The Park Service 01: The Park Service

by Ryan Winfield

  “He only took it ’cause he likes ya,” she says. “He likes ya and maybe he jealous some, too.”

  “Jimmy?” I ask. “Jealous of me?”

  She nods. “He jealous when I care for you while you’s sick. There’s time in a boy’s life when he becomes a man, to become this man he must let his mother go. I’ve had to push my son away more than it feels good to push … done it for his own sake and that’s been hard for me, see? When Jimmy brought ya to us, you’s in bad shape. Boy, you’s bad off. I wasn’t sure ya’d make it. My time was all yers, see?

  I nod, understanding. I want to tell her how much it meant to wake and hear her humming, to feel her arms protecting me in that cave. I want to tell her that I never had a mother for real and that she’s as close a thing to it as I can imagine.

  “Thank you,” is all I say.

  She smiles and puts her arm around me as if she’d heard all my thoughts anyway in just those two words.

  “Pipe was yer father’s?” she asks, after a long pause.

  I look at it and nod.

  “Ya know,” she says, taking it from my hand and looking at its carving in the fading light, “butterflies are spirit symbols. Many say butterflies represent the change, the stages of a life.”

  “Like the chrysalis breaking open and taking flight.”

  “The chrysalis?”

  “You know, the cocoon.”

  “Yes, yes. The second egg. But even more than that, see? The rebirth. Caterpillar dun’ become butterfly—caterpillar die so butterfly can be. A new thing. We all must let ourselves die to be what we will be. But we cling to what we know.”

  “Is that why Jimmy clings to you?”

  “Yes. And you’s too now. But there’ll be time soon when you’s must be strong, Aubrey. You’s a special boy.”

  “People keep telling me that, but I don’t see why.”

  “That’s ’cause you’s still a boy. A special one, but still a boy. Trust the heart, child. Always listen and trust. The answer is inside, since the beginning of all time. The butterfly waits.”

  When she finishes talking, she squeezes me close, and for a moment, one lingering sweet moment, the world is clear to me, and perfect, and I feel safe and wanting for nothing except to sit here beside her forever in the twilight. Then she releases me and walks back to camp, leaving me alone on our log. A black moth flits by and lands briefly where she sat, and then it too takes flight. I sit looking at my father’s pipe, trying to recapture the moment, trying to absorb the meaning of what she said. But all I feel is the summer warmth leaching from the fall air.

  I sit until I hear the call to supper.

  CHAPTER 15

  The Slaughter

  “Whale!”

  The cry comes echoing up the cove.

  “Whale!”

  The camp comes alive. Tents fly open, waking faces blink into the morning sun. The men dash to the cave and drag forth the boats. The women whirl around camp collecting supplies, thrusting things into pouches and draping the pouches over the men’s necks. Jimmy jumps from our tent and races to the high cliffs and disappears into a crack, reappearing moments later carrying an armful of lethal-looking harpoons, their barbed-antler tips wrapped in blubber-soaked skins.

  I follow him to the water’s edge and watch as he loads the harpoons onto the waiting boats.

  “Can I come?”

  Jimmy ignores me, boarding the last boat as it shoves off. “Watch from up there,” he calls, pointing to the bluff as they row away from me. “It’s my first time at the harpoon.”

  I clamber up the path and by the time I get to the bluff, the men are rowing clear of the cove and out to sea. I shade my eyes and look in the direction they’re heading and catch sight of their goal a hundred meters offshore.

  Massive gray crescents rising from the still water, barnacle-crusted and splotchy, spouting great plumes of mist and rolling before disappearing beneath the splash of their gigantic flukes. The water stills, the mist fades, the boats advance. They surface again farther off, at least a dozen gray whales all moving south along the shelf just past the reefs, where the deep water looks black in the dawn light. Big whales, small whales, mothers leading young—they rise and roll and splash, the loaded boats rowing toward them like slowly approaching arrows launched from the cove. I run along the bluff to keep them in my sight.

