Wilderness (21 page)

After the Indians had left him on the beach, Abel kicked over the remains of the fire, ate the salmon steaks, buried the bones, and set out into the forest. He walked on soil, and he walked on a red carpet of fallen needles. But for the play of wind in the creaking trees, all was silent. At one point, Abel heard a furious barking, very faint and far away, but when he stopped to listen, all he heard was squirrel chatter from the branches. Here and there along the trail, every mile or so, stood little stone cairns erected to keep travelers on the path and help them mark their distance. By late afternoon, Abel had counted seven such markers and come upon their previous night’s camping place.

The little clearing was just off the trail, and Abel paced it carefully, then crouched beside the dregs of their fire. Little hunks of wood lay crosswise and smoking in a ring of soot-blacked stones. The ashes beneath were warm. Gray and papery, they took flight and spiraled about like merry dust motes when Abel put his hand into them to search out a kernel of living coal. All within was dead, and when he put his fingers to his face he could smell burnt blood and melted fat and presently found the wet bones of a hare in the underbrush.

He found where they’d made their toilet and he found where they’d roped the dog to a spruce. Its tracks circled the tree, the moss torn and the bark raw and the underbrush ’round about savaged. The old man took a deep breath and went on up the trail.

At some point during the long day, he realized he could no longer smell the ocean. The scent of salt, of wet sand and rotting bull kelp, was gone, replaced by freshening breezes through branches and the faint odor of earthy rot as things dead and things recently dead decomposed upon the soft, mossy floor. A flash of unbidden memory brought the loose dirt and dry leaves of Saunders’ Field to mind, and on his tongue came the charry residue of old battles past. He wanted none of it. The way David died, and armless Ned. Abel sniffed and spat, then leaned over with his good hand on his knee to catch his breath. After a while, he straightened and went on.

Abel camped that night just off the trail near a rushing stream of water pale with glacial milk. He slept sitting up, his back against a smooth boulder, and he lit no fire. For a time before sleep, he watched the sky where it lay dark and star-crusted, with but a few airy wisps of cloud to the east where the mountains blackly stood. He tried to sleep but could not, for he missed the dog’s company and so lay there awake, remembering the night it appeared.

The dog had come out of the forest on a cold night four years
ago. The month of the new year, with the weather raw and wild. Freezing rain and a darkly frigid wind, yet there were breaks in the clouds that showed the icy stars above as Abel crouched in the wet sand beside his cooking fire. A rime of frost scaled the stones, and his hands ached with cold as he gutted a middling-sized sockeye for his supper. He did not hear it approach but was suddenly aware of its presence. One moment there was the empty brown trail that ran between the rocks past the driftwood to the shadowy trees, and the next the dog was there upon that trail. Panting, its eyes red in the firelight. The flickering light shimmered yellow on its redblonde fur.

Abel set the fish down. He stood slowly, wide-eyed and suddenly atremble. His mouth hung open. His hands, slick and red, hung limply at his sides, themselves like two skinned fish. He didn’t know the last time he’d seen a dog. He didn’t move. He barely breathed.

For its part, the dog stood just without the forest, at the very edge of the apron of firelight. Its breath smoked around its muzzle, and it lifted a quivering nose to gather Abel’s scent. The dog then sniffed the ground as though to be sure of the rocks and the sand and the fallen pine needles sugared with tiny points of ice. When it finally moved, Abel saw it limped, and there was a large, round wound on one thigh, all red and scabbed over.

The dog approached by fits and starts, pausing now and again to sniff a rock, some piece of ground, and studiously ignoring Abel as though he was beneath its rightful attention. And Abel stood, his breath so shallow you could hardly call it breath at all. The dog came to him through the honey-colored firelight like a dream of a dog, like an answered prayer he could not remember praying, and finally it settled painfully beside the fire.

Abel wiped his palm down the thigh of his trousers, then walked around the flames. Slowly, slowly, he crouched and put his right hand out, and the dog lifted its head as though beyond fatigue and
sniffed cautiously at his fingers, its lip curling a little over the fish smell. Abel reached and touched the dog on its wide brow, where the fur was damp but still very soft. “Dog,” he whispered, trying the word out. The dog looked at him, and Abel closed his own eyes, then opened them again.

