by Maddy Hunter
“Weren’t you listening?” chided Grover. “There aren’t any mountain goats in Denali. Only sheep that look like goats.”
“How can we tell the difference between the two?” questioned Dick Stolee.
“I just got through explaining,” bellyached Grover.
Thor Thorsen guffawed. “Waste of time, sparky. No one was listening. No one ever listens.”
I sidled a glance at Etienne and rolled my eyes. Maybe a few intermittent cell towers wouldn’t be such a bad idea after all, just to keep them occupied.
“You’re making this more complicated than it needs to be,” reasoned Kyle. “The process is simple. Yell stop if you want me to stop. I’ll pull over to the side of the road, if I can, and then the person who asked me to stop can tell the rest of us what he spotted and where he spotted it.”
“What’s going to prevent us from getting thrown from our seats when you stop?” asked Margi. “We don’t have seat belts. Are there any urgent care clinics inside the park?”
“The maximum speed limit for this bus is thirty-five miles per hour, ma’am, and I rarely even hit twenty, so seat belts aren’t really a concern.”
“What are we supposed to be looking for again?” asked Osmond.
Oh, God.
“I’ll start you out with a few statistics,” said Kyle as we drove through an area of new growth birches and aspens. “The park covers approximately six million acres, which makes it about the size of Massachusetts—maybe a little bigger. But unlike Massachusetts, much of the ground is underlaid with permafrost, which is basically ground that’s remained frozen for thousands of years. You’d think that only a few plants could grow in the thin layer of topsoil that thaws above the permafrost every summer, but the park supports over 650 species of flowering—”
“Would someone please tell Thor to close his window?” Helen Teig demanded. “He’s letting in all the mosquitoes.”
I turned around to see Thor kneeling on the seat behind the Teigs with his camera poised at the open window. “Dig out your repellent,” he griped. “I didn’t buy a boatload of expensive camera equipment to shoot a picture through a closed window with glass too dirty to see through.”
Dick Teig raised an orange canister and pressed hard on the nozzle, blasting Thor with a sustained shot.
Pssssssssst!
I froze in place. Omigod. Please make that be something other than bear spray. Please make that be something other than bear spray.
“What the hell!” yowled Thor, flapping his arms through the air as if he were battling a swarm of midges.
Psssssssssst!
Dick got him again.
“Cut it out!” yelled Thor as he chased away lingering traces of mist. “What is that stuff?”
“Bug spray,” said Dick.
“It stinks!”
“It’s generic. Generic repellents don’t have the same fresh scents as the name brands, but they’re a lot cheaper, so I’ve learned to live with the stench.”
“Spray that stuff at me again, Teig, and I swear I’ll twist you into a pretzel.”
“Hey, this is the thanks I get for saving you from an excruciatingly painful and potentially fatal insect-borne disease? Okay, have it your way.” Dick faced front again, a satisfied grin on his face. “From now on, you’re on your own.”
“Everything okay in the back of the bus?” questioned Kyle.
“It will be in a minute,” responded Etienne, who stood up and made his way down the aisle to Thor’s seat. Oh, wow. Talk about a diplomatic nightmare. How did one go about chastising a guest for rude behavior while still making him feel a welcome part of the tour?
Thirty seconds later Etienne returned to the front of the bus with Thor following close behind, weighed down with all his photographic equipment. Uff-da! Did Etienne just kick him off the bus?
“Mr. Thorsen has agreed to change seats with us, bella.”
I stared up at Etienne. “What?”
“Having a window open in the front of the bus doesn’t affect so many passengers.” He nodded toward the stepwell. “Fewer seats around it.”
“But…what about the mosquitoes?”
“I’ve never had a problem with mosquitoes on the bus,” Kyle spoke up. “We don’t usually stay in one place long enough for them to find us.”
“Oh. Well…” I stood up, annoyed that we were rewarding Thor for his bad behavior by giving him a front seat but proud of Etienne for realizing that the best way to keep the peace was to isolate Thor from the rest of the group.
Thor slid onto the front seat and dumped his equipment beside him. “All right!” He looked over his new surroundings like a king acquainting himself with his throne. “This is more like it.”
On our way back to our new seat, we passed Florence, head bent, hand shielding her eyes in obvious embarrassment. And my heart went out to her that she had to live with the profound disappointment that the man she thought she married wasn’t the man she’d married at all.
As Kyle resumed his narration, touching on the retreat of the glaciers and the revegetation of the area with fungi, mosses, lichens, and algae, the landscape morphed from a forest of shrubs and young hardwoods to panoramic vistas of broad, flat valleys whose backdrop was a muscular range of craggy, snow-drenched mountains. Shallow rivers cluttered with pulverized rock meandered through the flattened plains, carving out new channels that flowed outward like tentacles. Meadows lush with ground-hugging wildflowers swept to the water’s edge, sprinkling color like flakes of crushed candy. It was a frontier wilderness of grand proportions, untouched by commercialism, serene in its isolation, but thriving in the distant shadow of the cloud-covered behemoth known as Denali.
