Martin Marten (9781466843691) (5 page)

*   *   *

But Dave had not actually
seen
marten until the other day, and that was a glancing glimpse, really just a quick sense of heft and wriggle in lithe brown packages, whereas
this
—this was a
confirmed sighting
, as his teacher Mr. Shapiro would have said. Mr. Shapiro would then have pursued at least a cell-phone photograph or a snatch of iVideo or happily collected scat, but Dave didn’t move a muscle, and just stared back at the marten. He realized somehow, in the deep part of his own ancient mammalian brain, that to move just now would be to break the moment and lose the connection, and he was fascinated not only by this most interesting creature but by the fact that it had stopped when he had and seemed just as fascinated by Dave as Dave was by Martin.

Rarely does a book switch viewpoints at a crucial juncture like this, but perhaps we should, just so we can get a good grip on the momentous nature of what’s going on here. Dave, young as he is, has lived on this planet for fourteen years, almost fifteen—his birthday is October 4, same as the great explorer Joel Palmer, who walked over Wy’east barefoot. But Martin is, at this particular moment, only about seven weeks old; while he is no longer suckling milk from his patient and hardworking mother, he does still live at home with his mother and sister and brothers, and it has not yet entered his mind that in a few months he will be living alone and working for his living. In a sense, he is a new teenager too, like Dave, if you compare life cycles—an interesting and difficult project, that, as the fir tree in which Martin is sitting is itself rather a teenager as the life spans of fir trees go. So we have a teenager of one species sitting in a teenager of another species staring at a teenager of a third species. If only a young hawk would float over or an adolescent deer blunder by!

But their silent reverent contemplative moment, these three teenagers, is cracked not by a young sparrow hawk or elk but by the wildest most reckless bicyclist on the entire face of Wy’east, who can suddenly be heard rocketing down the mountain along the river path, getting ever closer and louder. Dave, who knows full well who this is and what it means for anyone in his path, smiles and immediately scoots his bike off the path and into the forest fringe. The instant Dave moves, Martin vanishes back into the forest, so fast and silent that Dave would use the word
evanesced
later at the dinner table when he told the story, and a man dressed head to toe in the most brilliant orange skin-tight jumpsuit shot past on a brilliant orange mountain bike, going faster than you have ever in your life seen a bicyclist go along a path featuring tree roots, rocks, whiplike branches across the path, stumps and jags of trees, and a shard of old highway drainage pipe just at the edge of town—which, if you did not know about the pipe and you hit it going fast on your bicycle, you would be thrown into the air and come down someplace near Japan, as Dave’s dad says. That Cosmas, added Dave’s dad, is the greatest most accomplished natural genius bike rider in the history of bicycles, but one of these days if he does not slow down he is going to break his neck, which would be a shame, because he’s the nicest guy, and I’d hate to lose him. If ever there was a case where a town would be reduced by far more than one resident if we lost one resident, it’s Cosmas. There’s everything to like about that guy except that he is the wildest most reckless rider anyone ever saw. I wonder what the animals in the woods think of him when he comes rocketing down the mountain all dressed in orange and singing that song or whatever it is that noise he makes. What a nut. Sometimes I think that everyone in Zigzag must have taken a nut test to be able to live in this village. Your mother struggled to pass her nut test, but
I
passed immediately with flying colors. Isn’t that so, darling?

