Harder Ground

by Joseph Heywood

“Spoilsport,” he said, plumping his pillow and rolling over.

  “Girls,” she said as she filled her morning thermos.

  “Mom,” they said in unison.

  Blessed be those who can begin their day in peace, she thought, and walked out to her truck. Gas tank full, four-wheeler tank full, and the Honda in the Silverado’s bed, chained in place, chalked in place, ready to roll. The Silverado’s engine was nearly silent, the computer was on, and the Automatic Vehicle Locator System humming, there when and if she needed it. She hit a button and a box showed on the lower left of her screen, telling her exactly what conservation officers were on duty around the state.

  As the lone officer for Keweenaw, her colleagues in south Houghton, Baraga, and Ontonagon would jump up into her area and help out by showing the flag. But they weren’t on duty yet this morning and no surprise there. They were night folk.

  “Station Twenty, One One Forty One is in Service.” She loved it that her call number was the same as the main highway up the spine of the peninsula. Twenty was Lansing.

  Just beyond Eagle River her personal cell phone chirped and the screen said, “Calumet High School.”

  “This is Gillian,” she answered the phone.

  “Yah, Gilly, Henry Miller here, where you at right now?”

  “I just left home, just passed Eagle Harbor.”

  “Have your girls said anything about a flier’s club?”

  The balding vice principal had taught biology before moving into administration. Students called him Half Chrome not because of his monkish tonsure, but because the kids insisted he was a female in male clothing, a double X chromosome in an XY disguise. Kids could be so damn cruel. He was a good guy and a fine teacher and it amazed her how much her kids had to know in school versus what she had been saddled with. They were way beyond where she had been. They’d talked about cells and chromosomes in her time, but to make specific jokes out of them, not a chance. It was a different world, changing every day.

  “Flier’s Club?” she said. “Nope, don’t know that term.”

  “Kids compete to see who can fly the farthest.”

  She had to think about this as the Military Road snaked north. “Like kites, rockets, model aircraft, like that?”

  “No, they jump.”

  “Parachutes, homemade wings?”

  “No Gilly, with nothing. They cliff-dive with no water below.”

  The conservation officer felt a chill. “Suicides?”

  “There ya go. Suicides with a flair,” the vice principal said. “Their friends videotape the event to post on YouTube.”

  “Why are you calling me, Henry?”

  “I guessed you’d be out on patrol. Other cops are mostly running on complaints and such.”

  “Do you think my girls would be involved in this . . . thing?”

  “Not as fliers, but your girls talk pretty openly with you, which makes you fairly different than most other parents.”

  “They haven’t said anything, Henry.”

  “Well, I just thought you ought to know, Gilly.”

  She was immediately suspicious. “Why today?”

  “Got a call from a colleague downstate, said they had some trouble with this thing and a few days ago there were rumors of some fliers headed to the U.P.”

  “To the Keweenaw?”

  “No, to Pictured Rocks or to Lake of the Clouds.”

  Pictured Rocks was a national lakeshore and out of her range, way east in Alger County. Lake of the Clouds was in Ontonagon County in the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park, not really close, but she knew that area well enough to patrol it when she was needed.

  “Did the guy alert the state police?”

  “He never said.”

  “Call him back, tell him to call the MSP as soon as you hang up. I’ll alert COs in both areas.”

  She didn’t know the Alger terrain at all, but she knew the Porkies and the escarpment overlooking Lake of the Clouds. It was a bit like Old Baldy in Yosemite, a dome-like slope not exactly made for smooth suicide leaps. The slope made it likely you’d skip your way down, banging rock faces all the way.

  On the other hand, the Brockway precipices were tailor-made for teen madness. No sense trying to reach her girls. They would not answer their cell phones until they finished classes in the afternoon. She tapped in a text message. “Call me. Flier’s Clubs? Love Mom.”

