Brian's Return (8 page)

Long, sweet, and sad and happy and frightening and joyful all at once, a keening howl that started high and dropped low and ended almost hoarse.

The hair went up on the back of Brian’s neck and he took a deep breath and answered the howl, trying to match the tones of it, starting high the same way and bringing it down as low as he could until it trailed off.

Then he waited. Ten seconds, twenty, a full minute and the wolf called again. Different this time. Low all the time, almost a moan.

And Brian answered.

Three more times they went back and forth and finally Brian waited until the wolf started its call and Brian matched it, harmonized with it, and they sang together that way, four more songs, a duet, boy and wolf in the moonlight, singing to beauty until at last the wolf grew tired of it and quieted. Brian called twice more but when he didn’t get an answer he stopped.

The moon was dropping below the horizon at any rate and he paddled back to the campsite, pulled the canoe up, tied it off and went back in to bed.

He did not sleep at first but lay thinking of the wolf and the moonlight and the loon and when he closed his eyes and sleep started to come he thought he could see the wolf, or perhaps see
as
the wolf moving through the night, part of the night, the smells and sounds of the woods moving through the wolf like vapor, stopping to listen, moving on in a silent slide through the moonlight and forest, Brian and the wolf mixed, Brian-wolf, wolf-Brian.

Then sleep.

He awakened completely refreshed, having slept again past dawn. It was a clear morning and the side of the tent was warm from the sun and he rolled out and stretched and walked to the canoe to flip it over and slide it into the water when he saw the prints.

Two wolves had come into camp. One good-size, the other slightly smaller, and from the look of the tracks around the tent in the drainage ditch, around the canoe in the soft earth and beneath the packs they had investigated everything. They had also peed on the canoe and the tent—not a great deal, but enough so he’d know they had, a calling card—and then moved on.

Brian smiled. Either they were greeting him or, more likely, telling him he was a lousy singer. He finished packing the canoe and just before leaving went up and covered the two places where they’d left sign with his own. Hello to you too, he peed. Then he got into the canoe and slid off.

He had not gone a mile when he was back beneath the canopy, in the green world, and wondered how far it was to the next lake. On the map that lake was long—almost eight miles before he would come to his first portage, about a half mile to the next lake, which was at least six miles long. He thought perhaps he would do the two of them today, which would bring the distance to Williams Lake down to about sixty-five miles.

The canopy only lasted three or four miles and he came out onto the eight-mile lake. There was a slight breeze coming up, directly into his face, so he put on the life jacket and set to the paddle, heading right up the middle of the lake.

The work felt good, solid somehow. The pain in his leg was nearly gone and he was just noodling along, paddling the canoe across small lakes and down the green corridors, not really working, and it felt good to stretch his arms and bite deep with the paddle and take the wind.

He kept up a steady effort and seemed to be moving well—an illusion caused by the visual effect of the wind blowing small waves in the opposite direction that he was going—but it took him four hours to make the eight miles.

“I guess the wind must be stronger than it looks,” he said, gliding into the calm area at the end of the lake where the portage started. “Half a day gone . . .”

He pulled the canoe up on the bank and considered the situation. He had to carry everything half a mile and he couldn’t do it all at once.

He tied the tent inside the canoe near the center, and under the cross-thwarts he tied the paddles, centering their weight, and the bow and the quiver of arrows. There was a yoke for portaging built into the canoe, shaped to fit around the neck and rest on the shoulders.

He put one backpack up in a tree on a bearproof rope, and the other one he slipped onto his back.

Then he moved to the canoe, flipped it belly-up and moved beneath it and took the weight of the yoke on his shoulders.

At first it felt as if his legs would sink into the ground.

But the canoe balanced well and when he started off he gained a momentum that kept him going. It only took him twenty minutes to walk the portage. There wasn’t a trail—the grass had grown up and covered any tracks—but there was a long clearing and in the dim past somebody had taken an ax and cut marks in the trees to show the direction.

Probably, Brian thought, Native Americans when they trapped through here. The ax marks were very old, healed over and often nearly covered with bark, so some were just a dimple.

