Ron Rash
Flight
The trouble began during her fourth month at the park. Until then, most of the visitors had been hikers, older couples who tapped the ground with ornate walking sticks as they followed the two-mile loop. They smiled when they saw her and went on their way. Nevertheless, the best days were when it snowed or rained and fewer humans were around.
But April brought people who fished. As Stacy had done with the hikers, she studied their behavior. Those who cast in the stream’s catch-and-release section drove late-model Jeeps and SUVs, wore waders and vests, and carried long rods and shiny reels. Anglers was her word for them. The gentle way they removed the barbless hooks reminded her of a pet being freed from its leash. When asked for their licenses, they sometimes tilted their heads or rolled their eyes. You’ve seen my bamboo rod and Orvis vest, the gesture meant, you think I can’t afford a twenty-dollar license?
Fishermen drove pickups and older cars with dents and rusty mufflers. Such vehicles were often left unlocked, windows rolled down. Fishermen cast from shore and used closed-face spinning reels, often Zebco 202s. They stayed near the bridge where the hatchery truck made its weekly dump. Some even followed the truck from the hatchery. The trout barely hit the water before they were yanked out. Nevertheless, Stacy preferred these people to the anglers. To kill and eat their catch was a purer act, none of the pretend-play of being a predator.
When she saw the battered blue truck in the lot, windows down, bed filled with trash bags and beer cans, she assumed its owner to be a fisherman. But it was the expired license plate that made Stacy check for her ticket pad before walking down the trail. This was the trade-off for those winter hours of solitude, she’d begun to realize, and it would only get worse come summer. With picnickers, tourists, campers crowding the park, there would be times she’d have to go to the ridge top, perch above it all.
Stacy stepped onto the bridge. A man she didn’t recognize fished below. He’d heard her boots on the wood planks but did not look up. Instead, he cranked in his line, checked his corn-draped hook, and cast sidearm to the head of the pool. She left the bridge and came down the trail. Farther downstream, an elderly couple fished where the water slowed and formed a deep run. She’d checked their licenses and stringers last week.
“I need to see your license, sir,” Stacy said.
“I don’t need one,” he answered, his eyes on the line.
Once on level ground, Stacy saw that the man was over six feet tall. He had a gut but thick-muscled arms, a stubbled chin that shadowed a centipede-shaped scar. The ball cap, jeans, and tee-shirt were what many of the bait fishermen wore. Only the footwear surprised her. Instead of work boots, he wore black dress shoes.
“I need to check your fishing license,” Stacy said again.
“I told you I don’t need one,” the man said, still not looking at her. “So you can be on your way.”
She had already issued seven citations in the last two weeks—no license, too many fish. But no confrontation, only a couple of pleas of can’t you let it go this time. But she was issued a Glock for a reason. Now, Stacy felt the gun’s presence, that extra weight, on the side of her hip. Her instructors had emphasized that most rangers would never need to unholster their weapon. If it appears a situation might escalate, they’d said, step away and call for backup. Bob Clary, the park superintendent, had told Stacy the same. Proper protocol, but the man in front of her would think otherwise—that she was fearful.
“Then I’ll have to write you a ticket.”
The man looked at her now and smiled.
“You’re new.”
“I’ve been here four months,” Stacy answered.
“Well, Clary’s finally hired him a looker. I’ve always favored brunettes.”
“I need your driver’s license.”
“Sure,” he said. “That way you’ll know who I am.”
The man took out his billfold and handed Stacy the license. Eric Hardaway. She studied the photograph, no beard but recognizable. She filled out the citation, freed the original from the duplicate. When she handed it to Hardaway, he crumpled the paper with his fist, flung it into the water.
“Tell Clary he needs to educate his new hires.”
Stacy looked downstream. The couple had heard him but stared at their lines, not wishing to get involved. Afraid. But Stacy wasn’t. What she experienced first when eight years old came again—the sense of entering an expanse where nothing could touch her. Yet this was a different kind of flight, no longer away from but toward.
Stacy nodded at the stringer staked to the bank.
“How many fish have you got?”
“Don’t remember,” Hardaway said, his left boot inches from the stringer. “But you might call Clary before you check.”
Stacy stepped forward, leaned over to tug the nylon cord. The fish emerged. Hardaway was so close she could smell his muskiness. Stacy counted fourteen and stepped away, began writing the second ticket. Hardaway reeled in and lifted the stringer.
“I’ll let you tear up that one,” he said, muttering “bitch” as he went up the bank to the trail.
At five, Stacy went back to the station, found Clary peering at real-estate brochures. Only six weeks from retirement, he spent less time on the trails than in his office sipping coffee and searching for beach property. The three keys to being a good ranger were experience, good manners, and common sense, Clary had told her several times in their four months together, and each time with less of an easy-going smile. Something’s wrong with that girl, Stacy overheard Clary tell a maintenance worker. But she’d known others thought that—why else the years of counselors, therapists, doctors.
Stacy showed him the copies of her citations, told what Hardaway had done.
