Girl Beside Him - Excerpt

Ski season continues - bunnies abound. Bouquets of grinning balloons. White teeth and sun-black skin. Pale raccoon masks tattooed by designer sunglasses. Tired muscles vigorously content, or endorphins still surging in hot bodies that breathe fog on alpine mountains in late spring. Fun recent enough to sustain a kick in those departing for L.A. or Dallas and beyond. Adrenaline-rush of anticipation fuels the shit-eating grins on those boarding for Vail, Snow Summit, Aspen, Jackson Hole. Nothing to you. You'll see none like them where you're going. But be careful, this time you're on your own, no one watching you but you. No one giving instructions and assignments to fill up every hour. Watch it - with a change like this, the cold clot may rupture, questions get answered, hypothesis proven. Are you a sex killer waiting to happen?

The Denver airport sold cowboy hats in colors a cowboy - or girl - wouldn't be caught dead in. Brian fingered the hat bands made of anything from snakeskin to Indian beads to peacock feathers. He looked at baseball caps - one for every Colorado brewery, golf course, ski resort and sport team, plus some with pictures of fishermen, skiers or golfers. Then under a leaning stack of cloth fishing hats with Denver or Colorado stitched on the brim, he found an army green Robin Hood hat with a rooster feather. Airport white noise was Country. Mamas don't let your babies grow up to be cowboys. -He's the-king of the road. -I wanna go home-oh Lord I wanna- Abilene, sweet Abilene. Unbreak my heart- He crumpled the feather, dropped it, and paid for the hat along with his USA Today. Final boarding for the commuter flight to Cheyenne had already been announced. He held the hat on his legs, under the newspaper, which he opened, holding the left-hand pages perpendicular to the flat pages in his lap, making a newsprint wall between himself and the woman in the window seat.

The hair she still had was white blond, butch-cut, shaved up the back of her neck, little pixie points beside each ear, with a short soft cap of white hair like a toupee placed on the top of her head, the sides and back the exact same length as the bangs on her brow. Her neck was long and thin with skin like eggshell membrane, small throbbing veins under the surface. Earrings of clustered blade-shaped silver splinters tickled her throat when she tipped her chin down. Her nose small, upturned, pierced with a diamond. Her mouth full, as though swollen. Her teeth caught and released her lower lip over and over. Wrists cuffed with silver bracelets that looked like manacles for prison chains. Almost every finger sheathed in a silver ring.

Okay, enough, focus now, just take out the field report on the relocated cougars in south-central Wyoming, study the relief map, review the procedures for setting foot snares, preparing anesthesia, using a jab-stick, or testing blood for plague antibodies. He remained carefully in place. His knees balancing the hat and newspaper as though they were fragile. And as though turning pages under water, to keep them from ripping or disintegrating, he found the section where a news item from each state is reported. It was one way he tried to get his first feel for the places he visited for months of fieldwork, but invariably had little to do with his interaction with the locale.

Wyoming. Yellowstone National Park. AP A camper was arrested early yesterday after park officials caught him urinating into a pool of boiling mud just off the walkway in the sulfur pits area. Jerry Jersey, 32, of Toledo, OH, was booked on suspicion of public indecency, public nuisance, and fouling a national park. No one was hurt.

Brian's arm, holding the left side of the newspaper upright, was starting to tremble, invisibly. Years of conditioning to be able to support a competition rifle with such sure steadiness that even a leveling sensor placed on the barrel couldn't detect any motion - suddenly it didn't seem to extend to any ability to hold a sheet of newsprint. Okay, perverts go on vacation too. The cougar relocation area isn't anywhere near Yellowstone. No tourists. No skiers. And no one with you in charge of the fieldwork. It was Peter Gallway - someone Brian barely knew - who, about four years ago, had gotten a grant, along with the necessary permission and permits from Fish & Game and the states of Wyoming and California, lined up the participation or cooperation of whatever agencies or organizations would be helpful or mandatory; then, more than two years ago, trapped, tagged and sterilized a dozen lions in the back country of San Diego - where some had been starting too frequently to come into close proximity with human habitation - relocated them outside the most desolate ranch country in Wyoming, and stayed to observe their adjustment. Gallway's proposal had specifically stated its purpose was not to move the animals in an attempt to protect either the species or the human population of Southern California, but as a study to determine if such habitat relocations were a better option for wildlife management than killing.

