The Purification Ceremony (2 page)

    Pawlett cleans and skins the deer as the first snowflakes appear. He quarters it, then salts the meat and wraps it in cheesecloth. He hangs the quarters high in the branches of a tree next to a lean-to where it will cool and eventually freeze. If the bears do not get the meat, it will be there when he returns by snowmobile later in the month. When darkness comes, he builds a fire, roasts the deer’s liver and eats it. Snow falls.

    When I think of Pawlett at this point, I always pray that he sleeps peacefully.

    There are six inches of powder snow on the ground by morning, which dawns blustery and cold. Pawlett eats more of the liver with a cup of black coffee and moves on.

    At two o’clock that afternoon, Pawlett catches sight of his destination. Active logging at Camp Four was abandoned nearly ten years earlier. But the company still uses it to store spare parts for the skidders and to act as sleeping quarters for the old logging crews called in to perform small clear-cuts for the benefit of the deer on the estate. It’s also where supplies too large to be flown into the estate are brought for final transport during the summer, when the two-track road is passable.

    Pawlett wipes his nose on his sleeve, then trudges down the hill through the fresh snow that has blown in among a sparse stand of ponderosa pines. He enters an overgrown meadow. At the far end stands an Army-surplus Quonset hut that once served as office, kitchen and bunkhouse to the loggers. Beyond that are three prefabricated metal storage sheds.

    The wind picks up. The sun breaks through the clouds, forcing the trapper to squint at the glare thrown off by the snow and the metal walls of the storage units. He stops halfway across the yard. Human footprints? He frowns and kneels. Judging from the depth of the prints and their angle, whoever made them has been carrying a heavy load. And the wind marring along the rim of the tracks tells him they’d been made sometime earlier that morning.

    Pawlett glances all around him at the surface of the snow, blazing like millions of diamonds in the sun. No other sign save this line heading off in the direction of the logging road that leads southeast toward the estate. I believe he considers the possibility that the outfitter Curly had spoken of has traveled the thirty-odd miles out from the lake — where old man Metcalfe had his hunting lodge — looking for parts. But where are the tracks of the snowmobiles Pawlett has seen around the lodge during his clandestine hunting trips in previous falls?

    He drops his pack off one shoulder and slides the leveraction rifle from the side compression straps. He stands and shouts, “Hello! Hello the camp!”

    Behind him, the wind causes a clacking of branches against the sheds, but no voice raises in response. He calls again and waits. Again nothing. Two crows drift through the far tree line.

    He looks back at the track. One of the paying hunters? Curly said the outfitter’s clients weren’t coming until the middle of the month, when the rut, the whitetail mating season, would peak. A resident hunter? Pawlett probably dismisses the idea. This part of Metcalfe terrain is off-limits, and besides, it is nearly sixty miles to the nearest town by some of the roughest two-tracks Pawlett knows.Too far and too much of a hassle to come hunt here, even if the estate is home to some of the biggest deer in the world. Besides, most locals Pawlett knows are interested in meat, not big antlers.

    Maybe the outfitter or one of his guides spent the night after scouting the perimeter of the estate and kept his vehicle back there in the forest? That would seem the most logical solution, and I believe Pawlett adopts it.

    He holds the gun level with his hip. He follows the blurred tracks to the door of the Quonset hut and prepares to kneel to fish the keys from behind the wooden stoop when he sees that one of the windowpanes in the door has been broken and patched over with cardboard and duct tape. He climbs the stoop and tried the knob. It turns. Pawlett lets the door swing open on the wind.

    “Hello?” he calls into the dim interior. “Anybody here?”

    The air inside rolls to Pawlett. He smells stale smoke, cooked meat and a musky, animal smell. He steps over the transom. The floor is plywood. The tread of his boots makes scratching noises as he moves past a busted table and lets his eyes become accustomed to the feeble light.

    On his left is a door he knows leads to the bunkhouse. He goes by that and into the main room. Here the logging foreman used to have his office. And the crews ate at picnic tables and lounged in a couple of sprung couches that had been hauled in years ago. Nothing has changed since Pawlett’s last visit.

