State of Nature: Book Three of The Park Service Trilogy (37 page)

He swallows and nods that he will.

“What about the rest of the books?” he asks. “I mean, what will you read?”

I shrug. “I’ve read most everything in there twice anyway. I think I’ll be happy to just read the river and the leaves.”

“You sure you won’t get bored?”

“Bored? I don’t know. If I do, maybe I’ll write something of my own. I’ve always liked poetry.”

He turns to set the reading slate inside the drone. Then he reaches under his seat and hands me my father’s tobacco tin.

“That’s as much as I could get,” he says, “but it’s full.”

“Thanks, Bill. I appreciate it. I want you to know that I’ll always remember the way you looked after me growing up. My mother told me you used to give her progress reports on me.”

Bill smiles and looks for a moment like he might cry.

“You were a good kid, Aubrey. And I’m just glad that your mother lived long enough to see you grow into a really great man.” Then he looks down and says, “I’ll miss you.”

I hand the tobacco tin to Jimmy, step up, and hug Bill goodbye. When he pulls away to look at me, his eyes are wet.

“Sure you don’t want me to check on you?” he asks.

“No,”—I shake my head—“we’re going to be just fine.”

“I believe you will,” he says, nodding. “I believe you will.”

I take my tobacco tin back from Jimmy and step aside so he can say his goodbye. He steps up and hugs Bill too.

“You look after this guy,” Bill tells him, nodding to me. “And make sure he looks after you.”

Jimmy smiles. “That’s the way it’s always been with us,” he says. “Ain’t no reason to change it up now.”

Bill bites his lower lip and bows his head. It appears for a moment like he might want to say something else, but then he turns and climbs into the drone, closes the door, and prepares the controls for takeoff. We step back to watch him leave. He looks out at us and salutes, but before I can even salute him back, he throttles forward and the drone races away in a flash. It lifts off just before the bend in the river and climbs into the late afternoon sky. I look up and watch him go, anticipating that he might circle around for one final farewell, but he flies straight up out of the valley and shrinks into all that blue sky until the drone is just a speck on the horizon. Then even that too is gone from our view.

We stand for a long time after, just looking up at nothing and thinking our own thoughts. Then Jimmy unzips his zipsuit, strips out of it, runs, and dives into the river. I laugh to myself and shake my head. You can take the boy out of the wilderness, I guess, but you can’t take the wilderness out of the boy. I carry my father’s tobacco tin to our oak tree on the hill.

In the evening we sit around our fire and watch the sparks rise into the darkening sky and eat fresh roasted trout with our fingers. We’ve got plenty enough meal bars to last for a long time, but I don’t think either of us has any taste left for them. When our fish are gone and our fingers licked clean, we lie back and look up as the stars come out one by one over the valley.

“You know what I’s thinkin’ today,” Jimmy says.

“No, what were you thinking?” I ask.

“I was thinkin’ that it’s almost my birthday.”

“Really? What day is it?”

“Hell, I dunno what day it is now,” he says. “But it’s the next full moon.”

I wonder how long it will be before I no longer have any idea what day or month or year it is. I won’t miss knowing.

“Well, what do you want for your birthday?” I ask.

“I already got ever-thin’ I could ever want for.”

“You must want something.”

“Well ... there is jus’ maybe one thing,” he says.

“You name it, and if it’s within my power to give it to you, you know it’s yours.”

There’s a long silence between us. The fire crackles, the river hisses as it slides by out there in the dark.

“You can say no if you dun’ wanna do it,” he finally says, “but I was thinkin’ maybe you could teach me to read.”

“Shit, Jimmy, I just gave away my reading slate to Bill.”

“I know it,” he says, “but I didn’t wanna read none of that stuff anyhow.”

“Then what did you want to read?”

“I wanna read those poems you said you might write.”

I can’t help but smile so wide my cheeks hurt.

“Okay, Jimmy. I’m going to write you a poem for your birthday, and then I’m going to teach you how to read it.”

“Now I really got ever-thin’ there is to want,” he says.

