by John Hansen
As I got dressed, intentionally taking my time just to piss off Larry, but skipping my usual morning shower, I grabbed the necklace on my way towards the door. Pausing by the mirror, I put it on. It was small on me and hung pretty close to my neck, like a choker almost. But it made me feel like last night was more real and that a part of her was still with me, so I wore it. As I left my room and trotted down the stairs, I wondered how Alia had gotten home – probably had called a friend yet again. But why had she left so silent and secretly?
All that day I worked the front store in a haze, ringing up peoples’ selections of souvenirs while barely looking at them, wrapping some of the more fragile things like mugs and glasses in brown paper, and making change robotically. Larry had left half way through that day to get supplies in Browning, saying he said he wouldn’t be back until late that night, which was welcome as far as I was concerned.
I kept reliving my night together with Alia in my mind, running little movies of our time together. It seemed like a fantasy but I could smell her on my skin under my polo shirt, and I could almost taste her still, just almost – so it had to be real. I imagined her breath on my neck again as I held her close as we slept. It was a long shift, and the whole day I kept wondering when I would see her again.
When it finally came time to close, I counted down the register and locked the front doors. Ronnie, who had been working in the back, came up to me. “How about a bonfire tonight?” he asked, yawning. “I feel like burning some things.” He shook a cardboard box he was holding and smiled at me as he rattled the contents.
I looked warily at the box. “What you got there buddy?”
“It’s a surprise.”
We walked back towards the kitchen. Ronnie looked sideways at me, “So did you fuck her?”
I shook my head. “Even if I did I wouldn’t tell you, dude.”
He laughed at that. “That’s a yes.”
I didn’t answer; to explain my night to Ronnie would have cheapened in, devaluing it to the level of some drunken one nighter, of which Ronnie was a master. I just pointed at the kitchen and nodded for him to go in. He snorted and marched ahead of me; and we finished up closing down the kitchen without any more talk about Alia. The necklace danged from my deck as I washed the dishes left from the day’s shift, and I imagined her coming in through the back door with a big smile, giving me a hug. She didn’t appear, however.
After we finished I went looking for Katie to invite her along with us to the fire that night. I tried to make it a point to invite her every time Ronnie and I hung out, because I knew she was lonely and sad, always reading her books and sipping her tea, perpetually alone and moody as a result. She liked solitude, sure, but also she seemed unhappy alone. And that night I found her sitting on the back porch of the store, lit by the fading sun light above Rising Wolf’s peak. She was reading a thick, leather book; and the sunlight made her hair shine, giving her an angelic, otherworldly aura.
“Hey Katie, how was kitchen duty?” I sat down beside her, taking in the vista of Rising Wolf towering over us, backlit by orange and red sunlight streaking across the sky, igniting the long, thin clouds that stretched out to the horizon.
“Peachy,” she said, looking up at me after a moment and then back at her book. “Sorry I didn’t help you guys clean up, but some guy ordered like 20 Huckleberry shakes today and the blender broke in the middle of making them. I just dumped it all in a bucket and froze it to make ice cream – gave him and his gang of kids the whole bucket to make amends.”
She spoke in a voice that was always a little bored and a little irritated at the same time.
“Watcha reading?” I asked her, trying to get her on a subject more in her line.
“The Bible.”
I looked down at the book as if she held some rare antique in her hands, or was reading Egyptian hieroglyphics. I don’t think I had ever seen anyone just sitting around reading a Bible, outside of church – even in church for that matter. My own religious upbringing had consisted of one yearly church service on Christmas, and that wasn’t guaranteed either. The Bible in her hands gave the glowing sun halo in her hair an even more spiritual effect.
“A little light reading?” I asked.
She smiled slightly, “This book is actually full of intrigue, betrayal, sex, violence, love, death, war, peace… so I’d say that’s a definite ‘no.’”
She folded a corner of the page and closed the book. The cover was very worn, like someone had paged through it a million times. Thinking back to my church days, I had always noticed that a much-used Bible develops a personality of its own. Handled and careworn like a favorite baseball glove, they took on the shape of the owner. Katie’s was battered and bruised.
“I could see that,” I said. “But how often do you read it?”
“Not enough,” she said, getting up and stretching her neck back and forth. “I grew up in a real religious home, Will, very strict. My parents are both missionaries, except they always worked in the U.S., teaching Bible classes mostly, leading retreats.
“If you want, you can go to church with me this Sunday,” she said with a hesitant voice, looking at me with some embarrassment.
“Church?” I asked. The idea seemed strange out there in the wilderness, like going to a bowling alley. “Where? In Browning?”
She shook her head, “No, there’s a service right here in the campground each Sunday morning. The park has a pastor come out – it’s just one of the employees from the lodge, some young guy like us – but the park always provides one.”
I tried to picture a group of campers sitting around a young preacher in the middle of the woods, like some new cult leader brain washing his burgeoning flock, deciding who among the crowd he would takes as his wives. I had no objection to religious people, far from it actually, but the scene left me with a vaguely unsettled feeling, out there in the wild as we were.
