Late one afternoon sometime in October, I step out onto our porch and light my father’s pipe. I sit with it in the chair I carved myself, lean back, and enjoy the sweet taste of the tobacco and the good feeling that comes from another day’s hard work. A gentle breeze sweeps up the valley, and the first leaves fall from our oak tree. I watch them glide down and land in the river, twist and turn, and ride the rapids like golden fish tumbling toward the sea. My pipe smoke rises into the cool air. Almost everything in the world is as it should be.
After a while, the last of the sun dips out of sight and everything loses its shadow. The pines on the bluff across the valley stand stark and clear against the pink autumn sky. I watch as Jimmy appears from a distant grove of trees and walks across the wheat toward our cabin. It’s a long field, and he’s a long time coming. I can see his smile even before I see his eyes.
He stops at the field’s edge and stakes something into the ground. Then he comes on up, and I see his catch off rabbits.
“There’s some stew on the coals still.”
“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll put these in the smoker and join you in a minute.”
When he comes out again, it’s nearly dark. He sits in his chair where he keeps it set up next to mine so that his good side faces me. He props the wooden bowl in his lap and goes straight to eating his stew. I puff my pipe and watch him.
“Trout were jumping today.”
“You catch any?” he asks, between bites.
“No, I didn’t even throw a line.”
He just nods and keeps eating.
As dusk drops like a curtain on the valley, I see a familiar shadow slink across the edge of the field. It stops at Jimmy’s stake, grabs the dead rabbit he left there, and turns to run away. But the string catches, and the rabbit jerks from the fox’s mouth. It turns back and sets to eating it where it lays, with one eye on the hill, watching us.
“You really think you’re going to tame that fox?” I ask.
“I can tame anythin’ that’s got a stomach,” he says. “It jus’ takes time, is all.”
“You mean like I’ve been taming you with my stew?”
“Exactly like that,” he says, laughing. Then he shows me his empty bowl. “’Cept you’re doin’ a better job of it so far.”
“Speaking of better jobs,” I say, “I wrote another poem.”
“You did? Where is it?”
“Beside your chair there.”
“Well, hold on. Let me go in and get the lamp.”
He goes inside with his empty bowl and comes out again with the lamp. He sits and takes up the piece of bark that has the poem scrawled on it, angles it toward the light, and reads.
Leaves will fall, cold will creep in
A circle of life that ends where it begins
It may take a thousand years and a thousand poems penned
But my hair will someday gray and my back will bend—
Then my shadow will join my body in the earth once again.
I know not the way, or even the when
Or who chooses that day we’re called away to ascend
But you bathed me in your bravery and forgave me my sins
You made a home in your heart for mine to live in—
And in return, my friend, this poem is my oath that a river of love will run through it until the very end.
After he finishes, I see him read it again to himself. Then he sets the bark in his lap, leans his head back, and closes his eyes. Several minutes pass. I sit with my pipe half-raised to my mouth, waiting to hear what he thinks.
When he finally opens his eyes, he says,
“I love it.”
“You do?”
“Yes,” he replies. “I love it, and I love you.”
I lean back, puff my father’s pipe, and smile like I never knew I could. Now everything in the world is as it should be.
Epilogue
He came up out of the fog sometime in September of the year the State of Nature celebrated its diamond jubilee.
He was leading a horse. The horse’s hooves clacked on the rocky ground, and the wagon that the horse pulled squeaked on its axels. An old fox trotted along behind the wagon. The entire sad and solemn procession heaved, moaned, and tottered up the hill, appearing piece by piece from the fog as the two park rangers sat their hoverbikes watching.
“Should we call in a drone?” the ranger asked his partner.
“Let’s maybe see what they’re about first,” she replied.
When the wagon came up level to them, they eased their bikes forward and blocked the path.
“Where are you heading to, kid?”
The kid looked at the rangers, their bikes, and the crests on their bikes.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“We’re park rangers,” the male one replied. “And I asked you where you’re headed to, kid?”
The kid looked away and spit on the ground.
“I’m not a kid, and I’m heading wherever I please.”
The rangers looked at one another, dismounted their bikes, and approached him from either side with their hands on their weapons. The old fox came to the kid’s feet and sat there, looking from one ranger to the other, unsure what to do.
The kid reached down to pet him.
“Easy there, old boy.”
“What’s in the wagon?” the ranger asked.
“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” the kid said. “I’ve lived around these parts a long time. I’m just minding my own business and trying to get somewhere.”
“I asked you what’s in the wagon.”
When the kid didn’t answer him, the ranger removed his weapon from its holster, stepped past the kid and the horse to the wagon, pulled the blankets back, and looked down at the old man lying there on his furs. Then he came back around to join them again.
“Is that your grandfather back there, kid?
“No, he’s not my grandfather.”
