The Followed Man (48 page)

Maybe he didn't hear a shot.
Though why not Jake, too? Was Jake being saved just because he was a
dog and didn't matter that much? "I cared very much for that
hound," he says to the vigi­lante. "In fact, I loved
that hound dearly." The pistol is at the small of the man's
back. "Why do you people do such dangerous things?" Luke
asks reasonably. "Don't you know the conse­quences? Why do
you take such risks?" He lowers the muzzle of the pistol and
fires downwards into the man's coccyx, the big bul­let traversing
down through bone, anus, prostate and the penile root. Lots of
writhing and screaming now, and lots of satisfaction: you have
sacrificed your innocent dog just because you want to punish a man.

Luke came out into tall beeches
on a minor ridge, breathing heavily, wet and shaking. Silence. The
sky was darkening quickly now, so that it was almost twilight among
the gray, skinlike trunks of the beeches. He almost called for Jake,
feeling the name, Jake, in his throat and lips. But that would be
stupid, a sign of panic. He rested, listening.

The other man must be listening
too, at least with his one good ear. There must be some place he
wanted to find, where he could rest and be safe. There would be no
reason now for defense, for rage or the desire to hate or kill his
pursuers. His guilt had taken all of that out of him and left him
empty, just an organism abhor­ring simple death. No matter what
he had done. He couldn't kill himself and that was that, so he moved
away, as well as he could, from nonexistence. No matter that he
didn't have a chance, that he wasn't a bear but only a man covered in
thin green chino, with bad teeth. Lester wouldn't think of his teeth.

When a helicopter came toward
you it went fluff, fluff, fluff, fluff, and when it left it sounded
more like a light plane. It went on over, looking for Lester.

Luke listened for Jake. The dog
couldn't help it; he was not re­sponsible for giving him this
pain, yet he felt anger toward him along with the impossible feeling
of the infinite value of the being that caused the anger.

"God damn it, Jake,"
he said. "Where are you?" The timing was all off; Jake
shouldn't be out in the woods now, but Jake couldn't know because he
hadn't the equipment to know. Luke knew that; his irritation was
anxious and foolish. How easy a drama it was to sentimentalize a dog.

Rain was coming. The sky,
visible only in leaf-enclosed patches, was now darker than the
saw-edged beech leaves and their smooth gray branches. Maybe the
coming rain would convince Jake to let up, or if it was heavy enough
erase the rabbit's scent.

He was a little lost,
disoriented because he couldn't place the sun in the sky. A cool
invasion of wind from the storm felt its way through the trees, and
his sweat was quickly not warm, just damp. Which side of this knoll
had he come from? Memory said there, from what he thought was north.
The storm came from the west, but in the woods the wind could sweep
and counter-sweep. The dark sky, though it must be moving, was a
solid tone of false night. Thunder began, a shake and a thud, valleys
echoing without giv­ing him a bearing. He moved with his memory
down through the trees that were here wild, unlike those around
houses, and couldn't be remembered from the side he hadn't seen in
coming. Too many burls and forked branches imitated each other. And
the levels of the woods moved their declinations around slopes so
that the world turned but not in his mind. He went down where he
really knew he hadn't climbed, the false compass of his mind more
powerful than logic. He could move and cover ground, so he moved,
wanting this to be the way home. He heard the gray noise of the rain
before the trees let it come through to him, and when it came,
gathered into dollops by the leaves, it was cold. This September
storm must be high, from a reservoir of ice.

Then he was at a steep
embankment, almost a cliff, but he didn't stop or try to find a way
around. Cherry and basswood branches were slippery in his hands as he
eased and slid his way down, step­ping occasionally on shiny
embedded stones. Green swamp grass in hummocks let him cross water
frothed by the rain. On the oth­er side he climbed a steep soft
bank among hemlocks, using their rough trunks as handholds. The rain
was solid and visible now and there was no dryness anywhere. All this
place was roofed, dark, a submarine cavern in which it seemed strange
that he could breathe. The water came into his boots with a naked
feeling, his socks liquid, the soaked leather of his boots flexible
as skin.

