Martin Marten (9781466843691) (34 page)

Dave didn’t fall asleep, exactly—there wasn’t enough room on the pillar for that, and it would have been too dangerous—but he did zone out, semi-doze, enter what old folks like the Robinsons would have called a brown study, so that when he heard a faint scrabble of claws on the rock, it took him two seconds to be fully attentive. And in those two seconds, Martin, equally unaware of Dave’s residency on his pillar, was over the edge and standing, every muscle tensed, not four inches away from Dave’s face.

Pause.

Did they recognize each other immediately?

Yes—Martin partly by Dave’s scent and Dave partly by the splash of white on Martin’s chest.

Were either or both frightened?

Not
frightened
, no. Wariness squared, perhaps. Leery to the fourth power. Alert plus plus. Put it this way—neither Martin nor Dave thought that the other would injure him, but both were quite aware that the other was a muscled animal, capable of violence, unpredictable, especially if rattled, and both were also well aware that they were sharing a very small ledge on a naked rock high above unforgiving rock. A fall from the top of the pillar, whether by assault or accident, would be painful or worse.

Pause.

In a sense, this whole book has been working toward this moment, hasn’t it? Two animals contemplating each other with the fullest and most piercing attention they could possibly bring to this moment. Two creatures, two beings, two unique consciousnesses unlike any that ever were or ever will be. Neither prey nor predator, hunter nor hunted, not mates or cousins, enemies, or teammates. So often we define beings by angle of relationship, by the nature of ostensible possession—my sister, my dog, your girlfriend, your rival. But here are two beings on a tiny ledge of rock on a vaulting mountain on a brilliant afternoon, and no labels apply. Each stares at the other. They apprehend, attend, absorb. Visually, certainly—the sheen of Martin’s fur, the slight flutter of it in the wind, the flap of Dave’s shirt around his waist, the scimitar scar on his calf, the muddle of his hair, the way Martin’s thick neck slid gracefully into his sharp face. But something else. Curiosity? Yes. The heightened interest afforded by a slight familiarity? Yes. The heightened interest afforded by mystery? Yes. Made all the more so because they are of different tribes of being? Yes. The sure knowledge that no species will ever fully understand another, given the incontrovertible fact that we do not understand our own? Yes. Respect? Yes; each is aware that the other fits in its world and is deft at the things that it can do—or some of them. Reverence? Yes. Not religious, perhaps not spiritual; perhaps we do not have a word for the way that they see each other with something for which we can only use the word
reverence
.
Witness
or
savor
, perhaps? And perhaps each knows—in some private innermost bone—even now, already, in the few seconds they have shared the pillar and stared at each other, that this is a moment so rare that it will never be repeated, could never be repeated, though perhaps in a thousand years another boy will encounter another marten, inches away, and neither will think of flight or prey, capture or attack, subservience or even friendship.

Something else. How can we get all the way to this moment and run out of words? But
you
know, deep in your own bones, what they feel, though we cannot find the word. They
see
each other—and having seen and knowing the alp of the moment, each is … changed. Could it be that moments like this are windows through which we see the endless possibility of deeper moments? Could it be that moments like this are the greatest moments in a life? Could it be that moments like this are the moments that tilt the universe and make possible new ways and means and manners of being? Could it be that moments like that are why we invented religions and dream of peace in the bruised world and write books and music, trying to find the right sounds and stories for the thing we know but cannot say? If we ever succeed in naming it, would we be closer to achieving it? Is this why we write and read, in the end, in order to find new words for the things we feel but do not have words for?

Martin moved first; he sat down, although he kept his eyes on the boy. Dave, feeling the first hint of what would be a cold night, slowly put his shirt on but did not otherwise adjust his position. Martin watched as Dave put his shirt on, perhaps thinking about removable skins and pelts. They continued to look at each other for a while, and then there came another of those ordinary extraordinary moments that happen all the time, generally wholly unremarked; they each turned away from the other and faced into the sliding sun, and for nearly an hour, they sat together, half dozing, half alert to hawks and eagles and the skitter of pika and chipmunk in the rocks below. Once they both saw, at the same time, a large dark burly animal for an instant, between massive boulders; Dave thought it was a bear, but Martin knew it to be a badger. And once Martin smelled a fox, a scent that made the fur on his neck bristle. Finally, again eerily at nearly the same instant, they turned to look at each other again, and Martin silently and without ceremony vanished over the side of the pillar. A minute later Dave climbed down and walked home, trying to think of ways he could explain what had happened on the rock but not coming up with any good ideas. Supper was trout and huckleberry pie, and as Maria said that night before she fell asleep in the bear den, if there is anything in this world more delicious than huckleberry pie, it has not come to my attention, and I have been around for
years
.