The female ranger looked at him. She saw the goodness in his grieving eyes. She said, “You do know where you are, don’t you, young man? This is park property. Why don’t you let us escort you to one of the reservations?”
“No, thanks,” the kid said. “I’m on my way somewhere.”
“Did you cross that valley back there?” she asked, nodding the way they’d come up. “Because that’s a preserve, and you’re not supposed to be there either. I’m thinking maybe you don’t understand the trouble you’re in.”
The kid stood looking at her, but he didn’t say anything. Eventually, she shook her head and walked back to see the old man for herself. No sooner had she peeked into the wagon that she came back looking as if she’d seen a ghost.
“Did you see his face?” she asked her partner. “The burns? That’s Jimmy back there.”
“Jimmy who?” he asked.
“Didn’t you learn anything in school? Jimmy, as in Aubrey and Jimmy from the Revolution.” Then she turned her attention back to the kid. “You need to tell us where you’re bringing him, young man. And you better tell the truth or we’ll take you in.”
The kid sighed. “I’m honoring his last wishes.”
“And who were you to him?” she asked.
The kid glanced back.
“He was everything to me. I think he’d have said the same about me if you’d have asked him.”
“And how’d you come to be in the valley, then?”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t see how any of this is your business, ma’am. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get on.”
The kid took up the horse’s lead and started forward with it to go around the bikes. He’d only taken a few steps when the male ranger got ahead of him and trained his weapon on the kid’s chest. The kid stopped, but the fox kept going and sank its teeth into the ranger’s calf. The ranger screamed and kicked it away from him, swung his weapon, and shot it dead.
The ranger stood with his weapon still pointed at the dead fox and looked down at the bloo
d soaking through his zipsuit where he’d been bitten. Then he looked at his partner and said, “That’s an authorized use of force. You saw it.”
The kid looked at the fox and the smoking hole in its side. He walked over, knelt, and petted its face. Then he lifted it up and kissed it. He carried it to the wagon and laid it in next to the old man. He lifted the old man’s stiff arm around it, and then he covered them both with the blanket again.
The female ranger stepped up beside him.
“You’re Aubrey VanHouten, aren’t you?”
“That’s impossible,” her partner said.
She ignored him, saying to the kid, “I knew it was true.”
“Knew what was true?” her partner called out.
“You had the serum, didn’t you?” she asked, still ignoring her partner and addressing the kid. “The lessons said that you didn’t, but my father said that you did.”
“If I tell you, will you let us go on?”
“We’re not authorized—”
She silenced her partner by holding up her hand. She nodded to say that she would let them pass.
“This is Jimmy in the wagon. And that fox your partner just killed was his favorite and the last of its line.”
“And you’re Aubrey?” she asked.
“And I’m Aubrey,” he said.
She immediately looked embarrassed. She holstered her weapon and reached out her hand, saying, “I’m really sorry, sir. I hope you’ll forgive us.”
Aubrey nodded but ignored her offered hand. He left her standing there, walked up, and led the horse and the wagon around their hovering bikes without another word to them.
“Hey, sir,” she called after him. “One last question. If you had the serum, how come Jimmy didn’t?”
He didn’t answer, but had she been able to see the pained look on his face, she might have regretted having even asked.
They arrived at the cove two days later.
The sun was shining through high clouds. He stood on the bluff and looked down at the beach, remembering. He saw them swimming together there as kids, and it ripped at his heart that he couldn’t go back and do it all over again. Time seemed an evil and unrelenting mechanism to him.
He unhitched the horse from the wagon, smacked its hindquarter, and shooed it away. It ran a few meters, then turned to come back. He chased after it with his hand raised.
“Get out of here!” he shouted. “You’re free now.”
The horsed shied, neighed, and stepped back. Then it turned away and began to graze.
The rigor had passed. When he picked Jimmy up from the wagon, he draped him limply over his shoulder and carried him down off the bluff and into the cove. Jimmy’s frame had been wasted by age and by disease, and he hardly weighed anything at all. Aubrey brought him to their cave and sat him against the wall. Then he returned to the wagon for the fox, brought it down, and laid it out across Jimmy’s lap.
It took him most of the afternoon to break the wagon apart and haul its wood down into the cove. Then he walked the beach, collected driftwood, and added it to the pile. He slept that night with Jimmy in his arms. The fact that Jimmy had now been dead several days did not bother him at all. The fact that he himself was still living did.
When the sun rose, he rose. He was not hungry, so he set right to work on constructing the raft. He tied together the wagon timbers, lashed the wagon basket onto them, and then piled it high with driftwood. After ensuring it would float, he carried Jimmy from the cave and laid him out on the raft. Then he laid the fox in his arm and tucked the fox’s head in the nook of his neck. He bent and kissed them both.
