Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

Lewis looked over his shoulder at the two men and the dog watching her. What goddamned thing’s got you confused?

I have something to show you, he said, and he asked her if he could pick her up there at the end of the day.

She told him all right.

He smiled and turned from her and nodded once to the ceiling before he strode from the building.

Pete stared after him and pushed the medieval coif up his forehead. That’s one strange bird, he said.

After Bloor picked her up they drove in his black truck down the mountain road. Out the corner of her eye Lewis watched him steer with hands chalked to the wrists. She sipped from the thermos of merlot. The inside of the cab was marked everyplace with handprints and scuffs of chalk.

In my eleven years up here I never been department liaison, she said.

Never had anybody lost up here?

We had a couple drunk hikers go missin for a couple hours till their wives found them. Only time I found anybody was about three years ago. I found Ranger Paulson after he’d got turned around in the woods behind his cabin and ruined his goddamn nose. I just know Terry Squime and the goddamn Waldrips are alive out there. They need somebody to keep lookin for them.

A woman’s intuition’s a powerful thing.

I’m not talkin about a woman’s goddamn intuition, Lewis said.

Have you enjoyed my company while I’ve been up here?

Lewis fixed on the man a pair of bloodshot eyes. His cheekbones were low and his thin blond mustache shone through like glass. I don’t know, she said. I guess it’s been all right to have some fresh faces up here.

They came to a shoulder of broken trees and rusted dumpsters and he pulled the truck over. The sun was nearly down and gold light lay aslant on the ground. He turned the ignition off and the lights in the cab went out and Lewis studied the shape of him in the murk. The motor cooled and it was quiet.

Bloor got out and Lewis followed him in the sundown, toting the thermos, and he led her behind one of the dumpsters.

This morning I brought my trash here and I found this, he said.

There leaned a stinking homunculus crudely composed of garbage and cat skeletons glued and woven together with electrical tape and melted dinner candles. It had for a head the yellow skull of a bobcat and for eyes a halved tennis ball. It wore a redly stained ranger’s uniform and used tampons for earrings.

Goddamn Silk Foot Maggie.

Who?

State allows her to live up across from the point, Lewis said. She does this kind of thing. Don’t know why.

Bloor bowed his great torso over the hodgepodged carcass and looked it over. She’s an artist?

I don’t know if you’d call her a goddamn artist.

I thought it was especially fascinating because of the uniform. It’s yours. Ranger Lewis. Says it right there.

It’s vandalism, Lewis said. You got to burn or goddamn bury somethin if you don’t want her to get her goofy hands on it. It’s a pain clearin these goddamn things up. This what you wanted to show me?

I need a vacation. You know, my wife always told me I was a hungry vulture eating dead hearts, but one day I’d get tangled in some power lines and they’d all start beating again in my stomach.

I don’t know what the hell that means.

I need recreation, Ranger Lewis. I spoke to Cherry and extended my stay.

You want to stay way the hell up here?

I’ve fallen in love with it, Bloor said, and he went on to tell Lewis that he did not yet know how long he would stay, but that he was driving down the mountain Wednesday to pick his daughter up from the bus station and that she would be staying with him for a time. He said that Chief Gaskell had suggested she volunteer in the Forest Service.

Goddamn Friends of the Forest?

I’m hoping it’ll pull the fog off her, Bloor said. And it’ll look good on her college applications.

Flies haloed the skull of the homunculus and some muddy color dripped from its pawed appendages.

We already got goddamn Pete Trockmorton participatin in some limited capacity.

She could benefit from a conversation or two with a strange bird like Pete.

Goddamn it. I don’t guess I can see any goddamn harm in it.

He thanked her and told her how rare Jill Bloor was. He said that he would never say she was slow, but that she had not developed the way some people her age might have for when she was a baby he and her mother had answered an advertisement for test subjects in a study at Seattle University. He told how the experiment had involved her mother behaving coldly with her and then comforting her and then behaving coldly again and how they had photographed hours of her crying.

I don’t expect a child’d understand any of that, Lewis said.

No. And then we homeschooled her in the sunroom until the lymphoma finally got Adelaide. Koojee. I couldn’t keep working and maintain my passions while continuing her education myself. So I enrolled her in a public school, you know. I’m telling you I think the confusion in her upbringing has left a mark on her.

I ought to be headin back.

Bloor took the cake of chalk from a pocket and passed it over his fingers. I like to get involved, you know. Now that I know she’s sexually active there’s little left unsaid between us. I keep a calendar of her cycle on the refrigerator door back in Missoula.

You got any goddamn gloves in your truck?

I might.

Don’t much want to use my bare hands to get rid of this, Lewis said, glancing at the homunculus.

I’d like to have it if you don’t mind. If you think this Silk Foot Maggie wouldn’t mind.

Lewis looked to the creation and back to Bloor. Do what you want, she said.

Bloor smiled. I’m sure you’ll be a valuable influence on her.

Who’s that?

My daughter.

I don’t know somebody like me has any business bein an influence on anybody.

Why do you say something like that, Ranger Lewis?

You can call me Debra.

I would prefer to call you Ranger Lewis, if it’s all the same to you.

She drank from the thermos of merlot and eyed the man. I don’t figure I’m a people person, she said. Sometimes I just don’t give a goddamn about anyone. I have to work at it. Remind myself everybody else still exists even when I’m not lookin at them. You figure sayin somethin like that tells you somethin about me?

My wife always told me that people are the most fearsome and unruly animal ever to have walked the earth, but that it was possible to train them not to shit on the carpet.

Lewis spat in the dirt.

Bloor brought a tarpaulin from the truck and he wrapped up the homunculus and laid it carefully in the truck bed. He stopped Lewis before she climbed in the passenger’s side and he pulled her close to him and held her. He gave her a pat on the back and apologized for the behavior of her ex-husband. I don’t want you thinking that all men are created equal, he said.

He let her go and she looked to his white hands. Why do you do that with your goddamn hands?

I don’t like them getting too moist, he said. One of those quirks you get when you’ve got an active mind, you know. Adelaide always told me it was the clearest indication that I was mentally ill. I stopped for a while, but I picked it up again after she died.

He drove them up the dark mountain road and let her off at her pinewood cabin. The tarpaulin flapped in the bed of his truck as he drove away. When Lewis undressed later that night she found on the back of her uniform a handprint left in chalk.

In 1972 a handsome young couple moved into the little yellow house next door to ours below the water tower. They were clean and had good postures and they looked after their lawn. They had a little legless Chihuahua dog they had found stuffed in a vase abandoned on the side of the road. On warm evenings they took that little dog out in a kind of tiny bespoke wheelchair. People got a kick out of that. This couple was well-mannered and they went to the Episcopal church off Pond Street.