But a month before Gallway's scheduled follow-up field work to assess the progress of the relocated cougars, he'd broken both legs and his pelvis skiing in Switzerland, and was still there, demanding frequent faxes - starting as soon as Brian arrived in Rawlins and then every time he observed anything, no matter how seemingly insignificant. Obviously it had been too late to find someone more experienced, in either the terrain or the particular study, or even someone who'd worked with mountain lions before. Likely anyone Gallway would've thought of calling before Brian had his own field work, his own book to write, his own on-going grants and proposals and lifelong study. Brian never finished, never even started his own PhD in wildlife biology. Never either regretted nor congratulated himself for the decision. Didn't remember that it was a decision. Instead, as though a long-standing appointment, the next step was flight school. An ability to fly both a small plane and a helicopter, combined with a degree in field biology, got him plenty of calls to work in the field for other people. And that was probably the real reason he had this job as well. Maybe there'd been a recommendation from a friend of an acquaintance. Someone from the tortoise inventory in the California desert.

Remember? You lodged in Independence, the county seat where they'd first held Manson after the murders. Sound traveled forever on the high desert, a shot lasted minutes when you did target practice at dawn, shooting at fenceposts - never cactus nor Joshua trees - the first shot still quaking against the Sierra by the time you were set for the next. Then at dusk, jeep races across the desert, once stumbling upon a long-abandoned dune buggy, you all circled it, went over every inch like archeologists, wondering if it had been one of the Family's stolen lookout vehicles. You took your turn at the pranks and jokes. Once you covered yourself shallowly with sand and jumped up at a teammate like a sneak Indian attack.

The girl beside him sighed heavily. Afterwards he could hear every breath she took. The fuselage vibrating through turbulence was like a jeep on a dirt road, with softer seats but a closer ceiling. The pilot announced there'd be a spell of medium chop, so he was leaving the seatbelt light on. She was breathing hoarsely, through her mouth. Brian could feel the heavy metal buckle on his lap, under the hat. And then became aware of the entire oval brim of the hat, a warm circle on his thighs. He turned to the classifieds, the noise of the newspaper crackling like fire.

Help Wanted.
Year-long house-sitting position.
Sell Mary Kay in your own neighborhood.
Proofreaders needed.
Traveling companion for disabled elderly man.
Doctor wanted for small Texas town.
Address envelopes at home.
Female singer/bassist needed for steady gigging rock band in Tallahassee.

The first roommate? Maybe the second. One of your college buddies played drums. Roadie for his rinky-dink top 40 band, your ears rang 'round the clock, a gig till midnight, up for shooting practice at the indoor range at dawn. That year it was difficult to hear a radio through the wall or pick up whispered conversations in the library. A new roommate every year as each abandoned the dorms for apartments, every year a freshman roommate, but what better way to learn to be the congenial college man? Spit and threw garbage out the windows at your roommate's passing friends, three-day old pizza under the bed, Olympic sliding contests across the shower floor with a panel of judges lining the windowsill. Adopted by each roommate's circle and included. One year you all played PacMan and had Rubic's cubes. One year beach volleyball. Year by year you filled the dorm room with sharpshooting trophies. Illegal to keep rifles in the residence hall, but you did anyway, locked in carrying cases. The rush of triumph after each trophy dissipated by the next morning. You had to start over, week by week.

The girl gasped. Then the air came out of her with a low moan. The plane had hit an air-pocket - the pilot said Whoopsie-Daisy, and people laughed. Something tugged gently, steadily on Brian's shirt sleeve. His temples pounding, he looked around the edge of the newspaper. There was a thin, curved scar on her forearm, seeming to originate from the inside of her wrist, snaking up and around, mostly concealed under her bracelet. She was gripping the arm rests on either side of herself, digging her fingernails in, the tendons in her hands straining under the skin. And she'd caught a little of his shirt by accident.

He tried to move his arm off the armrest. There may as well have been a knife jammed through his shirt and up to the hilt into the upholstery. His head bobbed with the turbulence, his eyes fixed on the newsprint. The girl was making a little dog-whimper with each breath. The seatbelt buckle under the hat under the newspaper seemed heavier, hotter. His legs trembled. He realized he was holding his heels off the floor, tensing his calves, holding his breath, as though necessary to keep his lap level. As though someone were sitting there. Releasing the air, slowly lowering his heels, his chin dropped, his eyes cleared and continued reading.

Estate gardener, lives on premises, will move anywhere.
24-yr-old white male, educated, bright, works hard, teacher, nanny, clerk, secretary, chauffeur, junior executive, can learn.
Investment banker, stockbroker, looking to relocate.
SWF zoological animal trainer tired of the circus, looking for real work, from safari guide to vet assistant, can anyone hear me?