  Jimmy’s boat reaches the pod first, intercepting a large cow and cutting her off from her calf. She’s fifteen meters long if she’s a foot, and half again as round. Her huge flippers slap at the water as she spins, and then sensing the boat behind her, she dives and smacks her huge fluke, showering the men with spray. They shake themselves dry and row on.

  Jimmy hoists up a harpoon that’s twice as long as he is tall and carries it to the front of the boat. His father ties a coil of rope to the harpoon, the other end to the boat. Then he slaps Jimmy on the back to let him know he’s ready. Jimmy climbs onto the bow and balances there, holding the harpoon.

  He looks magnificent!

  Standing proud at the very tip of the boat, long and lean, harpoon clutched in his hand, he has the look of some wood-carved Viking ship warrior I might have dreamed about seeing.

  The whale surfaces not far away. Jimmy points, the men dip their oars faster. The boat advances, the others following behind, and they encircle the whale and turn her out, cutting her completely off from the pod.

  She rolls and slaps her fluke and rolls again.

  Jimmy lifts the harpoon above his head, and as the boat closes on the whale, he steps onto one leg and crouches, knee-bent and ready, as taut as the string on his spear-gun bow.

  And then he leaps—

  He leaps high into the air, out over the sea, and he hovers there a moment, suspended, harpoon in hand, looking down upon the whale, and then he falls like lightning onto its back and drives the harpoon home with all his weight.

  He releases the harpoon and dives free of the speared and angry animal and swims toward the boats. The whale hits the end of the line, jerking the boat around and towing it behind her as she runs. She blows and her plume is pink with blood.

  I feel sick watching the slaughter, and now I’m glad they didn’t let me on the boat. I remember these gray whales from educationals and I know we nearly hunted them extinct. And here they are back in force, and we’re doing it all again.

  Jimmy climbs aboard a trailing boat, hefts another harpoon and steps again into the bow. The rowers dip their oars, dip and pull and dip again, passing the tethered boat and chasing down the whale. Jimmy leaps again, and again he drives the harpoon home, the whale now tethered from two sides and Jimmy being flung wildly above the water, clinging to one of the ropes, as the angry whale thrashes and turns. The third boat approaches and another man leaps with another harpoon and now there are three taut lines and three tugging boats and the whale rolls and slaps its fluke and the water turns red all around it.

  A wind comes up, rifling across the water, hitting the bluff and kicking sand into my eyes. I look away and see the other whales escaping farther down the coast, the calf bringing up the rear, either not knowing or knowing and having abandoned its captured mother to her fate.

  Then I see the ship.

  It comes cutting through the black water like an enormous gray mechanical whale hewn of carbon fiber angles and molded steel. It moves fast and silent. The hull rises sleek and tall, and if the ship were closer to shore, the alien wind meters and radar dishes turning slowly from its riggings would be eye level with me where I lie on the edge of the bluff.

  I open my mouth to scream, to warn the men about the approaching ship, but stop when I notice the emblem displayed on its side—the green interlocking Foundation Valknut.

  Feeling sudden relief, I sigh—it must be a research vessel.

  My scream comes when the slots slide open and the guns push out. I scream loud and long and useless into the wind as the ship barrels down on the men tethered to their catch. It’s nearly on top of them whe
n they see it.

  And then it fires.

  The cannons cut like thunder over the water, and several men explode into red mist and rain down on the already bloody sea. The sun darkens momentarily, brightens again as drones go racing by overhead. Helpless, I watch as the men scramble to make an escape. The ropes cut, the oars turned out—too late, the big cannons fire, this time blasting an entire boat to pieces and blasting Jimmy’s dad to pieces with it. Another boat turns over, flipped by the men now hiding beneath it, just like Jimmy and I did that day the drones flew overhead.

  “No!” I shout. “Swim! Get away!”

  A shell pierces the upturned hull, detonating in a bloody blast of splintered wood. Men dive from the remaining boats and swim for their lives toward shore. The loud rat-a-tat-tat of machine guns sawing them to pieces, water rising in showers like tracers behind the slugs.

  My heart hammers in my chest.

  I’m soaked through with sudden sweat.

