ECOLOGY Journal #7-8                            Jenna Hirschman

Untitled in the Woods
by Jenna Hirschman
(c)1996 Jenna Hirschman


   "We shouldn't be here," Davey said again.
   Pete held his hands out by the fire, turning them over in the orange glow.
   "Pete?"
   "Yeah?"
   "Wanna know why?"
   Pete turned his hands over again, then pulled one up to his breast pocket
and pulled out a cigarette. He held it out to Davey.
   "Well?" Davey took the cigarette and lit it in the bonfire, shaking
nuerotically.
   "Alright."
   "We shouldn't be here because..."
   "Oh wait, this one I remember," Pete said, cutting him off. "We shouldn't
be here ... because they closed the whole place off. Years ago, mind you, they
closed the whole place off."
   "That's right." Davey inhaled deeply.
   "And we shouldn't be smoking either."
   "Yeah." Davey looked down at the slim white cigarette between his fingers
and dropped it on the frozen ground, smothering it with his foot. "So why are
we here?"
   "Why are we smoking?"
   "Good point. Very good point," Davey whispered, looking around for ghosts
and smokes in the woods.
   "Davey? I'll tell you why."
   "Why?"
   "Because it's what we always did."
   "That's right, it is."
   "Mom brought us here."
   "And to Nepal and Chile and Africa and Alaska."
   "She was a killer."
   "Yeah."
   Pete looked around. There weren't any ghosts for him, they came with guilt
and he couldn't find that anywhere inside. "They closed these places off
because of what we did."
   "Not just us."
   "Just us."
   "It wasn't really her fault," Davey strangled out. "She was a product of
her--"
   "They came to Yellowstone and trashed it with their party, then they went
to the Sierra Nevada, then Alaska, then Africa, then South America, to the
mountains. And where are the mountains today?"  
   "It was only twenty inches, Pete."
   Pete chuckled and sat down on the cold ground. "Not very much at all, is
it?"
   "Well..."
   "Do you know what I wanted to be, Davey?"
   "No. What did you want to be?"
   "I wanted to be one of the rangers."
   "The guys who were always yelling at mom and waving their guns at us?"
   "Yeah."
   "Why?"
   "They got to stay."
   Davey looked around, at the dead trees and pop-bottle, paper covered
ground. "I don't see them here anymore."
   "They could've stayed."
   "Would you have stayed if you'd been one of them?"
   "It doesn't really matter. Mom never would have let me go into it." Pete
put his cigarette out, the extra butt faded immediately into the ground cover.
   "But would you have?"
   "Yeah, I would have stayed and chased everybody out."
   "Then what?"
   "Then this," Pete said, and pointed to the tiny fire, the empty night.
   "Why did we come back to Yellowstone?"
   "A funeral, Davey. We came for a funeral."
   "For mom?"
   "No."
   "Then who?"
   "Nobody," Pete said. "Nobody at all ... Those park rangers? They knew
something we didn't, didn't they? They knew it was bad if people did what they
said and worse if people didn't. Mom wasn't that smart."
   "She was before they found the b1 vaccine. She told us how smart she was,
the kind of school they let her into."
   "She was stupid, Davey."
   "I love her."
   "She's dead."
   "They lied to her."
   "Who?"
   "The scientists."
   "They lied to everybody. She should have known better."
   "It was just a party, Pete. Didn't you like it when we were kids? All those
people hugged us and showed us leaves and--"
   "And where are the leaves now?"
   "Where are the people now?"
   "Who cares about people?"
   "Who cares about leaves?"
   "I do."
   Davey looked sheepish again. "So do I. But I care about people too."
   "So they had a party when they found the vaccine for the virus. The first
vaccine."
   "The one that didn't work."
   "The party lasted a lot longer than the misinformation."
   "Mom said they were sick of being cloistered."
   "We're lucky the b1 vaccine worked the way it did."  
   "She always said so."
   "I told her I wanted to be a ranger in the hospital."
   "Pete, they don't have National Forests anymore. Or National Parks."
   "Because when we were kids, we did this."
   "They never really had anything wild. The minute they started watching it
and taking care of it like a baby it was just another park."
   "It was better than nothing."
   "Yeah."
   "Do you want to go back and watch all our aunts and uncles die?"
   "I don't like sitting here waiting for a man with a gun -- er a ranger --
to come after us."
   "They don't have rangers here anymore. There's no point."
   Davey sighed. "She really loved trees."
   "She really loved Off2000 too."
   "So did I."
   "Then leave. Go back to New York and try to find another job.See how long
you can stand the smell."
   "It doesn't smell any better here!"
   "Here I have memories."
   "I don't want memories."
   "Then leave."
   "Who is it, Pete?" Davey backed off into the dark recesses of the former
camp site.
   "Who's funeral are we having?"       
   Pete smiled. "My woods, my mountains, my buffalo."
   "You never saw a buffalo."
   "You're right. The beef and dairy producers of the world killed them all
first."
   "They were sick."
   "But they were alive."
   "Not with us."
   "No, they killed them when mom was a kid. She never saw one either."
   "So how can they be your buffalo?"
   "Alright big brother, you got me. It's more like this, I'm their man. And
this is a funeral for all of them."
   "You belong to Yellowstone National Park?"
   "I belong to the world."
   "What happened to God?"
   "What's God without this?"
   "I should've known you'd become an athiest."
   "Not exactly. I'm having a funeral, for myself and the earth."
   "The Earth is doing fine. Pollution has been cut down, landfills
restructured--"
   "Then where are the deer? Where are the trees?"
   "Gone, I guess."
   "When will THEY be restructured?"
   "I can't believe you blame this all on mom's generation. Sure, they had
a party when the disease was cured, sure they... well it was only twenty
inches, Pete. That's not so much in the Andes."
   "I blame everybody for being stupid and being human."
   "Isn't being human part of the whole thing?"
   "It's still stupid... Well today I'm a park ranger, Davey, and I'm doing
the last thing a park ranger should do before they close up the park for
good."
   "What?"
   "I'm having a funeral."
   Davey took a deep breath and released it slowly, backing off from his
brother. "So, it's all dead and so are you? Mom would be ash--" He stumbled
over something sticking out of the ground and looked down, expecting to see
a stump or dried root, or maybe an abandoned cooler.
   There was a knee high tree, thick and shedding a few off-color autumn
leaves. He leaned down and picked one up, examining it closely and feeling
it. "Pete?" he said weakly.
   "Stop calling me that. I'm Mr. Park Ranger to you, and I'm buisy having
a solem funeral for all the grasses and trees. Look around, they're all dead.
Not one is left standing."
   "Pete, come over here."
   Pete stopped and looked at his older brother, squating on the ground with
no explaination. "What are you doing?"
   "Looking at something."
   "What?"
   "Come over here."
   After a long pause, Pete finally did, moving his legs mechanically. It was
probably a trick to get his mind off the fire and abscence of the natural
order around him. He towered over his older brother and looked down.
   Davey held his hand up, with something small and dark on it. "Take it,
Pete."
   Pete grabbed him, surprised to find something wet and flexible. He brought
it to his eye. It was a small leaf. He looked back down at what Davey knelt
by. It was a small tree.
   There was a small leaf in Yellowstone, it was wet and it didn't crumble
in his hand. It had fallen by a small tree, no taller than his knees.
   "I guess your park isn't so dead afterall?"
   "Or so helpless."
   Pete twirled the leaf between his fingers and watched the fire, lost in
different thoughts.

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