Griffin's Story

by Steven Gould

  Bastards.

  I still had some rubber gloves from doing the concrete work in the Hole, but I jumped to San Diego and visited Home Depot for a paint-and-pesticide respirator mask and some heavy-duty plastic bags. The three coyotes were rotten with maggots and fell apart as I shoved them into the bags. They’d probably been there for days, but the change in the weather brought the smell in. Don’t know how I could of stood it without the mask.

  I left a note under the door at the rangers station telling them about the lock. It was after seven by then and the park had officially closed. It was better, as far as I was concerned, that the note be anonymous. If I started talking to the rangers, they might start wondering where I lived. The park had a residential ranger, but his quarters were way over by the park entrance, a good ten miles away.

  I dumped the bags in their Dumpster.

  There was a water spigot outside the station and I’d rinsed the gloves and was wiping them on a bit of turf near the station, preparatory to jumping back to the Hole, when I heard a gunshot.

  It wasn’t near—I didn’t jump away or anything—but it did come from up the ridge, back toward the mine.

  I jumped back up to the shaft, where I felt cold and exposed. The sun was going down and the wind was picking up. I walked back to one of the old surface buildings, a roofless rock-and-mortar shell, one wall tumbled down into a pile of its component rocks, and sheltered from the wind. After a while, I heard another shot, loud, but still not so loud that it made me nervous. A motor started up in the distance, and then another.

  Sounded like motorbikes. I started to leave the old building, trying for a vantage point where I might see them, when I realized the sound was getting louder.

  They weren’t motorbikes—they were four-wheeled ATVs, camouflage painted, two of them. They roared up the canyon scattering rock and dirt and what little grass there was and I wondered why I hadn’t seen their tracks before. They each had another coyote on the back rack and telescopic rifles on a rack in front.

  The gloves in my hand were still wet from washing, pretty clean, but the smell or the memory of the smell was still in my nose.

  They pulled right up to the grate, flipped open the gate, and tossed them down. Just like that, not even looking around.

  “Miller time!” one said to the other.

  “Miller time,” the other agreed.

  I thought about tossing them down the shaft, but they hopped back on the ATVs and roared back down the canyon. Off-road vehicles were also illegal in the park.

  I jumped back to the Hole and took the binoculars from the dinghy gear. I jumped to the ridgetop above the canyon, using the binoculars to pick my destination. They were easy to spot—they were in the long shadows of the Fish Creek Mountains and they’d turned their headlights on. I had to move once, as they moved behind a ridge, farther down the hills, but I tracked them all the way to the park’s edge, to a light that showed through the gathering dusk.

  I jumped back to the Dumpster by the rangers station and retrieved the plastic bags full of rotting coyote and left them, for the time being, in the old stone building I’d sheltered in, near the mineshaft.

  I said yes to Henry about the trip to France. That is, I said it was all right with my parents.

  “Do they need to talk to Harold? Or my mum?”

  I shook my head. “They’re cool. Tell you the truth, I suspect they can’t be arsed.”

  He got this look on his face, like maybe he should be sympathetic, but then said, “Be a relief, that. Every permission thing I have to do involves faxes and international phone calls and crossing my t’s and dotting all the i’s. Your passport all in order?”

  I nodded. “Oh, yeah. Old picture—hate it—but it doesn’t expire for another three years.”

  “Right. I’ll arrange the tickets.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “Oh, no, Dad’s treat. Thinks it’s good I’ve got a friend outside of St. Brutus’s. But I also think he wants cousin Harold to vet you since they can’t themselves, not until summer.”

  “Oh, they coming home?”

  “July after summer term. Three weeks. You going anywhere?”

  “Too far in the future, mate. Anyway, I don’t really pay much attention to term holidays, what with the homeschooling. Better to travel when everyone isn’t.” Or so I heard.

  In daylight, I used the binoculars and jumped, ridge to ridge, out to the edge of the park. There was a barbwire fence—not the park’s—stretching along the boundary.