*   *   *

Miss Moss chose a meadow. Mr. Douglas chose a trail to it that could be negotiated by the Unabled Lady, with cheerful assistance from Dave and the cross-country team. Miss Moss chose the food to be served after the unceremony. Mr. Shapiro did indeed provide excellent wines and ales and various delicious and savory ciders drawn from various species of apples harvested and pressed by a friend of his who lived in a yurt in an orchard. Dave’s dad quietly arranged the use of the meadow with the Forest Service, and Moon’s basketball coach arranged for folding chairs and tables to be conveyed to the meadow by members of the team in exchange for one day off from practice. Emma Jackson and Dave’s mom brought shining redolent tablecloths and napkins from the lodge to be used at the unceremony and then presented to the beaming couple, courtesy of the lodge manager and staff. The morning waitress and the third chef conspired in the matter of pies, and there were pies of every hue and nature delivered to the meadow and laid end to end on tables, from which they released scents alluring and
redolentous
, as Cosmas said. Edwin patiently hauled, in this order, in consecutive trips to the meadow and back, a small piano, a cask of wine, a keg of ale, and four enormous sealed buckets of soup. Moon made fifty sandwiches of various kinds and carried them up the trail to the meadow himself, humming. Dave’s coach, at Mr. Shapiro’s request, helped his players submerge the keg of ale in an icy creek nearby. Cosmas rode his bicycle slowly up the trail with a basket of fresh tomatoes, each carefully wrapped in newspaper so as not to bruise or jostle along the way. There were thirty tomatoes, all small compared to the swollen nuclear tomatoes you can buy in stores, but each was a glorious berry of stunning appearance and taste; each was crammed with the essence of summerness and mountain air and the evanescent scents of fir and fern; and each had been persuaded by the Robinsons up through the tall green dream of its parent plant and out along the knobby fingers of its branch and out into the broad welcome of the sunlight and into Cosmas’s fingers. Cosmas had picked each one gently and wrapped them gently in newspaper and tucked them in his bicycle basket as gently as you would handle new rabbits or thimbleberries or people.

65

THE DOG WHO HAD DECIDED
to live with Mr. Shapiro, having survived by wit and skill and some startling luck in the deepest forests of North America, was tremendously sensitive to pattern, to the many things said without words, to the many signals issued without conscious intent. So it was that even before Mr. Shapiro blamed his old spectacles for his decaying vision and ordered one new pair after another to no avail, the dog saw his infinitesimal hesitation while reaching for things, and the way Mr. Shapiro now shuffled to be sure of his feet even in his own house and the way he leaned over the wheel and peered closely at the road at dusk and the way he occasionally peppered instead of salted, the dog silently inserted himself into Mr. Shapiro’s days in so subtle a manner that Mr. Shapiro, for all his own vaulting intelligence and attentiveness, hardly noticed. When Mr. Shapiro rose from his reading chair, with its searingly bright new reading light, and shuffled down the hall to evening toilet and repose, there was the dog at his left side, at exactly the right height for Mr. Shapiro’s hand to ostensibly be in affectionate caress, but more and more, as the weeks passed, to be laid upon the dog’s spine for balance. More and more, the dog walked with Mr. Shapiro, and while the latter chaffed the former for clumsily bumping his legs here and there, the former might have called it guidance, or steering, or avoiding pitfalls, or assistance or affection, or slowly, shyly, learning to love.

