Kingdomtide

by Rye Curtis

  I have heard it said before that often as not when people pass away they look as if they have only gone to sleep. I do not believe that anyone who says this has ever truly seen a dead person. If you know the face at all you can see death in it by the way the face settles or looks stopped on some unknown eternal thought. When Davy passed away there was an open casket at the wake. I was only a young girl but I recall looking at my little brother embalmed and rigid there in his little coffin and believing that someone was meaning to trick me. He did not look like the little boy I knew and cared for. I was certain he was an effigy in wax, fabricated by some nitwit who had not known him at all.

  I have corresponded with a kind physician in Michigan, Dr. Rebecca Alcott, and what she believes happened was that the man had endeavored to stand and this had put too much strain on his already septic and traumatized system and caused cardiac arrest. He had fallen to the ground dead, but not before catching his coat on a low pointy branch and spilling the stuffing to the breeze.

  I sat there for a spell with his body in the sun and the gleaming goose down and the wind. When I got up again I gathered from it what I could use and left it behind.

  VIII

  The carcass of an elk swung from an eyebolt screwed into the eave of a hunting shack. It was half-flayed like a man with one arm in his coat. Lewis cut the engine, honked the horn, and leaned across the passenger’s seat to crank down the window. She called out a name.

  A black head cocked wildly from behind the shack, then came the rest of the large man. He bounded shoeless to the Wagoneer in a tuxedo too small for him. His wiry hair was pulled back into pigtails and he wore his mustaches old-fashioned and curled with lard. Ranger Lewis, he said as he reached the Wagoneer and rested a forearm on the open window of the passenger’s door. Workin on a Sunday?

  Almost didn’t recognize you, Eric.

  Yap, tryin out somethin for this woman I met down the mountain last week. I bought this here money suit off a destitute ombudsman in Missoula.

  Looks nice.

  Thank you, Ranger Lewis. You look nice too.

  Feel like hell. I quit drinkin this weekend. Got another call in about you, Eric.

  What’d I do this time? T’weren’t somebody in one of those tents I fell all over last week, was it? They got to put them suckers up in the tent area. If I go to the spigot for some potable in the night, which is my unassailable right, I cain’t see them tents just the way I cain’t see a hat on a flea.

  No, wasn’t them. Somebody made a report you were swimmin in the nude close to the campgrounds.

  Which area?

  Goddamn Clover, I think it was.

  So you’re tellin me I cain’t swim in the buff up here? What century’d the nekkid body get to be so offensive? If you cain’t get nekkid up here what’s all this for?

  There’re rules of common decency, Lewis said. Bylaws and codes, nationwide for all parks and recreational zones. Especially if there’re children around. Goddamn decency.

  Eric shook his head and twirled in his fingers the end of a mustache. My great litterbox, he said. Why’s one silly offense mean more than another? I cain’t no longer see the beginnin to the sense and the end to the nonsense.

  Just stay away from the campgrounds. That’s all you got to do, goddamn it. All right?

  All right, all right, Eric said. Hey, you guys ever find that old lady you was lookin for?

  No. She never materialized.

  Now that is sad. Old ones love a spot named for their bones so their kids can visit.

  Lewis leaned back and started up the engine and spat out the driver’s side window. Could you tell me somethin?

  Hope so.

  Why’re you livin out here like this?

  Well, Ranger Lewis, people generally don’t like me.

  Lewis nodded. Let me ask you, you seen anythin at all out of the ordinary recently?

  Eric turned his greased face to the sky and squinted at the cold fall sun. His dark eyes watered. I seen so many things out the ordinary, I just cain’t tell what the ordinary is anymore.

  But what about smoke, you see any more over there on the Old Pass?

  There’s been a lot more smoke comin from up that way than there used to be. Almost like you got campers like it was back in the sixties when people wasn’t afeared to lose sight of a radio tower. One night I saw what I surmise was a big stinky fire goin. I’ll say, look.

  Lewis looked to where the man pointed. There were peaks high in the clouds and the snow there turned off them into the sun, and the trees formed a meniscus below tunneling out into oblivion and there she spied a cut of white near lost in the daylight.

