Officer Casey K. of the Arizona Game & Fish

 

          Somebody saw something, then somebody said something to somebody else, and that somebody said, “we better call the Arizona Game & Fish people.”
          What did they see, whoever they were?  It might have been an unusually large and confident puma hanging around the old Chee place. That’s most likely it. Stories are like babies or kittens, they start out so small, but they grow and develop and get more interesting with time and repetition.
          The phone report was made to AG&F.  By the time Officer Casey Kenilworth got handed the case, this lion had become almost the size of a young horse.  Now, he didn’t really believe this, but his job was to go out and see if he could find the beast and most like put it down as too much of a hazard because of the way it was hanging around houses and people.  It didn’t make him real happy to think about this.
          The State of Arizona provided Officer Casey K. with a shiny white late model pickup to drive, so he didn’t mind the highway or even the backcountry roads.  It was the awkward investigations that wearied his soul. This one was already making him feel like a dope.  He was going to show up at this place way the heck and gone out on highway 77 and ask these people if they had a huge lion hanging around the compound, and if they felt endangered. “These are the times that try men’s souls…” he thought vaguely to himself.  Then he imagined a laugh track.  He loved a joke, even if he had to make it up himself.
          So, that morning at 8:00 AM he took 87 out of Phoenix, heading out to do his duty.
          When he got to the location, it looked like no one was home.  No vehicle was parked there.  He could see where it would normally park.  There was a small kitchen garden and a little hen run and shelter.  In the back behind the mobile house he could see an old style hogan, in rather good condition.  It was very quiet here under the scrub trees.  He could hear a small stream nearby.
          He knocked on the door. He was surprised when a non-Indian lady in her thirties, holding a baby girl opened the door.  There was also a mutt dog and a large striped cat in attendance. The lady said, “yes, how can I help you?”
          “Ma’am, I am Game & Fish officer Casey Kenilworth, of the state of Arizona. We have received a report of a dangerous mountain lion hanging around your place.  We have to investigate these kinds of reports.
          “Um, what say you, ma’am?”
          “Oh officer, I don’t know who goes out of their way to report stuff like that!  We haven’t seen any lions hanging around here.  Look, the chickens are fine.  You’d think if there was a mountain lion around there would be no chickens.  Also, we have this goofy big pup here.  He would have barked his head off if he thought there was a lion out there, sir.”
          Officer Casey could see the wisdom in what she said.
“Well, I have to tell them something back in Phoenix, so if you don’t mind a lot I think I will just hike around your place here just on the off chance that I see something.”
          “That’s fine,” said Beth. She laughed a little and said, “if my husband was home, he would give you a tour of the place. Maybe he will get back from town before you leave.”
          He touched his hat brim, and said “thanks, don’t think I’ll be here long.”
          She was nice about it, but he did feel like a big dope chasing a snipe.  Oh well. After she shut the door, he hitched up his uniform pants and headed out toward the hogan.  He walked all around it.  He found nothing.  He looked at the ground out behind the mobile.  No tracks.  Well, dog tracks but they don’t count.
          He put his hands on his hips and looked all around from back there and noticed a path leading uphill.  He decided to walk up there too and look around, just to say he did. When he got over the rise and back down to the rock face, he discovered that there was one of those old mines you find out in the backcountry around here.
          Now, Officer Casey K. had never been in a gold mine, or any mine, and he was a curious fellow. He told himself that he should take a look in there also, just in case. It would be nice to get out of the direct sunlight for a minute anyhow.
          Therefore, he stepped in old John Chee’s little one man mine set into the rock face up hill from the house. It was cool and very still in there. Faintly dusty smelling with a tang of something he could not identify. Nothing uncanny had ever happened to him in his life and he was not expecting any funny business.  He was a sensible twenty first century state employee out on an investigation. That’s all.
          But gold often exists embedded in granite rock. Granite is special. It rings. It vibrates on a subtle level.
          The officer was leaning up against the granite mine wall just feeling the coolness of the rock and musing there in the dark by himself. But then, he started to hear something.  He didn’t know what to make of it.  It was a faint wavering ringing sound that seemed to be all around him, coming from no direction, it was just there around him.
          He fell backwards. His feet flew up and he did a complete impossible loop in the atmosphere of some intangible location. He didn’t have time to ask himself anything about this experience.  It just happened. He had fallen into the granite.
          When his mind came back into his head he found that he was lying on a grassy plane looking straight up into a blue sky with dreamlike poofy clouds scudding by in a playful wind. When he looked more closely at the grass he saw tiny sparkling pink and blue flowers.  They were totally strange to him. Even smaller than the flowers he saw something like insects, but metallic golden and green moving in mysterious patterns on some business of their own over the surface of the ground. His mind spun around helplessly.
          Something licked the side of his face. He turned to see what it could be and saw that it was the face of a very large shiny golden tawny lioness, with humor in her eyes. She gave him a couple more licks with a very rough tongue. She seemed as if she might laugh out loud at any moment.
          “Wake up!  Wake up Casey! This is no time for sleeping!” she purred into his ear. She bunted him, cat like, with her big golden head. She was so powerful that she rolled him over and over on the grass of the shining plane.
          “Wake up, please wake up,” said the woman’s face looking down on him. “Are you alright, sir,” she implored.
          She was Beth of course.  She had put Emmy in the backpack baby carrier and had gone looking for the officer because of a vague sense of worry about him.  She brought Honda along too. She found Casey on the near side of the little incline and path leading to the mine.  He was passed out cold and had lost his hat somewhere.
          Jessie came home to find the state truck parked in his spot and his wife and baby and dog missing from the house. Very curious by then, he walked out to investigate.  He found Beth, with Emmy, trying to wake a hatless officer who was lying on the ground.
          Beth explained to him how the scene came to be.  Jessie said, “I see.  Why don’t you and Emmy go on back?  Honda and I will help him, Beth.  Don’t worry.  He’ll be fine. I bet his hat is up in the mine.”
          And Officer Casey was fine. He snapped right out of it, and he never ever told a soul about it! In fact, by the time he got to Phoenix, he had almost forgotten his hunt for the big mountain lion.
          Sometimes, though, he thought he could hear that wavering tone and he remembered it all.

They haven't taken my phone yet.docx