Martin Marten (9781466843691) (12 page)

Which increasingly was the case. Now when Dave went for his morning and evening runs, he looked automatically into the trees to see if the marten was there, and almost every day there Martin was, the distinctive golden brown burnish of his fur evident to an eye looking for just that characteristic color; and Dave would smile, and say
ready?
and take off, upriver or down depending on the bounce in his legs, and above him to one side or another the marten would float along effortlessly, flying along branches so fast and gracefully that Dave would have sworn on a Bible that there were times the marten’s feet touched nothing but the crisp clean air.

This is probably a good time to stop and talk for a moment about the really amazing athletic machine for which we use the word
marten
; and let’s use Martin as an example, as he is right there above us, in midleap between fir branches. Let’s freeze time for a moment and zoom in on Martin and take a close look. He’s four months old today, still growing, but already you can see the size and build of the mature creature he will be in a few months. He’s almost two feet long already, if you count his tail; his thick furry tail is about six inches long and a little darker in color than his body, as are his feet and legs. On his chest there’s a patch of lighter fur than his generally golden brown body; it looks like he’s wearing a permanent bib. Rather large triangulish ears, black nose and eyes, black burst of whiskers. Serious claws, when he unsheathes them. Small teeth, but sharper than any knife. Alert and attentive at all times, capable of long periods of absolute stillness and then instant violent action so fast that he would be a blur to your eye if he was moving at top speed. Weight, about two pounds now; in a few months he will grow to be close to three pounds. In essence he is a furry muscle in the woods, quite comfortable on the ground and in the trees. He can climb anything lightning fast and is the king of the forest insofar as using the canopy as a highway. While his favorite food is voles, caught on the floors of forest and meadow, he much enjoys squirrels of all kinds and is the only hunter of squirrels who can follow them to the highest, thinnest branches; not even the fisher, being heavier, can achieve that dangerous elevation. He eats everything else he can find, of course, but given his druthers, like today’s late-summer bounty, he would have a vole for breakfast and then some thimbleberries and a cricket as a midmorning snack and then another vole for late lunch, followed by huckleberries in the afternoon, most of a dead white-crowned sparrow, some early white-oak acorns—which were not quite as toothsome as he had hoped—and then, delightfully, a young flying squirrel, which was just waking up in a cottonwood tree for its own evening hunt. All in all, an excellent day food-wise; had Martin known it, this would be one of his best dining days of the year, for heavy snow will come all too soon on the mountain to cover much of the larder. Savor these last days of summer, for autumn on Wy’east will be short, and soon cometh winter; and winter on a mountain eleven thousand feet high is thorough and inarguable.

*   *   *

The hole in the cottonwood tree where Martin had found and eaten the flying squirrel was roomy, angled out of the prevailing wind, relatively inaccessible from other predators, high above a creek filled with fish and crawfish and snails, relatively close to two meadows with good hunting prospects, and equipped with the remnant of a branch that served as something like a porch or deck by the front door. After cleaning out all evidence of previous occupancy, Martin moved in, driven by some feeling that he must have secure housing before the seasons changed. He could feel the change, somehow—the chill now, after dark, and the beginning of leaf loss among the deciduous trees; the reddening of vine maples and yellowing of birch and aspen trees; the ripening of first acorns on the burly white oak trees in meadows; the first salmon and steelhead returning to their native streams; the male deer and elk growing restless and testy with each other. From his perch in the afternoon sun, he could hear the clash of their antlers like faraway swords.

Driven by another inchoate feeling, he sought out his mother and sister, and for two days, all was as it had been in the beginning—his mother bringing food to their den, Martin and his sister chasing each other comically, the three of them curling up for naps. More than once, Martin caught a faint and final wisp of the smell of his brothers and remembered them curled in the dark of their natal burrow. But early one evening, as he and his sister and their mother filed out of the burrow for an early evening hunt, they went one way and Martin another; and they would not see each other again for a very long time.

25

THE FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL
at Zigzag High is always officially three days after Labor Day, but freshmen with athletic aspirations were required to register early for physicals and interviews with coaches and team captains, so at ten in the morning on the first day of September, Dave was waiting nervously by the back door of the gym amid a remarkable gaggle of boys and girls, only a few of whom he even vaguely knew. More evidence, says Moon quietly to Dave, that there are a lot of people living out in the woods about whom we do not know a thing.

Not that you would know them anyways if they lived in town, says Dave.

Town? says Moon. What town? Is the Zag a town? A wide place in the road with a store and a gas station is a town now? Did I miss the meeting at which the Zag was christened a town? I’ll tell my folks next time they’re home.

