State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy

by Ryan Winfield

  “Who are you supposed to be?” I finally ask. “Some wildlife version of Frankenstein’s monster?”

  “Who’s Frankenstein?”

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter,” I say. “Just some character from an ancient book I read. The point is, you look ridiculous. Do you really think you’re going to fool an eagle with that outfit?”

  “I ain’t tryin’ to fool him,” he says. “It’s for protection.”

  “Protection?”

  “Yeah, I wet the hides and dried ’em so they’s almost like armor. Here, feel.”

  “Jimmy, I think you’ve finally lost your mind.”

  When we arrive at the plateau, Jimmy slides back the pine branches, uncovering his hole. Then he crawls in and lies down.

  “Here,” he says, handing me up the dead rabbit. “Put the branches back over me. Make sure I’m covered. Then lay the rabbit on top of ’em and make it look enticin’.”

  “How do I make a dead rabbit look enticing?”

  “Jus’ be sure it’s on its side so the eagle can see its shape.”

  “Then what should I do?”

  “You can watch if you wanna, but you gotta get far away and hide somewhere.”

  I look down at Jimmy, lying in his hole and covered in his mismatched pelts. If it weren’t for the look of determination in his eyes, I’d think him totally insane.

  “Okay, buddy. How long should I let you lie in here?”

  “I guess ’till I come out,” he says.

  I drag the branches over him and lay the rabbit on top of them on its side. Jimmy reaches up through the needles and adjusts its pose from underneath.

  “What?” I ask. “Didn’t I make it enticing enough?”

  “It’s fine,” he mumbles. “I’s jus’ checkin’ to make sure I’ve got a clear reach.”

  I walk away, shaking my head.

  He’s either braver than I am or crazier than I am.

  I hike several hundred meters out to a high point and hide behind a rock outcropping where I can look down on him. The rabbit stands out small and pale against the dark pine branches, but I see no hint of Jimmy hiding beneath them.

  Maybe he’s onto something after all.

  Sitting with nothing to do is boring, and my thoughts drift eventually to my mother, of course. I keep looking toward the shelter, even though I can’t see it from where I am, wondering if she’s back yet. But the only thing I know for sure is that she didn’t find him right away or they would have returned by now.

  As the morning wears on, the sky lightens, although high clouds keep the sun from showing, and nothing marks itself out against the gray above. No eagle, no hawk, no sparrow. I sit for hours, watching the dead rabbit and listening to my stomach grumble until the ground grows too uncomfortable to sit even a minute longer. I decide to hike down to see if Jimmy’s okay.

  He must hear my approach, because his disembodied voice from beneath the branches says, “You’re scarin’ the birds.”

  “There are no birds to scare, Jimmy,” I say, feeling funny talking to a dead rabbit. “I just came down to see if you were all right, which was silly of me since you’re obviously all wrong. I’m gonna go eat. You want me to bring you something?”

  “No thanks,” he says. “I’ve got some jerky in my pocket.”

  “What about water?”

  “I got that too.”

  “What about the bathroom?”

  “I brought my pee bottle.”

  “Well, be sure you drink out of the right one, then. I’ll be back down later.”

  “Okay, but stay out of sight.”

  “How will I know you’re okay?”

  “I’ll be fine,” he says. But as I turn to walk away, he calls to me from his hideaway underground. “Hey, Aubrey ...”

  “Yes, Jimmy?”

  “If your mom comes back, it’s okay to come and get me.”

  I nod and smile, even though he can’t see it.

  The shelter is cold and lonely without Jimmy or my mom around. The workstation where I’ve become accustomed to seeing her sits empty and unused, the screen blank, as if any evidence of her has already been erased. The cold meat and milk I eat for lunch does little to improve my mood, so I climb down into the hangar and sit awhile in the cold, watching the empty runway tunnel and the closed door. When the lights finally turn off, I sit still and stay in the dark.

  Three times I hike back down to check on Jimmy, but he’s always hidden in his hole just the same as the time before, the dead rabbit staring blankly into the sky from its bed of pine. Once, I see a bird circling high overhead, maybe even an eagle, but it passes on, riding the wind to the west and disappearing.

