Have You Seen Me?

A family of bronzed, golden-haired Californians (mother, father, son and daughter) in a white Ford Expedition, a silver-bullet Airstream trailer in tow, rolled to a stop at the contact station in Sunset Crater National Monument.  The ranger in the wooden booth, a young woman in a forest-green jacket, her auburn hair tucked up under her Smokey-the-Bear hat, took the tourists’ money, handed the mother a map, and explained the rules and regulations governing the park.  The family was looking for the campground, and the ranger pointed back to the entrance, which the visitors had missed, then watched as the father maneuvered the SUV and trailer through a U-turn in the visitor center parking lot and back to the campground road.  The young boy in the back of the Expedition gave the ranger the finger as the vehicle passed her again.

She was waiting for the next carload of animals to drive up when George, her gray-haired co-worker, poked his head into the window with a message.  “The super wants to see you right away, Karen,” he said, his voice soft with concern.  “I’ll hold down the fort.”

As Karen walked to her green Wrangler, parked behind the visitor center, she felt a knot in her stomach.  She knew what this was about.  It had to do with the family she had offended several days ago, a family very much like the one she had just dealt with: a mother, father, and two kids.  The father had promised to contact Karen’s supervisor.  She hadn’t meant to be so abrupt with the people, but the two unruly hound dogs braying in the back of the Chevy Suburban had set her off.

 “Pets are only allowed in the parking lot here at the park,” she had said, belligerently, “and they must be leashed at all times.”

“Right,” the father said, “but there must be someplace we can let them run loose.”

“There are animals that live in this park,” Karen said, surprised by the tightness she felt in her chest.  “When dogs run free they mark the area, forcing the others out.  We don’t want that to happen here.  If you can’t stand the thought of leashing your dogs, leave them at home next time.”

“We resent being talked to like that,” the father said.  “We know all about environmentalism.  This is a Green family you’re talking to.”

“Apparently, not Green enough.”

“Your supervisor will hear about this,” the father had said, turning the vehicle around at the visitor center, and driving out of the park.

After the confrontation, Karen had been unable to breathe normally for a few minutes.  A Green family–what a joke.  If they were environmentalists they’d have known all about domestic dogs and wild animals.  But as she began to calm down, she realized she’d been unduly harsh.  What was she thinking?  This place didn’t belong to her.

 Now, as Karen drove the loop road on the eighteen-mile trip to the office at Wupatki—where the superintendent was today—she couldn’t enjoy the early June morning, the temperature a cool fifty degrees, horsetail clouds in a powdery blue sky, the shadows of pine trees as straight as ink lines across the volcanic sand.  As she dropped out of the high country toward the orange and red rock of the Painted Desert, she remembered the two previous incidents that had landed her in trouble.  First, there had been that little blonde girl at the campground, who had filled a toilet bowl with black cinder stones to see if they would float.  Karen hadn’t meant to speak harshly to her, but she couldn’t believe the little girl’s stupidity.  “Who do you think is going to take those rocks out of there?” Karen had said.  “You are.”

The girl was stunned speechless by the bluntness of Karen’s statement, her mouth quivering until she burst out crying, tears falling from her eyes like a summer rain.  The girl bolted, running out of the restroom like a startled squirrel.  Later, Karen saw her standing with her parents, pointing back at the “mean” ranger.  The parents made an indignant departure in their gray van, driving to the visitor center to report her behavior to Superintendent Rusk.  That little fiasco resulted in her first reprimand.

Karen could remember the conversation in the super’s office as if it had been recorded.  Rusk had said, “Our job is to accommodate people, Karen, not punish them.  You were out of line with that little girl.”

“Is it too much to ask people to act responsibly?”

“She’s a kid.  Kids are irresponsible.”

“I was talking about the parents, Sir.”

“Perhaps you should have approached them, then–see what suggestions they might offer about dealing with the problem.”

“Perhaps so, Sir,” Karen had said.  But she was too cynical to give any merit to Rusk’s solution.

 After that incident, she had been transferred from campground duty to the pueblo, where she gave evening talks around a campfire in the amphitheater.  That had been her favorite job.  The nights there were magical.  The Milky Way’s river of stars snaking across a charcoal sky.  Coyotes singing in the distance.  The fire making bright-colored masks of people’s faces, their silhouette shadows dancing against the dark walls of the ruins.  It was as if everyone had ridden a time machine into the past, the mystery made more vivid by the words Karen spoke, the names of the ancient ones: Sinagua and Anasazi and Cohonina.  No wonder she had gotten pissed off, then, when two adults–men acting like Boy Scouts on an outing–started making cracks about the impoverished lifestyle of the Native Americans, suggesting the people of the pueblo would readily have abandoned their “natural existence” for the comforts of modern civilization.

