Martin Marten (9781466843691) (23 page)

Mrs. Simmons had a number of unusual convictions about life, one of them being that no person of sense would drink water from a faucet or hose or tap, because who knows what is inside those pipes and what mutant germs are living in there having sex, and besides,
snakes
can get in there, you know, that has
happened
. So Mrs. Simmons, when thirsty, drank from the clear cold water that the Lord Himself Bless Jesus provided us poor creatures of the soil, which is to say creeks and springs and rivulets and even sometimes the river when it was not gray with snowmelt in the late spring. So it was that at the end of her two hours today, Mrs. Simmons does kneel by the little friendly creek that marks the edge of the Unabled Lady’s yard, and she leans down to slake her thirst, having earned refreshment ten times over by the sweat of her brow and the honesty of her labors and the kindness of her heart, and something breaks inside her chest, and all the parts that have for the last sixty years worked relatively fine with only the occasional soreness and pain do now stutter and altogether halt, and Mrs. Simmons leans ever so slowly down and down into the creek, and her nose touches the water, and then her lips, still pursed to accept the clear cold water that the Lord Himself Bless Jesus provides, and then ever so slowly the rest of her face, and then her head, and then her neck and the first few inches of her chest and shoulders, but then old gravity calls a halt to the proceedings, and there, with her face and head beneath the surface of the creek and her eyes open and amazed at what they saw last in this life, rests what used to be Mrs. Simmons. Old weary has come at last.

*   *   *

The Unabled Lady did not notice Mrs. Simmons in the creek for quite a while, being absorbed in a piece of music at the piano that might under the proper circumstances grow into something like an oratorio; also she and Mrs. Simmons were quite comfortable with the idea that each could quietly do her work in another room without having to be constantly bantering and nattering about nothing and its second cousin, as Mrs. Simmons said. So it was twenty or thirty minutes before the Unabled Lady looked up and checked the time and did not see Mrs. Simmons in the kitchen or hear her in the bathroom or hear the squeak of windows being cleaned or hear her humming in the laundry room. Odd, she thought, and she wheeled away from the piano to the window to see if Mrs. S. was puttering in the garden, though it seemed early for that yet, this high on the mountain. And then she saw Mrs. S. kneeling by the creek, and she knew.

She was so
still
, as she told the policeman later. She was
never
still.

The Unabled Lady had a cell phone; sure she did. Who would be without a cell phone these days, especially in her situation? Of course she had a cell phone. But, she slowly realized, the phone was in Mrs. Simmons’s right-hand apron pocket. Mrs. Simmons was in the habit of calling her oldest daughter when she was finishing a shift, just to rest that blessed child’s mind about her ancient toothless thoughtless mother, and often she would make this call outdoors, partly for the ostensibly better cell reception and partly so as not to disturb the Unabled Lady at the piano.

So, then.

