The Last Family

1

A solitary hawk shifted its wings against invisible currents and traced lazy circles in a blue ocean of sky. The shoulders of the mountain, like the soft contours of a sleeping woman, blazed bright yellow-green where fingers of sunlight caressed the features. Fog still hung in the cradles of valley. On the ribbon of trail that lay among the trees like a forgotten piece of twine, there was movement that caught the bird’s attention. Flashes of yellow, blue, and flesh-white skittered to and fro in a space where the ground was open to the sky. Children.

The Cub Scouts who had run up the trail were headed for a rock that was roughly the size and attitude of a forty-foot sailing ship, a granite vessel that had lost its mast and was in the process of slipping beneath the waves. They had instructions to stay in a group at Schooner Rock and await the leaders, who followed with the stragglers. The immense slab of rock angled from the ground to a point twelve feet above the trail-a perfect ambush point. As the scouts erupted up the path toward the rock, they slowed at the sight of a man who stood leaning against the rock’s wall with his arms crossed. He was watching them and smiled as they approached. The man was wearing a khaki uniform and mirrored sunglasses. He had red hair and a matching mustache. The boys crowded around him.

“Morning, Boy Scouts,” he said.

“We’re Cub Scouts,” a small boy answered. “You a ranger?”

“I sure am,” the man said, smiling. “Ranger Ron. You boys having fun in my woods?”

“Yes,” they responded certainly.

“You boys know the difference between a white oak and a red oak?”

Silence.

He held out two large leaves. “See, one has pointy edges and the other has rounded ones. This one, the pointed one, looks like a fire if you hold it by the stem. Fire is red, that’s how you remember. White-oak leaf has soft, curved sides like a soft-serve ice-cream cone, and that’s white.”

The closest boy took the leaves, and the others looked over his shoulder waiting their turns.

“I want all of you to go back down the trail and find me one of each. Then bring them back and you’ll get woodsman merit badges.”

The boys were excited by the prospect and all turned to run.

“Whoa!” he yelled. “Which one of you is George Lee?”

The boys went howling down the trail, leaving a small red-haired boy standing alone. The man knelt down and looked at him at eye level. The boy was staring at his own reflection in the glasses.

“Your daddy asked me to come get you and take you to meet him at the parking area. He’s got some camping things for you, and he’s waiting there about now.” The man looked at the backs of the scouts as they disappeared. As George watched, the man opened a small brown bottle and poured some clear liquid over a handkerchief.

“Did he give you the code word?” George asked.

“He said for me to say…” He bent to put his lips to George’s ear. “Crackerjacks.” George tried to break and run, but the man had him in his arm and put the cloth over his mouth. George struggled, the sound of his screams muffled to a low roar by the kerchief.

As Ruth Tippet, the den leader, and Sarah Rodale, her assistant, arrived with the stragglers, they found the boys lined up on the rock against a brilliant sky like a victorious army, brandishing staffs and dark clubs looted from the forest floor.

“Lord of the flies,” Sarah said as they approached the rock. “Think they’ll attack?”

“Refrain from sudden moves and maybe they’ll let us pass without scalping us,” Ruth said. “And don’t touch any of their uniforms if you’re allergic to poison ivy,” she added. She was allergic and just knew the boys had been off the trail and neck high in the stuff.

Ruth stopped to check her compass-even though there was only one possible trail-and to let the three straggler Cub Scouts take a break. The two women were dedicated and wore the uniform of den leaders. Short pants, official knee socks, and the short-sleeved shirts of summer. Wide yellow ribbons wrapped their epaulets, and colorful patches had been sewn all over the fronts of their uniforms. Patches. Ruth, the undisputed leader of Den Six, had four more patches than Sarah. The packed ground beneath their boots was as cold as a gravestone.

“You guys ’er actin’ like idiot fools,” said Andy Tippet, who had dropped to the ground and propped his considerable bulk against a fallen tree.

“Yew guuuys ’errrr actin’ lack foools,” a child said mockingly.

Ruth Tippet’s son, Andy, had single-handedly slowed the scout leaders and two other children who didn’t feel at all safe away from the adults. He was overweight and lazy and had kept sitting down, causing everyone to stop until the more vital of the young boys had been released to run ahead to Schooner Rock. Ruth had got involved in scouting so Andy wouldn’t turn into the couch turnip his father was.

