Sacrament (3 page)

When they got back to Main Street, Peter Tegelstrom was out at the front of his house, perched on a ladder
nailing a string of Halloween lights along the low-hanging eaves. His children, a five-year old girl and a son a
year her senior, ran around excitedly, clapping and yelling as the row of pumpkins and skulls was unraveled.
Will headed over to chat to Tegelstrom; Adrianna followed. She'd made friends with the kids in the last week
and a half, and had suggested to Will that he photograph the family. Tegelstrom's wife was pure Inuit, her
beauty evident in her children's faces. A picture of this healthy and contented human family living within two
hundred yards of the dump would make, Adrianna argued, a powerful counterpoint to Will's pictures of the
bears. The wife, however, was too shy even to talk to the visitors, unlike Tegelstrom himself, who seemed to
Will starved for conversation.

'Are you finished with your pictures now?' he wanted to know.

'Near enough.'

'You should have gone down to Churchill. They've got a lot more bears there'

' - and a lot of tourists taking pictures of them.'

'You could take pictures of the tourists taking pictures of the bears,' Tegelstrom said.

'Only if one of them was being eaten.'

Peter was much amused by this. His arranging of the lights finished, he climbed down the ladder and switched
them on. The children clapped. 'There isn't much here to keep them occupied,' he said. 'I feel bad for them
sometimes. We're going to move down to Prince Albert in the spring.' He nodded into the house. 'My wife
doesn't want to, but the babies need a better life than this.'

The babies, as he called them, had been playing with Adrianna, and at her bidding had gone inside to put on
their Halloween masks. Now they reappeared, jabbering and whooping to inspire some fear. The masks were,
Will guessed, the shy wife's handiwork: not gleeful vampires or ghouls, but more troubled spirits, constructed
from scraps of sealskin and bits of fur and cardboard, all roughly daubed with red and blue paint. Set on such
diminutive bodies they were strangely unsettling.

'Come and stand here for me, will you?' Will said, calling them over to pose in front of the doorway.

'Do I get to be in this?' Tegelstrom asked.

'No,' Will said bluntly.

Affably enough, Tegelstrom stepped out of the picture, and Will went down on his haunches in front of the
children, who had ceased their hollers and were standing at the doorstep, hand in hand. There was a sudden
gravity in the moment. This wasn't the happy family portrait Adrianna had been trying to arrange. It was a
snapshot of two mournful spirits, posed in the twilight beneath a loop of plastic lights. Will was happier with
the shot than any of the pictures he'd made at the dump.

Cornelius was not yet home, which was no great surprise.

'He's probably smoking pot with the Brothers Grimm,' Will said, referring to the two Germans with whom
Cornelius had struck up a dope-and-beer-driven friendship. They lived in what was indisputably the most
luxurious home in the community, complete with a sizeable television. Besides the dope, Cornelius had
confided, they had a collection of all-girl wrestling films so extensive it was worthy of academic study.

'So we're done here?' Adrianna said, as she set about making the vodka martinis they always drank around this
time. It was a ritual that had begun as a joke in a mud-hole in Botswana, passing a flask of vodka back and forth
pretending they were sipping very dry martinis at the Savoy.

'We're done,' Will said.

'You're disappointed.'

'I'm always disappointed. It's never what I want it to be.'

'Maybe you want too much.'

'We've had this conversation.'

'I'm having it again.'

'Well I'm not,' Will said, with a monotony in his tone Adrianna knew of old. She let the subject drop and moved
on to another.

'Is it okay if I take a couple of weeks off? I want to go down to Tallahassee to see my mother.'

'No problem. I'm going back to San Francisco to spend some time with the pictures, start to make the
connections.'

This was a favourite phrase of his, describing a process Adrianna had never completely comprehended. She'd
watched him doing it: laying out maybe two or three hundred images on the floor and wandering amongst them
for several days, arranging and rearranging them, laying unlikely combinations together to see if sparks flew;
growling at himself when they didn't; getting a little high and sitting up through the night, meditating on the
work. When the connections were made, and the pictures put in what he considered to be the right order, there
was undeniably an energy in them that had not been there before. But the pain of the process had always
seemed to Adrianna out of all proportion to the improvement. It was a kind of masochism, she'd decided; his
last, despairing attempt to make sense of the senseless before the images left his hands.

'Your cocktail, sir,' Adrianna said, setting the martini at Will's elbow. He thanked her, picked it up and they
clinked glasses.

'It's not like Cornelius to miss vodka,' Adrianna observed.

'You just want an excuse to check out the Brothers Grimm,' Will said.