8

YOU REMEMBER THE GRAY FOX
in the tree, a few pages back? The fox that watched silently as the five marten made their way to their new den? The fox that noted that one of the kits seemed ill or indisposed or not quite growing normally and that another of the kits was slightly too adventurous? This fox noticed things like that. If you didn’t learn to notice things like that in the woods, you wouldn’t live very long. You needed to notice patterns and manners of behavior. If you paid attention, you could learn the ways that mice and voles and rabbits liked to travel on subtle paths and trails and roads through the brush. You could learn to smell their roads even through the snow and wait at key points and junctures and pounce at exactly the right time so that you wouldn’t starve. You could learn that birds’ nests were loaded with eggs in April but not in July, except for sparrows, who raised two sets of fledglings per year. You could learn that trying to steal eggs from hawks was in general a poor idea because they could and would and did fight back, and they had talons like razors. You could learn that young crows in June and July will crowd their parents for a while, moaning and gibbering and pleading for food, until they get a little cocky in early August and wander away from their parents far enough for an enterprising fox to pick them off without being battered by attacking parents. You could learn that carrion is delicious except when defended by the animal that caused it, and all of those animals were more than happy to kill and eat a fox if the opportunity presented itself. You could learn that human animals could and did set steel traps for foxes, and if a fox was caught in such a trap, the fox would be struck with a club until it was dead and then carried away to an unimaginable fate.

The gray fox had learned that lesson all too early and all too thoroughly. This was neither bad nor good, sad nor haunting, not for the fox; it was terrifying, yes, and she would never forget the scent of steel, the particular musky flavor of the scent the trapper used to mask his own scent, the scent of his leather boots and gloves in the snow, the scent of coffee that hung infinitesimally around his trails and traps; but all that information and all that terror was filed away inside her somewhere as useful material for survival. She did not wish to wreak vengeance on the trapper, although she had once watched from a snowy thicket as a fisher deliberately fouled and sprang several of the man’s traps along a frozen creek. She wished simply to avoid the trapper and all of his works and things, which she did so thoroughly for so long that among the small cadre of trappers, male and female, on the mountain, there were stories of the fox they called the Rhody ghost, because she had twice been seen near the village of Rhododendron.

Those trappers who set for fox knew her mark, when she ran, she cantered her feet in an unusual style, but only two had ever seen her, one man twice. Oddly, the third sighting was completely on the other side of the mountain from the first two, but as the man who had seen her twice said, sitting by the fire at Miss Moss’s store one afternoon, who knows the ways of foxes? Whatever you are sure of in the woods, don’t be. You can study behavior and pattern all your life and read a thousand books and talk to a thousand biologists and spend a thousand days out there, and on the thousand and first, there’ll be a fox that eats only ducks, or a beaver that’s got his heart set on destroying a highway bridge that just doesn’t meet his aesthetic standards, or a bobcat set on romancing a cougar, despite cultural differences and social bias and the excellent chance of getting eaten. All you can do is pay attention and hope you don’t die. Farming fur is a hell of a way to make a living, and there’s no real living in it, but those of us who do it, do it mostly for money but also for some sort of education, I guess. You learn things you never expected to learn in a million years—such as there is a fox out there who appears to be either a ghost or a genius at avoiding traps and trouble. I have a lot of respect for the fox population generally when it comes to intellect; it’s pretty much a dead heat between people or foxes on the fox’s native ground, but this one has surpassing gifts. You almost don’t want to catch her except that her silver skin is worth a hundred bucks.

What if I gave you a hundred bucks
not
to catch her? said Miss Moss from behind the counter. She was kneeling down tinkering with something or other, and you couldn’t see her face, but her voice was crisp.

Be tempting, said the trapper. But then you’d be on the hook for all the other animals I wouldn’t catch, not to mention someone else might catch her, not to mention eventually that fox is going to die, and I might as well be the beneficiary of her pelt before it turns to dust in a cave somewhere.

It’s interesting to me, said Miss Moss, emerging suddenly above the counter, how some animal beings on the mountain become famous among human beings, generally for their elusiveness. They are like football running backs no one can easily catch, and so their legends develop.

Also size, said the trapper equably. Bears, for example. Or Louis the elk.

Although I might argue, said Miss Moss, that Louis is famous not because he is big but because everyone wants to shoot him every year, and no one has yet in more years than any of us can easily remember. That animal might be a hundred years old. Though it
is
entertaining when hunters claim they shot him and they didn’t.

