Mastodonia (6 page)

Looking in the direction the mastodon had gone, I saw a herd of mastodons, a mile or so away, four adults and a calf. The mastodon that had almost run over me clumped steadily to join them.

Pleistocene, I told myself, but how deep into the Pleistocene, I had no way of knowing.

While the lay of the land remained unchanged, it had a vastly different look, for there were no forests. Instead, there was a stretch of grassland that looked somewhat like a tundra, dotted here and there with clumps of birches and some evergreens, while along the river, I could make out misty yellow willows.

The birch trees in the clump next to me were leafed out, but the leaves were small, the immature leaves of spring. On the ground beneath the trees was a carpet of hepaticas, the delicate, many-hued flower that came to bloom shortly after the snow was gone. The hepaticas lent an air of familiarity, almost of identity. In my boyhood, on this very land, I had ranged the woods to bring home in grubby hands great bouquets of the flowers, which my mother would put in a squat brown pitcher, setting it in the middle of the kitchen table. Even from where I stood, it seemed to me that I could smell the exquisite, distinctive, never-to-be-forgotten odor of the tiny flowers.

Spring, I thought, but it was cold for spring. Despite the sun, I was shivering. An ice age, I told myself. Perhaps just a few miles to the north reared the shining ramparts of the glacial front. And here I was, with no more than pajama pants and slippers, and a shotgun in my hand—a shotgun with two shells in its barrels. That was all. That was the sum total. I had no knife, no matches, nothing. I glanced toward the sky and saw that the sun was edging up toward noon. Noon and chilly as it was, it could be freezing by nightfall. A fire, I thought, but I had no way to make a fire. Flint, if I could find some flint. I racked my brain to recall if there was flint to be found in the neighborhood, although even if there were, what could I do with it? Flint struck against flint would produce sparks, but not hot enough to start a fire. Struck against steel, the sparks would be hot enough to start a fire in tinder. The gun was steel, but there wasn't any flint—for now I remembered that in this area there wasn't any flint. Perhaps I could take a shell and open it, extracting the shot charge, then pour out some of the powder to be mixed with tinder, and fire the opened shell into the tinder. Theoretically, the burning powder expelled from the barrel would fire the tinder if it was mixed with powder. But what if that didn't work, I asked myself. And where would I look for tinder? In the heart of a rotten log, if I could find a rotting log and could tear it open to get at the dry, pulpy inner wood. Or bark peeled off a birch tree and shredded finely. Maybe that would work. I wondered whether it would, but could not be certain.

I stood defeated, exhausted with my thinking and the fright that was creeping in. Now, for the first time, I became aware of birds. First the flowers and now the birds. I'd been hearing them all the time, but my brain, roaring with its problems, had rejected them. There was a bluebird perched on a winter-dead stalk. A mullen stalk, perhaps. I tried to remember if the mullen was native or had been imported, in which case, it could not be a mullen stalk. Anyhow, the bird clung to the swaying stalk and sang. A meadowlark leaped from the grass and soared into the air, spraying its trill of excited happiness behind it. In the birch trees, little birds that must have been some sort of sparrow hopped cheeping from branch to branch. The place simply crawled with birds.

The lay of the land, once I had gotten myself oriented, began to look more and more familiar. Naked as it might be, it still was Willow Bend. The river swung out of the north and curved toward the west, then veered east again. All along the bend, the stream was lined with yellow willow trees.

The mastodons were moving off now, down the valley away from me. Other than the mastodons and birds, I could detect no sign of life. But there could be other life, I thought: sabertooth, dire wolf, maybe even cave bear. I could take care of myself for a time, I knew, but only for a time. Once the two shells had been fired, I would be without a weapon, defenseless, the gun no better than a club.

Watching carefully for any sign of life, I walked down the slope toward the river, which I saw was wider and flowing more rapidly than I had ever seen it. Melt water from the glaciers to the north, perhaps.

