The Followed Man (49 page)

In the cabin the warm dryness
was another shift in the way to look at the world and the human
condition. To be dry instead of greasy, the penetration of the cold
solvent gone. The cabin was still warm from the morning's sun, but
before he took off his sop­ping clothes he took some lumber
scraps and made an open fire in the black iron stove, the wood dry
and light, the paper rustling. The new clothes were light and soft,
and slid furrily over his skin as he warmed. He gave Jake a towel and
Jake took it to the hearth to roll in it before he settled himself
down to lick and steam before the fire.

Luke took the pistol out of its
holster, removed clip and shells, wiped it and left it on the table
to dry. His soaked clothes he took to the porch to wring out before
they steamed dry on the back of a chair. The long log walls were
bulky and tight, gleaming in the light of the fire, and his windows,
though they let in a cold gray light, kept out what they let him see.

Another singular man, wounded
and cold, tried to escape over there in the dripping swamp of the
woods, climbing up along a brook that began in farther and higher
wilderness where there was no warm haven like this one, and not even
a hound for com­pany. Luke made himself a drink of bourbon,
death's little an­tidote, to try to fool reality somewhat and
perhaps to reconcile his own comfort with the agony of another. And
of others, the poor wounded and self-wounded that were all he seemed
to touch.

He pulled Shem's old Morris
chair up to the fire, the new cush­ions clean and tailored as
once the old ones had been new and clean for Shem, and let his tired
bones into it. How good to be re­warded for industry and
foresight, to be dry and warm in a snug harbor, plenty of food and
tobacco and booze. These were the realities after all. He was not out
there bleeding and weeping.

In October, as the sun waned,
the animals grew sleek for win­ter. After the first hard frost
the deer came under the apple trees for the softened fruit already
pecked over by grouse, among oth­ers. A bear, glutted on apples,
left recognizable cores, skins and stems in the loose piles of his
spoor. The sun was clear in cool blue, not a force now, just a broad
light the hardwoods trans­formed, each species and then each tree
in its own way turning lu­minous, as if answering the sun's
departure with a last bright sig­nal from earth. There seemed to
be no air, it was so clear. Warmth during the day was just radiance,
from everywhere, and the cool nights seemed to go all the way to the
stars, as though the whole universe were a perfect benevolence.

Luke used this harvest time to
prepare his place for the winter. AH of the machinery and appliances
had come and been installed. In his shed, now closed by sliding barn
doors, was a small diesel generator, his tractor, storage tanks, room
for his truck and sever­al cords of wood, though as much wood was
stacked on the cabin porch and in the wood room off the living room,
drying quickly under cover. His books, furniture, pictures and
miscellaneous items, some handy and others not, had arrived by Joe
the Mover. Other furniture he had bought or made, and now the cabin's
main room was warm, a little spare in furnishings, but there were a
comfortable leather sofa, chairs, Shem's Morris chair, a long old
table desk by the main window, drawers, cabinets, lamps, books in
shelves, a view of the mountain through triple glass above the
kitchen end. The room began to have its patterns of use, to be his,
or even him, as if it were an exoskeleton, or a finely, genetically
perfected organic shelter made of his own labor and glands, in which
he was comforted in all functional and aesthetic ways. Jake had a
little self-closing, insulated tunnel next to the eastern door for
his use, and the bedroom had a door which kept Jake's hairs and dense
musk from Luke's pillow. A small thick rug near the hearth was
Jake's, though he had alternate places on sofa and chairs, according
to his temperature and other atavistic hound ne­cessities, such
as elevation or the mammalian need for a kind touch.

As the sun's route across the
southern arc grew lower, its heat entered the southern window,
crossed the room and was absorbed by the stone column. At night the
column was warmed internally by the long sloping tiles of the stove's
flue, the window shuttered and the stove in its closed, controlled
mode so that it gave even heat for twelve hours or more. He would see
how this worked in the real cold to come; in October he often didn't
fuel the stove for a day or two at a time, or used it as a fireplace
only, and that most­ly for the sight of a fire. He hoped not to
have to use his backup heating at all.

In his cellar were shelves for
foodstores and that category of former possessions he hadn't decided
what to do with. Among these were the boxed contents of Helen's desk
at^iome and anoth­er box of papers and books her department
chairman had collect­ed from her office at Moorham.

