Grizzly

by Will Collins

  Donald Stober, piloting the Hughes 500 helicopter, did not consciously think of the impact the noisy machine was having on the forest below, but he was aware of it. By now the wild animals had become used to the noise, and being animals, they almost never looked up anyway. But the back-packers did, and some of them, angry at being dragged back to civilization by the ugly metal bird, made gestures toward.it that weren't exactly friendly waves.

  Don had flown two full tours of chopper service in South Vietnam, most of them on rescue and medical missions. Tall and slender, he looked more like a medical student than an experienced pilot and ranger.

  Below the helicopter, the dark green of the forest blurred beneath its whirling blades.

  Behind Don, in the passenger seat, two men sat. They were dressed in conservative business suits, totally useless in the wilderness below if the trusted chopper engine should ever shut down.

  But it never had. And, Don thought, grinning, it probably never would. Which was too bad, because he would have enjoyed hiking out for several hours, followed by two sweating V.I.P.s wearing grey business suits and expensive alligator loafers.

  Well, if he wanted to keep his flying time, this was a necessary payment of dues. Giving visiting firemen the grand tour.

  His southern accent, created back in Cedartown, Georgia, was almost gone now; it had been more than six years since he had been home. At thirty-four, he sometimes lapsed into the "good old boy" slang for fun, or for effect with a susceptible visitor from one of the cities that seemed to spew their two-week tourists at the parks with increasing numbers.

  Don Stober's voice was slightly bored as he went through his carefully rehearsed spiel, but it was obvious that he really meant what he was saying. He'd merely said it too often.

  Pointing at the virgin forest below, he said, "This area is pretty much the same as it was in the days when the Indians roamed around in it. We like to think that's because of the work the National Park System's done."

  One of his passengers, the one with the bright pink shirt and the blue bow tie, asked, "They're always trying to allocate more money for you characters. What do you really do to earn it? Stand around and watch the trees grow?"

  Don fought down a tinge of anger. He was used to such carping, especially from locally oriented congressmen who begrudged every national dollar spent that did not result in additional industry and employment in their home district.

  "We've had a camper explosion in the past few years," Don said calmly. "And that's good, because we want city people, or even rural people from other parts of the country, to see the good side of our forests. But they've got to be controlled."

  "You mean exploited, don't you?" asked Pink-Shirt.

  His companion made a gesture of displeasure. He was a younger man, his face heavily sunburned. He had obviously been somewhere closer to the equator recently.

  "Hold it down, Sam," he said. "No call to take off on this feller. He's only doing his job." He leaned over and peered down into the green ceiling of the forest. "How many folks charge in here every year, anyway?"

  "It keeps going up," Don said. "Last season, we hit almost half a million. About the same this year, but because of the warm weather, we're getting a lot of post-season visitors. I'd guess we might see six hundred thousand."

  "At a couple of bucks apiece gate fee, and those ripoff prices for food at the lodge, you do pretty good," grumbled Pink-Shirt.

  "I'm paid by the Park Service," said Don. "If you want to take a look at my check after they get through with the deductions, you'll understand why there aren't many married rangers."

  Pink-Shirt made a Iow chuckling noise. "Why bother?" he said. "When you've got local talent like that little babe I saw this morning."

  "Sam," warned his companion.

  Don Stober said, keeping his voice under control, "There are quite a few female rangers now. Something to do with equal rights."

  "Yeah, man," said Pink-Shirt.

  His companion hurried to ask, "Is it getting out of hand? By making the wilderness so available, are we going to end up wiping it out?"

  Gratefully, Don answered, "That's what worries us. The parks belong to all the people. But when all the people try to use them—and mostly at the same time, those three months in the summer when the kids are out of school—it just won't work. They have a devastating effect on the habitat. We spend most of our time protecting the water, the fish, the wildlife, against the hundreds of thousands of people who turn up most of them not knowing the first thing about getting along in the woods."

  "So set up a quota," said Pink-Shirt. "We're already spending too much money on this nonsense."

