Martin Marten (9781466843691) (31 page)

This was that sort of life moment for Maria, who looked up, smiling, after saying she would have
loved
to try a thorough insect population map but just didn’t have the time and saw her teacher’s lower lip, thick and lovely and gently lipsticked still, even at the end of the school day, hanging loose and astonished before its owner hauled it back up toward its partner. That was maybe the moment, Maria said to Dave many years later, when I started to realize that not everyone was like you and Mom and Dad, letting me chase whatever I wanted to, but also that I was
right
to chase after stuff I wanted to, even if a lot of people would think I was nuts.

Did she think you were nuts? asked Dave.

No, said Maria grinning. But she said I would be doing a lot of independent study the rest of the year.

Studying what? asked Dave.

Otters, of course! said Maria. If you had eight months to study whatever you wanted, wouldn’t you study otters? Sure you would. Otters rule!

*   *   *

I’d study marten, if I had the chance to study one animal for a lifetime, Dave is saying to Mr. Douglas. They are in the kitchen of Miss Moss’s store, and Dave is making Everything Soup, and Mr. Douglas is poring over cookbooks on the off-chance that
someone
he knows will ask him what foods she ought to have at the Unwedding.

Why marten?

I think because no one knows anything about them, says Dave. No one even knows they exist except trappers and forest biologists and game wardens and people like that. I bet if you asked the next hundred people who walked into the store about marten, maybe one would know who you are talking about. Everyone else would think you meant Martin Somebody or Somebody Martin. But trappers know. And I know. I’ve seen them. They are the most amazing animals. You know how most animals look like some other animal? Like a fox looks like a coyote or an osprey looks like a hawk? Marten don’t look like anything else except fishers, and fishers are three times bigger. I’d like to study them partly because they fascinate me and partly because no one knows anything about them, and if we knew more about them, maybe we wouldn’t wipe them out.

We’re not wiping them out here, says Mr. Douglas. They’re pretty healthy on the mountain. Lots of deep forest and squirrels here, and it’s protected land, you know, so they ought to do well forever here.

Except for trappers, says Dave, and he says this half politely and half challengingly—the former a Dave tone Mr. Douglas knows and admires and the latter a Dave tone he had not heard until now.

Trappers do more to preserve populations than anyone else, says Mr. Douglas carefully, looking at Dave; but Dave is staring into the soup pot.

Trappers respect animals more than anyone else, continues Mr. Douglas. Trappers know how animals live and if their populations are healthy. Trappers never take more fur than the population can bear. We did in the old days, sure, but not anymore. Who do you think tells the state scientists how to set limits and seasons? Where do you think the data comes from? From trappers. We know if a population is declining, and we are the ones who provide the numbers to the foresters. It’s not like the old days when people would just take everything and move on. For one thing, there’s no more On to move on to, and for another, we’re a lot smarter about balance. Trappers are more environmentally alert and astute than any of your next hundred people walking in the door, Dave.

It’s killing, says Dave very quietly into the soup.

Dave, what’s in the soup?

What?

What’s in the soup?

Well, says Dave, well—everything.

Name the ingredients.

Carrots, garlic, potatoes, onions, peppers, peas, leeks …

All killed for your soup.

Pardon?

Did you think the carrots weren’t alive before they got pulled from the garden? The garlic, the leeks? Sentient beings, every one of them. They’re born, they grow up, they sense light better than we do, they know how to eat minerals from the soil better than we do, they have enemies and communities and relationships beyond our understanding. Yet we yank them up and cut them up and eat them and don’t think twice about it. And in the refrigerator there are pieces of chickens and pigs and cows and deer and ducks and salmon. It’s all killing, Dave. Why is my profession crueler than any other way we kill beings for food and clothes? Why is that? At least in my profession it’s me and the animal, one on one, a battle of wits, and believe me, I lose the battle most of the time. There’s factory farms in my profession, but trappers scorn them. You want to earn the price of a mink pelt, go catch a mink. I don’t have truck with fur farms. But even at that, why is a mink farm any different from a piggery or a cattle ranch or a cornfield or a vineyard? Riddle me that.