Adrianna didn't contest the point. 'Gert looks like he'd be fun in bed.'

'Is he the one with the beer belly?'

'Yep.'

'He's all yours. Anyway, I think they're a package deal. You can't have one without the other.'

Will picked up his cigarettes and wandered over to the front door, taking his martini with him. He turned on the
porch-light, opened the door and leaning against the door-jamb lit a cigarette. The Tegelstrom kids had gone
inside, and were probably tucked up in bed by now, but the lights Peter had put up to entertain them were still
bright: a halo of orange pumpkins and white skulls around the house, rocking gently in the gusting wind.

'I've got something to tell you,' Will said. 'I was going to wait for Cornelius but ... I don't think there's going to
be another book after this.'

'I knew you were fretting about something. I thought maybe it was me-'

'Oh God no,' Will said. 'You're the best, Adie. Without you and Cornelius I'd have given up on all this shit a
long time ago.'

'So why now?'

'I'm out of love with the whole thing,' he said. 'None of it makes any difference. We'll show the pictures of the
bears and all it'll do is make more people come and watch them getting their noses stuck in mayonnaise jars. It's
a waste of bloody time.'

'What will you do instead?'

'I don't know. It's a good question. It feels like ... I don't know...'

'What does it feel like?'

'That everything's winding down. I'm forty-one and it feels like I've seen too much and been too many places
and it's all blurred together. There's no magic left. I've done my drugs. I've had my infatuations. I've outgrown
Wagner. This is as good as it's going to get. And it's not that great.'

Adrianna came to join him at the door, putting her chin on his shoulder. 'Oh my poor Will,' she said, in her best
cocktail clip. 'So famous, so celebrated, and so very, very bored.'

'Are you mocking my ennui?'

'Yes.'

'I thought so.'
'You're tired. You should take a year off. Go sit in the sun with a beautiful boy. That's Dr Adrianna's advice.'

'Will you find me the boy?'

'Oh Lord. Are you that exhausted?'

'I couldn't cruise a bar if my life depended upon it.'

'So don't. Have another martini.'

'No, I've got a better idea,' Will said. 'You make the drinks, I'll go fetch Cornelius. Then we can all get maudlin
together.'

Cornelius had spent the dregs of the afternoon with the Lauterbach brothers, and had a fine time of it, watching
the wrestling flicks and smoking their weed. He'd left as darkness fell, intending to head back to the house for a
couple of shots of vodka, but halfway along Main Street the prospect of dealing with Adrianna had loomed. He
wasn't in the mood for apologies and justifications; they'd only bring him down. So instead of heading back he
fished out the fat roach he'd connived from Gert, and wandered down towards the water to smoke it.

As he walked, weaving between the houses, the wind carried flecks of snow from across the Bay, grazing his
face. He stopped beneath one of the lamps that illuminated the ground between the back of the houses and the
water's edge and turned his face up to the light so as to watch the flakes spilling down. 'Pretty ...' he said to
himself. So much prettier than bears. When he got back, he'd tell Will he should give up with animals and start
photographing snowflakes instead. They were a lot more endangered, his gently befuddled wits decided. As
soon as the sun came out they were gone, weren't they? All their perfection, melted away. It was tragic.

Will didn't get as far as the Lauterbach house. He'd trudged maybe a hundred yards down Main Street - the wind
getting stronger with every gust, the snow it carried thickening - when he caught sight of Cornelius, reeling
around, face to the sky. He was obviously high, which was no great surprise. It had always been Cornelius' way
of dealing with life, and Will had far too many quirks of his own to be judgmental about it. But there was a time
and a place for such excesses, and the Main Street of Balthazar in bear season was not one of them.

'Cornelius!' Will yelled. 'Cornelius? Can you hear me?'

The answer was apparently no. Cornelius just kept up his dervish dance under the lamp. Will started down the
street in the man's direction, cursing him ripely as he went. He didn't waste his breath shouting, the wind was
too strong, but part of the way down the street he regretted not doing so because without warning Cornelius
gave up his spinning and slipped out of sight between the houses. Will picked up his pace, though he was
tempted to head back to the house and arm himself before pursuing Cornelius any further. If he did so, however,
he risked losing the man altogether, and to judge by his stumbling step Cornelius was in no fit state to be
wandering alone in the dark. It wasn't so much the bears Will was concerned about, it was the Bay. Cornelius
had headed in the direction of the shore. One slip on the icy rocks and he'd be in water so cold it would stop his
heart.