This was no dog to retrieve sticks and newspapers or chase after slobbered balls and whirling bits of plastic or sit and sprawl on command or play the happy fool in exchange for bits of meat, and to Mr. Shapiro’s credit, he never once entertained the idea that the dog was a pet or a servant or an amusing clown or a sort of replacement child. Also to Mr. Shapiro’s credit, not a day went by that he did not express amazement and gratitude that the dog had chosen him, among all possible companions, and he never, even once, took the dog’s residence for granted. Indeed, every morning, as part of his daily ablutions, he spoke directly to the dog, face-to-face over coffee, and said thanks. Every morning, he would also ask the dog his name—it was Mr. Shapiro’s feeling that he had no right to impose a name on a being who had lived a life of his own and probably had several names already, names that would probably be remarkable and revelatory of his, the dog’s, provenance and adventures—and every few days, usually in the evening as they sat in their chairs after dinner, Mr. Shapiro would ask gently if the dog would tell him something of his life. This is not to say that Mr. Shapiro expected a response in any language he knew; but he did think, as a historian and an appreciative student of journeys and voyages, that perhaps a way would become clear for him to understand what the dog had been through and how he had survived and what he had learned and what he had concluded in his long study of pattern and signals both conscious and unconscious.

You never know, as Mr. Shapiro said one day to Dave’s dad at the high school. You just never know. I think it’s less a matter of the dog not being able to communicate and more a matter of me not being sufficiently versed in his languages—many of which, of course, are not verbal but physical. As you know from your wife and children, perhaps. But one good thing about being a scholar is that you can concentrate wonderfully sharp when you are fascinated enough by something. And for me, it’s a matter of professional pride too—how can I call myself a historian if I cannot piece out some of the history of someone I
live
with? Although perhaps that’s the final frontier—maybe it’s easier to understand things you don’t love than things you do. The closer you are, the farther. That could be. I should be getting home, Jack—my regards to your lovely bride and to Dave and Maria. You might remind Dave that he has an exam on topography next Friday for which I am
sure
he has studied assiduously. From what I understand of your daughter, she could already teach that segment of the course herself. Remarkable child, I understand.

In very many ways, says Maria’s dad with a smile. She’s the kind of kid who makes you think you must have done something right to be chosen to be
that
kid’s dad. She’ll be governor someday, mark my words.

*   *   *

Edwin carried Miss Moss up to the meadow. Just before ten in the morning on October 4, she set out alone up the trail from the store where she had been since before dawn, staring into the fire, but when Edwin and Mr. Douglas arrived exactly at ten, as had been agreed by all parties so they could travel joyously nervously together, Edwin realized she had gone ahead, from pride or nerves or fury or fear, and he leapt up the trail, leaving Mr. Douglas gaping at the sight of Edwin moving with speed and alacrity.

Not only had I never
seen
him gallop or canter or trot or prance or sprint or any of the other paces horses are supposed to have in their toolboxes, but I had never even
imagined
him in a hurry, said Mr. Douglas to Dave later. It was unthinkable. He’s the unhurriest creature you ever saw. But the unthinkable is thinkable, as the poet says. You wouldn’t believe how fast he was, suddenly. Maybe it was just the once, but still. I decided you are right, by the way, and I am taking a year off from setting traps for marten. Marten on the mountain get a sabbatical year as a wedding present.

Miss Moss never explained that evening or ever after how it was that Edwin persuaded her to board him or the nature of their meeting in the woods or who said what to whom about what; but when Mr. Douglas arrived at the edge of the meadow, there she was, sitting astride Edwin, smiling and weeping at once; and Mr. Douglas held out his hand and helped her down to the sinewy grass, and they went to stand together in the center of the circle of their friends; but as they did so, Mr. Douglas said something quietly to Edwin, and Edwin came with them into the center of the circle.

Dave was there, and Maria, and their mother and father; and Moon was there with his mother and father; and Emma Jackson was there, standing with the morning waitress, whose face was love and loss; and Mr. Shapiro was there, leaning on the dog with his left hand, for his back was aflame. In a larger circle outside this circle, there was Moon’s basketball coach and Dave’s running coach and various members of those teams, and the lodge master with one eye, and Cadence was there, and a few quiet men and women who turned out to be trappers and Forest Service staff and folks who trucked food to the store and a bent older man who brought fresh trout to Miss Moss in exchange for newspapers and spiritual advice.