  And I scream again, but if any sound comes I can’t hear it for the ringing in my ears.

  Then the ship stops firing and comes about and floats still, its guns swinging in their turrets, slow over the bloody water—looking, waiting, looking.

  A splash there.

  The gun moves, sights itself, fires.

  The water is calm again except for the slow rolling of quiet waves glowing red with blood where the sun shines through.

  I lie flat against the bluff and hold my breath.

  The ships stands off for minutes and the minutes seem like hours. Waves lap against its side at the waterline, bumping flesh and body parts and blubber wooden-like against its hull.

  Still I hold my breath.

  The ship turns, and as if powered by the same silent force of gravity that moves the tides, it glides swift and sure back the way it came and disappears down the coastline out of sight.

  I gasp out my breath—

  And the long scream of horror that it held.

  CHAPTER 16

  Horror in the Cove

  I race down the bluff to the water’s edge.

  By the time I arrive, pieces of wood and parts of bodies are already washing ashore. I wade into the gory surf and sift through the floating debris, desperate to find Jimmy. A corpse that looks like Jimmy’s floats up beside me, face down. I turn it over, and his father’s head lolls on his half-severed neck, his staring eyes milky and lifeless, glazed with death. The bottom half of his body is gone. I turn and retch in the water.

  More bodies, more blood.

  A sudden wave surges past me, an oar smashes me in the head, and I nearly drown and join the rest of them floating there all dead. I cough up saltwater and shake off the blow.

  I’m sloshing back to shore when I see what’s left of the whale floating several yards farther out. She’s cut in half, and white blubber spills like curdled milk from her amputated body. Her entrails float out red and purple and bloated among the wreckage in the bloody surf.

  I see movement in the tangled guts.

  Yes—there. An arm wrapped around a hunk of blubber.

  Diving in without hesitating, I swim to the floating whale, cautious of its bulk being tossed in the waves. I paddle through the mess, kicking intestines free from my feet, pushing a chunk of blood-soaked baleen away from my face. When I seize the arm and turn him over, Jimmy stares up at me, blurry-eyed but alive. I wrap my arms around him and kick with everything I have toward shore, making slow progress through the corpse-littered surf. We pass another man also alive and moaning, but unrecognizable with half his face and all of his shoulder gone. He won’t make it, and even if he might, I can’t save them both.

  In shallow water, I get my feet beneath me and drag Jimmy onto the sand and flop down, spent and exhausted with him in my lap. He’s breathing. Barely, but breathing. His cut forehead is bleeding, his leg is worse. A nasty gash in his thigh spreads open, his flesh filleted from the bone. I need to get him back to the cove, back to his mother and her healing hands.

  I try pulling him along the shore, but his feet drag in the sand, stretching the thigh wound open, blood pulsing out with every heartbeat. I yank a piece of rope free from the wreckage and tie it around his thigh above the wound. I stand him up, hoist him off the ground, and with a new adrenaline-fueled strength, I stagger off with him draped and dangling over my shoulder as I lurch up the shore toward the cove.

  The cove is awash with blood—

  More blood and more bodies.

  I stand stunned, Jimmy still on my shoulder, and watch as the gentle tide washes its crimson waves up onto the shore, the blood-soaked sand deep red as they retreat, fading as the water drains, only to have another bloody wave darken it again.

  The women and the children are scattered, pieces of them everywhere—floating in the water, washed up on shore, lying outside of tents in bloody patches of soil. The shot-up tents are collapsed, a few with the bodies still inside, red-splotched and humped like some pale and bloated beasts bleeding out in the sun. Then I remember the drones flying overhead. Drones like the one on the train that was bringing me up from Holocene II. Drones designed on Level 3, built on Level 4. Drones that we ship to the Foundation on Level 1. Not exploration drones like I was told, but drones that murder women and children.

  I carry Jimmy across the cove, stepping around the bodies, and take him into the cool dark shade of the cave and lean him against the wall. His bleeding has slowed, so has his pulse.

