Touch (14 page)

My grandfather would have been familiar with the proverb, “He that tilleth his land shall have plenty of bread: but he that followeth after vain persons shall have poverty enough.” But, of course, he and my grandmother were not thinking of gold when they ignored the way that the summer held longer than it should have. They may have been the only people in Sawgamet who were not thinking of gold: the previous winter had been mild enough for the miners to work through, and the summer had been warm and lasted well into the fall, the town growing by the day. But my grandparents were in love. They weren’t thinking of the way that empires crumble, the way that people can lose faith, the way that nothing lasts forever.

They expected the summer to last forever, and when they finally woke to frost on their windows near the end of October, it came as a surprise. They had gone to sleep the night before to another unseasonably warm night, but the morning frost was thick on the glass. Sun scattered through the ice crystals and splayed across the room. Flaireur stayed sleeping at the foot of the bed, even as Martine washed and dressed and made her way downstairs to see what Rebecca had prepared for breakfast.

The same Rebecca, of course, that I knew only as my great-aunt, witty and often warm to me and her granddaughter, Virginia, but a sharp-tongued matron who suffered no fools. It is difficult for me to imagine her as the young woman—she was a year or two older than Martine and Jeannot—that my
grandfather hired as soon as the house was complete. Rebecca was one of the few women who had come to Sawgamet unwilling to sell her body.

While Rebecca made breakfast—pancakes and bacon, syrup and preserved raspberries—my grandmother returned upstairs. She found Jeannot dressed in thin pants and a light shirt, pulling on his pair of boots.

“Where are you off to?”

“I’ve been cooped up here long enough,” he said, and then he saw the look that flashed across Martine’s face. “Not with you. With you I could lay forever,” he said, “but I’m used to being outside more. I was thinking of going for a paddle.”

“Where?”

Jeannot stood and stepped over to the window. He scratched his thumbnail against the frost on the window. “I think I’m going to go off into the woods a ways.” He rubbed on the glass until there was a small square that they could both see through. He nodded at the view over the river and at the hills rising into peaks on the other side. “I’ve always wanted to know what’s further along. Today seems like a fine day for it. Would you like to join me,” he said, and with a small smile he added, “or do you have too much to do?”

THEY DID NOT BRING MUCH
with them. Rebecca packed Jeannot and Martine some fried chicken wrapped in paper, biscuits, and shortbread, and Jeannot brought his rifle. The sun had already chased away the morning’s frost, and my grandparents wore light summer clothing that belied the date
on the calendar. They paddled upstream until their shoulders and arms ached. Because of the current, they moved slowly, no more than half the pace of an easy walk, and several times they pulled the canoe from the water and portaged it, carrying it past whitewater and then launching it again when the river widened. After a few hours, they stopped for lunch, beaching the canoe on a gravel bar. They set aside some shortbread and gave the rest of the chicken scraps to Flaireur. After eating, the dog fell asleep in the sun.

The river moved slowly and sang quietly. Jeannot sat on the gravel, leaned back against the canoe, and closed his eyes, but Martine stripped off her clothes and swam in the river. She let herself float in the current, her long hair trailing behind her. Three times she drifted down the river, swam to the side, then walked back to Jeannot. He watched her, noting the way that the sun seemed to burnish the gold chain embedded in her skin, and finally, after she called to him, he, too, joined her in the cold water.

They played, dunking each other under the water, swimming down to touch the bottom, letting themselves be carried along by the gentle pull of the wide, lazy river. Though Jeannot told me they just swam, I’d imagine that after a while the playing led, as many things do for newlyweds, to kissing, and the kissing to making love. Jeannot standing in the river with the water midway up his chest, holding Martine in the slow sway of the current. Even with muscles sore from paddling, she would have seemed weightless, and when they were finished, they remained still, Martine wrapped around him, Jeannot’s head on her shoulder.

Whether they were just swimming or something more, my
grandfather told me that as he held his wife in the river, she started to fall asleep until she heard him let out a small gasp. She started to speak, but my grandfather’s hand darted from the water and touched lightly on her lips. Silently, she turned and looked out on the bank.

Flaireur lay sleeping, curled near the canoe, even though a caribou stood only a few paces away from the dog. The caribou was enormous. From where my grandparents were entwined in the river, the caribou seemed to stand nearly six feet at shoulder height, easily a foot bigger than any caribou either of them had seen before. He was heavy, as well. Perhaps because of the delay in the cold, the rutting season had not begun, and this bull had not lost his stores of fat. More striking than his size, however, was that he seemed to be made of solid gold. Had he not taken a step forward at that moment, both Jeannot and Martine would have been willing to believe that he was some sort of misplaced statue.

The caribou hovered over Flaireur, but the dog did not stir. The sun reflected off the caribou’s golden coat, his antlers, his feet.

“Even his bones must be made of gold,” my grandfather whispered to Martine. His words broke the stillness that had come over the couple. Gingerly, Jeannot lowered Martine to her feet, and then he slowly began to ease his way out of the water, his eyes flickering from the rifle that lay in the canoe to the golden caribou that stood only a few paces away from the boat.

The caribou looked up at Jeannot, but the animal showed neither surprise nor fear as my grandfather steadily advanced upon him. As Jeannot moved forward, the caribou turned and
took a few steps toward the woods before stopping and looking back. Jeannot froze, expecting the animal to bolt, but the golden caribou shook his head and then took only another two steps before pausing again.