Karen let several comments slip by before confronting the men. “The Native Americans were richer than us in many ways,” she said.

“Name one,” one of the men said.  Several people giggled, destroying the mood of the night.

“Are you in grade school?” Karen said.  “Figure it out.”

To her amazement, the men had been irate about their treatment.  The following morning they went straight to the superintendent’s office to make a report.  Later, when Karen stood in front of his desk, Superintendent Rusk read a sentence from the men’s written complaint: “An otherwise perfect night was ruined by the ranger’s rude comment.”  When Karen tried to explain, Rusk had said, “People, Karen, people–our job is to serve people.”

As far as Karen was concerned, though, there was only one thing that kept hers from being the perfect job:  people.

 Since she’d been working at the park–a little shy of two years now–Karen had classified people into five basic types.  She had come up with this classification by observing tourists carefully: while they stumbled around the cinder trails on the self-guided tour of the lava flows, shrieking in amazement at the rivers of frozen ebony; while they consumed lunch at the picnic sites, strewing plastic bags and aluminum cans across every square inch of soot-covered earth; but mostly from watching them at the park campground, where the visitors congregated every night, coming home to their campsite dens at the end of each exciting day.  It was when she was assigned to the campground that she had grouped the campers according to the animals they resembled–though, ultimately, Karen knew this was an insult to the animals.

There was nothing, for instance, more beautiful than a Steller’s Jay, its black stocking cap cocked back on its head, its blue plumage more iridescent than a sunset sky.  The jay hopped effortlessly from bough to bough in the ponderosas, squawking aggressively whenever anyone entered its territory.  The campground jays, Karen decided, were those people who hawked around their campsites, always on guard should strangers cross into their space.  The jays left their sites only reluctantly, fearful that their belongings would be stolen or, worse, that their territory would be commandeered by other, more dangerous animals.

Whenever the moon rose at night, real coyotes wailed at each other across the dark desert floor, like sirens in a big city.  The campground coyotes sat around their fires long after they should have been asleep, drinking illicit alcohol, rehashing stale jokes, howling at punch lines.  Asked to keep the noise down, the coyotes often became sheepish, astonished to learn that they were making a ruckus.  Ten minutes later, they were at it again.

 The black bears were those people whose sole interest was the consumption of food.  The bears roamed the grounds at all hours, their mouths stuffed with gorp, baked potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, anything, in short, to keep their faces full.  At the visitor center at Wupatki, they raided vending machines for the sweetest candies, rinsing the confections down with can after can of soda pop.  A fatal mistake other campers often made was being friendly to the bears, who would then invite themselves into the strangers’ campsites, talk about the food they’d brought along, and outstay their welcome.

The deer were the campers Karen found least offensive, though there was something repulsive about their timidity.  The deer sat nervously around their campsites, nibbling food, eyes always on the alert, never fully able to relax among the other animals.  Any small disruption would start them, and often the deer packed up and left the campground without spending the night.  Where did they go, Karen often wondered–deep into the blue pine forest at the base of the mountain in search of true solitude?  At least the deer were neat.  That was more than she could say about the last group of animals, the domestic dogs, without a doubt the most destructive of campers, the ones who gave her the most grief.

 Adult dogs had no control over their pups, who intruded upon everyone’s privacy with their games of hide-and-seek, who mucked up the restrooms with too much toilet paper, and who were always too hurt when reprimanded by a ranger, carrying their sulking grievances back to Mom and Dad, who glowered at authority for the rest of the vacation.  If that wasn’t bad enough, the dogs frequently brought real dogs with them, ignoring the leash law and allowing the canines to wander where they didn’t belong, sometimes out onto the cinder lakes to lay down prints where none had been for nearly a thousand years.

And what kind of animal was she, Karen wondered now, as she drove her Jeep up the service road behind the visitor center at Wupatki.  Perhaps a mountain lion–shy and solitary, but dangerous when provoked.  Or maybe she was a skunk, overreacting to the tiniest threat, stinking up the environment with her perception of how things should be.  More likely, though, she was a deer: shy and sensitive, overly afraid of other animals.

Behind the visitor center at Wupatki, Karen parked her Jeep in front of the narrow walk that led to the super’s office.  Rusk had made it more than clear what would happen to her in the event of another incident, and he was a man of his word.  She didn’t resent him for what he had to do, she just wished she could find the words to defend herself when he asked for an explanation.  The trouble was, there was nothing she could say in her defense.  In front of his door she hesitated, took a deep breath, and knocked.