    Except, perhaps, the dust. The cobwebs that normally crisscrossed the thin windows have been cleared to let in more light. The tables have been swept clean. The floor, too. Pawlett crosses to the woodstove and holds his hand above the surface. Still warm. He goes into the kitchen. He turns the knob on one of the stove burners. A muffled cough greets him; someone has turned on the gas. He opens the door to the cold pantry and, to his surprise, finds a deer carcass hanging. The tenderloins have been cut from around the backbone. The head of the deer, a spike buck, has been left on. No hide. Probably skinned it outside. Against the wall, however, stretched taut within a circular hoop of alder wood, is the skinned-out cape of a timber wolf. Pawlett squats and fingers the fur. A professional skinning job. He sniffs his fingers and recognizes the musky smell out in the main room.

    I think he returns through the main room then, and, with the gun before him, nudges open the door to the bunkhouse. He waits for a moment, then goes inside. The light is worse than in the main room. He strains to see, and strains again to make sure he’s right. Pawlett finds enough gear in there to support a man for at least a month in the wilderness. Dozens of freeze-dried meals held together in stacks by rubber bands. Four two-gallon water containers and a filtration kit. A down sleeping bag. A bivvy sack. Several clear plastic tarps. Three wool shirts. Two pairs of wool twill pants. Twelve pairs of wool socks. Two complete sets of expedition-weight long underwear, including the balaclava hoods. A black knit watch cap. One pair of leather boots similar to his own and a second pair of deep-snow pac boots with a fur cuff. A gray camouflage outfit in fleece. A flashlight with ten sets of batteries. A camping lantern and two gallons of white fuel. A folding pack saw. And more equipment stacked in the corner where the light is worse.

    As I see it, Pawlett tries the flashlight, but it doesn’t work. He’s about to tear open one of the battery packages when he notices the faint outline of two white candles that have been set up on a table on the far side of the room. He leans his rifle against the wall. He shrugs off his knapsack. He sets it on the floor. He fishes a matchbook from his pants pocket and weeble-wobbles over the gear. He strikes a match, holds it to one candle and then to the other.

    In the wavering light, Pawlett beholds a shrine: the hide of the spike buck has been nailed to the plank boards above the table. The wolf’s skull has been boiled free of flesh and affixed to the bloody deer skin. Attached around the skull, in a fanlike formation, are the red tail feathers of a hawk, the white wing feathers of an owl and the oily spine feathers of a raven.

    But I know it is what Pawlett finds on the makeshift altar below the fetish that makes him panic. Pawlett’s heart catches and snags, as if manipulated by a force outside his capacity to understand. The urge to flee overcomes him. He stumbles over the gear and through the door, forgetting in his haste his gun and his pack.

    He explodes into the outer room. He slips on the plywood floor and crashes to his knees, trying to keep down the bile that climbs the back of his throat. He tells himself to calm down, to get to the generator room, gas it and start it so he’ll have electricity to run the radiophone. He’ll call Curly. He’ll be all right.

    Pawlett gets to his feet and runs to the door to the generator room. Locked. The keys are under the stoop. Pawlett curses and races out the door of the Quonset hut, barely giving attention to an outer world that has been made anew and powerful and evil in the confrontation of the shrine.

    He digs through the snow and reaches in behind the stoop. He strains for the coffee can the keys were kept in. And then the keys are in his hand. He is laughing, telling himself he’ll be all right, that he’ll be all right.

    The generator argues with Pawlett for what seems an eternity until he checks the oil, sees that it is low and fills the reservoir to the brim. Three tugs on the cord and the machine wheezes to life.

    Pawlett has time now. He lowers his head and moves straight back through the main room toward the nook where the logging foreman had kept track of the operation. There, on a metal bookshelf, the radiophone glows.

    He picks up the phone and is about to dial in the Metcalfe frequency when his heart catches again, only this time he feels the presence of a manipulator, and a shaking takes hold of his entire body. Pawlett turns to see that the outer door is open. A thick shaft of sunlight cuts across the floor and in it, dressed head to toe in a camouflage suit the color of fresh cream, is a man whose eyes shine like ebony.

