by Rye Curtis
I watched after him until I could no longer see him in the timber.
I walked quickly through the woods hollering out my name. It was not but ten minutes before I found a clearing that opened up to a bluff and I quit hollering. Out in a rocky ravine, granite slopes fell to country patchy with snow and motts of spruce and pine. At a considerable distance, a troop of people in orange moved across the floodplain. They had a dog. I heard their voices echo over the range. They were hollering my name.
I do not imagine many of you can truly understand how it was for me to hear my name in the mountains and see those benevolent souls arriving to put an end to my ordeal. Few people have had the experience of being rescued. I had been out in the Bitterroot for near a month by then. I am certain a good many of you will not understand what occurred in my heart nor the decision I was to make. No doubt many of you will holler at the page, turn back, turn back, you old fool! Bless me, I suppose I do not entirely understand it myself. But a person has to make sense of their own behavior best they can and get on with it.
I stood perfectly still. I did nothing. I did not raise my arms nor wave them about. I did not holler out for help.
It was a dire sadness that came over me and at that moment, despite all the desperation I had endured out there in the Bitterroot, I could not see any good reason to go back home. It was impossible to imagine that Clarendon would be where I had left it back in the plains of the Texas Panhandle. Perhaps I did not even believe our house was still under the afternoon shade of the water tower, nor that First Methodist was holding services, nor that the congregation had bowed their heads in prayer for myself and Mr. Waldrip. At the time I was not sure how anything could exist after the great colorful ramparts of that wilderness. I worried that if I went back I would find nothing at all.
I feared a life not terribly unlike the one I live today. I live in an assisted-living facility and have been here for eleven years, since I turned eighty-one. I have a small air-conditioned single-room apartment. Most hours of the day and night I am alone. Visitors seldom come now, and when they do I am less certain what I mean to them or they to me. In truth I do not enjoy their company very much. Often I worry that compassion is perfunctory in this place, though perhaps it is that way in most of the world and nobody has caught on. But bless you, yes, there are new and dear people in my life whom I now know because of my ordeal, and in the most melancholy of ways I am grateful for that, and you dears know who you are. But at the time I could not see any potential for goodness in my return to the peopled world. Psychologists have told me that I was grief-stricken and dissociative and traumatized, but they were not there. To them those are just terms from a book. I assure you I was something else entirely.
I watched until the search party crossed out of sight into the woods. Then I turned back for the log cabin. I tossed my filthy old tore-up clothes into the stove and burned them.
The old dog limped in back of the four searchers, all of them clad in vests of orange, carrying packs and bedrolls. They came in a slow single file: Lewis, Claude, Jill, and Pete behind. Lewis led them under boughs and overhangs of rock, massaging on a forearm bruises like hourglasses, an eye hooked far on a helix of smoke. She drank from the thermos of merlot, then from a canteen of water.
Claude snapped his fingers at the old dog and it came along, nosing the tracks of his boots and stringing under the daylight silver tendons of slobber in the dirt. I’d say this isn’t goin to turn out the way you picture it, Debs, Claude said.
Jill chewed the butt of a dying cigarette as she followed them.
Pete wheezed behind and tugged at the strap for the video camera. He beat a fist on his pigeon chest. How far?
Another two miles, give or take, said Lewis.
Pete shook his head and coughed into his palm and looked wide-eyed at the phlegm he had brought up.
Claude tipped back a campaign hat and searched the sky. I’d say we’d better turn back, Debs. Looks like we can’t make it to the shelter and back to the vehicles before dark. It’s too far out there on foot.
We’re not turnin back, Lewis said.
Claude stopped and the rest stopped behind him. I’d understood the sleepin bags to be a precautionary measure.
Lewis balanced against a pine. When we find Mrs. Waldrip we’ll radio for a chopper, she said.
What if we don’t find her?
Think of it as a goddamn company retreat.
Jill ended the cigarette on a pine. Maybe our murders will be reenacted on television by actors that kind of look like us.
