The Park Service 01: The Park Service

by Ryan Winfield

  “That’s it.”

  It’s much slower going up loaded with our packs than it was coming down running for my life. We work our way up the canyon in long switchbacks, using our spears for balance and keeping the trestle above us in sight. When we reach the foot of the trestle, Jimmy looks up and sighs.

  “No way I’m climbin’ that,” he says.

  “Wait here, I’ll go check it out.”

  I’ve grown much stronger, and this time I climb the trestle with little effort and not once do I fear I might fall.

  Scrambling over the edge, I stand and look at the tunnels. They’re closed. Iron doors sealed shut on either side. The track glints in the sunlight, its electromagnetic plates smooth as glass. No rocks, no wreckage, everything has been put right again.

  I look out over the landscape. The treeline, the rolling hills, the river running through the valley. The late sun is orange on the horizon and it lights the world below me in soft pastels so that if I didn’t know the evil that happens here, I’d think it a paradise still. But I know what horrors lurk beneath the beauty, and I almost wish I’d never seen it at all.

  I climb down and rejoin Jimmy.

  “No going that way anyway,” I say. “It’s all sealed up.”

  He nods. “What now?”

  “Well, at least we know what direction it was headed.”

  “Where’s that?”

  “Northeast there,” I say, pointing toward the jagged peaks now dark and distant in the setting sun.

  “Oh, great,” Jimmy says, shaking his head. “It would be over the damn mountains.”

  “I’m not happy about it either.”

  Neither of us says another word—we just poke around the base of the trestle inspecting the steel joints.

  Jimmy whistles; I throw stones.

  The sun sets the rim of the world afire, and we drift to the trestle and sit together on a beam looking down the canyon, watching it burn out. The heat drains away with the color, the stars blink on one by one, and cold creeps into the canyon.

  We lie down and cover ourselves with our furs, tossing and turning on the hard ground, and finally falling asleep.

  I dream I’m underground again, standing at the train platform and a thousand blank faces stand beside me, their features melted away or not yet cast, and the train slides in from the tunnel and the doors slide open and we file into the cars and sit facing the movie screen ahead. The train glides off, and the screen blinks on and shows us a movie—the slaughter in the cove. Screaming men diving from boats, cannons tearing them to shreds, bodies drifting in bloody tides. All the faceless people begin to laugh, as if it were all some great joke, and I scream at them from my seat to be quiet, to turn the horror show off, but they only turn their heads and laugh at me, every one of them with my father’s face.

  Something wakes me in the cold blackness of night.

  I sit up and see Jimmy’s sleeping silhouette, and all around us is quiet and dark. Even the stars seem far away and only half lit now. I lay back and search for sleep again.

  Just as I’m drifting off, I hear a metallic knocking echoing softly through the trestle beams, as if some deep and sleepless machine were bent already to its mindless work.

  The next day, the mountains seem farther away.

  We climb higher and higher, cresting ridges and dropping into low saddles between them, up again, over again, and the mountains in the distance never seem to grow any closer at all.

  The few animals we drive out ahead of us are skittish and we never get within spear’s reach of anything. Jimmy spends an afternoon whittling a pine bow while we walk, but the wood is too soft for shooting arrows, and we have nothing to string it with besides. As our smoked fish reserves run low, I realize just how dependent we were on the sea for our protein. The river streams we cross are shallow; the tiny trout are impossible to spear and hardly worth the energy to catch.

  On the third day, we crest a high ridge and get a good look at the mountains we’re headed for. They run north and south, rising before us like a jagged snow-covered wall, piercing clouds that gather and form around their summits.

  I shiver with cold just to look at them.

  “Maybe we’re going in the wrong direction?”

  “Nah,” Jimmy says. “The flyin’ drones always come over the mountains. Had an uncle set out to find ’em once.”

  “Did he make it?”

  “No.”

  We make camp on level ground near the top of a ridge and the wind comes howling up from below, whistling through the canyons all night so we hardly sleep at all. Moving on in the gray light of dawn, we crest the ridge and stand looking down on a swath of charred spires poking out of a thick fog.