  There were coyote carcasses, some old, some fresh, hung every thirty feet along the wire. Some of them were tatters of skin caught on the barbs and bones below.

  On the other side of the fence, the ground was stripped bare, no vegetation, nothing, but there were sheep. Lots of sheep.

  I moved down the fence, to the north, the direction the ATVs had seemed to go the night before. The fence turned a corner and there was a stretch of land that looked just like the park—it hadn’t been grazed to nothing, but there were tire tracks—the kind with deep pockets from the tire lugs, designed to grip in mud and sand. I turned and followed them.

  They went as far as a county road, dirt but graded smooth, then headed south, back along another fence. The coyote carcasses continued all around the property. The house was set back from the road, the only spot of vegetation on the entire ranch.

  A mailbox at the road had “Keyhoe” painted crudely across it. The ATVs were parked near an outbuilding and there were four dogs lying on the porch that came for me, tearing across the ground toward the fence, growling and barking.

  These were not friendly dogs.

  I stepped off the road on the other side, put a mesquite bush between the house and me, and jumped away.

  I took a cab into La Crucecita from St. Augustin. I was wearing tourist clothes and a big droopy sun hat. I gave directions in English and when the driver overcharged me, I didn’t correct him. I went into Significado Claro like any other client. Alejandra was on the phone and I didn’t look at her as she talked—I looked at the posters on the wall.

  She glanced at my clothes and said, in English, “I’ll be with you in a moment.” I waved my hand, acknowledging this.

  She was arranging the details for one of her immersion courses out at the Sheraton resort and I listened, not really paying attention to what she said, but just hungry for her voice.

  Finally, details arranged, she hung up the phone and said, “How may I help you?”

  I took off the hat and held my finger to my lips. They might be bugging the office.

  Her eyes widened and without saying anything, she came around the desk and enfolded me in her arms.

  I began crying.

  “Shhhhh.” Her arms tightened and I cried harder; after a while, I calmed down and she let go. I picked up a pad of paper and wrote on it, ¿Dónde podemos hablar?

  She took the pad and wrote where and when.

  A half hour later we met on the wooded hillside behind the church, screened by the trees and with a good view of the approaches.

  “No one was with me when I went into the church. I said ten Ave Marias,” she told me and held up a bag, “and I brought chapulines.”

  She was kidding about the grasshoppers.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” I said, over the chicken enmoladas. I’m okay, really.”

  “I missed you, too,” Alejandra said.

  I had to busy myself with eating for a moment, though I nearly choked. She covered by telling the news, new babies, two marriages, what was happening at the agency. I’d gotten some of this from Consuelo but I didn’t tell her that. I just listened and watched. After a bit, when I’d finished eating, she said, “You look so muscular! Exercising?”

  “Yeah, karate.”

  “And your schoolwork?”

  “Yes, Mum. Every day.”

  She tilted her head. “Your English has changed—the accent, it’s less American.”

  “Yeah,
I’ve been mucking about in London.”

  “Don’t tell me where,” she cautioned.

  “It’s a big town, London—twelve million souls. But I don’t live there.”

  “Et votre français?”

  We switched to French.

  “I still do written class work. I’m going to Normandy next month. Work on my accent.”

  “I’m jealous! I’ve been to Quebec and their French is … different. But Martinique in the French West Indies was good. But never to France.”

  “After next week, I can take you instantly.”

  She looked sorely tempted. “No. Maybe someday, when our friend from the Villa Blanca is gone, when they’ve stopped looking for you. Last time I went out of town, to Mexico City, they were there, watching to see who I met.”

  I could feel my face change, set.

  “Don’t feel bad. I do everything I would do otherwise, except see you. I just ignore them.”

  “Consuelo said they searched the house.”

  I saw anger flicker across her face but then she smiled. “But they didn’t take anything. See? Not like a thief.”

  “They steal your privacy.”

  She shrugged and touched her forehead. “This is still private.” She gestured between us. “This is still private.”

  She rolled up the paper trash from the lunch, twisting it tighter and tighter, then put it in my hand. “You can dispose of this. I will go back into the church and pray. How do you leave?”