“We’ll see.” I said. Then, to change the subject. “By the way, the reason I came down here is Ronnie and I are going to get a fire going in a bit – thought you’d like to join us.”
She thought for a moment, “Why not?” She got up walked down the back porch stairs onto the grass, and then looked back at me. “Will, what do you think of this place now that you been here a little while?”
I thought about it a minute, trying to examine my feelings and rehashing what I had gone through thus far – I wanted to give an honest answer. Katie was the type of person who you gave honest answers to because you had the feeling, when you talked to her and she stared at you, that she could tell when you were lying. And she had no tolerance for phoniness – that was obvious.
She smiled, “If it’s taking that long, it can’t be good.”
“Honestly? I don’t know,” I said, giving up after a moment. “It’s as beautiful a place as I could imagine, and I love being up there in the mountains, hiking, fishing...”
“But?” she added.
“But… I’m not sure this is what I came out here for – this job, the gift shop, Larry – it’s all weird… out of place. I get the kitchen and camp supplies thing we do, but all that crap in the front, and to have such a buffoon as Larry running this place seems a travesty.”
I looked around at the woods beyond the porch. “I came here to try to start a new life, really, because my old one wasn’t working out so good for me. The job at the store was just a way to get up here, but sometimes I wonder if I made the right choice after all.”
She laughed softly. “Yea, but don’t let the store get you down, Will, that really would be a shame.” She looked out over the lake at the mountain. “This place has a special… power, a wonderful, special beauty that you need to see before you leave.” She nodded back to the store, “The campers, the tourists, Larry – these are all just distractions from what’s really here.”
“And what’s that?”
She raised her eyebrows at me. “God,” she said, holding up the Bible too me.
I thought she
was joking but she held a serious expression on her face. As I watched her for a moment, I could hear steps crunching on the gravel as Ronnie made his way towards the back of the store where we were.
“And the devil, too,” Katie said.
Ronnie walked up to us nonchalantly. Again I wondered about the two of them, but I never seemed to have the right moment to ask – either of them, yet. I certainly could picture Ronnie sneaking into her room at three a.m., with no one else on that whole side of the building, with some excuse about sleep walking or something... his long lanky frame stealing across her room in his tighty whities. A terrible image…
“What are you two scheming about?” Ronnie asked. His arms were full of firewood, and behind him walked Bridget, the red head from the big bonfire at the lodge. She was carrying his cardboard box.
Katie shrugged, and I said ‘hi’ to Bridget and helped them gather some wood that was stacked around the store. This was not the wood for the huge fireplace in the store – those logs were greedily guarded under lock and key by Larry – this was just wood left around by campers who had moved on, which Ronnie went around and gathered every few days like a scavenging coyote.
Whenever we had a bonfire at Two Medicine, Ronnie was also the unofficially finder-of-vacant-camp sites in addition to keeping the firewood in steady supply, and this evening he had found a beautiful spot – one right near the lake shore. Such spots were usually taken and kept for days at a time by campers. Ronnie had parked his car facing the other way and had lifted the trunk up, facing us, to let the music flow in our direction. He popped in a mix CD of classic rock, his favorite kind of music, and set up some chairs.
We piled the wood up high and soon had a roaring little inferno, which we sat around in fold-out camp chairs. I had brought my guitar and was idly strumming some tune quietly, under the stereo, as we stared into flames and talked. Ronnie had taken a couple six packs from the store – probably not paying for them – and we all drank them out of the can. Ronnie had, of course, also brought a couple of newly-rolled joints with him, and he passed it around. I took a couple of little puffs; Katie declined.
“So, Will,” Bridget said to me, smiling, “Ronald tells me you and Alia are an item.”
“Well Ronald is full of shit,” I said back to her, looking back down at the flames and strumming my guitar some more.
I wondered as I stared into the flames why I was so evasive; what did I care if they knew I had fallen for a local? What did they care? When I thought about it, I realized it had more to do with the fact that I felt so strongly for her, that it was an almost holy thing that I couldn’t joke about and didn’t want to speak openly about for fear of it being tainted, and like my other, disappointing, past experiences with women. I had to keep this person separate, treat Alia as a special experience – which she definitely was in my heart – I had no doubt she was.
Ronnie blew out a cloud of smoke and sputtered and chocked for a second, then said, “Oh don’t give us that shit Will, Katie and I could hear your bed a-rockin’ last night.” He winked over at Katie, who rolled her eyes, shaking her head.
“I know Alia,” Bridget said, taking the joint from Ronnie’s hand carefully as she spoke. “Be careful is all I would say.”
“What the hell do you mean?” I snapped.
“She’s a little hellion, is what I mean. She just broke up with the biggest drug dealer in Browning a couple months ago, but before that they lived together a while – and this is one bad dude.” Bridget tentatively tried to coax a couple of puffs from the disintegrating joint in between her fingers. Ronnie gave her a sharp look, and nudged her elbow. She ignored him.
I knew that Alia had had a rough background, but she seemed so young and innocent to me that I wondered if Bridget was talking about the same person.
“Alia Reynolds?” I asked.
“Oh it’s her, William, don’t worry,” Bridget said, smiling at me and winking. “I saw her up here at the store a week ago, giving you that ‘come hither’ look.”