Dale Rusk was sitting at his desk when Karen entered, finishing a last swallow of black coffee from an evergreen mug.  He gestured with his raised eyebrows for Karen to sit in the brown cloth chair in front of him.  Rusk was a man in his early fifties, a rugged sculpted jaw beneath a stubborn five-o’clock shadow.  The furrow between his eyebrows was deep, scar-like.  When Karen sat, he picked up a manila folder from the top of his desk and held it in front of him as if he were weighing the cardboard.  “I’ve got a letter here from a Nevada man who says his family decided not to stay at the park after an encounter with a woman ranger at the contact station.  I’d like to hear your version of the incident.”

Karen went through the whole story as carefully as possible, making sure to explain it without allowances for her gruff behavior.

After he had listened attentively to everything she said, nodding at appropriate intervals, Rusk said, “I’ve reminded you repeatedly that our job description outlines the importance of public relations.  So I think you’ll agree, Karen, that we’ve reached the point where something must be done.”

She wanted to beg him for another chance, to say she’d make a concerted effort in the future to get along with tourists.  But she couldn’t.  She was too proud, too afraid of appearing needy.

He stared at her for a moment, biting his upper lip as if he hated to speak.  Then he closed the manila folder and set it down on his desk.  “I’m going to suspend you for two weeks,” he said, “effective tomorrow morning.  Perhaps that will give you time to think about your situation.”  When Karen remained silent for an awkward moment, Rusk said, “Is there anything you want to say?”

There was a lot she wanted to say, but she said, “No, Sir.”

Rusk looked at the watch on his left wrist.  “I apologize for having to rush this along, Karen, but I’ve got another appointment in a few minutes.”

She stood.  Before she left the office, Rusk said, “Give yourself the full time off before making any decisions.  Will you do that?”

“Yes, Sir,” she said.

* * *

When Karen left Wupatki, she drove down the two-and-a-half-mile road to the small ruin at Wukoki.  Even though it was still early, she was surprised to find the parking lot empty.  She was glad to be alone; it gave her a chance to think about what had just happened.  It bothered her that Rusk had had so little time, suspending her and then dismissing her abruptly.  Surely that was an indication of how much he valued her.

Wukoki was her favorite ruin in the entire park, and it looked especially fine this morning.  The sun hung low in the sky, making strong, dark shadows on the pueblo.  She walked around inspecting the stone walls, peering through open windows, marveling for the hundredth time at the handiwork.  While she stood gazing into one of the ancient rooms, an image of herself as a Native American came to mind.  She pictured herself grinding corn on a metate, smiling peacefully.  Maybe that was her problem, she thought: she had been born four centuries too late.  Perhaps she might have been more content in a simpler society.  But in the same instant she realized she wouldn’t have been happy living in a crowded pueblo.

The sound of car tires whining down the long stretch of asphalt road brought her out of the reverie.  On her way to the parking lot, a freckle-faced teenaged boy with thick wire-rim glasses, an expensive digital camera hanging around his bony neck, rushed by.  At the head of the winding sidewalk that led down to the ruin, his mother appeared, a large round woman wearing a red flannel shirt and jeans.  She had a trumpet voice.  “Slow down, Dwight,” she blasted, looking back at her husband for support, disgust for her spouse evident on her face.  The man, seeing Karen, said nothing.  There was that quality about the husband, Karen thought, an obvious timidity, though he was as large as a bull elephant.  Both parents nodded at Karen as they passed.  “Good morning,” Karen said, even though her morning had been anything but good.

* * *

At the contact station, things had picked up, and George was too busy with tourists to ask what had happened with Rusk.  Karen was grateful for the heavy traffic because she was afraid her voice might crack explaining the scene at the super’s office, and hearing herself sound weak like that, she might break down crying.  That was the last thing she wanted–to let somebody see her out of control.  Later, by the time the morning rush had slowed, she had managed to compose herself, and she was able to tell George about her suspension without a quavering voice.

George was one of the nicest rangers in the park, an old-timer who would be retiring in less than a year.  Just looking at him always made Karen feel better, his leathery, sun-tanned face, his smiling blue eyes.  Karen had always gotten along with George, and she knew he meant well when he said, “You want me to talk to Dale?  He and I go way back.”

“What would you say?”

“That two weeks is too long a suspension for someone who loves this place as much as you.”

Karen tried to smile stoically, but she couldn’t muster the expression.  “It’s probably for the best,” she said.  “It made me realize I’ve been working the wrong job all this time.  It’ll give me a chance to look for something else.”