  "I think nonsense is the wrong word," said the younger man. "I just got back from the Caribbean. There's a blight destroying the palm trees there. The beaches look like the day after the invasion of Iwo Jima. Nothing but bare trunks sticking up into the sky. It could have been avoided. But nobody would spend the first dime."

  Don said, "And who would enforce the quota? How can you tell a citizen—and taxpayer—that there's part of his country he isn't allowed to visit because he didn't make a reservation two years ago?"

  Pink-Shirt stared down into the green canopy and said, "Hold it!"

  "Mister," said Don Stober, "You can't hold a chopper. Why?"

  "I don't know," said the older man. "Forget it. I thought I saw something."

  "What?" Don asked.

  "I'm not sure. It looked like some kind of big animal.''

  "That's the idea of these parks," said the younger congressman. He rubbed some sunburned skin off his nose. "To give the animals some place to live."

  Up at the stream, June Hamilton heard the screams. At first, she thought that Maggie was putting her on, teasing her with a phony rape scene.

  But that didn't last long. The intensity of the cries was too fearful, too raspingly agonizing.

  Still, June hesitated. She felt the cold fingers of fear within her own vitals.

  Then she abandoned caution and ran down the hill toward the camp site.

  The first thing she saw was the violent movement as Maggie's body hurtled past her and crashed against

  a tree. The sound was sickening. Blood and air exploded from what had been, minutes before, a human being.

  "Jesus!" shrieked the red-haired girl.

  She felt something warm hitting her face. She reached up and when her fingers came down into view,

  they were laced with thick blood.

  Her chest hurt. She had stopped breathing. Her fear was so great that she felt its leaden weight dragging her down into the soft forest Iloor.

  Then the spell was broken.

  She came face to face with the beast.

  He had followed Maggie's body across the clearing, and as he reached for it, his giant head rose, and his eyes met those of the girl.

  His nose lifted, and sniffed.

  The blood scent came from this one.

  He pushed Maggie's remains aside and started toward June.

  She screamed, and ran.

  The natural terrain and existing settlements had resulted in an unplanned gerrymandering of the park when its limits had been set up. On the map, the park appeared to be one giant square of bright green. But in reality, its boundaries were dictated by the rivers and streams, by the obstinate settlers who wouldn't sell their hundred and sixty acres to the Department of Interior, by access roads and the recommendations of wild game management experts.

  So there were pockets which extended into the sides of the imaginary rectangle. And in one of these pockets, just a few hundred yards from the park itself, yet on private property, was the Wildhorse Mountain Lodge. The name of the lodge was in error, because Wildhorse Mountain was actually two slopes away. But where the lodge sat, the actual name was Squat Head Ridge, named after an Indian who had been killed there by one of the pony soldiers back during the Civil War Period, and who would want to spend thirty dollars a night to sleep in the Squat Head Inn?

&
nbsp; Other than the name change, the builders of the lodge had done a good and honest job. Its facade was of split logs, erected more than half a century ago, and they had weathered well. This was hardly a town—it was more of an outpost—but the visitor who did not want to totally abandon civilization could find almost anything he needed in the way of creature comforts. There was a small market that carried most human needs from toothpaste to Pepto Bismol. Cans of spray deodorant lined its shelves, so that odor-conscious campers could help destroy the ozone layer. Instead of soap, high phosphate detergents were on sale to help choke the streams. Like most stores in the world, the Wildhorse Mountain market was a victim of mass merchandising.

  Naturally, no such oasis would be complete without a bar, and the Inn had its own, a rustic, rough-hewn room complete with a life-sized painting of a semi-nude western lady of leisure. On the juke box, in addition to Tex Ritter, were such classics as "El Paso" by Marty Robbins.

  Although it was still early in the afternoon, the bar was half-filled. Most of its inhabitants would never get any closer to the wilderness than the painting of Miss Sarah Keesler of Dutch Springs, Nevada. How the painting had found its way up this mountain was anybody's guess.

