Martin Marten (9781466843691) (30 page)

Where is there? asked Moon’s father. And when? I am off to Swaziland, and I believe my wife is headed to Tasmania.

The when is October 4, and the where is To Be Determined, said Mr. Douglas. Miss Moss is in charge of where, and some observers think that she may well announce the where on the morning of October 4.
Some
observers think this is nuts, but
some
observers are not in charge of the Ceremony.
Some
observers think the Ceremony ought to be held on the rock in the river where the reason for the Ceremony was hatched, but this idea did not get past initial supervisory review and has not been accepted for appeal as yet.

58

FOR LOUIS,
the long hot days of September were a series of terrific battles, one after another, with a series of challengers, each of whom was large, furious, covetous of the possibilities of congress with Louis’s female companions, and majorly muscled. Some days he was involved in two battles lasting an hour or more each, and there was a three-battle day which, for a while, late in the last afternoon, he did not think he would survive. But he won that battle, and he won the others. By now, after years of battles, he was a master at judging his opponent and using his experience to unsettle the opposition’s intent. Young challengers, for example, who were newly grown into their muscle and power and proud of their heft and size, could be worn down by their own energy, so to speak; the trick was to let them charge you in all their glorious fury, accept the charge, but decline to hold your ground. Louis would allow them to push him halfway across the battlefield in clouds of dust before shaking them off and resetting the stage for another furious charge from the young prince. After an hour of shoving Louis from place to place, even the strongest young buck was exhausted, at which point Louis would suddenly blaze up and charge, irresistibly. In the first years of his chieftaincy, he would lose his temper and sometimes gore an opponent or trample a fallen foe, but experience had taught him not only patience but a sort of serenity. It was enough to win the battle, and the winner did not, in Louis’s view, have to actually vanquish a foe—just defeat and dishearten him.

But this year he was nearly as exhausted as the young bucks he defeated, and when an older and more experienced challenger fought him, he won now by wile and no longer by strength. Twice he defeated a veteran challenger by topographical maneuver—once driving a foe into toppling off a small ledge, once trapping a challenger in a muddy dingle with poor footing. Once he was so desperate and weary that he calculated his final charge in such a manner as to drive his opponent into a copse of trees, where the challenger damaged a hoof. And the battle he had survived this third afternoon, the one that left him so exhausted that he could not stand, was the first in his whole life in which he had consciously, deliberately, calculatedly done his best to blind his opponent, done his best to jam the razor edge of his antler into another elk’s eye, to gore a fellow animal in such a way as to cripple it, and he had tried to do this not once but twice, succeeding the second time and causing his opponent to retreat with his shredded eye dribbling down the side of his face.

We are so sure that we know what animals do not feel. We measure their brains and record their behaviors and analyze their communication and map their sensory apparatus, and we conclude they do not feel regret, shame, the grit of mortality on the tongue. Perhaps we are right to be sure; perhaps they are not reflective and meditative in the ways we are; perhaps they cannot think and feel as we do; but then again perhaps
we
cannot think and feel as
they
do, and perhaps they are meditative and reflective in ways we cannot understand. Perhaps Louis, wearier than he had ever been in a long and tumultuous career, feels sad and proud at once that he was what he was, and this is now ending. Perhaps he feels a rush of affection and loss and pain for his paramours and their children grown and new, with whom he must soon part and see them gathered under another chieftain; perhaps, as he finally lifts his head to stare out at the brilliant meadow where so many of his battles were fought, he feels some sort of dark joy that the end of his story is nigh and weariness at an end.

*   *   *

As he wanted to cover a good deal of the mountain, Mr. Douglas had boarded Edwin that morning; trapping season for marten opened in five weeks, and he wanted to scout the possibilities as thoroughly as he could. The season for marten was again the first day of November through the last day of January, and if he got off to a good start in the first two weeks of November, he could then focus on gray fox, mink, and raccoon, all of which were trappable beginning in mid-November and closing in March; bobcat, on which he also wanted to concentrate this winter, were December through February. The three-month red fox season opened in October, but Mr. Douglas calculated that (a) he would be occupied learning how to be Miss Moss’s … unhusband?, and (b) he had never seen a red fox on the mountain, although there were now vague reports of montane fox, a red fox particularly suited to alpine reaches. This was something to explore next year, he thought, as he and Edwin trotted upriver, both of them wary of Cosmas and his headlong bicycle. Once again he had concluded to leave the otters alone, even though otter pelts were worth more than a hundred dollars each; his sensible self had remonstrated with the rest of him on this matter, especially as he would now be welcoming Miss Moss into the financial chaos of Richard Douglas Incorporated, but he felt somehow that he and the otters had an understanding, and he could not bring himself to trap animals who spent glorious sunny days like this playing merrily on mudslides and careening hilariously into the river, not even bothering to hide as he and Edwin strolled by.

