The Park Service 01: The Park Service

by Ryan Winfield

  A rush of wind tickles my ear, and Jimmy’s spear flies toward the boulder and disappears, taking the fox with it. One second the fox is sitting there, the next second it’s not.

  We camp on a high bank beneath the overhanging bows of a tree. I scrounge up wood and build a fire while Jimmy skins out the fox. When the fire burns down, we skewer the meat on pine branches and lay it to roast over the coals. Then we sit in the dark listening to the fat sizzle and smelling the meat cook while we pass the fox’s pelt back and forth, admiring it.

  Jimmy tosses me the pelt and leans forward and turns the meat, the fox’s naked legs flopping from side to side.

  “Looked a lot bigger wearin’ its fur,” he says.

  I stroke the pelt, inspecting it in the dim glow of the coals. Thick brown fur, gray highlights, a black tip at the end of its soft and bushy tail. It’s beautiful. Jimmy hands me a skewer of meat; I hand him back the pelt.

  “What will you do with it?” I ask.

  “The fur?” he says. “Hell, I dunno. Ya want it?”

  “No, I don’t want it.”

  “Well, maybe I’ll make ya a hat.”

  The meat is burnt on the outside and half raw yet on the inside, but after almost two days without food we devour it and suck the bones and lick our fingers. Jimmy cracks the bones and eats the marrow, but the idea grosses me out so I toss mine in the fire and watch them blacken. When we finish we’re still hungry, and Jimmy gathers pinecones in the dark and sets them in the coals to roast and then we fish them out with sticks and pry them apart and eat the seeds.

  If the moon is in the sky, it’s trapped somewhere on the other side of the mountain and the night is as black as anything I’ve ever seen. The coals burn down to just a dim glow beneath the ashes, and we lie on our backs looking up into absolute nothingness and listen to the river rumble down the canyon.

  We break camp at dawn, filling our canteens in the river and splashing cold glacier water on our faces before strapping on our packs and heading off downriver. Jimmy ties the fur to the outside of his pack, and as he limps along ahead of me it looks as if the fox has leapt onto his back and is clinging to his shoulders and hitching a ride. We’re not gone long when I hear a sort of whimpering behind us. I look back but see nothing among the rocks where we passed.

  “Did you hear anything, Jimmy?”

  “Jus’ the river. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  I pick up a river stick, leaning on it to test its strength, and it feels about the right length so I take it with me for a walking stick and start after Jimmy. Not a minute later, and I hear the whimpering again, this time even closer behind me. I stop, turn. There, following at my heel, is a baby fox. It stops, plops down on its haunches, looks up at me with coal black eyes, and opens its little pink mouth and yawns.

  “Jimmy,” I call out. “You aren’t gonna believe this.”

  Jimmy backtracks and steps up beside me.

  “Shit,” he says.

  The fox pup trots around behind us, and when we turn, it moves behind us again, as if it were playing some kind of game.

  “Take off your pack, Jimmy.”

  “Why would I?”

  “He’s following his mama on your back.”

  Jimmy shrugs off his pack and sets it on the ground. The little fox runs up and buries its face in its mother’s fur.

  “Should we eat it?” Jimmy says.

  “No, we can’t eat it,” I say, punching him on the arm.

  “Well, what’ll we do with it then?”

  “Let’s just bury the fur inside your pack and go on,” I say.

  Jimmy stuffs the pelt inside his pack, concealing it as best he can with the tattered skins now loosely covering its contents. Then he straps the pack on again and we continue walking.

  The fox pup whimpers meekly behind us.

  “Don’t look back,” I say.

  We walk for several minutes with nothing but the sound of the river running and then I peek over my shoulder.

  “Thought ya said not ta look back,” Jimmy says.

  “I did say it.”

  “Then why’d ya look?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, what?”

  “Is it back there?”

  “Yeah, it’s back there.”

  “Shit.”

  We noon on a sandy shoal where the river splits and pours thick into a deep pool. We sit on our packs and watch the little fox come trotting along the river behind us.

  “I’m pretty dang hungry now,” Jimmy says.

