Kingdomtide. Rye Curtis

it.

      Maybe. Maybe. Don’t think I did.

      What sounds like cloris?

      Morris, Pete said.

      Where were you?

      Out by Darling Pass.

      See your goddamn ghost?

      Claude smiled. All right now, Debs. No need to have fun at my expense.

      Pete raised a red eyebrow. You don’t believe in the ghost, Ranger Lewis?

      I’ve never seen it.

      I guess it’s hard to believe in somethin especially when you can’t see it, Pete said. I tried to believe my wife loved me. But after a while she said she wanted to make a change in her life before change was too late to be made. She said I was repressed. Sometimes she likes to use words I ain’t never heard of to make me feel bad about my education. But I told her she ain’t goin to get another way of life like she wants, not at thirty-nine lookin like she’s sixty-nine, not a clean tooth in her gourd.

      Pete’s had some ciders, Claude said.

      Did I tell you what she said, Claudey?

      Why don’t you tell me later?

      No, go ahead, Lewis said. What’d she say?

      Said I had a weird heart in a weird chest. Said I looked like an ugly woman with derelict breasts.

      I’m sorry, Petey. She shouldn’t talk about you like that.

      Well, I’ll be all right. I know I got a weird chest, had it all my life, born with it. Pectus carinatum. But a weird heart? Been wrackin my brain tryin to know what she meant by that.

      Sorry again about the hour, Debs, Claude said, turning to her. Just thought I’d brief you on this cloris word in case you thought we should act on it in some way didn’t occur to me.

      Lewis steadied herself on the doorjamb and looked up to the dark sky. She recalled the coat of a black Labrador she had once watched her father euthanize in his clinic. She looked back to Claude. You don’t need to check on me every goddamn weekend. I’m all right.

      I know that.

      All right, she said. Man’s voice or woman’s?

      Couldn’t say. I’d say might’ve been a woman or a young boy.

      Pete fanned out a hand of small fingers. To me that voice had the sound of a forlorned woman, he said importantly.

      All right. I’ll make a note of this tomorrow mornin. You two ought to get on home before Cornelia eats you guys’ tongues and takes you to Neptune.

      Come on now, Debs, don’t poke fun.

      What’s that? Pete said.

      The goddamn ghost Claude’s got you lookin for, Lewis said. Gums off tongues, hair, and balls.

      She closed the door on the two men, then she went back to the kitchen sink. The stains in the uniform had not come out. She dropped the shirt in the wastebasket. She had another glass of merlot and took a long bath with another bottle and listened to Ask Dr. Howe How. A thunderous woman phoned into the program and asked how it was that she and her husband seemed to be behaving like unrealistic and impractical people. She asked if it were common for people to behave like characters they had seen on television. In a reedy and pragmatic voice like that of a physician in surgery, Dr. Howe offered that, yes, it was common, perhaps because to do so was easier than assessing and acting on our authentic impulses and concerns.

      Lewis switched off the radio and climbed from the bath. She dried herself and stood naked to her bedroom window looking out at the dark pines and the valley below. She took to the fogged pane the tip of a finger and outlined her tall reflection. Beyond, in the forest, distant flashlights worked the dark and struck the trees. Lewis figured it was the men searching yet for the ghost of Cornelia Åkersson.

      She wiped the window clear and returned to the bathroom to vomit in the sink and then went to bed where she slept a restless night of dreams she was sure she had dreamt but none of them could she recount upon waking. In the morning she said to herself, God only knows what happens to me in my goddamn dreams.

      Lewis stopped the Wagoneer to clear from the road a flattened goshawk. She sailed the carcass like a discus into the trees below and marked the incident in the notepad she kept in her chest pocket. The sun was not yet up, the road still dark. She drove on and came to the one-room cedar structure perched high up the mountain. She unlocked the front door under a sign wood-burned with National Forest Service Backcountry Station and went inside.

      In the kitchenette she started a pot of coffee and took three aspirin and splashed her face at the sink and clicked on the space heater. Her desk was flush against a large westfacing window with a view of the same wooded valley she could see from her cabin. Mist sat in the evergreens and was just burning off under a rising sun. Great clots of dark birds turned in the sky. Lewis took off the campaign hat and set it to a hook on the wall. She sat and powered on the radio equipment on the desk and waited for it to warm up. She leaned over the paging microphone.

      Ranger Lewis to Chief Gaskell. Ranger Lewis to Chief Gaskell. Come in, Chief Gaskell. Over.

      Mornin, Ranger Lewis. Readin you loud and clear. What’re you doin at the station this early? Over.

      Somethin was buggin me, couldn’t let it wait. John, you know any-thin about a cloris? Over.

      What’s a cloris? Say again. Over.

      Cloris. I don’t know. I was hopin you would. Over.

      I don’t. Over.

      Is it not code? Stand for somethin? Over.

      Not anything I know. Over.

      Ranger Paulson received a transmission over his handheld last night out by Darling Pass, worried it might’ve been a distress call. It just said cloris. Thrice it said it. Cloris, cloris, cloris. Could’ve misheard. Over.

      Cloris? Say again. Over.

      Cloris. I’m spellin it C-L-O-R-I-S. Cloris. Over.

      Cloris. Copy. Cloris. I’ve never heard of that. Cloris. I’ll check around. Darling Pass? Was Claude out lookin for that ghost he says rides that turtle? Over.

      Goddamn Cornelia. He was. Over.

      He’s a strange bird. How’re you holdin up up there? Over.

      Lewis leaned back and looked out the window. A black beetle was climbing the inside of the pane and appeared there an immense animal using for stepping stones the peaks beyond. She hunched again for the microphone. I’m all right, John, thanks. Over.

      All right, well you let me know if there’s anything I can do. We’re thinkin about you. Marcy says she’s thinkin about you too. Divorce is hard times under any circumstance. Over.

      Appreciate it. Over.

      That everything, Ranger Lewis? Over.

      That’s everything. Out.

      Lewis stood from her desk and went to the kitchenette and poured a cup of coffee and splashed a little merlot in it from a bottle hidden in a cutout behind the cabinet and turned again to the window. She went back and leaned over her desk and flicked away the beetle.

      Mr. Waldrip and I had a calendar of 1986 from First Methodist pasted to the pantry door. Prior to us leaving on our trip to Montana, Mr. Waldrip had circled the 31st of August with black pen and had neatly written in the appointment we had with Terry Squime for the flight to our cabin in the Bitterroot National Forest. I have always thought it noteworthy that the 31st happened to fall on the first Sunday of Kingdomtide. If you are not a Methodist of a certain age likely you have not heard of Kingdomtide. It is meant to be a season of charity and unity in the Kingdom of God observed after Pentecost and before Advent. Not many churches observe it anymore. For me, ever since my time in the Bitterroot, it has turned out to be a season of