Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

It had gotten dark, but I fumbled around and turned up some dry pine needles and such for tinder there in a recess like that of a doorway. I hoped to build a fire. In some haste I put together a little pile in that spot. I had one fire-starter stick left. I took it out along with the silly cartoon lighter in Terry’s coat pocket. There was a crack of lightning and I jumped. I dropped the lighter and it skidded away and disappeared right down that drain in the rock! I thought about putting my arm down after it to see if there was a kind of catch basin but it was dark and I could not bring myself to do it.

I slumped down on those ruins and watched the downpour and set to turning my wedding ring on my finger. I had gotten used to rain. I did not bawl about it, I just set out Mr. Waldrip’s boot and filled the red canteen with the runoff from the rocks. After my eyes had adjusted to the dark I could see the woods, all black and gray. The rain fell very hard and a chill was in my bones. There was not a thought in my head, save that I was cold. I was mighty hungry too so I had the rest of the cereal, which I had hoped would last longer than it wound up doing. I did not much like the salted fish.

It was after I had eaten up the cereal that I spotted the mountain lion. It crept up out of the rain. Like everything else in those woods the creature looked infirm. It had overlarge shoulder blades that jutted up like panels on a dinosaur. In the dark the animal resembled a kind of winged mythological beast, one that was to guard the limestone ruins in which I sat. Most unusual of all, and believe me or not, the lion walked backwards. It led with its tail sweeping left to right like the head of a snake. Its mouth was slack and rain ran through its teeth. I was mighty scared but I picked up my hatchet and hollered at it loud as I could. Well, that lion lit out of there like a little pussycat. I have since read that mountain lions have an instinctual fear of the human voice.

I sat in that limestone, hatchet in hand, waiting for the cat to return. It is strange sometimes how the mind wanders off on its own, once danger disperses, and by and by when I was convinced the cat would not come back my way, I got to worrying again over the past, and the tally for and against me. I mean to say I thought of Garland Pryle.

Ours was no great love affair. I do not want to leave you the misunderstanding that it was. The women of Texas who belong to my generation generally do not talk about sex. You could live your entire life in Donley County and never be sure it was being had by anyone but yourself. But to be direct and to honor the veracity of this account, I will here put it down plainly that I committed adultery with Garland Pryle. I am not proud of it, but there it is.

It happened twice. The first incident occurred in the lovely little home his parents had on Bent Tree Street. We made love on the dinner table. The second incident occurred one summer afternoon not but a week later in the springhouse behind the grocery store. The springhouse cooled our hot and crazed young blood and we made love on the cucumbers and the squash. I did enjoy it very much. This troubled me for some time, for my amorous mind would fetch him in the night as I lay in bed next to dear Mr. Waldrip, that kindest of men. It bothered me that rainy night out in the Bitterroot, when little else made any good sense anymore and God sure seemed less like Himself than He ever had. I could not fathom the way He had worked in the masked man. I could not fathom the way He had worked in Garland Pryle so many years before. Most of all, I could not fathom the way He had worked in me. I am the greatest mystery to myself.

This is what frightened me and frightens me yet: I am near to certain I would make the same decision in that little aisle of canned peas if I had to do it over and over again until the end of time. I knew that was true every time I asked for forgiveness on my knees at First Methodist, when all of the congregation whispers selfish prayers to themselves, all of us sinners accounting the balance of our souls in that same slatted wood building, hearing not even the wind howl. I would do it again, Lord. I would do it again, and I am not even sure that I am sorry.

I did not sleep. I waited for morning as the rain slowed and then quit altogether and the clouds lightened up. I had survived yet another night. Exhausted and cold as I was I picked myself up, wrung out the zigzag sweater, and looked through the drain in the stone to see if I could spot the lighter. I could not see a thing but a trough of black water. In the light the ruins were not as grand as I had imagined them in the dark. I transferred the rainwater from Mr. Waldrip’s boot to the little red canteen and then I studied the compass. I started out again in an easterly direction.

I had not gone but a quarter mile when I heard a long whistle come from a particularly shady place in the trees to the southeast. I stopped and put my hand to my ear. It sounded like the cattle pens on a windy day, slow and in the register of a school-aged boy. I have always had good hearing, I imagine because I had lived a quiet life up until that time. Mr. Waldrip, on the other hand, had lost much of the hearing in his right ear to his shotgun.

I followed the whistle through the trees until it got to where it sounded like the noises a woman makes when she is with a man. Not but fifteen yards ahead, nestled under two crooked pines, was a little blue tent. Heavens, I was excited!

I endeavored to holler out and make myself known to whomever it was inside making the racket, but my throat seized up with too much excitement. When I reached the tent, suddenly the noises quit. I went to announce myself again but could not. I was trembling. Instead I rapped on the side of the tent.

Not a thing happened.

At last I managed to say, Excuse me, help, pardon me, I am Cloris Waldrip, I have been in an aviation accident.

No answer came from within.

I do not know much about tents. I have never cared too much for sleeping outdoors. When I was a girl Father took me once out on the prairie and we slept under the stars in the bed of the wagon on top of the horse blankets. I imagine what he really wanted to do was get away from Mother for a night. Davy had passed away only the summer before and a woman had just been elected governor of Wyoming and Mother did not think that was a very good idea. She was not good company for quite some time.

This tent had zippers. It was dingy and its blue color was faded in a streak where the sun had gone over it that same way for a good long while. At the bottom the nylon was bulged and was darkly discolored like the apron of a fry cook. I was starting to get uneasy. I nudged it with my foot and announced myself again. Not a thing happened. Then I worked up the courage and reached down and unzipped the opening. Out came a smell like that of the icebox after the power had been out.

There was no one inside the tent! There was a big paper bag of groceries that had molded, and a swoll-up blackened plastic jug labeled as orange juice sitting upright next to an unopened package of paper plates and plastic cutlery. I could not for the life of me figure out what had made the noises I had heard. Perhaps it was the wind. To this date I do not know.

I hollered out. I hollered and hollered so loud I believed I would bust my throat. I had just had enough of it out there. The horror of that empty tent bothers me yet. How had it come to be there, and to what purpose or by what treacherous event had it been abandoned? I worried I had stumbled into some special kind of puzzled hell.

After I had hollered for a spell I sat my back against a pine and took a rest. My throat was sore and I was dizzy. I watched that tent and waited to see if the noises would start up again.