Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

That’s all right, Lewis said.

Claude lived next door in a small blue-washed cabin with an old golden retriever he called Charlie. He had no curtains to his bedroom window and Lewis often saw him in bed reading or asleep, mouth agape. Most mornings she had a cup of coffee and merlot and watched him iron his uniform. Once she had seen him awake past midnight naked at the foot of his bed weeping into the dog’s coat.

Lewis opened the screen door and a man staggered up the steps behind Claude, struggling with a video camera as if it were a cinder block. Pigeonchested, the man propped himself against a post, jaundiced there under the porch light. He swung the video camera off his shoulder and trembled a hand over his skinny neck. He scratched at the red stubble down past his shirt collar. Evenin, ma’am.

Claude jabbed a thumb over his shoulder and introduced the man as Pete and said that he was an old friend from high school. He’s goin to be stayin with me and Charlie for a little while.

My old lady left me, Pete said.

Goddamn sorry to hear that.

I’ll be all right, ma’am, thank you. Claudey’s agreed to put me up while I’m hurtin.

Claude told Lewis the plan was for Pete to help him finally get the ghost of Cornelia Åkersson on tape with his new video camera. He said that it would also do Pete some good to volunteer in the Friends of the Forest program and get some fresh air.

Pete glanced behind him at the dark mountain road. So it’s just you and Claude the only rangers up here? Maybe I’ll be some help, then, while I’m hurtin.

Pete’s had some ciders.

We been out lookin for that one-eyed ghost you got up here, Pete said. He retied a meager auburn ponytail and adjusted the strap to the video camera. Claudey here wants me to get a picture of her, but I told him I ain’t any good at takin pictures. He’s always had more faith in me than what I got in myself. I know Claudey since we’re in high school back in Big Timber. It sure is good to be with old friends while you’re hurtin.

Lewis nodded and looked to Claude. The porch light showed the dog hair on his uniform. He turned in his hands the campaign hat like he were steering a car.

So what is it, Claude?

I’d say that’s a hard one to say.

We got a distress call over the radio, Pete said.

Claude put up a hand. I’ll give her the information, Petey. We can’t say we know it was a distress call. All we can say is we heard a humanoidal voice say cloris . Thrice it said it. Cloris, cloris, cloris. Like that. It was garbled.

Cloris?

Cloris.

I tend to frighten, so it spooked me some, Pete said.

What’s a goddamn cloris?

I can’t say that I know, Claude said. If it’s some kind of code, I can’t say that I know it. And what for, to what end?

Maybe you misheard it.

Maybe. Maybe. Don’t think I did.

What sounds like cloris?

Morris, Pete said.

Where were you?

Out by Darling Pass.

See your goddamn ghost?

Claude smiled. All right now, Debs. No need to have fun at my expense.

Pete raised a red eyebrow. You don’t believe in the ghost, Ranger Lewis?

I’ve never seen it.

I guess it’s hard to believe in somethin especially when you can’t see it, Pete said. I tried to believe my wife loved me. But after a while she said she wanted to make a change in her life before change was too late to be made. She said I was repressed. Sometimes she likes to use words I ain’t never heard of to make me feel bad about my education. But I told her she ain’t goin to get another way of life like she wants, not at thirty-nine lookin like she’s sixty-nine, not a clean tooth in her gourd.

Pete’s had some ciders, Claude said.

Did I tell you what she said, Claudey?

Why don’t you tell me later?

No, go ahead, Lewis said. What’d she say?

Said I had a weird heart in a weird chest. Said I looked like an ugly woman with derelict breasts.

I’m sorry, Petey. She shouldn’t talk about you like that.

Well, I’ll be all right. I know I got a weird chest, had it all my life, born with it. Pectus carinatum. But a weird heart? Been wrackin my brain tryin to know what she meant by that.

Sorry again about the hour, Debs, Claude said, turning to her. Just thought I’d brief you on this cloris word in case you thought we should act on it in some way didn’t occur to me.

Lewis steadied herself on the doorjamb and looked up to the dark sky. She recalled the coat of a black Labrador she had once watched her father euthanize in his clinic. She looked back to Claude. You don’t need to check on me every goddamn weekend. I’m all right.

I know that.

All right, she said. Man’s voice or woman’s?

Couldn’t say. I’d say might’ve been a woman or a young boy.

Pete fanned out a hand of small fingers. To me that voice had the sound of a forlorned woman, he said importantly.

All right. I’ll make a note of this tomorrow mornin. You two ought to get on home before Cornelia eats you guys’ tongues and takes you to Neptune.

Come on now, Debs, don’t poke fun.

What’s that? Pete said.

The goddamn ghost Claude’s got you lookin for, Lewis said. Gums off tongues, hair, and balls.

She closed the door on the two men, then she went back to the kitchen sink. The stains in the uniform had not come out. She dropped the shirt in the wastebasket. She had another glass of merlot and took a long bath with another bottle and listened to Ask Dr. Howe How . A thunderous woman phoned into the program and asked how it was that she and her husband seemed to be behaving like unrealistic and impractical people. She asked if it were common for people to behave like characters they had seen on television. In a reedy and pragmatic voice like that of a physician in surgery, Dr. Howe offered that, yes, it was common, perhaps because to do so was easier than assessing and acting on our authentic impulses and concerns.

Lewis switched off the radio and climbed from the bath. She dried herself and stood naked to her bedroom window looking out at the dark pines and the valley below. She took to the fogged pane the tip of a finger and outlined her tall reflection. Beyond, in the forest, distant flashlights worked the dark and struck the trees. Lewis figured it was the men searching yet for the ghost of Cornelia Åkersson.

She wiped the window clear and returned to the bathroom to vomit in the sink and then went to bed where she slept a restless night of dreams she was sure she had dreamt but none of them could she recount upon waking. In the morning she said to herself, God only knows what happens to me in my goddamn dreams.

Lewis stopped the Wagoneer to clear from the road a flattened goshawk. She sailed the carcass like a discus into the trees below and marked the incident in the notepad she kept in her chest pocket. The sun was not yet up, the road still dark. She drove on and came to the one-room cedar structure perched high up the mountain. She unlocked the front door under a sign wood-burned with National Forest Service Backcountry Station and went inside.

In the kitchenette she started a pot of coffee and took three aspirin and splashed her face at the sink and clicked on the space heater. Her desk was flush against a large westfacing window with a view of the same wooded valley she could see from her cabin. Mist sat in the evergreens and was just burning off under a rising sun. Great clots of dark birds turned in the sky. Lewis took off the campaign hat and set it to a hook on the wall. She sat and powered on the radio equipment on the desk and waited for it to warm up. She leaned over the paging microphone.

Ranger Lewis to Chief Gaskell. Ranger Lewis to Chief Gaskell. Come in, Chief Gaskell. Over.