By the time the leaves turn, we have our little cabin on the hill roughed out, roofed in, and ready for the fall. We’ll need stronger shutters, and maybe more firewood, but our food shed that Jimmy built up between a pair of high branches in the oak tree is already filled with enough smoked fish and cured meat to see us through whatever winter the valley throws at us.

Late one afternoon sometime in October, I step out onto our porch and light my father’s pipe. I sit with it in the chair I carved myself, lean back, and enjoy the sweet taste of the tobacco and the good feeling that comes from another day’s hard work. A gentle breeze sweeps up the valley, and the first leaves fall from our oak tree. I watch them glide down and land in the river, twist and turn, and ride the rapids like golden fish tumbling toward the sea. My pipe smoke rises into the cool air. Almost everything in the world is as it should be.

After a while, the last of the sun dips out of sight and everything loses its shadow. The pines on the bluff across the valley stand stark and clear against the pink autumn sky. I watch as Jimmy appears from a distant grove of trees and walks across the wheat toward our cabin. It’s a long field, and he’s a long time coming. I can see his smile even before I see his eyes.

He stops at the field’s edge and stakes something into the ground. Then he comes on up, and I see his catch off rabbits.

“There’s some stew on the coals still.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll put these in the smoker and join you in a minute.”

When he comes out again, it’s nearly dark. He sits in his chair where he keeps it set up next to mine so that his good side faces me. He props the wooden bowl in his lap and goes straight to eating his stew. I puff my pipe and watch him.

“Trout were jumping today.”

“You catch any?” he asks, between bites.

“No, I didn’t even throw a line.”

He just nods and keeps eating.

As dusk drops like a curtain on the valley, I see a familiar shadow slink across the edge of the field. It stops at Jimmy’s stake, grabs the dead rabbit he left there, and turns to run away. But the string catches, and the rabbit jerks from the fox’s mouth. It turns back and sets to eating it where it lays, with one eye on the hill, watching us.

“You really think you’re going to tame that fox?” I ask.

“I can tame anythin’ that’s got a stomach,” he says. “It jus’ takes time, is all.”

“You mean like I’ve been taming you with my stew?”

“Exactly like that,” he says, laughing. Then he shows me his empty bowl. “’Cept you’re doin’ a better job of it so far.”

“Speaking of better jobs,” I say, “I wrote another poem.”

“You did? Where is it?”

“Beside your chair there.”

“Well, hold on. Let me go in and get the lamp.”

He goes inside with his empty bowl and comes out again with the lamp. He sits and takes up the piece of bark that has the poem scrawled on it, angles it toward the light, and reads.

Leaves will fall, cold will creep in
A circle of life that ends where it begins
It may take a thousand years and a thousand poems penned
But my hair will someday gray and my back will bend—
Then my shadow will join my body in the earth once again.

I know not the way, or even the when
Or who chooses that day we’re called away to ascend
But you bathed me in your bravery and forgave me my sins
You made a home in your heart for mine to live in—
And in return, my friend, this poem is my oath that a river of love will run through it until the very end. 

After he finishes, I see him read it again to himself. Then he sets the bark in his lap, leans his head back, and closes his eyes. Several minutes pass. I sit with my pipe half-raised to my mouth, waiting to hear what he thinks.

When he finally opens his eyes, he says,

“I love it.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” he replies. “I love it, and I love you.”

I lean back, puff my father’s pipe, and smile like I never knew I could. Now everything in the world is as it should be.

He came up out of the fog sometime in September of the year the State of Nature celebrated its diamond jubilee.

He was leading a horse. The horse’s hooves clacked on the rocky ground, and the wagon that the horse pulled squeaked on its axels. An old fox trotted along behind the wagon. The entire sad and solemn procession heaved, moaned, and tottered up the hill, appearing piece by piece from the fog as the two park rangers sat their hoverbikes watching.

“Should we call in a drone?” the ranger asked his partner.

“Let’s maybe see what they’re about first,” she replied.

When the wagon came up level to them, they eased their bikes forward and blocked the path.

“Where are you heading to, kid?”

The kid looked at the rangers, their bikes, and the crests on their bikes.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“We’re park rangers,” the male one replied. “And I asked you where you’re headed to, kid?”

