Yellowstone Memories (41 page)

“But it’s urgent, Nelson! Really. Don’ll flip! Maybe even write me up—depending on what kind of mood he’s in.”

“Know any magicians?”

Jersey groaned.

“Well, then, good luck.” Nelson winked and blew on his coffee, waving over his shoulder as the door fell shut behind him. Blotting out the golden, sunshiny morning with the dull glow of artificial light.

“Mornin’, Rodney.” Jersey patted the taxidermied cougar by the wooden counter. “You’re looking crabby today. What’d you do, stay up all night taking our computer down?”

Rodney showed pointy fangs in a permanent scowl.

“So you’re not talking, huh? Well.” She passed a wall of brochures that campers usually took and left littered all over the campsites. “That figures.”

Jersey gave an exaggerated salute to Phyllis, one of the other rangers. She stopped by the coffee machine and poured a cup of horrible black stuff, which she doctored up with an unhealthy dose of sugar and artificially flavored vanilla creamer.

She was still mixing the powdery muck with her plastic stirrer (yes, park rangers resorted to plastic if it was cheaper than wood down at the closest Albertsons grocery) and started into the back office. Then as quick as she’d come, she jerked back out, leaning up against the side of the door. Hoping he hadn’t noticed her.

“Is he in there again?” Jersey wrinkled up her nose at Phyllis in a whisper, nodding with her head toward the office.

“Who, that Japanese researcher guy?” Phyllis whispered back.

“Yeah. From Caltech, right? What’s his name again?”

“Taki? Taco? Don’t ask me. Researchers give me the creeps. He’s probably a CIA plant, you know? Looking for drugs or something.”

“Taka. That’s his name.” Jersey glanced through the crack in the door. “I don’t want to be rude, but he’s … weird. He bugs me.”

“Tell me about it. He wears bedroom slippers to work, and he never smiles.”

“Never.”

“Those researchers all think they’re better than everybody else,” Phyllis muttered. “I knew one who went around with a pocket dictionary so he could correct everybody’s grammar. Beastly little jerk. This guy carries one, too. I’ve seen it.”

“No, I’m pretty sure his is a pocket translator. You know. To type in the Japanese words and get the English version.”

“Well, he drinks weird stuff. Look at him.” Phyllis pulled Jersey over to peek through the crack in the door. “What is that, tea? He carries it in a Thermos, and he packs little compartmented lunch boxes with perfectly trimmed carrots in the shape of flowers and stuff. Strange if you ask me.”

Jersey shook her coffee cup. Frothy, lumpy, creamer-laden coffee quivered back, reminding her of the geothermal mud pits. “Then again, we’re not really one to talk about drinking weird stuff, eh?”

“Good point.” Phyllis smiled. “What’s he doing, research on moose or something?”

“Elk, I think. Something about population patterns after the reintroduction of wolves and the big fire back in ‘88.” Jersey sipped her coffee. “At least that’s what Nelson said. But then again, never trust Nelson. He told me five years ago that you were only staying for the summer. And look at you now.” She poked Phyllis’s arm. “You’re practically a tour exhibit.”

“Old Faithful?”

“Nah. I was thinking of a different one.”

“If you say Porkchop Geyser, I swear I’ll slash your tires.”

Jersey chuckled. “Snort Geyser—or maybe Spasm. Remember that birthday party at Nelson’s? I think that Coke came out your nose.”

Phyllis snickered. “Poor guy had carpet stains for weeks.” She nodded toward the back office. “Well, I wouldn’t worry about ol’ what’s-his-name. I’m sure he’ll be gone in a few weeks.”

Jersey sighed and shook her coffee cup, tapping the stirrer. “Probably. But it’s not his tea drinking habits that bother me. It’s … a lot of things. For starters, every time I turn around he’s asking me for something. To ride out to the lake to put down some equipment. To go here and go there. To let him borrow my phone or take him out to the wilderness station.” She raised her hands. “It drives me bats! I’ve got a job to do, and I sure don’t get paid extra for ferrying researchers around.”

“Snobby researchers that don’t know how to use a normal two-syllable word. And I’m still not convinced he doesn’t carry a pocket dictionary.”

“Well.” Jersey tossed her coffee stirrer in the trash. “I’ve got to get that report done, or I’m in trouble. The computer’s really down?”

“Yep. Dead as the possum I scraped off the road this morning.” Phyllis jerked a thumb in the direction of the office. “I hear that computer was here before Don, and it takes up more space than the truck. What a dinosaur!”