As it warmed itself beside the fire, the dog began to steam. Abel stroked its cheek with the backs of his fingers and ran his palm along the underside of its jaw to softly scratch the point of its chin. He pressed his palm against its chest to feel the steady beating of the heart behind the bone. “My Lord,” Abel said softly.

The dog watched him and was silent. It closed its eyes and sighed. Abel settled beside it in the sand. The fire crackled suddenly on a wet log and shot loud sparks against the dark. Frightened, the dog tried to rear up but fell back for its bad leg, with its eyes wild and its nose running. Fur stood in a bristling ridge between its shoulders and down its back. Abel spoke to hush it and surprised himself with his own voice. He coaxed the dog calm, telling it what a good dog it was, and when it had settled again, he bent to examine its hurts.

Four ill-healed claw marks that could have come from anything in that country—bear or cougar, raccoon, skunk, or barbed wire—raked its left thigh. The long fur behind one leg was dizzied into a mat the size of Abel’s heart that did not allow the dog to unbend it. Abel sighed and rocked back on his heels, speaking quietly to the dog, looking the rest of it over.

The dog watched him and did not growl when Abel wiped his knife off on his pants leg, then cut free the mat. He set the knife down and tossed the fur into the fire, where it crackled softly, and presently the dog climbed stiffly to its feet. It gentled its leg to the ground as though unsure yet whether to trust it. Abel nodded and praised it and the dog stood looking at him for a long time. Then it limped over to the half-open shack door, looked over its shoulder at Abel, and went into the dark to lie down beside his cot. Abel followed
and eased shut the door against the cold. Lying down, he let his hand dangle until he could twist his fingers into the soft fur behind the dog’s ears. He spoke to it a long time that night. And finally, just before sleep, Abel breathed deeply and said, “I’ll be goddamned if it don’t smell like wet dog in here now.”

Abel smiled broadly to remember the moment and felt himself slip slowly to sleep.

The afternoon of the next day found him in an old field that stretched a half mile in every direction. A Swede’s homestead from years ago, but the ground had been too boggy to support his claim—not farm or outbuilding, let alone any sort of crop. Old timbers dressed greenly in scissor-leaf lay abandoned in dry, waist-high grass that shivered and clashed softly in the wind. The sky was gray with clouds but rainless yet. Upon the air was the brass taste of winter, the sharpness of a coming cold snap. The forest began again on the far side of the field—a green wall cut with brown trunks and shadows. Abel thought for a moment he could hear them somewhere in the field ahead or in the darkness beyond, but a great weariness settled over him, and he covered his face with his hands as though in despair. After a time, he went to an outcropping of stone where the old Swede had thought to build a wall near the center of the field where there grew a bent apple tree. Abel picked a few pieces of spoiling fruit that still, improbably, clung to the branches, and settled upon the stones to rest.

He broke the apples open in his hands. The meat was soft and orange and smelled winesweet. Abel pushed the pulp off the cores with the pad of his thumb and ate the cores, then spat the seeds to the side. The Indians had given him a water skin, and he rinsed his mouth and cleaned the fronts of his teeth with his tongue, then spat and took a long drink. The water was cold and sweet, tasting of rain. After a while, Abel closed his eyes.

He dreamed a dream of empty houses. He dreamed of ancient
stones, cold and moss-covered. He dreamed of a yellow woman whom he knew well, and when he opened his eyes again, he rose and went on.

When they finally bedded down, neither stood guard. After a while, Abel rose from the blowdown and by starlight checked the pistol the Indians had given him. It was an old Adams .32 pocket revolver with but half a grip and a dangerous-looking dent in the barrel. Abel swallowed quickly to ease the itchy burn at the back of his throat. He turned the single bullet out onto his palm, squinted through the chamber, blew it clear, then replaced the bullet and snapped the cylinder back. “All right,” he said softly. “You checked it. You did that, so there ain’t no cause to go checking it again.” Abel took a deep breath and crept through the blowdown toward the red glow of their coals.

