Where the Forest Meets the Stars(4)

“Why?”
“They’re in their seventies, and his wife has to be near a hospital because of a medical condition. Now they use the house as a source of income, but they only rent it to scientists.”
“You’re a scientist?”
“Yes, but still a graduate student.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I’m done with the first four years of college, and now I take classes, work as a teaching assistant, and do research so I can get a PhD.”
“What’s a PhD?”
“A doctorate degree. Once I have that, I can get a job as a professor at a university.”
The girl licked her dirty, dog-drooled fingers and scrubbed them on the blackened marshmallow stuck to her cheek. “A professor is a teacher, right?”
“Yes, and most people in my field also do research.”
“What research?”
Relentless curiosity. She’d make a great scientist. “My field is bird ecology and conservation.”
“What do you do, exactly?”
“Enough questions, Ear poo . . .”
“Earpood !”
“It’s time for you to go home. I get up early, so I need to go to sleep.” Jo turned on the spigot and pulled the hose to the fire.
“Do you have to put it out?”
“Smokey Bear says I do.” The fire hissed and steamed as the water conquered it.
“That’s sad,” the girl said.
“What is?”
“That wet ash smell.” Her face looked bluish in the fluorescent kitchen light filtering through the window, as if she’d become a changeling again.
Jo turned the squeaky spigot handle to off. “How about you tell me the truth about why you’re out here?”
“I did tell you,” the girl said.
“Come on. I’m going inside, and I don’t feel right about leaving you out here.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“You’ll go home?”
“Let’s go, Little Bear,” the girl said, and the dog, improbably, obeyed.
Jo watched the alien changeling and her mongrel walk away, their fade into the dark forest as sad as the wet ash smell.


2

The alarm woke Jo at four, her normal time on the days she traveled long distances to her study sites. In the light of a small lamp, she dressed in a T-shirt, button-down shirt, cargo field pants, and boots. Not until she turned on the fluorescent stove light did she remember the girl. Hard to believe when she’d thought of little else during her restless first half hour in bed. She looked out the back door at the empty chairs circled around the fire pit. She flipped on the front porch light and stepped into the screened room. No sign of the girl. She’d probably gone home.
While her oatmeal cooked, Jo made a tuna sandwich and packed it alongside her trail mix and water. She was out the door twenty minutes later and at her site by dawn. While the morning air was still cool, she searched for indigo bunting nests along Church Road, the least shaded of her nine study sites. A few hours later, she moved on to the Jory Farm site, and after that, to Cave Hollow Road.
She quit at five, earlier than usual. Insomnia had become routine in the last two years, since her mother’s diagnosis and recent death, but for some reason her anxiety had been especially bad for three nights running. She wanted to be in bed by nine at the latest to catch up on sleep.
Though she’d stopped at a farm stand first, she arrived at Turkey Creek Road early enough that Egg Man, a young bearded guy, was still seated under his blue canopy at the road’s intersection with the county highway. During her infrequent days off work—mostly because of rain—Jo had noticed he kept a regular schedule, selling eggs on Monday evenings and Thursday mornings.
Egg Man nodded his head in greeting as Jo rounded the bend. She waved and wished she needed eggs to give him business, but she still had at least four in the refrigerator.
Turkey Creek Road was the five-mile gravel road that dead-ended at the creek and Kinney property. Driving it took a while, even in an SUV. After the first mile, it got narrow, snaky, potholed, and washboarded, and toward the end it was precariously steep in a few places where the creek washed it out in heavy rains. Jo’s return trip on the road was her favorite part of the day. She never knew what the next bend might bring—a turkey, a family of bobwhite quail, or even a bobcat. At its end, the road brought her to a pretty view of the clear, rocky creek and a left turn that led to her quaint cottage on the hill.
But it wasn’t wildlife she saw staring back at her from the cottage walkway when she turned onto the Kinney property lane. It was the Ursa Major alien and her Ursa Minor dog. The girl was wearing the same clothes as the previous night, her feet still bare. Jo parked and jumped out of the car without removing her gear. “Why are you still here?”
“I told you,” the girl said, “I’m visiting from—”
“You’ve got to go home!”
“I will! I promise I will when I’ve seen five miracles.”
Jo took her phone from her pants pocket. “I’m sorry . . . I have to call the police.”
“If you do, I’ll run. I’ll find another house.”
“You can’t do that! There are weird people out there. Bad people . . .”
The girl crossed her arms over her chest. “Then don’t call.”
Good advice. She shouldn’t do it in front of her. Jo put the phone away. “Are you hungry?”
“Kind of,” the girl said.
She probably hadn’t eaten since her meal at the fire. “Do you like eggs?”