  We descend into the fog and make our way over the rocky, charcoal ground in near zero visibility. The burnt trees seem to grow out of the fog itself as we pass, materializing like eerie ghosts holding their black, skeletal arms aloft. We come upon a single green tree in that fog, a tree untouched by the fire, and on a low limb sits a large white owl, an owl as pure as snow in all that black. Its red eyes glow with some inner fire, or perhaps still reflecting the fire that passed, and it looks as if it’s been perched there forever and will be forever perched, waiting for the forest to regrow and then burn again. I lift my spear to take a try at him, but Jimmy grabs my arm and shakes his head. The owl follows our crossing with the slow turn of its head and then its red eyes blink and disappear into the fog again.

  Hours later, we pass through the fog and stand looking down a V-shaped valley at a raging river in our path. We walk several kilometers north to find a shallow crossing where we strip naked and stuff our clothing in our packs and hold our packs up over our heads and wade into the freezing current. Jimmy slips once and nearly sets off downriver, but I catch his arm until he finds his footing and we both climb onto the far bank, shivering with steam rising of our naked backs.

  The bluff above the river is steep, only one narrow path made by some migratory animal crossing, or maybe just carved by chance of nature. Halfway up it, we see two figures coming down the path toward us.

  “Maybe we should go back,” I say.

  “They’s already seen us.”

  “All the more reason to turn around.”

  “Makes us look chicken,” Jimmy says, pulling his shoulders back and walking on with stiff strides to hide his limp.

  The sun has risen behind the approaching figures and we can’t make them out until they stop, a meter ahead and slightly above us, no room on either side to go around them.

  The lead man is a massive bundle of filthy furs, his knotted dreadlocks hanging like tentacles from his greasy head, thick as rope and nearly dragging on the ground behind him. He has a long wooden bow and a quiver of red-feather fletched arrows hanging around his chest, a gnarled staff in one hand, and the end of a leash in the other. At the other end of his leash dances a strange little man collared at the neck. He might be fifteen, he might be fifty. He’s naked save for a filthy cloth at his groin, his ribs showing beneath gray skin, his bare feet as big and flat as seal flippers. A hideous pink tumor grows from the side of his neck like a second aborted head, and he leans his ear into it as if listening to something it might be whispering to him as he hops from flat foot to flat foot and sucks his few remaining teeth.

  The big man holds his leash and takes us in with squinted eyes but says nothing. After several moments standing off like this, he slides the looped end of the leash over his staff, gathers up his mop of dreadlocks with his freed hand, sweeps the hair around, sits down on a rock, and lays the hair across his lap. A bone knife handle shows from his belt and he sits with his hand just inches from it, twisting the nappy locks of his hair between his filthy fat fingers. He opens a hole in his beard and spits a mouthful of brown juice into the path and says:

  “Where ye boys headed?”

  “We prefer keepin’ to us own selves,” Jimmy says.

  “Wise more times than not,” the man says, spitting agai
n. “But I’s jest askin’ where you’s all headed.”

  “We’s headed yonder to the ocean,” Jimmy says, a layer of sarcasm in his voice. “Goin’ for a swim.”

  The man nods the way we came up. “Ocean’s thataway.”

  “Maybe we’s headed to the other one,” Jimmy says.

  The man laughs, his huge belly shaking, the freak dancing faster on his leash. Then his laugh cuts off abruptly and he spits another mouthful of juice on the ground.

  “Ye got any women with ya?”

  “Where would they be,” Jimmy says, “in our packs?”

  “Yer friend’s got his self a smart mouth to go with that limp of his,” the man says, turning to search my face.

  Right away I recognize the look of a bully in him. I know he’s testing me for weakness, calculating my resolve, so I lean on my spear and tilt it just enough in his direction that it could be taken as either natural adjustment or a threat. He’s above us on the trail, and that gives him an advantage, but coming down against two grounded spears gives us an edge. He eyes my spear and taps his finger on the bone handle of his knife. He smiles; his leashed man-boy hops from foot to foot.

