Free Mountain Madness by Daniel Pyle

now, okay? Just stay here with Dad and I’ll be right back.”
    “Kay.”
    Mike pulled his wallet from his back pocket and fished through the bills inside. “Here, let me give you some money. I’ll see if I can’t get these shoes fit to be seen while you’re gone.”
    “No,” Libby said too quickly, “I can pay for—” She patted her right shoulder, then gave Mike a look he hadn’t seen often in all the years they’d been together. A look like she’d forgotten to turn off the stove or left the garage door open, a combination of forgetfulness and stupidity. He half expected her to slam her palm into her forehead. She didn’t.
    “My purse.”
    Mike didn’t have time to respond. She was halfway out of the bathroom, tossing the crumpled paper towels into the trashcan like an NBA player banking an easy lay-up. He followed her to the exit.
    She spun around and saw him watching her. He thought from the look on her face that she might ask him a question, but instead she said, “Thanks. For helping me find him.”
    “No problem.” He leaned his shoulder against the white block wall.
    “But I would have found him on my own.”
    Mike crossed his arms over his chest and said seriously, “I know you would have.” He meant it and could tell she knew.
    “Back in a jiff.” And then she was around the corner and gone.
    Mike uncrossed his arms, pushed himself away from the wall, and re-entered the bathroom to help his son.

EIGHT
    DAVE CARRIED GEORGIE half a mile through the woods before the kid began to gasp and sputter and generally wiggle about. He stopped beside a dead tree and lowered the boy. The kid flopped back against the scarred trunk and breathed so shallowly and raggedly that Dave wondered if he might have asthma.
    “You—” the kid started but never finished.
    Dave would have added bastard , but he was glad Georgie hadn’t. He didn’t want to have to punish him.
    Dave reached for the boy’s forehead. Georgie tried to pull away, but Dave grabbed hold of the side of his face and took another look at the wound above his eye. It had bled freely for a while, the blood running into the boy’s hairline while he hung from Dave’s shoulder. A dried clot reached from his hair down to his eyebrow like an unfortunate birthmark. Dave would wash it clean later. Didn’t want to risk infection. Daddies knew better than that.
    His own wounds still throbbed. He reached an exploratory hand to his cheek, pulled it away, and looked it over. Blood, and plenty of it, but none fresh. It caked under his fingernails and packed into the creases and wrinkles like dried paint. He wondered if an artist felt this way, stained by his chosen medium.
    For a while, he said nothing, just stood and waited for the boy’s breathing to return to normal. Finally, he asked his question: “Do you have asthma?”
    Georgie looked at him strangely and said, “No, I…no.”
    Good , Dave thought but didn’t say. Asthma would have meant medicine and doctors, maybe hospitals with questioning nurses and forms to fill out in triplicate. Dave would take care of his boy, but he didn’t want to deal with those kinds of complications if he could avoid them. Nodding satisfactorily, but not enough to worsen the pain in the gouges on his face, he curled the tips of his fingers upward a couple of times and asked the boy to stand.
    “No, I don’t want to,” Georgie said in a tone that could hardly have been more impudent. The boy wriggled back on his butt a little, straight back, though he had nowhere to go but up the tree.
    Dave grabbed him by his armpits and jerked him to his feet. “Don’t ever tell me no,” he said. He didn’t raise his voice, didn’t even really change his tone, but thought he managed to convey a sense of authority regardless.
    He would get the hang of this.
    The boy sighed, nodded, and acquiesced when Dave told him to get moving.
    They followed an old game trail through a dense section of forest—a trail Dave had found