Pete dabbed his face with the coif. What if we got a real owly man up there? That Kisser fella. I just said I’d take a look around with you guys. I didn’t sign on for nothin like this. Not with my heart misbeatin like it is.
It’s Cloris up there, Lewis said.
Claude came around and took Lewis aside behind a tree away from the others and whispered, You all right, Debs?
I’m fine. You don’t need to ask me that.
Are you drinkin wine right now?
No.
I got to say if you expected we’d be stayin overnight it’s inappropriate to bring that girl out here. Let alone Pete.
I don’t figure we’ll be stayin the night.
Claude looked her over. Lewis figured he was looking at the washed stains and missed buttons on her uniform. She tucked in her shirt.
Debs, I’m worried, he said.
Goddamn it. Don’t be goofy.
I’d say we’re not the people we were when we started. Have you noticed?
I expect we’re not.
Lewis went on and the rest followed.
Pete came astride Jill and hoisted the video camera to a shoulder and framed her. You doin this for your college applications?
No, said the girl.
College sure is a good thing. I didn’t go to it. And look at me.
Look at you for what?
Pete lowered the lens. I’m forty years old volunteerin for a search on a mountain, just to keep from killin myself on account of my broken heart. My best pal from high school’s losin his mind about the ghost of a one-eyed shemale and his colleague here’s losin hers about a lost old lady. I can’t find no comfort in anybody left in my life. I’d be losin my cool if I hadn’t let Jesus take the wheel years ago.
Seems like he has fallen asleep at it, the girl said in her strange accent.
Pete scratched his neck and rotated his eyes high towards his brow like he were looking for an answer inscribed there on the inside of his skull. You sure do got a good head on your shoulders, he said.
The party struck onward for a time without words, kept only by the measure of their breath and the dog snuffling and jangling its tag and the clap of the snowmelt in the trees and now and again Lewis belting out ahead the name of the lost woman. Dark started to come on and the sky deepened to the color of the smoke they had followed there.
Lewis brought out a flashlight from her pack and stopped and shone the beam over her followers. They squinted back at her, resembling nothing so much as the terminally ill dogs and cats held dimly in the death kennels behind her father’s clinic. She would say the same strange words to them that her father used to say to those doomed pets: Alea iacta est.
They neared a pair of dim windows parallactic and deep in the forest. Lewis smelled pine burning. The sky was dark and big and the air cold and the party put over the trees and granite forms tines of pale light. Lewis stopped and leaned against a boulder. The rest of them stopped behind her. None spoke. The old dog panted at their feet.
In the shadows ahead crossed a bluish body, stooped and slow. Lewis moved towards it and the toe of her boot struck something. A bronze of a perched eagle lay in puddling snow. When Lewis looked up the body was gone. She focused her eyes on the shelter. She drank from the thermos and jogged ahead, calling out Cloris, Cloris, Cloris, Mrs. Waldrip!
Behind her Claude called for her to be quiet and slow down.
Lewis reached the door and
put an ear to it. Mrs. Waldrip, this is the United States Forest Service, are you in there?
Claude came up beside her. Jill followed, lighting another cigarette. Pete stood back.
Lewis drew the revolver and held it upright in one hand and the flashlight against it in the other. She leaned into the door and it gave way.
Careful, Debs.
Don’t goddamn worry about me.
She went slowly into the shelter and aimed the revolver and the flashlight at the floor. She asked the dark for the lost woman. A small coal fire burned in an iron stove. Cloris? she said. She brought up the flashlight. The light slipped over the log walls and the minor furniture and the dust and smoke in the air yet did not illuminate any human form. Lewis holstered the revolver and removed her campaign hat and wiped sweat from her forehead. A clothesline crossed the room, hung with a pair of dirty green striped socks. Lewis took the end of a glove in her teeth and pulled it from her hand, then pinched a sock and felt that it was damp. She knelt at the stove and looked into the fire. A grouping of brass buttons glowed in the embers.
Claude had ducked into the room and the dog dragged its nose along the floor behind him. I’d say we just missed someone, he said.
Jill was close to the door and looking around at the room.