“You don’t mean that,” George said, as if it were fact.  “You’re dedicated to this job.”

“But I don’t do well with the tourists.”

“I used to feel the same way myself, and look at me–I’m about to retire.”

 Karen remembered the conversation she’d had with George after her second reprimand, when she was flirting with the idea of moving to California.  He told her then that he had thought about quitting plenty of times himself.  When she had asked what had made him stay, he said, “Oh, lots of things.  Maybe I was too lazy to find another job.  Maybe I liked the park service too much.  I know I always loved working in the out-of-doors.  I guess it was a combination of all those things.”  She recalled being disappointed with his response.  She had wanted him to share some wisdom, to give her words to live by, to tell her how to get along with others.  But he had offered nothing.

Now, as they stood staring down the long curve of road leading out of the park, she found herself irritated at George’s sudden silence, as if somehow, he, too, had forsaken her.  But when he reached his bear-paw hand up to scratch the crown of his white head, the feeling passed.  She couldn’t be mad at George.

The influx of tourists through the gate kept the rangers so busy they had to take turns eating lunch.  Karen went first, requiring only fifteen minutes because she had little appetite.  George took a bit more than half an hour, sitting in the wooden chair with his feet up on the counter, sipping strong-smelling coffee from a beige thermos cup, eating a ham sandwich he had made for himself.  His wife had died last year.

While he ate, he talked about his wife, Dinah, how he could never make sandwiches like hers.  He talked about what a good person she was, and what a good relationship they’d had.  At any other time Karen would have been receptive to George’s reminiscences, but she felt resentful now, thinking her dilemma had already faded from his mind.  So he surprised her a moment later, saying, “If we’d have had kids, Dinah would have wanted a daughter just like you.”

 “Why?” Karen said.  “I’d have been a disappointment.”

He said, “Are you kidding?  There aren’t many people as kind as you, kiddo.  You just don’t know it yet.”

It was a sweet thing for him to say, but George didn’t know the real her.  Not that she didn’t have some kindness and compassion inside–after all, she had been brought up that way–but she wasn’t one of these people who went around treating others according to the Golden Rule no matter how they treated you.

As afternoon shaded toward evening on this her last day of work, she found herself growing depressed.  Right before knock-off, the phone rang and George answered it, nodding into the apparatus as if he could see the person on the other end.  A co-worker in the visitor center needed to talk to him in person, and George left in a hurry without saying goodbye.  Karen didn’t have time to linger long in her despair, though, because her relief, a young ranger named Dave Coleman, showed up to replace her in the booth.

Later, on the way home, she turned her Jeep on impulse up the dirt road that led to O’Leary Peak.  Not far off the main road was one of her favorite places, a small mountain above the campground that overlooked the Bonito Lava Flow.  She parked at the side of the road and stepped out to survey the country.  Her abdomen felt hollow, a sensation brought on by a strange nostalgia, as if she already had been gone from this place for years, and had just returned as a visitor.  She stood gazing at Humphreys Peak, one of her favorite sights.  A sprinkling of powdered-sugar snow dusted the very crest.

It hurt deeply to think she was actually considering leaving this place for good.  Staying, however, meant finding a way to deal with people no matter how they treated the park.  Couldn’t she do that?  After all, there had been plenty of good experiences with good people who thoroughly enjoyed the place.  Why did the negative experiences seem to carry the greater weight?  Couldn’t she focus on the positive, overlook the others?  Yes, she might be able to do that, she thought, feeling better about her situation.  She would use the two-week suspension like a vacation, from which she’d return refreshed and recharged.  She decided to drive home then, but when she pictured her house waiting for her, something unpleasant sprang to mind–the incident with her former neighbor, Janet– and that punctured Karen’s suddenly inflated mood.

She had gone home for lunch one day to see if her income tax refund had come in the mail.  The check wasn’t there, but something else caught her attention: one of those cards the letter carrier delivered weekly now, the headline “Have You Seen Me?” above a photo of a missing kid.  Normally, Karen barely glanced at these pictures, but this card carried the photo of a missing girl who looked very much like Janet’s daughter, Loretta.  The information below the girl’s picture identified her as Jennifer Jocelyn Leonard, missing for two years from Lewiston, Idaho, last seen with her mother, Callie Lee Leonard.

