Blood lure

It wasn't merely the prevalence of the Mission '66 ranch-style floor plans: three bedrooms, L-shaped living area and long narrow kitchen circa 1966, the last time the NPS had gotten major funding for employee housing. It was the decor. Rangers, researchers and naturalists, from seasonal to superintendent, could be counted on to have park posters on the walls, a kachina or two on the shelves, Navajo rugs over the industrial-strength carpeting and an assortment of mismatched unbreakable plastic dishes in the kitchen.

The predictability of the surroundings had dulled A

On top of the television, between a Kokopelli doll standing on an o/o de Diosand the skull of some large canid, were framed school portraits of two boys, either fraternal twins or very close in age. Both were stu

Thinking of the children in those terms brought A

Her promotion to district ranger on the Natchez Trace Parkway was taking its toll. The Trace was a road, hence A

The boys in the picture frames: not potential victims but future promise made flesh. Attitude screwed around the right way, A

"Luke and John," Joan said.

Good apostolic names. A

"Stillborn."

A

"Yup."

Silence settled around them, oddly comfortable this time, more so given this silence's root.

"John graduates high school this year. Luke's a junior. I got pregnant while nursing. Another old wives' tale bites the dust. They live with their dad in Denver."

There was no need for elaboration. The park service, though sublime in many respects, was hell on marriages.

A

Accompanied by an alarming creaking noise that she hoped was the ladder-backed chair and not Joan's sacroiliac, the researcher rose. She crossed to the television, returned with the pictures and set them down amid the BIMS reports and scat sample tubes.

"They're good-looking boys," A

"Their dad was a virtual Adonis. Still is. Still knows it. Still drives the little girls wild."

Another chapter in the same old story.

"Ah," A

"If I ever marry again, it'll be to a rich old hunchback with bad teeth."

Picking up a frame, A

"Luke. Though he's younger, he's the bigger boy."

Around the eyes-brown and, because of a slight downturn at the outer corners, sad-looking-Luke resembled his mother. In all else he had followed along the Adonis lines. "Looks a little like Rory Van Slyke," A

"I noticed that," Joan said.

Wistfulness permeated the words. Joan missed her sons, maybe picked the Van Slyke boy from the Earthwatch litter because he reminded her of Luke. Evidently Joan heard her own vulnerability and was shamed by it. At any rate, the moment of intimacy was over.

"BIMS," she said overbrightly. "Never a dull moment. Let me read you one." The forms had been made up in an attempt to keep a record of every bear sighting in the park. They were filled out by visitors and park perso

Joan shuffled through her pile of BIMS and, A

"Too big?"

"By half. In Glacier, grizzlies don't reach the size they do in Alaska, where they have access to all that salmon protein. Here an average male weighs in at three-fifty or four hundred pounds, the females a little less. We get a lot of exaggerated reports. I can't say as I blame folks. When you see a bear and you're all alone in the big bad woods, they do have a tendency to double in size."

Joan's jocularity was forced. Equilibrium was not yet reestablished. The ghosts of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John still hovered over the scat bottles, A

"I got a good one," she offered in the spirit of denial. She paged back till she located a form filled out in lavender ballpoint. "August fifth. No location. No time. No observer name. Species: grizzly. Age: twenty-six. Color: blond-don't know if this means the bear was twenty-six and blond, or the observer was."

"Blond for our bears is rare."

"That's not the rare part. This is." A

Joan laughed and the air was clear again. Tales of visitor silliness could always be counted on to bring back a sense of normalcy to park life. "Reports like that reassure me that Timothy Leary's alive and well and doing drugs with Elvis," the researcher said.

After ten o'clock, in Joan's spare room furnished, as was every spare room in every park service house A

Months had passed since she'd done anything more strenuous than sit on her posterior in an air-conditioned patrol car. The most weight she'd lifted with any regularity was a citation book and government-issue pen. In desperation, she'd joined an aerobics class at the Baptist Healthplex in Clinton, Mississippi, but she'd only gone twice. One of the requirements for inclusion in this cross-training venture had been the ability to carry a fifty-pound pack. A

She hoped she wouldn't slow everybody down. She hoped Joan wouldn't have Rory Van Slyke unwittingly bearing, along with the blood of sacrificial cows, the burden of stillborn apostles because of an unca