Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

From what I can tell Mr. Waldrip must have come across her advertisement in the classifieds in the back of a Little Rock newspaper after having gone there to look at some cattle in 1965. He would have been fifty-three then. I know some young people have pen pals in the Internet these days. Back then we used paper. Some of you may not believe me, but I tell you the letters did not upset me. I believe I have read them all and I cannot be certain if they ever did meet in person or not. That does not matter much to me. But there it was. Mr. Waldrip wrote to another woman and by the way she wrote him back it would appear that he had great affection for her. He would have been mighty embarrassed to know Sara Mae had read them.

At the heart of it I suppose I knew Mr. Waldrip well enough to know that he was the kindest, most decent man I could ever have hoped to marry. I love him and miss him very much. He was a powerful sweet man and this woman must have done something to earn these affections from him and I hold no ill will for her.

I understand now that most of us are much more complicated people than we care to let on. We all have our separate lives and I do not allow that there is a person alive out there who does not have at least one secret they will endeavor to take with them to the grave. I imagine most everyone has at least one locked door in their heart to which they alone keep the key. Perhaps we are all our own lonely bedrooms. And as thoroughly as I have bared myself in this account, I know there are some things I will just have to keep to myself.

The day after the hut burned down I poked around through the ashes and turned up the old olive can to boil water in. I took an hour or so and built up the makings for a fire and set it with embers dug up from the debris. I boiled water from the creek and gave it to the man. He drank it and did not speak. He had his back to a boulder under a big tree. Most of the time he just watched the sky.

We spent two nights out in the open like that. Thank goodness it did not rain. We were both mighty hungry and I did not sleep much at all on account of the cold and I had to be vigilant about the fire so that it would not go out.

The man’s leg worsened. It changed colors and gave off an odor like that of Catherine Drewer’s horrible mushroom casseroles. Gracious, that woman never could discern sugar from salt or etiquette from honesty. In time it also seemed she could not tell perfume from cat urine.

The man’s traps and snares were set a considerable distance away and I did not dare find them on my own, being disguised as they were, and being that I had not heard the cry of any poor critter, I imagined they were empty anyway. On the second day I endeavored to catch some fish for us. His tackle box had burnt up in the fire, so I fastened the spey blade of his knife to the end of a branch and set about using it for a spear. The man kept watch over me from under his tree, out of the sun. I jabbed at fish after fish in the creek for a good couple of hours and believe it or not at last I stuck a slow and backwards-looking mudfish plumb through the middle and flung it from the water! I was mighty proud of myself. I cleaned and cooked that mudfish over the fire. The innards hissed and burned up in a black smoke. We had our supper in the late afternoon. My friend did not eat much. We also had some cattails.

Often in the night when he thought I was asleep I would hear him groan and sit up and drag himself out behind the big boulder to relieve himself. On the second night I heard him trying to bawl quietly. It is no common sound to hear a man bawl to himself in the dark when he imagines no one can hear him. It is an awful sound of misery and I do not rightly know what to compare it with. I did not let on that I was awake or get up to comfort him. I suppose I knew it would embarrass him too greatly and make matters worse than they already were.

On the third day after the fire, on what I believe would be the 8th of November, the man started a fever. He glowed all over with sweat and he did not speak and often partly shut his eyes. He had a bad pond-water color to his face and his lips split and bled. I knew that I had to do something or he was going to meet the end in no time at all.

That sundown, as purple snow blew from the tallest peak in the range, I got it into my mind that I would get him down that mountain myself and get him to a doctor. I did not know how I was going to do it yet, but I had decided that would not stop me. I went to him before dark while his eyes were shut and whispered in his ear: I am going to get you to safety, Garland.

Lewis goose-stepped over hedges and a low bulwark of schist out to the forest behind her pinewood cabin. For ballast she swung waistlevel a heavy bottle of merlot and murmured angrily to herself about a mousy-voiced girl who had phoned into Ask Dr. Howe How about dreams she had been having of her grandfather’s knees. Her mouth was darkly smeared like a jester’s and her hair was tangled under a sideways campaign hat. She soon came to an overlook of granite above the gray wilderness and she sat there and watched the night fall. When it was dark and she had finished the bottle she chucked it off the mountain and could not see where it broke.

She felt her coat for a flashlight, but she must have left it back at the cabin. She sat in the dark and pouted and whimpered, and she lay back on the granite slab and figured she would never again hear from Jill Bloor. She recalled the way Jill had looked getting in her father’s black truck the previous afternoon when he had picked her up in front of the pinewood cabin. Bloor had not gotten out. The last thing Lewis saw of the girl was the cigarette smoke blowing out the passenger’s window as they drove off.

She sat up now and started back for the cabin. Clouds covered the moon. Small and dim through the trees she could just make out the deck light she had left on. She had not taken but a couple of steps when there sounded a sourceless and low tone and she stopped. It recalled to her an old oscillating belt fan that had sat on her father’s desk for years issuing a dissonance only he could tolerate.

The tone stopped all at once and the forest was silent again and then came the moaning she had heard before, plaintive and sexual. To her left there was the shuffling of feet. Lewis twitched and unbuttoned the holster she wore and drew the revolver and braced her back to a tree. She raised the revolver and shook it outheld.

Who’s there?

There was no answer and something neared.

Who’s there, goddamn it? I am a Forest Ranger. I’m armed.

No answer.

If you’re anybody but goddamn Cloris Waldrip, you step back and go on.

The body in the trees quickened its pace and Lewis lined up the front sight with a dark place between two pines. A tiny globe glinted there like a lone eye. She began to sob in a manner she had not since she was a child.

Goddamn it, get it over with and have me, you goddamn goofball.

From the trees the dark figure came bounding. Lewis bellowed the Lord’s name in vain and fired all five rounds in the cylinder.

The forest was darkest after the muzzle flash. Her ears buzzed.

She sat down deaf and blind and caught her breath in the powder smoke. She lowered the revolver. She sat a minute and pushed herself from the ground and steadied herself by the bough of a pine. The clouds had blown off and the moon stuck in the fog and the powder smoke.

Lewis wiped her eyes with a sleeve and said hello to the dark place.

No answer.

When she flipped open the cylinder it burned her thumb. She jammed the ejector with her palm and let the casings fall over her boots. She reached around and punched free from her belt five cartridges and loaded them and closed the wheel against her trouser leg. She crept forward and let her eyes adjust to the moonlight. She watched the ground.