Rye Curtis - Kingdomtide

I mean to tell you I maneuvered that little raft with all the strength I could muster. Suddenly I was not exhausted. My arthritis was gone. I have heard stories of women who perform incredible feats of strength beyond their abilities to protect their children. Not to suggest that I took the man for a son, but I had grown mighty fond of him. The physician here at River Bend Assisted Living, a kind and fastidious Oriental Indian man by the name of Dr. Laghari, has told me that I was using my adrenal glands in overtime. So, bless you, I was able to get us angled just right, and gritting my teeth, I sent us careening into the riverbank.

The pitiful little raft ran aground and I dug my heels in and with a last gift of strength I heaved the man up onto the bank of mud and rock and collapsed beside him. We lay there for a time shivering and soaked through, letting the warm sun dry us. We did not speak.

Dark was soon to be upon us, and I urged myself to get up. I set about building a fire. My hands shook so much it looked like I was endeavoring to play some difficult music on a make-believe piano. I got the fire going with the last fire-starter stick we had and the flip lighter. The night settled in cold and I cuddled up close by the man. His fever put out heat like a stove.

Morning came and I found my friend upright with his back to a pine and his legs stretched out. Poor dear, he had messed himself in the night and his blue jeans were black. I pretended not to notice. He was awake and his eyes were on the mountains.

I bade him good morning and sat up. How are you feeling? I asked him.

Better, he said.

Oh my, that is wonderful, I said. And I got up and started for the riverbank. I told him I would boil some cattails for our breakfast and have our trusty vessel fixed in no time. We should be sailing out of this place by the afternoon, I said. I will have you to a doctor quicker than chain lightning with a tailwind.

I’m not going, he said.

Stop being silly. We must get you to a doctor.

I don’t want one, he said.

I told him that was foolishness.

I can’t go to a hospital.

Why not? I said.

I’ll be all right, he said.

Now, look, you are badly hurt, I told him. You require a doctor.

He looked ahead to the river. I can’t go to a hospital, he said. I’m wanted by the FBI.

I did not say a word for what seemed like a good long while. Finally, being that no conversation I had ever had before had prepared me for this one, I asked him a silly question. I asked him if he was a fugitive.

He said: I’d just like you to know I didn’t do what they say I did.

What are you accused of having done?

They say I kidnapped a ten-year-old girl.

What makes them say a silly thing like that?

A misunderstanding, he said.

What misunderstanding?

He looked to sink some into the dirt under that pine. I fell in love with a younger girl, he said. The police got involved. I wasn’t charged with anything, but they know about it. After that I was staying in a house down the street from where this other girl was supposed to have disappeared. I can’t understand why they’d think I did it other than that. I woke up one morning and a drawing of my face was on the news, but they didn’t know my name or who I was. I still don’t know how my face got there.

I told him that I did not understand, then I asked him how old was the girl he had fallen in love with.

Twelve years old, he said, and gripped his thigh. I’d never hurt anybody, he said.

Again I did not have word one to say for some time. I recall folding my muddy hands in my lap and watching the water run in the river. What did you do to her?

Who?

The twelve-year-old girl.

I didn’t do anything to her, he said. I met her at the mall. I worked at the movie theater in there. She’d come in, see a movie, and talk to me. We’d go to the food court and get Chinese food.

Did you touch her?

What do you mean?

Did you touch her inappropriately?

One day we were in a movie and we kissed. We started doing that. We held each other and kissed and that’s all we ever did. I only ever saw her at the movie theater. I loved her, I’d never have hurt her.

I was quiet again for a spell. I thought back now to what I had seen of this man. The elastic undergarment bands he had worn around his wrists and the women’s undergarment I had found in his coat pocket. The old key that looked like it had gone to an old padlock. The glittery stockings and pink shirt I was wearing, which he had given me. Where had they come from? My heart was jumping like a loosed bird dog. I realized I had backed away from him.

Finally I said: Why would you want to do that with a twelve-year-old girl?

He exhaled and slumped a little in pain. I don’t see myself when I look at people my age, he said. They look older. I think, that person can’t be my age.

I told him again that I did not understand.

I’m not attracted to them, he said. It’s hard when you’re different inside than what you are on the outside. People don’t accept someone when they’re not what they’re supposed to be.

We will go to the doctor and then we will go to the police station and sort all this out. You do not have to be out here if you are innocent.

Yes I do, the man said. Innocent or not.

I said to him, Now, listen, Garland—

My name’s not Garland.

Tell me the truth, please. I would like to know, and be honest, for whatever God may or may not be anymore, and I do not know, whatever He is He is telling you to be honest right this minute. Did you take that little girl?

No, the man said. I did not.

I watched him for a spell.

He said: You want to know why I’m here in this place, like this? I’m out here because I can’t help the way I am or what I like. I don’t think I’m very different from anybody else that way.

He sat there shrunken against that pine glistening white as stone. The flesh on his leg had grown porous and was welted with colorful polyps. He trembled something terrible and would not look me in the eyes. I was not sure what to think. But I mean to tell you I have hardly ever experienced more compassion for someone in all my now ninety-two years on this earth. I do not doubt but that many of you will hold that I am an amoral old witch to have compassion for a man like that. However most of you have not lived past the end of your life to claw your way back to a world where its inhabitants and all the things which they have created seem small and ridiculous and beyond concern or consequence. Without you having lived through something like that, I do not believe you will ever understand. I do not believe that I can describe it. What I will put down here is that I have found that morality is not the anchor of goodness, and that a person is too many things to be the one thing that we all want them to be for our convenience. Whatever else this man was, he was right about that.

I took his filthy hand in mine and held it. He turned and I imagine that he saw something in my face which comforted him for he squeezed my hand and let out a good long sigh.

I told him that I would go and pull up some cattails and get water to boil before we set out again, because whatever he had done or had not done I was not going to leave him there. He shut his eyes and put his head back to the pine.

I had gone upriver to fill the tin in some calm water. I was hoping to catch some minnows and tadpoles with it too. A cool breeze was blowing. It almost sounded like it did back in Texas. Gracious, did it sound good! I shut my eyes and I saw the rippling plains of yellow grass and all the country roads smoking up with dust and I saw our little house and the water tower above turning shade around it like an enormous gnomon, measuring out the days until that first Sunday morning of that strange and terrible season of Kingdomtide when I would board a little airplane in Missoula and fall out of the clear blue sky into the Bitterroot Mountains.