anger and direct it at someone, some force that had wronged him. Some external target to focus his gaze on rather than perpetual self-reflection and second guessing. That didn’t happen.

He rose from the bed, careful not to wake Tracey and looked out of the window towards the fly shop across the street, smiling at the little life he had whittled for himself. He knew he had to confront the Nagadan.

Perhaps he was operating on some sub-conscious level of clarity, knowing he must absorb the pain he had endured on that river, knowing he needed to sit with it, and that he could no longer float aimlessly through his life. He needed to put the oars into the water and propel himself somewhere.

Or perhaps he was just looking to pawn that decision off on someone else, and Bayless was the perfect opportunity. He was begging Niko to go out there and offering obscene money to do so. How could Niko turn that down?

As the faint navy-blue light of dawn tinted the eastern sky, Niko picked up his phone and he typed a message.

I’m in. Meet me at the fly shop tomorrow at 4:30 a.m.

Bayless replied in seconds.

I knew you’d come around.

Tracey stirred in the bed and rolled towards Niko.

“What are you doing over there? You woke me up.”

Niko walked back towards her. He bent over and kissed her forehead.

“Just couldn’t sleep.”

Her eyes were already closed again, and she murmured something unintelligible. Niko smiled at her sleepy beauty as he felt a profound sadness over his impending betrayal.

He stood up and left the room to start his day. He had a lot to figure out for this trip up the Nagadan.

…

Thanks for reading — check in next week for a new episode!