Preston Falls : a novel (10 page)

"Are we finished, then?" Willis says.

The ranger turns the stare on him. "Don't forget it, your dog stays in camp at all times."

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"Yeah, I think we've covered that," says Willis. But the ranger's already motioning to the first car in line.

The campground is half a mile up a winding blacktop road; Willis spots the Cherokee parked by the last lean-to, which looks just like all the others, Birch and Cherry and Dogwood and whatever the fuck E would be. Eucalyptus? Depressing beyond belief: plywood walls painted forest green because this is a fucking forest, that whole trip. The lean-tos are strung along this ridge above the lake. You'd have a better view looking off if they'd thin out some of these pine trees or whatever they technically are—F must be Fir—but God forbid. He pulls in beside the Cherokee; Rathbone's already dancing back and forth on the seat. "Who's here, boy? Go get 'em." By loosing Rathbone first he's preparing them for who's bringing up the rear. Rathbone! What the —and then it dawns on them. And the little faces light up.

He opens the door and Rathbone scrambles over his legs and begins madly sniffing the ground. "Where's your friends?" says Willis, getting out of the truck. "Go get your friends." The lean-to is empty except for a Sportif bottle the ecopolice must have missed. Weird to see that logo. Okay, so what must've happened, they must've walked down to the lake and left their shit locked in the car. About the millionth reason not to go camping: having to worry all the time about your shit getting ripped off. As he's sure he'll find occasion to point out, since he doesn't seem able to keep his fucking mouth shut.

"Bone-face," says Willis. "Which way did they go?" Rathbone wags his tail harder. "Lassie! Go find Timmy!" Ridiculing his dog for being a dog.

Between Aspen and Beech, a rocky, dusty path leads steeply down. Canny woodsman that he is, Willis reasons that if you keep going downhill you'll eventually hit the lake, and after a couple of switchbacks he spots blue water below, sparkling through the trees. And then he remembers: no dogs. Shit. He stops, whistles again, turns around and starts back up the path. Rathbone looks at him and cocks his head. "Yeah?" says Willis. "Well, fuck you too." Then he says, "Sorry, buddy. C'm'ere." He squats, and Rathbone approaches; Willis roughs up his ears with both hands and rubs his chin across the top of the dog's head. As they near the lean-to again, Rathbone in his whatever-is-is-right mode, capering and sniffing among the pine needles, it occurs to Willis that E must be Elm. Not fucking Eucalyptus. This is why all the George Jones tapes in the world just aren't going to do it.

So he's got a problem. He can either (a) sit here with his thumb up his ass and wait God knows how long for them to come back; or {b) walk down to the beach and leave Rathbone tied up here, where he'll bark and yap and yowl the whole time and probably get them kicked out of this shithole. So he'll have to put Rathbone in the fucking truck, drive back down to the parking lot by the beach, leave the dog in the truck while he tries to find Jean, then beat it back up here before anybody can bust his chops.

He gets Rathbone's leash back on him with a low-down trick— offers a stick, then grabs his collar—drags him into the truck and sets off down the road the way he came. When he gets in sight of the booth again, he peels off into the parking lot and takes a space as close to the beach as he can find. He rolls the windows up, leaving the usual gap, and says, "Stay. I'll be right back, okay?" Rathbone yips and whines as Willis walks away.

Before he reaches the head of the path he hears someone yelling "Hey, you!" Which he ignores because it can't be happening.

"You! Hey! You get back over here!"

Now what the fuck? Willis turns and glares. Sure enough, it's that same asshole ranger, bearing down on him in this fucked-up gimpy gait that's partly a jog-trot and partly a stride, belly swaying from side to side. Willis waits for him to get closer—not deigning to raise his voice—so he can say Are you talking to me? Not De Niro style; more your frightfully-sorry-old-man-but-do-we-know-one-another tone. Except isn't that going to sound rehearsed, given that the son of a bitch is yelling right at him?

"You were told not to bring that dog to the lake area!" The ranger's sweating and panting. A mouth-breather, literally.

"The dog," says Willis, "is in the truck. The dog," he says, "cannot get out of the truck."

"Now, what did I say? I said you were to proceed with your dog to the campsite. Isn't that what I told you? You read that sign there?" The ranger jabs a finger at a NO PETS sign by the head of the path. This character must have been in the military. Fucking Korean War.

