Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

Don’t get me wrong, Ranger Lewis, Pete said. I don’t want nothin. Didn’t get any footage of any special rare sex ghost or anythin like that while I been up here but I got this, and it sure seems rare enough. And like I said, I didn’t know what to make of it at first. You both bein female and bein she’s only seventeen and a subordinate in your volunteer program.

She’s eighteen.

Ain’t she just turned it yesterday?

Yes.

Still there’s got to be a kind of power imbalance there. Anyway, then I watched the tape over a few more times and I got to thinkin you guys didn’t look all that bad. Like it weren’t wrong you were touchin her and you were both female and she was young and in your care. And there’s always some power thing, ain’t there? Don’t matter who it is. Don’t matter when it is. Don’t matter how old anybody is. Somebody’s got the upper hand.

I’ve never had the upper hand, Lewis said.

Point is, this sure didn’t look like somethin bad was goin on, or somethin without heart. Hell, if you got some pictures of the way me and my wife used to look together you’d say better stone those two dead fore there’s another second shared between them, fore they ail the rest of us with their ignorance of love. Watchin you guys in the station today, I can tell you got her best interest at heart. So what I’m tryin to say is thank you, Ranger Lewis. Thank you for showin me somethin real nice.

Lewis looked down at the cassette and turned it over again. She shook it. Did you show this to Claude?

No, ma’am.

Tell him about it? Tell anybody about it?

No, ma’am, I reckoned it weren’t my place.

She looked at Pete through the open window. He hunched with his hands in his coat pockets. Lewis shook her head. Leave it to a goddamn man to think he’s surrounded by lesbians.

Pete smiled and put a hand to his pigeon chest. I sure do appreciate you lettin me in the volunteer program, Ranger Lewis. It’s been a few months of the best therapy a man like me could ask for. Turns out I’m sexually frustrated and I hate women. That’s only cause I don’t have any real respect for myself, but I’d like to think there’s hope for me yet. I know I’m a strange bird, but I’m pretty sure I ain’t a bad one.

No, you’re not a bad one, Pete.

Their headlights lit up the rotted wood sign at the trailhead: Egyptian Point . Lewis put the Wagoneer into park and stopped the engine. She cut off the headlights and all was dark. From the passenger’s seat Jill’s smoke scattered blue under the moon. The girl opened the door and climbed out and took with her a bottle of merlot from the backseat.

They made the trail to Egyptian Point. Lewis passed uneven before them a flashlight and spat to the wayside. They came to the clearing and there was no fire in the pit. There was no wind and it was quiet. All they could see was the moon above and the outlines of tall figures made of candle wax and merlot bottles with long wrists of electrical wire and soup bowls for breasts. One of the figures wore an old campaign hat Lewis recognized and the other held a karaoke microphone plugged into its rectum.

Goddamn it, Maggie.

Jill sat on one of the logs angled around the pit. She smoked another cigarette and held the bottle of merlot between her small knees and uncorked it with a corkscrew she had brought from the Wagoneer. Lewis dragged to the center of the pit some cordwood from a nearby stack. She took a squeeze bottle of lighter fluid from her coat pocket and doused the logs. She dropped a match in them and caught her trouser leg on fire and stamped it out in the dirt. Firelight fell about and lit the scarred face of the girl where she sat, watching.

Lewis sat next to her and took the bottle of merlot. She drank and said, I’m goddamn sorry.

Why?

I expect your dad leavin this mornin was difficult.

Jill took back the bottle and drank. No relationship is a citadel. They’re all tents.

Lewis studied the girl. Goddamn it, your dad really has you figured all wrong.

Together they drank off the bottle of merlot and Lewis drank what was left in the thermos. She took from a coat pocket the cassette Pete had given her. She shook it once and tossed it on the fire.

What was that? Jill said.

Nothin, Lewis said.

They watched the cassette melt down through the logs under an acrid smoke.

From the trail came the racket of hikers and Lewis laid a hand on the butt of the revolver at her hip. There came the three young men they had seen before in front of the Crystal Penguin. One of them wore a turtleneck and cradled a box of beer. The skinny mohawked boy led the group into the light of the fire, his round glasses as opaque as two silver coins.

You ladies enjoyin your evenin? he said. The jewelry in his tongue flashed.

Lewis stood and brushed off her trousers. You boys aren’t allowed up here. I figure you know that.

What about you?

I’m a goddamn ranger in the United States Forest Service.

The one in the turtleneck nodded at Jill. Well who’s she? She ain’t no tree cop.

You don’t need to know who she is, Lewis said. If you don’t head back, I’ll write some goddamn tickets.

The mohawked boy slunk to the other side of the fire and perched on a log. The two other boys joined him on either side. The fire was the only sound and light, and the wind was calm and the wood burned slow. The boys opened cans of beer from the box. The mohawked boy unzipped a large bag and took from it a sandwich bag and a mantel clock of dark wood inlaid with gold.

My mom’s clock, said the boy.

She died, another said, and he held up the sandwich bag. We’re comin up here, to this place, to sprankle out her ashes in honor of her memories.

The mohawked boy placed the clock on a stump next to him and all of them went quiet for a moment to listen to the loud tick and tock count the whip of the fire. When my dad and her were my age, he said, they’d scratched their names on that big junky rock right over there looks like a vulva. I knowed her clock’d be better off up here in that spot right there than back in my trailer. It’d look out of place with me in my trailer.

The weather’ll ruin it up here, Lewis said.

That’s all right. Everything ruins everything else, don’t it?

Lewis spat in the fire. I’m sorry about your goddamn mom, she said, then she told them that she would allow them to scatter the ashes and have a brief memorial, but then they would need to be on their way.

The boys mumbled to each other and rose from the logs with their cans of beer like they were marionettes strung on the moon. The mohawked boy took the sandwich bag and stood out on a far ledge over the expanse below and opened it and shook it out by the corners into the windless dark. He strolled back to his companions, his shirt and trousers grayly dusted and his eyes unseen for the reflections in his glasses. Each of the other two boys touched a shoulder of his and sucked from their cans.

All right, Lewis said.

The mohawked boy nodded and took up the clock from the stump and placed it high in the hollow of a wide rock face under his parents’ names. He turned back and hung the empty bag off a shoulder and went away down the path. The other boys were slow to follow and the one in the turtleneck knelt to get the box of beer.

You’re goin to have to leave those, Lewis said.

Why’s that?

Can’t have alcohol on goddamn state property. I ought to give you goofballs tickets. Just let them be. I’ll dispose of them.

I bet you dispose of them, all right, the other one said. Like you’re disposin of that wine.

You’re a real dirty tree cop, I hope you know that, said the other. Abusin your power and takin advantage of us cause we don’t have the heart to argue with a shitty old woman.