Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

Lewis hoisted onto the table a box wrapped in white paper. Happy birthday, she said.

Should I open it?

What else would you do with it?

Jill tore away the paper and Lewis cut the string with a pocketknife.

I went down the mountain a couple days ago, Lewis said. Came across this in that antique shop by the gas station. Couldn’t believe my goddamn eyes. Had to get it. Easy there. It’s goddamn heavy.

Jill opened the box. She pulled balled-up newspaper from around the bronze of an eagle taking flight off a tree limb.

I know pokin up your hand wasn’t the best thing to happen to you up here, Lewis said. But I figured you could remember the other times by it too.

The girl showed her palm and the white dash there. It’s healed, she said. Maybe this is the same bird and time is different.

I had it engraved there at the bottom.

Jill read aloud from the bronze: United States Forest Service Volunteer Forest Ranger Jill Bloor 1986 .

Two goddamn months in the program. That’s somethin to be proud of.

We didn’t find your old lady.

Lewis took the Lord’s name in vain and shook her head. Nine o’clock that morning Chief Gaskell had radioed into the station and told Lewis that the state had declared Cloris Waldrip dead in absentia. Almost everythin doesn’t work out, Lewis said. We can just do our best, that’s all.

Do you think she’s dead?

If she’s not she’s probably goddamn unrecognizable.

Will you keep looking for her?

I’ll keep an eye out.

The rain quit and Lewis drove the girl to an outlet store in a dismal corner of the town. Lewis strolled the aisles through racks of collared shirts and Jill tried on polyester dresses in the changing room. Lewis stood guard and kept an eye on the curtain. She scowled at a spidery boy loitering there with his hands in his pockets. Lewis told the boy to get and he did. When Jill was finished, Lewis bought her a pair of trousers and a blue cotton dress and she bought for herself a khaki shirt and then drove to a wine-and-spirits store and picked up ten bottles of discounted merlot. She loaded the Wagoneer and drove back up the mountain and the red evening sun pulled long shadows from the road signs and made bloody roods of the last telephone poles.

She caught a bottle of merlot rolling in the floorboard and had Jill uncork it with a corkscrew from the glove compartment. She parked the Wagoneer at the trailhead for Egyptian Point and they sat in their seats as the last of the sundown mist rolled off the mountains into the black wards of the valleys below. Silk Foot Maggie paced the yard behind the mobile home where she had built rust-colored castles out of used tampons and beer cans.

It was Monday and it was quiet and no vehicle save theirs was parked there. Lewis turned the engine off and let the quiet stand. She drank from the bottle. Didn’t want to take you back just yet. That all right?

Jill nodded and cranked down the window and lit a cigarette. They drank together from the bottle and Jill smoked cigarettes out the window. A cloud covered the moon, leaving only the red glow of the lightbulb in Silk Foot Maggie’s back porch. The girl’s hair shone. Lewis reached over and touched it.

What are you doing?

Thought your hair was wet. It’s real pretty. You still plannin on leavin? Now you’re eighteen?

Jill said that she planned to leave the next day.

What’s your dad say about that?

He wants to stay here.

You can stay too if you want, Lewis said. She took back her hand. You don’t have to stay with him. You can stay with me. There’s a goddamn spare room that’s just boxes. It was my ex-husband’s study. You’re welcome to it.

I lied to you, Jill said. My dad never had sex with my mom after she was paralyzed.

All right. Why’d you lie about that?

Do you know the reasons for everything you do?

No, goddamn it, I don’t expect that I do.

One day you’ll not like me so much, Jill said.

I don’t care that you lied about that. We all have our goofy reasons for doin what we do, Jill. Even if we don’t know them all the time.

I can’t stay with you.

Lewis watched the girl a moment longer and turned back to the wheel and started the engine.

Lewis, a lip wedged in the neck of a bottle, sulled drunk on the white couch. Moths knocked against the window without like a heavy rain. In the circular fireplace the false logs lay in the fire like the limbs of cats and dogs cremated in the dirt yard behind her father’s clinic. Beyond the fire the homunculus leaned dry and foul in a corner, gawping at her through the flames with its eyes of halved tennis balls. A cricket sang from a hole in its skull.

Behind her a door opened and a forked shadow reached over the living room. She pried from the bottle her lip and turned to find Bloor in a lacy yellow nightgown.

Are you all right, Ranger Lewis?

What’re you wearin?

It was Adelaide’s.

All right. Lewis nodded at the homunculus across the room. You’d better throw that goddamn thing out before it falls apart and makes a real mess.

Thanks for taking her today.

Eighteen’s a big one. Figured she’d want a day off this goddamn mountain.

Bloor let the gown slip from his shoulders and fall to the floor. He cocked a hip before her in the firelight. His long naked body was shorn of hair and his penis tight and small. His golden mullet was like a kind of Japanese headdress. He held a cake of chalk and passed it between his palms and set it on the end table, then lowered himself next to her on the couch. The synthetic leather croaked against his skin and he took from her the bottle and finished what was left. He pinched lightly her sides. When Lewis did not make a sound, he pinched harder. She put a hand over her mouth. He pinched her again harder yet and he whinnied and she took the Lord’s name in vain between her fingers.

What do you want to do? he said.

I’d like to try somethin, Lewis said.

What’s that?

Get on the floor and open your mouth.

Do you want to take off your clothes first?

No, she said. That’s not necessary for this.

Bloor looked at her, then slid to the floor and lay there naked on his back as he was told.

Now open your mouth, Lewis said from the couch.

Bloor did so and Lewis got up and stood over him. He lay there staring up at her. She figured he looked like an enlarged and deformed girl. She settled down on top of him and put her face close to his.

Put out your tongue, she said, and he did. Lewis pursed her lips and let drool run from them. Bloor turned his head. She told him no and he turned it back. She aimed and spat into his mouth. Keep it open, she said, and drooled again. I’ll tell you when to swallow. She drooled until his mouth was full and his eyes were watering, then she sat up and told him to swallow. He did and gagged and got up on his elbows and Lewis climbed off him and sat back on the couch.

He was awed a moment and clucked in the pit of his throat and jittered the sweat off his head like a water bird coming up for air, then he stood widelegged before the fire with an erection. He finished there and splattered the artificial logs and the mess sizzled and burned off in a watery smoke. He told her it was the best sexual experience he had ever had and that he loved her and he took up a glass of water from the coffee table and drank there naked.

Lewis watched him for a time and then said, I’m not all right.

Bloor set the glass down. Are you going to be sick?

No. I want to end our relationship, professional and otherwise.

You’ve had a couple of bottles of merlot, you know.

I’ve had four goddamn bottles but I know what I’m sayin. Will now, will always.

I don’t think you do.