The Last Family

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A solitary hawk shifted its wings against invisible currents and traced lazy circles in a blue ocean of sky. The shoulders of the mountain, like the soft contours of a sleeping woman, blazed bright yellow-green where fingers of sunlight caressed the features. Fog still hung in the cradles of valley. On the ribbon of trail that lay among the trees like a forgotten piece of twine, there was movement that caught the bird’s attention. Flashes of yellow, blue, and flesh-white skittered to and fro in a space where the ground was open to the sky. Children.

The Cub Scouts who had run up the trail were headed for a rock that was roughly the size and attitude of a forty-foot sailing ship, a granite vessel that had lost its mast and was in the process of slipping beneath the waves. They had instructions to stay in a group at Schooner Rock and await the leaders, who followed with the stragglers. The immense slab of rock angled from the ground to a point twelve feet above the trail-a perfect ambush point. As the scouts erupted up the path toward the rock, they slowed at the sight of a man who stood leaning against the rock’s wall with his arms crossed. He was watching them and smiled as they approached. The man was wearing a khaki uniform and mirrored sunglasses. He had red hair and a matching mustache. The boys crowded around him.

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