Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

Bloor came from the sliding glass door and carried with him another bottle of wine. He kissed the air twice and went to the hot tub and pulled the cover from it and set the bottle on its edge. A mass of black hair tumbled and rolled in the water. Ah, koojee!

Lewis peered drunkenly at it from her seat. What now, goddamn it?

Looks like a skunk got in here.

Bloor chalked his hands and drew by its tail the thing from the water. He held it aloft before them. Limp and matted, it steamed in the cold and ran dark water to the deck boards. The animal did not smell, all Lewis could smell was chlorine. Death, like a crazed taxidermist, had fixed open the skunk’s eyes and mouth in a maniacal snarl. The flesh slid from the tail and the body thudded to the deck and Bloor was left holding a length of fur like a necktie.

Whoops, he said, and he knelt and picked up the rest of it and laughed once and slung the body over the railing and into a tree, where it landed draped over a high bough.

What good is that? Lewis said. Now it’s goin to stink of dead skunk out here.

I’ll get it down tomorrow.

Jill stood and set her empty glass on a little wood table by the chairs. She went to the sliding glass door and before she went inside the cabin she held on Lewis her blue-painted eyes and smiled a smile Lewis could not figure.

Bloor clapped and pointed to the hot tub. Do a little tubbing with me, Ranger Lewis.

There was a goddamn skunk dead in there not a minute ago.

You know, the water is chlorinated. My wife always told me that chlorine could kill anything.

Why’d she always tell you somethin like that?

Bloor stripped his clothes and sank his naked body inch by inch into the green waters until nothing save the wispy crown of his blond mullet remained above the surface. Lewis watched the man a moment, drank off another glass of merlot, stripped naked, and climbed in after him.

They bobbed in the water and Lewis spoke low about how she yet believed Cloris Waldrip had been in the old wilderness shelter. It was her, she said.

Bloor did not respond, he only hummed to himself. The wind moved the pine where the skunk lay snagged, its eyes wide and tungsten in the light from the kitchen window, and Lewis recalled the way she had found Mr. Waldrip, caught aloft in the grave heights of the mountain spruce.

Bloor went silent and took her by the shoulders and pulled her to him.

Stop, she said.

He let her go. What is it?

She took up the bottle of merlot and drank deeply and set it back on the edge of the tub. All right, she said.

Bloor took her again by the shoulders and kissed her. He stroked the bruised places on her arms and pinched her. My leopard, he said. He turned her over and was almost inside her, humping shortly at her backside. She watched a rind of black skunk hairs ride the surface of the wild green water. After less than a minute he climbed from the tub and finished off the side of the deck. She got dressed and replaced the campaign hat to her damp head.

Are you not going to stay, Ranger Lewis?

I need to go home, she said.

You know, I wish you’d stay.

I got to change my uniform. See if I can’t get the blood out of this one. I’ll be by to get your goddamn daughter in the mornin.

The sodium lights were dark at the Crystal Penguin when Lewis drove by again. She passed the place slowly and leaned out the open window in the warm night. She drove the Wagoneer high up the mountain to Egyptian Point, listening to late-night reruns of Ask Dr. Howe How . The radio signal came and went. A caller she had heard before spoke from a heavy voice about the relativity of pain and suffering and why some people cry when a dog dies. Have they not known true tragedy and loss? said the voice. Lewis drank from the thermos of merlot she had filled at Bloor’s cabin before leaving. She had also stolen a full bottle from his pantry and had wedged it in the passenger’s seat and it clunked and thunked next to her up the unpaved road.

When she pulled up to the trailhead the blue pickup truck with the missing tailgate was parked there. She flipped down the visor and in the mirror rubbed a thumb over her teeth, then licked the thumb and drew it to the edges of her mouth and across her eyebrows. She removed the campaign hat and ran a hand through her hair. The holster she unbuckled from the belt of her trousers and closed the revolver in the glove compartment. The dial clock in the dashboard showed 2:40 a.m. before she took the key from the ignition.

She carried the bottle of merlot up the trail in the dark. She listened for voices in the trees and watched for the light of a bonfire. As she neared the place she saw the glow against the rocks. Ahead a group of boys cackled crazily like a coven of witches. She stopped at the edge of the clearing and stood there and listened. She clutched to her chest the bottle of merlot.

The boys chittered high and breathlessly. One of them boasted about a new used car, and another spoke about how telephones would be able to read minds in twenty years’ time and how marriage would be obsolete and how psychotherapy would be done by coin-operated machines in bars and gas stations.

Then a voice like an icepick split through the rest of them. She’ll be here any minute.

No she won’t. She ain’t comin, faggot. It’s all fancy lies for sissy girls who drink diet pop and kiss boys with gay haircuts.

We stay up here long enough, she’ll come.

My peepaw said he saw her up here once. Said she came up from the rocks ridin a big armadillo and moanin. She had one eye and no teeth and red hair and she had her tits and dick out and everything. He said she was hot as hell even though she was what she was.

Why moanin?

Because she died orgasmin against her will. It’ll echo off the mountains for eternity, my peepaw says.

That can’t happen, can it? Orgasmin if you don’t want to?

I heard it can.

Lewis held tight the bottle of merlot. She took a breath and stepped forward almost into the light so that she would be seen, yet just as she was there she turned on her heel and set off back down to the Wagoneer.

Anice young reporter from a Boston newspaper once asked me in the most darling accent if I had ever considered taking my own life during my ordeal out in the Bitterroot. My answer at the time was no. However if this is going to be any kind of an honest document, I ought to come clean and apologize to her and put it down here that not only had I considered taking my own life, but I had endeavored to do it. And it was not the first time.

I had a mighty sad spell back in the summer of 1941 after Dr. Josiah Dove had made it known to me that I could not become pregnant. I was twenty-seven years old and embarrassed and blind envious of the women I knew who had managed it. I had the terrible notion that I was not a complete woman. Women do not worry as much about that these days, but back then in Texas motherhood was one of the awful few respectable stations in society we had.

So in the middle of a summer night I drove Mr. Waldrip’s truck out to our ranch headquarters and found where the cowboys kept the bovine medicine in a dirty old drawer. After drinking all the vials I could stomach, I wandered sick as a dog out into the pasture and collapsed on a fence post like a scarecrow. Come morning I woke up there very well rested and was surprised, and relieved, to be alive. I hopped back in the truck and stopped by the grocery store for some eggs so that I would have a story for Mr. Waldrip. Bless his dear heart, he never did know much about what my crazy head was up to most of the time. If he did, he never cared to let on.

Out there in the Bitterroot I sat up the night with my back to the washout, letting little critters crawl all over me. I hollered out my name until the sun rose behind the clouds. I could not put any weight on my right leg without it giving me a good deal of trouble. If I was going anywhere it was going to have to be on my belly like a snake. But I did not know which direction to go and my purse was up there out of reach on top of the overhang. The most useful items in it were the hatchet, the red canteen, and the compass. I was sad to have lost Mr. Waldrip’s boot too. I had the idea then it would have been easier to perish over a month prior in that little airplane with Mr. Waldrip and Terry.