  I nod to the path beyond.

  “We don’t want to hold you two up any longer. We’re just passing through.”

  “Passin’ through, eh?”

  “That’s right, passing through.”

  “Ain’t ever last one of us?” he says.

  Then he looks past us to where we came up, as if to see if any others are following.

  “Jest curious if y’all travelin’ with any women,” he says. “You’s pretty young yet, the both of ye is, and I’d bet my son here ya didn’t nurse one another takin’ turns at the other’s dry little tits. Or did ya now, boy?” He spits again.

  “No women,” I say. “Just us two crossing the mountains.”

  “Shit. Over there? You know what’s over there, boy?”

  “No. What’s over there?”

  “Ain’t nobody know ’cause ain’t nobody never crossed them mountains,” he says, looking back and shaking his head.

  “Well, you’s musta come over ’em,” Jimmy says.

  “Nah,” he replies. “I was trackin’ something sure, but had to quit the trail or we’d all be dead on the mountain by dusk.”

  “Well, whatever you’s trackin’ seemed to prefer its odds up there better’n down here with you,” Jimmy says, spitting on top of the man’s brown stain.

  “As she oughta,” the man says, tagging the spot again and grinning as if enjoying the contest. “As she oughta. But evens if ye could cross, there’s evil over there, boy. Evil for sure.”

  “We’ll take our chances,” Jimmy says.

  “Isn’t there a pass?” I ask.

  The dreads slide across his lap as he turns to look up at the mountain, as if searching it for a pass he might have missed.

  “Nope,” he says, simply. “Not for a hundred miles either way. Only way over’s straight across the summit itself.”

  “Ain’t no mountain cain’t be climbed,” Jimmy says.

  “You’s way wrong there, young fella,” he says. “Ain’t no mountain that can be climbed. Mountain decides whether she’ll let ye pass or not. She either lifts ye over or she swallows ye up. This’n here’s hungry.” His shifty eyes train again on me. “How about coffee?” he says. “Ye got any coffee?”

  “Ain’t never drank no coffee,” Jimmy says, spitting.

  The man nods, as if he’d expected not. He spits again on top of where Jimmy spat. “Got any tobacca?”

  “Ain’t no settlin’ nowheres long enough to grow none,” Jimmy says, “And besides, we dun’ smoke.”

  “Then how come he’s got a pipe hangin’ round his neck?”

  My hand jumps to my neck and my father’s pipe.

  “Family keepsake,” I say.

  “Ah, family,” he sighs. “Family’s all a man’s got. Man with no children disappears when he’s dead, but a man with a family, well, that man lives on in his kin.” His eyes tear up sentimental like, and he grabs the leash and jerks it, pulling the dancing freak onto his lap. We stand for a minute watching as he pets its head, the freak closing its eyes and moaning with pleasure, and just when I’m beginning to think he’s forgotten that we’re here, he looks up.

  “Sure there ain’t no lady folk down there yonder? From where y’all come from?’

  “Everyone’s dead,” I say.

  Jimmy pushes me aside and steps up.

  “That’s more’n enough talk now,” he says. “We ain’t come all this way to sit and visit with you’s. Now good luck to ya, sir. Damn good luck to both of you’s.”

  That said, Jimmy steps forward and turns, squeezing past them on the path. I hesitate long enough to watch the man’s shocked expression turn to acceptance and then almost to an expression of sadness. Then I step forward and squeeze past him too, and I can smell his sweat and mildewed fur, his freaky son in his lap looking up at me wide-eyed, head resting on his tumor, and I step clear of them and follow Jimmy up the path.

  I look back once from high above, before we turn and lose them from our sight, and I see them sitting as before, the man cradling his son in his lap and watching after us as we go.

  CHAPTER 21

  One Foot In Front of the Other, and Don’t Slip

  Snow appears in shady patches.

  Nooks and crevices.

  Places where the sun doesn’t penetrate.

  Miniature icefalls melting into tiny streams where we stop and drink and fill our canteens.