Moon has been persuaded to register for a sports physical, but he has yet to choose a sport. He says he will feel it out as the day goes along. He says he will listen to each coach and each team captain and see if there’s a place where their agendas meet his. He says you can tell a lot about coaches and captains by the way they explain what it is they want. He says that there are all sorts of ways they talk about what they want, and you have to listen carefully as if they are speaking in code, which basically they are. The coaches and captains who dwell on glorious victories over bitter rivals are interested in war. The coaches and captains who talk about each member of the team rising to his or her best self are interested in weight lifting. The coaches and captains who talk about the team as a family are the sort of people who will cut you from the team without the slightest hesitation or compunction if you get hurt. You have to listen carefully before committing yourself to things, Dave, says Moon. You have to tread very cautiously in water this deep.

Isn’t that a mixed metaphor? asks Dave.

I think you are committing to running without knowing anything about the people you will be running with or who will be telling you where and when to run and in what direction, says Moon. Is that wise? Is that the approach of a sensible man?

Are we men? asks Dave. At fourteen?

I’m serious, Dave.

Moon, says Dave, smiling, I am going to try out for the cross-country team, and I hope I make it, and that’s that. If I make it, great. If not, I’ll run on my own. I like running, and I am no good at any other sport. Like you.

It turned out that the cross-country team had three captains—two seniors and a sophomore who was so clearly the best on the team that there was no way not to make him a captain. To Dave’s relief, all three of the runners and the coach seemed relaxed and honest and direct folks; secretly, he had been worried that Moon was right and that the captains and coach would be grim martinets or screamers. The seniors talked about summer training, academic expectations, and how the team mixed and matched for travel slots during the actual season, depending on performance and attendance and health. The coach talked about how the team was really a collection of individuals who ideally supported each other but were in the end responsible for their own training; his role was only to help runners train, choose the best for meets, and make sure everyone got the same chances and opportunities. It’s a loose team, and you are on your own together, is the best way I can explain it, he said. We are not much like the other teams here, with organized practices and such. We just stretch and run and then stretch. Sometimes we have meals together. I drive the bus. If your grades sink below a B, you’re off the team. If you miss school for disciplinary reasons, you’re off the team. If you fight or curse at anyone, you’re off the team. Otherwise you’re on the team. You freshmen might not make the traveling squad, but you’re on the team. You get your uniforms at the end of the first week of running, if you make it that far. Once you get your uniform, only you can take it away from you. Questions?

The sophomore spoke last. He was a tall thin boy with a ponytail that hung to his waist, and he was barefoot and shirtless. Dave could see each detail of each rib on his chest. He looked like he might have about an eighth of an ounce of fat on him, or less. He spoke quietly. He said that running was an ancient human craft, and we ought to honor and celebrate such a gift. He said he would be at the back door of the gym every afternoon at three o’clock, starting today, and that anyone who wanted to run with him was welcome to do so, for as long or short as they wanted. He said it would be an honor to run with anyone who wanted to run with him, because running was memory and meditation and fitness and witness, and those were good things to achieve collectively.

Even the kids who usually sniggered at talk like this did not snigger, partly because the sophomore was one of the best three runners in the state already and partly because of the sheer calm dignity with which he said his piece. You’d feel like a heel laughing at a guy like that, as Dave said later to his dad. He was speaking right from his heart without any fuss and bother. He wasn’t selling anything or showing you how cool he was or anything like that. You got the sense that this is exactly who he is, no more and no less.

Alluring, isn’t it? said his dad. That’s the final frontier for all of us. To take off as many masks as you can pry off and just be you. Was that the end of the tryouts?

Yep, said Dave. I passed my physical, and I’ll show up for the run at three o’clock and see if I am really in shape or not.

What sport did Moon choose?

Basketball.

Isn’t basketball in the winter?

That’s why Moon chose it. He says he gets to say he’s trying out for basketball, but he doesn’t actually have to do anything. He says he picked basketball because it’s a metaphysical idea for the next three months.

Unusual boy, your boy Moon.

I’ll say.

Do his parents know he chose basketball?

He says he will inform them by all modern means of electronic contact tomorrow. His mom’s in Russia and his dad’s in Kuwait.

Unusual boy, your boy Moon.

I’ll say.

Kuwait?

Kuwait.

I’ve been in Kuwait.

Your turn for the dishes, Jack, said Dave’s mom, and Dave’s dad said, your wish is my command, madam, and he extended his hand to Maria and said won’t you join me, young lady? And she said I accept your invitation, frog king, and everyone cracked up, and that was that, but later Dave looked up Kuwait in his atlas and wondered.

