Chapter Seven #4
Later, after they had bidden farewell to Kayleigh Swan, watching her vanish into the background whence she’d come, after they had made their way back down the mountain to their car, and driven the muddy road to home, Miles and Kate tried to piece together what they had learned, though a full explanation would have to await the next time they saw Miranda, who, not surprisingly, knew all about it, having published a paper on “Secessionist and Counter-Secessionist Movements in Southern Vermont” in Sociologica Ruralis.
The important part, Miranda had reassured them, sitting with them at the dining table, after the kids had vanished with their books upstairs, was that it wasn’t what it sounded like.
Militia—to answer Kate’s question—was really an exaggeration, when there was just one person involved, or two if they counted Miss Kayleigh’s brother, Cory.
And they didn’t have to take her word for it; according to the Gaines-Burroughs Dangerousness Rating Scale, Miss Kayleigh scored only a 3 out of 23, while Cory scored only a 7.
Indeed, Miss Kayleigh, whom Miranda had actually interviewed back when she was still Kayleigh Hightower, in high school, four years ago, had a Pugh-Holtz Likelihood of Violence of 4, which was low, lower in fact than Wesley by the simple virtue of his being male.
As for the purpose of her patrol, Miranda would get to that later, but it was as harmless as gathering mushrooms, which the woods were rich in, and which Miss Kayleigh also excelled at, as Miranda had learned when interviewing her for a different monograph, “ ‘My Forest Is My Walmart,’ ” for Foodstuffs and Peoples.
Now, these traditional foraging grounds had been reduced, significantly, in recent years, by second-home owners and a private mountain-biking trail network, but to the point, which Miss Kayleigh had also emphasized: the initial tensions had been the fault of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
The truth, said Miranda, who had, in fact, written about this in “Fated Parallel: The Dark History of 42°44'N” in the International Journal of Conflict and Violence, was that the Southern Vermont/Northwestern Massachusetts border, though clearly defined on the map, was something quite different when you got into the forest, a problem that was compounded when one considered the number of properties that spanned the frontier. And even though, politically speaking, the two states seemed similar, on a more granular level, for decades, certain individuals, including the Hightowers, had claimed that Oakfield, across the border, belonged historically to Vermont, while other individuals, in Massachusetts, whipping out old maps from dodgy historical societies, proclaimed that Greensbury belonged to the Bay State. If this wasn’t confusing enough, what Kayleigh (but mostly Cory) was patrolling for were pro-Massachusetts sympathizers on the Vermont side, who claimed the forest as their own.
Except, Miranda said, she didn’t think that Kayleigh was actually patrolling. She thought Kayleigh was pretending she was patrolling, but in fact was surveying.
She paused, a touch triumphant.
Said Kate: “And now you want us to ask what she’s surveying for.”
“Funny you should ask,” said Miranda.
For she had tried to study it, except that Kayleigh knew a skeptic when she met one, and that’s when she clammed up. But, judging from what she told her students, it might be ley lines, or Native American burial mounds, or wild-man nests.
Kate looked at Miles. It occurred to him that Olive’s teacher had just become much more interesting to him, and much more concerning to his wife.
Ley lines, in this context, demarcated energy lines used to guide alien aircraft, said Miranda.
Burial mounds they knew.
“And what’s a wild-man nest?” asked Miles.
Miranda wasn’t sure exactly. A lair? A bunch of branches?
The more compelling question was how and why people believed in wild men, she added, and there were great, validated psychological assessment scales for gullibility, conspiratorial thinking, and maladaptive daydreaming. That was what she wished to study.
And that, thought Miles, is where we part ways.
For he wanted to ask whether wild men nested in trees or in caves.
And what of the wild women and the children?
Not that he believed, but details mattered.
And what kind of spacecraft? Ancient? Or did Kayleigh claim that they still visited?
So many questions! But he sensed that they were not going to be received appreciatively, at that late hour, by his wife.
“There is such a thing as maladaptive daydreaming?” he asked instead.
Now Kate interrupted, either because she didn’t want to hear the answer to this question, or because she already knew the answer to this question, or because it was a school night and, from upstairs, one could hear the sound of television, though neither she nor Miles had given permission.
But she also had her own, practical question, which had emerged shortly after the first day of school, become more pressing after their hiking encounter, and now could no longer remain unspoken.
“Is Olive safe?” repeated Miranda. “With Miss Kayleigh? Are you kidding? When the shit hits the fan,” said one of America’s experts on the topic, “you know which bunker door you’ll be knocking on. You and me both.”