Still, it meant people had been here before and it made Brian wonder about them. Fifty years ago, he thought, or maybe more—seventy-five. The trees were huge pines, the marks well off the ground. Whoever had made them was probably gone now, dead, nothing left but his mark.

He left the canoe at the next lake, tied the pack up in a tree—though he hadn’t seen any signs of bear— and, carrying the bow with an arrow ready and the quiver on his back, he went back for the other pack.

It took him only ten minutes to get back. He let the pack down, took the quiver off his back and put the pack back on, and with the quiver in one hand and the bow with a broadhead nocked to the string in the other he started for the canoe.

He hadn’t taken three steps when he saw the deer. It was a buck, horns in velvet, and it stopped, a young animal with a small rack.

Good meat, Brian thought—really good meat. The thought came automatically and he lowered the quiver to the ground softly, raised the bow and paused. The deer wasn’t thirty feet away and seemed entirely unafraid, standing there. While Brian watched, it actually turned its head away and looked to where a bird had chattered on a limb.

It would have been an easy shot. A clean shot. You’re mine, Brian thought, and his throat seemed to choke with it, the excitement. Mine. The arrow was in the bow, he raised the bow, drew the arrow, sighted it so he was looking over the broadhead straight at the deer’s heart, and then he paused again. He eased the string up and lowered the bow.

Maybe in the fall. He could not keep the meat in the hot weather. He would get three or four meals and the rest would spoil. The skin wouldn’t make leather and most of the meat would be wasted.

He had fish, all the fish he wanted, all he would need. He could take a rabbit or a grouse for different meat, but not the deer, not now. It would be a waste.

“Thank you,” he said aloud, to the deer, to whatever hunting spirit was watching over him, had given him this chance at meat. “Thank you . . .”

The sound of his voice startled the buck but still it stood for another beat, two, three, then it turned and trotted off down the portage trail for thirty or forty yards before springing lightly off to the side.

“Thank you,” Brian whispered, watching it leave.

Dear Caleb: I met a man today and he helped me find my medicine.

The deer was on his mind when he came to where he’d left the canoe. He looked out at the lake ahead of him. The wind had picked up a bit, still on his nose, and he would be lucky to make the other end by dark.

For a moment, standing there looking at the water, he actually thought, I’m behind schedule, and then remembered he had no schedule. He was there to learn, to seek, to find, to know. It could happen here or over there or by going backward. There was no time requirement.

He thought of the deer again and the thought made him think of meat other than fish. He was suddenly hungry and he decided to make camp at the portage and hunt for a grouse or a rabbit to make a rice stew—something heavier than fish.

He tied the canoe off to a tree high above the lake, pulled his packs up in the air, found firewood enough for the night, and though it was no longer cloudy he stacked a pile of wood beneath the canoe to stay dry so he could start a fire if it did rain.

Then he hunted.

He put the quiver on his back again, took the broadhead off the bow and put it back in the quiver, and because he was taking small game he pulled out a field point—they were sharp but had curved shoulders to cause shock and a faster death than the cutting edge of a broadhead—and laid the arrow on the bow.

He slipped into the woods. He was wearing tennis shoes and wished he had moccasins but they would have to serve. The green grass kept his feet quiet enough.

One step, another, slowly into the thick green. A yard, another yard, ten yards—he didn’t have to worry about getting lost because he kept the lake on his left, visible now and then through the leaves.

He saw a rabbit almost at once, and could have hit it easily enough, but that would have ended the hunt and he was moving now, into the woods, slowly, like a knife being pulled through water, the forest closing back in on him, his eyes seeing every movement, his ears hearing every rustle.

This, he thought, is what I have become. A hunter. The need to hurry disappeared, the need to kill was not as important as the need to see all there was to see, and he worked the afternoon away until evening, perhaps two hours before dark. He had seen seven or eight rabbits, any one of which he could have had, and heard several grouse and seen four more deer, two of which he could have hit easily, but he had waited and now, as he turned back, a grouse jumped up in front of him, its wings thundering, and flew to a limb on a birch about twenty-five feet away.