All killing, says Dave, even more quietly than before and again speaking into the bubbling soup.

Mr. Douglas pauses a long moment. He can feel his ire rising—he’s been attacked before for killing sentient beings and scalping them and selling their skins, and his articulate defense is there on his tongue, ready for tart delivery. Yet he likes Dave, he understands something of Dave’s anger and confusion, and he too was once fifteen, furious at the brilliant half lies and eloquent excuses of adults, their shoddy bargains and easy rationalizations, their willingness to ignore and forget the inconvenient and unremunerative.

Yes, says Mr. Douglas, all killing. There’s no way around it, yet. I tease the vegetarians and the
veeeeegans
for their prim arrogance, but you have to secretly admire the effort when it’s not about being cooler than the next person. We do kill and eat and wear and use other beings all the time, from food to clothes to cabins and firewood. We do. Maybe someday we will evolve to just eating carrots and leeks, although that’s still killing sentient beings, you know. But meanwhile you can at least kill with respect. You can at least acknowledge the fact that the chicken and the carrot gave their lives for your nutrition. I don’t suppose that the chicken and the carrot care much about your respect after the fact, but it’s at least something. Religious people would say something about reverence right here, but I don’t speak their language.

I wish you wouldn’t trap for marten this year, said Dave suddenly. I wish you would take a year off. Focus on bobcat, like you were saying. Raccoon, mink, fox. Maybe leave the marten alone, give them a break. Like farmers let a field go fallow to recover. You said yourself there’s not all that many marten, not as many as there used to be. You said so yourself. You said they used to be all over the country from sea to sea anywhere there was serious forest, and now they’re not. Now they are only in the north and west where there are still serious forests, and there will be ever more people and ever less serious forest and so ever less marten, right? You said so yourself. So why go for marten this year? Give them a last year off. No one else traps for marten on this side of the mountain. You’re the only one; you said so yourself. If the world keeps going like it’s going, there will be just little islands of serious forest, and the marten can’t stand that; they like to amble and roam. You said so yourself. You talk about respect—take a year off out of respect; give them a last year where they can ramble and roam and no one sets traps for them. Close the season the day before it opens. You could do that. You’re in charge of marten trapping on this side of the mountain. Give them one last year when no one knows anything about them except you and me. I won’t tell anyone. I won’t even tell Miss Moss. I’ll make up the lost money for you, working extra in the store. We don’t even need to tell Miss Moss. I’ll just say I am stashing extra money for college. If you don’t give the marten a break, who will? And you don’t lose a dollar on the deal. They win and you win. My mom says that the birthday present system is all flawed and that on your birthday
you
should give everyone
else
presents. Isn’t a wedding like that? So you are giving the marten a present in honor of your wedding. You’re giving Miss Moss a present so cool she won’t even know about it. Isn’t that sort of the coolest present of all? A present that’s not a thing? You say yourself we have too many things in our lives. Remember how angry you were at all the stuff dumped in the woods? Here’s a chance to give a present that has nothing to do with things and everything to do with respect, isn’t that right? Mr. Douglas?

60

FOR NO REASON HE KNEW,
Martin went more and more to his pillar rock above timberline and crouched there contemplating the sprawling vast wilderness below his feet. Sometimes he watched the sky and marked the patterns of the ravens and noted the way eagles used flyways above ravines. Did ravines channel thermal lift, perhaps? Other times he focused on the border between the dense fir forest and the last band of trees and bushes before all green surrendered; that border, he knew from experience, was a good hunting ground, as denizens of both thick and thin forest crossed borders looking for food. Still other times he paid attention only to the rock jungle below him, a wilderness itself of nooks and crannies and tiny caves; this was the kingdom of pika and chipmunk, ground squirrel and marmot, and here too Martin had made many a meal, especially in this season, late summer and early fall, before the snow returned and covered it all ten feet thick.

