Empty Promises

Hank. “I know where they just dumped a whole truckload of fish,” he said. “I was just up there working when they dumped them off the bridge. That’s where I’m headed.”
    Since the other fisherman had also told them about the fish dump, it seemed reasonable that this stranger, who said his name was Tom, was telling the truth. Hank was really tempted, but he worried about his nearly empty gas tank. Tom told them that it wasn’t that far—they had more than enough gas to make it, adding, “Besides, I can go to town in the morning and bring back gas if you run low.”
    They decided to follow Tom to the place where he said he’d seen the fresh dump of fish. The two-vehicle caravan wended its way slowly down the deserted road. At one point, Tom pulled the truck over and suggested that they ride with him so that they wouldn’t run out of gas, but Robin shook her head, and Hank shrugged. She wanted to stay in their own car; the feeling of uneasiness that had plagued her for the past two days had returned.
    “Just where is this spot?” Hank asked.
    “Just beyond the Bagby Hot Springs Road.”
    Hank and Robin looked at each other; that was the road that had frightened them when they’d taken it by mistake the day before. It had given them both goose pimples on a hot day. They whispered to each other about turning back, but they finally decided to go on. “It’s silly for us to be afraid of a road,” Hank reassured Robin.
    They passed a man and his daughter they’d camped with the night before, and Robin felt better; they were nice, normal people and seeing them here on this road allayed her fears.
    Hank looked over at Robin and grinned. “See, things always work out. It’s neat that we met Tom. If we hadn’t been at the dam at that precise minute, we wouldn’t have had this chance to catch some fish. We probably would have just gone home and lost the whole weekend.”
    Up ahead, Tom turned onto an old dirt road that was bumpy and deeply rutted. They could no longer see much of the landscape because the sun had dropped below the horizon, and it was that time of evening between dusk and full dark. They pulled in behind the glowing taillights of Tom’s red pickup.
    They lit a fire, and Tom pulled out a bottle of liquor and offered them a drink. To be polite, they each took a little sip. Then Tom pulled something out of his truck. It was a milk carton with a dead bird in it. “See this?” he bragged. “I picked it off on the way down here.”
    Robin felt her stomach turn over. “We don’t believe in killing things for sport,” she murmured. “Not unless you have to—for food.”
    “Oh, don’t worry,” Tom said. “I plan on eating it.”
    After they ate, Tom grabbed a rifle from his truck and called to Hank and Robin to join him on a walk. They came to a clearing in the midst of the lowering pine and fir forest and Tom told them that this was where he did his hunting. “If we got a deer, we could eat only the hindquarters. We could be wasteful masters,” he said. It was an odd term. Robin had never heard it before.
    “That’s illegal,” Hank said.
    Tom only laughed and shrugged.
    They shared Tom’s binoculars, and there was just enough light to see a deer foraging in the clearing and, farther on, some bear cubs playing. Tom raised his gun, sighting in on them, but he didn’t shoot. Robin heard him cock the gun, and she quickly turned her back in disapproval and horror. She tugged on Hank’s arm and pleaded, “I want to go back to camp right now. If he shoots a cub, the mother will kill all of us!”
    Tom smiled, his teeth white in the dusk, and lowered the gun. They made their way back to the campfire.
    Hank and Robin prepared to sleep in their car again.
    “I’ll rap on your hood in the morning when I get up,” Tom said, “about five.”
    Alone in their car, with Rusty tied outside, Robin told Hank she didn’t like Tom. “He seems to enjoy killing for its own sake,” she whispered.
    Hank held her close and said softly, “You just have to understand everyone in his own way, honey.”
    Hank was like that. He didn’t judge people—he accepted them, but Robin felt an overwhelming rush of fear that she couldn’t shake. She clung to Hank all night. While she watched him as he slept, she had a numbing thought. What would she do if something took him away from her? She loved him so much, but she knew that sometimes there was nothing she could do to stop whatever Fate had planned