Dave Eggers - Heroes of the Frontier

“Sorry,” Josie said.

Stan nodded gravely, as if Josie had said My child is demented and incurable . He got out the owner’s manual and went through the functions of the RV with the seriousness of someone explaining the dismantling of a bomb. There was the oven, the speedometer, odometer, bathroom, cleanout, electrical hookup, various levers and cushions and hidden compartments.

“You’ve operated a recreational vehicle before,” he said, as if there could be no other answer.

“Of course. Many times,” Josie said. “And I used to drive a bus.”

She’d never done either, but sensed that Stan took the Chateau seriously but not so much Josie. She had to instill in him some confidence that she wouldn’t drive the Chateau off a cliff. He led her around the vehicle, noting the pre-existing damage on a clipboard, and as he did, Josie saw a boy of about six in the bay window of Stan’s home, staring out at them. The room where he stood seemed to be entirely white — white walls, white wall-to-wall carpet, a white lamp on a white table. Soon a grandmotherly woman, likely Stan’s wife, arrived behind the boy, put her hands on his shoulders, turned him around and guided him back into the depths of the house.

Josie expected, after the inspection, that she and the kids would be invited into the home, but they were not.

“See you in three weeks,” Stan said, for that was the duration they’d agreed on. Josie thought the trip might be extended, for a month or indefinitely, and figured she’d call Stan when that became clearer.

“Okay,” Josie said, and got into the driver’s seat. She pulled the long arm, extending from the steering wheel like an antler, down to Reverse, unable to shake the sense that the plan had been to invite her and the kids inside, but something had convinced Stan to keep them away from his pristine white house and grandson.

“Drive safe now,” he said, waving his banana hands.

—

They had three days to kill before Sam was back from one of her tours. She was taking a group of French executives into the woods to look at birds and bears, and wouldn’t be back till Sunday. Josie planned to spend a day or two in Anchorage, but when she drove through the city, the Chateau creaking and shuddering, she saw a street fair, and thousands of people in bright tanktops and sandals, and she wanted to flee. They left the metropolis, going south, and soon encountered signs for an animal park of some kind. Most popular attraction in Alaska was the claim. Just when Josie was sure they would pass the attraction without Ana being made aware, Paul spoke.

“Animal park,” he said to Ana.

His ability to read had greatly complicated their family.

The kids wanted badly to go, and Josie wanted badly to speed past the attraction, but the signs had mentioned bears and bison and moose, and the idea that they could cross all these mammals from their list in the first few hours held some appeal.

They pulled over.

“You need your jacket,” Paul said to Ana, who was already at the Chateau door. Paul held it out to her like a butler would. “Hold your sleeves so they don’t bunch,” he said. Ana held her shirt-sleeves and slipped her arms into the jacket. Josie watched all this, feeling superfluous.

Inside a log-cabin office, Josie paid a criminal amount, sixty-six dollars for the three of them. There were usually guides and carts that would drive guests around the premises, but everyone was gone or vacationing, so Josie and the kids were alone in what seemed to be a zoo after an apocalypse. She thought of the Iraqi zoo after the coalition’s bombings, the lions and cheetahs roaming free but starving, looking for cats and dogs to eat, and finding neither.

This was not so bad. But it was sad like any zoo is sad, a place where no one really wants to be. The humans feel guilty about being there at all, crushed by thoughts of capture and captivity and bad food and drugs and fences. And the animals barely move. They saw a pair of moose, and their new calf, none of them stirring. They saw a single sleeping bison, its coat threadbare, its eyes half-open and furious. They saw an antelope, spindly and stupid; it walked a few feet before stopping to look forlornly into the grey mountains beyond. Its eyes said, Take me, Lord. I am now broken .

They returned to the log cabin for refreshments. “Check it out,” a tour guide said to Josie’s kids as they drank lemonade. He pointed to a mountain range nearby, where, he said, there was a rare thing: a small group of bighorn sheep, cutting a horizontal line across the ridge, east to west. “Use the binoculars,” he said, and Paul and Ana raced to a stationary set, anchored to the deck.

“I see them,” Paul said. As Paul ceded the binoculars to Ana, Josie squinted into the distance, finding the group, a smattering of vague white dots against the mountainside. It was a baffling thing, seeing twelve or fifteen animals standing comfortably on what seemed to be a clean vertical wall. Josie took a turn at the binoculars, found the sheep and in the sky saw a dark shadow slashing across their path. She assumed it was a hawk of some kind, so she swung the binoculars around but found nothing. She returned to the sheep, finding one in particular that seemed to be looking right back at her. The sheep looked very pleased with its life, hadn’t a care in the world, even though it was standing on a quarter-inch of shelf, two thousand feet up. Josie adjusted the focus a bit, now seeing the sheep even more clearly, and as she locked into a wonderfully clear view of the animal, two things happened in rapid succession.

First, the clouds above the sheep seemed to break, parting as if to allow a narrow ray of godlight to shine on the animal’s downy head. Josie could see the animal’s bright grey eyes, its feathery cotton-white hair, and as Josie was staring at the sheep, and the sheep at Josie, as it was showing Josie what unadulterated bliss was, revealing the secrets of its uncomplicated life high above everything — as this was happening, a dark shape entered Josie’s view. A dark wing. This was a predatory bird, enormous, its wingspan wide and opaque like a black umbrella. And then the bird dropped down and its talons took the sheep by the shoulders, lifted it just a few inches up and away from the cliff, and released it. The sheep fell from view. Josie stood, and with her naked eyes watched the sheep as it descended from the mountain, oblivious and unstruggling, like a ragdoll steadily falling to an unseeable place of rest.

“Eagle,” the guide said, then whistled appreciatively. “Wonderful, wonderful.” He explained that this was a common but rarely seen method eagles used to kill large prey: an eagle would lift and drop an animal from great heights, allowing the prey to fall a few hundred feet to its death on the rocks below, breaking every bone. Then the eagle would sail down, grab the dead animal in whole or in pieces, and bring its flesh back to its children for consumption. “Why did you want us to see that?” Josie asked the guide, knowing it would haunt her thoughts, would scar her children, but the guide was gone.

“What happened, Mama?” Ana asked. Paul had heard and understood the guide’s narration, and Josie was sorry he knew the treachery of every level of the animal world, but was grateful that Ana was free, for now, from such knowledge.

“Nothing,” Josie said. “Let’s go.”

—

It was best, she told the kids, to get out of the Anchorage area, to really leave, to strike out and make their own path. So they stopped at a grocery store and loaded up. The store was twenty acres, it did not end; it sold stereos, lawn furniture, wigs, guns, gasoline. It was full of truckers, some large families, some people who seemed of Native blood, some weathered Caucasians, everyone looking very tired. Josie bought enough groceries for a week, stored them as best she could in the Chateau’s particle-board cabinets, and left.