Yellowstone Memories (40 page)

Alicia choked back an unexpected sob, and Carlita seemed to realize her gaffe in a horrible instant.

“I’m sorry,” Carlita whispered, hugging her tight. “I didn’t mean it. Forgive me, amor.” Her voice swelled with tears.

Travelers streamed around them like water around a fallen log. Never stopping, only turning a curious head to glance.

“It’s okay.” Alicia looped an arm around Carlita’s shoulders and wiped her eyes with her free hand. “I know what you mean. I won’t be safe forever.” She dug for the now customary Kleenex in the pocket of her stonewashed jeans.

She walked toward the boarding gate, arm still around Carlita. “But I’m not scared of Miguel anymore. I think I know what I’m going to do.”

“What?” Carlita raised a wary eyebrow over tear-red eyes. “Move in with us? Good, because that’s the only way I’ll let you have any sleep at night. Otherwise I’ll be calling you every minute of the day and night, so help me.”

“I believe you.” Alicia laughed weakly. “But I’ve got another plan.”

“It better be good.” Carlita glared.

“I think I’m going to Montana.” Alicia fingered the business card in her flowered jean jacket pocket. “There’s a place that might be able to … well, help me.” She licked her dry lips, which Carlita insisted she paint coral pink.
A Burst of Color
, the Avon label read on the lipstick tube. Which is exactly what Carlita said she needed.

“Montana?” Carlita’s eyebrows shot up, and she didn’t bother to lower her voice. “Are you nuts?”

“Nah.” Alicia shrugged, embarrassed. She lifted a finger to her lips. “But keep it down, will you? I don’t want one of Miguel’s cohorts hearing me.” She scowled. “And so help me, if I ever meet Jorge again, I’ll kick him so hard he won’t get up for a week.”

“You and me both. So what’s with Montana?”

Alicia hesitated then reached under her strappy K-Mart purse and dug the business card from her pocket. She plopped it in Carlita’s hand. “It’s a ranch. A Christian place. Thomas’s sister helps run it, and he said they work with women who’ve been abused. And … so forth.” She turned away, too emotional to meet Carlita’s eyes. “I think maybe it could help me. I called her already, and … she seemed really nice. I think I’ll go.”

“How are you gonna pay for it?”

Alicia shrugged, picturing the little jar hidden under her living room carpet. Her precious life insurance policy. All she had to do now was cash it in, and she’d be good to go.

“I’ve got a little stash,” she mumbled, not daring to look at Carlita. “I’ll be okay. Maybe I’ll even have enough to start over again somewhere far from Miguel. Get a job in a different city.”

Carlita stayed silent a long time, reading the business card. Flipping it over and reading the back then flipping it over again.

Finally she stuck it back in Alicia’s hand. “You know what? I think you’re right.” She put an arm around Alicia’s shoulders and patted her. “On one condition.”

“What’s that?”

“That you accept visitors named Carlita and Trisha any time they want to see you.” She raised an eyebrow in warning. “Because believe me, we’ll take that place apart brick by brick if you don’t.”

Alicia laughed and nodded, tucking her arm through Carlita’s as they headed toward the sunlit gate.

To Mr. Kenji Miwa of Saitama, Japan,
and one of my great heroes of the faith.
Thank you for serving our Lord so faithfully all these years.

2012

T
his way, everybody. Hands on the rails, please, and watch your step.” Jersey Peterson’s hiking boots clomped down the wooden boardwalk over Yellowstone’s misty, muddy-colored water, which billowed sulfur-scented steam. “This water’s only two degrees below boiling—which means the bubbles don’t come from heat but from escaping gases in underground vents. Can anybody guess how many similar geothermal features we have in the park?”

Jersey leaned closer to the group to hear the answers. “Two?” She smiled at the kid, who stared back in a smirky grin. “Sorry. We’ve already seen six in the past half hour. And no, don’t … no. No gum on the railings. Could you pick that up, please?”

Brat Boy didn’t respond, shrugging his shoulders and snickering, and his parents didn’t seem to notice. Dad pecked away at his iPhone, and Mom chuckled with another woman over some shared joke.