    Pawlett sees the primitive weapon the man holds and realizes he has no recourse. He feels the predator’s intent like a claw in his chest. The old trapper drops the phone and begins to cry like a baby stricken with night terrors…

    The rest of what happened that fall, I know for certain.

    

    

    LONG BEFORE I ever speculated about Pawlett, the chill forewinds of a gathering storm raked the surface of the lake and the heavy chop spit white foam onto the dock. A twin-engine Otter floatplane bucked and strained against lashes. And the spruce trees on the far side of the inlet cowered.

    The wind gusted. The metal Coca-Cola sign above the ramshackle provision store clanged against its braces. I flipped up the collar of my green plaid wool coat and turned my back to the storm. I stepped around the two canvas duffel bags and the aluminum rifle case I’d stacked on the dock to be loaded into the floatplane. I shoved my hands deep into the sheepskin-lined pockets of the coat, and for the fifth time that hour, I went to the phone booth in the gravel parking lot

    Inside the booth, I allowed myself a moment of quiet from the chatter of the others who were gathering themselves and their equipment for the flight into the Metcalfe Estate. Then I dialed. Three thousand miles away, at what used to be my home in Boston, the line engaged and the phone rang. It sounded thirteen times. I made to hang the receiver in its cradle.

    On the fourteenth ring, my husband answered. “Hello?”

    “It’s me.”

    For a moment I thought Kevin had hung up. But over the wind, I caught the faint beat of his breath.

    “I’m glad I caught you,” I barged on. “I wanted to talk to the kids… before I go.”

    “They’re already outside in the car,” Kevin replied curtly.;’Off to Mom’s for dinner.”

    “You could get them for me.”

    “I could,” he said. “But I won’t.”

    “Are you trying to destroy me, Kevin?” I’d told myself I wouldn’t yell at him anymore, but I couldn’t help it.

    “You’ve already done a pretty good job of that yourself,” he said calmly.

    I took a deep breath and tried to be civil. “I just want to say good-bye. This separation is hurting them more than us.”

    “They’re in the car,” he said again. “I’ll say good-bye for you.”

    I pressed my forehead against the chill glass of the phone booth. “Why do you have to be so cruel? Haven’t you punished me enough?”

    “Diana, you punished yourself.”

    I didn’t want to get angry again. I knew I had to keep my lines of communication open, but it boiled over again. “That’s a lie. You’re a shit for doing this.”

    “Judge didn’t seem to think so.”

    “You know I’m a good mother.”

    He laughed. “And you show it by going on this trip?”

    I looked out at the windswept lake. Tears welled. I whispered, “I have to.”

    “So you’ve said.” There was a pause. “The way I look at it, you lost your mind. Everybody can see it but you.”

    “I suppose sympathy would have been too much to expect.”

    “Used up,” he replied. “Gotta go.”

    “Kevin, please…”

    “Call when you get back, Diana.”

    The line went dead. I closed my eyes and listened to the static as if it were a wild thing moving electric and purposeful through dry leaves.

    Someone rapped sharply on the door behind me. I hung the receiver up, wiped the tears from my eyes and turned to find a vaguely familiar man, short, stocky, bald, early fifties, wearing a long red Pendleton coat that had been woven to affect a Navajo blanket design. He stuffed a stick of gum in his mouth and chewed at it, creating the illusion of a brick smacking a boulder. He was looking at me with a vague sense of hunger.

    I say this not to draw attention to myself. Like most women in our culture, I have learned the subtle lessons well. We may be competent. But we may not boast. We may not see ourselves as something more than a part of a community. But here, to tell this story true, I must abandon convention. I must describe myself honestly.

    If you were to see me, you would think — a tall, handsome woman in her mid-thirties with a duskiness to her skin that suggests diluted Indian blood. Despite carrying two children, she has kept her waist, her legs and her lungs. Her black hair, flecked silver at the temples, is cut functionally short. My mother, in one of her rare moments of lucidity at the end, said Little Crow’s eyes were the color of shale, intent, roving and yet, somehow, sad. My mother always knew me best.

    When I opened the door, the man said, “If this phone booth was a John, sweet thing, I’d swear you had the trots, you been here so many times.” The accent was all cactus and bourbon and quail.