Karen’s first impulse had been to call the 1-800 number listed on the bottom of the card, but she didn’t.  After all, in the short time Janet had lived there, she had been a good neighbor, quiet, but friendly.  Karen was in a bind.  As an officer of the law she was required to follow the rules, but strict adherence to rules often created more harm than good.  The longer she waited to act, the more indecisive she became, until finally, about a week later, card in hand, she approached Janet across the side yard wall.  Janet had just washed clothes and was hanging them on the line to dry.  When she saw the photograph of her daughter, Janet’s normally-warm smile disappeared.  She immediately invited Karen over for a cup of coffee and an explanation.

Her ex-husband, Danny, a child-abusing drunk, had filed for custody of their daughter.  According to Janet, he had already abused Loretta sexually.  So when the court awarded Danny custody, Janet had taken the kid and run.  “Please don’t turn us in, Karen,” Janet had begged.  “Would you want child abuse–incest–hanging over your head?”

Janet’s story had been so convincing, Karen promised to say nothing.  And she hadn’t.  A few months later, though, the cops showed up next door to take Janet and her daughter into custody.  Karen just had gotten home from work when she heard the commotion, and she ran outside to see if she could intervene.  But Janet, seeing her, screamed insanely: “You dirty bitch.  You filthy lying bitch.”  Karen wanted to tell Janet that she hadn’t been the one to turn them in, but the mask of hatred on her neighbor’s face stopped her cold.

A few days later, the local newspaper ran a story on the incident.  A medical examination of the little girl had revealed a body battered by years of abuse.  The most recent–six deep bruises on the girl’s backside–proved that the real abuser was the mother.  The photo accompanying the story showed the little girl being reunited with a grateful father, who for years had searched desperately for her.

Now, standing in the park above the Bonito Lava Flow, Karen felt deflated.  As long as there were animals like Janet in the world, she could never trust people.

 As she gazed in the direction of the Painted Desert before turning to leave, something in the near foreground caught her eye.  When she went to inspect it, she found several candy bar wrappers wadded together at the entrance to a small cave, where she sometimes came to eat lunch.  The cave was something of a private sanctuary, to which she retreated when the pressures of her job became too great to bear.  So she was even more agitated to find a small fire ring just inside the entrance, an amateurish circle of stones probably fashioned by some kid who had come up here to eat candy and burn paper.  There were even newly-laid footprints in the black sand outside the cave, feet too small to be an adult’s.  The discovery caused a wave of hatred for humanity to well inside of her.  This was just further evidence of people’s carelessness, their total disregard for the sanctity of special places.

Ordinarily, she would have pocketed the litter and broken up the fire ring, disassembling the stones, smoothing over the ash-gray dirt with her boot.  But this time she threw the candy wrappers into the fire pit, turning away in disgust.  In that instant she felt she had arrived at a decision about her job.  She got into the Jeep and drove back down the mountain, out of the park, and onto the highway back to the city.  In thirty minutes she reached her university-neighborhood house, the house she had rented after her second reprimand, when she had moved out of the rangers’ quarters.

* * *

After a TV dinner for supper, Karen called her friend Petra in San Diego and told her about the suspension.  Months ago, Petra had suggested that Karen move to the coast to live with her.  That was after Karen’s second reprimand.  Karen hadn’t been interested in living in San Diego then, but the idea appealed to her now.  When she asked Petra if she could visit, her friend said she could spend the full two weeks if she wanted.  “When can I expect you?” Petra said.

“I’ll leave first thing tomorrow morning–before the desert gets too hot.”

After she hung up, Karen wondered if she had done the right thing.  She remembered the first time she had visited Petra–the long, hot drive across the desert, the brief respite from the heat while crossing the coastal mountains, then the steep descent into the insanity of the city, fighting freeway traffic to nudge her way across lanes to the exit Petra had warned against missing.  Petra’s directions were precise and accurate–not surprising coming from the manager of a bank.  When Karen found the street, she was shocked at the size of Petra’s house.  For a $250,000 home it was downright tiny.

The two friends had a good time together, touring the art museums, strolling through the botanical garden at Balboa Park, driving down to the old lighthouse at Point Loma.  Several times they had walked the beach at sunset, watching a rouge-red sun dip into an ultramarine ocean, pencil-line clouds on the horizon.  Every place they went had one thing in common: people.  They were everywhere, a fact Karen found truly disconcerting.  And something else she didn’t like about San Diego were the mornings, the gray marine layer that didn’t burn off until noon, making her feel blue.

Now, Karen was packing a suitcase in the bedroom when the telephone rang.  She figured it was Petra calling back to say she couldn’t entertain a guest, after all, but when Karen put the receiver to her ear, she heard George’s gruff voice.  “A kid’s gone missing from the campground,” he said, his breathing heavy, as if he’d been running, “and Dale asked me to round up all available hands.”