He couldn't stop going, though
he should wait and try to think. It was as though he would, if he
kept moving, come through something like a doorway out of the cold
swamp into the clear day he had left, his cabin there and Jake to
greet him. Or he might just pass out of all of it, back to anything
predictable. He should be back at his cabin now, right now, or in
some looming way it would be too late. George and Pillsbury might
stop by on their way around the mountain, and even that little thing
increased his worry. He couldn't stand to wonder what they would
think if they found his truck there but not him. It was ridiculous,
but still he crashed on, too careless of his footing, between trees
and boul­ders, the wind moving everything but rock, the thunder
so directly overhead he felt he was about to be hammered flat on an
anvil. He didn't know where he was or which way he was going; the
geo­detic map, green, brown and white, flickered there in his
mind, no doubt oriented wrong. There were too many small hills and
val­leys in the woods. Sooner or later he would have to come out
somewhere. He thought he might be near an old logging road that came
out by the two hunting cabins, but he might be a mile in another
direction.

He nearly fell over a ridge of
tilted ledge, but caught himself on sharp wet rock that numbed his
hands. Below him was a brook, but it couldn't be Zach Brook because
he had crossed too many ridges. It must be Carr Brook. It became Carr
Brook, the white water and rain-speckled pools not Zach Brook. Every
stone and flow of the dark water and the white rushes of it were
unfamiliar, elsewhere, in another valley, where he now was. It
flowed, accord­ing to the flickering map, more or less to the
east, where it met Zach Brook at a bridge. He could follow it down
until it met Zach Brook, then go up Zach Brook to his cabin, or take
the longer way by the road and come to the entrance to the farm. He
stood there, seeing Carr Brook, these rational processes going on in
his mind while the sky fell through the trees in gushes and whirls.
He was under water, as wet as if he had been submerged, scratched and
buffeted. It was like trying to think in the midst of battle.

Something big moved to his
right, soundless in all this sound. A gray shape; two shapes, one
darker and larger. Then the larger one leapt upward and outspread a
tail like a linen-white flag, as did the smaller one, and the tilting
flags flicked from one side to the other as the two deer flowed
bounding through the rain and were gone between and behind the trees.
They had been so close to him, he half-blind in the storm, that their
great hunch and starting of weight had made his pulse jump, with a
hesitation be­tween each throb of blood that seemed too long, and
made him short of breath. It was that, and the force and purity of
the wild lives escaping from him.

He went down the brook, which
rose steadily, every gulley in its banks now a tributary. The rain
came down his forehead and passed over his open eyes in a blur sharp
at its edges. His eyes cleared for a second at a blink, then were
blurred again. He tripped over a dead alder and fell to his knees,
the cloth sucking as he got up, a bent finger hurting. He asked
himself to slow down, even to wait for a lull in the rain, but
whatever made him run said hurry, hurry, be there right now, and
there was such a long way to go. If he could just break out of here
into the clear where he could put one foot after the other and not
have to wres­tle branches, duck his head, worm under and over and
have to stretch his body past where it hurt.

Nothing pursued him except an
anxiety not justified by events. He was not hunted with guns, though
he too was a lone man with­out allies. He must get safely home,
his possessions around him, and never leave that place. It was Jake
who was threatened; if he didn't own that dog, if he hadn't been hung
with that responsi­bility, he would just be a wet man out in the
woods finding his way back to his camp, no hurry or panic at all. He
should get rid of the dog as he had shed himself of his family. This
pain was too strong.

In a clear blink something
moved. It was down the brook, on the other bank. The brook was all
white now between black rocks, and the only sound was the crashing
water. Something bulky and slow moved down there. It was dark, almost
black; at first he made a bear out of it, but it had white and red
splotches that moved with it against the mist-green and black of the
woods in a strangely loose, toppling yet connected way. He couldn't
seem to think it a man, or to make himself trace out a whole man
there.