“Don’t talk about dinosaurs.” Jersey’s headache throbbed again as she remembered her rowdy tour group. She swallowed the rest of her coffee and tossed the cup.

“Whatever, Jersey. But as long as that computer’s still running, Uncle Sam won’t spring for another one.”

“Believe me, I can make it quit running. If that’s what they want.” Jersey picked up a taxidermied squirrel mounted on a slender log and pretended to swing it like a baseball bat.

Right as Taka Shimamori abruptly stepped through the door—the end of the log catching him square in the chest. His sheaf of papers spilling everywhere, glasses flying off. Dislodging the squirrel and sending it hurtling into the copier.

I
’m so sorry!” Jersey gasped, not sure whether to rush to help Taka or pick up the injured squirrel, which bonked off the copier and landed in a pitiful heap on the short gray carpet.

Phyllis shrieked and promptly backed into the coffeepot, knocking it sideways with her hip. Spilling coffee down the side of the maple cabinet—where they’d wedged the coffeemaker and a stash of supposedly recycled paper cups, plus an ancient jar of sugar that ants periodically invaded.

While Phyllis ran for a wad of paper towels, Jersey dropped to her knees and scooped up Taka’s files, not daring to look him in the eyes. “I’m terribly sorry. I didn’t know you were coming through the door just now. I’m … I’m an oaf. Forgive me.”

Taka’s face remained the same mask of sober, emotionless blank, but he blinked faster. Something like an embarrassed laugh choking out of his mouth as he avoided her eyes, reaching for some printouts. “It’s okay. Please. Don’t worry.”

Jersey scrambled around on the carpet for his trendy rectangular-rimmed glasses, the style of young businessmen and artists, and then handed them back in humiliation. “Here. They’re not broken, are they?”

“They’re still usable, I’m sure.”

Was he laughing at her? Jersey narrowed her eyes at him in contemplation then reached for another printout. “What is this, your research?”

“Yes. My initial analysis of elk migration patterns and factors affecting movement in the park area.” Taka reached out to point, his pale fingers trembling slightly. The faintest Japanese accent clipping his syllables. “This one shows herd numbers following the 1988 fire, which disturbed breeding and feeding grounds, along with other more recent ecological dynamics of concern. Particularly the reintroduction of
Canis lupus
.”

“Wow.” Jersey bobbed her head like a lizard as if she understood. “Um … sure.”

Wait a second.
Canis lupus
. Wolves. Aha! “You’re talking about wolves, right?” she asked, relieved to have decrypted some of Taka’s blabber. “So how are the numbers?”

Taka handed her a paper. “Overall the population has reduced due to predation but also because of a fear-based behavioral reaction. The elk are declining, with more and more frequency, to venture deep into thickets due to fear of attack in areas of very low visibility.” He straightened his glasses. “Incidentally,
Populus tremula, Salix bebbiana
, and other new-growth vegetation species have increased, which is good for park biodiversity.”

“Oh.” Jersey felt as intelligent as the taxidermied squirrel. “So … that’s good, right?”

“Not exactly.” Taka ran a hand through his black hair. “You see, the recent long-term declines in elk recruitment has been across the board, which means that several potential biological factors are having a definite impact on population dynamics.”

Riiiight. Exactly what I was going to say
. Jersey handed him the rest of his papers and started to get up, annoyed at his show-offy gibberish, then noticed the broken squirrel lying by the copier. Its frozen arms in perpetual mid-run where they’d popped off the log.

“Oh no,” she groaned, scrambling over and scooping it up off the floor. Its tail had broken off in a furry heap. “Don will kill me! He loves this squirrel.”

She turned over the stiff body, its beady eyes glinting, and tried unsuccessfully to fit the tail back in place. She pictured Don scowling under thick gray eyebrows, writing a nasty note in her file.

“Superglue?” Jersey shrugged. She tugged off her hat with her free hand and scratched her hair, wondering if there were an emergency taxidermy hotline.

Taka peered at the squirrel tail. “No, you need something like … hmm. A polyepoxide, maybe? Something with a thermosetting polymer to bind the epoxide and polyamine to the surface of the material. But not too viscous that it’ll soil the surrounding fibers.”

Jersey stared.

“What do you call it … epoxy?”

“Oh.” She narrowed her eyes in irritation. “Well, I don’t think we’ve got anything beyond your basic Elmers.”

“I can try to fix it.”