  We crest a ridge, the air suddenly cold, and snow stretches beyond the shadows and comes together in a vast snowfield up which we climb. The snowfield is dirty and littered with dead insects, and when we step our feet crunch through and reveal perfect white powder hidden beneath the crust. I look back and see our two sets of white footprints trailing behind us, glowing in the shadows as if they had a light of their own.

  With the sun high now in blue skies, the icy crust begins to melt, and we slosh through it soaking our tattered shoes, finally taking them off and walking barefoot. The air thins, Jimmy wheezing beside me. I breathe better up here, which is strange because I grew up at much lower elevations than Jimmy did.

  Arriving at a swath of sun-dried boulders cutting across the wet snowfield, we sit down to rest and drink, admiring the fine lichen that swirls gray and green across the stone surface like ancient writing. A curious marmot pokes its head over a nearby rock and stands still against the blue sky taking us in, but neither of us have the energy to make a move to kill it. When we start up again, I look back and see the marmot on its toes, inspecting our urine stains on the rock.

  “Is yer vision blurry?” Jimmy asks, hours later.

  Trudging the clean upper snowfield now, I pause to rest my weary legs, looking behind us and then ahead again.

  “Yeah, but it’s probably just the glare from the snow.”

  Jimmy strips off his pack where he stands.

  “Shit, we’ll be lucky if we dun’ lose our sight.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Snow blindness.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “That uncle tried to cross once. He come down blind as a mole, all bloodied from trippin’. Never did see nothin’ again.”

  We tear strips of skin from our packs, stretch them over our faces, and mark the location of our eyes with smudges of charcoal. Then we poke holes there and tie them around our heads. Jimmy looks like a cartoon bandit from some old story I read on my slate and I must look just as silly to him.

  We pause to look up at the summit high in the hazy blue sky, smoking like some windblown and frozen other world

  “What do ya figure we’ll find?” Jimmy asks.

  “On the other side?”

  “Yeah, if we make it.”

  “Think positive,” I say. “We’ll make it.”

  “Well, when we make it then.”

  “I don’t know. Probably
nothing.”

  “Then why’s we goin’?”

  “We gotta do something.”

  Jimmy laughs, shakes his head, and we start up again.

  After a while we come up on a strange set of tracks in the snow, and Jimmy stops and squats to inspect them. He brushes the edges clear, looking them over for a long time.

  “Bear,” he says.

  I want nothing to do with another bear, but Jimmy sets off again following the tracks and I fall in line behind him.

  “What do you think a bear’s doing way up here?”

  “Prob’ly same as us,” he says, smirking over his shoulder. “Tryin’ to get to the other side.”

  The man was right: Jimmy does have a smart mouth.

  When the snowfield steepens, we switchback our way up, crossing the bear tracks, and then crossing them again. The sun beats down and we pant and drip with sweat, but when we stop to sip from our canteens, I go from hot to freezing fast.

  Another half hour climbing and we crest the snowfield and stand on a windblown saddle of rock, looking back through our pinhole bandito masks at the way we came up. We’ve climbed much higher than I thought. The snowfield drops away beneath us, and the fading ridges we crossed roll away into the distance like rock waves on an endless sea, puffs of white cloud floating through the valleys there. A gust of wind rises up the snowfield and tickles my hair. Time seems to stand still up here.

  “We better find shelter for the night,” Jimmy says.

  “Okay, just a little higher.”

  We spot a horizontal cut of recessed rock, enough of an overhang to protect us from the wind. We drop our packs and settle in. Jimmy sits watching the sunset with his feet dangling off the ledge, and I lie down and look at the darkening sky and one single point of light that must be a planet.

  “First rule of packing,” I say, “don’t stand when you can sit, and don’t sit when you can lie down.”

  Jimmy laughs and lies down beside me. We fish the furs from our packs and bundle up together to share our body heat.

  “What planet do you think that is?” I ask.

  “There’s more planets than jus’ ours?”

  “Yeah, there are lots of planets.”