Kingdomtide

by Rye Curtis

  The cook clapped and the waitress flattened an ink-stained hand to the girl’s back and leaned over her. Lewis figured she studied the girl’s scars. What birthday is it, baby doll?

  Eighteen, Jill said.

  What’s that, sweetie?

  She’s eighteen, Lewis said.

  Just a young and beautiful woman, the cook said, whistling. Ye gawd, ye just got yer whole life ahead of ye.

  The waitress turned to Lewis. You must be one proud mama.

  Lewis fixed on the woman a red eye. I’m not her mama.

  She’s new, Ranger Lewis, said the cook.

  All right, goddamn it.

  The waitress blinked and the cook pulled her away behind a swinging door.

  Lewis hoisted onto the table a box wrapped in white paper. Happy birthday, she said.

  Should I open it?

  What else would you do with it?

  Jill tore away the paper and Lewis cut the string with a pocketknife.

  I went down the mountain a couple days ago, Lewis said. Came across this in that antique shop by the gas station. Couldn’t believe my goddamn eyes. Had to get it. Easy there. It’s goddamn heavy.

  Jill opened the box. She pulled balled-up newspaper from around the bronze of an eagle taking flight off a tree limb.

  I know pokin up your hand wasn’t the best thing to happen to you up here, Lewis said. But I figured you could remember the other times by it too.

  The girl showed her palm and the white dash there. It’s healed, she said. Maybe this is the same bird and time is different.

  I had it engraved there at the bottom.

  Jill read aloud from the bronze: United States Forest Service Volunteer Forest Ranger Jill Bloor 1986.

  Two goddamn months in the program. That’s somethin to be proud of.

  We didn’t find your old lady.

  Lewis took the Lord’s name in vain and shook her head. Nine o’clock that morning Chief Gaskell had radioed into the station and told Lewis that the state had declared Cloris Waldrip dead in absentia. Almost everythin doesn’t work out, Lewis said. We can just do our best, that’s all.

  Do you think she’s dead?

  If she’s not she’s probably goddamn unrecognizable.

  Will you keep looking for her?

  I’ll keep an eye out.

  The rain quit and Lewis drove the girl to an outlet store in a dismal corner of the town. Lewis strolled the aisles through racks of collared shirts and Jill tried on polyester dresses in the changing room. Lewis stood guard and kept an eye on the curtain. She scowled at a spidery boy loitering there with his hands in his pockets. Lewis told the boy to get and he did. When Jill was finished, Lewis bought her a pair of trousers and a blue cotton dress and she bought for herself a khaki shirt and then drove to a wine-and-spirits store and picked up ten bottles of discounted merlot. She loaded the Wagoneer and drove back up the mountain and the red evening sun pulled long shadows from the road signs and made bloody roods of the last telephone poles.

  She caught a bottle of merlot rolling in the floorboard and had Jill uncork it with a corkscrew from the glove compartment. She parked the Wagoneer at the trailhead for Egyptian Point and they sat in their seats as the last of the sundown mist rolled off the mountains into the black wards of the valleys below. Silk Foot Maggie paced the yard behind the mobile home where she had built rust-colored castles out of used tampons and beer cans.

  It was Monday and it was quiet and no vehicle save theirs was parked there. Lewis turned the engine off and let the quiet stand. She drank from the bottle. Didn’t want to take you back just yet. That all right?

  Jill nodded and cranked down the window and lit a cigarette. They drank together from the bottle and Jill smoked cigarettes out the window. A cloud covered the moon, leaving only the red glow of the lightbulb in Silk Foot Maggie’s back porch. The girl’s hair shone. Lewis reached over and touched it.

  What are you doing?

  Thought your hair was wet. It’s real pretty. You still plannin on leavin? Now you’re eighteen?

  Jill said that she planned to leave the next day.

  What’s your dad say about that?

  He wants to stay here.

  You can stay too if you want, Lewis said. She took back her hand. You don’t have to stay with him. You can stay with me. There’s a goddamn spare room that’s just boxes. It was my ex-husband’s study. You’re welcome to it.

