Chapter 7

(Day 3 - Dusk — the high trail by the double pond)

It only took Kathy and Ricky an hour to reach the double pond where Grif picked up Tracy and Carol. When they did, and read the note Grif had Tracy leave them, Ricky was indignant about being left behind. He ranted on and on about how his Dad's lawyers were going to sue the outfitter until they bled money to pay for abandoning him out there.

Kathy said to her brother, "Well we did hide from him."

"That doesn't matter," he said. "What matters is who can afford the best lawyers. We can!"

Kathy said, "Ricky I am getting tired. Let's just make camp here. Besides I am worried about Mom. This says she will be taken to a hospital in Fairbanks or Anchorage for treatment. We need to go be with her."

"What we need to do is clean up our loose ends," he said.

"Well I will wait here then," Kathy told him, "You go on and be consumed with hatred. It will only eat you up from the inside out. I am tired of being a pawn in your scheme of things, and helping you hurt people."

"What are you saying Kathy?" he said stunned. "You're my partner now; we are a team. You are not just going to up and quit like that! We have to stick together and see this through."

"What I am saying brother," she told him, "is this; I love you because you are my brother. But you have turned into someone I don't know anymore. When you pulled your 'I am in charge' bit Thursday, I went along with it, I thought that was your way of living out your fantasy of being the head of the Foundation."

"Well it was," he answered. "That's all it was."

"No, Ricky that is not all it was, " she said defiantly. "There was NO love in hitting and abusing your own mother. You don't abuse people you love! You hit our mother!"

"I needed for them to obey me, " he argued.

"Ricky the world does not revolve around you!" Kathy continued, "You broke our mother's heart, you know? Or do you even care? Does it matter to you at all that Carol is terrified of you?"

"Carol should be," Ricky boasted. "Her kitty's sudden disappearance was a warning!"

Kathy gasped, "I never did get her to tell me why it ran off. Now I know why she was scared to talk about it. Then you probably killed it anyway, didn't you? How did you do it, with your golf clubs? Why did you do it?"

"I took it to my friend Joe's house, and let his pit bull play with it," Ricky admitted. "It didn't last long. I sort of felt bad afterwards, but it was done, and for all the others knew, the cat ran away."

"Oh. God, Ricky" Kathy said in tears, "You are going to burn in the bottom most pits of Hell someday. You have truly become a terrible person. You are not the sort of person that will inspire people to give to our cause and support Animals First! We will lose ALL of our membership and never get anymore contributions, if the public ever found out you gave our baby sister's cat to a pit bull!"

"Aw, don't give me that Hell bit, Sis," Ricky sneered arrogantly, "You don't believe in it nor do I. You can stop saying 'Oh God' too. There is no so-called Heaven or Hell."

"No?" Kathy sobbed, "Then what do you call this" as she waved her arms around at the countryside, "just look at us. This was supposed to be a beautiful vacation. It has turned into an awful ordeal. First, bears attack us and kill Daddy and Uncle Barry, and nearly killed Mom! Then mosquitoes mob us, and that environmentally correct crap we sell to people is like steak sauce to these bugs! How about the leeches we were covered with yesterday? Now we learn that Mom had to be flown to a hospital. Who would have guessed? It is no surprise to me that her leg is so bad with you making her walk."

"That's just stuff that happened," he said. "It happens with wild animals when we invade their territory."

"You hit that nail on the head," Kathy said. "Then we tell people that these are nice animals that need protection from the awful hunters, trappers and the horrible people who would construct a building that might house families, or a hospital, or a school."

"Or a shopping mall," he snapped back!

"That could provide jobs for hundreds of people, who need work," she justified. "The point is that our movement is built on lies and emotions and misinformation. Maybe the reason we have suffered these consequences is because of our willful blindness. I wonder how many of our members didn't renew their membership because maybe they got eaten by the same bears we assured them were just like on our nature shows."

"Well that's why we have important friends in Hollywood," he said, "Nobody knows they were trained bears we used in our films. Money buys you lots of political clout too."

"Oh, yes," she recalled, "Like having the reports squashed of those alligators in Florida that were going into peoples' yards eating their pets and the one little boy. That was shameful the way that was covered up. That one poor game warden, who talked to the news people after that alligator got the little kid, lost his job over it and worse, that he supposedly committed suicide because of it!"

"You don't cross people in power, Kathy," Ricky stated matter-of-factly. "Dad told the Senator that the loss in contributions to our cause could affect his campaign contributions accordingly. So the problem just disappeared. That is just the way things are done in this great country these days. Live with it."

The she said, "That Steven guy, the bear biologist that Mom and Dad crucified on National television was just as bad. All he tried to do was present the facts! His career is working with bears, and he has studied their habits for fifteen years. His presentation was based on actual field study. All Mom and Dad did was show pictures of hunters with dead bears, and her crying on cue."

"They ate it up, Kathy," he said proudly. "The networks support us because we support other liberal causes, like abortion, and maintaining a Welfare State where they keep people dependent upon the government rather than themselves."

"Oh yes, 'The Abortion', that is the one thing I don't regret," she said to him. "The abortion. If the illegitimate child would have been conceived by anyone else, I would have had the baby and put it up for adoption. It was YOUR baby, and I did not want to bring another MONSTER into this world like his father. So there! I killed it because it was your baby, and I didn't want it growing up to hurt others, not because it was an inconvenience like most women do!"

"Well listen to you," Ricky sneered. "You are still my woman. You are in this with me, and you can't quit on me. So get your ass moving up that hill and let's go find the others, and take care of that little problem! Further more, don't start getting religious on me like Aunt Sheila."

"Ricky if you are going to do that, you will go alone." She defiantly stated. "I am waiting here for the pilot to come in the morning, and going to be with Mom. I never was your woman. You held me down and forced me when I was thirteen, you sick bastard! That is called rape! Don't you ever touch Carol, Mom or me again! As far as I'm concerned, all this dirty money can go to keep you supplied with whores!"

"SMACK!" came the blow from his fist. Then the second mercifully knocked her out cold. She fell to the ground, and lay with her bloody mouth in a patch of tiny violet flowers. He kicked her four times, then shucked his pack off and said to himself, "Nobody crosses me, and I mean NOBODY! Never touch you again? How is that for never again?"

Ricky took the tent they had shared from her pack, and dumped the rest out looking for anything useful to him. Taking anything useful to him, Ricky kicked his unconscious sister in the head, and said, "I hope the bears get you," and then he started down the trail towards a rendezvous with Sheila and her kids.