  For no other reason than boredom, I hike down to the hot spring in the late afternoon to bathe. I lower myself into the warm water until just my eyes remain above the surface. I watch as thin snowflakes drift down and meet the rising steam and melt. I remember sitting in this pool with my mother and hearing her story, and I wish more than anything that she were here with me now so I could ask her all the things I didn’t then. What are her favorite books? We must have read the same ones since we both grew up with Holocene II reading slates. What’s her favorite season? Her favorite color? Her favorite food? I know it can’t be algaecrisps. And I want to ask her about my father too. Not Radcliffe, but my real father. Anything she might tell me about what he was like before I was born.

  After my bath, I check on Jimmy again, but the rabbit hasn’t moved. I’m torn between going down to see if he’s okay and not wanting to disturb him, but the temperature has already dropped. It’s snowing and almost dark.

  When I pull the branches back, the look of defeat on his face nearly breaks my heart.

  “There’s still light left,” he says.

  “Jimmy, your nose is blue.”

  “Okay,” he says, “help me up.”

  He rises like some frozen and stiff-legged apparition from the grave, and leans on me for support as we trudge together back toward the shelter. Flurries of snow blow across our path.

  “I’m goin’ back in the mornin’,” he says, having guessed correctly that I was going to try and talk him out of it.

  It takes him a full half hour to disrobe from his costume—pulling off his long rawhide glove, unlacing leggings, removing the leather chest plating. When he finishes, the pile of frozen clothing looks like some slaughterhouse garbage heap in the corner of the shelter. How he gets it all on again is a mystery to me, but by first light he’s standing at the door, ready to go. I’m still pulling on my coat when we step out into a wonderland of white. Every inch of ground is covered in snow.

  Jimmy retrieves the rabbit from his meat cache where he stuffed it the night before. It’s frozen so solid that when he picks it up, it maintains its shape as if carved out of stone.

  “Maybe we should wait until this snow melts,” I suggest.

  Jimmy ignores me, tucks the rabbit under his armpit, and heads off down the trail toward the plateau. By the time we reach the snow-covered hole, the rabbit has thawed enough for him to be able to at least reposition the legs.

  “I want it to look more appealin’,” he says. “Like it’s alive but distressed, you know?”

  “Funny, but that’s kind of how you look to me,” I reply.

  When Jimmy’s lying back in the hole, I cover him again and lay the rabbit down like he showed me. Then I wish him luck and take one of the extra pine branches and back away from the bluff, sweeping our footprints from the snow as I go. I hide behind my outcropping with the pine branch on my lap for extra cover and settle in to watch, as just like the day before, nothing happens. For the first time since we’ve been here, there’s no wind. It’s remarkably quiet, as if the snow has sucked the sound out of everything. My thoughts drift to my mother and how different the weather must be in the jungle as she flies over it, looking for Bill. It’s hard to believe two people can have such different experiences at the same time.

  Movement catches my eye on the snow
below, and I watch as a small rodent, perhaps a ground squirrel, scurries up to Jimmy’s hideaway and sniffs the dead rabbit before moving on again. If Jimmy notices, he doesn’t move a muscle. I pull some jerky from my pocket and nearly break my tooth on it, as solid as it’s frozen. I tuck it in my cheek to thaw.

  “This is really crazy,” I mutter to myself.

  The eagle appears late in the afternoon.

  I spot it gliding on a current high above us. It passes, then returns, descending in wide circles. Does it see Jimmy’s rabbit? It must. The eagle drops lower and circles again. But then it turns to fly away, taking my excitement with it. No. Wait. It turns back, tucks its wings, and glides down toward the rabbit with its talons outstretched. I expect it to snatch it and fly off, but the eagle lands on the branches, bowing them beneath its weight, and perches there picking at the dead rabbit with its enormous yellow beak.