He'd reached the spot where Cornelius had been dancing, and followed his tracks away from the comfort of the
lamplight into the murky no-man's-land between the houses and the tidal flats. There he was pleased to discover
Cornelius' phantom figure standing maybe fifty yards from him. He'd given up his spinning and his sky-
watching, and he was standing stone-still, staring out towards the darkness of the shore.

'Hey, buddy!' Will called to him. 'You're going to get pneumonia.'
Cornelius didn't turn. In fact he didn't move so much as a muscle. What kind of pills had he been popping?, Will
wondered.
'Con!' he yelled again. He was no more than twenty yards from Cornelius' back. 'It's Will! Are you okay? Talk
to me, man.'
Finally, Cornelius spoke. One slurred word that stopped Will in his friend's tracks.

'Bear.'

There was a cloud of breath at Will's lips. He waited, as still as Cornelius, while the cloud cleared, then scanned
the scene to the limit of his vision. First to the left. The shore was empty as far as he could see. Then to the
right; the same.

He dared a one-word question.

'Where?'

'Ahead. Of. Me.' Cornelius replied.

Will took a very slow sideways step. Cornelius' drug-induced senses were not deceiving him. There was indeed
a bear maybe sixteen or seventeen yards in front of him, its form barely visible to Will through the snow-
flecked murk.

'Are you still there, Will?' Cornelius said.

'I'm here.'

'What the fuck do I do?'

'Back off. But, Con: very, very slowly.'

Cornelius glanced back over his shoulder, his stricken face suddenly sober.

'Don't look at me,' Will said. 'Keep your eyes on the animal.'

Cornelius looked back towards the bear, which had begun its implacable approach. This wasn't one of the
playful adolescents from the dump; nor was it the blind old warrior Will had photographed. This was a fully
grown female; a good six hundred pounds.

'Fuck...' Cornelius muttered.

'Just keep coming,' Will coaxed him. 'You're going to be okay. Just don't let her think you're anything worth
chasing.'

Cornelius managed three tentative backward steps, but his equilibrium was poor after the dervish act, and on the
fourth step his heel slid on the slick ground. He flailed for a moment, then recovered his balance, but the harm
was done. Hissing her intentions, the bear gave up her plod and came bounding at him. Cornelius turned and
ran, the bear roaring in pursuit, her body a blur. Weaponless, all Will could do was dodge out of Cornelius' path
and yell himself hoarse in the hope of distracting the animal. But it was Cornelius she wanted. In two bounds
she'd halved the distance between them, jaws wide in readiness

'Get down!'

Will threw a glance back in the direction of the voice and there, God save her, was Adrianna, rifle raised.

'Con!' she yelled. 'Get your fucking head down!'

He got the message, and flung himself to the frozen dirt, with the bear a body's length from his heels. Adrianna
fired, and hit the animal's shoulder, checking her before she could catch up with her quarry. The animal rose up
with an agonized roar, blood staining her fur. Cornelius was still within swatting distance, however, if she chose
to take him out. Ducking to make himself as small a target as possible, Will scrambled towards him, and,
grabbing his trembling torso, hauled him out of the bear's path. There was a sharp stink of shit off him.

He looked back at the bear. She wasn't finished; nowhere near. Roaring so loudly that the ground shook, she
started towards Adrianna, who leveled her rifle and fired a second time, at no more than ten yards' range. The
animal's roar ceased on the instant, and again she rose up, white and red and vast, teetering for a moment. Then
she reeled back like a breaking wave, and limped away into the darkness.

The entire encounter - from the moment Cornelius had named his nemesis - had perhaps lasted a minute, but it
was long enough for a kind of delirium to have taken hold of Will. He got to his feet, the snowflakes spiraling
around him like giddy stars, and went to the place where the bear's blood had splashed on the ice.

'Are you all right?' Adrianna asked him.

'Yes,' he said.

It was only half the truth. He wasn't hurt, but he wasn't whole either. He felt as though some part of him had
been torn out by what he'd just witnessed, and had fled into the darkness in pursuit of the bear. He had to go
after it.

'Wait!' Adrianna yelled.

He looked back at her, trying his best to block out Cornelius' sobbing apologies, and the shouts of people on
Main Street as they came sniffing after the bloodshed. Adrianna was staring straight at him, and he knew she
was reading the thoughts on his face.

'Don't be a fuck-wit, Will,' she said.

'No choice.'

'Then at least take the rifle.'

He looked at it as though it had just pumped its bullets into him. 'I don't need it,' he said.

'Will-'

He turned his back on her, on the lights, on the people and their asinine questions. Then he loped off towards
the shoreline, following the red trail the bear had left behind her.