“Okay,” says Black Doctor. “That’s pretty clear, right? We need to find a boulder along a creek to the east of the tallest mountain. Where’s that?”
Banker runs his forefinger along the map, scanning contour lines. “Here,” he says. “This one’s the tallest.”
“And there’s a blue line,” says Black Doctor. “But I don’t see the boulder.”
Banker swallows a laugh, not wanting to be rude. Black Doctor doesn’t see his smile, but viewers will. “I don’t think they’re going to show the boulder on here,” says Banker. “Not at this scale. We need to look for the bend.”
“Ah, right. So that’s…this?” Black Doctor jabs the map with his index finger. A comment thread will unexpectedly erupt on this topic—Black Doctor’s thick fingers. How can he use a scaple with fingers like that? one user will ask; the red line of misspelling obvious beneath as she hits post, but she doesn’t care. Another, I don’t want those hairy nubs operating on me! A lone voice of reason will tell people that one can’t actually determine an individual’s dexterity by looking at his fingers, and besides, they don’t even know what kind of doctor he is. And it’s true: Black Doctor is not a surgeon. He’s a radiologist and his stubby fingers get the job done.
“Looks like the bend to me,” says Banker. “Now, what’s the best way to get there?”
They take turns prodding at the map, exchanging ideas, and after a few minutes settle on a route that mostly involves following water upstream. They check their compasses, then strike out into the woods.
When Zoo and Tracker are given their map four minutes later, they determine the destination almost instantly, and Tracker notes something that Black Doctor and Banker did not: the giant swath of white cutting through the map’s abundant green east of the mountain creek. “I suggest we follow this clearing north, then shoot a bearing to the U-bend from its northern edge,” he says.
“Sounds great,” says Zoo with a laugh. “But will you tell me what ‘shoot a bearing’ means?”
Tracker doesn’t understand why she’s laughing. Neither her question nor her ignorance is funny. But they’re partners for now and so he answers, “It’s using the compass to determine what direction you should move in, then following your bearing landmark to landmark in an area where it would otherwise be very easy to lose your direction of travel.”
“Oh!” says Zoo. “We kind of did that last night.”
Tracker blinks at her, then takes out his compass and places it on the ground atop the map. He shifts the paper slightly so the map’s north aligns with his compass’s, then twists the compass housing to bring the north needle home. “Thirty-eight degrees,” he says, mostly to himself. “That’ll get us to the field. Although…” He scans the perimeter of the map.
“What are you looking for?” asks Zoo.
“Declination,” says Tracker. There’s small print, but not the small print he’s looking for. “Doesn’t say. Around here, it has to be at least five degrees. So, forty-three degrees. That’s our direction of travel.”
Zoo sets her compass to forty-three, then tucks it perpendicular to her chest. Tracker folds the map to leave their current location exposed.
“That dead tree?” asks Zoo. A decaying, toppled-over birch is as far as she can see along the line.
“Why not,” says Tracker.
They begin walking.
“I’ve heard of declination,” says Zoo, “but I have to be honest—I have no idea what it is.”
Tracker doesn’t reply. He’s already talked more than he’d like.
Zoo allows him a few steps of silence, then insists, “So, what is declination?”
“The difference between true north and magnetic north,” he relents. Zoo’s curious look prods him to further explanation. “Maps are set to true north—the North Pole—and compasses to magnetic north. Factoring in declination corrects for that difference.”
“Ah.” Zoo is trying and failing to move as quietly and smoothly as Tracker. A branch snaps under her foot and she grimaces. The cameraman following them is even louder than she is. He stumbles and nearly falls. Zoo starts to ask if he’s all right, then aborts the nicety. He’s not here, she reminds herself. And then she laughs again, thinking: If a cameraman falls in the woods and no one turns to see, did he make a sound?
Tracker’s back and mouth curl ever so slightly.
The next team to receive their map is Carpenter Chick and Engineer. They’re on their way within moments, as are Air Force and Biology, once they receive theirs.
But the final group—the trio—struggles. Rancher is so thoroughly flummoxed by the map that he barely registers the Clue as Waitress reads it aloud. He knows his land, but his land is a single rolling vowel. The land here is a series of sharp consonants. Indecipherable lines burrow through his vision. Waitress is also far out of her depth. But the team’s biggest problem is Exorcist. His hands, shoulder, and pride still ache from his fall. By his reckoning, this Clue belongs to him and him alone—he was the one who climbed, the one who fell. He seethes and struggles not to rip the paper from Waitress’s hands. He is full of hateful thoughts—sexist thoughts, racist thoughts. The aftermath of his humanizing crash is the flaring of his most monstrous self.
Exorcist is well aware of this monstrous self, though he would never choose it. He wishes he could banish it. Every time he convinces a spurned mother or belt-whipped boy that their hatred is an outside invader, it helps. Converting another’s hatred into a demon and expelling it makes it possible for him to suffer his own. But there is no one here to exorcise. He’s taken the lay of the land and it is barren. This leaves Exorcist grasping at past experiences. The Clue echoes through his mind and he says, “Boulder. I knew a woman from Boulder once. She called on me to help with a certain situation.”
“Now’s really not the time,” says Waitress.
Exorcist plows forward. He has to. “She didn’t have a true demon, few of them do. But I could still help. I tell her, ‘Yes, you’re possessed.’ This woman, she’d been hearing ‘no’ for so long, just hearing ‘yes’ did most of the job. Lord, but did peace settle into her eyes right then.”
“We need to figure this out,” says Waitress.
Exorcist fiddles with the map, crinkling a corner. “After that, all she needed was a little handholding and prayer. Easy peasy.”
“What’s the Clue say?” asks Rancher.
Waitress has already read it aloud twice. “Here,” she says, handing him the slip of paper.
“They aren’t all that easy,” says Exorcist. “Most take a lot more effort. But there was something sweet about this case. They’re always thankful, but she was thankful. And I don’t mean sexually—I get that sometimes, though usually it’s part of the possession.”
“Can you focus, please?” says Waitress. “Do either of you know how to read one of these maps?”
“A creek’s U-bend,” mutters Rancher. “Well, blue’s water, ain’t it? And a creek’s a line, so where does a blue line bend?” He leans over the map. He’s holding his hat, and his striated hair falls forward from either side of his face like curtains closing.
“Lots of places,” says Waitress. “How do we find the tallest peak?”
“I think these lines are for elevation,” says Rancher.
Exorcist is quiet. He’s thinking more about the thankful woman. She was one of the few, perhaps the only, who understood. She’d held his hand before he left, clenched it tight, and said, “I know this wasn’t a real exorcism, but whatever you did it was supremely real. It helped. Thank you.” She was not the kind of woman to use a word like “supremely,” but that’s how he remembers it, though sometimes he thinks that maybe she just held his hand and didn’t speak at all.