by Rye Curtis
What was that? Jill said.
Nothin, Lewis said.
They watched the cassette melt down through the logs under an acrid smoke.
From the trail came the racket of hikers and Lewis laid a hand on the butt of the revolver at her hip. There came the three young men they had seen before in front of the Crystal Penguin. One of them wore a turtleneck and cradled a box of beer. The skinny mohawked boy led the group into the light of the fire, his round glasses as opaque as two silver coins.
You ladies enjoyin your evenin? he said. The jewelry in his tongue flashed.
Lewis stood and brushed off her trousers. You boys aren’t allowed up here. I figure you know that.
What about you?
I’m a goddamn ranger in the United States Forest Service.
The one in the turtleneck nodded at Jill. Well who’s she? She ain’t no tree cop.
You don’t need to know who she is, Lewis said. If you don’t head back, I’ll write some goddamn tickets.
The mohawked boy slunk to the other side of the fire and perched on a log. The two other boys joined him on either side. The fire was the only sound and light, and the wind was calm and the wood burned slow. The boys opened cans of beer from the box. The mohawked boy unzipped a large bag and took from it a sandwich bag and a mantel clock of dark wood inlaid with gold.
My mom’s clock, said the boy.
She died, another said, and he held up the sandwich bag. We’re comin up here, to this place, to sprankle out her ashes in honor of her memories.
The mohawked boy placed the clock on a stump next to him and all of them went quiet for a moment to listen to the loud tick and tock count the whip of the fire. When my dad and her were my age, he said, they’d scratched their names on that big junky rock right over there looks like a vulva. I knowed her clock’d be better off up here in that spot right there than back in my trailer. It’d look out of place with me in my trailer.
The weather’ll ruin it up here, Lewis said.
That’s all right. Everything ruins everything else, don’t it?
Lewis spat in the fire. I’m sorry about your goddamn mom, she said, then she told them that she would allow them to scatter the ashes and have a brief memorial, but then they would need to be on their way.
The boys mumbled to each other and rose from the logs with their cans of beer like they were marionettes strung on the moon. The mohawked boy took the sandwich bag and stood out on a far ledge over the expanse below and opened it and shook it out by the corners into the windless dark. He strolled back to his companions, his shirt and trousers grayly dusted and his eyes unseen for the reflections in his glasses. Each of the other two boys touched a shoulder of his and sucked from their cans.
All right, Lewis said.
The mohawked boy nodded and took up the clock from the stump and placed it high in the hollow of a wide rock face under his parents’ names. He turned back and hung the empty bag off a shoulder and went away down the path. The other boys were slow to follow and the one in the turtleneck knelt to get the box of beer.
You’re goin to have to leave those, Lewis said.
Why’s that?
Can’t have alcohol on goddamn state property. I ought to give you goofballs tickets. Just let them be. I’ll dispose of them.
I bet you dispose of them, all right, the other one said. Like you’re disposin of that wine.
You’re a real dirty tree cop, I hope you know that, said the other. Abusin your power and takin advantage of us cause we don’t have the heart to argue with a shitty old woman.
She’s thirty-seven, Jill said.
A really dirty tree cop, a real sad old lesbo, said the one in the turtleneck. I hope that hermaphrodite ghost gums you to death and steals your soul to Neptune.
Lewis told them again to get and they looked at each other and then at Jill and they set off dragging their feet down the trail after their mohawked companion.
Lewis stood and stumbled at an angle to the box of beer and hauled it over to where Jill sat on the other side of the fire. She opened a can and handed it to the girl, then opened one for herself and raised it. To us, she said.
She sat beside Jill on the log and they drank can after can.
Don’t believe that nonsense about Cornelia, Lewis said. Goddamn people’re hell of a lot scarier than stories. I’ll keep you safe from it all.
You want to keep me safe?
Course I do.
Why?
Lewis slid from the log and lay in the warm dirt before the fire. She lifted her boot from where she lay and crushed an empty can and chucked it drunkenly to the pit. I figure I’d like to find out what kind of woman you grow up to be, she said.
I’ll be this size until I die.
You’re not goin to die. By the time you’re my age they’ll have a goddamn pill to help with that.
With dying?
Maybe it’ll even make you young again. We’ll just have a country full of immortal teenagers.
Jill crawled from the log and lay down beside Lewis. I do not want to die.
I won’t let you, Lewis said. I won’t let you stop callin, stop keepin in touch. And I won’t let you die. We’re goin to always know each other.
Jill made a sound and Lewis figured it was a laugh. We will do our best, Jill said.
Lewis rolled over onto her side and looked at the girl. She put a hand to her cheek and traced a thumb over the scars that mapped the girl’s face. Jill leaned in and touched her lips to Lewis’s chin. Lewis moved and brought their lips together. The clock in the rock face knocked out a rhythm and the two of them lay together close to the fire under their coats.
Lewis awoke in the dark. The fire pit smoldered under blackened cans and the wine bottle. The mantel clock chimed 5:00 a.m. The wax figures stood over her. From the trees came a moaning that then died away. Lewis leaned up on her elbows in the dirt and squinted at her hands by the glow of the embers. Red ants scaled her fingers. A fat one stung her and she flicked it away. The moaning started again and the trees swayed in shadow. Black nightbirds flew against them and the blacker mountains.