Listen, we have all read epic adventure stories. We have read them all our lives and had them read to us, and we have or will read them to our children and very probably will have them read to us again when we are near the end and old weary is reaching for us also. But consider how climbing a mountain, or grappling with a bucking boat or bronco, or wielding a sword or wand or gamma gun, is a lot easier when you have legs and feet under you for general balance, and then consider that the Unabled Lady does not have any legs and feet anymore for reasons having to do with cocktails and cocaine and cars and then a slow dying of nerves in the body, and now she needs to get from the house all the way up a steep uneven rocky trail not six inches wide, lined with dense fern and bramble and currant and snowberry, with not one but two fallen fir trees across the trail, each one fully three feet in diameter, before she can reach Mrs. Simmons’s right-hand apron pocket and call for help. Consider the next hour and four minutes—for it will take the Unabled Lady an hour and four minutes to traverse the hundred yards between the moment she sits in the window, steeling herself, to the moment when ever so gently she wraps her arms around Mrs. Simmons and pulls her from the creek and folds Mrs. Simmons onto a little bed of moss on the bank and then calls the police and then collapses exhausted and sobbing next to Mrs. Simmons in such a way that their faces are both looking up at the sweet wild blue of the sky—as one of the greatest epic and courageous adventures of all time. Consider what it might feel like to lower yourself out of your protective chair and down onto the moist earth, so recently covered with snow and remembering the cold wet of it yet, and scrabble and roll and haul yourself up a wet rocky tiny trail, your hips and stumps being rubbed raw by stones and thorns, your shoulders burning, your breasts scratched mercilessly by the bark of the fallen trees, your jacket caught and held by branches, your shirt torn and stained. Consider what it might be like to stop, exhausted and sobbing, after making it over the first fallen fir and having to pee so badly from shock and fear and despair that you just do, right there, into the fir duff, and then you crawl on up the trail, dreading the next fallen tree. Consider what it might be like to slip and lose your balance as you haul yourself over the second moist tree and fall heavily on your right side in such a way that your right hand, your strong hand on the piano, is caught under you in your fall and is twisted in such a way that you scream in pain. Consider the desperate strength with which you grasp the body of your friend around the middle and yank with all your might and nothing much happens, for Mrs. Simmons was a substantial woman and you are not, until you scream with rage and loss and haul her bodily out of the creek and fall backwards with her onto the mossy bank. Consider how you weep from the bottom of your soul as you brush her hair away from her sweet lined stern face and fold her long thin arms over her flat chest and reach into her pocket for the cell phone and make the call and talk to the dispatcher and give him directions and then lie down next to Mrs. Simmons, so close that your shoulders touch, and stare at the sweet wild blue of the sky and the way that all the fingers of all the branches are webbed and woven, all reaching for each other all the time. Consider that.

46

MARTIN SAW ALL THIS.
He saw Mrs. Simmons bend to drink from the creek and never stop. He saw the Unabled Lady crawl sobbing from the house to Mrs. Simmons and then lie there also in the moss staring at the sky, the two women dripping and silent. He saw the police car arriving and the policemen running and the radio blaring and the emergency vehicles later. By then it was dusk and when everyone was gone he slipped back into the woods to hunt, for he was very hungry, and in May there were new young things and many eggs to eat for a marten who knew where to look.

In the morning he was again possessed by the urge to ramble widely; it was almost as if some force was steering him through the woods in search of something he did not know. He was restless and annoyed and uncharacteristically testy, and twice he attacked tiny birds he would ordinarily have ignored. All day he slipped through the woods, a shadow in the canopy, a dark rumor among the squirrels, who feared a marten even more than owls and hawks, for raptors could miss a strike and then veer away disgruntled, but martens rarely abandoned a chase. Had the squirrels known it, this relentless pursuit was a mark of the whole mustelid family, who, once launched on a project, rarely gave it up, be it battle or burrow. From the smallest weasel at one end of the clan to the bearlike wolverine at the top, the mustelids were generally musky, intent, ferocious at times, much hunted for their dense fur, and famed in lore and legend for their intelligence, their long memories, and their skill as hunters. Even the anomalous members of the family, like skunks, were noted for their combative temper (as many a whimpering and stinking dog could attest), and those of a more playful mien, like otters, were ferocious underwater when chasing their favorite food and had no particular enemies among the larger predators, except for human animals. Martin had only once in his life seen an otter even attacked by another animal, and that had not gone well for the bobcat, which leapt away in pain and shock after being raked across the face by the otter’s claws. Martin had drawn two lessons from that fight: be even more cautious of otters, who were bigger than he was, and an otter away from water is out of his or her element and thus subject to attack.

In the afternoon he found himself up near timberline, and he ranged through the thin forest with a fidgety unease, although his senses were sharp. This high and dry on the mountain, it was a sea of different scents than down in the thicker woods of firs and cedars, and he could smell juniper and hemlock, woodrushes and violets, windflowers and rock cress, and even currants and serviceberry. Currants were a favorite fruit of his, and he stopped for a moment to nose through the currant bushes to see how far they were from fruit—and that is when he saw her.