The misty yellowness of the willows came from pollen-laden pussy willows, great fluffy caterpillars covered with a golden dust. The stream was clear—so clear that I could see the pebbles rolling on the bottom and the flashing shadows of fleeing fish, darting schools of them. Here was food, I told myself. Without a hook or line, I still could weave a net of withelike willow branches, stripping off pieces of the willow bark to hold the woven branches in place. It would be a crude affair and an awkward business, but it could be done; I could weave the net and use it to catch fish. I wondered how raw fish might do as a steady diet and gagged a little at the thought.

If I had to stay here, I told myself, if there was no way of getting back to my own time, then somehow or other, by some hook or crook, I must rediscover fire—fire to keep me warm, fire to cook my food.

Standing there beside the river, I tried to get the facts sorted out. Looking at the situation realistically, I had to reconcile myself to the idea that my chances of getting back to Willow Bend were small. That meant that there were a lot of things to do. First things first, I told myself. Shelter at the moment was more important than food. If necessary, I could starve for a little while. But before the fall of night, I had to find someplace where I would be sheltered from the wind, some small hideaway that might conserve my body heat. The important thing, I knew, was not to panic. I had not panicked so far; I could not afford to panic.

Shelter, food and fire—those were the three things that I needed. Shelter came first, after that, food; fire could wait a little while. Fish, once I had rigged a net, would supply food, but there would be other food as well. Probably tubers and roots, even leaves and bark, although I had no way of knowing which of these would be safe. Perhaps I could find out by watching what bears and other animals ate, take a chance that what they ate was safe. There would be, as well, slow game, small game, but for these, I'd need a weapon, a club. If I could not find another kind of club, the gun would work, but it would be heavy and awkward to handle. A stick would be better. Surely, somewhere, I could find a proper stick that would fit my hand—a well-seasoned piece that would not break at the first blow. A bow and some arrows would be better and, in time, I probably could come up with such a weapon. I'd have to find a sharp stone or a stone that could be broken to form a cutting edge. With it, I could cut down and shape a sprout into a bow. When I'd been a lad, I remembered, I'd been hell let loose with a bow and arrow. I'd need a cord, and fine roots—fine, tough roots—would serve. Was it cedar roots that the Indians had used to sew canoes? It had been years since I'd read “The Song of Hiawatha” and there was something in it, I was sure, that told about cedar roots being used to make canoes. Probably some of the evergreens that grew here were cedars and I could dig down and get the roots.

While I was thinking all of this, I had turned away from the river and was walking back toward the birch clump. I turned to the right and climbed the small slope above the clump, for it had occurred to me that I had better start right now looking for someplace to spend the night. A cave of some sort would be ideal. If nothing else, if no cave were available, I might make out by crawling into a grove of evergreens. The branches of most evergreens hung close against the ground, and while they might not afford much protection from the cold, at least they would keep out the wind.

I reached the top of the little rise and began to angle down it, looking for some ground formation that might lead me to shelter. Thus it was that I was almost on top of it before I saw it—the hole gouged in the ground. Stopping at its edge, I looked down into it. But it was some seconds before I realized what I had found.

Then, suddenly, I knew. This was the pit where I had been digging. It was old. There was no freshness to it. A bit bigger than when I had first come upon it, but still old; its walls were overgrown with grass and a small birch tree thrust out of the far wall, the tree tilted at a crazy angle.

I squatted down and looked at it and a curious wave of terror came over me. A terrible sense of time. If only the gouge could have been new and raw, I thought, I might have derived some strange comfort from it. But for some reason I could not understand, the oldness of the pit stirred a deep depression in me.

A cold nose touched my naked back and, instinctively, I leaped straight up, letting out a squall of fright. I came down on the slope of the pit, rolling to the bottom, the gun flying out of my hand.

Sprawling on my back, I stared up the slope at the thing that had touched me with its nose. It wasn't a sabertooth or a dire wolf. It was Bowser, looking down at me with a silly grin on his face, his tail waving frantically.

On hands and knees, I scrambled up the wall of the pit, threw my arms around the dog and hugged him while Bowser washed my face with a slobbering tongue. I staggered to my feet and reached out to grab his tail.