  Jimmy must be asleep, I think, because as the eagle feasts, there is no movement from Jimmy to trap it. I’m tempted to yell something to wake him up, but I know the slightest sound from me will scare the eagle away. Besides, by the size of that thing, it might be better if Jimmy doesn’t catch it. As if I had spoken my thoughts out loud, the eagle lifts its head, a purple tangle of entrails dangling from its beak, and looks up toward where I’m sitting. It’s still as a statue, just staring at me.

  Then it jumps, as if startled by something. It unfolds its impressive wings and labors up off the rabbit, bringing the pine branches and Jimmy up with it. The branches fall away, and Jimmy stands there, reeling on the snow in his incredible suit with the eagle’s talons caught in his hand as it flaps wildly above his head, trying to get away. He looks like some frozen Viking warrior who’s climbed out of his grave to hitch a ride up to the Valhalla on a Valkyrie.

  I rush down from my post to try and help.

  The eagle pulls Jimmy left, then right, nearly sending him plunging off the plateau, and then it gives up on getting away and turns to peck out his eyes. As Jimmy fends off its beak with his glove, I grab a pine branch and swing it at the bird, trying to distract it. It works long enough for Jimmy to slip out his lasso and somehow manage to ensnare the eagle’s talons. Then he falls to his knees, jerks it down to the ground, and presses his hand into its wide back. The eagle hisses and tries to raise its head, but Jimmy keeps it pinned.

  “Grab the hood,” Jimmy says.

  “The what?”

  “On my belt there. Grab it and put it on him.”

  I pull the makeshift hood free from Jimmy’s belt and kneel down next to the eagle in the snow. It stares at me with furious yellow eyes. Keeping my hand clear of its powerful beak, I slip the hood over its head and tie it with the tethers. The moment its eyes are covered, the eagle gives up its fight and goes limp on the ground. Jimmy slumps down breathless in the snow and pulls the giant eagle into his lap. He tries to sooth it by cooing softly and petting its ruffled feathers.

  “I can’t believe you did it,” I say.

  Jimmy grins from ear to ear.

  “Not me,” he says. “We did it, buddy. I never could have caught him without your help.”

  “How do you know it isn’t a she?”

  Jimmy looks at the bird, as if suddenly uncertain of its sex himself. The eagle shivers in its feathers then settles again.

  “Shoot,” I say. “If it’s a he or a she hardly matters. What I wanna know is what are you going to do with it now?”

  Jimmy shrugs. “I ain’t thought that far ahead,” he says. “Guess I wasn’t convinced I’d really catch one.”

  CHAPTER 22

  Flying Eagle, Falling Drone

  It’s hard to sleep with an eagle perched in the corner.

  I keep thinking it will somehow get free and decide to feast on my eyeballs as I sleep. But Jimmy assures me that he leashed it securely to the chair on the back of which it’s perched, and that he weighted the chair with plenty of rocks.

  “Besides,” he says, “I fed it lots of raw rabbit meat.”

  “Oh, that’s reassuring,” I grumble.

  “Shh ...” he says, “my eagle’s tryin’ to sleep.”

  A little later, I say, “I can tell you this much, you’re gonna have to find a new place for it when my mother gets home.”

  Jimmy doesn’t respond to this comment. I begin to worry that maybe he thinks she isn’t coming home.

  “She’ll be back any day now,” I say. “Maybe tomorrow.”

  “I know she will,” he replies. “She’ll be fine.”

  We’re woken in the night by a wild clatter and the LED lights coming on. The eagle is flapping around the shelter, dragging the chair with it. Jimmy leaps out of his hammock and manages to seize the bird and hood it again. Then he returns it to its corner and reweights the chair, tying an exceptionally large rock to its base this time.

  In the morning, the eagle’s hood is off again. It waits for us to rise with its unblinking and patient yellow eyes, as if it hadn’t slept at all. Jimmy lengthens its leash and feeds it by baiting the floor with chunks of rabbit meat and making it flap off its perch to retrieve them. I heat leftover porridge on the stove for Jimmy and myself. After breakfast, Jimmy hoods his eagle and coaxes it onto his gloved arm.

  “Jimmy, that thing’s nearly as large as you are.”

  “It ain’t light neither,” he responds. “I’m gonna have to build one of them braces that fella on the horse was usin’. You wanna come watch me train him?”

