Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

Jill pressed a thumb to the empty glass and held it up to the candlelight. Just in case, she said, and showed Lewis the whorl of a thumbprint. So they will know I was here.

Pardon?

She held Lewis with her blue-painted eyes. In case he murders us.

Lewis excused herself and went down a hall to a clean white bathroom. She rinsed her mouth and combed through her hair a row of wet fingers and sat on the lid of the toilet. The barrel of the revolver in her holster clinked against the porcelain.

When she returned to the table Jill had gone out back to the deck and Bloor was still in the kitchen. She took a bottle of merlot from the table and joined the girl’s small figure at the deck railing. The plaid cotton dress the girl wore was draped on the wind. Rain fell far away in the mountains, and the treetops bristled like the hackles of many thousands of enormous dogs.

Lewis drank from the bottle and held it out. You think you’ll like it up here?

Jill took the bottle. Do you think being in these mountains for a long time can make a person nuts?

Lewis looked at the small face. Anglewise the girl recalled to Lewis a beautiful and fineboned boy in her high school class she had never had the courage to befriend. I’m not nuts, Lewis said. And I’ve lived up here eleven goddamn years.

I think it’s nuts that people believe what other people say about themselves.

You ever listen to Dr. Howe?

No. What is that?

Lewis took back the bottle and swigged it and loosed a mouthful down her front. You lookin forward to spendin time up here with your dad?

Jill lit a cigarette. He says he has anxiety and depression like it’s an excuse to be selfish. She took back the bottle and finished it. Are we going to get in?

The hot tub was in a corner of the deck, wood-paneled and etched with suns and crescent moons. The two uncovered the water and Jill stripped down to black underpants and a brassiere. The girl stood lean before Lewis, her bony shoulders drawn in against the chill.

Lewis stripped too and the cold raised the dark hair on her arms and she folded her winestained uniform on a deck chair and set the revolver on top. She wore tan briefs and a white undershirt.

They got in the hot tub and circled each other in a clockwork of pale suds until they both found a corner. They did not speak yet. Jill kept her head back and upward to the night sky. She pinched the bridge of her nose and swatted often at nothing. By the green of the lights in the water her small face and fatless body glowed like the vision of a drowned girl.

Your dad mentioned you want to volunteer for the Forest Service, said Lewis. Goddamn Friends of the Forest program.

The girl said nothing.

You’re welcome to if that’s what you want.

He told me you would be a good influence.

I don’t figure he’s right about that. I don’t know what I’m doin most of the time.

I don’t need a good influence, the girl said. I’ll be eighteen in November. I plan to leave.

Where’re you plannin to go?

Maybe out of the country. But I don’t want to sit around this cabin and watch my dad try to understand himself. So I’ll help you look for that old lady while I’m still here.

Good. I’m sure she’s anxious to be found.

They sat in silence for a time in the tub and Bloor came from the cabin, bared to the flesh save for a pair of small shorts patterned in bald eagles. He carried yet another bottle of merlot and three glasses. He showed Lewis a garish smile purpled like her own and he slid into the water between them the length of his white body and let out a joyful groan.

My gals, he said. My tub gals. I’m a lucky man tonight. Jill, I’m intoxicated. I don’t normally like to get this intoxicated. I wanted to tell you how grateful I am you’re here. You know, we’re going to have a meaningful experience together and when you’re my age you’ll look back on this time up here with your dad and think how formative it was. It is essential you learn about hard work and the value of a day spent in the service of others. We’re both going to get better up here, you know.

Clouds stopped the stars, and the girl’s face was dark turned away from the green lights below.

Bloor pulled the cork from the bottle and dropped it into the water. He poured three glasses. Ever since your mom died I’ve been turning into someone I always worried I could be but never was before, he said.

Jill turned from the sky and looked at her father.

The fringe of his mullet had gotten wet and was stuck together like the feathers of a sick bird. He trained his gaze on the cork in the water. What does it want from me?

What does what want from you? Lewis said.

Bloor nodded at the cork. That.

He’s drunk, Jill said. We don’t have to answer him.

Bloor drained his glass. How did your partner’s nose turn blue, Ranger Lewis?

You don’t have to talk to him.

Lewis drank off her glass. It’s all right, she said, and told the story of how three winters ago Claude had gotten lost in a snowstorm looking for his dog. Lewis had found him at daybreak, balled up under a ventifact of sandstone with a face frostbitten nearly black, mumbling about a redheaded one-eyed shade he had seen riding a giant armadillo. His nose just hasn’t gone back to normal, Lewis said. Maybe his mind hasn’t either. I never hear the end of it about that goddamn ghost. I reckon that’s round the time I developed a real taste for merlot. Roland never liked it.

Bloor held his hand to the sky and palmed the moon. People need to do whatever it is they want to do while they still want to do it, he said. Give in to our temptations before we can’t even care enough to be tempted anymore. Someday we won’t have any temptations at all, Adelaide used to say.

Jill looked at her father and climbed from the hot tub and wrapped herself in a towel. Good night, she said, and she took with her the bottle and slid open the door. Before she went inside she glanced once over her shoulder and met Lewis with an expression she could not place.

Lewis raised a steaming hand from the water and bade the girl good night.

Jill slid the door to and Lewis found Bloor’s eyes walled and following his daughter through the picture window. He mouthed at the ends of his fingers like a suckling infant.

Are you feelin all right?

Are you, Ranger Lewis?

Lewis sent her eyes roving to the wild dark. The trees reeled blackly there in the wind. Mrs. Waldrip’s still out there, she said. I’ll bet she’s goddamn terrified. Just goddamn terrified. And we’re sittin drunk in a goddamn bathtub doin not a goddamn thing but talkin shit about stuff we don’t understand.

Bloor brought her to him through the water. Let’s not get upset about dead strangers tonight. He put his hand behind her neck and drew her head level with his. He did not kiss her yet but brought his lips to within half an inch of hers and told her that she was a powerful woman. He put out his tongue and licked her bottom lip. Lewis put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

Soon he was on top of her. The pair of bald eagle shorts roiled with the cork in the green water. He grappled with her. Together they flailed in the foam and splashed and he held her still by the shoulders. He could not penetrate her for he was not erect. He pressed himself to the inside of her thigh and rotated his hips like an exotic dancer. A light rain had begun to fall and he asked a question into her open mouth so that it rang in her head as if they had shared a voice. What can I do for you?

What?

What do you want me to do? What do you like?

I don’t know, she said. Whatever.

He held up two fingers and took them underwater and he pinched at her sides. Lewis laughed and he held her there. His face was set humorless and empty like a death mask. He pinched her harder and she quit laughing, and he went on pinching her under the water many times as she watched black rain fall from the sky.