Goddamn it. Who’s there?
Lewis pushed herself up slowly to her feet and stood there undulating as if she were in a canoe. She reached for the revolver and unbuttoned the holster. The moaning grew louder and a rock flew out from the trees and missed her. She drew the revolver and aimed at the trees and fell over.
The moaning stopped. She waited. Nothing followed.
She heard the girl crying and looked around. Jill’s head was out from under the gray coat covering her and she shivered in the dirt. Ants roamed her face and struggled in her curls. Lewis holstered the revolver and leaned over her. She brushed the ants away and touched the girl on the shoulder and shook her awake.
The girl quit crying and sat up. Red welts had spread across her cheeks and lips. She blinked wearily and wiped her swollen mouth. What is this?
We dozed off on a goddamn anthill.
Jill said she was cold and did not feel good and asked if they could leave.
Lewis flashlit the way and they staggered down to the trailhead and found the Wagoneer. Keyed into the driver’s side door were the letters L E Z.
Lewis snaked down the mountain road, leaning forward and squeezing the wheel. She pulled over on the way and Jill vomited from the open passenger’s door into wildflowers growing from the pavement. Lewis vomited from the driver’s side.
Half an hour later they got to the pinewood cabin and Jill had fallen back asleep. Lewis parked and went around to the passenger’s door and opened it and hoisted the girl into her arms. She lumbered with her across the driveway and nearly tripped over the nose of the doe head she had buried there. Its worn face peered glassily up at her from between her boots, partly unearthed in the gravel. She went on and caught with one finger the door handle and carried the girl inside. The living room was dark and Lewis lowered Jill onto the couch. The girl stirred but did not wake. Lewis watched her slee
p by the new light of dawn coming in the kitchen window.
Soon the girl woke and sat up and cried into her palms.
What’s wrong?
I want to go home.
I thought you wanted to stay with me.
Can I call my dad and have him come get me?
Lewis knelt before her. I thought you wanted to stay here.
The girl quit crying and dried her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She tipped up her marked and scarred face and looked at Lewis and said in her bizarre way of speaking: Do you think we all victimize each other without even knowing it?
Goddamn it. I don’t know.
I kept hearing that clock last night and I thought about the old lady.
Cloris Waldrip?
She lost her husband. I think it would take another lifetime to get over someone that you had already spent a lifetime with. She never had enough time. Do you think it’s cruel to make yourself stay with someone for that long?
I don’t know, Jill. I don’t want you to go.
I think it’s cruel for me to stay with you on this mountain.
We can go somewhere else, Lewis said. Let’s go to Tokyo.
Jill swatted at nothing and placed her small hands on Lewis’s cheeks and squeezed her face and held it there. I want you to understand me, she said. You were my age when I was born. I’ll be your age in the year 2005. Things will be different then.
I know that.
Some people the years don’t weather them, but they have weathered you.
It’s the age difference. You think of me as a mother.
I guess I’ve lived a sheltered life. And I’m still young. I’ll be someone else in a few years’ time. I want to be someone else in a few years’ time.
I expect that’s only natural, Lewis said between the girl’s hands. But I don’t know what you want me to do. What do you want me to do?
My parents told me I was born with my face like this, the girl said. But I know what really happened. Everyone gets changed from the very beginning. We’re all changing each other all the time. You have concerns that are beyond my experience. I’m not desperate yet. I haven’t found desperation like you have. And I’m glad for that. But when I do find it, and I know someday that I will, I hope to have the decency to be afraid of what it will do to others.
Lewis took the girl’s hands from her face and held them by the wrists. Goddamn it, Jill. Your goddamn dad sure doesn’t give you enough credit.
Jill moved from the couch to the floor and wrapped her arms around Lewis’s waist. Lewis put her arms around the girl and smelled the top of her head and they held each other there until the sun was up.
I do not allow that anyone can truly know another person through and through. I knew Mr. Waldrip better than anyone, but did you know that after my ordeal in the Bitterroot I discovered that he had been writing letters to a woman in Little Rock, Arkansas? Our will and testament had provided for our belongings and remaining assets to go to First Methodist, and when Mr. Waldrip and myself were declared dead in absentia, my dear friend Sara Mae Davis volunteered to take a hand in the great effort of sorting through it all. Not only that, but I understand she and her nephew were kind enough to lay a final resting place for our poor cat Trixie, under the crabapple tree in our backyard. As I had feared, Trixie did not survive our absence. I was told she was found atop the credenza. Anyhow, while Sara Mae was clearing out Mr. Waldrip’s desk in his study these letters from Arkansas turned up and once she had read them she decided to keep them. I will not put the Arkansas woman’s name down here. I see no reason to draw her out into the light for this, for I believe she is a married woman if she is still living as I write.