  I lied to you, Jill said. My dad never had sex with my mom after she was paralyzed.

  All right. Why’d you lie about that?

  Do you know the reasons for everything you do?

  No, goddamn it, I don’t expect that I do.

  One day you’ll not like me so much, Jill said.

  I don’t care that you lied about that. We all have our goofy reasons for doin what we do, Jill. Even if we don’t know them all the time.

  I can’t stay with you.

  Lewis watched the girl a moment longer and turned back to the wheel and started the engine.

  Lewis, a lip wedged in the neck of a bottle, sulled drunk on the white couch. Moths knocked against the window without like a heavy rain. In the circular fireplace the false logs lay in the fire like the limbs of cats and dogs cremated in the dirt yard behind her father’s clinic. Beyond the fire the homunculus leaned dry and foul in a corner, gawping at her through the flames with its eyes of halved tennis balls. A cricket sang from a hole in its skull.

  Behind her a door opened and a forked shadow reached over the living room. She pried from the bottle her lip and turned to find Bloor in a lacy yellow nightgown.

  Are you all right, Ranger Lewis?

  What’re you wearin?

  It was Adelaide’s.

  All right. Lewis nodded at the homunculus across the room. You’d better throw that goddamn thing out before it falls apart and makes a real mess.

  Thanks for taking her today.

  Eighteen’s a big one. Figured she’d want a day off this goddamn mountain.

  Bloor let the gown slip from his shoulders and fall to the floor. He cocked a hip before her in the firelight. His long naked body was shorn of hair and his penis tight and small. His golden mullet was like a kind of Japanese headdress. He held a cake of chalk and passed it between his palms and set it on the end table, then lowered himself next to her on the couch. The synthetic leather croaked against his skin and he took from her the bottle and finished what was left. He pinched lightly her sides. When Lewis did not make a sound, he pinched harder. She put a hand over her mouth. He pinched her again harder yet and he whinnied and she took the Lord’s name in vain between her fingers.

  What do you want to do? he said.

  I’d like to try somethin, Lewis said.

  What’s that?

  Get on the floor and open your mouth.

  Do you want to take off your clothes first?

  No, she said. That’s not necessary for this.

  Bloor looked at her, then slid to the floor and lay there naked on his back as he was told.

  Now open your mouth, Lewis said from the couch.

  Bloor did so and Lewis got up and stood over him. He lay there staring up at her. She figured he looked like an enlarged and deformed girl. She settled down on top of him and put her face close to his.

  Put out your tongue, she said, and he did. Lewis pursed her lips and let drool run from them. Bloor turned his head. She told him no and he turned it back. She aimed and spat into his mouth. Keep it open, she said, and drooled again. I’ll tell you when to swallow. She drooled until his mouth was full and his eyes were watering, then she sat up and told him to swallow. He did and gagged and got up on his elbows and Lewis climbed off him and sat back on the couch.

  He was awed a moment and clucked in the pit of his throat and jittered the sweat off his head like a water bird coming up for air, then he stood widelegged before the fire with an erection. He finished there and splattered the artificial logs and the mess sizzled and burned off in a watery smoke. H
e told her it was the best sexual experience he had ever had and that he loved her and he took up a glass of water from the coffee table and drank there naked.

  Lewis watched him for a time and then said, I’m not all right.

  Bloor set the glass down. Are you going to be sick?

  No. I want to end our relationship, professional and otherwise.

  You’ve had a couple of bottles of merlot, you know.

  I’ve had four goddamn bottles but I know what I’m sayin. Will now, will always.

  I don’t think you do.

  Don’t tell me what I don’t know. You can do this goddamn goofy thing without me. There’re plenty of me out there. I’m just another kind of the same person over and over again. Same as you.

  No you’re not. I love you.

  Your goddamn love’s not special neither, she said. She cleared her throat and spat all the way into the fire from where she sat. Don’t you mistake that it is. It’s the same brand everybody else’s got.