"Yes, I can read, thank you. I am now going down to the beach," he says, "to let my family know that I am here. I will be back. Good? Good." He turns and starts along the path.

"You get back here, mister. You hear me talking to you?"

Willis stops, turns again and stares at this cartoon man with vast

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sweat stains darkening the underarms of his uniform. Some flunky who takes tickets. Is Willis not a patron, whose three-dollar admission pays this fellow's salary? And is not the spirit of the NO PETS rule—i.e., that grass and sand not be shat upon—being complied with? And in fact, since the dog is in the truck, is not the fucking letter of the NO PETS rule being complied with?

"You know what?" says Willis. "Why don't you go fuck yourself, okay?"

"You're out of here, my friend." The ranger's face has gone aneurysm red. "You're to leave the park immediately. And you don't come back, you understand? You don't leave the park immediately, I call the sheriff's deputy and he'll see to it you leave. You think I'm foolin' now?"

"Yeah, why don't you call him, man? I'd like to see you fucking explain to a fucking deputy sheriff why it is I can't keep a fucking dog in a fucking truck while I walk a hundred fucking yards to the fucking beachr

"You got it, mister," says the ranger. 'Tm done foolin' with you. You'll move when he says to. He don't fool around." And the son of a bitch starts gimping back to his booth. Willis turns and starts along the white-graveled path, bordered by these stupid foot-high logs painted a redundant brown, Hopes the son of a bitch does call a cop: somebody needs to set this motherfucker straight.

He passes grills and picnic tables, fat laughing fathers in baseball caps and dumpy teenage girls groping empty air for badly thrown Frisbees. A spastic in a motorized wheelchair, putting Willis to shame. SmeUs of woodsmoke, pine trees, hot dogs roasting. A radio somewhere (which shouldn't be allowed) playing "Jimmy Mack" by Martha and the Vandellas. A "mack," we now know, is a pimp. In the maple trees, more hints of cautionary red. Bathers crowding the sand: a scrawny old bozo with a white goatee, a teenage thug with shaved head and iridescent sunglasses, a mom with a wide ass and oatmeal thighs holding her little girl by the hand—and there's Jean, her back to him, toweling herself off, wet hair hanging. She's looking out at the glinting water, and he sees how the insides of her thighs do that nice thing at the top where they bulge out a little and then go back in. Still so slender after two children. His children. There's something wrong with him.

Now, what the fuck is that—a lucid moment?

He calls her name. Willis hates yoohooing, but to sneak up close and

then suddenly start talking normally will scare the shit out of her, which'll piss her off good. Not that she won't be pissed anyway. After he yells it out enough times for the whole fucking beach to know Jee-yeen's husband is here, she turns around. He could swear he sees a flicker of glad smile before she remembers what the deal is.

"What are you doing here?" she says. Then she clamps a hand to her mouth. "Oh my God." She takes the hand away. "Did something happen?"

"No. No-no-no, nothing. I just sort of had a change of heart."

"Oh," she says. "Well, good for you. I guess." She drapes the towel around her shoulders.

"I missed you guys." Not precisely true, but it would be insulting on feminist grounds to say he suddenly got afraid for them. Or maybe it is true, and he's such a head case that his missing them can only take the form of imagining them buggered and murdered. Just a boy and his mind.

"You missed us," she says, "so you followed us here. And what's your plan now?"

"Well, I guess I'd hoped to stay and camp out with you guys." A little hat-in-hand shit seems called for just here. "I sort of thought we should try to leave things on a better note, you know? Where are the kids?"

"Over there," she says, not pointing. "What about the dog? You just left him at the house? "

"Of course not," he says. "He's out in the truck—in fact, I should get back to him. I just wanted to let you know I was here."

"And what did you plan to sleep in? Did you bring blankets for yourself?"

"Shit," he says. "I knew there was something."

Silence.

"Well," she says. "I suppose you could use this." She nods toward the old blanket spread out on the sand. "Did you remember to bring any food for the dog?" Translation: My darling, I'm so glad you've come. Though he guesses he should admire her for not snapping to it. They've done reconciliation-and-relapse.