  The bar, and indeed, the whole Inn, had a friendly kind of run-down quality that people liked. Nothing was actually dirty, or broken, but nothing was new and shiny either. This extended even to the appearance of the proprietor, Walter Corwin, a big man in his early sixties. Corwin, in this post-season period, had let most of his staff go—and was learning, as he did every post-season, that he wasn't really very good at dropping a tablecloth onto the table and having it float down neatly with all four corners squared. He tended to spill drinks while attempting to serve them, and his heavy hand was sure death to a plate of cheese. But his happy manner overcame the worst of his accidents, and people laughed along with him, rather than at him.

  Allison Corwin, Walter's daughter, moved around the bar cleaning up after the lunch crowd. The smile she wore was warm, not the professional smirk of the harried waitress whose job she was filling, it would have been hard to guess her age. No one would have put her farther along than mid-twenties. Her actual years were more than that, but she still had the sexy and aggressive posture of youth. Just now, she was harried and hassled. At the season's end, Walter Corwin didn't like to invest in more glassware, and the highball glasses were down to the last case, thanks to a temperamental bartender who liked to throw them into the fireplace. She filled a tray and hurried behind the bar, began feeding the glasses into the automatic washer with its whirling brush and hot soapy water.

  Walter Corwin looked around and frowned.

  "You're washing glasses again? What did I tell you about that? Don't you ever listen to me?"

  "All the time," said Allison Corwin. "Number one, you told me to always respect my father and mother. Which I did and do. And number two, you told me never to waste my precious mind, and the great thing about physical work is that you have lots of time to think. Number three, you—"

  He interrupted. "Enough! One of these days you'll stop wising off and listen."

  "I'm listening," she protested. "I'm listening!"

  He looked around the bar. Nobody was close enough to overhear. "Baby," he said, "I didn't know we'd get this busy, or I'd of kept Susy on. I can handle it. You came all this way to take pictures of people in the woods and up in the high country. So far, all you've gotten is dishpan hands. Why don't you unpack those expensive cameras and get to work before everybody heads back to the city?"

  Washing another glass, Allison said, "You're right, Pa. Absolutely right."

  "You're on your way to making it," said her father. "You got great reviews last time. What's the deadline for your new book?"

  "Yesterday," she said calmly.

  He snatched up three of the glasses and began rinsing them. "And you're up to your elbows in soap suds instead of—"

  "Pa," she said, "don't start riding me too. My editor does enough of that. I only have a third of the book to go. I need maybe another thirty or forty good shots and I'm home free. l'm hoping snow will fall. I don't have enough snow stuff."

  "Publishers don't wait," Walter Corwin warned. "They're like sausage makers. They have to keep shoving that stuff out into the stores. They'll just move on without you."

  "I don't think so," she said, aware that Kelly Gordon had just come in. He had taken off his peaked ranger hat, and carried it in his left hand.

  Corwin did not see the ranger. He raised his voice. "I run this place fine on my own, Allie. I don't need your help."

  She tried to signal him that they were being overheard, but he didn't notice. She said, "You're under-staffed. You let your help go too soon this time."

  "Maybe so," he said. "But the glasses can wait. Your work can't."

  Kelly Gordon stepped up to the bar and said, "Oh, Allison's an expert on letting work wait."

  She whirled on him, wordlessly. Allison Corwin had always been her own woman. She was used to fighting her own battles. But she had come to expect support and approval from Kelly. Now he seemed to be withdrawing it.

  He looked directly at her and said, "Maybe you ought to change your book's topic. Do one on how to avoid responsibility."

  "You—" she began. Then she remembered, and her face lost its angry tenseness. "Oh, hell," she muttered. "I was supposed to meet you. Kelly, I'm sorry. I just got busy and—"

  He put on the Charlton Heston face. Here, in the dim bar, it worked a little better. He teased, "Listen, if dishes and dirty glasses are what you're into, don't let me stand in the way."

  Allison clinked one glass against the metal splashboard, nearly breaking it. She let it slip back into the water.