26

THE THING ABOUT ANIMALS,
says the trapper, sitting by the fire and ostensibly talking to Dave but pitching his voice loud enough so Miss Moss could hear him in the kitchen, is that we totally take them for granted, and we arbitrarily divide them into categories that don’t actually apply, like domestic and wild. The animals we think are tame would mostly happily escape their prisons given the chance, and the ones who are not fenced in are, in my experience, cautiously interested in human beings. And
we
are wild animals too, of course. We forget that. We’re just mammals with attitude. In a lot of ways our skills pale before their skills, and in a lot of ways we are terrible at fitting into our environmental niche. Why we achieved this dominance is sometimes a mystery to me, and a dangerous dominance it is too. The whole point of
our
evolution, it seems to me, is for us to find a way to fit back into the world as it is, rather than try to remake the world to fit us, but not everybody thinks like me.

And a good thing too, or we would all be philosophizing by the fire and keeping Dave from doing his work, said Miss Moss’s voice, wandering out of the kitchen by itself.

Mr. Douglas grinned and got up and left money for his milk shake on the counter and said good-bye to Dave and Miss Moss.

I’m off to the woods for a while now, Miss Moss, he added, but I will be by in October to outfit for the season.

It will be a pleasure to see you when you are back, said Miss Moss, coming out of the kitchen to shake hands. It seemed to Dave that they shook hands very slightly longer than people usually shake hands, but there’s only so much you can read into how long people shake hands, and Miss Moss’s hand was a little moist from doing the dishes, anyway, so maybe that’s why their hands stuck together that extra couple of seconds. Probably that was it.

*   *   *

Martin sees the trapper leave Miss Moss’s store. Martin is high in a beech tree behind the store, staring down at the jumbled welter of stuff where Dave found his trap. Martin watches Dave wander among the stuff; today, Miss Moss has asked Dave to begin
the Count,
as she says.

Long past time for someone to know what’s out there and what’s useful and what’s not so we can sell the former and recycle or scrap the latter, she says. You would think the proprietor of the store would know what’s out there, but you would be wrong. The proprietor, in her defense, bought the store with the clearing already almost full of Stuff, and she has not had time or, to be honest, inclination to conduct proper inventory, whereas she was trying to keep body and soul together and the business extant and the wolf from the door.

When did you buy the store? asks Dave.

Many moons ago.

Your folks owned the store?

No, no, says Miss Moss, recovering herself from some sort of reverie. I bought it from the sweetest couple, Mr. and Mrs. Robinson—Alton and Alicia Robinson—just the nicest friendliest gentlest people in the history of the universe. They had owned it for fifty years and they were getting kind of worn and weary, as Mr. R. said. You know them, don’t you? They’re the old couple with that little old black Ford Falcon car. They go everywhere in that car and they never go anywhere without each other. They only travel as two. They live out of town a ways in the woods. I keep telling them they ought to move down into the city away from the ice and snow, but they’ll never leave the mountain. Now
those
two people are mountain people from the old days of mountain people. I doubt they have been down to the city more than three times in their whole lives. Both of them were born up here and schooled here and worked here all those years and never wanted to live anywhere else. You see them here and there in that little old car. I bet that car is fifty years old too. You wouldn’t believe a little old regular car like that could survive this long on the mountain, but you would be wrong there. I bet that car has half a million miles on it. I kid you not. They sold me the store for a price slightly below what it was worth, I thought. And then they worked for me for thirty days, the two of them together, so I would understand all the little quirks and corners of the business, who could be trusted and who couldn’t and who drank a little and who would deliver supplies when he said he would, that sort of thing. The sweetest gentlest people ever, the Robinsons. They must be ninety years old or more. No one knows how old they are. I don’t think they know how old they are. They might be two hundred years old for all anyone knows. Mr. Robinson in particular likes to play with people’s heads that way and sometimes he says he knew Joel Palmer before he walked over the mountain.
That Joel Palmer,
says Mr. Robinson,
he was a wild kid, wore through a pair of shoes every week, his poor mother was in here buying shoes regular as rain
. Old Mr. Robinson, what a lovely man, and Mrs. R. is twice as so. You’ll see them go by in that Falcon sometimes, going about eight miles an hour. You can identify their car by the sound—it sounds like a bicycle with baseball cards in the spokes, pupupupupupupup.
We are in no particular hurry
, says Mr. Robinson,
and this way we don’t use hardly a drop of gasoline. We only use the gasoline going up the mountain, and we just coast down
.