  “Me too,” I say, “but we’re still not eating it.”

  The fox lopes up and plops down next to Jimmy’s pack. Jimmy stands and snatches his spear, heading off toward the river with it. When I reach to pet the little fox, it shies away, keeping its eyes on Jimmy’s pack. I open his pack and pull out the fur and lay it over my lap, patting it as an invitation. The pup takes a half step forward and stops, dropping on his belly.

  “Come on, little fox,” I say, “it’s okay.”

  I feel funny talking as if it can understand, but I pat the fur again and it shimmies a head closer. We go on like this for the next hour, inch by inch, me talking it toward me, and by the time Jimmy walks back into camp with a half dozen small trout hanging from a string, the fox is sitting on my lap.

  “If ya plan on feedin’ that whiney little thing,” Jimmy says, holding up the fish, “it’s comin’ outta yer half.”

  We build a small fire and roast our fish, three for Jimmy, two for me, my third one raw and in the mouth of the pup. He eats it with his little paws holding it down, and it’s all he can do to tear small chunks from the fish by biting into its back and thrashing his little head from side to side. After we eat, the pup sits on the riverbank and licks its paws while Jimmy and I swim in the pool. The river water is ice cold, but it feels good to be clean when we finally climb out of it, shivering.

  We rinse our tattered clothes in the river and hang them from branches to dry. Then we pull everything out of our packs and spread the packs to air on the sand, and we sit next to them naked with our arms around our knees and skip stones across the pool. I look at Jimmy’s thigh, the wound fully healed now, but a nasty red scar there from my crude stitch job.

  “Does it still hurt?”

  He looks at the scar and shrugs.

  “Nah, not really,” he says, skipping another stone.

  “Never?”

  “Only when I think about it.”

  Jimmy nods to the pup, now running in circles and playing with a pinecone.

  “He is kinda cute.”

  “How do you know it’s a he?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I dunno. I jus’ figured it.”

  The pup bats the pinecone and it rolls down the bank into the water. He runs after it and buries his nose in the pool and comes up with the pinecone dripping in his mouth.

  “Ya got a name for ’em?” Jimmy asks.

  “If we name him, we’ll have to keep him.”

  “Ya already gotta keep ’em,” Jimmy says, “ya fed ’em.”

  “I guess you’re right. But I can’t think of any name.”

  Jimmy nods toward the contents of our packs spread out and drying in the sun: furs, broken lengths of rope, canteens, an empty food pouch, my father’s pipe, and Uncle John’s knife.

  “Why dun’ ya jus’ call ’em Little John, or John, Jr.?”

  I remember Uncle John teaching me to clean a fish in two cuts, then giving me his knife. And I remember them bringing his mangled body back and burning it on the bluff. I remember his wife giving birth to his son and naming him John, Jr. And I remember the Park Service slaughtering them, too.

  “How about we just call him Junior?” I say.

  “Junior it is then,” Jimmy says, skipping one last stone. “We better get on if we’s gonna reach that lake by dusk.”

  Junior takes to his name better than he does to keeping up with us. He quickly falls behind, a
nd after waiting for him to catch up a third time, Jimmy threatens to eat him again. I scoop him up and carry him a ways, then I put him in my pack with his mother’s fur and we set a fast pace to make up lost time.

  All is quiet, with just the sound of the river running and Jimmy’s spear and my walking stick knocking against stones as we walk. I feel Junior’s hot breath on my ear every few minutes when he pokes his head out and looks around, as if satisfying himself we’re heading in the right direction, before retreating into the pack and snuggling into his mother’s coat.

  Near dusk, with the sky turning cobalt overhead, we come to where the river flows into a deep canyon with no bank on either side, and we’re forced to seek higher ground and follow the river by sound as we weave our way through the forest. The forest is bone cold, and the pines stand dark against the deep-blue sky as our breath smokes in the air before us—Jimmy’s, mine, and occasionally Junior’s tiny breaths over my shoulder. We walk for a long time with the sounds of the river fading to our right and sticks and pine needles crunching under our feet.