  Tightly, she said, "I've already got one father. I don't need two."

  "Well, do you need a ride up into the park?"

  She hesitated.

  Her father said, "Get out of here, before you break all the profits. Go take some pictures."

  She dried her hands. "All right. But don't complain to me when you run out of glasses right in the middle of the Happy Hour."

  "If I do, I'll use paper cups," he said. "You do your work, let me do mine."

  "All right," she repeated. She wiped her hands again on a bar rag. She looked at Kelly. "Let's split this scene while the sun is still working for me."

  "You need these," said her father, holding out her gadget bag, bulging with cameras, lenses and film.

  She took the bag and, impulsively, hugged him and kissed his weathered cheek.

  Walter Corwin smiled at the couple. He liked Kelly Gordon. And it was his private opinion that his daughter had been single long enough, professional photographer or not.

  He waved at them as they left.

  "Adios," he called.

  Kelly waved back. "Adios, Walter."

  Kelly Gordon had taken the jeep Tom Cooper hadn't needed that morning. It was parked in the big lot outside the Wildhorse Mountain Lodge.

  As they walked toward it, Allison Corwin said, "It was sweet of you to drive down to get me. I'm sorry I forgot. I got busy and—"

  "Bull," said Kelly. "This isn't the first time you've stood me up. I agreed to take you up to camp on company time, and now I've wasted the trip twice over. Did it ever occur to you that I might have been needed up there? Unlikely, but I just might have been."

  She put her arm around his waist as they walked and said, "No excuse, sir. Guilty as charged."

  Kelly laughed. But he added, "You know what's wrong with you? After your mother died, your father spoiled you rotten. And now you expect the same treatment from everybody else in the world."

  She stopped and his motion took him half a step past her. Her face wasn't angry, but her voice carried none of the teasing quality it had just shown.

  "How long have you known me?" she asked.

  "A few weeks," he said, puzzled.

  "That's not very long," she said. "Why don't you reserve judgment? Spoiled is a heavy word.
It's a word I don't believe should be applied to me. First of all, I don't think I'm spoiled. I think I'm needed. My father has taken on a little more than he can handle at his age. I've been trying to help. In return, he indulges me and I enjoy it. But I don't demand it, and I don't believe it's automatically due me. Hell's bells, Kelly, haven't you ever been torn between two things? With me it's between my father's problems and my career. The career's still forming, but his problems are here right now. Which way do I go?"

  Kelly said, "I think Walter can handle his end of the deal. It's your end you should be worrying about. Or maybe it's easier this way? If you don't really try, you can't be blamed for failing."

  She tightened her lips. An angry retort came to them, but she choked down the words.

  "I don't know," she said. "Look, give me some rope. I'll get it all together. I always do. Somehow."

  He shrugged, and got behind the jeep's steering wheel. She climbed in beside him.

  As he ground the starter, she went on, "Besides, I haven't really been leveling with Pa. He's got this thing about having a genuine book author in the family. Well, I got lucky with one book but all I've got going now is a feature story for that credit card magazine. Six hundred bucks and expenses."

  "Then you're wasting your time," he said, as he drove out of the lot.

  "Maybe. But I keep hoping I'Il luck into a subject where I can really explore the graphics. The poets call it 'finding your voice.' That's what I need. A subject that will make me use everything I've got."

  Dryly, Kelly said, "Good luck. But let me give you one word of advice from a non-professional."

  She softened, touched his arm.

  "Give."

  "Cameras laying in the gadget bag don't take any pictures, good or bad."

  "You're right," she said. Then, "Forgiven?"

  He said, "Sure." And added, "But you were counting on that anyway, weren't you?"

  Chastened, she said, "Yes, I guess I was."

  "You're too late with too little," said Kelly, piloting the jeep up the steep slope toward the ranger station.

  "Pictures are my business," said Allison Corwin, threading a 135mm telephoto lens into her Pentax. "Driving is yours. And if you don't watch yourself, you're going to drop us down into that gorge."