The kid looked away and spit on the ground.

“I’m not a kid, and I’m heading wherever I please.”

The rangers looked at one another, dismounted their bikes, and approached him from either side with their hands on their weapons. The old fox came to the kid’s feet and sat there, looking from one ranger to the other, unsure what to do.

The kid reached down to pet him.

“Easy there, old boy.”

“What’s in the wagon?” the ranger asked.

“I don’t understand what’s going on here,” the kid said. “I’ve lived around these parts a long time. I’m just minding my own business and trying to get somewhere.”

“I asked you what’s in the wagon.”

When the kid didn’t answer him, the ranger removed his weapon from its holster, stepped past the kid and the horse to the wagon, pulled the blankets back, and looked down at the old man lying there on his furs. Then he came back around to join them again.

“Is that your grandfather back there, kid?

“No, he’s not my grandfather.”

The female ranger looked at him. She saw the goodness in his grieving eyes. She said, “You do know where you are, don’t you, young man? This is park property. Why don’t you let us escort you to one of the reservations?”

“No, thanks,” the kid said. “I’m on my way somewhere.”

“Did you cross that valley back there?” she asked, nodding the way they’d come up. “Because that’s a preserve, and you’re not supposed to be there either. I’m thinking maybe you don’t understand the trouble you’re in.”

The kid stood looking at her, but he didn’t say anything. Eventually, she shook her head and walked back to see the old man for herself. No sooner had she peeked into the wagon that she came back looking as if she’d seen a ghost.

“Did you see his face?” she asked her partner. “The burns? That’s Jimmy back there.”

“Jimmy who?” he asked.

“Didn’t you learn anything in school? Jimmy, as in Aubrey and Jimmy from the Revolution.” Then she turned her attention back to the kid. “You need to tell us where you’re bringing him, young man. And you better tell the truth or we’ll take you in.”

The kid sighed. “I’m honoring his last wishes.”

“And who were you to him?” she asked.

The kid glanced back.

“He was everything to me. I think he’d have said the same about me if you’d have asked him.”

“And how’d you come to be in the valley, then?”

“I’m sorry, but I don’t see how any of this is your business, ma’am. Now if you don’t mind, I’ve got to get on.”

The kid took up the horse’s lead and started forward with it to go around the bikes. He’d only taken a few steps when the male ranger got ahead of him and trained his weapon on the kid’s chest. The kid stopped, but the fox kept going and sank its teeth into the ranger’s calf. The ranger screamed and kicked it away from him, swung his weapon, and shot it dead.

The ranger stood with his weapon still pointed at the dead fox and looked down at the blood soaking through his zipsuit where he’d been bitten. Then he looked at his partner and said, “That’s an authorized use of force. You saw it.”

The kid looked at the fox and the smoking hole in its side. He walked over, knelt, and petted its face. Then he lifted it up and kissed it. He carried it to the wagon and laid it in next to the old man. He lifted the old man’s stiff arm around it, and then he covered them both with the blanket again.

The female ranger stepped up beside him.

“You’re Aubrey VanHouten, aren’t you?”

“That’s impossible,” her partner said.

She ignored him, saying to the kid, “I knew it was true.”

“Knew what was true?” her partner called out.

“You had the serum, didn’t you?” she asked, still ignoring her partner and addressing the kid. “The lessons said that you didn’t, but my father said that you did.”

“If I tell you, will you let us go on?”

“We’re not authorized—”

She silenced her partner by holding up her hand. She nodded to say that she would let them pass.

“This is Jimmy in the wagon. And that fox your partner just killed was his favorite and the last of its line.”

“And you’re Aubrey?” she asked.

“And I’m Aubrey,” he said.

She immediately looked embarrassed. She holstered her weapon and reached out her hand, saying, “I’m really sorry, sir. I hope you’ll forgive us.”

Aubrey nodded but ignored her offered hand. He left her standing there, walked up, and led the horse and the wagon around their hovering bikes without another word to them.

“Hey, sir,” she called after him. “One last question. If you had the serum, how come Jimmy didn’t?”