The fifteen boys were between the ages of seven and nine. The children were not even carrying packs on this early-morning hike. The trail above the rock was steeper, and there were places where a child could wander from it, slip, and fall. That was why they had been told to wait at the rock. The adults were no more than five minutes behind.

At the summit several other mothers and a couple of fathers waited with the tents, sleeping bags, clothes, scouting manuals, and food. Ruth carried an emergency pack that had, among scores of useful things, a first-aid box complete with a snakebite kit and bandages. She also carried one apple for each of them, flashlights, three canteens, spare batteries, NASA survival blankets, insect repellent, and on her belt she wore a massive chunk of a knife with every imaginable utensil attached, including a spoon and a saw blade that would cut through a branch the size of an adult python in seconds.

“Ten minutes, boys,” Ruth said. “If you need to relieve yourselves, please do it now. I suggest a rest before we continue. So sit quietly and talk among yourselves. Drink in the natural splendor.”

The two women sat and the boys split up into groups. Instead of resting they began to run about like escaped weasels; the blue uniforms and yellow kerchiefs seemed to be everywhere at once.

“Nothing will grow on that slope for a few years.” She laughed and pointed to a ridge where two scouts had arched their backs and were crisscrossing yellow streams in the air and laughing.

“I figure we’re about one mile away. This rock is the two-mile point. So figure six hours,” Ruth said. She looked over at a fallen tree where her son was collapsed in a state of imagined heat exhaustion. “I don’t know how to motivate Andy. Maybe I could tie his Nintendo to a stick and dangle it in front of him.”

“Oh, we’re not in a hurry,” Sarah said. “It gives the others a chance to go slow and enjoy the trip.”

“Up ahead maybe half a mile there’s an overlook that is just mind-blowing,” Ruth said. Sarah had never been on this particular trail before. Ruth seemed to know every trail in the Smokies, because those she had not walked she had read about and studied on her maps, some of which were three-dimensional.

“There’s a guardrail but we’ll have to be very careful to keep them back. With the drop I don’t imagine any of them will get too close. It’s a spine tingle to look off that cliff, I can tell you.”

Ruth stood and blew the stainless-steel whistle that hung from a lanyard and rode between her breasts. The boys started wandering back up to the trail from three or four directions.

“We need to rest here awhile,” Andy said. “What do we have to eat?”

“Roots and berries,” Ruth said. She didn’t plan to use the apples except in an emergency. Stopping to eat would kill an hour. The idea of the hike was to let the children burn off some excess energy and build an appetite for lunch.

“I ain’t eating no roots and berries,” he growled.

“Andrew, a double negative becomes the positive. So you just said you are going to eat roots and berries. Aren’t you glad I didn’t say roots and grubs?”

“Gross!” Teddy Barnes said. Teddy was wearing his cap pulled down so that his ears were at right angles to his head. His thick lenses made his eyes look like blue tennis balls. “Or cat poop,” he said. Andy tried to strike Teddy with his worn Reeboks, but he was too slow.

“He said I eat cat poop!” Andy yelled.

“Well, you don’t, do you?” his mother said. “Sticks and stones. All here?” she said, standing. She had been fat until she had started hiking and eating right. Now her thick legs were defined with muscle and well tanned. Her husband and sons could sit and watch television, but she had turned the garage into a gymnasium and spent her spare time on her program.

Ruth pointed at the little heads as they bobbed and weaved. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven…” She stopped counting and held up two fingers to quiet the boys. “Be quiet. What’s this? Silence,” Ruth said.

“What’s this? What’s this sign?” Sarah added.

“Akela. The wolf!” several shouted. Soon the air was filled with small waving hands echoing the women’s “V” signs.

“And it means what, everyone?”

“Shhhhhhhhh-” It sounded as though all of the children had sprung air leaks.

“Okay.” Ruth started to count the heads again. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen.”

“Fourteen?” Sarah said. “Who’s out?”

“Who’s missing?” Ruth asked. She turned 360 degrees, her eyes scanning the forest floor for a flash of yellow or a flesh tone amid the green, brown, and stone-gray.

“One, two, three, four,” Sarah counted as she pointed at each head until she got to the last scout. “Oh, dear God-who’s missing?” she said.

The children looked around at each other.

“George is,” a child said.

“George!” Ruth yelled out. “George Lee!”

“He musta went with that ranger man,” Timothy Buchanan said. Timothy was George’s best friend. “He left his hat, though.” The child pointed to a blue-and-yellow hat that was lying beside the rock.