“Don’t sweat it bro, just be careful,” Ronnie said, flicking the tiny ember of the joint into the fire.
“Who’s the biggest drug dealer in Browning?” Katie asked. We all looked over at her; she was sitting on the ground, hugging her knees. “Tony Montana?” she asked.
Ronnie gave a warning look to Bridget, who still ignored him.
“You met him,” Bridget said, looking at me. “He was at the lodge bonfire.”
“He was with me,” Ronnie interrupted. “That guy Clayton, Will. But don’t listen to Bridget – Clayton’s a nobody.”
“Oh, don’t be so sure,” Bridget said, shaking her head.
“Just fucking drop it!” Ronnie barked at her. “He’s fucking trailer trash!”
Bridget looked over at me, raising her eyebrows in mock surprise, and then down at the fire.
As if to lighten the mood, Ronnie looked up into the stars, now speaking in a tone of apparent wonder. “Did you guys know that the Perseid meteor shower is called ‘The Tears of Saint Lawrence,” and comes every year in August? And… did you know that the meteors are actually meteors from the tail of a comet….”
Katie and I both groaned and told him to shut up, and it had the desired effect – we all relaxed a bit. I still wondered about Alia, why she had lived with a drug dealer, whether or not Clayton was dangerous, and what she saw in me, and when I would see her again. Maybe she was avoiding me because I’d be in danger if Clayton found out, but it could have been anything that was keeping her away. Why hadn’t I gotten at least a phone number?
I wished she was sitting beside me at the fire – roasting a marshmallow and talking with us. I’d risk a little danger to lay beside her in my bed that night, I decided.
Ronnie produced his cardboard box and shook it again for us, a roguish look on his face. He set the box down and slowly opened it, reaching in for its contents. We all sat watching him. Katie looked over at me and shook her head.
“Viola!” Ronnie said as he revealed a set of huge fireworks. They were actual mortar tubes with baseball-sized fireworks shells that you light and drop in the tubes. There were about six of the shells lined up in the plastic holder. Ronnie held them up for us to see delicately, with fascination, pride and a bit of fear.
“Jesus! Those look like the real deal,” I said.
“Not ‘like’ the real deal – these are the real deal,” Ronnie said, as he unwrapped the big tube. “They’re from Clayton and Jake’s stash, actually.”
He got a bucket out of his car, struggling with the weight, and I saw that it was full of sand. He jammed the big tube down deep in the sand, to anchor it, and then looked around at us with childlike excitement, “Who wants to light the first one?”
We shot off all of the huge firework mortars, one by one. They flew up to a great height and produced the big, colorful balls of explosions that one sees on July fourth. They were incredibly close to us though – so close and so loud that I figured the rangers would surely have to show up and arrest us all on the spot. None did, although a few campers wandered over to watch the show. I wondered what Larry would make of the spectacle and the deafening noise.
Each time Ronnie dropped a lit mortar he’d run over to our camp like a kid with a sparkler. I tried to enjoy the moment, the show, but I couldn’t shake a worried feeling about Alia now, and I hoped she was safe, wherever she was. And I wished, as I watched the Two Medicine sky explode, that I was going back to my room later and was going to find her lying in bed again. We would cuddle up, I could hold her firm little body in my hands, and talk as I fell asleep to the smell of her.
Later that night I lay in bed alone, staring up at the two little bats that had yet to fly out of my window to hunt for the night. What did they think of the firework cacophony? Had they noticed Alia and I making love? I had named them Siegfried and Roy, and had come to think of them as pets, although not the kind of pets that provided any affection or even entertainment.
As I la
y there I heard someone fumbling with the lock outside the kitchen door downstairs, and then the door slammed open and shut again. I assumed it was Ronnie, coming back from some late night romp with Bridget, but then I heard heavy steps lead across the store over to the front, then the distant creaking of someone walking through the store below, and finally up the wooden steps that led to Larry and Phyllis’s master room on the other end. I rolled over and looked at the clock and it said three a.m.
I heard their door close softly, and then I didn’t hear anything more. I lay back down and imagined Alia’s little steps up my staircase and a soft knock at the door. No such luck, however. I was soon asleep in the silence of the early morning.
Seventeen
The next morning I was on kitchen duty and we were busy. Larry was not at work, for the first morning ever since I had been there, and Phyllis said he was in bed sick. She seemed a little frazzled about it after Katie and Ronnie asked about him, so we all just dropped it, glad in any event not to have him lurking around. As I got the front doors of the store wedged open to let in the campers, I listed above me where Larry’s room was, but didn’t hear a sound. He was never sick, never went out at night, never drank, and didn’t have any friends to see. What had that old bastard gotten into then?
That day Ronnie and I were sharing kitchen duty. He was on the register this time and I did the cooking. I enjoyed us teaming up in the kitchen because we had always a good time joking around and talking. I had just wrapped up a big order for a family that had just arrived to camp, and was scraping down the grill, when Greg the ranger came walking in the back screen door of the kitchen.
“Hey Will,” he said as he closed the screen door behind him, “how’s business?” I noticed he didn’t smile.