Not so entertaining for the elk they
did
shoot thinking it was old Louis, said the trapper. But I am not picking on hunters who eat their meat. You have to eat, and you have to feed your kids; that’s the agreement if you have kids—you have to actually take care of them. I have a problem with rack hunters, but who am I to talk, catching and skinning Rocky Raccoon? It’s not like I eat him, after all. Which reminds me, I better get to work. I got a lot of work to do this summer before the season opens. You’d be surprised how little actual trapping a trapper does. Mostly it’s walking and looking. They should call us wookers instead of trappers, or lawkers. You got to do a lot of walking homework in spring and summer before trapping exams in the fall. I thought I was all done with school when I graduated from Zigzag High, but no—still studying for tests all year long. Thanks for the fire, Ginny. My old cold bones feel better here than anywhere, and that’s a fact.

Be safe, be well, drive careful, said Miss Moss, and she vanished again behind the counter, to tinker with something or other.

9

DAVE WALKED IN THE FRONT DOOR
of the store, noticing that the bell that was supposed to jangle and clang when someone entered was broken. This was exactly the conversational opening he needed, for he was here to boldly ask Miss Moss for a job. His sister Maria said there was no way Miss Moss would be able to afford a helper, didn’t Dave ever notice that Miss Moss was the only employee in Miss Moss’s store? How could someone with no employees hire an employee suddenly? But Dave thought he would ask, and he had armed himself with information that only a sharp eye would gather about Miss Moss’s store and environs: the broken bell; the vast incoherent disorganized welter of things out back that could be organized and categorized and offered for sale; and the fact that Miss Moss had no online presence whatsoever, even though surely the tourists and skiers and hikers and hunters and trappers who stopped at the store for one thing or another would be interested in being informed about products specifically aimed at their expressed interests and/or purchasing histories, to name the first three things that Dave had written down and had clutched in his hand.

But where was Miss Moss?

Right here, she said, once again emerging suddenly from behind the counter and smiling at Dave. What were you looking for this time, Dave? Traps for bears?

No, ma’am, said Dave. This time I am here to propose something.

You’re here to propose to me? I am very honored.

No, ma’am, said Dave, blushing instantly and thoroughly. I am here to propose that you employ me in any capacity whatsoever, and I have several reasons and ideas about why employing me would be a good thing for the store.

I
have
been proposed to, you know, said Miss Moss. Twice. Well, one and a half times, to be accurate.

Ma’am? said Dave, a little rattled; he had been prepared to launch into his speech, which he had practiced for an hour with Maria, Maria acting as Miss Moss, complete with spectacles and sandals and wry amused tone of voice.

The first time was a little confusing, and I am not quite sure even now if the young man in question was actually proposing or sort of musing about what might
possibly
happen someday if the
stars
aligned, said Miss Moss. I think maybe he was talking about how a proposal
might
happen rather than actually proposing. It was very confusing. You’d have to count that as a half proposal at best.

Yes, ma’am, said Dave.

Whereas the second time was a legitimate and honest proposal, and made while he was kneeling too, which was impressive, said Miss Moss. An
excellent
proposal. The best I ever received, no question. A really memorable proposal. My favorite ever.

Did you say yes? asked Dave.

Well, now, Dave, what exactly were your reasons and ideas for employment here?

But her swift shift of gears caught Dave by surprise, and for a moment he was silent, trying to replace the thought of Miss Moss being proposed to with the coherent and persuasive speech he had memorized.

Dave?

Ma’am. Well, ma’am, there are several areas to discuss. One is what the store needs right now to get up to its best speed. The second is what the store could use to open new commercial vistas. The third is the character and responsibility of the candidate for employment.

Vistas?

Yes, ma’am.

Vistas.

Vistas, yes, ma’am. Areas of possible lucrative trade and income growth.

Dave, are you sure you are fourteen? Did you go to college already and not tell anyone?

Almost fifteen, ma’am. Heading to the Zag in September.

Hmm.

Let’s look at each area in order. Right now, it seems to me that the store is efficiently run but not perhaps sufficiently staffed. It could be that the staff, because she has to do every aspect of running the store, is weary and cannot do more that needs to be done.