Mink River: A Novel (40 page)

10.

Dawn on the mountain is bright and silent. The colors are white and blue. Everything has a shining edge to it. Billy sits against an enormous ice-rimed rock that looks like a boat with spars and mizzenmast and yardarm and everything. He boils water for coffee. For three days there has been nothing but ice and sky. No trees or bushes or flowers or even a sturdy nutty little mat of plants hiding from the wind. Not even lichen or moss. Ungreen, disgreen, greennot. There is white and there is blue. The primary colors. Blue made white and white melted to allow all the others. That’s how it must have happened. He and Cedar had made their way through green and blue, up through those last scraggly junipers and fingery asters, and yellow, those last tough little butterflies, into long hours of dust and ash, slogging through it like brown and gray snow, and then up into the ice fields, as high as they could get, and they have wandered and poked, searched and squinted, for days. Now Cedar checks through their equipment and plots the day. You start here and I start there, he says. Flare if there’s a problem. We should stay together but our time grows short. I’ll take the upper and you take this lower stretch. First priority, caves. If we find likely candidates, flare the other guy. Second goal: anything unusual, bones, fauna, petroglyphs. Utmost caution. Helmets. Walking sticks. Matches. Sunglasses. Ice axes. Flashlights. Headlamps. First-aid kits. Camera. Film for camera. A photographic record of phenomena is just as good as or better than eyewitness accounts. Flare at noon to attest safety. No time to meet for lunch. I calculate that we will have nine hours maximum for light and we had better make the most of them. More coffee? We can leave the fire banked. We’ll want it this evening. Ready? Ready. Stay calm. Don’t be a hero. This is great. This is fun. Can you believe this is happening? Me neither. Who would have thunk it? All these years. Ready? Ready. Flare at noon. Flare if any trouble whatsoever. Camera loaded. Deep breath. Let’s go.

11.

Billy in the kingdom of the ice. He picks his way carefully and cautiously, angling northwest; Cedar went northeast. Ceremonial handshake as they parted. My oldest and dearest friend. Hope to see him again. Born from the rush of the river. Rushes, Moses. Where has the time gone? Eternity is in love with the productions of time. Blake. Time in its motley colors. It has color as well as speed and pace. Of course there are blue times and gray times, black times and golden times, times of red rage, time with russet edges, etc. Time held me green and dying though I sang in my chains like the sea. Dylan Thomas. Should write this down. Be a great project. Measure color spectra over time duration in coordination with perception of same. Owen can make a machine. Also examine perceived color of time in concert with reported emotional state: nostalgia, sentimentality, melancholy, romance, frustration, etc. Public Work. Imagine the report! Colored filters, film spools. Spoor of time.

This line of thought reminds him what he is supposed to be looking for and just as he realizes this, he sees, by heavens, a cave, the slice of its opening hidden so exquisitely from view by ice and stone that only someone standing right here, at exactly this angle, slightly below and to the west of it, can see how that lip of rimed rock is essentially a door, permanently flung open. He clambers up carefully and cautiously, using his stick, making sure of every step. The opening is essentially exactly his size, tall and thin. He turns on his headlamp. Thinks about firing a flare for Cedar but his curiosity is electric and insistent. He steps inside. His pack clunks against the opening. The cave is dry and silent. Flashlight … on. The cave is deep and spacious. A thin ashen dust on the floor. No bones to be seen. No footprints that he can see. Animals at this elevation would be rare but not unknown—eagles, marmots, ravens, ptarmigan.

You think so? says a voice from the sifting darkness at the end of the cave. I don’t think so.

Billy is so startled he actually jumps, his pack jingling, and cracks his helmet against the roof of the cave.

Cedar? he says.

No.

Who are you?

A
very
good question.

Silence. Billy can hear his own heart thammering and thrummering. He suddenly has to pee. This is
not
happening, he thinks. His mind is all scrambly. How could there be a
person
in a cave that seemed so remote no human being had ever in a million years even laid eyes on the
door
?

Another excellent question, says the voice.

How can you
hear
me?

Don’t be afraid, says the voice.

How did you get here?

A
third
excellent question.

Is this a dream? Am I dead?

You’re not dreaming, technically, and you’re not dead, yet, says the voice. But we need to talk about that. There are some things we need to talk about, so here I am. I have been sent, that’s probably the best way to explain it. Why don’t you sit down and we can get started? Don’t worry about Cedar. He’s safe. He will come looking for you in about an hour, because you didn’t send up a flare when you found the cave, as you agreed to do, but that decision actually works out for the best, because it gives us a chance to talk. Would you like something to eat?

12.