  Soon, the sky is nearly black, and the trees recede into it so we can only see their faint shadows when we’re nearly on top of them. I’m about to suggest we stop and make camp when Jimmy drops to the ground, grabs my arm, and pulls me down with him. He points ahead. We shimmy forward on our bellies and I see why he made us drop out of sight.

  The trees end abruptly at the edge of a high bluff, and the bluff looks over the lake now glowing a kind of purple as its still waters reflect the last bit of light. Below us, on a small peninsula that juts out into the lake, is some sort of building shrouded in deep shadows. It looks like a big house, or maybe a lodge. Lighted windows cast yellow rectangles on manicured lawns. Stone steps lead down to an enormous boathouse and a long dock built out into the lake. The dock’s edges are lit with gas torches that crisscross one another and cast luminous twin sets of torches on the surface of the water.

  “Whataya think it is?” Jimmy whispers.

  “Some kind of mansion or something,” I whisper back.

  “What’s a mansion?”

  “Just a big fancy house, I guess.”

  “Oh …”

  “Like a big tent, but more permanent,” I say, realizing he’s never seen a house either.

  “Who lives here?”

  “I’m wondering the same thing.”

  We lie still and watch while the last bit of light fades, the lake turning from purple to black, the lodge disappearing into shadow save for the lit windows and the torches on the dock. After a while, Junior crawls out of my pack and stands with his front paws on the back of my head and watches with us.

  “We better backtrack and make camp,” Jimmy says.

  I scoop Junior off my back and we shimmy away from the edge. We walk maybe fifty meters into the forest until we find a wind-felled tree. It’s too dark to make beds, and we don’t dare make a fire, so we lie on the cold ground with the tree between ourselves and the lake. I can hear Jimmy’s stomach grumbling next to me, and I wonder if he can hear mine. I fish the pelt from my pack and use it for a pillow. Junior curls up on it also and drops fast asleep beside my head. I feel his tiny ribs rising and falling as he breathes, and I’m sure I even hear his little tummy grumble once, too.

  “Hey, Aubrey,” Jimmy says.

  “Yeah …”

  “Never mind.”

  “What is it, Jimmy?”

  “I was jus’ thinkin’.”

  “Thinking about what?”

  “Well, I was jus’ thinkin’ that whatever’s down there … I mean, whatever happens tomorrow …”

  “Yeah …”

  “Ah, it’s nothin’, really,” he says, “I jus’ was thinkin’ stuff. Guess I wanted to say I’m real glad we met.”

  Junior sneezes in the dark, shifts his position on the fur, and falls right back to sleep. I think Jimmy might say something more, but he doesn’t, and all I can hear is the faint rumble of the restless river running down its canyon somewhere.

  “Hey, Jimmy?”

  “Yeah …”

  “I’m real glad to have met you, too.”

  CHAPTER 23

  The Lake House at Malthusai

  “Knock it off.”

  Junior licking the salt from my lips.

  “All right, all right. What’s that sound?”

  Swoosh—thwap! Swoosh—thwap! Swoosh—thwap!

  Jimmy is fast asleep snoring, his arms wrapped around his pack as if he were cuddling it. I pick Junior up and carry him with me to go investigate. The dawn light beyond the trees is gray and the distant peaks stand black against it, and as I near the edge of the bluff, the pewter lake comes into view. A duck calls, another flapping clumsily across the sky veers to the lake and lands, cutting the smooth surface open like a zipper.

  I set Junior on the ground, drop to my belly, and shimmy to the edge. Just as I peek over, the sun rises from between two peaks, blinding me. I narrow my lids against the glare, raise a hand to shield my eyes, and wait for my vision to adjust.

  Swoosh—thwap! Swoosh—thwap! Swoosh—thwap!