More bitter about her situation than she realized, Karen’s anger leapt out.  “I don’t even work there anymore, George, remember?  Besides, isn’t it too dark to look now?”

“We’re organizing people for a morning search party.  The kid disappeared early this afternoon, but his parents didn’t report it until after dark.  They kept expecting him to turn up at any moment.  Thirteen-year-old boy.  He and the folks had a big tiff.  He’s run away before, but never at a place like this.”

The image of the crumpled candy bar wrappers and the fire ring popped into Karen’s mind.  Of course, anybody could have left those wrappers there.  Any kid could have climbed the mountain from the campground, built the crude fire ring.  Yet the cave would be a logical place for a runaway to hide.  And if the searchers knew where to look, it would save them a lot of time and energy.  But instead of mentioning this to George, she said, “Does Rusk know you’ve asking me to get involved?”

“Not really,” George said, “but he told me to find available people–and you’re available.”

Karen knew what George was trying to do–and at another time she might have appreciated it.  But now she said, “Actually, I’m not available.  I’m leaving for San Diego first thing in the morning.”

Without missing a beat, George said, “Heading to the coast, are you?  Wish I could tag along.  Dinah and I used to love driving to the ocean.  We used to go at night, stay out of the desert heat.”

“I don’t like driving at night,” Karen said, then felt silly for saying it.

 “Well, if you change your mind,” he said, “or have some free time at first light, stop out–we could use the help.  If I don’t see you, have a good time.”

“Good luck with the search,” she said, halfheartedly.

Later, after a shower, Karen lay in bed trying to sleep.  She hadn’t meant to be angry with George, but she couldn’t believe his insensitivity, calling like that to enlist her aid, as if he had forgotten about her suspension.  In reality, he had just meant to keep her involved, to remind her of how important he thought she was to the place.

When restlessness made sleep a distant prospect, Karen rose and went to the kitchen to warm a cup of milk, which she sipped sitting at the table.  Afterwards, with all the lights off, she stood in the living room, staring out the window toward the invisible mountain north of town.  A flash of lightning surprised her, and it took a second to figure out what it had been.  A half minute later, another flash went off, a distant spark that illuminated a cloud over Humphreys Peak.  Then another flash, and another, each time in a slightly different location.  Karen tried to guess where each successive flash would appear, but the lightning flitted like her thoughts, brilliant little flares that revealed the great hulk of black mountain brooding over the city.

Why should she get involved in the search, she thought.  Why should she care how much time the searchers spent?  To hell with them.  She needed to think about herself now.  With that in mind, she returned to her bedroom.  But before she fell asleep she pictured a frightened boy cowering in a dark cave, his puny fire snuffed by high winds, lightning X-raying his hiding place.  She felt a pang of true remorse.  She’d go far out of her way to rescue an animal in need, wouldn’t she?  Had she really become that callous about human beings?

* * *

Karen locked the front door behind herself the next day.  The morning had dawned bright and beautiful.  The Jeep needed gas, so she stopped at a service station on the main strip.  Then she made the thirty-minute drive north to the park, thinking that if the kid wasn’t at the cave she’d still be able to beat the heat across the desert floor.  The sight of the mountain encouraged her, a blue giant looming over town.  Sunlight had already begun to filter down through the green pines at the timberline.  On the ride she thought, ‘This is the right thing to do.’  She could tell it was by the way her heart beat strongly in her chest, by the sweet morning air in her lungs.  But perhaps she was deceiving herself.  Maybe she was doing this for the wrong reason.  She might have ulterior motives: others would see her as somebody who went out of her way to help people.  Dale Rusk would hear about her selfless act.  Karen nearly turned the Jeep around right then, disgusted with herself.

By the time she neared the cave, she had convinced herself of the futility of the effort, so she was absolutely stunned to see a kid dash across the road toward some large yellow boulders.  “Hold it,” Karen yelled, jumping down from the Jeep before it had rolled to a complete stop.  The authority of her command froze the kid in place.  He turned to face her, and immediately she knew she had seen this boy before.  It was yesterday morning, out at Wukoki.  He had rushed by her with his camera.  And from behind him had come the squawking commands of his mother, a hen who wouldn’t let her chick too far out of sight.  Karen suddenly felt genuinely sorry for the kid, and in that instant she thought she understood everything.

 She expected him to be scared and submissive, but he wore a hostile expression when she reached him, his eyes complacent behind the thick, wire-rim glasses.  Karen said, “Did you spend the night up here–in the cave?”

“What if I did?”

“Your mom and dad must be worried sick about you.”