When he was close, Abel stopped just without a little box-shaped patch of moonlight, filtering silvery and fine through the canopy. He crouched and listened to them at their slumber—snoring and sighing and soft whimpering. Abel put his hands into the moonlight and broke open the gun to check it once more. Satisfied, he put it back, and the parts clacked softly as he fumbled in the dark. The old man stilled, and he waited a moment to see if they would stir before he continued.

It was very cold now; his breath steamed and rose through the trees like moss vapor in the morning sun. Abel clutched the broken grip where the metal was jagged and tried to control his breath, to ignore the thin, high, icy itch at the back of his throat. He could smell himself, root-sour and fusty, speaking of fear and sickness and age and anger and hurt. He went slowly forward once more, and only stopped when he saw the dog’s eyes glowing redly from across the burned-down fire.

It growled, low and deep, ancient in intent, and Abel made a quick, soft shushing sound and the dog fell silent. The old man crouched and let his eyes adjust to the glow of the fire shivering up the tree trunks and paling red the darkness beyond. The dog’s legs were tied fast, and a heavy rope was looped tightly around its neck and secured to a tree. It was muzzled with strips of knotted cloth, and a white scrim of drool decorated its underjaw. The dog raised its head to peer at Abel. He made a sign and it settled once more, ears raised.

Abel stepped into the clearing. There was a high burning in his chest and he could feel the action of his heart at work. Above, the stars glittered like fool’s gold, and beside the coals the two men slept. Abel eased out the knife the Indians had given him, trod softly around the perimeter of their camp, and crouched beside the dog to cut away its bonds. He cut the rope from its neck but left its muzzle bound for the quiet it gave. Because it could not help it, the dog’s tail began to work, sweeping through the ferns once and twice before Abel clutched hard at the loose flesh at the back of its neck and stilled it with a glare. The dog calmed, and Abel nodded, then ran the backs of his fingers over its cheek. He nodded again and jerked his chin toward the dark, and the dog turned and disappeared into the shadows.

The old man pressed his lips together and breathed. He looked at the two men where they lay reddened by coal light. The Haida slept with his face starward, and even in sleep his lips framed a soft, cruel smirk as though his dreams well satisfied him. The big Indian’s hands lay composed just so upon his chest in the unnatural manner of the dead in their caskets, and his rifle lay beside him. For his part, Willis slept curled on his side. His thin white hands covered the ruins of his mouth as though he were mocking some proverb-monkey, and his eyes and shoulders twitched as though his dreams showed him things he’d not otherwise see. He whimpered softly,
and the toes of his wretched boots dug shallow troughs through the dirt.

Abel moved quietly to the edge of the clearing, then around to where they’d piled their gear, and quickly found his haversack, rifle, and walking stick amongst their reeking equipment. Distantly, he heard the dog barking and frowned and stood stock-still until he was sure the sleepers had not woken. After a moment, he gathered his things and made to turn, but chanced to look starward, where he saw them falling out of the night.

It was no repetition of the Leonids of ’33 or even the lesser shower after the war, but perhaps some celestial precursor of other, greater star showers yet to come. Long white trails etched flashing across the glassy night soundlessly in cold parabola. They glittered in the old man’s eyes, and for an instant he was a child again, clutching tightly his father’s strong hand in the starlit dark, and then he was a man and young and without anyone at all on the long, lonely trail to the blue Pacific and the forests Out There. And then, just before the long white arcs of light faded and were gone, Abel’s breath caught in his throat and he began to sputter and to gag. He sputtered and gagged, then drew a great, shuddering breath that forced the caution from him along with a cough that rattled from him harsh and loud.

He doubled over, blood on his lips, and felt strange, damp chunks of matter spray against the backs of his teeth and a tearing within him. Abel spat. He fell to his knees with the pistol falling from his pocket and gone amidst the red-clothed shadows. On either side the sleepers woke and rose.

The dog came silently out of the forest to the left of the road, and had Emerson not spooked, Glenn Makers might not have seen it at all until it was in the bed of the wagon behind him. As it was, all he did see was a dark shape, low to the ground and swift as he took up
his rifle. The wagon creaked to a stop in the middle of the road as Emerson stamped and blew and rolled his eyes. Makers told him hush and pointed the barrel out at the dark, cursing himself for a fool for traveling after nightfall with Farley’s friends about.