  That goddamn smoke?

  Yap. Must be.

  Lewis shook her head. She shifted out of park and clasped together her hands and leaned on the wheel. Who knows who’s up there, she said.

  The next day she went into the station early and turned on the space heater and the coffee percolator and as dawn came in the wide window she read the Missoulian under the weak bulb at her desk. The newspaper was a day old, dated Sunday, November 9, 1986. On the front page next to an article about Iran was a newsprint picture of the missing girl. Sarah Hovett still missing, authorities assume the worst.

  Lewis finished the newspaper and dropped it in the wastebasket at her feet. She brought in a cardboard box from the Wagoneer and cleared out her desk. She filled a plastic sack with the empty wine bottles she had hidden in the space between the desk and the wall and she went to the sink in the kitchenette and emptied the thermos of merlot. The merlot circled the drain and she recalled how it was to help her father wash the bone saws and lancets after surgery at the clinic.

  It was 9:05 a.m. by the wall clock when Claude came through the station door. He stopped in the doorway. I’d say we usually do that in the spring, don’t we?

  Lewis was wiping down the desk with a damp rag. She dropped it. Claude, you’ve been a real goddamn good colleague, she said. But I can’t find the joy in this job anymore.

  Joy?

  I’m movin to a big city. Someplace like Seattle or Boston.

  I’d say this’ll be leavin this station undermanned.

  Pete already leave?

  Left before the weekend, Claude said, looking out the window behind her. I’d say he’s back in Big Timber by now. Claude touched the scraggly scarf he wore around his neck. Left me this goofy thing he’d been knittin.

  He’s a nice man, Lewis said.

  I’d say he’s all right.

  A strange bird.

  He’s that too.

  John said he’d be sendin my replacement up on Thursday, Lewis said. A man by the name of Sokolov.

  Sokolov? I’d say he’s Russian.

  I expect so.

  I guess I can’t say I’m surprised you’re leavin.

  You’ll be all right, Lewis said. Eric Coolidge and goddamn Silk Foot Maggie can’t get into too much trouble in three days. Then you’ll have Sokolov.

  What’ll you do in Boston?

  I don’t know if it’ll be Boston. Goddamn, I don’t know. I figure I can find a job in the city park service.

  Claude took the campaign hat from his head and smoothed his neat black hair. You know someone shot Charlie?

  What’s that?

  Yeah. Few days ago. Shot her to pieces.

  Her?

  Charlie was a bitch.

  Lewis looked out the window at a flock of geese shadowing the valley. I’d forgot.

  Found her out back a ways. Her bowels were irregular, you remember. I let her go off by herself for some privacy. Shot to pieces. I’d say someone with a lot of hate had to do a thing like that.

  You didn’t hear anythin?

  I was in the shower.

  I’m sorry, Claude.

  Thought you might’ve, Claude said.

  What?

  Heard somethin at your place.

  No. Sorry.

  Well, it’s goin to get pretty lonely up here, I’d say. Claude thumbe
d the blue end of his nose.

  Lewis unpinned the badge from her chest and set it on the clean desk, where only the holstered revolver and the receiver to the radio remained. The light from the window gave clouds to the lacquer there. Lewis touched her fingertips to the desk, paused a moment, then swung the plastic sack of wine bottles over a shoulder and went clinking to the door. Grab that box?

  Claude replaced the campaign hat on his head and lifted the box and followed her out to the Wagoneer. He set the box in the backseat and folded his arms and watched Lewis drop the plastic sack in the back.

  Thunderclouds rolled over them and they both looked up. I’m sorry you still haven’t got any proof of Cornelia Åkersson, Lewis said.

  I saw her, Debs. I don’t need anybody else to believe me. I know I saw her and the glyptodont. I’d say that’s all that really matters.

  All right. That’s fine.

  Claude nodded down the road. I’m sorry it didn’t work out between you and Officer Bloor.

  Goddamn it, Lewis said. It just wasn’t right.

  Nope, didn’t seem right to me neither.