  I sighed. “I’ll take the bus to Oaxaca, but I won’t arrive. Twenty kilometers should be safe.” I pulled the hat back over my eyes. “See? Invisible.”

  “We can meet here sometimes. Have Consuelo call the day before—exactly twenty-four hours before—and she can say el gato saliseo. I will meet you the next day.”

  “Well, if the cat got out, the coyotes would eat it. Very well, if it is safe,” I added a little stridently.

  She pulled me to her again. “If it is safe.”

  The dogs were nowhere to be seen when I appeared behind the bush on the other side of the county road from the ranch house. It was dark but the moon was three-quarters full and my eyes were acclimated. I jumped up to the porch, ripped the bags open, and dumped the rotting coyote corpses in front of the door.

  The dogs began barking up a storm but I was back behind the bush before the first light came on.

  “Oh, shit! Tasha, Linus, Jack, Lucy, get out of that!” I heard a thud and a dog’s yelp. “Trey, get your rifle! Someone’s messing with us!” I recognized the voice from when they’d dumped the last coyote.

  I left before they started shooting randomly into the night. I hoped all of the dogs rolled in it.

  “Why am I doing this?”

  Henry reached out and adjusted my bow tie. It was a rented white-jacket dinner suit from a formal hire shop in Lewisham. They made me leave a bloody great deposit since I didn’t have a credit card.

  “Meet girls, have fun. Meet Tricia.”

  He’d only asked me two days in advance. I guess if your school is in a Georgian mansion and they have an honest-to-God ballroom, you occasionally have an honest-to-God ball. The St. Bartholomew’s Midwinter Ball, to be specific.

  “I went once before, when I first started at St. Brutus’s, but spent the whole time against the wall. But Tricia’s got leave to attend with her roommate and the girls from St. Margaret’s come. It’ll be fun.”

  We were waiting for Tricia at Paddington Station by the bronze statue of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. My hair was sticking up in back. I could feel it. I kept trying to push it down but Henry said, “Leave it alone. People will think you have nits.”

  “Git.”

  “Twit.”

  The 5:29 rolled in and Henry turned to watch. If he’d been my height, he would’ve been craning his neck and standing on tiptoe, but he didn’t have to.

  I’d realized early on that I was there for moral support. What the hell—why not?

  Tricia really was stunning—tall, blond, green-eyed, and if she had any of Henry’s problem with pimples, makeup was hiding it entirely. Her roommate was shorter, thank God, probably my height without heels, but slightly taller with. She had dark glossy hair half over her face, brown eyes, a turned-up nose.

  “Griffin O’Conner, Martha Petersham.”

  “Delighted,” she said.

  “Charmed,” I said, sounding rehearsed and phony and stupid.

  We took the Tube back to Russell Square but a cab from the station, fog and drizzle not mixing well with rented clothing.

  Tricia and Martha checked in with the headmaster as required and he placed the reassuring call back to St. Margaret’s. They were to call again when they reached Martha’s aunt’s flat in Kensington Gardens after the ball.

  Henry and I escorted them into the ballroom.

  I don’t know what I was expecting—probably something like a Merchant-Ivory production with a butler announcing the arrivals. It was kids in good clothes dancing to a nice punk band from the East End. Every six songs or so, the band would break and they’d play slow recorded music and a few students but mostly the chaperones would get out and fox-trot.

  “I don’t know how to dance,” I told Martha early on, “but I’ll take instruction.”

  This, apparently, was the right thing to say. I just thought about it like kata, or two-step kumite, and took instruction. She relaxed a great deal and bossed me around unmercifully. There was lots of laughter and some teasing because Henry and Tricia did all the slow dances.

  Henry and I were returning from the refreshments table with drinks when we saw Watters, Henry’s in-school nemesis, trying to pull Tricia onto the dance floor. I took one look at Henry’s face and said loudly, “Why’s the headmaster coming over here?”

  Watters released her arm like he’d been scalded and turned.