Lewis stood and replaced the campaign hat and pocketed the gloves. Goddamn it. Why do you figure she’d leave?
I’d say those don’t look like the kind of socks worn by an old lady, Debs.
I don’t like this all that much, Pete said from the doorway.
Lewis picked up from the table in the room a warped hardcover book. The Joy of Lesbian Sex: A Tender and Liberated Guide to the Pleasures and Problems of a Lesbian Lifestyle by Dr. Emily L. Sisley and Bertha Harris. She set it down. She asked Jill for a lighter and lit the lantern on the table and then went to a window and cupped her hands and looked out the unclean glass. Trees gnashed in the dark.
Lewis turned back to the team. They were leaned about, orange vests glowing in the murk. The dog had curled up already near the stove.
Lewis pulled a chair out from the table and sat down. She took an index finger and drew on the table a spiral in the dust. We’ll stay here tonight.
No, Jill said. I don’t want to.
Lewis took the thermos from her pack and drank. She wiped her mouth. Don’t worry, she said. We’re not in any goddamn danger.
What if they come back? Jill said.
Pete took one step through the doorway. Who? What if who comes back?
This is it, Debs, said Claude. I’m not helpin you look for her anymore. Don’t care even if we get John to get us a chopper. I won’t be party to it. It’s not healthy.
It’s a good thing to help somebody if you can, Ranger Lewis, Pete said, but it ain’t if you can’t. Learnt that from the hard way, at the end of a hard road of domestic torture.
They agreed to set out again for the trailhead at first light. Pete and Claude huddled upright at the stove with the dog like a covey of quail. Lewis and Jill took the bunk beds, and from the bottom bunk Lewis watched Claude fall asleep. Pete, the stovelight awash in his eyes, stared at the door. Claude whined through his blue nose, dreamspeaking low and gospel. Jill lay on the top bunk. She was quiet and still. Lewis could not know if the girl slept or not.
Lewis did not sleep and was awake suckling the last of the merlot from the thermos and listening to the loud fire of pine they had built in the stove quiet and die out. The revolver lay on her chest. Some hours into the night after she had closed her eyes, she opened them again and looked out from the bunk. Jill stood in the room.
What’s wrong?
The girl came closer and moonlight in the small window touched her dark curls and the scars on her face. Can I sleep with you?
Lewis sat up on her elbows and sucked merlot from her teeth and looked at the girl. She recalled a waterspotted painting of Artemis that had hung near the basin in the restroom of her father’s clinic. What?
Can I sleep with you?
In here?
I don’t want to be up there by myself.
Why not?
I’m cold and I’m scared.
Aren’t you too old for that kind of thing?
I’m not too old to be cold and I’m not too old to be scared.
Lewis studied the girl and said: All right.
She moved to one side and Jill brought a sleeping bag down from the top bunk and laid it on the cot. She climbed into the bunk and pushed her back against Lewis and her hair fell about and smelled the way of bloody cats shampooed after surgery.
Can you hear that?
Hear what?
It sounds like someone copulating.
Lewis raised an ear to the air. It’s probably just some goddamn animal.
It’s hard for me to sleep without music playing, Jill said.
How come?
I think about every little sound. Music covers them up.
There’s no music here and I’m not singin.
When I was a kid I had a cassette of Jimmy Durante singing. When a side would end I’d wake up and turn it over.
You’re still a goddamn kid.
Some minutes passed in silence and Lewis figured Jill had fallen asleep for she breathed slowly and twitched. Lewis touched the girl’s hair and smelled her neck. The floor creaked and she looked out to the dark. Pete stood at the stove, the video camera shouldered. The black eye of the lens gazed back at her. The tape ran in the dark. Lewis did not move.
Pete squinted past the viewfinder and lowered the video camera to the floor and knelt in the corner of the room where they had stacked firewood.
The others were sleeping yet and Lewis, hunched over in her coat and hat against the chill, crept from the shelter into the dawn. She trudged out past the trees, sucking old merlot from her teeth, and she pressed her back to a wide trunk and took down her trousers. Steam rose and she breathed it in.
