Page 98 of Bailey

“Okay, Daddy,” Corrine yelled, as she’d already headed off with her fishing gear to stash it.

Luke grabbed his chair, and then Eric’s, as the boy was still struggling with his poncho. Reeves paused to help him, and then they headed away from the river and out of the drainage area.

Luke had just made it to the treeline and dumped the chairs when another clap of thunder filled the sky. It seemed to echo directly above him and bellow all around him, and Reeves crouched down, saying, “Come on, guys, down here with me. Let’s have a little talk.”

Luke did the same, though he wasn’t nearly as young as Reeves and couldn’t hold that position for long. Reeves looked at each person directly in the face, holding their gaze for a few beats before he moved to the next person.

“You guys know I do videos on outdoor survival, right?”

“Yes, sir,” the teens said, some louder than others.

“The most important thing is what?” He looked at OJ. “You’ve watched a lot of my videos, bud. What am I always telling people?”

OJ’s cute face scrunched up, and he looked at Lars, and then Luke. “Don’t panic?” he guessed.

“Exactly.” Reeves grinned at the kids. “We’re not going to panic. We’ve been in rainstorms and hailstorms before. We’ve been outside before. We’ve camped before. We’ve hiked before.” He shrugged like this was no big deal, and Luke found himself relaxing slightly.

“Now, it’s a little scary because it’s loud, especially if it starts hailing, and we’ll need to pay attention to dead trees if that happens, because with the wind and the hail, they can come down around you.” He shook his head. “But we’re not going to worry about that. We’re going to stay together, we’re going to pay attention, and we’re going to talk to one another.”

He paused for a moment, and Luke’s admiration for the man doubled and then tripled. If he’d been here alone with the kids, he’d like to think that he would do the same thing as Reeves, but to be honest, he wasn’t sure. Yes, he’d camped in the rain and snow with his family, but nothing had ever come up on them unexpectedly the way this late summer thunderstorm had.

“I haven’t seen any lightning,” Reeves said. “Which is great news for us. We’re still not going to carry anything metal or our fishing poles. If it rains, we’re going to try to stay dry, and we’re going to find a thick clump of trees that we can get under.” He looked at Luke. “I can scout ahead while you hold the kids here.”

Luke nodded.

“We’re going to be careful, because we didn’t come this way to the stream, so this is new terrain for us, and we have to be able to get back.” Reeves nodded just once, his confidence astounding.

“We’re going to be able to get back to the tents, aren’t we?” Lars asked.

Reeves reached out and cupped his face in his hand. “Of course we are, bud. We only hiked for twenty minutes. We’re not that far away.” He looked down to the stream. “I just don’t want to cross the water until I know how much there is.”

Luke looked that way too, and holy Toledo, he could see that the water had risen. Maybe not by much, but there was definitely precipitation coming down already somewhere and then flowing out of the mountains.

“If it’s hail, it’s going to be a little scarier.” Reeves leaned forward as the wind blasted him from behind, then righted himself as if nothing had happened. “It’s windy; it makes it hard to see and hear. So, if you want to hold hands, we can do that. It just makes walking a little clumsier. We need to be careful, because the ground might be slick.”

He looked around at everyone again. “I’m going to stop there, because I’ve given you a lot of directions. Who’s with Luke?”

Corrine and Lars immediately raised their hands, but Luke shook his head. “I’m going to switch you for Eric,” he said. “Eric, son, I want you with me; right at my side.”

He could tell Reeves later that Eric was a little squirrelly, didn’t always follow directions, and sometimes thought he was tougher than he was. Luke didn’t need to embarrass the boy in front of his cousins, and he’d matured quite a lot in the past couple of years since he’d gotten his driver’s license and a job. Still, Luke wanted him at his side instead of Reeves’s, as he knew the boy far better than Bailey’s boyfriend did.

“Lars, you and OJ go with Reeves.”

“Yes, sir,” Lars and OJ said together.

“I don’t think we’ll get separated,” Reeves said. “At least we want to stay together.”

“What will we do if it starts to hail?” OJ asked.

“We’ll do all the same things we would do if it rains,” he said. “The only difference is, depending on the size of the hail, it could hurt, so we’ll definitely want a shelter. And if it’s hailing, we hunker down and wait. You don’t try to hike, the way you might in rain.”

He’d positioned his pack on the front of his body, and he lifted his poncho and reached inside it. “I’ve got a GPS right here, and a satellite phone. We should notify our loved ones right now.” He pulled his phone out, as well as a GPS device. “I can look at the topography, and I can see all the National Park fixtures as well.” He looked around at everyone as the wind increased, and another blast of thunder boomed loudly in Luke’s ears.

“I’m going to text Bailey right now,” he said. “And Luke is going to text Sterling, and we’re going to let them know that we’re in a storm, and if they don’t hear from us within an hour, then they need to call for help.”

He looked around at the kids, his eyes filled with the same energy Luke had seen on the man’s videos. “If it’s you versus Mother Nature, you’re going to lose unless you’re prepared. And part of being prepared is admitting when you need help.”

“But we don’t know if we need help, right?” OJ asked.