“What man?” Sarah asked.

“He asked for George Lee,” Timothy said.

Panic threatened to close Ruth’s throat. She fought to maintain control in front of Sarah and the children.

“Yes,” Timothy said. “He said George Lee. And he’s gonna give us merit badges for these leaves. White oak and-”

“What in the world?” Ruth said.

“What did the man look like?” Sarah asked.

“He was big,” Timothy said.

“And he had a gun…,” another child added. “… Like a cowboy. Silver with a black handle and silver diamond shapes on the handle.”

“In a holster,” the black child added. A slug’s-trail of mucus, which ran from his nostril to his lip, glistened. He wiped it onto his sleeve and inspected it in a shaft of filtered sunlight.

“And cowboy boots,” one said.

“But no spurs,” offered someone else.

“Where is he? When did he come up here?” Sarah asked.

“He was already here when we got here,” Timothy said.

“And was he wearing a uniform?” Ruth asked.

“Yes,” Timothy said. “Brown with a Smokey the Bear hat and glasses that showed you your face back.”

“He was tall like Michael Jordan,” another child said.

“Was he black like Michael Jordan?” Ruth asked.

“No, he was a ranger with a red beard on his lip.”

“They don’t have black rangers,” someone added.

The black scout objected. “They got African-American rangers, polices, cowboys, and silver war soldiers, too.”

“They did not!” another child said. “They were just cooks and cleaners.”

“Which way did they go?” Ruth asked.

“That way.” A scout pointed up the trail. “To his Jeep.”

“Well, no need to panic,” Ruth decided. “He knew George’s name and had a description and he was in uniform. It must have been some sort of emergency. It happens.”

“Isn’t his daddy a…?” Sarah started.

“A government official would certainly know how to get to his son if he needed him. He’s DSF, you know.”

“DSF?”

“Drug Strike Force. It’s a branch of the DEA or something,” Ruth said. “I’m going to hurry on ahead-y’all can catch up.”

“We can’t go faster,” Andy whined. “My feet hurt-I’ll pass out-I’m starving-I’m all fuzzy-headed.”

Several scouts began laughing. Someone was mimicking his whines.

“Ah’m fat. Ah’m mooshy-headed. Ah’m stupid.”

“Uh-uh!” Sarah said. “We’re all one team. All for one, and one for all. We pull together or we’ll pull apart.” The double entendre was wasted on the children.

“Very well,” Ruth said as she lifted the pack. “Stay here all night, then. Come up at your own pace. And, remember, bears almost never attack if you simply play dead. Just lie up against a tree like you’re doing now and close your eyes, and no peeping even if she does bite you.”

“Den Six-line up!” Sarah yelled.

“Forget it!” Andy jumped to his feet. By the time the scouts were lined up, Ruth was already running far up the trail.

The ranger stopped at the overlook and placed George’s limp body on the railing that had been made out of foot-wide stone cemented into a wall stretching between two large rock facings. He looked off at the scenery for a few seconds, drinking up the natural splendor. He picked up a coconut-sized rock, placed it on the rail near George’s head, and shoved it out with a quick motion. It seemed as if four or five seconds passed before the canyon gave up the echoing sound of the missile landing on the rocks below. He contemplated the child for a few moments, as a man might stare at a car someone else owns, removed the hat and glasses so he could wipe his forehead with a handkerchief. “Well, George. Nothing personal,” he said as he placed his hands under the body and lifted.

He caught a flash of something through the trees moving up the trail. It was a scout leader. He watched behind her for the others but saw no one except the lone woman jogging toward him. Quickly he took a metal tube with a threaded end from his pocket and screwed it into the barrel of a small black automatic, which he pulled from his right boot.

Ruth had run all the way to the overlook without stopping even once. She was thrilled when she saw the man leaning against the stone railing watching her over his right shoulder. She was trying to put a smile on when she realized that the man was alone.

“Sir, are you the ranger who came for George Lee?” She almost yelled it. Maybe George was in the woods relieving himself or wandering ahead.

The man straightened and his face softened in a smile. He had his right hand behind his back, the left propped on the top of the railing. There was something strange about his wearing dark glasses in such a shady place.

It’s all right, he’s a park ranger. She looked around, still expecting to see the child.

She was closing the last ten feet between them with her right arm extended. “I was worried sick-” she started.

Then she saw the gun.