A scream broke the quiet and the dog barked.
She pulled up her trousers and ran back towards the shelter, buckling them as she went, and found Jill coming from the woods. The girl slumped in the doorway and the dog jangled up and licked dark blood from her hands.
Lewis told the dog to get and kicked it away and it yipped and went off. Tell me what happened, she said.
Jill raised a bloody hand to the forest. I saw someone. There.
Claude appeared in the doorway wearing backwards his campaign hat. He held out a can of bear spray. Who?
Pete rubbed his eyes and peered over Claude’s shoulder. Are we bein assaulted?
Lewis knelt down and took the girl’s bloody hands in hers and turned them looking for the wound. Where’re you hurt?
The girl held out her left hand. I went out there to pee and I saw somebody. I ran and tripped over a metal eagle. I landed on it with my hand.
Claude held back the bloodthirsty old dog by the collar. A metal eagle?
A statue, Jill said. On the ground.
Pete shook his head. That’s not the kind of thing you’d normally see out here, is it, Ranger Lewis?
Lewis found a perfect hole in the palm of the girl’s hand. You’re bleedin pretty good, she said. You feel all right?
Yes.
Does it hurt?
No, said the girl. Someone is out there.
Cornelia Åkersson.
Goddamn it, Claude. Quit bein a goofball and help me.
Claude gave Lewis a white plastic container from his pack. Lewis broke it open and pulled out a bottle of iodine. This’ll sting. She popped the cap with her teeth and emptied the bottle over the wound. Jill winced. Lewis put some gauze to it. There were no bandages. Here. Give me that goddamn thing. Lewis snatched the coif from Pete’s head and made a bandage of it. What d’you mean you saw someone?
I heard a sound and then I saw something move. There. Jill picked a place in the trees with a bloody finger.
Pete brought up the video camera and aimed it at Jill’s hands. What if it’s that Kisser
fella?
Lewis scanned the trees. The sun had not yet risen above the range and the light was little. Wait here.
I ought to come with you, Claude said.
Stay with her, goddamn it, Lewis said. See if you can’t stop it bleedin like that. Goddamn it.
Blood-splattered and stained in merlot, her campaign hat askew, she went onward with crooked footing like a war-weary soldier, sucking her teeth. She drew the revolver and held it in both blood-slicked hands and walked in a ways until she came to an escarpment. She looked out from the trees at the vast woodlands and scrub. She was alone and could not see the others.
Mrs. Waldrip? Mrs. Waldrip? Cloris?
A gust blew through the woods and Lewis heard crinkling above. She looked up. A mylar balloon was tangled high in a bleached dead pine at the edge of the escarpment. In pink block letters it bore the phrase Get Well Soon. Lewis blinked at it and sank to the ground and did not take her eyes from it. She knelt there for a time and watched reverently the balloon brighten in the rising sun until it burned like the bead of a welder’s torch.
When she touched her face it was wet and she figured she had been crying. Behind her voices called out her name and she wiped the wet from her cheeks, blazing them in the girl’s blood, then she stood and holstered the revolver.
She returned to the others at the shelter, where most things were bloodied. The two men stood outside, their hands red. Claude was buttoning his uniform. Jill sat in the doorway, her back to the jamb. Her left hand was bandaged in Claude’s undershirt and Pete wore again the coif, now pied crimson. Jill smoked a matching cigarette. The dog lapped dots of blood from the floor.
Jill was cleaning her good hand in her curls. What did you see?
Just a goddamn balloon stuck in a tree.
No doubt many of you will believe that I am a crazy old bullfrog to have walked away from the search party sent after me. Perhaps I am. It is mighty difficult to know your own mind. I could liken it to when poorsighted Mr. Waldrip misplaced his glasses. Poor darling, he would bump around the house and touch the furniture like a mad faith healer, cussing up a storm under his breath. I was always the one to find the silly things, having the blessing of good eyesight as I do. I imagine that is the way it is with a mind too. You need one to find one. So if you have lost yours, you had better have another to help you find it.