Mel comes stalking over, in what he could swear is a different bathing suit from the one this morning. Right, because wasn't she sunning with the top off? This is a metallic-blue one-piece with a gold boomerang. So he is not a totally head-up-his-ass father.

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"Mother, I told Roger, and he still won't come. Hi, Daddy. I knew you'd be here."

"You didT' he says. "That's more than / knew."

She shrugs. This is her more-mystic-than-thou mode.

"Til go deal," Jean says to Mel. "I want you to get dried off and changed, okay?" Mel picks up a towel and starts scrubbing it at her hair; Willis notices what might be the beginnings of breasts trembling in rhythm. He looks away, and sees a man in gray uniform and Smokey hat heading their way through the bathing suits. Gun in a holster.

"Jesus, he got here in a hurry," he says. "Good, I'm glad."

"Who?" Jean turns around, sees the cop, looks at Willis. "What's this about?"

"Actually nothing, really," he says. "Guy at the gate was being an asshole. I guess he's here to adjudicate."

"Would you watch your language, please?" Jean says, and looks at Mel, who's making a turban of her towel.

"Right," says Willis. "She's never heard the word adjudicate before."

Melanie blushes down to her collarbone.

Jean says, "Sometimes your humor—"

"Excuse me, folks," says the cop. Sheriff, deputy, whatever he is. Marine-looking guy about Willis's age, one of your not-an-ounce-of-fat-on-him cops. "Are you the gentleman owns the dog?"

"Yep," says Willis. "I sure am." He says to Jean, "I better get going. You guys want to meet me back at camp? Or I could drive us all up in a few minutes."

"Fm sorry, sir," the cop says. Embroidered patch on his sleeve says SHERIFFS DEPT: no apostrophe, no period. "Tve been requested to escort you out of the park."

Jean and Mel both look at Willis.

"Whoa, wait a minute. Let me explain what happened." He pauses before launching in.

"You can explain on the way to your vehicle, sir. Your family can join you outside the main gate. But you need to leave right now, sir." He comes a step closer to Willis and nods toward the path.

"This is unreal," says Willis. "You're kicking them out too? For what? They weren't even there.''

"What is going on, please?" Jean says.

"Em sorry, ma'am." The cop gives her a glance, then turns his eyes

back on Willis. "There was an altercation with a park personnel which led to abusive language being used by this gentleman."

''You're a smooth son of a bitch," says Willis.

The cop doesn't move, but he's clearly gone to a higher state of alert: his eyes move from side to side, in case this character has buddies. "It's necessary for him to leave the park immediately."

"Unbe/zei^able," says Willis. "I don't have the right to explain what the hell this so-called altercation was even about} I left my dog in the—"

"You heed to leave, sir." The cop moves half a step closer. "We don't want any trouble."

"Hey, this guy is definitely a pro," Willis says to Jean. "See how he keeps dialing it up? We're now into the veiled threats."

"Sweetheart," Jean says to Mel, "go in and change into your clothes right now, please?" When Mel bends to get her clothes from the blanket, the cop's eyes go to her, then quick back to Willis.

"As of right now, sir," says the cop, "you are not under arrest."

"Doug," Jean says. "Please don't push this."

God, and there's Roger, staring at the cop's gun. God knows how long he's been drinking in the scene.

"Look," Willis says to the cop. "She and the kids have nothing to do with this, okay? They're all set up at their campsite and everything. I mean, fine, if you're going to kick me out of here, you know, fine. But would you let them have their thing?"

"That would be up to them. You can talk it over outside the gate, sir. Now let's move it."

It strikes Willis that either he has to let himself be marched out of here in disgrace, which is the sensible thing, or he can cross over into who the fuck knows what. He looks around. Everybody on the beach is watching; balls and Frisbees have stopped sailing, and the sun is glinting absolute white off the blue water. In the silence that's fallen, a blue jay screams. Willis looks back at the cop, who's moved in close enough to put hands on him.

"Tell you one thing," Willis says. "I don't like your fucking tone."

Jean says, "Oh my God."

The cop nods. "I'm placing you under arrest, sir. Charge is disorderly conduct. You have the right to remain silent, right to be represented by an attorney, and anything be used in evidence against you. Now. You don't come along quietly at this point, it's going to be neces-

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