“I haven’t spotted any caribou yet,” Kyle continued as we bounced along the park road, “but if we see one, we’ll see a whole herd because they travel in groups. And an interesting factoid for you: unlike other members of the deer family, both male and female caribou have antlers. A typical herd size numbers around—”
“Stop!” yelled Thor. “Bear! Right side of the bus.” He thrust his hand out the open window to indicate the rise that sloped upward from the valley toward another mountain range.
Kyle hit the brakes gently and pulled the bus to the side of the road where he came to a full stop. “Can you tell what color it is? Grizzlies are kind of a dirty blond.”
Thor stuck his camera with its comically long zoom lens out the window, directing it toward an expanse of low bushes that were interspersed rather sparingly with tall, pointed spruce trees. “It’s halfway up the hill here. At about three o’clock. And as far as I can tell, it’s brown.”
He might as well have fired a starting pistol.
Passengers occupying the aisle seats on the right side of the bus sprang to their feet and clambered over their seatmates in a desperate attempt to stake out a place at the window.
Passengers on the left side of the bus jammed into the aisles to peer out windows that were being blocked by their traveling companions’ heads, arms, torsos, and cell phones.
“You people who are hogging the windows need to sit down so the rest of us can see something,” insisted Dick Teig.
“I don’t see any bear,” scoffed Dick Stolee, his face glued to the window glass.
“Right up there!” barked Thor, his camera whirring as he snapped shot after shot. “Three o’clock. Take the blinders off!”
“Is that three o’clock Iowa time or Alaska time?” asked Margi. “My watch has dual time zones, so I get both.”
“Which way’s twelve o’clock?” questioned George. “How are we supposed to figure out where three o’clock is if we can’t locate twelve?”
“Can’t help you there,” lamented Osmond. “My watch is digital.”
“I can’t see nuthin’,” fretted Nana as she stood on tiptoe amid the tall timber in the ais
le.
“No one can see nothin’!” complained Dick Teig. “Guess they forgot to tell us we’d need x-ray vision to see out the damn windows.”
“Too late now,” blared Thor, his camera suddenly silent. “It just disappeared over that first ridge. Excitement’s over, folks.”
Disappointed and grumbling, everyone in the aisle returned to their seats on the left side of the bus. Kyle started the engine again and pulled onto the road, creeping along at about fifteen miles an hour. “The deeper we drive into the park, the more likely you are to see grizzlies, so I’ll tell you a little about them. They’re not fussy about what they eat. Anything goes: plants, berries, rodents, moose, carib—”
“Stop!” cried Thor. “Right side of the bus. Bear foraging by that big boulder on the hill.”
“Is it a grizzly?” asked Kyle.
“Nope. It’s black.”
The lefties clogged the aisle again with renewed excitement, bobbing their heads, weaving through the crush of bodies, stretching to make themselves tall, crouching to make themselves short, aiming their phones toward the windows that were being monopolized by the righties.
“Grover, will you move your damn head?” sniped Dick Teig as he waved his phone in frustration.
Grover didn’t budge. “Why do I have to move? My seat, my window.”
Grover’s mulishness didn’t surprise me. I’d noticed he’d been a little out of sorts ever since he’d learned that instead of joining us for the excursion, Alison would be remaining at the cabins to manage details of our meal at the diner this evening.
“Hey, the bear’s got two cubs with her,” announced Thor, his camera whirring frenetically as he squeezed off a flurry of shots.
“Where’s he seeing bears?” fussed Goldie as she knelt on the seat behind Grover, peering over his shoulder. “I don’t see anything moving out there.”
“I see a black dot,” Mom called out from the back.
Thor lowered his camera. “That’s the bear. But if you don’t have binoculars or a telephoto lens, that’s all you’re gonna see.”
“Why are we looking for dots?” asked Helen Teig.
“Have we decided where twelve o’clock is yet?” asked George.
“I’m not takin’ pictures of no dots,” grumbled Nana as she returned to her seat.
“Come on, people,” I chided. “Share the windows with your friends. This isn’t like you. Does anyone have binoculars they want to share?”
“I do,” boasted Thor, “but I’m not going to share because they’re way too expensive to just pass around. Oh, look at that! The cubs are romping around like puppies. It’s really too bad the rest of you can’t see this.” Whirr. Whirr. Whirr. Whirr.
Throwing in the towel on the wildlife photography, the lefties dragged themselves back to their seats, and as Thor continued to shoot pictures, they resorted to their favorite pastime—taking pictures of themselves—which seemed to boost their spirits considerably.
“Okay,” Thor said after another five minutes, “I’m done here. Let’s get going.”
We’d gone no more than five hundred yards when he yelled, “Stop!”
A collective sigh went up from the group.
“What is it this time?” droned Lucille.
“Probably another dot,” said Mom.
Thor peered through his viewfinder. “Right side. Top of the ridge. Big blond-colored bear lumbering in the low bushes. Gotta be a grizzly.” Whirr. Whirr. Whirr. “This is awesome.”
“I think I see it,” whooped Dick Stolee. “At the ridgeline. A little yellow speck.”
“That’s it,” affirmed Thor.
Dick swiveled around to snap a headshot of himself in front of the window. He showed the screen to his wife. “Grace, when we get home, in case I forget, would you remind me that this is the picture with the grizzly in it?”