  Bloor shuddered naked and took a step forward. Koojee. Let’s discuss this tomorrow when you’re sober.

  Lewis straightened up on the couch and aligned the holstered revolver on her belt. Let’s just leave it where it stands and move on.

  You owe me some discussion.

  Can you put some goddamn clothes on?

  What changed your feelings for me?

  I don’t expect they did change.

  Bloor sat down next to her on the couch. I don’t understand.

  Put some goddamn clothes on.

  He took up from the floor the nightgown and pulled it on. My wife always told me that God has tiny feet and tiptoes through time but makes a hell of a racket in space.

  Goddamn it, Lewis said. Half the time I don’t know what the hell your goddamn wife was always tryin to tell you. And the other half it sounds like what every other goddamn person’s already said before and it never helped anybody when it was said the first time. I can’t figure why we all keep sayin the same goddamn things to each other and expect anybody to be anythin new and good. I’m not attracted to you and I don’t like the sex, if that’s what we’re callin it.

  I’m sorry, Bloor said. I was under the impression you liked it.

  You misunderstood.

  I hoped we could explore some of our fantasies with each other in a comfortable and safe space. I thought you had a healthy sense of yourself and were a strong, progressive woman.

  Some of you people sayin you’re progressive are the ones goin backward.

  I had the impression you were the kind of woman that was sexually accepting and adventurous.

  I’m not, goddamn it.

  Bloor took up the cake of chalk from the table and turned it in his hands. You should’ve said something before now.

  I expect so, Lewis said. But there’s the goddamn joy of this, the goddamn joy of that. I just don’t figure I’ve ever found any goddamn joy in anything. It isn’t often I get what I want, but I figured I had to try.

  I’ll go to therapy. I’ll use less chalk and we can talk more about what you like. We can do what we did tonight as often as you want.

  I’m goin, Steven. You ought to go too. You ought to go back to Missoula or goddamn Tacoma or wherever the hell you come from. I don’t care.

  Bloor slid from the couch to his knees. He laid his head in her lap and sobbed. The nightgown cinched up around his hips. A ridge of spine disappeared into the hairless crack of his pale backside. I wish you’d stop being so mean, he said. Koojee. I have anxiety.

  Whatever word you want to call it is fine, Lewis said. You’re still just a person I don’t much want to be around. I’m sorry you’re this way. But I just don’t care enough to help you.

  What about Jill?

  Lewis said nothing.

  You know, she’s come to think of you as family, Bloor said. I don’t want to give you the impression that she’s slow, but—

  Lewis put up a hand, then she touched the man’s head and stroked a length of golden hair.

  Bloor wiped his face and rubbed together his chalked hands. I was in a bad way before I came up here, he said. Did you know I was on hiatus with the department?

  Get up off the goddamn floor.

  John called me up and said he had a job for me up in the mountains. I took it so that I could get away from my anxiety and come up here to find some healing. Then I met you and I didn’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave now, Ranger Lewis.

  Lewis rolled her eyes and sucked the merlot from her teeth and burped up some sick in her mouth. She swallowed it and stood up and said looking down at the man: Goddamn Mrs. Waldrip would’ve been better off crashin into any other mountain range in the country. When you get up off the goddamn floor tell Jill goodbye for me.

  Lewis walked out the door and drove the Wagoneer back to her pinewood cabin. She parked in the driveway and sat there in her seat. It was late but the lights were on in the blue-washed cabin next door and Claude let out the old dog into the woods. He did not see Lewis in the dark while he waited. After a while he let the old dog back inside and went in after it. Lewis leaned the seat back and fell asleep.

  She woke to tapping on the driver’s side window and opened her eyes. The sun backlit a thin figure outside. She brought up her seat and cranked down the glass and shaded her brow and peered out. Jill slouched there with luggage and the bronze of the eagle belted to a suitcase.

  Jill?

  It’s me. My dad left. He’s going back to Missoula and then Tacoma.