Marten and bobcat, though, would bring good money—the current price was over a hundred dollars per skin for both animals—and if he had a good year with them and filled in where he could with fox (twenty-five dollars each) mink (twenty dollars), and raccoon (ten dollars), plus the occasional coyote, if possible (thirty dollars, and the season was always open on the poor creatures—what did that say about human beings that no authority saw fit to give them a safe season?), he could post a very good year indeed—which, added to the miraculous situation with Miss Moss, would make for what Mr. Shapiro liked to call an
annus mirabilis
, a year of wonders.

He was just pondering where he would set for red fox next year when Edwin stopped suddenly, snorting uneasily.

What? said Mr. Douglas. This is a meadow. You and I know that we are looking for good marten runs, none of which entails a meadow.

Don’t you see the elk in the thicket? thought Edwin. Maybe I have been wrong to admire your sharp eye over the years.

Although … what’s that? said Mr. Douglas quietly. In the thicket. That’s not a lion. It’s big, though. Bigger than deer. Not a bear. Is that an elk? Why is it down? Let’s go see.

I think that’s the biggest elk I have ever seen, thought Edwin, and I am not happy about approaching an elk bigger than me. An elk that big will have serious antlers, and I do not have antlers, and you don’t carry a rifle, and we are screwed if there’s a misunderstanding. What if he thinks I am a very ugly elk and am challenging him? What then? It’s the rut, you know. Can’t you smell that? Smells dangerous to me. I think we should retreat forthwith, myself.

But Mr. Douglas gently urged him on, and they walked very slowly forward. Soon enough Mr. Douglas could see that the animal in the thicket was indeed a tremendous elk, but something was wrong with it. Was it sick? It should have exploded out of the thicket to flee or charge at this close range, but it lay there sick or exhausted or even wounded. His temper flared—had some idiot tried a potshot out of season? Archery season was finished, and rifle season didn’t open until October.

Maybe it was this spurt of anger that made him dismount and approach the elk—a dangerous idea under any circumstances, and more so with an animal of what appeared to be epic size. But Mr. Douglas was no fool; he was the sort of man whose experience soaks into his very being so that now when he was in the woods he made decisions calibrated by many thousands of hours of attentiveness and caution and respect and even reverence. And here, without consciously thinking about it, he knew that he and Edwin were safe and that the elk, incredibly powerful though it appeared to be, was not going to come roaring out of the thicket, hooves and antlers flashing like axes and knives.

On the other hand, he was not foolish enough to approach too closely or too abruptly, so he and Edwin stood together a few feet away, gaping at the animal’s war wounds. Welts, slices, cuts, one serious hole in the left shoulder; trickles of blood on chest and haunch; dusty from head to hoof; a powerful scent of sweat and musk and blood and thrashed vegetation; and a patent obvious bone weariness you could very nearly feel.

This one is close to death, thought Edwin, and Mr. Douglas nodded soberly. Of course Edwin was right and this was the rut, the season of epic battles among elk on the mountain. Mr. Douglas had forgotten about the rut, being so concentrated on planning his traplines. And here was inarguable proof of the awful price of the rut, the wounding and killing of those who went to war.

And something in him was moved, suddenly, by the utter exhaustion of the being in front of him. Such a king he must be or have been—and not only able in battle but an intelligent chieftain of his companions to have survived and flourished so. But here he was, helpless, curled in a thicket, a tremendous life very nearly at the end of its energies. Perhaps this was merely a lull, after which it would rise again and slowly be restored, but perhaps these were its last moments, and none of its own to witness, but only a quiet horse and a silent man.