  “Maybe later,” I say. “You go ahead.”

  With Jimmy gone I head out to the tower to watch for my mother’s return. The sky is gray, and dark clouds pile up on the horizon to the east, but it does not snow again. I stand all day at the window with no sun to mark the passage of time, and when the sky finally fades toward black, signaling that the short winter day has come to a close, I head into the shelter, defeated.

  “Nothing?” Jimmy asks.

  I shake my head.

  “She’ll be back, Aubrey. I’m tellin’ you.”

  “How’d you do?” I ask, changing the subject.

  “I got ol’ Valor here to fly and return to my arm for some meat. Still on the leash, of course.”

  “Valor?”

  “That’s what I named him. I thought on it all day. My pa said eagles is fearless. I think that’s what valor means, don’t it?”

  “It does and it’s a good name.”

  “Maybe you could come out and help me tomorrow,” he suggests. “Watchin’ and waitin’ won’t hurry her back.”

  “Thanks, but I’m going to stay around here just in case.”

  She doesn’t come home the next day.

  Or the next day after that either.

  I sit my vigil in the tower, watching the sky and trying not to think of all the things that might have happened to her and to Bill. Jimmy takes breaks from training Valor to deliver me hot soup, but he no longer tells me she’ll be coming back; he mostly just sits quietly and watches the window with me.

  On the afternoon of my third day watching, the ninth day since my mother left, I spot the drone. I rush to the window for a better view, uncertain if I can trust my eyes after all this time of waiting and hoping. But sure enough, the sun glints on its wings as it approaches from the east against a clear, blue winter sky. I’m leaving the window to run down to the hangar to meet her when something catches my eye and stops me. As the drone turns for its final approach, I see the Park Service crest on its nose. That can’t be; my mother had sanded it off of hers. Then I notice that there are no cockpit covers on this drone either. Before I can react, the drone launches a missile.

  At first, I think it’s coming for me. But it passes by the watchtower and explodes against the mountain beneath the wall, just missing the concealed hangar door. The fireball fades, and dislodged rocks go tumbling down the mountainside.

  As the drone flies by, no doubt intending to come around and try again, I race down the watchtower stairs and out onto the wall. I run full speed to the shelter an
d slam the door closed behind me. I’m down the ladder three rungs at a time and nearly on the hangar floor before the motion sensor lights even come on. I grab the rocket launcher.

  As I head for the ladder again, a voice in my head says, “There’s no time, Aubrey, and if the drone destroys our runway, there won’t be any way for your mother to land.”

  Instead of climbing the ladder, I slap the emergency door open button on the wall. The door slides away from the end of the runway, and daylight washes the tunnel. Adrenalin takes over, and I bolt toward the opening, carrying the rocket cradled in my arms. I get to the edge and stand there, looking out from inside the mountain at nothing but blue sky. Then the drone rises into view, heading straight toward me, so close already that I can see the red tips of missiles inside their tubes.

  I raise the rocket launcher to my shoulder, aim, and fire.

  The rocket leaves the tube with enough force to blow me back a meter or two. I land on my rear and slide several more meters on the smooth runway. Just as I come to rest, a massive fireball appears in the sky outside the opening, and then a shockwave slams into my chest. I toss the empty launch tube aside, get up, and walk back to the door.

  What’s left of the drone lies in a twisted heap of smoking metal several hundred meters below me where the mountain levels off. I stand and stare down on it for a long time. The next thing I know, Jimmy is standing next to me.

  After a while, he says, “That wasn’t ...”

  “No,” I say, “it wasn’t her.”

  It takes us nearly an hour to hike down to the wreckage. When we get there it turns out to hardly have been worth the time. We search for weapons or anything salvageable, but very little remains other than scrap. Jimmy collects several pieces of metal that he thinks might be useful for one thing or another, and we carry them back up to the shelter.

  Ours is a quiet supper. Even Jimmy’s eagle seems to sense the depressed mood, sitting quietly on its perch, only moving to snatch the occasional piece of meat Jimmy tosses its way.