Jersey turned to Taka in mounting exasperation. “You really think you know something about squirrels?” She shook the stiff, brushlike tail. “Long-dead squirrels?”

He bowed slightly and held out his palm.

“Fine.” Jersey reluctantly handed over the pieces. “But don’t mess it up any worse than it is, okay? Don raised this thing from a little ball of fluff, and he bawled like a baby when it got thumped in the head by a speeding car. Seriously. I think he had to spend some time in rehab to deal with the grief and … What are you doing?”

Taka didn’t reply, rooting around on the walls and pulling down corners of Wyoming and Yellowstone Park maps.

“Hey, hey—what are you doing?” Jersey jumped up to press the maps back in place. Mentally kicking herself for giving a nerdy researcher Don’s prized squirrel.

Taka scraped a bit of putty from the corner of a Yellowstone Falls poster and rolled it into a ball. He took a plastic coffee stirrer from the cup near Phyllis’s shoulder, where she crouched, furiously scrubbing coffee from the carpet.

Jersey stood over Taka, hands on her hips, as he sat down at the table. Poking around inside the body of the squirrel. He broke off the coffee stirrer and fitted it inside then calmly produced a mini sewing kit from his backpack—the kind with needles and tiny thread spools—and began to thread a needle.

“You carry a sewing kit?” Jersey tipped an eyebrow upward.

“Glue?” Taka glanced up at her without taking her bait.

“Umm … let me check the supply closet.” Jersey squeaked open the closet door and sorted through several boxes of flyers, markers, and scissors, and finally found it: a battered old bottle of Elmers wood glue, the orange cap crusted with repeated drenchings of yellowish stuff. Wondering where in the world Caltech got oddballs like Taka Shimamori.

“You think it’s gonna work?” She held out the bottle to Taka.

He adjusted his glasses and took the glue without looking up. Giving her a curt nod.

Jersey rolled her eyes, but she stayed by the table, peering over his shoulder as he fitted together some kind of structure on the inside, holding it together with putty. Then he threaded together the two squirrel pieces, stitching carefully through the hard skin along the broken edge. Dabbing on glue with the end of the coffee stirrer.

Taka pressed the pieces together and reached for the log. He glued on the four feet, one at a time.

And then—voilà. Good as new.

“It’s a flying squirrel after all, no?” Taka chuckled. The first time Jersey had seen him smile.

“Yeah, it is, actually.” Jersey surveyed his work then spun around in surprise. “Hey, did you just make a joke? That was pretty good.”

Taka shrugged as if embarrassed. He set the squirrel on the far end of the table and then silently reached for his Thermos and poured a cup of briny-looking brown stuff. He sipped it as he lifted a stack of papers, a bird’s nest, a cluster of prickly nuts, and a shiny plastic pencil case decorated with smiling onions and pale blue Japanese
kanji
characters.

“Ah. There it is.” He reached for a rogue mechanical pencil. “That’s what I was looking for.” And Taka settled down to work as if nothing had ever happened.

“Thanks. The squirrel looks … amazing.” Jersey put it back in its place on the shelf and tipped her head sideways. “You wouldn’t know I broke the tail.” She turned back to Taka, who was busy making notes in a notebook, comparing something from a computer printout. “Where’d you learn to sew?”

“Sorry?” Taka peered at her through his glasses, hand pausing on the mug. Condensation frosting on the outside. Meaning Taka probably kept some kind of cold herbal stuff inside his Thermos instead of the ubiquitous green tea most Japanese carried around.

Jersey hoped one of those spiny nuts wasn’t an ingredient. Or, heaven forbid, whatever came out of that bird’s nest either.

“Sewing,” she repeated. “Where’d you learn sewing? You know. With the needle and thread.” Jersey imitated stitching. “Who taught you?”

A flicker of irritation flashed through his dark eyes. “I know what sewing is.”

Jersey stepped back, involuntarily facing her palms outward. “Sorry. Just asking.”

Taka still seemed reticent, so she turned back to the closet to replace the glue. “I’ll just … put this away and be out of your hair. Thanks for the help.”

She retreated to the closet and took her time wiping the cap and replacing the glue, making a face in the darkness. Weird. That’s what Taka was.

Taka said something, so softly Jersey had to stop shuffling boxes to try to hear him.

“Sorry?” She leaned away from the baskets of scissors for kids’ nature crafts.

“My mother,” said Taka, clearing his throat. Tapping his papers together, upright, in a perfect stack. “She was a seamstress. A very good one.”