From what I can tell Mr. Waldrip must have come across her advertisement in the classifieds in the back of a Little Rock newspaper after having gone there to look at some cattle in 1965. He would have been fifty-three then. I know some young people have pen pals in the Internet these days. Back then we used paper. Some of you may not believe me, but I tell you the letters did not upset me. I believe I have read them all and I cannot be certain if they ever did meet in person or not. That does not matter much to me. But there it was. Mr. Waldrip wrote to another woman and by the way she wrote him back it would appear that he had great affection for her. He would have been mighty embarrassed to know Sara Mae had read them.
At the heart of it I suppose I knew Mr. Waldrip well enough to know that he was the kindest, most decent man I could ever have hoped to marry. I love him and miss him very much. He was a powerful sweet man and this woman must have done something to earn these affections from him and I hold no ill will for her.
I understand now that most of us are much more complicated people than we care to let on. We all have our separate lives and I do not allow that there is a person alive out there who does not have at least one secret they will endeavor to take with them to the grave. I imagine most everyone has at least one locked door in their heart to which they alone keep the key. Perhaps we are all our own lonely bedrooms. And as thoroughly as I have bared myself in this account, I know there are some things I will just have to keep to myself.
The day after the hut burned down I poked around through the ashes and turned up the old olive can to boil water in. I took an hour or so and built up the makings for a fire and set it with embers dug up from the debris. I boiled water from the creek and gave it to the man. He drank it and did not speak. He had his back to a boulder under a big tree. Most of the time he just watched the sky.
We spent two nights out in the open like that. Thank goodness it did not rain. We were both mighty hungry and I did not sleep much at all on account of the cold and I had to be vigilant about the fire so that it would not go out.
The man’s leg worsened. It changed colors and gave off an odor like that of Catherine Drewer’s horrible mushroom casseroles. Gracious, that woman never could discern sugar from salt or etiquette from honesty. In time it also seemed she could not tell perfume from cat urine.
The man’s traps and snares were set a considerable distance away and I did not dare find them on my own, being disguised as they were, and being that I had not heard the cry of any poor critter, I imagined they were empty anyway. On the second day I endeavored to catch some fish for us. His tackle box had burnt up in the fire, so I fastened the spey blade of his knife to the end of a branch and set about using it for a spear. The man kept watch over me from under his tree, out of the sun. I jabbed at fish after fish in the creek for a good couple of hours and believe it or not at last I stuck a slow and backwards-looking mudfish plumb through the middle and flung it from the water! I was mighty proud of myself. I cleaned and cooked that mudfish over the fire. The innards hissed and burned up in a black smoke. We had our supper in the late afternoon. My friend did not eat much. We also had some cattails.
Often in the night when he thought I was asleep I would hear him groan and sit up and drag himself out behind the big boulder to relieve himself. On the second night I heard him trying to bawl quietly. It is no common sound to hear a man bawl to himself in the dark when he imagines no one can hear him. It is an awful sound of misery and I do not rightly know what to compare it with. I did not let on that I was awake or get up to comfort him. I suppose I knew it would embarrass him too greatly and make matters worse than they already were.
On the third day after the fire, on what I believe would be the 8th of November, the man started a fever. He glowed all over with sweat and he did not speak and often partly shut his eyes. He had a bad pond-water color to his face and his lips split and bled. I knew that I had to do something or he was going to meet the end in no time at all.
That sundown, as purple snow blew from the tallest peak in the range, I got it into my mind that I would get him down that mountain myself and get him to a doctor. I did not know how I was going to do it yet, but I had decided that would not stop me. I went to him before dark while his eyes were shut and whispered in his ear: I am going to get you to safety, Garland.
Lewis goose-stepped over hedges and a low bulwark of schist out to the forest behind her pinewood cabin. For ballast she swung waistlevel a heavy bottle of merlot and murmured angrily to herself about a mousy-voiced girl who had phoned into Ask Dr. Howe How about dreams she had been having of her grandfather’s knees. Her mouth was darkly smeared like a jester’s and her hair was tangled under a sideways campaign hat. She soon came to an overlook of granite above the gray wilderness and she sat there and watched the night fall. When it was dark and she had finished the bottle she chucked it off the mountain and could not see where it broke.
She felt her coat for a flashlight, but she must have left it back at the cabin. She sat in the dark and pouted and whimpered, and she lay back on the granite slab and figured she would never again hear from Jill Bloor. She recalled the way Jill had looked getting in her father’s black truck the previous afternoon when he had picked her up in front of the pinewood cabin. Bloor had not gotten out. The last thing Lewis saw of the girl was the cigarette smoke blowing out the passenger’s window as they drove off.
She sat up now and started back for the cabin. Clouds covered the moon. Small and dim through the trees she could just make out the deck light she had left on. She had not taken but a couple of steps when there sounded a sourceless and low tone and she stopped. It recalled to her an old oscillating belt fan that had sat on her father’s desk for years issuing a dissonance only he could tolerate.
The tone stopped all at once and the forest was silent again and then came the moaning she had heard before, plaintive and sexual. To her left there was the shuffling of feet. Lewis twitched and unbuttoned the holster she wore and drew the revolver and braced her back to a tree. She raised the revolver and shook it outheld.
Who’s there?
There was no answer and something neared.
Who’s there, goddamn it? I am a Forest Ranger. I’m armed.
No answer.