#roy parvin

[a-labyrinth-of-stories]

I’m the fish and game warden. A funny thing that. My public life is anything but wild.

There are enough black bears and cougars and eight-point bucks and red-tailed hawks for all my days. That’s Trinity County: not a stoplight in the whole of the place, not a properly incorporated town in the handful of crossroads that took root under its trees. That’s what it is. Trees and animals and lakes and rivers and hills and a few thousand people.

But a wild life, no.

Despite its bigness—the place is about the size of Connecticut—the people are small. Alternative lifestyle means living at a campground. Butch is a kind of wax for hair or mustache. And so on.

Trapline, Roy Parvin [from the book ‘The Loneliest Road in America’]

[a-labyrinth-of-stories]

When Delmont pitched in he would have had a small air bubble in the top of the truck cab, a supply that would have lasted maybe twenty minutes. In the end, he would have been pressing his face to the roof, sucking the last bits of the air, then his world would have gone to shadows, then night, darker yet than his poor heart.

Trapline, Roy Parvin [from the book ‘The Loneliest Road in America’]

[a-labyrinth-of-stories]

THE QUESTION OF WHAT to do with the kid remained.

Massey was beginning to get attached to him, like a pet. Also he’d forgotten what it was like to be with people. He’d been alone so long, he’d become a stranger to his own voice. In the first few days he’d be telling the kid something and he’d stop in the middle, listen to his words rumble around the shack, have to remind himself to keep talking.

Massey felt bad about the ropes. He asked the kid if he wanted to be tied down flat during the nights in order to sleep better. “This is fine,” the kid said, never complaining once. Massey stil felt bad about it, considered what he could do to make things easier but never came up with anything.

Smoke, Roy Parvin [from the book ‘The Loneliest Road in America’]

[a-labyrinth-of-stories]

Wind shook the plants in the garden. Massey laced the kid’s arm to the chair again. Another star fell.

The kid said, “I did make one. A wish.”

Massey nodded at him.

“I’m not telling it.”

“It won’t come true, right?” Massey said. He found himself rooting for the kid, pulling for whatever it was he’d wish for. For a moment, expectations prickled inside him like sweetness from a slice of sugar cake, then rose from his gut to his head, the thought it carried tripping him up: he hoped the kid was wishing to stay.

“That’s birthdays,” the kid said. A coyote barked from the Bear Hollow. They listened to the night, the trees in the wind creaking like ship’s rigging. “I don’t think you’d like it,” the kid said.

“Your wish?” Massey said. “Probably not.”

Smoke, Roy Parvin [from the book ‘The Loneliest Road in America’]

[a-labyrinth-of-stories]

After saying it, he saw she was already gone. The blue in her eyes, once deep as the water in Tangle Blue Lake, now drained away to steel.

Smoke, Roy Parvin [from the book ‘The Loneliest Road in America’]

[a-labyrinth-of-stories]

“I love you,” she’d said. “But not this. Not anymore. I want what’s after this.”

Smoke, Roy Parvin [from the book ‘The Loneliest Road in America’]

[a-labyrinth-of-stories]

The kid looked down at his hands and back up into Massey’s face. He gave him one of Zero’s smirky looks. “If you’re the troll,” he said, “where’s your bridge?”

Massey laughed. “Spunk,” he said and saw the kid was only putting up a good front, was in truth bullyragged, more fidgety and jumpy than a cat. “I like that. I'm laughing with you.”

Smoke, Roy Parvin [from the book ‘The Loneliest Road in America’]

[a-labyrinth-of-stories]

Stars leaked into the night sky. One fell in the northwest like a white thread pulling in the dark.

“Look at that,” Massey said. The star fell behind the stand of trees now dark as ink blots. “It’s a wonder they all don’t fall,” he said and lifted both hands, palms up.

The kid said, “It’s not really a star. An asteroid or meteorite or cosmic debris maybe. The stuff burns up when it enters earth's atmosphere.”

Massey took the empty from the boy's hand.

The kid pointed at the sky. “Astronomy.” He swelled out his chest, talked about comets and quasars and black holes.

Massey chewed on the inside of his cheek, thinking about what the kid said, trying to understand it all, remembering the stories Gail had told about how the constellations got their names. He liked watching the kid talk, his free arm pointing, painting for Massey the picture he saw when he looked up.

“You make a wish?” Massey said. “Or is that just a load of cosmic debris, too?”

The kid laughed, his mouth pulling up on the right side into an off-kilter smile. “No,” he said, “wishing’s still cool.”

Smoke, Roy Parvin [from the book ‘The Loneliest Road in America’]