  No?

  No, said Claude. Talk about a strange bird.

  Lewis came around to the front of the Wagoneer and leaned on the hood. I’ll be lookin forward to a visit whenever I get where I’m goin.

  I’d say you don’t know me very well if you think I’m goin to go to Boston.

  Been eleven years, Claude.

  Claude clicked his tongue and looked off. Well, people come and go, I’d say. You can do nothin for it. He looked at his boots. Blood stained the hems of his trousers. I’d say it’s when you try and hold on to somethin, that’s when you get into the real trouble. I think you’ve got to keep a loose grip on everything you love.

  I figure that’s probably right, Lewis said. You’re my best friend, Claude. Want you to know that.

  Thank you.

  I meant it. Never had a better goddamn friend. I’m sorry I’ve not always been a good one back.

  Claude shook his head. He pulled taut his uniform and straightened his back and saluted over the brim of his campaign hat. To care for the land and serve the people, he said.

  Lewis returned the salute. To care for the land and serve the people.

  Claude smiled and reached up and put a hand to her arm. So long.

  Lewis nodded and climbed into the Wagoneer and Claude headed back to the station. She waited a moment and honked the horn. Claude turned at the station door. She leaned over and cranked down the passenger’s window. I shot your dog, Claude, she called out. I’m goddamn sorry about it.

  Claude stood there and looked up to the brim of his campaign hat. I figured, he called back. It’s all right. So long, he said, and turned back to the station.

  Lewis watched the screen door clack shut behind him and pulled out onto the road.

  Thunder shook the night mountains and rain lashed the windshield. Lewis, clear eyes ahead, brought the Wagoneer down the winding alpine road and buffed with the end of a finger the surface of her teeth. When she rounded a bend she passed a beat-up towncar heading the other direction up the mountain. In the dark a ghoulish woman behind the wheel was briefly lit up by the instrumentation, her lime-colored face like that of a corpse, mouth wide and abyssal, hair in a big bouffant. At that moment the two strangers were the most important people in each other’s lives, for all that separated them from certain death, Lewis figured, was a painted yellow line and faith in the system.

  Lewis turned on the radio and listened to a woman with throat cancer and a voice like a jaw harp phone in to ask Dr. Howe about the nature of grief and why had her sister wanted everyone at their mother’s funeral to see her cry. For the vast majority of people, Dr. Howe said, grief is what you do to remind everyone that you are a person. That you have inside you an entire universe of emotion and thought, a universe that only you can truly know and access.

  Before long Lewis reached the bottom of the mountain and pulled out onto Florida Avenue and the flat land. She drove north and arrived in Missoula in little over an hour, steering under the warm streetlights and listening yet to the radio show and the rain. A man with a deep voice soon phoned in, and he asked Dr. Howe about love, and how could he ever know for certain when he had it. Love is a wonderful and elusive state of being, Dr. Howe said. By its very nature it is difficult to explain to someone who has not found themselves in a position to know it. Love is something that you will know when you feel it, and when you are in love you will know.

  Lewis shook her head and turned down a small street lined with closed shops and darkened alleyways. Dr. Howe went on defining love for the man with the deep voice. Lewis spotted a rain-swept pay phone bolted to a brick building next to a bus stop, orange under a streetlight. She swung the Wagoneer to the side of the street and halfway up onto the sidewalk in front of the pay phone. She scooted across the seats and turned up the radio and climbed out the passenger’s door into the rain.

  She fished two quarters from her pocket and pushed them into the pay phone slot. Already she was soaked through and her dark hair was matted down over her head like a straw hat with a frayed brim. Lewis dialed the number she knew by heart and gave the squeaky voice on the other end her maiden name. The voice told her that hers would be the next call on air.

  Over the pummeling rain Lewis listened to the radio blaring from the Wagoneer. Love is something worth hoping for, waiting for, Dr. Howe said. It is the salve to all trouble and fear, only it is hard to discover and even harder to sustain. I hope you find it. Thank you for calling in, Mr. Hopscotch, and good luck. And now we have our next caller, Miss Silvernail. You’re on the air, Miss Silvernail, how can I help?