He put his hand on his left hip and cocked his head to one side.  “You think I give a shit about that?” he said.

Karen took a deep breath, trying to be patient.  Maybe the kid had good reason to be defiant.  Karen tried the rational approach.  “Right now a group of rangers is organizing a search party to look for you,” she said.  “A search party like that costs a lot of money.  Guess who’s going to pay?  Your parents.  How do you think they’ll feel about that?”

“I don’t give a fuck how they feel,” he said.  “I’m not going back to live with them, anyway.”

“Look–kid–what’s your name?”

“Who wants to know?”

Karen took another soothing breath, inspecting the boy.  His faded jeans had sooty stains on the thighs, from where he had rubbed volcanic pumice off his hands.  His black windbreaker had a fresh scar on the left sleeve, snagged, no doubt, on a jagged rock.  His rumpled brown hair was thin on top, almost as if he were balding already, and Karen saw him that way–as an obnoxious middle-aged man, bossy and arrogant, bullying his own kids around.  She fought hard against that image, forcing herself to remember that he was a thirteen-year-old kid.

“How about hopping into the Jeep?” she said.

 He laughed, a little pig snort.  “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he said.  “Who the fuck are you, anyway?”

“Hey–watch your mouth, kid.  My name’s Karen Donner.  I’m a ranger here at the park.”

“If you’re a ranger, where’s your uniform?”

“I haven’t put it on yet.”

“For all I know you’re some psychotic bitch that goes around snatching innocent kids.”

“You’re no innocent kid,” she said.  “But take my word for it, I’m a ranger.  At least I was a ranger.”

“What does that mean?”

Why not level with the kid–what would the truth hurt?  “I’ve been suspended from my job for two weeks.”

“Suspended?” the kid said, interested.  “What for?”

“For the same reason you’re up here–I can’t get along with people.”

“Let me get this straight,” the boy said.  “You’ve been suspended, but you’re helping the search party.  Why?”

She shrugged.  “It seemed like the right thing to do.”

He shook his head, a cynical old man.  “Boy, what an ass you are, lady.”

The comment hit a little too close to home, and Karen grew defensive.  She took a step closer to the teenager and stared into his defiant eyes.  “Don’t make me resort to violence, kid.  Get into the Jeep.”

He examined her face and body posture to see if she meant business.  “Okay,” he said, “but you’re taking me back under protest.”

He started for the Jeep, but suddenly bolted across the road, scampering rapidly to the top of a massive boulder.  A stunted pine grew next to the rock, and the kid grabbed a low branch and began to climb.  As agile as a monkey, he reached the top in a few seconds.  “If you want me now,” he said, gloating down at Karen from his high perch, “you’ll have to come up and get me.”

The calm demeanor she had been trying to maintain disappeared instantly.  She walked with determination to the rock, scaled it, grabbed a branch of the tree and swung up.  She could climb with the best of them, but what would she do when she reached the kid, grab his leg and pull him down?  He had a worried look on his face when she tilted her head up to see him.  She said, “Make this easy on both of us, kid–come down.”

“No way.”

She started up, stopping halfway to coax him down again.  But he refused.  So she climbed until she was one branch beneath the bough where he stood.  She considered reaching her hand up, but seeing her intention, he said, “Put it there, lady, and I’ll step on it.”

The absurdity of the scene suddenly struck her.  What the hell was she doing?  If she had left for California when she had planned, she’d already have driven through the Verde Valley on her way to Phoenix.  Her impulse now was the grab the kid’s foot, tug him out of the tree.  But an image of him falling to his death on the boulder below stopped her.  With that thought in mind, she slowly began descending.

The kid didn’t notice until Karen nearly had reached the rock.  Then he said, “Hey–where’re you going?”

 “Down,” she said.  “I don’t have time for this shit.”

“Wait a minute.  What kind of ranger are you?”

“An ass,” she said.  “You were right.

His whole demeanor suddenly changed now, and he seemed shaken by her actions.  He said, “Are you going to leave me up here?”

“That’s the idea.  And don’t worry–I won’t tell anybody where you are.”

She nearly had reached her Jeep when the kid said, “Hey–I’ll go with you, lady.  But I’ve got a problem here.”

Turning to face him, she said, “What problem is that?”

“I’m stuck.”

She had to climb back to the boulder and coach him down, directing his feet to specific branches, pointing out the best route to follow.  He came down excruciatingly slowly, finally speeding up when he had reached the relative safety of the lower limbs.  When he jumped to the rock, he reverted to his old self, a cocky kid who needed a knock on the head.  He dusted his hands off, holding them out to her, palms downward, crossed at the wrists.  “Aren’t you going to cuff me?” he said.