  Henry looked like murder so I stepped forward, between him and Watters, my drinks held out before me. “Watch out, drinks coming through!” I weaved a bit wildly and Watters stepped back, eyeing the drinks and still looking around for the headmaster.

  Tricia, also eyeing Henry’s expression, moved suddenly, taking Henry by the hand and saying, “I love this song.” She pulled him onto the dance floor and kept moving until she was on the other side, near where two of the chaperones sat, nibbling cake.

  I turned, more cautiously, and handed Martha her fizzy water. “Here you go, m’dear.” I turned back to Watters and offered him the other. “Thirsty, mate?”

  His reply was inarticulate. He turned on his heel and left. I didn’t turn my back until he was well away so I was surprised when Martha kissed me on the cheek. I felt my ears go hot.

  “What’s that for?”

  “Being clever,” she said. “Being brilliant when it was needed.” She was blushing a little, too. “Come on, dance.”

  We took a taxi after and Henry and I saw them all the way to the aunt’s flat in Kensington Gardens.

  Henry and Tricia snogged the whole way, and on the steps, before Martha punched the buzzer, I got kissed, too. And not on the cheek.

  They scanned our passports, and along with fifteen hundred other souls, we trooped aboard the MV Bretagne. The brochure said it could handle over two thousand, but it was off-season. The cars had been loading for over an hour.

  “Dad actually sprung for a cabin. Usually I just do the trip in one of the reclining chairs, which is a lot cheaper, but I guess there’s a certain economy with two. He’s not paying for two cabins, after all.”

  I nodded. I vaguely remember taking the ferry to Calais from Dover as a child and my mother insisting we not speak a word of English until we were back in the UK. I think they were both in graduate school then and we had three weeks off.

  She was pretty serious about it and I learned the words for my favorite foods pretty quickly. Pommes frites, Maman, s’il te plaît?

  They had a cinema aboard, bars, shops, several restaurants. We could’ve eaten in the fancier table service, Les Abers, b
ut we hit the self-service place, La Baule, instead.

  “Not fish and chips again?”

  “Eat what you want.”

  I had the baguette with Brie and tomato and basil, and pie à la mode for pudding.

  As we got out into the channel, the ship began pitching around and I began to regret the pie. We’d been thinking about hitting the cinema but it was something we’d both seen, so we returned to our tiny in-board cabin and lay down. Henry dropped off promptly but I couldn’t get to sleep—it was still early afternoon by my clock. I started to get up again, but the ship was still dancing and my stomach lurched. I lay back down and dozed, more or less, through the night.

  The ship was far calmer when we awoke, sheltered from the north winds by the Cotentin Peninsula. We got our stuff together, then hit the La Gerbe de Locronan café for tea and a roll. The Isle of Jersey was bathed in wisps of fog to the south. We docked at Saint-Malo at eight but it took a bit to get off.

  Cousin Harold was waiting on the other side of passport control. “No trouble?”

  “Not this time,” said Henry. “Mr. Harold Langsford, young Master Griffin O’Conner.”

  We shook hands and I asked, “Is there trouble sometimes?”

  Harold smiled. “Sometimes they get concerned about youngsters traveling alone. I’ve had to step up more than once to show he’s being met. But,” he looked up at Henry’s face, “since Henry’s shot up, I expect they’re not paying that much attention.” He glanced at the people streaming around us. “Let’s give the car park a shot, why don’t we? I’d like to clear out before they start unloading the cars.”

  It took less than forty-five minutes to make it to Pontsorson. We went on the coast road but it turned inland before we could see Mont-Saint-Michel. “Later,” said Cousin Harold. “Don’t want to go today, anyhow. There’s less tourists during the week.”

  We had four days.

  Cousin Harold’s gray stone “cottage” had four bedrooms, a walled garden, and a vast slate roof. Everything in the garden was brown and wilted but tidy, beds well covered with mulch. It had been foggy in Portsmouth but by the time we parked his Citroën, the sun had burned off the light mist and the sky was blue as Mum’s eyes.