  I don’t think you’ve got any of that right about love, Dr. Howe, Lewis said.

  Do you want to tell me why you feel that way?

  Yes. I was sure I was fallin in love with a girl much younger than me. She’s eighteen. I’m older than that.

  Do you identify as a lesbian, Miss Silvernail?

  That’s not important. But I’ll tell you what I figured out about fallin in love with this goddamn girl. It wasn’t hardly anythin to do with her. I enjoyed her company and I was attracted to her. For a little while I couldn’t figure if I was like a mother or somethin else. Didn’t know what she thought of me either. And I started to get the urge to squeeze her and kiss her and show her all kinds of affection and protection. I thought that was love.

  What was it if not love?

  Lewis sighed. Rain traced her face and her hand on the handset. Well, I don’t know, goddamn it. That’s the point. Desperation, maybe. I’ve never been good about carin for people. But I just decided I’m not goin to give names to things I don’t understand. Names like love. The joy of love. The joy of sex. Right or wrong, good or bad. I don’t figure anybody should be doin that anymore.

  How should we talk about anything like love if we do not have a word to use to signify it?

  We don’t know what it is, Dr. Howe. That’s the point, goddamn it. How’re we ever goin to talk about it no matter what we call it? It’s all the same behind all those goddamn words.

  Watch your language if you can, Miss Silvernail.

  I just decided I’m goin to live without them. Is that all right with everybody out there? Cause of people like you sayin that shit you’ve been sayin over and over again, usin all those old meaningless words, there’s still goin to be a whole lot of people gettin together just cause it feels good to get to say them to someone else. They’re in love, they’ll say. Then they get all worked up over who they think they are and they don’t have to be alone anymore with all the thoughts about who they aren’t. Goddamn it. We’re not a true goddamn social animal out here, Dr. Howe, much as we try and convince ourselves otherwise.

  Perhaps you are simply expressing your own antisocial feelings.

  No. Somehow this eighteen-year-old girl understood all that. She might be a genius, even though her goddamn dad thinks she’s retarded. I’d like to
figure her generation or the generation after’s goin to do a better job than we ever did with words like love. And Mr. Hopscotch, if you’re still listenin, I’m sorry, but I don’t figure there is love the way you want it, so you’re not goin to find it in anythin but stories. I figure love bein a real thing is just one of those lies we’ll never admit to. Something phony to keep us occupied and entertained and lookin for nothin. Just another stupid goddamn ghost story.

  It sounds like you must really be hurting, Miss Silvernail.

  Down the street an old woman carrying an umbrella walked alone, stooped and deformed, moving away into the rain made visible by the streetlights. No, not yet, Lewis said. I’m just gettin ready for it.

  Lewis hung up the pay phone and went farther into the rain after the old woman. The garbled radio show faded behind her as she made her way down the dark and quiet street: So on that rather disheartening note, we must close our show for this evening, wishing Miss Silvernail all the love in the world…

  Excuse me, Lewis called to the old woman. Excuse me, ma’am.

  The old woman turned. She had no face that Lewis recognized.

  I’m sorry. Goddamn it. I thought you were somebody else.

  There are all manner of uncommon perversions. The first and only time I got into that Internet without our dear grandniece there to shepherd me I read an article about a young man, a Daniel Plant, who claims to have had sexual intercourse with 2,367 cats and dogs and 112 even-toed ungulates. Apparently he takes great pride in his efforts, as he had requested inclusion in the Guinness Book of World Records. I understand he was denied. Now, what is a person, let alone a person my age, supposed to make of a thing like that? I have now spent some time reading about the sexual customs of different cultures throughout history, and there are certain practices I have learned about that have upset and confused me tremendously. Those of Ancient Greece, in particular, and how even now on some islands in the Pacific women have more than one husband while on other islands the elderly are known to bed children, all of it acceptable to them. But I suppose we are all for better or worse deviants of one kind or another to someone somewhere in the world. Depending on the way things are at the time, some of us stand out more than the rest.