“I’d like to ‘cuff’ you,” she said.

They got into the Jeep, and Karen turned around on the mountain road.  She drove fast, the vehicle bouncing over rocks.  The kid had to hold tight to the handle above the passenger window, but he seemed to like the ride.  Halfway down the mountain, the boy, who had inspected the inside of the Jeep and seen her luggage, said, “Going on a trip?”

 “That’s right.”

“Where to?”

“San Diego.”

“Take me with you, lady,” he said.  “Please?  I can pay my own way.  I’ve got money.  I’ve always wanted to live on the beach.”

She looked him over, shaking her head.  “In five years, kid, you’ll be an adult.  Then you can do whatever you want.  You can move to the coast, be a bum, sleep on the beach.  For right now, though, you’re going back to your folks.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” he said.  “They’re going to beat the shit out of me.”

“Somebody’s got to do it,” she said.

This early in the morning, nobody manned the contact station booth, and a wooden sign in the window read “Drive Through.”  Behind the visitor center a few rangers had already gathered, the first members of the search party.  Karen recognized Bill Saunders and Dave Coleman, who stood together drinking coffee from Styrofoam cups.  They waved to her when she drove by, not paying attention to the kid sitting beside her.  She spotted George Simpson examining a map with two other rangers near the dirt road that led to the rangers’ quarters.  When she pulled alongside the three, depressing the clutch pedal to let the Jeep idle, George said, “Decided to join us, after all?”

“I decided to save you some trouble,” she said, gesturing with her head to the kid.  “Here’s your man.”

George leaned forward to peer around Karen’s body, his mouth dropping open at the sight of the boy.  “Well, I’ll be damned,” George said.  “Where’d you find him?”

“On the O’Leary Peak road.  I found some candy bar wrappers up there yesterday, and I thought there was a chance he had left them.  I played a hunch.”

The boy sitting beside her said, “Damn.”

“You sure this is the kid?” George said.  Addressing the boy, he said, “You’re Dwight Stevens?”

The kid said, “Dwight?  No–I’m Danny, Danny Edwards.”

“Take my word for it, George,” Karen said, “this is the kid.”

The boy lowered his head, his chin almost touching his bony chest.  “I’m Dwight Stevens,” he said, resigned to the trouble that lay ahead.

“What’s wrong with you, son?” George said.  “You’ve caused a lot of trouble for people.  It’s a good thing Karen here found you, or your mom and dad would be shelling out money for an expensive search.”

All of Dwight’s early cockiness disappeared, and he sat with his head hung low, his lips drawn back in an expression of submission.

Mrs. Stevens’ maternal shriek pierced the early-morning quiet.  “Dwight?” she screamed, running toward the Jeep with her arms outstretched, her stomach bouncing above her belt like Jell-O.

 Before climbing out, the boy looked at Karen as if she had delivered him to a demon.  “You don’t know what you’ve done, lady,” he said.  Then he was locked in his mother’s embrace, smothered between her ample breasts.  Her initial relief at finding him safe suddenly gave way to anger, and she pushed him away gruffly.  “Ooh,” she said, “what did you do?”  Before he could respond, she grabbed an ear and tugged him back toward her husband, who was advancing toward the two like a dutiful father.

When they were out of earshot, George said to Karen, “I can’t begin to tell you the trouble we’ve had with that kid’s mother.  I can see why he ran away.”

“Yeah?–well he’s no bundle of joy.  They deserve each other.”

“I want you to know,” George said, “that Dale Rusk hears about this as soon as he comes in.”

“Naw–don’t bother telling him.”

“You can’t be serious?”

“Maybe not,” Karen said.  “Just don’t make a big deal of it.”

Patting her on the back, George said, “Nothing’s a big deal to you, is it, kiddo?  Have a nice time in San Diego.”

She let the clutch out, spun the Jeep around, and headed out of the parking lot.  Bill Saunders waved to her as she passed.  Before she even left the park she was smiling hard–almost laughing out loud–already thinking about the story she’d tell Petra tonight.  She could picture the two of them sitting at the kitchen table over beers, Petra’s mouth half open in disbelief.  “And then he said,” Karen would say, dragging it out, “‘For all I know, you’re some psychotic bitch that goes around snatching kids.’” The air would wheeze out of Petra’s lungs as she laughed hysterically.

Karen couldn’t wait to get there, away from this land of the dormant volcano.  By day’s end, she’d be standing on the beach at sunset, gawking at the crazy natives who inhabited the coast.  Just another tourist in California.