T. Boyle - When the Killing's Done

There’s a brief conference with Wade, then out come the coolers, lifted from the hold and propelled across the sun-blasted planks of the dock with a whoosh of molded plastic, all the details settled, the picnic in its nascent stages and nothing left to do but distract everybody with what she hopes will prove to be the highlight of the day, the nature walk. While Wade and some of the others go on ahead to light the charcoal and set up the portable picnic tables in the courtyard of the visitor center — a spot calculated to move even the palest driest desk-bound cynic with its views across the channel — she and Tim, as planned, begin working their way up to the bluff to lead the group hike along the loop trail. She reminds herself to go slowly, especially up the steps, pausing at each landing to flag one plant or another and give the less fit a chance to catch their breath. Once they get to the top, where the walking is easy, she’ll have ample opportunity to score points for the principles and rationale of island restoration, indicating the nests of the western gull and other recovering birds while subtly but unfailingly bringing home the point that all this has been made possible by the rat-control project, which, incidentally, was funded by a court judgment against one of the gross polluters of the ecosystem — Montrose Chemical Corporation, responsible for pumping over a hundred tons of DDT-contaminated waste into Santa Monica Bay between 1947 and 1982—and so cost taxpayers virtually nothing.

In her detail-oriented way, she’s reminded each of the guests through repeated e-mails to dress appropriately for what should be a moderate two-mile hike in changeable weather conditions, and most seem to have gotten the message. She sees hiking boots and windbreakers, daypacks, water bottles and the like, but Toni Walsh, bringing up the rear in a pair of blood-red espadrilles, cropped crepe pants in a jungle print and a spandex tube top — sans jacket or sweater — is already hugging her arms to herself and looking as if she’s in need of a cigarette. Or no, Alma corrects herself, that’s cruel and judgmental — she doesn’t even know if the woman smokes. But then all writers smoke, don’t they? And drink? And sit in front of computer screens till their arteries clog and muscles atrophy? Tim has the floor at the moment, telling those gathered round him something of the nesting habits of the gulls, how they pair for life and defend the same patch of ground year after year and will attack and even kill any chick from a neighboring nest that might blunder onto their turf, so she gives him a truncated wave of her hand and makes her way back down the trail, thinking she’ll offer Toni Walsh the extra windbreaker she’s brought along for just such a contingency as this.

The trail is half an inch deep in dust the consistency of waffle mix. The sun has burned off the mist by now but there’s a wind out of the north that brings the chill factor down into the low fifties, she guesses, and as she eases past people (“What’s with you, Alma,” the mayor jokes out of a flushed moon face, his eyes exophthalmic and his tongue licking for air, “giving up so soon?”) and down a gentle incline to where Toni Walsh seems to be struggling to put one foot in front of the other, she’s already got the windbreaker out of her pack and bunched in her hand. Though her intention is obvious, the reporter — what is she, forty, forty-five? — just stares numbly at her. “You okay?” she asks.

“Me?” Toni Walsh hasn’t bothered with makeup, not even lipstick. Her shoes are coated in dust. Her hair, dyed an unnatural shade of red, hangs limp at her shoulders, over-processed and dry as the bunch grass at their feet. “Oh, yeah, I’m fine. Just not used to boat rides, I guess. In the morning anyway.”

“You look cold.” Holding out the windbreaker now. “I’ve got this if you want it. It’s extra, so—”

There’s something in the woman’s face that warns her off and she feels embarrassed suddenly, as if she’s been attempting in some unconscious way to bribe her, or at least curry favor, but that’s not the case. She’s just being accommodating, that’s all, because everyone here is in a sense her guest, and a good host. . or just common courtesy. .

“No, no, thanks,” Toni Walsh says, and she’s fishing in her purse for — yes — a cigarette. Which she puts to her lips and lights in a windblown puff of smoke. There’s gooseflesh on her upper arms. Her eyes are red-veined. The ends of her hair, split and eroded, flail round her throat.

Alma drops her arm awkwardly, the rejected garment catching the wind till it flaps like a pillowcase on a clothesline. “If you want, you can just go back to the visitor center and have a cup of hot coffee — Wade’ll have the fire going by now — or wine, if you want a glass of wine. We won’t be long.”

Toni Walsh looks over her shoulder to where the white monolith of the lighthouse rises up out of the scrub against the broad bright pan of the ocean, the light spanked and coppery, the thin distant sail of a yacht like a scrap of cloth blown on the wind. The rest of the group has begun to move off now, Tim, his shoulders slumped, loping on ahead of them, talking all the while. “Yeah,” Toni Walsh says finally, puckering her lips to exhale a lungful of smoke and watch the breeze snatch it away, “that sounds cool. Think I’ll just do that.”

Later, after she’s caught up to the group to add her comments and exhortations to Tim’s running monologue and the hikers have had an opportunity to absorb something of the island’s rare solace and beauty on their own, she begins to forget herself, trying to imagine the experience through their eyes, as if she were seeing the place for the first time. It’s not all that different geologically from what they’d find along the coast opposite, where Highway 1 bends away from Port Hueneme and the cliffs stagger back from the breakers under a mantle of coreopsis and coyote brush, except that there is no highway, there are no roads or buildings or trash. And it’s quiet, as quiet as the world must have been before the invention of the internal combustion engine, the sea and the wind providing the backdrop to the barking of the seals and the mewling of the birds. Sometimes, when she’s out here alone, she can feel the pulse of something bigger, as if all things animate were beating in unison, a glory and a connection that sweeps her out of herself, out of her consciousness, so that nothing has a name, not in Latin, not in English, not in any known language.

Today, of course, she’s too wound up to get to that point or anywhere even close. Yet still everything looks fresh and eternal at once, wildflowers in bloom, the views unencumbered, the gulls cooperative, lizards exploding underfoot as if to underscore the point that the rats are gone and all is well. The hikers are enjoying themselves, she can see that, the hands-on experience of the place worth a thousand press releases. And isn’t this what she took the job for to begin with — to familiarize the public with the specialness of these islands and by extension all the dwindling retreats of the world made so much more precious by their rarity? To turn them on? Make them advocates? Engage them in the fight against the land-grabbers and developers and people like Dave LaJoy, who might mean well, or think they do, but act solely out of ignorance and vindictiveness?

She’s left her hair loose and the wind takes hold of it, flinging it across her face, and when she shakes her head to settle it, any thought of Dave LaJoy and the rest of the self-appointed saviors is gone. She shuts her eyes, lifts her face to the sun. This is perfect. A perfect day. She feels like a conqueror, like a queen, like the first Chumash woman come ashore ten thousand years ago. She’s soaring. High on the moment. And the feeling sustains her for a whole thirty seconds — until she thinks to glance at her watch, that is. How did it get so late? They’re ten minutes behind schedule, ten minutes at least.