Jeannot reached for his rifle, but Martine, who had crept behind him, touched his wrist lightly, and instead he took her hand in his. Together, carefully and slowly, still naked, the water glistening on their bodies in the midday sun, Jeannot and Martine walked after the caribou. As they headed into the woods, Jeannot glanced back and saw Flaireur still sleeping peacefully.

My grandparents followed the caribou through the forest. At first they were tentative and solemn, but soon it became almost a game. By the time they were deep enough into the forest that the light had become diffuse—as if they were walking in the moonlight—they had forgotten any need to be quiet. The path that the caribou followed was wide and twisting, and the fallen leaves and dirt stayed soft underneath their feet. Jeannot noticed that the tree trunks and bushes near the trail glittered with gold dust, and they wondered if the forest grew its own gold, but then they came to realize that the caribou seemed to be shedding gold as it walked. The air was thick with it, and the few beams of light that came cleanly through the forest canopy appeared as spears of gold.

The caribou walked in front of them, slow enough that they could follow, but fast enough that no matter how much my grandparents called to him, he kept out of reach. They did not try running after him. There was something in the hush of the woods—broken only by the clicking of the caribou’s feet—that made them reverent. After a little while, they began
to forget why they had started following the caribou. Hand in hand, they began to speak of children and the future, subjects that neither of them had spoken openly to the other of before, and neither of them noticed the change in the light or the sudden cold stillness in the air until they had already come into the clearing.

Ahead of them, the caribou waited. The trees formed an almost perfect circle around the glade. The sun, past its height, still shone heatlessly down, and its light bounced brilliantly off the giant boulder that occupied the middle of the clearing. The caribou watched Jeannot and Martine emerge from the trees, and then he turned to the boulder and began grinding his antlers and his shoulders against it.

At first neither Jeannot nor Martine understood what they were seeing, but after a moment it became clear. The caribou was not made of solid gold. Rather, it was covered in dust from vigorously rubbing against the golden boulder. The boulder stood several hands taller than the caribou, and it seemed so substantial and large that both Jeannot and Martine thought they could hear the earth groan beneath its weight.

They kept still, unable to move, enthralled and awed by the sight of the powerful caribou pushing and grinding against the golden boulder. With every push of his antlers or scrape of his side, gold dust sprang into the air. The glade was full of the floating dust, and in the light, Jeannot and Martine thought they had found some sort of fairy kingdom, each fleck of dust a sprite.

The caribou finished rubbing against the boulder, and then he pawed at the ground. He stopped and looked up at the watching couple, and then he scraped the ground again.
Martine dropped Jeannot’s hand, and as if she could not help herself, she took the dozen steps that separated her from the caribou. Hesitantly, she reached out and touched him, running her hand up his muzzle. A cloud of gold burst from his coat and settled around her. She tried to pet him again, but the caribou stepped back and then tilted his head and showed the kind of stillness that always augurs flight in animals. My grandfather moved forward and grabbed my grandmother’s elbow, suddenly worried about the thought of malevolent spirits. He glanced at the boulder, knowing that nothing ever really came without cost.

But it was no creature of the woods that bothered the caribou, only the sound of Flaireur’s barking. The sudden sharp pitch of the dog’s voice moved through the trees, and after shivering for a moment, the caribou tensed and then bounded into the woods, disappearing so quickly that all he left in his wake was a small puff of gold.

Flaireur came bursting into the clearing, stopping short at the sight of the golden boulder. It was like the dog did not even see Jeannot or Martine. He crouched low, his hackles suddenly rising, his tail tucked between his legs, and he let out a thick, rumbling growl. Flaireur bared his teeth, showing the leather-colored stain at the roots of his fangs, spittle dripping from the sharp tips.

Jeannot and Martine felt a cold prickling on their bare skin and the rise of gooseflesh on their arms. Jeannot reached out to touch the golden boulder, and as he did, Flaireur’s growl pitched even deeper. It was then that Jeannot realized the sensation of cold was not simply that of fear: a new, winter-carrying wind had started to cut through the clearing. At that
moment, the sun fled behind gray clouds, the shadows in the trees turning darker. Jeannot took Martine’s hand and tried to turn her toward the woods, in the direction from which Flaireur had just come.

“What about the gold?” Martine said, unwilling to turn.

“We’re earning plenty enough from sawing wood,” Jeannot said, and then he placed his hands forcefully on her shoulders.

Martine stared at him, rubbing her arms with her hands, seemingly unaware of her actions. “But what about …” she said, trailing off and looking at the boulder.

“It’s the winter,” Jeannot said. “It’s coming. Now. We have nothing to start a fire, we don’t have our clothing with us, and what we do have at the canoe won’t see us through a night in the woods. I’ll mark this spot and we’ll return.” He whistled to Flaireur, and the dog broke off his growling.

Jeannot held Martine’s hand, pulling her after him through the trees and following Flaireur, and they were both surprised when, after only a few hundred feet, they emerged onto the gravel shore by their canoe. Jeannot took his knife and marked a pair of trees on the beach.

“We’ll be able to find the clearing easily enough,” he said. “Better to return properly dressed tomorrow, or even to wait until spring. It will be there waiting. Gold’s not of much use to us if we freeze to death.”