  I tear through wrecked tents, ignoring the corpses there, frantic to find the sewing kit Jimmy’s mother used to mend our clothes. When I find it, my frenzied pace fades, and I carry the small wooden box back to the cave, out held like an offering, in no hurry to do what I know I need to do.

  Kneeling beside Jimmy, I open the box. The curved-bone needle sits on a pile of sinewy thread, its ivory surface polished as smooth as soap from years of use. Jimmy fades in and out of consciousness while I stitch his wound, and several times nearly so do I. His thigh is cut through skin, fat, muscle—all the way down to yellow bone. I know it should be stitched in several layers, but he’s bleeding, and I’m scared, and it’s all I can do to squeeze the wound closed and thrust the needle deep, hooking it out the other side and cinching it tight, then tying it off every quarter inch the long length of the gruesome gash. Three more shallow stitches close the cut in his forehead.

  When I finish, Jimmy is passed out, either from blood loss or from pain. He lies slumped against the cave wall with his leg in a pool of blood, already swelling against my crude sutures. He looks so helpless and so young, like an exhausted boy tired from a long day in the sun. I kiss him on the forehead.

  I start a fire and boil water in the salvaged cook pot, using it to clean his wound as best I can. Next, I gather bedding and make him a place farther inside the cave, close enough to the opening for fresh air to circulate, far enough away to stay in the shade. I slide him to it, careful of the new stitches, and lay him down and elevate his leg.

  Then I sit in the mouth of the cave and watch the sun set on the blood-red waters painting horror in the cove.

  CHAPTER 17

  The Funeral Pyre

  Sunrise.

  Same as any other day.

  Except I know I’ll have to gather the bodies.

  I clean Jimmy’s wound, the dried blood wiping clear and revealing angry flesh swelling badly now against the stitches. He wakes, wincing with pain. I make him drink water and choke down some stew. He doesn’t say anything, he doesn’t have to. He just points to the bluff where we cremated Uncle John.

  There’s no way I can carry them up to the bluff by myself, so I settle on a spot between the beach and the cave, just above the high-tide line.

  I start with the nearest bodies.

  Cutting a piece of tent free, I use it to drag them to the spot and I lay them out on the sand. I scoop them in pieces onto the tent skin and pull them to the pile and dump them there. Others are intact but with gaping wounds and things never meant to see the lig
ht of day hanging out. The children are the worst. Their small faces frozen, twisted with confusion, their tiny hands clenched in agony. Their little limbs are already stiff with rigor and unbending as wood. Most are drained of blood and waxy cold even in the sun. Others are beginning to bloat and look as though they might pop if poked with a point.

  My stomach coils up; I vomit several times.

  “They’re just seals,” I mumble. “Just dead seals.”

  I keep telling myself that as I work. Just seals or sharks or fish—anything but the people I’ve grown to love.

  There is one small blessing in that I can’t find Jimmy’s mother. Or if I do, she’s so unrecognizable as to allow me to pretend she made it safe away. But I know she didn’t.

  I move next out of the cove and south down the beach. The tide has come in and gone out again and the shoreline is scattered with body parts and debris the entire length of a mile. I wear the tent skin through and have to fetch another. I chase ravens away from the corpses, their bloody beaks pulled up, their evil heads cocked in confusion as I drag their lunch away. I find a torso and turn it and a dozen small crabs covered in slime scurry away. Farther down, I find what’s left of the whale washed ashore in an enormous gray and stinking hulk already torn apart by things in the night and being slowly returned to the sea from which it came.

  By the time I’ve gathered all I can find or am willing to see, the bodies and pieces of bodies line nearly half the cove, and I’ve become numb to the horror of it, moving mechanical-like as if it were just some dirty job I’m meant to do.

  Next I gather wood.

  I know it will take hours and lots of heat to render all this flesh into ash and I labor fast and frantic, dragging great pieces of dry driftwood and broken branches into a tall pile that looks already like so many bleached bones. I drag over the log that I sat on with Jimmy’s mother, and I cry for five minutes straight while I tug and pull and roll it end over end toward the growing pile. I add bedding to the stack. Tent skins, brush-brooms—anything that might help the fire burn.