He didn't know what to do with
Helen's relics. Maybe they were sacred, each unclaimed theme,
annotated schedule, calendar or text. If so, they should be in a
monument, or laid to rest with cere­mony, and he hadn't any
monument or ceremony. A musty card­board box in a cellar seemed
less respectful than incineration. He should go through them, but
what news would he find there ex­cept loss? Every paper he
touched would proclaim that she hadn't planned to die, and if he
began he would read every one.

That night he brought the boxes
up from the cellar. There had been on this bright day a sense of the
near-completion of his ca­bin. There were more things he wanted
to do to it, and to the land, but most of those would wait until
spring. He was almost ready for the long sleep of the wilderness.
With Shem's knife he cut the paper tape on the boxes. An open fire
waited; he was not here to fondle relics and mourn, but to try
something else.

The Moorham teaching, committee
and personnel material went into the fire, as did marking books and
catalogues, the slick paper of the catalogues opening slowly, like
black flowers. The let­ters to a woman who didn't exist, letters
concerning recommenda­tions, schedules, salary, the strange
half-democratic governance of a college, went into the fire. From
that box, the one from her office, he found nothing that wasn't to or
of the official person she was.

The other box, in which he had
piled the materials from her desk at home, was at first not much
different. He had seen most of the letters here, because mail was
read in common at their house, and Helen was not a saver of
correspondence. Most had been re­ceived within the few months
before the accident. The household bills had all been paid and dated.
She hadn't yet answered, and hadn't noted that she had answered, her
mother's last letter, which must have made her unhappy as she flew
toward her moth­er's funeral.

When he came to a typewritten
note in elite he read it before he recognized what it was, not
expecting or wanting to find, with a sudden loss of breath that was
also the loss of mystery, the Aveng­er's certain identity this
close to Helen.

Dear Helen,

Yes, I'd have to say it's plagiarism, if only because of internal
evi­dence. I can't quite lay my memory on the lines that seem so
un­characteristic of this student's other work (especially the
in-class theme), but I know so much about
her!
Examine, for
instance, the word "Tho." I'd say lower middle class, a
note-passer in high school (in the in-class theme she dotted her i(s)
with little circles). Also the multiple exclamation marks and
question marks, the possessives that are plurals half the time and
vice versa, willy-nilly; a careless­ness or grayness of the mind
rather than error. I mean that in such a messy cranium the
possibility
of error has not inkled. Contractions, such as
"you're," are also used for the possessive, and question
marks are left off questions. Oh, Lord, what hope
is
there?

We must talk. Lunch Wednesday?

Coleman

There, without the possibility of doubt, was the short serif on the
capital T and the bent lower case
e.
How could this not be
proof of identity, the puzzle solved? The other question was how long
had he really known without wanting to know. Mr. Death; it was all
just a little too sick, a disease that couldn't be left untreat­ed.
He could not ignore or withstand pathological malice. It had to be
dealt with.

With this note was another:

Helen: I can't bear to be near you in the presence of others. I am
blinded and struck mute. It is passion; it is an obsession. Can't you
arrange to stay the night somehow? The gift you have to give!

C.

And another:

Helen: I can't bear to face you, your irridescence—it blinds
me. I apologize to you, but not, never, to the swine who possesses
you. You are in thrall, sick, infected with the banal, and that is
your only flaw. I hate him, not you.

C.

Helen had saved these notes, and never shown them to him. She must
have been flattered, no matter what else her feelings might have
been. She couldn't have known that after her death this madman would
play with threatening letters. Luke could not follow the mind that
called itself Mr. Death.

He was, he thought, cool as he
went to his truck. It was Saturday and Coleman might be at the house
in the village for the weekend. He would shake Coleman like a rag
doll, shake some reason from him. He would not break Coleman's
scrawny neck. It was as if he had taken a step off into nothing; he
couldn't understand, and Helen was infected by the void that kept
opening, now here, now there.