“He’s a real piece of work, ain’t he,” Clary said, smiling.
“He’s a lawbreaker.”
“I’d not argue that, and it’s put him in jail half a dozen times, including near killing a man in a bar fight. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even know he was out.”
“What do you want me to do, besides taking these citations to the magistrate?”
“Nothing, except throw those tickets in a trash can,” Clary answered. “Having to deal with Hardaway isn’t worth it for you or me.”
“So let him think I’m afraid of him?”
“I’m saying it’s best not to provoke him,” Clary answered, “the same way you’d not take a stick and poke a rattlesnake.”
“I did my job, and he called me a bitch,” Stacy said, “but he didn’t dare say it to my face.”
“He didn’t dare?” Clary said.
“I know what people are like. I observe them.”
“He’ll soon do something serious enough to put him back in jail, hopefully for a long time. Whatever that screw up is, I’d rather it not happen in my park.”
“What if he comes back?” Stacy asked.
“Look,” Clary said, shaking his head. “I’ll make this easy for both of us. I’m ordering you not to check Hardaway’s license or catch. You keep your ticket pad in your pocket, and remember you’re on probation.”
The following Wednesday morning, the white hatchery truck made its weekly stocking, so Stacy wasn’t surprised the lot was crowded with vehicles. By late afternoon, many of the stocked fish had been caught, the fishermen gone to await next week’s dump. Stacy was about to check the catch-and-release section when she saw Hardaway’s blue pickup pull into the lot. She watched him walk down the trail, can of corn and rod in his hands. She waited a minute then followed, walked to the bridge’s edge and stopped where she could see below but not be seen. Another man, younger, was already fishing the pool. Hardaway sidled up beside him and said something. The other fisherman pulled up his stringer and walked downstream.
Stacy stepped onto the bridge.
“What did you say to that other fisherman?”
“What guy?” Hardaway said.
“Him,” Stacy said, nodding downstream.
Hardaway smiled.
“I just told him the fishing’s a lot better below this pool.”
Stacy stepped off the bridge and walked a few yards into the forest. She pressed a palm against a white oak to steady herself, looked at the brown leaves covering the ground, then the tree trunks, and last, the gaps in the greening canopy. I am a part of only what I see here, she told herself and let go of the oak. With her fingers, Stacy preened her black hair until she grew calm.
She searched the understory, picked up a softball-sized stone, and returned to the bridge. At first, Hardaway ignored Stacy as she watched him from above. She waited until he looked up, then settled her forearm on the bridge railing, the rock in her palm.
“You ain’t going to do that,” Hardaway said.
The rock was heavy, but she held it in her palm a few more moments, then tilted her hand. The rock slipped free and hit the pool’s center with a loud splash. She walked off the bridge and up the stream trail, thinking Hardaway might follow, but he didn’t.
After half a mile, she came to where the creek split and followed the narrower branch. The small path ascended. Alongside, the water leapt off rocks to pause in kettled pools. Only brook trout lived here. Unlike the browns and rainbows downstream, Stacy knew these fish were native to these mountains, holdovers from the last ice age. Beautiful creatures but too fragile.
Few people came up this far, the path too steep and the air too thin. They’d turn back, out of breath, legs wobbly. But she could make the ascent easily, her body trained to do so. At the beginning of tenth grade, the high school’s counselor told her parents that sports might be a way for Stacy to develop better social skills. She chose cross country and found that she liked it, though for reasons opposite of what the counselor and her parents hoped. For her, the whole idea was to run as fast as you could away from everyone else. She had been good at that. Unlike the other girls, she ran an extra two, then three miles on mornings before school, did workouts alone on Saturday and Sunday. By October, she was the fastest on the team, making all-conference. But what mattered were the moments she forgot she had arms and legs, felt instead the gliding sensation of flight, something none of the medications had ever given her. The other girls resented Stacy, especially Stacy’s refusal to run with the pack even in practice. By her senior year, she was the best cross country runner in the conference, but one dawn morning, she tripped and her achilles tendon snapped.
The path leveled; a granite outcrop was on the right. Here was her favorite perch. She could see the valley below, the stream, the asphalt parking lot, even the peaks on the farther mountains. A limb rustled behind her, a glimpse of glossy black feathers. Probably a crow. But at this elevation ravens could also be here. After all, one raven already was.
The name had been bestowed on her last summer at the ranger academy. In nineteenth-century Colorado, the instructor had told them, a woman hoeing in her garden had watched a raven fly toward her, dip low as it passed overhead, and settle a few feet away. The bird performed the same action twice more. Perplexed, the woman looked around the surrounding land. She saw it then, a mountain lion hunched low in prairie grass. The woman dropped her hoe and fled, barely reaching the safety of her cabin.
So what have we learned from this story, the instructor had asked. One trainee spoke of the woman’s ability, learned from living close to nature, to interpret the bird’s actions. Another spoke of the bird’s intelligence, its creation of a way to communicate with humans. The instructor waited, and Stacy raised her hand for the only time all term. The bird was leading the cougar to prey they could share, Stacy told the instructor. The class was silent, but the professor nodded, said Stacy was the first student who’d ever answered correctly.
