I went upstream past this dead monster and filled Mr. Waldrip’s boot. I did my best not to let my imagination wander to what other nasty things might be lying afoul in the water. While I sat sipping from Mr. Waldrip’s boot the light changed color on the mountains all around me. I was hungry and cold so I prayed and then set about building another fire for the night. I piled wood together much the same as I had done the night prior, only I gathered more of it and more dry tinder. I piled the makings near the creek. It was near dark when I sat down exhausted and took out Terry’s matchbook.
The wind was against me and howled wildly over the valley, and the wide sky darkened with clouds. I opened the matchbook to the last match and tore it carefully. I steadied my hand and positioned my back to the wind. I got close as I could to the tinder pile, then said a prayer and struck the match. The matchhead hissed and blackened but did not bring a flame.
Dark came but not before I spotted the silhouette of an animal I took to be a mountain lion prowling a far ridge of rock. Scared and uneasy, and nearly starved, I had my last caramel for supper. It threatened to rain, but the wind chased the clouds from the sky and uncovered the stars and moon. The dark was hardly dark anymore under the bare heavens, which shone down on the grassy fields of the valley, the silvery creek, the woods nearby.
I did not know what next to do. I worried my situation had grown too dire. But I knew come morning I would be compelled to do something, anything at all. The dead monstrosity was yet nearby, its black antlers moonlit and the twinkling water underneath like a bed of lovely gems.
I heard something move in the woods. I recalled the face I was now certain I had seen the night before. I thought of the mountain lion too. My Bible was in my purse and I moved it to the breast pocket of Terry’s coat right over my heart. But I was mighty tired, enough not to be too afraid of mysterious faces and mountain lions. There was not a thing to do but to offer up my prayers to God and succumb to exhaustion.
The pilot swung the helicopter low over gray slopes of scree high above the tree line. Lewis squinted against the crags of sunlit granite, upthrust from the depths of the mantle some eighty million years ago. She brought slowly to her lips a thermos of merlot.
Bloor, long legs folded childlike in the seat next to her, knees level to his chin, turned upon her his pale face. His voice squelched in her headset over the beat of the blades. Have you ever been to Macao?
Lewis shook her head.
An older man with clubbed fingers sat across from them. He watched the window. Bloor had introduced him as Cecil. Keep your eyes peeled, he said.
I left Jill with her grandmother and spent last winter in Macao, Bloor said, and he made a show of looking out the glass. Had to get away. Met a six-foot-three Pekinese woman named Chesapeake. They pick their own English names, you know. She picked Chesapeake. Her friends referred to her by a Chinese word that means ladder. You’re tall too, Ranger Lewis.
Cecil looked up. Keep your stupid eyes peeled.
Cecil’s a longtime rescue paramedic, Bloor said. Works even though he has COPD. He doesn’t like me very much.
These people we are lookin for, they are dead, Cecil said. He turned back to the window. Sun filled his eyes yet he did not squint.
Koojee, said Bloor.
They flew onward over intrusions of granite set in the earth like molars in a jaw, and they each of them searched the ground below, wearing now sunglasses as the day grew brighter. Wind shear drove the helicopter down and Lewis squeezed the thermos in her lap. The air smoothed and she drank. Bloor watched her behind yellow lenses and asked her if she considered herself an ethical person.
Lewis wiped her mouth and ran a tongue over wine-red teeth. She tightened the lid to the thermos. Not sure, she said.
Bloor brandished a finger white with chalk. I give a share of my time and skills for the wellbeing of others, so for the sake of universal balance I allow myself particular ethically selfish pleasures. Chesapeake was an ethically selfish pleasure.
Lewis smiled and unscrewed the lid to the thermos. She drank and rescrewed it.
What ethically selfish pleasures do you allow yourself, Ranger Lewis?
Goddamn, I’d have to think about that.
I hope you do.
Cecil put up a hand. Do you need me to peel them for you?
Thank you, Cecil, Bloor said.
The pilot circled two other mountains and passed over a bleak forest. Lewis kept her eyes to the land and blinked little. In the glass she could see Bloor turn his head to look at her. Twilight was already upon them when the pilot warned that they ought to turn back before they lost the light.
Goddamn it, Lewis said.
Cecil had not turned his head for a time. At long last he shuddered it around to them like some rickety piece of theater on a set of pulleys. It’s difficult to think anyone of any age could survive down there at all, he said, and he coughed on the plump ends of his fingers.
As the pilot began to fly them back toward the station, Bloor spoke about the depression of people without ambition.
These are the eighties, you know, he said. I’ve seen thirty-year-olds dressing like teenagers. I’ve always been ambitious. Do you enjoy your work out here, Ranger Lewis?
They passed the black edge of the mountain in the oncoming dark. Yes, she said.
My daughter will be eighteen the third of November. I’ll tell her about you, remind her that there are ambitious women out there.
Be quiet, Cecil said. You’re makin the pilot crazy.
One more thing, Cecil. Then you can wire my jaw shut if you want. Listen, Ranger Lewis. I apologize if this is too forward. Sometimes I’m too forward. Have dinner with me this evening? I’m renting a large lonely cabin and I’d appreciate the company. We can go over the case and discuss our options.
Lewis watched unsteadily the man’s face.
She drank a bottle of merlot at her kitchen sink and put on a clean uniform and then drove to a stately two-story cabin built of pine and painted clean white, stilted dark and alone in a far dead end overlooking the east valley. Down below in the foothills a little town glowed. No wind battled the trees and stars spun like rowels in the glassy firmament. Lewis parked the Wagoneer in the gravel driveway. She took up from the passenger’s seat a four-dollar bottle of merlot and picked off the price tag.
The front door of the white cabin opened. Bloor ducked under the transom and peered out at her. His thin black shadow emerged like an insect from a crack in a floor. He put up a hand and rolled his long fingers. Lewis climbed from the Wagoneer.
Without a word Bloor ushered her into the cabin. He closed the door and locked the dead bolt. He waved in a circle a chalked hand and asked her what she thought of the place.
Lewis surveyed the large, open room. A circular steel fireplace burned in the center and a length of dark picture windows lined a wall beyond which lay a stilted deck and a hot tub and a barbecue. Long white couches were angled around a glass coffee table where there sat a bottle of wine. The kitchen was lit up through an open archway and from there came a smell of cooking that recalled a deep basement.
It’s goddamn modern, Lewis said.
I thought so too, Bloor said. He took from her the bottle she had brought and her coat. Do you go everywhere in uniform, Ranger Lewis?
I expect I just got comfortable in it.
It’s a handsome uniform.
I’ve been by here before, Lewis said. It’s goddamn unusual to see a white cabin.
It’s owned by a homosexual man named Cherry. Good guy. You know him?
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