Now it was time. He raised the bow, drew the arrow back, looked down the wooden shaft and saw, felt, where the arrow would hit, and released, all in one clean, fluid motion.

The arrow went where he was looking, took the grouse almost in the exact center of the body, drove it back off the limb, and it fell, flopping for a moment, in the grass beneath the tree.

“Thank you,” Brian whispered as it died. “For the food, thank you.”

He picked the bird up, pulled the arrow out and wiped it on the grass, then tied the grouse to his belt with a short piece of nylon cord and started back. He was done hunting now but kept the bow ready, the arrow on the string.

It was nearing dusk. The sun was well below the line of trees, though it was still light, and he had much to do—set up the tent, make a fire, cook dinner and write in the journal—and he picked up the pace and was near where he’d left the canoe, still in thick trees, when he smelled the smoke.

He stopped. It was pine smoke. He couldn’t see it, or hear anything, but there was a definite odor of smoke. It went away, then returned when he moved.

How could there be fire? There was no storm, no lightning—which Brian had read caused most forest fires—and besides, with the recent rain it wasn’t likely there would be a forest fire.

Still, it was there. Again. He moved forward a few steps, stopped, and started to step again when he heard a clink of metal on stone.

Somebody was there. Ahead. At the camp.

Brian crouched and moved again, one step at a time, carefully, quietly, until he was at the edge of the forest. He moved a limb aside and peered out.

A man sat crouching with his back to Brian. There was another canoe pulled up by Brian’s, an old fiberglass standard twelve-footer with many hard miles on it, judging by its look. The man had pulled up more wood and had a fire going and a pot of water boiling. Brian could see the steam. There was no weapon showing, no other gear. Just the canoe, tipped upside down, and the man and the fire. The man had long gray hair streaked with black, no hat but a headband, and had his hair tied into a ponytail.

All that, Brian saw without moving, without speaking.

“You might as well come in by the fire,” the man said without looking. “I ain’t that much to look at and I’ve got potatoes boiling with an onion. We can add that grouse you’ve got and have some stew.”

Brian jumped. The voice was old, gravelly, but it carried so that it seemed to come from everywhere. He realized he still had the bow raised, not aimed exactly, but ready, and he lowered it and stepped out of the thick brush and walked to the fire and laid his bow and still-nocked arrow down by his canoe. He had a million questions—who was this man? where did he come from? why was he here?—but he kept his mouth still and the answers came. The man came from the woods, he came in a canoe while Brian was hunting, he was there as Brian was there—because he was there—and his name didn’t matter, just as Brian’s name didn’t matter, and so he didn’t ask.

But one thing puzzled Brian and this he did ask. “How did you know I had a grouse?”

“Smelled it. Your arrow hit the stomach and carried some of it through. Nothing smells like grouse guts.”

“Ahh . . .” The wind was blowing right to carry the smell around the lake back to the campsite. Still, the man must have a very sensitive nose.

Brian moved down to the edge of the lake and cleaned the grouse. He tore the skin off with the feathers and washed the carcass in the water. He looked back up the bank out of the corner of his eye as he worked, studying his visitor. He was an older man—Brian guessed at least fifty—with a lined face darkened by smoke and weather. Perhaps he was from a native people. His face showed that he’d been in the woods a very long time. He had on worn moccasins, faded work pants and a work shirt buttoned up to the collar and buttoned at the cuffs. Everything, like his canoe, was old but in good repair. The shirt had been patched several times, the patches sewn neatly by hand with small stitches. His hands looked as if they were made of old polished wood.

“They call me Billy,” the man said, still looking down at the fire.

“I’m Brian.” He brought the grouse back to the fire and used his knife to cut it into pieces and dropped them into the stew pot, an old aluminum pot that could hold at least three gallons. The potatoes were just starting to boil.

Brian lowered his packs and sleeping bag. He found a little salt and started to put it in the stew and stopped. “Salt all right?”