  Lewis smacked dryly her purpled mouth and pulled herself up by the wheel. Goddamn.

  I decided to stay.

  You got any water on you?

  No.

  What’d he say?

  He said you didn’t want to see us anymore and we had to go home.

  Lewis looked at the girl.

  He said we had wasted too much time on this haunted mountain already and it wasn’t good for me anymore.

  What’d you say?

  That I’m an adult and I would decide myself what was good for me and where I would waste my time. I’m eighteen now. Now everyone has to respect that I mean what I say.

  The girl told Lewis that she would like to stay with her until she had decided where she wanted to go. Lewis shook the empty thermos over her tongue and tossed it in the backseat. She blinked a few times at the girl and told her that the offer of the spare room still stood.

  He doesn’t want to see you again, Jill said. He said you’re a dangerous and distorted woman.

  I can understand why he’d say somethin like that.

  Why are you sleeping in your car?

  Lewis rubbed her face and opened the door and stood from the Wagoneer. She leaned against it and vomited in the shade of it on the gravel. I got carried away last night.

  He was angry, the girl said. He didn’t think you would take me when he dropped me off, so he gave me money for a bus ticket home. Then he threw that gross thing out the truck window.

  Lewis righted herself and wiped her mouth and looked to where the girl pointed. Cat bones and garbage gleamed on the road. A halved tennis ball lay next to the busted skull of a bobcat, and a foul uniform fluttered in a heap. Lewis squinted at the sun burning in the trees and on the granite. She pulled her campaign hat from the Wagoneer and put it atop her head.

  All right. We’re late for the station.

  I was to call that little hut home for just shy a month. The man and I suppered together there every evening and there we slept just a couple yards apart every night. I put in a good deal of my spare time telling him stories by the skulled light of that pine-knot lantern. I called him Garland. We became quite the companions.

  We had our share of little adventures too. One evening we had a tussle with a black bear cub that had climbed down a finger of the dead white pine and fallen through the roof. As the expression goes, it was more afraid of us than we were of it. Still it did give us a mighty powerful start and I chucked my supper at it. The man gave it some
good whacks with a rolled-up issue of National Geographic he had said he had read cover to cover well over a million times and chased it out. We sat up for a spell that night waiting for the mama bear to come for her vengeance, but thank goodness she never did.

  Another night after we had finished up supper, some strange doleful racket occurred in the dark outside. The noises were passionate and I was sure they belonged to a woman. I had heard them before, when I had come across that vacant blue tent in the woods. We sat and listened to them for a good long while, hoping it was only the wind in the trees. Before long the man gathered his courage and went out with the axe and his spey blade unsheathed to see what was going on. He was gone for about half an hour and when he returned he was the color of sea water and shivering. The noises did not quit until just before dawn. He did not tell me what he had seen.

  Most nights we sat by the stove and I told him stories about Clarendon and Mr. Waldrip. I told him about growing up in the country in the old days, about how I had lived through two world wars, the first of which I can scarcely recall, being that I was not but three years old when Father went off to France and fought the Germans under General Pershing and came home with a wrinkly right hand that could not make a fist. I told him about the rations and the rubber drives during the Second World War, and about how Mr. Waldrip had been 4-F on account of his poor eyesight, and how he had lost in the invasion of Normandy a distasteful cousin who beat up on his wife but was memorialized as a fallen hero all the same. I told him about how I had taught at Clarendon Elementary and then was the school’s librarian for over forty years, and about how I had dearly hoped to have children of my own but none had come to me, and about First Methodist and the pastors we had had over the years, including Pastor Jacob, who had renounced the church and wedded his Mexican housekeeper in an agnostic ceremony in El Paso.

  My companion was not a loquacious man and he told me very little about himself. I am a notorious chatterbox and he would steer the conversations away from himself and let me go on and on until I found a natural end. I did however learn that he was born someplace in the east of the continent and that he had traveled around the world with his mother since he was eight years old and had lived for a brief time in Germany. Despite that, he came from very little money and never knew the name nor origin of his father.