Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

She’s thirty-seven, Jill said.

A really dirty tree cop, a real sad old lesbo, said the one in the turtleneck. I hope that hermaphrodite ghost gums you to death and steals your soul to Neptune.

Lewis told them again to get and they looked at each other and then at Jill and they set off dragging their feet down the trail after their mohawked companion.

Lewis stood and stumbled at an angle to the box of beer and hauled it over to where Jill sat on the other side of the fire. She opened a can and handed it to the girl, then opened one for herself and raised it. To us, she said.

She sat beside Jill on the log and they drank can after can.

Don’t believe that nonsense about Cornelia, Lewis said. Goddamn people’re hell of a lot scarier than stories. I’ll keep you safe from it all.

You want to keep me safe?

Course I do.

Why?

Lewis slid from the log and lay in the warm dirt before the fire. She lifted her boot from where she lay and crushed an empty can and chucked it drunkenly to the pit. I figure I’d like to find out what kind of woman you grow up to be, she said.

I’ll be this size until I die.

You’re not goin to die. By the time you’re my age they’ll have a goddamn pill to help with that.

With dying?

Maybe it’ll even make you young again. We’ll just have a country full of immortal teenagers.

Jill crawled from the log and lay down beside Lewis. I do not want to die.

I won’t let you, Lewis said. I won’t let you stop callin, stop keepin in touch. And I won’t let you die. We’re goin to always know each other.

Jill made a sound and Lewis figured it was a laugh. We will do our best, Jill said.

Lewis rolled over onto her side and looked at the girl. She put a hand to her cheek and traced a thumb over the scars that mapped the girl’s face. Jill leaned in and touched her lips to Lewis’s chin. Lewis moved and brought their lips together. The clock in the rock face knocked out a rhythm and the two of them lay together close to the fire under their coats.

Lewis awoke in the dark. The fire pit smoldered under blackened cans and the wine bottle. The mantel clock chimed 5:00 a.m. The wax figures stood over her. From the trees came a moaning that then died away. Lewis leaned up on her elbows in the dirt and squinted at her hands by the glow of the embers. Red ants scaled her fingers. A fat one stung her and she flicked it away. The moaning started again and the trees swayed in shadow. Black nightbirds flew against them and the blacker mountains.

Goddamn it. Who’s there?

Lewis pushed herself up slowly to her feet and stood there undulating as if she were in a canoe. She reached for the revolver and unbuttoned the holster. The moaning grew louder and a rock flew out from the trees and missed her. She drew the revolver and aimed at the trees and fell over.

The moaning stopped. She waited. Nothing followed.

She heard the girl crying and looked around. Jill’s head was out from under the gray coat covering her and she shivered in the dirt. Ants roamed her face and struggled in her curls. Lewis holstered the revolver and leaned over her. She brushed the ants away and touched the girl on the shoulder and shook her awake.

The girl quit crying and sat up. Red welts had spread across her cheeks and lips. She blinked wearily and wiped her swollen mouth. What is this?

We dozed off on a goddamn anthill.

Jill said she was cold and did not feel good and asked if they could leave.

Lewis flashlit the way and they staggered down to the trailhead and found the Wagoneer. Keyed into the driver’s side door were the letters L E Z .

Lewis snaked down the mountain road, leaning forward and squeezing the wheel. She pulled over on the way and Jill vomited from the open passenger’s door into wildflowers growing from the pavement. Lewis vomited from the driver’s side.

Half an hour later they got to the pinewood cabin and Jill had fallen back asleep. Lewis parked and went around to the passenger’s door and opened it and hoisted the girl into her arms. She lumbered with her across the driveway and nearly tripped over the nose of the doe head she had buried there. Its worn face peered glassily up at her from between her boots, partly unearthed in the gravel. She went on and caught with one finger the door handle and carried the girl inside. The living room was dark and Lewis lowered Jill onto the couch. The girl stirred but did not wake. Lewis watched her sleep by the new light of dawn coming in the kitchen window.

Soon the girl woke and sat up and cried into her palms.

What’s wrong?

I want to go home.

I thought you wanted to stay with me.

Can I call my dad and have him come get me?

Lewis knelt before her. I thought you wanted to stay here.

The girl quit crying and dried her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. She tipped up her marked and scarred face and looked at Lewis and said in her bizarre way of speaking: Do you think we all victimize each other without even knowing it?

Goddamn it. I don’t know.

I kept hearing that clock last night and I thought about the old lady.

Cloris Waldrip?

She lost her husband. I think it would take another lifetime to get over someone that you had already spent a lifetime with. She never had enough time. Do you think it’s cruel to make yourself stay with someone for that long?

I don’t know, Jill. I don’t want you to go.

I think it’s cruel for me to stay with you on this mountain.

We can go somewhere else, Lewis said. Let’s go to Tokyo.

Jill swatted at nothing and placed her small hands on Lewis’s cheeks and squeezed her face and held it there. I want you to understand me, she said. You were my age when I was born. I’ll be your age in the year 2005. Things will be different then.

I know that.

Some people the years don’t weather them, but they have weathered you.

It’s the age difference. You think of me as a mother.

I guess I’ve lived a sheltered life. And I’m still young. I’ll be someone else in a few years’ time. I want to be someone else in a few years’ time.

I expect that’s only natural, Lewis said between the girl’s hands. But I don’t know what you want me to do. What do you want me to do?

My parents told me I was born with my face like this, the girl said. But I know what really happened. Everyone gets changed from the very beginning. We’re all changing each other all the time. You have concerns that are beyond my experience. I’m not desperate yet. I haven’t found desperation like you have. And I’m glad for that. But when I do find it, and I know someday that I will, I hope to have the decency to be afraid of what it will do to others.

Lewis took the girl’s hands from her face and held them by the wrists. Goddamn it, Jill. Your goddamn dad sure doesn’t give you enough credit.

Jill moved from the couch to the floor and wrapped her arms around Lewis’s waist. Lewis put her arms around the girl and smelled the top of her head and they held each other there until the sun was up.

Ido not allow that anyone can truly know another person through and through. I knew Mr. Waldrip better than anyone, but did you know that after my ordeal in the Bitterroot I discovered that he had been writing letters to a woman in Little Rock, Arkansas? Our will and testament had provided for our belongings and remaining assets to go to First Methodist, and when Mr. Waldrip and myself were declared dead in absentia, my dear friend Sara Mae Davis volunteered to take a hand in the great effort of sorting through it all. Not only that, but I understand she and her nephew were kind enough to lay a final resting place for our poor cat Trixie, under the crabapple tree in our backyard. As I had feared, Trixie did not survive our absence. I was told she was found atop the credenza. Anyhow, while Sara Mae was clearing out Mr. Waldrip’s desk in his study these letters from Arkansas turned up and once she had read them she decided to keep them. I will not put the Arkansas woman’s name down here. I see no reason to draw her out into the light for this, for I believe she is a married woman if she is still living as I write.