Jersey peeled the label off her water bottle and used it like a napkin, scraping off the neon pink bubblegum and folding the wad into her pale green uniform pocket.

“Anybody else? How many hot springs and geysers?” Jersey asked. “And remember, the Upper Geyser Basin has more geothermal features than the entire Yellowstone Park or anywhere else in the world.” She pointed to a woman in the back. “A thousand? You’re pretty close. More than ten thousand. We don’t even know for sure how many.”

Three teens huddled in a bunch, giggling, whispering, and sharing an iPod bud. Heads together, not hearing a word Jersey said.

Oh no. “Sir?” Jersey called, louder this time. “With the camera? Please don’t lean between the railings—it’s dangerous. People have died here in Yellowstone’s hot springs. Not only are they full of acid but … sir? Sir!” She marched back through the group and faced him. “Please. Nikons don’t function well when dropped into scalding water. Believe me, I’ve seen enough people try it that I’m thinking of selling camera insurance.”

The others tittered as the guy snapped three more rapid-fire shots then slowly retracted his camera and torso. Coolly wiping his lens and avoiding her eyes as if she’d never spoken.

Argh. Did anybody listen anymore? Jersey walked back to the front of the group, trying not to think of the ignorant mom who’d wanted a picture of her child with a bear—so she set him in the middle of a field in grizzly territory with an open jar of honey. Jersey’s colleague Nelson had saved the child that time—storming through the field in his truck and hazing the approaching she-bear with rubber bullets. He’d given the mom a tongue-lashing and called the police and social services, and still Jersey had to hold herself from taking a punch at the woman across the ranger station table as she coolly lit up a cigarette, blowing smoke in Nelson’s face.

Or what about the Chinese tour bus that unloaded sixty sardine-packed hikers who made a collective trash pile to attract wild animals and then climbed on top of the bus to watch? You’d think the two bison who rocked the bus back and forth might have created some healthy fear, but the following day (after the group had been ordered to leave the park) Jersey picked up seven of them for slipping through boardwalk railings and onto thin snowdrifts covering boiling mud pits to take pictures. About to fall through the ice and cook themselves alive in front of other tourists—and destroying fragile mineral deposits in the process.

At the moment, Jersey wondered which would’ve been worse.

The plaid-wearing redneck who shot two mule deer and tried to exit the park with them stuffed inside his camper? Been there, done that. The drunk college students who left their campsite a mess of broken beer bottles, vomit, and toilet paper—and tried unsuccessfully to burn a broken metal lawn chair in their campfire? Yup. The French hiker who dug up ginseng roots and got caught when Nelson found his stupid “fresh, hours-old, ginseng roots from Yellowstone” post on the Internet? Mmm-hmm.

Jersey motioned the group ahead. “Everybody remembers Old Faithful, right? Well, even Old Faithful isn’t as precise as you think, and its timing has changed quite a bit in recent years. Any ideas what can make a shift that big?”

“Dinosaurs?” quipped the bubblegum boy in a sarcastic tone.

One of the teens poked his head up from the iPod. “Dinosaurs? Who saw a dinosaur?”

His sidekick, who sported the shortest shorts Jersey had ever seen, laughed and shrugged long, sleek hair over her shoulder. She popped a bubble, hand on her hip, sunlight glinting off fancy oversized sunglasses. “Can we hurry up?” she whined, checking her watch. “I’m starving. Who cares about this stuff?”

“What was the question again?” Bubblegum Kid’s dad asked with a hint of irritation. “Something about dinosaurs?” His cell phone rang a shrill and annoying jingle, and everybody turned while he proceeded to laugh over football stats with his buddy, so loudly that people across the geothermal pits on a different boardwalk turned to stare.

“No dinosaurs.” Jersey held back a sigh, speaking over a noisy criticism of the Packers’ defense. “It’s okay. I was just saying that Old Faithful’s accuracy is subject to earthquakes that affect rock layers—changing temperatures or causing more gases to escape.”

Teen Girl snapped another loud bubble. “I know somebody who’s got the same problem,” she said, elbowing her friend in the side. “Escaping gases.”