  She fades into my sight like some fiery sex-goddess might in a dream from which I’d never want to wake, and I know in this very moment that I’ll never be the same again. Standing on a red clay tennis court, she’s hitting balls thrown by a machine. She wears white shoes and a white tennis skirt, her long legs bare, her skin the color of pale honey, and when she hits the ball, her skirt lifts and I can see the hint of her pink underwear. But what attracts me most about her appearance, and why I cannot pull my eyes away, is her thick red hair pulled back from her gorgeous face and tied in a pony tail that sweeps out behind her, splaying open like a burst of flame when she swings, then falling again to rest in the perfect curve of her back.

  The balls come fast from the machine, and she delivers them back across the net with expert swings—backhand and forehand and overhand—dancing on the red court, agile and so faery-like I wouldn’t be surprised if her red hair spread into wings and she flew away over the treetops. But I hope she never flies away. I want to lie here and watch her forever, and I would if Junior didn’t start crying loudly in my ear, the noise threatening to draw her attention to me.

  I turn to grab him but he backs away and yips again. I look at his little ribs showing through his fur and think he must be starving. Shimmying away from the edge, I head back toward our camp with Junior yipping at my heel.

  Jimmy’s awake, propped against the log, digging through his near empty pack.

  “What are you looking for?” I ask.

  “Anythin’ eatable,” he says. “Where were ya?”

  “Had to take a leak,” I say.

  I don’t know why I lie to him, I just do.

  “What was that sound?” he asks.

  “What sound?” I say, lying again.

  Jimmy just shakes his head and says, “I’m starved.”

  “Me too. And so is Junior.”

  He tosses his pack and stands, brushing himself off and looking around.

  “Well,” he says, “let’s leave our stuff here jus’ in case and go on and have a look.”

  When we belly up to the edge, the tennis court is empty. Now that’s she’s no longer there, holding me spellbound with her beauty, I can see what the place looks like in the light.

  The lake is enormous, cupped on all sides by mountains. The lodge below us is built almost entirely of brown stone, its steep roof shingled with red cedar, its gables accented with gray rock. The windows warble in the light like pictures of old leaded glass I’ve seen in educationals. The face of the lodge angles away from us toward the blue lake, two wings on either side surrounding the red-clay tennis court. The grounds are impeccable, with bursts of little flowers here and hanging baskets of color there. The green lawns are mowed so tight that you can see the lines running in perfect patterns across the grass. At the edge of the property, stone steps lead down to a swath of beach and the enormous boathouse built right up o
ut of the water in stone that matches the lodge. A dock juts out into the lake, hovering just above the water’s surface on pylons.

  All is quiet and serene, and we sit there for thirty minutes and watch hummingbirds hover at the flowers and the shadows shrink as the sun climbs in the sky.

  “Think anyone’s home?” Jimmy says.

  “I don’t know,” I say, lying again.

  “Think you could boost me over that wall?”

  “Maybe.”

  With Junior whimpering in my arms, we walk through the forest north of the lodge to where we won’t be seen, and where the cliffs give way to gentler slopes. We work our way down to the lake and walk the shore back to the wall that separates us from the house. The wall must stand nearly three meters tall, made from impenetrable stone, with a wide arch in its center framing giant wooden doors with iron rings for handles.

  “Boost me up,” Jimmy says.

  “How about you boost me,” I say. “I’m lighter.”

  “Whatever,” Jimmy shrugs.

  I set Junior down and step into Jimmy’s hands. He lifts me up, but I’m still a head short of seeing over.

  “It’s too high.”

  I step down. He crouches, tapping his shoulders for me to climb on. I step up, left foot, right, and brace myself against the wall with my palms. He grunts, rises, and the wall slides down past me and disappears until I’m looking in on the garden.

  She’s standing there on the other side of the wall, looking up at me with her hands hooked on her narrow hips.

  “Whataya see?” Jimmy asks, his voice strained beneath me.

  She’s changed from her tennis skirt into white shorts, her feet bare in the grass, her red hair loose and all around her.

  “Who are you?” she asks, her voice calm.

  I prop my arms on the edge of the wall.

  “I’m Aubrey.”

  “What?” Jimmy asks.

  “Aubrey’s a funny name for a boy,” she says, smirking.

  “I’m not a boy, I’m a man,” I say. “What’s your name?”