But he had already eaten this morning, a fat golden squirrel near the lodge, and now he perched atop his pillar, pondering, watching, attending. He did not doze, not here in the open. More than once, ravens had swooped on him, taking a chance on causing a fall that might lead to meat, and once an owl had attacked him here at dusk—to the owl’s regret, for Martin had slashed it deep enough that the bird staggered off dripping blood. So today he gazed, he meditated, he paid attention. By now, almost two years old, almost fully grown, experienced and seasoned, survivor of much conflict, he was a serious student of pattern, for apprehending and understanding the ways and habits of creatures was the best road to safety and supper. But there was also something in him that
enjoyed
seeing and learning for more than simply utilitarian purposes.

And he
remembered
; perhaps this is his greatest gift, more than his liquid speed and quickness, more than his astonishing sensory machinery, more than the way he was the most cautiously curious and adventurous of all his species on the mountain, the only one who silently drew close enough to schools and stores, lodges and ski runs, boat docks and orchards to apprehend human animals and their symbiotic companions among other species.

He remembered, and not just facts and patterns necessary for survival. He remembered certain angles of light pouring in the door of their burrow when he was a mewling kit with his sister and brothers, and he remembered the first time he saw Dave in the clearing by the river, and hearing the clank of metal traps. He remembered carrying a shrew to his sickly second brother and nuzzling him with it and seeing his brother raise his head for an instant and then sink back and soon after die. He well remembered being chased to within a whisker of death by a bobcat; he remembered every instant of the savage fight with the fox; he remembered the scent of the huckleberry bushes in which he had seen his female companion for the first time. He remembered the wild sound of Cosmas singing as he whizzed down trails and clear-cuts on his bicycle, the lovely savory tang of the first chipmunk he’d ever eaten, the dark safe warm joy of his mother’s milk before dawn. And so much more—the ice cave in which he found the skeleton of a bear twice as large as any living bear he’d ever seen; the remote meadow where three times he had seen people on their knees weeping and beating their chests with their fists; the glacier pit, far from any trail, where he had found a tiny frozen new human being, covered with snow.

*   *   *

The Unabled Lady is now so hunched over from her slow illness when she sits at her piano that she thinks pretty soon she is going to be playing the piano with her nose, which would actually be interesting, like having an eleventh finger. But that day is not yet come, and she thinks she’d better use the time before she is permanently bent to write one last glorious piece of music for ten fingers and not eleven. She thinks maybe she will write it for the Unwedding, because she very much admires Miss Moss, who sometimes brings her stacks of chicken sandwiches, and she very much likes Mr. Douglas, who stops by to fix things occasionally, after which they watch football games and drink beer. She thinks maybe a song will be the right and only thing she could present the young people as a gift for the unceremonious unoccasion. She thinks maybe someone else will have to play it by then, which means she’d better get in touch with Emma Jackson, who plays a terrific piano—something no one knows except the Unabled Lady, who has been teaching Emma quietly for more than a year. She thinks she will try to write a piece of music that has everything on the mountain in it. She thinks this is crazy; therefore she will do it. She sits down and starts noodling at the keys and scribbling notes and dreaming and humming, and the morning slides into afternoon and melts into evening, and all that time she tries to write down Mrs. Simmons’s amused smoker’s cough and the way the finch used to cock an eyebrow at her if she started a piece in the wrong key and the way buzzards flitter the silver lining of their wings to each other, probably signaling secrets, and the way the little creek in her yard burbled and thrilled and trilled and murmured and how she still dreamed sometimes of her legs as they were before the accident and her husband’s smell like sweat and mint when he was naked when they were young and the way the baby she never had would have suckled desperately at her breast and belched like a barge and the faint groan of logging trucks early in the morning away on the highway and the chime of ice in the fir trees and the reek of cougar urine on the porch one morning and the sound of dirt falling on her husband’s coffin made of juniper and jack pine and the screech of Cosmas’s bicycle as he braked to a halt when he came by occasionally to sit and listen and hardly ever speak. Maybe listening is a kind of music also, she thought. Maybe I should write a piece of music that has listening in it, places where the piano stops talking. Yes. I want to write a piece of music that has everything in it, including room for the parts of everything that don’t make a sound. Yes. The music of breathing and waiting and smelling and listening and savoring. The music of being afraid but going on anyway. The music that you write last and best for someone else to play.