He melted back into evergreen
boughs and watched the awk­ward progress of the thing as it came
up the brook. It was a man, because it was more upright than not as
it climbed and leaned its way through the alders. It was not armed,
at least not with a long gun, which was the first warning of its
identity. Then it was a big man, young but broken, a man who was
followed. Long before the face could make its statement the signs of
the hunted were there in the bones.

"Oh, no," Luke said, a
soft exclamation he was unable to hear over the rushing water. It was
Lester, who had to be somewhere because, after all, he was not yet
dead. He had nothing left, but he was not yet dead and didn't want to
be dead. Luke said no because in all the miles of hills and swamps
around the mountains he had to be here to observe what was real.
Lester came up the brook toward him, staggering as if whipped by each
alder trunk that was only a stationary bar to his passage, but often
looking back. He seemed to be trying to hear, though nothing could be
heard over the white water. When he turned his head Luke saw that one
side of his neck was grizzled white and pink, his ear enormous and a
darker red. His black bristles of hair stood up straight, washed and
shiny. His awkwardness said fear, exhaustion, despair, a knee locked
half-bent and whatever other disasters could beset a man. He didn't
seem to know where he was going, but he looked back, knowing what he
tried to escape.

He tripped and fell to his knee,
and his mouth opened as wide and round as a child's, his random teeth
and red gums showing. It was a cry Luke couldn't hear, repeated after
a short breath. Lester was not armed; he didn't even have a belt, and
the pockets of his soaked green chinos had been torn off or cut off,
showing white, hairy thigh that seemed cold and vulnerable. One of
his workshoes was unlaced, the black sock down and his Achilles
ten­don silver.

Still on his knee, he retched,
one hand on an alder, his head down. He seemed to hear something
behind him and turned, his face so wrinkled with terror Luke had to
look where he looked. Nothing was there, but Lester's mouth squirmed
like part of a phantom face seen in the embers of a fire. He still
thought he might have seen a man back there, and all men were against
him.

Across the brook, Luke felt
himself to be lateral to this hunt. He could step across the brook on
stones and ledge, draw his pistol and remove the last of Lester's
possessions, but that was not the direction in which he was going.
Having been given an excuse, in this fellow's case, the men with guns
would have him soon enough.

Wet and friendless, Lester got
back to his feet and began to move again. Fresh blood washed down the
cloth below his dam­aged knee, where he might have taken a
buckshot pellet or a bul­let. A wound was like a little leash or
hobble, giving the hunters a certain edge.

Luke was not without pity for
the animal that didn't want to die, but he had nothing to say to the
man. What he saw across the brook was an animal about to be destroyed
by its own kind, like a brown rat touched with a foreign scent. He
would not join the hunt, but responsibility, he knew, would not be so
easily denied, whether the man was supposed to deserve it or not. He
had touched the man's life. He was not neutral, even if he seemed to
have no control over the curse of his touch. He watched Lester go on
up the brook, the wide face, when it turned to look back, so beaten
and simple he wondered how the man could ever have in­spired
caution or fear. Lester's fear, however, spoke to Luke and made him
cold.

He hurried down the brook, a
little faster because the rain had lessened and he could see the
traps and hurdles that had grown into his path. After a while he came
to a bridge that couldn't be there, made of maple logs and boards. As
he recongnized it for what it had to be the world shifted with a
giddy lurch, like a slide in a projector, and he had been on Zach
Brook all the time and was at his own bridge, on his own land, a
hundred yards from home.

He climbed up out of the brook
bed and sloshed across the field toward the cabin, his disbelief at
where he was fading slowly be­cause it seemed that he had spent
hours in another valley, on another brook. When he was halfway across
the field, Jake came from the cabin porch, looking as hard as he
could, hesitant, suspi­cious, shy, eager, wanting the upright
figure who came toward him to be the one he wanted. When Luke spoke
to him he trusted his eyes and came running and howling, prancing
sideways out of joy and the torque of his tail. He stopped to shake a
mist of water from his coat and came on, safe and happy—this
time.