by Gregg Olsen
Technically, she only had forty-three days left on the job.
A squirrel darted across the shrouded entrance to Croaking Frog, turned left, then right, before zipping up a mostly dead Douglas fir.
“My dad shoots those in our yard,” Davy Saunders said. The schoolboy’s disclosure didn’t surprise anyone. Davy’s dad went to jail for confronting an intruder—a driver from the Mattress Ranch store in Gorst—with a loaded weapon. The driver’s crime? The young man used the Saunders driveway to make a three-point turn.
“Want to hear something really gross?”
This time the voice belonged to Cameron Lee. He was packed into the middle of the mass of kids and two beleaguered moms clogging the trail. “My cousin sent me a video that showed some old guy cutting up a squirrel and cooking it. You know, like for food.”
Ms. Hatfield considered using Cameron’s comment as a learning moment about how some people forage for survival, but honestly, she was simply tired of competing with reality TV, the Internet, and the constant prattling of the digital generation. They knew less and less it seemed because they simply didn’t have to really know anything.
Everything was always at their fingertips.
Ms. Hatfield knew the Latin name for the skunk cabbage that had so irritated Tracy’s olfactory senses—Lysichiton americanus—but she didn’t bother mentioning it to her students. Instead, she sighed and spouted off a few mundane facts about the enormous-leafed plant with bright yellow spires protruding from the muddy soil like lanterns in a dark night.
“It smells bad for a reason,” she said. “Anyone know why?”
She looked around. Apparently, no one did. She glanced in the direction of Viola Mertz, but even she didn’t offer up a reason. The teacher could scarcely recall a moment in the classroom when Viola didn’t raise her hand.
If she’d lost Viola, there was no hope.
Ms. Hatfield gamely continued. “It smells bad to attract—”
“Smells like Ryan and he can’t attract anyone,” Cooper Wilson said, picking on scrawny Ryan Jonas whenever he could.
Ms. Hatfield ignored the remark. Cooper was a thug and she hoped that when puberty tapped Ryan on the shoulders, he’d bulk up and beat the crap out of his tormentor. But that would be later, long after she was gone from the classroom.
“. . . to attract pollinators,” she went on, wondering if she should skip counting days left on the job and switch to hours. “Bugs, bees, flies, whatever.”
“I’m bored,” Carrie Bowden said.
Ms. Hatfield wanted to say that she was bored too, but of course she didn’t. She looked over at one of the two moms who’d come along on the nature hike—Carrie’s mom, a willowy brunette named Angie, who had corked earbuds into her ears for the bus ride from the school and hadn’t taken them out since. Cooper Wilson’s mom, Mariah, must be bored too. She flipped through her phone’s email, cursing the bad reception she was getting.
“It might smell bad,” Ms. Hatfield said, trying to carry on with her last field trip ever. “But believe it or not this plant actually tastes good to bears. They love it like you love a Subway sandwich.”
Only Cooper Wilson brightened a little. He loved Subway.
“Indigenous people ate the plant’s roots too,” the teacher went on. She flashed back to when she first started teaching and how she’d first used the word Indians, then Native Americans, then, and now, indigenous people.
Lots of changes in three decades.
“Skunk cabbage might smell bad,” she said, “but it had very important uses for our Chinook people. They used the leaves to wrap around salmon when roasting it on the hot coals of an alder wood fire.”
“I went to a luau in Hawaii and they did that with a pig,” Carrie piped up, not so much because she wanted to add to the conversation, but because she liked to remind the others in the class that she’d been to Hawaii over Christmas break. She brought it up at least once a week since her sunburned and lei-wearing return in January. “They wrapped it up in big green leaves before putting it into the ground on some coals,” she said. “That’s what they did in Hawaii.”
“Ms. Hatfield,” Tracy said, her voice rising above the din of not-so-nature lovers. “I need to show you something.”
Tracy always had something to say. And Ms. Hatfield knew it was always super important. Everything with Tracy was super important.
“Just a minute,” the teacher said, a little too sharply. She tried to defuse her obvious irritation with a quick smile. “Kids, about what Cameron said a moment ago,” she continued. “I want you to know that a squirrel is probably a decent source of protein. When game was scarce, many pioneers survived on small rodents and birds.”
“Ms. Hatfield! I’m seriously going to puke,” Tracy called out. Her voice now had enough urgency to cut through the buzzing and complaining of the two dozen other kids on the field trip.
Tracy knew how to command attention. Her purple Uggs were proof of that.
Ms. Hatfield pushed past the others. Her weathered but delicate hands reached over to Tracy.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
The girl with big brown eyes that set the standard for just how much eye makeup a sixth grader could wear kept her steely gaze focused away from her teacher. She faced the trail, eyes cast downward.
Tracy could be a crier and Ms. Hatfield knew she had to neutralize the situation—whatever it was. And fast.
“Honey, I’m sorry if the squirrel story upset you.”
The girl shook her head. “That wasn’t it, Ms. Hatfield.”
The teacher felt relief wash over her. Good. It wasn’t something she said.
“What is it?”
Tracy looked up with wide, frightened, almost manga eyes.
“Are you sick?” the teacher asked.
Tracy didn’t say a word. She looked back down and with the tip of her purple boot lifted the feathery stalk of a sword fern.
At first, Ms. Hatfield wasn’t sure what she was seeing. The combination of a stench—far worse than anything emitted by skunk cabbage—and the sight of a wriggling mass of maggots assaulted her senses.
Instinctively, she swept her arm toward Tracy to hold her back, as if the girl was lunging toward the disgusting sight, which she most certainly was not. It was like a mother reaching across a child’s chest when she hit the brakes too hard and doubted the ability of the safety belt to protect her precious cargo.
All hell broke loose. Carrie started to scream and her voice was joined by a cacophony. It was a domino that included every kid in the group. Even bully Cooper screamed out in disgust and horror. Angie Bowden yanked out her earbuds as if she was pulling the ripcord on a parachute.
No one had ever seen anything as awful as that.
Later, the kids in Ms. Hatfield’s class would tell their friends that it was the best field trip ever.
Photo by Howard Petrella
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Number-one New York Times bestselling author GREGG OLSEN has written more than twenty books. As a journalist and true-crime author, Olsen has received numerous awards and much critical acclaim for his writing. He’s been a guest on Good Morning, America, Dateline, CBS Early Show, Entertainment Tonight, 48 Hours, and news programs on CNN and Fox, as well as other national and international TV programs. The Seattle native and his wife live in rural Washington State, where he’s now at work on his next thriller. Readers are invited to visit his website, www.greggolsen.com.
Notes
1 Available from Kensington Publishing Corp.
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