Later that day, Stacy was in the lunchroom when one trainee nudged another and said Look out, here comes the raven. In the months afterward, Stacy let her dark hair lengthen to cover her brow and ears, the sides and back of her neck. She had each shoulder tattooed with a feather, though as the months passed, she realized such adornment was as unnecessary as the meds that had only helped shackle her.
Flight, but not the songbird’s flight of her childhood, that vacation morning when her step-uncle took her small hand and led her into the backyard, then be- hind the garage. Afterward, the smell of his cigarette lingered on her shorts and shirt, but her parents hadn’t noticed. The next day he took her there again, except this time a sparrow—even at eight she knew the type of bird it was—landed on a nearby tree and began to call to her. Then the bird flew, taking Stacy with it into the sky.
It was Sunday afternoon when Stacy saw Hardaway again, not on the stream but in a Bi-Lo checkout line. Skoal tobacco and Schlitz malt liquor were placed in the plastic bags Hardaway lifted, but an elderly woman took bills from a pocketbook and paid. As the woman accepted her change, Hardaway saw Stacy. The old woman said something and Hardaway, red-faced now, shifted one bag so she could tuck coupons and a receipt inside. As they walked out the glass door to the lot, Stacy wheeled into the checkout lane just vacated, quickly emptied her buggy. When the card reader dinged its acceptance, she told the teenager bagging her groceries she’d be back to get them. Stacy wasn’t sure what she was going to do or say, but the truck was already gone when she got outside.
Stacy thought Hardaway might not return to the park, but one morning, the blue truck was in the lot. She went to the bridge and saw Hardaway fished the pool alone. She descended the trail and stood on the bank, her eyes fixed on the trout gilled to Hardaway’s stringer. Fifteen at least.
“Go ahead and write up your fucking tickets,” Hardaway muttered.
“I’m not doing that because I know it wouldn’t be you paying the fine, same as it wasn’t you paying for those groceries.”
“What did you say?” Hardaway asked.
“You heard me,” Stacy said. “That was your mother paying for the groceries, wasn’t it?”
Hardaway stared at her, then looked first upstream, then downstream.
“You’re trying to provoke me into something that’ll land me back in jail.” When Stacy didn’t respond, Hardaway spoke again. “Maybe I figure if I got to go back to jail, this time it ought not be for some nickel-and-dime shit but for something big that folks will remember. You know, front page stuff.”
“There’s a story I could tell you,” she said. “It’s about a raven.”
“There’s something wrong with you,” Hardaway seethed, and pulled up a stringer that held four fish. He crossed the bridge and disappeared.
Stacy did not return to the parking lot until checkout time. Her truck’s left front tire had been slashed. She’d known it would be either the tires or the wind- shield, had known he would do it before Hardaway himself knew. Stacy took the tire iron from the lock box and put on the spare.
Clary had left for the day when Stacy returned to the office. She went to the storage shed, took a plastic funnel and container of Quikrete from a shelf and placed them in the truck bed. That night, her sleep was deep and dreamless.
The next morning, Stacy waited on the outcrop, knowing Hardaway would come. Soon, she saw the blue truck come down the park road. She left the ridge, avoiding the trail as she walked to the parking lot. A fly fisherman leaned against his Jeep as he tied on a leader. After he went down the trail, Stacy opened the blue truck’s door and freed the hood latch. She unscrewed the cap, poured in the Quikrete, and went back to the outcrop. An hour passed before she saw Hardaway sling a stringer of trout in his pickup and drive off.
It was late afternoon when Clary found her checking limits below the bridge.
“There’s been an accident,” he said when she joined him. “Hardaway’s truck wrecked. He’s hurt bad and in CCU. They don’t know if he’ll live or not.”
“If that’s all you came to tell me, I need to go upstream,” Stacy said. “I haven’t checked the catch-and-release section since midmorning.”
“No, that’s not all. Sheriff Patterson thinks Hardaway was taking a curve too fast. That’s what he thinks, anyway.” Clary took a handkerchief from his pocket, patted his brow almost daintily, and then put it away. “I saw the Quikrete in your truck bed. Interesting how that stuff can lock up a truck’s power steering. I’m not mentioning that to the sheriff. I don’t want the hassle, but when I do your probation evaluation, I’m stating that you repeatedly disobeyed instructions and you shouldn’t be kept on. Which might be a blessing if Hardaway survives and figures out what really happened.”
He wanted her to react, Stacy knew. They always had—words, tears, something. But she didn’t have to anymore. Clary walked back to the lot and Stacy went upstream, not to check licenses but to perch alone on the outcrop. What people she saw from that vantage would be small and insignificant, which they were, though they didn’t know it. The afternoon sun cast her shadow across the outcrop. Even in flight, a raven’s shadow touched the ground.