*   *   *

At exactly the same elevation at exactly the same moment at exactly the other side of the mountain, Mr. Douglas reaches up and helps Miss Moss descend from Edwin’s back—which is, as Mr. Douglas has often said, more like the deck of a tall ship than it is the spinal segment of a member of the equine family. Miss Moss then helped unpack the duffel bag that Mr. Douglas had slung over Edwin’s capacious rear parts. From the bag, she drew, as if from an inexhaustible vault of treasures, a bottle of cold wine, two sandwiches, two enormous carrots roughly the size of small baseball bats, and a candy bar so old that the brand name of the bar and the company that made it were utterly obscured.

How old exactly, said Miss Moss, is this candy bar?

My grandmother gave it to me when I graduated from high school, said Mr. Douglas. I have been saving it for a special occasion.

Right about now would be a good time to ask her, thought Edwin, glaring at Mr. Douglas.

Edwin, my friend, I am going to borrow this blanket from you, if you don’t mind, said Mr. Douglas, sliding the blanket off and snapping it twice before draping it over a fallen log. Don’t glare at me like that. It’s not that cold, and you have plenty of fur.

It’s not the blanket, thought Edwin. Look at the poor girl. She’s rattled. Either give her some wine or ask the question, for heavens’ sake. The one complaint I have about you after all these years is that sometimes you hesitate a beat too long to do things. Sometimes you have to just jump into the moment and logic be damned. This is one of those moments, my friend. If you don’t do something in the next minute, I will kick you from here to Mount Jefferson.

Ginny, listen, said Mr. Douglas. I don’t know how to dance around this anymore. I think of you all day and night. I love your honesty and humor and hard work. I love talking to you and listening to you. I trust you. I’d like to be your partner in everything we do. I think I could be the best trustiest lovingest partner you could ever have.

In the store?

Ginny, really, listen. I am trying to say that, I, you, could, we could, I think, that we, I don’t know how to say this.

I am going to kick you
past
Mount Jefferson, thought Edwin. I am going to kick you all the way to California.

Let me try to say it, then, said Miss Moss. The woman is always supposed to wait patiently and sweetly, but I am neither patient nor sweet. I love you too, Richard David Douglas. I love your company, and I trust your heart. But I don’t want to get married. Every marriage I have ever seen was a sort of gentle or awful jail bound by expectations and assumptions. It seems silly at best and cruel at worst. The wedding is performance art, the honeymoon is a pretense of dewy intimacy, and the only real benefit is a tax break. I don’t want a tax break. I want you. Why can’t we be married without being married?

Maybe I will kick
her
to California, thought Edwin.

Even the birds in the clearing paused to hear what was coming next.

Well, said Mr. Douglas slowly, because I don’t want to be married without being married. I want to be married to you and only you the rest of my life, if at all possible. It matters a great deal to me to be married. There’s something about saying yes to each other boldly and publicly that seems wild and brave to me. I would invite the whole world to our wedding if I could—animal, vegetable, and mineral.

Mineral? thought Edwin. There’ll be rocks at the wedding? Where would they sit?

Would you like a sandwich? asked Miss Moss.

I would not like a sandwich, said Mr. Douglas, and both Edwin and Miss Moss saw something in his face they had never seen before, some complex wrangle of pain and humor and anger and affection and respect and sadness that washed over his face like wind shivers a lake. I would
not
like a sandwich, he said again, and he held out his hand to help Miss Moss up off the log, and she took his hand and stepped toward him, perhaps to kiss him, but he bent and picked up the blanket and put it back on Edwin. She stepped back, her face a mask, and they packed up the duffel bag again and rode home.

47

FOR NEARLY THE ENTIRE
academic year now, Dave had tried and tried and tried to talk easily and naturally and comfortably and unconcernedly to girls, to no avail. He tried to be casual. He tried to be flippant. He tried to just engage them in normal conversation as if they were actual human beings. He tried to pretend they were guys and therefore not alluring and causing him to mumble and stammer. He tried being dismissive. He tried being mysterious. He tried being attentive and solicitous. He tried ignoring them altogether. But none of this worked, and every single day, every single class, every single minute in the tidal surge in the hallways as he was carried upstream and down by the crowd, he was entranced and awkward and bumbling and a complete idiot with girls—and not just the girls he found attractive, either, but with girls he was not attracted to
at all
. He was a total stammering idiot with them too, which was just
dispiriting
, as he said to Moon.