“It’s freezing,” Maya said quickly. “Let’s get inside there.”
“Max seems to think there’s a rattlesnake in the tent,” Alex said.
“A what?” Maya said, stepping back. “Max, honey. What? You saw a rattlesnake?”
“Not exactly,” Alex said. “We left the tent flap unzipped when we all went to shower. He’s saying — he’s convinced — well, he’s right here. What took you so long, Maya?”
“A snake went in there while we showered,” Max declared. He stared at the tent with — not fright, but a kind of chagrin.
Maya exchanged glances with Alex, ignoring his question. “Have you looked inside?” she said. Alex shook his head. Maya’s heart was jumping, but she tried to conceal it. “We have to go to the office,” she said. “I’m sure they deal with this all the time.”
“I’m afraid,” Max said.
“But you’re not afraid,” Maya said, and crouched before her son in her bathrobe. She took him by the shoulders. “Right? You’re not afraid?” The boy wriggled out of her hold and encircled his father’s leg with his hands.
“Alex?” Maya said.
“You want me to look in there?” he said.
Maya slumped onto the bench of the picnic table; they were nailed to each other. “First-time visitors to Badlands National Park frozen in the night while rattlesnake sleeps, warm, in their tent. The trip had been the mother’s idea.” She thought of what Raisa — better yet, the outdoorsman Eugene — would say about how quickly they had arrived at an emergency. She felt as if she had wished the rattlesnake into existence by thinking of it in the shower; in her mind, she heard Alex saying to their son, “Mama won’t rest until everything’s upside down.” She wrapped her robe more closely and stared, despondent, at Alex and Max.
To her the light had been clarifying, to them barbarous. The sweep of the land was menacing to them, imperial to her. The abrupt departure of the morning’s cold had felt to Maya like the thaw of a steam bath in winter, to Alex and Max like a diabolical snap from freezing to burning. Even now, as a rattlesnake slithered across the floor of their tent, the indigo night settled on her with an aching crispness. It was beautiful here — epically, rinsingly beautiful. Her humpbacked hills (in the end, she preferred their modest spread even to the glorious sightings of the afternoon), squatted somewhere in the darkness, awaiting reunion with her at daylight. Maya breathed the wood smoke of campfires, the campsite’s inhabitants like a caravan of pilgrims bedding down for the night. Could something felt so cleanly and deeply be felt incorrectly? She felt far not only from her husband, but son.
Alex went to call his parents; Maya went to the office. She reached a hand out for Max. He watched her warily. “You can come with, or you can wait for me here,” she said without energy. “I’ll be back with Mr. Wilfred. He’ll fix it.”
Max gave her his hand. Silently, they walked up to the shed. They heard the shouting inside before they walked in. Maya stood outside on the small deck with her son, wanting to give Wilfred privacy. But then she grew cold and pushed open the door; she could hear every word anyway.
He was pacing the small slot behind the reception counter. He stepped like a top-heavy animal — his shoulders shook with each step. She wanted to embrace him. He stopped striding and gazed at the mother and son from the morning. “I have to go, Carla,” he said, his shoulders sagging. “There’s customers.” A strangled squawk came through the phone. Wilfred’s eyes flashed and he shouted “Up yours!” before slamming down the telephone. He withdrew it and slammed it again. He withdrew it a second time and was about to shout into the receiver once more — then remembered the line was dead. He lowered the phone weakly.
“You have every right to give this campground a low rating,” he said, and fell into his swivel chair.
“We’re very happy here,” Maya said. “But there’s a rattlesnake in our tent.” She tried to sound steady.
Wilfred looked up, alert. The day insisted on trying him. “You sure?” he said. “Not really the time for them anymore.”
Maya looked down at Max. “We haven’t seen it,” she said. “But we think so, yes.”
“Fine,” Wilfred said. “Fine.” He dipped below the partition and popped up with a two-gauge shotgun, even this item a plaything in the logs of his fingers.
Maya moved back. “Is that necessary?” she said.
He looked at her like a surgeon second-guessed by his patient; instinctively, she rechecked his nameplate — this abrupt escalation put her in mind of police reports, and she was on probation in that department already. “I’m not gonna shoot you,” he said. His eyebrows, long free from the tyranny of regular grooming, moved up.
“Have you owned it long?” Maya pleaded toward Wilfred Shade’s rump as she and Max bounded behind him on the weakly lit path back to the campsite; it was fully dark now. She meant the campground, but he could have answered for the shotgun. She cared about neither — she was hoping to distract him, separate out in his mind what was Carla and what was the rattlesnake. The shotgun rocked in Wilfred’s hand like a baby. The crisis of five minutes before, which involved only a rattlesnake and no shotgun, seemed desirable by comparison.
“It was an accident that the campground was placed where the rattlesnakes come?” she pressed, hearing no answer. To this, too, she received no reply. She lost her politeness. “My son is scared,” she blustered at Wilfred’s back. To this, too, Wilfred said nothing, but paused and waited for the two of them to catch up, a gesture.
When they reached the campsite, Alex surprised Maya by nodding solemnly at the shotgun and taking several steps back. Though, due to work, Alex despised bureaucracy, he admired all displays of authority. Acrewood’s relative affluence and isolation meant that its police was forced to channel most of its energy into traffic stops; Acrewood Police came at a pulled-over speeder guns drawn. The regional liberals were appalled but Alex applauded. His admiration passed the ultimate test when he was pulled over for going forty-seven miles in a forty-five zone. He nearly put his wrists together in ecstasy. He even paid the ticket enthusiastically, the rare time Maya saw Alex part calmly with money parting with which could have been avoided.
“Stand back, all,” Wilfred Shade said.
“I really don’t think—” Maya started to say, clutching Max’s hand and moving him behind her leg.
“Hold it, hold it,” a voice came from the shadows. She knew the voice. Its owner was vaulting through the shadows like a bear, little bits of gravel shooting out from his feet. Maya’s brain was wet moss in the morning; of course, there was more than one campground; he had sent her to the one that was his also; he and the girls were on a camping trip. A smile escaped Maya’s lips. She killed it.
“Wilfred,” Marion said, stooping to regain his breath. He gave Maya a quick look, the darkness giving them cover.
“Rattlesnake,” Wilfred said. His voice was less strident: Marion seemed to demand a greater solicitude.
“Wait now,” Marion said, holding up one hand tenderly as if reasoning with an assailant. He had the other down on his thigh, breathing heavily.
“It’s Mama’s friend from the diner,” Max said honestly.
Maya looked over at Alex and registered the change on his face even though it was too dark to actually see it. She knew the expression: His forehead rode up; his brows furred; his eyes squinted. Confronted with unwelcome information, Alex declined to certify it as such, preferring to plead incomprehension.
“Carla?” Marion said. Maya watched Wilfred’s shoulders slump in the shadows.
“One of these days,” Wilfred said, and brought the shotgun down to his side. He exhaled painfully. His drive gone, he scraped the gravel of the footpath. “I left my flashlight, Marion,” he said.