He paused before lighting the pyre with the strike-a-light in his hands, remembering that birthday party long ago and half way around the globe. He had never wanted to cry so much as he did now, but he was numb with grief, and no tears would come. So he struck a spark. After starting several small fires around the base of the pyre, he fanned them with his hands to coax them up. Then he pushed the raft out into the cove and sat down on the sand to watch it burn.
“Say hello to your mom for me,” he said.
The raft rolled gently on the waves. The fire rose up and engulfed his dead friend. It burned and burned and burned. Eventually the pyre caved in on itself and sank, hissing and smoking, beneath the waves. Three hours later the tide washed Jimmy’s charred corpse up onto the beach at his feet. He sat looking at it with disbelief—the blackened flesh, the scorched grin. He went to his friend on his hands and knees. He sat in the shallow water and took him in his arms. He cried and kissed his head, cried and cried some more.
“I love you,” he said. “I love you so much, and I miss you. I know you told me to forgive her, and I know I said I would, but I hate her, Jimmy—I hate her, I hate her, I hate her. I’m not as good as you. I never could be. Oh, God, I miss you. Please, let me break my promise and come with you. Please.”
The tide was coming in as he spoke. Soon the waves were lifting them. Water was entering his mouth. He was coughing and talking incoherently and crying. He pulled his friend to his chest, laid back, and kicked off past the waves and away from the shore. As they floated together out of the cove and into deep water, the sun was setting on them. He looked up, and he could see Jimmy there in the molten sky, lean and bronzed and forever young, a wide smile stretched across his proud and perfect face. He hugged his friend close and closed his eyes. As his head dropped into the silence beneath the waves, he could hear the children laughing in the camp and Jimmy’s mother calling them in to supper just one last time.
Some three hundred years later, their legend was still alive. Families on vacation could rent bungalows on the edge of the valley and look down from their glass decks at the fields and the river and what was left of the rotting cabin on the hill. Some said that if the wind was gentle and just right, you could hear poems being read. Yet others said that on still winter nights, you could sometimes glimpse a lone campfire burning across the way at the valley’s edge, high in the cold and lonely mountains where no living soul, night or day, dared tread.
At least that’s what they said.
THE END
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About the Author
Ryan Winfield is the New York Times best-selling author of Jane’s Melody, South of Bixby Bridge, and The Park Service trilogy.
For more information go to:
www.RyanWinfield.com
Copyright
State of Nature
Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy
By Ryan Winfield
Copyright © 2013 Ryan Winfield
All rights reserved.
Please visit www.RyanWinfield.com
Kindle Edition
Cover art by Adam Mager
Cover art and design Copyright © 2013 Ryan Winfield
Cover image: kaipic.com / Flickr Open / Getty Images
The Licensed Material is being used for illustrative purposes only; and any person depicted in the Licensed Material, if any, is a model.
Author photo: Sarah T. Skinner www.sarahtskinner.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used here fictitiously. Any resemblance to any real persons or events is entirely coincidental.
Summary: After leaving the Isle of Man, Aubrey and Jimmy return to the Foundation to confront Hannah about her betrayal and to free the people of Holocene II only to find themselves facing new and more difficult challenges in a world where nothing is as it seems.
BIRCH PAPER PRESS
Post Office Box 4252
Seattle, Washington 98194
Table of Contents
Title Page
Part One
C
HAPTER 1
The Return
CHAPTER 2
Hannah, How Could You?
CHAPTER 3
Laughing in the Dark
CHAPTER 4
The Ultimatum
CHAPTER 5
Take Care, Alex
CHAPTER 6
Home, Home Again
CHAPTER 7
The Speech
CHAPTER 8
BethAnn, the Beach, and the Vote
CHAPTER 9
A Midnight Meeting
CHAPTER 10
The Other Side
CHAPTER 11
Subterrenes and Strange Dreams
Part Two
CHAPTER 12
The Jungle
CHAPTER 13
Monkeys, Skulls, and Blue Holes
CHAPTER 14
Yet Another Goodbye
CHAPTER 15
China and the Chief
CHAPTER 16
Aubrey and Aubrey
CHAPTER 17
The Rest of the Story
CHAPTER 18
Stories and Wild People
CHAPTER 19
Flying over China
CHAPTER 20
Going Back For Bill
CHAPTER 21
Killing Time, Catching Eagles
CHAPTER 22
Flying Eagle, Falling Drone
CHAPTER 23
The Return
CHAPTER 24
Dinner with Friends
CHAPTER 25
A Message in the Sky
CHAPTER 26
A Birthday Surprise
CHAPTER 27
Face to Face with Hannah Again
CHAPTER 28
The High Cost of Betrayal
CHAPTER 29
Dust to Dust
CHAPTER 30
This Had Better Work
Part Three
State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy Page 30