“Hey, no writing on the rails!” Jersey jumped forward. The same kid.
Again
. “Could I have some help, please, Mom?”

He jumped forward, scribbled on her hand in green ink, and then threw the marker cap into the mud pit. Grabbing for the other half of the marker to throw it in, too.

“No, no! Don’t do that!” Jersey searched for the brat’s parents, but they’d walked forward, leaning over the railings. “These are fragile environmental ecosystems, and when that plastic melts from acid and heat, it’s going to … wait, what are you doing?” She straightened up. “An X-ACTO knife?”

Jersey walked up the boardwalk and tapped the kid’s mother on the shoulder. “Sorry, could you take the knife from your son, please? No knives.”

“What?” Brat Boy’s curvy mom finally looked up from her lengthy, lowered-voice conversation with the miniskirted bottle blond. Appraising Jersey’s shapeless, light green park ranger’s uniform and brimmed hat with a nose scrunch of open distain. “What’s he done now?”

“The knife.” Jersey tried to pull him away from the rail, where he’d begun to carve in silent defiance. “Please.”

His mom pushed herself off the railing and took a few steps toward him. She sighed and held out her palm, showing the undersides of long, red acrylic nails and a little too much cleavage. “Give it, Parker. Now.”

“Naw. I don’t wanna.” He continued carving and swiping at Jersey with the other hand.

“I swear this boy’s gonna wear me out. Doesn’t do a thing I say.” Mom turned back to her blond buddy, apparently giving up the chase. “It’s the age, I guess. That’s what everybody says. His teacher wants to put him on Ritalin—thinks he’s got ADHD or something fancy like that—but I think he’s upset by new school rules. They’ve gotta wear uniforms, which, if you ask me, is borderline child abuse.”

Jersey reached for her walkie-talkie to call for another ranger’s help when something hit her square in the forehead. Something sharp, like tiny folded paper.

The folded wad of gum wrappers fell to the boardwalk, slipping between two slats and into the bubbling mud pit. Bobbing away on a roiling tide.

The teen girl with the short shorts buried her head in her friend’s arm, shoulders shaking with silent laughter.

A headache pulsed in Jersey’s head as she ended the tour and waved good-bye, trying to keep her smile pleasant. After all, park rangering had been a dream come true—the first thing in Jersey’s life that truly clicked. Once she’d inhaled Yellowstone’s dewy morning air, tinged with earth and pine and lupine sweetness, she’d never regretted it. Yellowstone lay in the rugged heart of the Rockies like an iridescent jewel: shimmering in snows and showers and vaulting peaks and a shocking froth of flowers.

A far cry from the smoggy Chicago skyscrapers of Jersey’s past.

But lately people didn’t seem to … notice. To care. Traipsing over thousand-year-old petrified wood without a glance and littering it with empty Aquafina water bottles and Diet Coke cans.

Maybe she was too hard on them. Jersey lifted her head to the pines, catching a bit of breeze from the mountains against her sweaty face. Not so long ago she’d been clueless, too—sitting around a campfire in a sort of wide-eyed wonder, like gazing at her first love.

Only Yellowstone didn’t break hearts like he did. Leaving her to pick up the pieces and fend for herself.

Jersey pushed open the door to the ranger’s station, catching a glimpse of herself in the glass: pale green hat sporting the iconic National Park Service patch, messy red-gold hair pulled back in a knot, badges glinting. Blue eyes starting to show the lines of thirty-three years, the last six of which she’d spent in the Wyoming sun and harsh winter wind.

“Morning.” Nelson breezed past her on his way out, his brown ponytail tucked under his hat. A cup of coffee steaming in one hand. “You doing the Old Faithful tour after this? Heard there’s a big group.”

“Right after lunch.” Jersey nodded. “But first I’ve got to do that funding report for Don. He’ll have my head if it’s not finished this week. Not that I have anything good to say in it anyway, with all our funding down.” She let out a sigh. “We’re all gonna have to pan for gold or something.”

“Gold. Right.” Nelson chuckled. “Well, good luck with any reports. Computer’s down again this morning.”

“Again? Are you kidding?”

“Sorry. Preet from the tech place is on vacation until next week.”