“Git for home, Bowser!” I yelled at him, and the limping Bowser, one back leg stiffened by the Folsom wound, headed straight for home.

NINE

I sat at the kitchen table, wrapped up in a blanket, trying to get the frost out of my bones. Rila was busy at the pancake griddle.

“I hope,” she said, “that you didn't catch a cold.”

I shivered; I couldn't help it. “It was cold back there,” I told her.

“The idea of running out with nothing on but pajama bottoms.”

“There was ice north,” I said. “I could practically feel the ice. I bet I wasn't more than twenty miles from a glacial front. This is a driftless area. The ice came down, time after time, moving south on each side of us, but never crossing this area. No one quite knows why. But twenty or thirty miles north, there could have been ice.”

“You had a gun,” she said. “What happened to the gun?”

“Well, when Bowser over there came up behind me, he close to scared me witless. I jumped and dropped the gun and when I saw Bowser, I never stopped to pick it up. The only thing that I could think of was that he could get me home.”

She brought a platter stacked with cakes to the table and sat down opposite me.

“This is ridiculous,” she said. “Here we are, talking about your going back in time as if doing so were an everyday affair.”

“Not to me,” I said, “but it is to Bowser. The thing about it is that he must go to many different times. He wouldn't have been stabbed in the rump with a Folsom point at a time when he could have found dead dinosaurs to drag home.”

“To tangle with a Folsom point,” she said, “he couldn't have traveled back much more than twenty thousand years. Perhaps, a great deal less than that. You are sure you saw no signs of man?”

“What kind of signs? Footprints? Broken arrows lying around?”

“I was thinking of smoke.”

“There wasn't any smoke. The only solid time clue that I have is a mastodon that damn near ran me down.”

“You're sure you did go back? You aren't having fun with me? You didn't just imagine the whole thing?”

“Sure. I went out in the woods and hid the gun, then whistled Bowser to me and grabbed him by the tail …”

“I'm sorry, Asa. I know. Of course, you didn't. You think that cat-faced thing has something to do with it? Here, get started on those cakes before they get cold. Drink some of the coffee. It is hot. It will warm you up.”

I forked cakes onto my plate, buttered them, poured on syrup.

“You know,” said Rila, “we just might have something.”

“That's right. We have a place where it isn't safe to go looking for a fox.”

“I'm serious,” she said. “We may have something big. If you have discovered time travel, think of what you could do with it.”

“Not on your life,” I said. “I'm not fooling around. I've had it. When I see Catface again, I'm going to turn around and walk rapidly away. You could get trapped back there. I couldn't count on Bowser to come back every time and get me.”

“But supposing you could control it.”

“How could you control it?”

“You could make a deal with Catface.”

“Hell, I can't even talk to Catface.”

“Not you. Hiram, maybe. Hiram could talk with Catface. He talks to Bowser, doesn't he?”

“He thinks he talks with Bowser. He thinks he talks with robins, too.”

“How do you know he doesn't?”

“Now, goddamn it, Rila, just be sensible.”

“I am being sensible. How can you be so sure he doesn't talk with Bowser? As a scientist …”

“A scientist of sorts.”

“All right, even as a scientist of sorts, you know very well you can't take a position, either negative or positive, until you have some evidence. And remember what Ezra said about Catface coming around and making arrangements for Ranger to run him.”

“Old Ezra is crazy. Very gently crazy. But crazy just the same.”

“And Hiram, too?”

“Hiram's not crazy. He's just a simpleton.”

“Maybe it takes gently crazy people and simpletons and dogs to do things we can't do. Maybe they have abilities we don't have.…”

“Rila, we can't turn Hiram loose on Catface …”

The screen door creaked and I swung around. Hiram came bumbling through the door.

“I heard you,” he said. “You was talking about me and Catface.”

“We were wondering,” said Rila, “if you ever talked with Catface. Like you do with Bowser.”

“You mean that thing that hangs around the orchard.”

“You have seen it, then.”