  Gillian Hartdog stopped at Esrey Park and had a coffee. The morning light was low but she could see two eagles in a snag, an adult and a juvenile. Various seabirds soared and hunted along the rocky coast and a flat Lake Superior. Several Caspian terns were performing their hover-maneuvers and straight-down dives to the lake’s surface. The terns were strictly migrators this time of year.

  Birds had air in their bones, could soar and float and glide and cheat gravity or use it, as they chose. Unadorned human bodies couldn’t.

  She was in a dead-phone zone when she tapped a text to the vice principal. “Flier Club, what school yr friend?”

  She drove up Brockway Mountain Road from the west, would pop up to the summit, and work her way downhill to the east toward Copper Harbor and down the far side of the mountain.

  No blue lights, no siren, but she felt her heart racing and she willed herself to calm down. This is just rumor, uncitable odds, like the lottery. Odds aside, her mind whispered that people do win lotteries, every day. Flier’s clubs? How stupid could kids get? They could be so damn stupid. Where the hell did notions like this come from? YouTube? Good God.

  Brockway Mountain Road was less than nine miles long and there were no posted speed limits. A county deputy had once told a reporter, “Speed itself is a self-correcting problem on the mountain.” Lots of people laughed at that. She wasn’t one of them.

  Her phone sounded again as she hit the T on top of the mountain. She looked to her right. No vehicles on the loop on the very top. Good. She checked her message. “Empire County Day School. H.M.”

  She eased the truck to the left, looking downhill for pullovers and parked vehicles. Her phones began to chatter, her radios came to life as COs called to ask her if she had service. Brenda Lodge, the troop post commander from Calumet called. “You get the word on Flier Clubs, Gillian?”

  “Yah, this morning. You?”

  “One minute ago, direct from Lansing. What do you think, Alger or Onty?”

  “Neither.”

  “You thinking Brockway instead?”

  “I’m there now. Just checked the loop road on top, nobody there, headed downhill now. I’ll work my way to the bottom and drive back up, keep running the route, just in case.”

  “Ounce of prevention,” the state police officer said.

  “You ever hear that term before this morning?”

  “Never.”

  “Me either,” Brenda Ledge said. “Youse keep me in the loop, eh?”

  A Yooper raised in Carney in Menominee County, Ledge rarely revealed her roots in her speech. This thing had her shook and Brenda Ledge was not the sort of woman to shake easily.

  One mile down from the summit, Hartdog saw a red Lexus SUV, an LX 570, not a kid’s toy with a sticker price of seventy-five grand. The vehicle was empty. Hartdog slowed, pulled over and parked, grabbed her look-stick, a one-inch diameter, six-foot-long dowel with a GoPro camera mounted on the tip.

  She eased out of her truck. The sticker on the back of the other vehicle said Crusaders, in red and white. Decades back in the Great Depression the WPA and CCC had built stone walls all along Brockway Mountain Drive. The kids were on the cliff-side of the flat-stone wall.

  Clad in pricey top-of-the-line outdoor clothes, these were not Walmart girls: Ugg boots, eighty bucks a tootsie, kids from money, all girls. All four were looking at the valley between Brockway and Rock Ridge to the south on the other side of the valley.

>   Neither afraid of, nor attracted to severe heights, Hartdog stepped over the wall. “Morning ladies, who’re the Crusaders?”

  Four heads turned in unison. Eight semi-dark eyes staring at her. Dope? She hadn’t smelled anything by the SUV, but had not gotten that close. Damn dope complicated things, sometimes made people more stupid than alcohol.

  “Traverse City?” Hartdog suggested.

  “Empire County Day School,” one of the girls said.

  “Ah Sleeping Bear.”

  “We live in Glen Arbor,” one of the girls said in uplift, “but not public schools, see what I’m sayin?”

  Twit. “You guys on vacation?”

  “One does not holiday in Michigan,” another of the girls said. “It’s just not done.”

  Bitch. “Well, this is a pretty overlook.”

  The girls nodded lethargically.

  “Am I interrupting something?” Hartdog asked.

  “Just looking,” Miss No Holidaying in Michigan said.

