Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

I turned around and looked up once more at that great mountain where the airplane had gone down. I thought about the impact and the sound that was not sound. I thought of poor Mr. Waldrip still up in that spruce, and imagined vengeful birds pecking at him as if they had learned he had hunted their kind every season since he could walk. I got one last look at that vile mountain and through the keyhole I sallied forth into the dark wood. What awaited me there I cannot easily forget.

In the blue dawn Lewis tucked the campaign hat under her arm and rang the doorbell to the white cabin. Bloor answered the door.

Thanks for coming to get her again, he said.

More than a week had gone since Jill had arrived on the mountain and every morning Lewis had collected her on heading into the station, and they would ride together without words, listening to the whir of the heater.

It’s on my way, Lewis said.

He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. She’s out back, he said. Having a little trouble getting going this morning.

He gave Lewis a mug of coffee and she went out the sliding glass door and found the girl smoking at the deck railing and staring at something. Lewis went to her and followed her gaze. An emaciated squirrel, perched on the bough of a pine, was turning in its paws a wriggling knot of damp fur.

It’s eating its baby, Jill said. Like Ugolino.

The young squeaked and clicked and the squirrel rolled over the minor skull its bared teeth, stripping flesh like a hand plane. Lewis sipped the coffee and grimaced and pulled from the end of her tongue a toenail clipping. She spat over the railing and flicked the clipping from her fingers, then faced the white cabin. Bloor stood in the window watching them.

Lewis turned back to the girl and lifted the campaign hat to the coloring sky and told her they ought to go for they had yet to collect Ranger Paulson and Pete and would be going a long way out today.

Jill blew a ring of smoke. She nodded at the hot tub. I heard you both.

Heard what?

You and my dad copulating in the Jacuzzi.

I don’t know what you mean.

Last week, the night I got here. I heard you having sex.

No. Lewis watched yet the squirrel work the newborn like a nut. Maybe you heard some goddamn animals.

I convinced a boy to copulate with me, and after we did he told the school my vagina looked like an old army boot.

Lewis poured the coffee out off the deck. Boys can be mean.

Men who act like whatever they think men are supposed to act like should be gassed. Women who act like whatever they think women are supposed to act like should be gassed too.

Maybe we need the people we don’t like. For some reason.

Maybe, Jill said, swatting at nothing. Like we need gnats for the ecosystem? Maybe if we lose all the annoying people it could be the end of society.

Lewis turned again to the window. Bloor was behind the glass in shadow still watching. He smiled and held up a chalked hand.

I’m beginnin to think your dad doesn’t give you enough credit, Lewis said.

When my mom was sick she couldn’t move her body. She couldn’t even talk. And he would get her from her wheelchair and copulate with her on the living room rug. Up until the week she died.

Maybe that’s romantic.

It’s not, Jill said.

Lewis watched the girl suck her cigarette. Smoke swam from a perfect nose, light catching the pattern of scars on her face.

The girl said: I would like to be one of those people that change many times before they die. I could be married to a man in Tokyo and he cheats on me when he’s volunteering for UNICEF in Africa. I could be a librarian with an Iranian-American girlfriend. She’s a hot dog vendor in Central Park. I could have a shoe store that floods, gets mold, and is condemned, and I become a counselor at a homeless center. I could be in jail for fish gambling with a son in Newfoundland. As long as it’s different from this and everything else.

Don’t you figure you ought to finish high school first?

Jill stubbed the cigarette out on the railing and turned to Lewis. You could take me seriously.

You just might regret not finishin school.

Do you regret anything?

Probably.

If somehow that old lady is still alive out there, do you think she regrets anything?

Well, you can goddamn ask her when we find her, Lewis said.

If the crash didn’t kill her, she has probably killed herself by now.

Lewis looked back to the pine. The squirrel had gone.

She checked the rearview mirror. Jill, asleep in the backseat, jostled against the window. The old dog lay balled on the floorboard under her feet. Pete, his red hair matted under the coif, sat in the seat next to the girl and worked at his needlepoint. Lewis imagined him as an ugly peasant woman living in Holland before the discovery of America. Over the three hours she had been driving he had raised the video camera now and again and taped Jill and the embroidery hoop and the dog and the nape of Claude’s neck in the front passenger’s seat. He had once fixed it on her and caught her drinking from the thermos of merlot.

She drove them on for near an hour more over worsening roads and darker forest, and often they stopped and dragged away a fallen branch in their path and Lewis would sneak around to the back of the Wagoneer and refill the thermos from a bottle she kept hidden there.

Jill woke when the engine quit and the others had climbed out and slammed the doors. She blinked at Lewis as if she had forgotten her and asked if they were there. Lewis told her they were and that they would walk side by side and comb the forest trail until they came to Black Elk Creek, where they would continue on for about a mile more and then turn back before dark if they had not found Cloris Waldrip. Her guess, she said, was that Cloris would be at the creek.

She gave Jill and Pete reflective orange vests and the team followed an overgrown trail marked by wooden posts rotted thin and washed pale red. They chanted in round Cloris, Cloris, Cloris, Mrs. Waldrip . Claude kept time with a machete on the pines and the old dog wavered at his heels. Downward to a scrub valley they went like a pilgrimage in prayer, and Pete hauled about his neck the video camera, wheezing and halting to clutch at his pigeon chest and to straighten the coif.

Don’t get left behind, Petey, Claude said. We’d never find you.

They left the forest for the grass and the few windspiraled pines of the wide valley. Ahead of them was the river. They spread out and Pete and Claude went together. The dog trotted after them. Carrion hunters patterned the peaks.

What d’you think of it out here? Lewis said.

You should see Tokyo, Jill said.

Lewis tightened the straps on her pack and spat in the grass. You been there?

No.

How d’you know then?

I’ve seen images in a magazine.

What about bein out in goddamn nature?

Tokyo is nature, said the girl.

Lewis sucked her teeth. Maybe you’re right. Maybe this isn’t all that different.

They went on and the team reached the river and stopped there. Jill sat on a rock and lit a cigarette.

Don’t you goddamn leave that out here, Lewis told her.

Claude and Pete milled about downriver some hundred-odd feet away. The dog snuffled around and ate grass and gagged. Pete set the video camera on a stump and fixed it on Claude, who stood before him gesturing wildly to the water and forming claws of his hands and making a speech Lewis could not hear.

Jill brushed the hair from her blue-painted eyes and swatted at nothing in the wind. Do you hate your ex-husband?

Lewis brought from her pack a thermos of merlot and unscrewed the lid. She pushed back her campaign hat and drank. Already it was late afternoon and the mountains swayed blue over the river. Why’re you askin me that goddamn question?