Page 11 of Leave No Trace
‘Where is he?’
‘Why are you asking?’ His arms flew up, shoving me away, and I stumbled into the table before catching my balance.
Agitation. Focused aggression. Instead of trying to calm him and de-escalate the situation, I put my finger on the wound and pressed. ‘If he’s sick or hurt, he needs help.’
‘Like you’re helping me?’ He raged, pacing the perimeter again, but I put myself in his path, blocking his way. He tried to push me aside but I grabbed his hand, not really holding it so much as arm wrestling in midair. We struggled for a minute. When he finally gave up, he jerked back against the wall and glared at me. I lowered our hands, keeping an awkward grip around his knuckles.
‘I promised I’d help get you out, didn’t I?’
He shook his head and stared at the locked door, his eyes filling with tears that he furiously blinked away. ‘Not that way. I’m not turning him over, not even if I have to rot in here.’
‘Turn him over?’ I repeated, my mind scrambling to catch up.
He pulled his hand free and scrubbed at his face. I watched his chest rise and fall as he worked to bury the emotion. When he finally spoke, it was with a horrible, quiet certainty.
‘No one can help us. That’s why we disappeared.’
6
Karp Lykovwasa man who had to disappear. In 1936, he lived in a remote village in Siberia and was working in the fields when a Communist patrol shot his brother at his side. The Bolshevik government had made it their mission to systematically eradicate religion from the country, seizing church property, harassing believers, reeducating children, and executing priests and the devout like the Lykovs. In the wake of his brother’s murder, Karp gathered his wife and children and fled to the only place the Communists couldn’t follow: the taiga, three million square miles of unforgiving wilderness. They lived for over forty years in total isolation, using only a few pots, a spinning wheel, and a loom for tools. The family built their log cabin by hand and planted crops on a mountainside, surviving famine and endless winters without any contact with the outside world, that is, until 1978 when a group of prospecting geologists happened upon them.
By that time Russia had changed. Instead of ordering executions, the government sent religious people to mental hospitals and diagnosed them with ‘philosophical intoxication.’ Psychiatry had become a political weapon, but one that couldn’t touch the Lykovs. They refused to leave their wilderness home. They accepted few gifts from the geologists and those only grudgingly, as though the pleasures of salt, forks, and paper were inherently sinful. Ultimately it wasn’t the spices or tools that struck the Lykovs down, but a series of illnesses due to their harsh existence. One by one, the entire family died in the 1980s except the youngest daughter, Agafia. Concerned, the geologists tried to convince her to return to civilization with them, but she refused. Standing sentinel near her family’s graves, she urged the geologists to leave and waved them on when they hesitated.
In her seventies now, Agafia Lykov still lives in the taiga, the place where she was born and where someday she’s determined herself to die.
‘Josiah Blackthorn is alive.’
Dr Mehta spooned spices from various pots into her pestle and began grinding them with the mortar. Her office filled with the familiar pungent fragrance, making the air heavy and sharp. It took ten minutes to prepare a traditional chai, five minutes to let it cool, and another fifteen for her to drain the entire pot while I pretended to sip my single cup. That was a half an hour, measured in blisteringly bitter tea, for our monthly ‘check-in’ sessions.
‘That’s why Lucas keeps trying to escape. It’s not just leaving Congdon, it’s not just the Boundary Waters: He’s trying to get back to his father.’
‘Believe me, Maya,’ she poured the spices into an electric tea kettle and set a timer, ‘no one is more gratified than me to hear Lucas has trusted you with this information. The US Forest Service is making renewed efforts to locate Josiah and any information from his son will help. They’ve canvassed the western area closest to Ely by both water and air, trying to find any trace of him but so far have turned up nothing.’
‘What about Quetico?’ The rangers wouldn’t have any authority to search the Canadian reserve, which extended the wilderness by almost another two thousand square miles.
‘To my understanding, they’re working in tandem with the Canadian authorities and’ – she cut over my attempt to ask another question – ‘we’ll go over this in detail, I assure you, but right now we’re here to discuss Maya Stark, not Josiah Blackthorn.’
I dropped into my usual spot in one of her overstuffed chairs and stared at the moss-eaten trunk of an old oak outside the window. Dead leaves circled the ground around it and its branches curled naked into the sky. ‘There’s not much to say. My boss trusted me with a challenging assignment and it’s taking over my life.’
‘What did you do this weekend?’
I’d spent most of it replaying my last conversation with Lucas over and over to the beat of Jasper’s paws hitting the boards of the lake walk, but she didn’t want to hear that.
‘I went to the hardware store. The nickel handles I put in the bathroom are all wrong. Copper would be perfect with the wood tones and the floor, but then I’d have to get new fixtures, too.’
‘Is it possible,’ she ruminated while pulling out two squatty brown cups, ‘that your fixation on this bathroom allows you to avoid other areas of your life?’
‘Like remodeling the kitchen?’
‘Like making friends. Socializing. Pushing yourself out of your avoidant attachment style and opening up, building relationships and trust. It all starts through meaningful interaction with someone outside of Congdon.’
‘I signed up for three different social media accounts in the last week. My phone’s been going crazy.’ The notification buzzes had made my pocket vibrate all morning. I pulled the phone out and she came over, donning her glasses to examine the screen.
‘ “Stephanie posted to Lucas Blackthorn’s timeline?” “Lake Superior and 5K others liked @therealblackthorn’s tweet?” ’ She handed it back. ‘Thelakeliked it?’
‘It’s got an account, too.’
‘Of course it does.’ Dr Mehta perched in the chair across from me. Behind her head hung a framed quote that had been in this office for as long as I’d known her. It read,What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.Dr Mehta had spent eight years and counting trying to counsel what lay within me.