  “That’s good. Don’t blame you for wanting to see better, but why don’t you guys step back over the wall. The winds up here are unpredictable. It can be calm one second and hit a gust of seventy the next, take you right off your feet and if you’re at the wrong spot it will take you right off the mountain.”

  All but Miss No-Holiday crawled over the wall.

  Hartdog heard a voice in her ear bud and triggered the microphone on her jacket.

  “One, One Forty One, One Thirty Two, you up on the mountain? I got your message.”

  “Affirmative,” she said quietly.

  “Anything shaking?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “Where you at?”

  “Check AVL.”

  “I’m passing Mandan.”

  “Step on it, but come cold.” Meaning no lights or siren.

  “Thirty Two clear.”

  “You can like talk to people on that thing?” one of the girls asked.

  “Yah. In fact it’s hot now. Our entire conversation is going all over the state.”

  “Way cool,” one of the girls said.

  “What’s up with the stick?” Miss No-Holiday asked.

  The CO weighed what to say and quickly decided to be brutally direct. “Is this some sort of lame-ass flier club deal?”

  “Dude,” Miss No-Holiday said. “We like don’t know nothing about no fly club.”

  The other three girls shook their heads, taking their cue from the fourth girl. Was No-Holiday their leader, or talking because she was the one out front? No way to know yet?

  “What’s ETD?” the CO asked.

  All four girls stared dumbly at her. “Estimated time of departure. Like takeoff?”

  The three giggled nervously.

  No-Holiday said, “There isn’t a schedule for fate.”

  “Fate? Since when is offing yourself fate?”

  No-Holiday stiffened. “It is written.”

  “Nothing is written,” Hartdog said.

  “One cannot stop fate,” No-Holiday declared.

  “Why would I want to? What I want is to record this whole thing on my GoPro so I can put it up on the net.”

  “Like YouTube?” one of the girls asked.

  Hartdog grinned. “Yoohoo, wake up people. YouTube won’t take some retard’s suicide vid.”

  No-Holiday stiffened. “Don’t use that word, dude. It’s like so rude.”

  Sore point. Good. “How about we just call it stupidcide?”

  “Fate is eternal.”

  “So is ignorance.”

  “Are you trying to talk me out of this?” the girl asked.

  “Oh hell no, I want you to jump. I want it on camera for other cops to see. I’ll upload it to SpedDotCom see you as a wet spot on those rocks way down there.”

  “That’s like gross,” Miss No-Holiday said.

  “Hey that site is real, and they pay serious money.”

  “No way,” one of the other girls said. “Sped Dot Com?”

  No-Holiday looked at the speaker. “You’d like sell a video of me?”

  “Free market,” one of the girls said.

  “My act is not intended to be a commercial product,” No-Holiday said in a strained, harsh voice.

  “If you can sell it, that makes it commercial,” the other girl said. “By definition.”

  “Totally unacceptable,” No-Holiday said. “To fly is a beautiful thing, a gift from God for those who believe.”

  “It’s a gift until the rocks kiss you,” Hartdog said. “Five hundred feet. You jump, accelerate to thirty-two feet per second and gravity helps you by making a falling body speed up. First second you fall sixteen feet, by two seconds you’re at sixty-four, three seconds you’re at 144 and after three seconds you’re already halfway to smashing down, 272 feet of five hundred gone, give or take. The whole damn thing happens simultaneously fast and excruciatingly slowly until impact.”

  “Not me,” No-Holiday said.

  “Sure you, why not? You’ve never killed yourself before so how could you know what’s going to happen?”

  “Well duh,” No-Holiday said.

  “Seriously, I clean up corpses all the time, I know about stupidcides. We get trained to deal with people like you, or how to clean up your remains. In fact, you jump I’ll make your girlfriends scrape up the shit that’s left.”

  “You’re trained to talk me out of it.”

  “Hell no I’m not. I’m sick of the shit from your kind. Jump! I sell my vid and make money. Hell, all four of you can go at once, I’ll be rich, a four-banger, I’m sure nobody got pictures of a four-banger before. C’mon, stop jawing and do it!”