His headlights pushed away the
darkness as the truck climbed out of the valley to the mountain road.
He was going to initiate an action he didn't think would work. Surely
reason wouldn't work, nor would threats or violence. He might
dislocate Coleman's an­kle, for a start, and maybe, if Coleman
found that unpleasant enough, he might see the light. No, he would be
dealing with madness, with a man who would punish someone who had
just lost his wife, son and daughter. He must remember that. Should
he carry the pistol in his hand, in his pocket, in his belt, none of
these? He could kill Coleman easily with just his hands. Murder was
just a thought, yet it was plausible. Death was not that odd, or that
rare, Mr. Death.

The Sturgis house was dark, no
cars in the driveway. He left the pistol in the truck and walked up
to the house, to the front door. In his strength the house seemed
flimsy. The front door was locked so he kicked it in easily, with
little noise, as if the frame were made of cardboard. He turned on
the hall light. The floor­ing was still unfinished; nothing had
been done since he'd been here last. In Louise's room her bed was
unmade, the wrinkled sheets as still as carved marble. If no one had
touched them of course they would not have changed. He shut the door
again on that room and went on into the living room, his hand
remember­ing light switches. The pale paintings gleamed from the
walls, Louise's pots and platters silent on their shelves and tables.

In the kitchen the dishwasher
was full of washed dishes and in the refrigerator a quart carton of
milk hadn't soured, so Coleman must have been here recently. He went
upstairs to Coleman's room, his right to enter this house or any room
in this house the incipient rage that made his arms tremble with
strength. Cole­man's double bed was stripped to the mattress. The
room was bare, the patterned wall paper faded and in places
water-stained. On an old pine desk were manuscripts, books and an
office-sized typewriter, its type not elite, fn spite of its clutter
the desk did not look worked at, more as if the books and papers had
been placed upon it long ago and just left there. The manuscript on
top was titled, "Dream Images in Stearns Sloan's
Repetitions."

He went downstairs to the
telephone table, found a Wellesley telephone book and called
Coleman's number there. No one an­swered. He let it ring until he
stopped counting rings and began to think that he didn't know what he
would say to Coleman if he answered. He didn't want to speak to the
man, he wanted him, simply, eliminated, he and his letters
nonexistent. He could do nothing about it now, however, and surprised
that he had come to that sane conclusion he shut off the lights in
the house, jammed the front door shut upon its splintered frame and
left.

He drove back up the mountain in
the dark. Why had Helen never mentioned a nut she worked with called
Coleman Sturgis? Was it possible to be jealous over the dead? His
anger now might simply have been caused by the violation of his own
freedom; how selfish and cold he was if that were true. If she had
told him, would he then have become demeaningly suspicious and angry?
He didn't know the logic of love, if it had any, and there were no
reliable witnesses to whatever had happened.

In the morning his anger had
passed and could not be sum­moned back; he was not the initiator
of confrontations and had no hope for structure or resolution.

The hardwood leaves paled and
thinned, and the woods opened up to long columned vistas that
revealed the old field lines and the rises of hills that were once
pastures. Evergreens were dark islands here and there, hemlock groves
far up a hillside re­vealed themselves and were walls where
vision ended, though they were vague, seen through skeins of graying
branches. Maple leaves twirled like yellow and orange stars down the
brook, and the beech held their fading sienna leaves longer than the
rest. Ash, that had turned dark mauve at first, were now altogether
bare of the stems and branchlets of their compound leaves, and seemed
over-simple, as if drastically pruned.

Jake, as if he knew the season
and the opening of the floor of the woods to Luke's surveillance,
became more nervous and curi­ous about Luke's entrances and
exits, watching him closely, the brown eyes full of one question:
now? Is that a gun? (No, it was a brush scythe). Jake didn't mind
hunting by himself, because he had to when the scent called and
crossed his senses, but that was not the real thing, which was to
cast ahead, knowing the man was there, checking back, circling,
needing the man as well as the vivid rabbit. So one day Luke took
down the single-barreled shotgun and a pocketful of number eight
shells and without explanation left the cabin. Jake had seemed asleep
but knew perfectly the click of the opening of the shotgun's action,
the hollow, musical clunk of the shell entering the chamber, and he
flowed through his tun­nel and was there with Luke before he
could cross between the porch woodpiles. "Which way?" Jake
asked with a pause and a look. Luke pointed west, toward the
mountain, and Jake began the hunt.