The young she-bear is away up in the hills near the meadow where Maple Head and No Horses are holding each other and laughing and laughing. The bear had smelled them before she heard them and now she sees them, holding each other and rocking slightly like slender trees in great winds. The bear’s two cubs trundle along behind her in ragged parade order, fascinated by bees and berries. By now the cubs have names in the dark tongue of bears. The smallest is called smallest and the largest is called eats snakes. These are their very first names. Bears wear many names over the course of their lives, sometimes carrying several at once. Names having to do with lust are forbidden by ancient custom. There have been bears in these hills for four million years. Bears remember everything having to do with bears. Bears love eating more than remembering stories about bears but it is a near thing. One time a small bear killed a wolverine in an argument about an elk calf and that story was told for seven thousand years, mothers telling it to their cubs in the cold dark places where they prepared to sleep through the winter. There are stories of white bears and blue bears and bears with stars and moons on their chests. There are stories of bears who swam in the sea and bears who could learn the languages of other animals and a bear who could climb even the thinnest trees even when she was very old. There was a bear who killed a whale trapped at low tide in the mouth of the river, that was a story told for many years, and a bear who would eat only fawns, and a bear who would eat only fish, and a bear who destroyed any horse he ever found, and a bear born without rear legs who lived on berries and nuts and never left the meadow where he was born, and bears who climbed trees to eat the eggs of eagles, and a bear who clambered onto a log in the river just to see what would happen and the river carried him out through the surf and he went away into the sea and was never seen again. That is the story of the bear who went into the sun, a story every bear hears while young. Bears do not tell stories about animals other than bears. By ancient custom all stories about other animals are told through the manner in which they affect the lives of bears. So that cougars, for example, who are called deereaters in the dark tongue of bears, figure greatly in the stories of bears, but always through stories of bears who fought them, or outwitted them, or tricked them into leaping on dark bushes they had mistaken for bears, or ate their tails, or lost an eye to their razor fingers, or imitated their yowling so successfully that they would come bounding toward romance and find instead a bee’s nest, which is a story that happened to a bear who once lived not far from where Maple Head and No Horses are still laughing at the ouzel, who is still wondering what to make of this new liquid noise in the world.

13.

What
are you? says Worried Man.

Incredibly, a
fourth
excellent question, says the voice. And you didn’t say you wanted something to eat, so let us turn to the matters at hand. First of all, as you may suspect, I have awkward news.

Are you an angel?

Technically, no, says the voice. And I am not here to tell you that you are dead, or about to die. You are
not
about to die. Let’s get that out of the way. People are always so paranoid about death. However, you will be entering the seventh stage very soon.

What?

I have been sent to commend your efforts thus far, says the voice. Your kindness, especially—
very
impressive. Plaudits, high marks. If this was a test you would have scored very well. My sincere congratulations. Believe me, not everyone earns plaudits. I would applaud if I could do so. And your humor especially really helped your grade. Kindness is first, of course, but you’d be surprised how much humor weighs. Also curiosity. If only people knew. Although perhaps they do.

Billy sits. His pack jingles. A puff of ancient dust arises and hangs in the air for an instant like incense.

You sound … Welsh, says Billy.

No no, says the voice. Much as I admire the Welsh. A tough little people. Mountain fastnesses. No empire will ever conquer the Welsh. I shouldn’t tell you that, but it’s probably evident to any sensible observer after many thousands of years. But we digress. I have been sent to tell you that you are about to have a massive stroke, which will damage your body permanently, as it were, but leave you lucid, if speechless. In short you keep your head but lose your voice and body. This will seem like a blow but it’s a gift. I am afraid I cannot explain further. Your task in your time remaining is to discover the nature and character of the gift, and then use it to the best of your considerable ability.

How much time will I have left?

No no, says the voice, I am not authorized to tell you that sort of thing, and indeed I have no idea. I am a … messenger. Not everyone is allowed a messenger before the seventh stage. I am not sure you understand what a compliment this is. There are only a few messengers. I can understand you are rattled by the message, but really, as you people say, it could be worse. I could be delivering the message that you have
completed
the seventh stage. Not many people get that message either. One did in your town recently, a woman. A great compliment too, that message. Very few people are applauded at the end of the race, as it were. It’s hard to explain.

Wouldn’t it be easier, says Billy, if I just died now? I mean, my family will have to care for me, and that will be such hard work. I’m sure you can empathize. I wouldn’t want to inflict that on them. I think I’d rather die now. Or maybe you can give me a couple of weeks to wrap up my affairs? Or a month? A month would be great. I can get a
lot
done in a month. You’d be surprised. But less is good. Less is fine. I am good with less. Three weeks? That’s a good compromise. I say four, you say two, meet you in the middle.

When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, says the voice, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. A man from Britain said that, very pithy man he was, too. Still is. It’s hard to explain. But we digress. I am not authorized to negotiate, and I have another message to deliver. Your daughter has been lifted from a great darkness. There is a very great work before her. So those are the two messages I have been sent to deliver. Our time is finished. Are you ready?

Not at all, says Worried Man.

Would you like a moment to prepare?

Can I ask a question?

Maybe one.

What about time? What is it, where is it, can it be found?

That’s three questions. Four, really.

Please? I spent years on this. Most of my life.

Is maith an scealai an aimsir
, time is a storyteller, says the voice, isn’t that what your son-in-law says? He is wiser than he knows, that young man. But time is more than a storyteller. Storytellers are something else altogether. I am not authorized to explain further. It’s impossible to explain. Languages are not yet equipped. They have so much more to learn. Languages will … expand. There will come a time when languages are sentient themselves. I suppose I shouldn’t say these things but I must say it is a pleasure to
use
language. Such a supple and musical device. I can see why you enjoy it so. But we digress. It’s time.

I have an idea, says Billy. Why don’t we discuss this? We are both intelligent beings, if being is the right word for you, and I think I have a workable solution to our dilemma. You have been sent to deliver a message. I have come here on a mission, as it were. But my mission is unfinished, and as you say yourself I am granted a messenger out of respect, let’s say, for previous effort. So what say we compromise? I suggest a thorough but workable paralysis, one that pushes me to the seventh stage, as you say, but leaves me capable of … research.

I am not …

Yes, authorized, I know. But how about paralysis only of the lower body?

I cannot think that would meet the terms of the assignment, says the voice.