  No-Holiday glared at her. “You are sick, lady.”

  Hartdog saw One One Thirty Two, Gabe Raven, creeping along the other side of Mountain Drive, signaling with subtle hand gestures. Did she want him to cross over, or squat where he was? She put her left fist by her left thigh and he squatted and nodded.

  “G’head, fly,” she told No-Holiday.

  “It’s my decision,” the girl said, raising her arms out from her shoulders.

  “Don’t fly with your arms out,” Hartdog told the girl. “Don’t you know shit? If you try to look like Jesus, you’ll just piss off God.”

  “She might have a point,” one of her companion girls offered.

  “It’s idolatry,” yet another one said, “pretending to be Jesus.”

  “Don’t start! I just want wings,” No-Holiday said. “That’s all.”

  Hartdog said, “You don’t have wings now and you still won’t after you blow your guts all over the rocks down there. God doesn’t make angels out of dumbasses.”

  “God will protect me and welcome me.”

  “Really? You ever see a bird that’s been sucked through a jet engine or a propeller? You think God protected the bird?”

  “Birds aren’t human.”

  “We are all God’s creatures, all of us who are sentient, and he gave us free will. You decide to fuck yourself up flying, so be it. It’s on you, not God.”

  The girl’s arms came down to her sides.

  “I want to be the first,” No-Holiday said.

  “To stupidcide yourself from up here? Dude, you’re not even close.”

  The girl’s shoulders slumped.

  Hartdog spread the fingers of her left hand and made a subtle clawing motion. Her partner immediately began to crab-crawl across the roughly paved road.

  “I’m going to fly,” No-Holiday said in a flat voice.

  “Fine, good. Let me get my camera closer, okay? Seeing some fool kill herself from start to finish ought to be worth a fortune. Step back six inches, I need the full view.”

  The girl edged back.

  “Put your arms back behind your sides and s
wing them forward to streamline your jump, then go for it when you’re ready.”

  The girl’s arms went back. She said “Hey you guys,” in a thin and reedy voice and she disappeared over the wall onto the road where Raven had snatched her and had her face down and in cuffs before she could react.

  “Whose car?” Hartdog asked the three girls.

  “Lena’s,” a girl said, pointing to the girl on the ground.

  Hartdog went to the Lexus and took out the key. “Were you guys wanting to jump with her?”

  “No Ma’am,” they said.

  “But you’d watch her kill herself?”

  One of the trio said, “She’d never jump. She’s a wuss. Is that Sped Dot Com thing like, for real?”

  “It, like, should be,” Hartdog said disgustedly. Kids.

  “Put her in your truck,” Hartdog told her partner. “One of the girls will drive the Lexus between our two trucks. We’ll go down to Eagle River and get this squared away.”

  Gabe Raven came over to her; his eyes were popped out like golf balls. “You want to go now?”

  “I can’t,” she whispered. “My legs are shaking so bad I don’t think I can walk.”

  “Me too, Lu, but you? Unfucking believable. That was some majorly drastic shit. I can’t even believe what I just saw and heard. How’d you think of GoPro?”

  “I didn’t. I just grabbed it from the truck.”

  “Holy shit.”

  When she finally calmed enough to get in her truck, Hartdog called Trooper Brenda Ledge. “We just got four girls from Empire County Day School.”

  “All jumpers?”

  “Not sure yet. One looked like she would. You got units rolling this way?”

  “Two.”

  “Tell them to work the mountain road east to west from on top. There could be more kids. Probably not, but let’s assume the worst.”

  “Affirmative, let me know if you learn more.”

  It was late afternoon when she walked outside the jail for a break, and stretched. Stupid kids, no thought, herd animals. Hartdog texted her girls, asked their whereabouts, and got fast responses. Both were at home, one reading a book, the other one oiling her ball glove.

  Teens lived a life apart, secret from adults and even secret from younger children. How the hell could you tell if one of them was suddenly turning stupid? She was still shaking when she went back inside the Eagle River jail.