His body jolted but absorbed the silent impact without movement, as though still set for a next shot, ears insulated with noise protection headgear, but adrenaline flooding like oil spreading on water, waiting the hiss of a lit match. You don't suffer from impaired memory. Hadn't big sister wanted to grow up to be a vet and go to Africa to work at a compound in an animal preserve, like on her favorite show, Daktari? Took you to the zoo on a bus when you were three or four. It must've been a howler monkey. Like an air-raid sounding off right beside you just as you, always the rogue, bent to scare some newborn chicks in the bushes. You screamed and ran, but she caught you and held you, and you were like a monkey yourself, watching over her shoulder as she carried you through the zoo's streets, watching the zoo unroll backwards, rows of primates and birds in cages. It was still an old-fashioned zoo, and she was just a skinny girl of maybe seven or eight. She kept having to re-hoist you, but didn't put you down until your distorted face relaxed and only the hiccup of fear remained. She said the howler monkey must've wanted you for her baby, but you were already hers - Diane's. Not your mother's. Hers. Taught you to tie your shoes. Played school and made a reading book with a picture that said "See Bob, Bob is a boy," the first thing you read. You and six or seven stuffed animals sat at upside-down cardboard boxes and learned to add. When they got in trouble for passing notes to you, they got the dunce hat, not you. You could throw spit-wads and make dirty noises and never sit in the corner. But mostly you played Daktari and all the stuffed animals were in the veterinary compound in Africa, hurt or sick. You were one of the animals too, and she gave you candy pills and bandaged one leg. Naturally you decided to also be the hungry leopard or cheetah that came prowling at night, and Daktari would come back to save the compound, pinning and tickling the cheetah.

His arm snapped off the armrest as though it had been restrained there by elastic which suddenly broke. The girl's hands were at her face, clutching her own cheeks in each fist. Her mouth moving like a fish gasping. Under the roar of engines and rattle of carry-on luggage and mumble of other voices, Brian could hear her little voice saying "no, no, no, no, no..." until his pulse tapped the same rhythm in places all over his body-his gums, his fingertips, his stomach, his lap. And, throbbing in time with the practically imperceptible cadence, thready, ghostly, faraway -now you don't talk so loud- now you don't seem so proud about having to be scrounging

On your way for the first time to do field work alone. No other guys in a communal setting with a common time limit and single purpose, do your part and the whole project will wrap up, social needs crunched to an hour of cards around a Coleman before zipping the mosquito net of your tent behind you. Or go as a group to a tavern for a beer and discuss the project, discuss tomorrow's tasks, discuss the findings, discuss the problems, discuss solutions. Your input as crucial as anyone else's, so you can't allow yourself to be sidetracked. You don't stray

The pilot said, "Now folks, if you can picture a water-skier bouncing across the wake of another boat, this isn't anything more than that. This little plane isn't concerned in the slightest-she's fat, dumb and happy, having the only fun she has all day. We'll just humor her for a little while and keep our seatbelts on until we get out of this choppy air."

The terrain, the scope of the project, the lack of a large team of field workers had made it almost necessary for Gallway to have a helicopter, unflown now for over a year, still hangared in Rawlins. Actually, a two-seater plane would've been cheaper, and in this case more appropriate, since homing was done without the need to buzz or hover close to the ground. Why Gallway owned a chopper instead of a Cessna was a guess Brian hadn't bothered to make. He'd told Gallway he hadn't flown a helicopter in a while and asked if Gallway's pilot would be returning to Rawlins to help gather data, but was told he was two-birds-in-the-hand, the chopper was his partner. Receivers mounted on elongated antennas on either side of the chopper sped up the ability to locate cougars, assess their general health, determine their individual territory and diet, pinpoint any problems. It reduced the amount of range to cover on foot looking for scat and scratch-mark territory markers, deer carcasses covered lightly with leaves and twigs, an occasional print in the mud beside a creek to tell him all was well. Cougars disappear when they're adjusted and thriving, and when they're dead. The chopper couldn't find remains of a skeleton scattered by coyotes-for that it would take an FBI crime task force to comb the area-but besides aerial homing, a view from above provided information on rugged or inaccessible areas, showed where the water was and where deer ranged, moved the biologist quickly through the square mile sections marked in a grid on his map.

Her flexed and rigid hands moved slowly down her face, pulling her eyelids down so the red showed like blood, leaving a trail of parallel white scratch marks on each cheek. Below her chin, her hands clumped into a single fist over her heart. The bracelet fell toward her elbow, leaving the scar alone to decorate her forearm. Then her fists dropped and dug into her lap, burying a deserted set of earphones and cassette player between her knees. The tracks of scratch marks filled in pink. Appearing from beneath her rubbed-away and melting make-up, fine etched lines, under her eyes, around her mouth. The whine in the girl's throat resumed, became louder every time the plane hit a bigger bump, sometimes Oh was jolted out of her mouth.