Then Edwin walked forward and pushed through the scrim of the thicket and knelt down slowly alongside the elk and leaned in and rested his head upon the head of the elk, and for long minutes, all was still, and no being stirred, not the elk nor the horse nor the man nor insects and birds nor creatures in the dust and soil below. Mr. Douglas stood amazed, staring at the two massive beings before him; and then, as if by some subtle signal, the birds sang again, and insects whirred, and Edwin stood up, and the elk lifted his head and regarded them. As Edwin stepped gingerly out of the thicket, he looked at Mr. Douglas, and Mr. Douglas understood, and they turned and walked downhill together, Mr. Douglas not climbing aboard until they were back among the jungled firs. As they stepped beneath the trees, Mr. Douglas thought he heard a slight thrash and rustle behind them, as if a very large elk had arisen, but neither he nor Edwin turned around to look, and they went on, silent and thoughtful.

59

SCHOOL BEGAN ON THE NINTH DAY
of the ninth month of the calendar invented by a man for whom a crater was named on the moon. The first serious homework assignment in second grade was a one-page report on What You Did This Summer. Maria turned in a seven-page report with a cover made of cedar bark about mapping not only the topographical and zoological features of her “area of residence” but also a brief essay about the interesting possibilities of mapping emotional landscapes and finding ways to add story to maps—so that the truly useful map, as she wrote, would exhibit not only the readily evident physical aspects of a place, such as promontories and water features, but also local lore, notes on beings past and present, and something of the songs and story of that place as distinct from other places, even ones thought to be similar by the usual categorical measures, which are, of course, shallow and insufficient to the mapmaker who wishes to account a place in any kind of seriously layered way, rather than simply the topographical—or even worse, merely the concrete and macadam and cement ribbons we call roads and streets.

In fact, as Maria wrote, warming to the task, we miss a wonderful chance in cartography and mapmaking to discover, in the layered accounting of a place, more of it than we could in any other single endeavor; to “map” a place is essentially to try to tell its stories, and the creative mapmaker sees this as a remarkable opportunity to plumb and explore, to study not only spatial but verbal, oral, musical, spiritual, literary, tactile, climatological, geologic, dendritic, atmospheric, electric, criminal, political, theatrical, and other narratives. For narrative
preserved
is the bailiwick of the dedicated mapmaker, and her task and pleasure in that responsibility is today made all the more attractive and interesting by the advent of new technologies for showing and sharing the wealth of narratives that are to be found in all places, be they famous or ostensibly obscure—the latter being, of course, a silly and unfair label, better phrased as
not well mapped as yet
.

Maria’s teacher asked her to stay after school on Friday for a few moments so they could discuss her report. Maria, delighted to speak freely about all this—Dave pretended to be asleep whenever she spoke of narrative mapping—walked her teacher through the more complex three-dimensional aspects on her iPad, like flow function (showing river level and volume by season, correlated to snowpack depth on the mountain), selected animal population ebb and flow (the otters were particularly interesting when correlated with highway traffic patterns), and even a selection of recorded stories filterable by the teller’s gender and age. Female storytellers, Maria contended, were twice as likely to tell stories of a spiritual nature, defined broadly, than males, who were almost twice as likely to tell stories of adventure and misadventure than females—although, Maria had to admit, the control group here was small, and she had not been able to recruit stories from beings other than human beings.

The first time you see a person actually gape—open his or her mouth in astonishment, and (entranced or amazed or astounded or stunned or awed, whatever word you like) forget to close it again for a few lovely seconds—is a truly remarkable moment. It doesn’t get enough credit as an Incredible Life Moment. We are all over the Incredible Life Moments of birth and death, and kneeling down to ask for marriage, and the cold moment the word
divorce
first enters the kitchen, and sporting moments and moments of sudden violence and sexual moments, and moments of mass hysteria like elections and concerts, but the little extraordinary moments that are not little, those should be in the hall of fame too, yes? Like the moment you realize you just did work that was play to you. Or the moment you realize you aced a test because it was fun and you love the subject and it didn’t feel like a test at
all
. Or the moment when you wanted to reach for the bottle with every iota of your being, and you kept your hand still, clutching so tightly to the newspaper that you couldn’t get the ink off your fingers for two days. Or the moment someone you so wanted to say yes said, gently,
yes
.