The afternoon wore on the same way, with Thor making Kyle stop every one to two hundred yards so he could photograph wildlife that no one else could see. After three hours, having traveled a grand total of four miles out of the seventeen we were supposed to cover, Kyle decided to turn the bus around so he wouldn’t be late making it back to the visitor center.
“I’m really sorry we haven’t seen any caribou herds,” Kyle apologized. “They’re usually out there in force. Maybe if we could have made it farther into the—”
“Stop!” shouted Dick Teig.
Kyle pulled over and killed the engine.
“Right side of the bus,” Dick enthused. “Down by the river. Near that gravel bar. A huge black blob.”
We shot excited looks out the window. Searching left. Searching right. Searching left again.
Helen harrumphed. “What black blob?”
He swatted his hand in front of his eyes. “False alarm! It’s a floater.”
“Is anyone getting cell service?” Ennis Iversen called out as Kyle restarted the engine.
“No bars for me,” Osmond responded.
“Me either,” a smattering of voices agreed.
“You’ll be able to get service once we’re back at the visitor center,” Kyle assured them.
“Have you had any updates on Lorraine since last night?” Florence asked in an anxious voice. “We’re all really worried, Ennis, but none of us want to pester you with questions when you’re in the middle of a personal crisis like this.”
“Well, the crisis got worse this afternoon,” he admitted, sounding as if he couldn’t allow the burden to fester inside him any longer. “Lorraine is more than just missing. The police think she might have been kidnapped or abducted or whatever terminology they’re going to use.”
“The difference between the two is in the intent,” Grover spoke up. “Kidnapping is the forceful seizure of a person against their will for either ransom or other criminal motives, and it usually involves false imprisonment. Abduction, on the other hand—”
“Will someone shut him up?” barked Thor.
A suggestion proving that even wankers like Thor could come up with constructive ideas every once in a while.
For the next five minutes Ennis reported on the latest news about Lorraine, his depleted money market account, and what it all might mean, ending with a confession that he never should have left his cabin this afternoon. “Chief Burns might have news, and here I sit…holding a phone with no bars.”
“I’m glad you decided to come with us,” Florence reassured him. “We’re all glad you’re here, aren’t we, everyone?”
Nods. Fist pumps. Scattered claps.
“It doesn’t make any sense for you to suffer by yourself when you’re surrounded by all your friends,” she continued. “And you just wait and see. I bet when we get within range of a cell tower again, you’ll find a voicemail on your phone from Chief Burns with good news for you.”
Ennis sighed. “Hope so.”
“It’ll happen,” encouraged Florence. “I can feel it in my bones.”
“Stop!” shrieked Bernice, leaping out of her seat. “Right side of the bus.” She aimed her phone toward the side of the road.
Kyle pumped the brakes and glided to a full stop.
“What’s there?” urged Dick Teig.
“Squirrel! Right over there.” She stabbed the window.
Accompanied by excited oohs and aahs, everyone scrambled toward the windows again, angling their phones at the glass in the hopes of photographing what looked like a common gray squirrel.
Thor’s boisterous laughter echoed through the bus. “Why are we wasting time stopping for a squirrel? We have squirrels back home.”
Bernice sniffed with disdain. “That squirrel is the only photo- worthy thing we’ve stopped for today.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Because it’s the only thing in this whole damn park we can see without a telephoto lens!”
fifteen
It must have been arthritis Florence had been feeling in her bones when she’d made her prediction because when we arrived back in civilization, Ennis discovered no new message from Chief Burns in his voicemail. Alison greeted the bus in the parking lot at the cabins with goofy waves and smiles, and when we were safely offloaded, she gathered us around her to give us our immediate instructions.
“Your meal is all ready, so if you’ll march directly over to the diner, they’ll start serving. No waiting necessary. They were expecting you about twenty minutes ago, so they’re doing their best to keep everything hot.”
“We decided to use the comfort facilities at the visitor center in case the water was still off here,” I explained.
Alison nodded. “Good decision. We’re still without water.”
Boos. Hissing. Razzberries.
“To the diner, everyone!” She raised her arms and pointed to the eatery as if she were an airport technician guiding an incoming jet to its gate. “And cue up your photos because I want to see each and every one of them at dinner.”
The media vans had vacated the parking lot, which was good news for Mom and Dad but not such good news for Nana, who was right back where she started, having to figure out innovative ways to avoid Mom’s overprotective clutches. All I could say was Mom owed me big-time for taking Nana’s bear spray away from her.
The waitstaff started serving as soon as we sat down—a fixed meal of chicken fingers, cole slaw, and fries, which had sounded Happy Meal enough to order for everyone, except that each “finger” was big enough to be classified as a hand.
“What kind of fish is this?” asked Osmond as he poked at the two claws of meat on his plate. “Walleye?”
“Looks like a largemouth bass to me,” said George.
Helen picked a hunk up by two fingers, studying it from front to back. “It’s got a mouth?”
“It’s actually chicken,” said Alison as she flitted between tables, handing out extra napkins. “And it’s really pretty tasty once you get past the outer crust.”