Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

Don’t tell me what I don’t know. You can do this goddamn goofy thing without me. There’re plenty of me out there. I’m just another kind of the same person over and over again. Same as you.

No you’re not. I love you.

Your goddamn love’s not special neither, she said. She cleared her throat and spat all the way into the fire from where she sat. Don’t you mistake that it is. It’s the same brand everybody else’s got.

Bloor shuddered naked and took a step forward. Koojee. Let’s discuss this tomorrow when you’re sober.

Lewis straightened up on the couch and aligned the holstered revolver on her belt. Let’s just leave it where it stands and move on.

You owe me some discussion.

Can you put some goddamn clothes on?

What changed your feelings for me?

I don’t expect they did change.

Bloor sat down next to her on the couch. I don’t understand.

Put some goddamn clothes on.

He took up from the floor the nightgown and pulled it on. My wife always told me that God has tiny feet and tiptoes through time but makes a hell of a racket in space.

Goddamn it, Lewis said. Half the time I don’t know what the hell your goddamn wife was always tryin to tell you. And the other half it sounds like what every other goddamn person’s already said before and it never helped anybody when it was said the first time. I can’t figure why we all keep sayin the same goddamn things to each other and expect anybody to be anythin new and good. I’m not attracted to you and I don’t like the sex, if that’s what we’re callin it.

I’m sorry, Bloor said. I was under the impression you liked it.

You misunderstood.

I hoped we could explore some of our fantasies with each other in a comfortable and safe space. I thought you had a healthy sense of yourself and were a strong, progressive woman.

Some of you people sayin you’re progressive are the ones goin backward.

I had the impression you were the kind of woman that was sexually accepting and adventurous.

I’m not, goddamn it.

Bloor took up the cake of chalk from the table and turned it in his hands. You should’ve said something before now.

I expect so, Lewis said. But there’s the goddamn joy of this, the goddamn joy of that. I just don’t figure I’ve ever found any goddamn joy in anything. It isn’t often I get what I want, but I figured I had to try.

I’ll go to therapy. I’ll use less chalk and we can talk more about what you like. We can do what we did tonight as often as you want.

I’m goin, Steven. You ought to go too. You ought to go back to Missoula or goddamn Tacoma or wherever the hell you come from. I don’t care.

Bloor slid from the couch to his knees. He laid his head in her lap and sobbed. The nightgown cinched up around his hips. A ridge of spine disappeared into the hairless crack of his pale backside. I wish you’d stop being so mean, he said. Koojee. I have anxiety.

Whatever word you want to call it is fine, Lewis said. You’re still just a person I don’t much want to be around. I’m sorry you’re this way. But I just don’t care enough to help you.

What about Jill?

Lewis said nothing.

You know, she’s come to think of you as family, Bloor said. I don’t want to give you the impression that she’s slow, but—

Lewis put up a hand, then she touched the man’s head and stroked a length of golden hair.

Bloor wiped his face and rubbed together his chalked hands. I was in a bad way before I came up here, he said. Did you know I was on hiatus with the department?

Get up off the goddamn floor.

John called me up and said he had a job for me up in the mountains. I took it so that I could get away from my anxiety and come up here to find some healing. Then I met you and I didn’t want to leave. I don’t want to leave now, Ranger Lewis.

Lewis rolled her eyes and sucked the merlot from her teeth and burped up some sick in her mouth. She swallowed it and stood up and said looking down at the man: Goddamn Mrs. Waldrip would’ve been better off crashin into any other mountain range in the country. When you get up off the goddamn floor tell Jill goodbye for me.

Lewis walked out the door and drove the Wagoneer back to her pinewood cabin. She parked in the driveway and sat there in her seat. It was late but the lights were on in the blue-washed cabin next door and Claude let out the old dog into the woods. He did not see Lewis in the dark while he waited. After a while he let the old dog back inside and went in after it. Lewis leaned the seat back and fell asleep.

She woke to tapping on the driver’s side window and opened her eyes. The sun backlit a thin figure outside. She brought up her seat and cranked down the glass and shaded her brow and peered out. Jill slouched there with luggage and the bronze of the eagle belted to a suitcase.

Jill?

It’s me. My dad left. He’s going back to Missoula and then Tacoma.

Lewis smacked dryly her purpled mouth and pulled herself up by the wheel. Goddamn.

I decided to stay.

You got any water on you?

No.

What’d he say?

He said you didn’t want to see us anymore and we had to go home.

Lewis looked at the girl.

He said we had wasted too much time on this haunted mountain already and it wasn’t good for me anymore.

What’d you say?

That I’m an adult and I would decide myself what was good for me and where I would waste my time. I’m eighteen now. Now everyone has to respect that I mean what I say.

The girl told Lewis that she would like to stay with her until she had decided where she wanted to go. Lewis shook the empty thermos over her tongue and tossed it in the backseat. She blinked a few times at the girl and told her that the offer of the spare room still stood.

He doesn’t want to see you again, Jill said. He said you’re a dangerous and distorted woman.

I can understand why he’d say somethin like that.

Why are you sleeping in your car?

Lewis rubbed her face and opened the door and stood from the Wagoneer. She leaned against it and vomited in the shade of it on the gravel. I got carried away last night.

He was angry, the girl said. He didn’t think you would take me when he dropped me off, so he gave me money for a bus ticket home. Then he threw that gross thing out the truck window.

Lewis righted herself and wiped her mouth and looked to where the girl pointed. Cat bones and garbage gleamed on the road. A halved tennis ball lay next to the busted skull of a bobcat, and a foul uniform fluttered in a heap. Lewis squinted at the sun burning in the trees and on the granite. She pulled her campaign hat from the Wagoneer and put it atop her head.

All right. We’re late for the station.

Iwas to call that little hut home for just shy a month. The man and I suppered together there every evening and there we slept just a couple yards apart every night. I put in a good deal of my spare time telling him stories by the skulled light of that pine-knot lantern. I called him Garland. We became quite the companions.

We had our share of little adventures too. One evening we had a tussle with a black bear cub that had climbed down a finger of the dead white pine and fallen through the roof. As the expression goes, it was more afraid of us than we were of it. Still it did give us a mighty powerful start and I chucked my supper at it. The man gave it some good whacks with a rolled-up issue of National Geographic he had said he had read cover to cover well over a million times and chased it out. We sat up for a spell that night waiting for the mama bear to come for her vengeance, but thank goodness she never did.

Another night after we had finished up supper, some strange doleful racket occurred in the dark outside. The noises were passionate and I was sure they belonged to a woman. I had heard them before, when I had come across that vacant blue tent in the woods. We sat and listened to them for a good long while, hoping it was only the wind in the trees. Before long the man gathered his courage and went out with the axe and his spey blade unsheathed to see what was going on. He was gone for about half an hour and when he returned he was the color of sea water and shivering. The noises did not quit until just before dawn. He did not tell me what he had seen.