Wilderness (36 page)

It was night again when Abel came back onto the plain. The wind gouged designs into the snow, and the dark little shack upon the apron of white was dark within as well. He watched from just without the treeline with the dog across his shoulders but could not see the candle flame that had quivered in the window before. The thin scent of woodsmoke still flavored the wind. After a while, Abel grunted and started forward.

He set the dog in the snow before the shack. It pawed the crust and lifted its head to seek the old man’s eyes. Abel bent over it and spoke and stroked its brow and its fine, soft cheek and ran his hand through the fur along its flank. The dog lay its head on the snow. The old man could see the shape of its death in its eyes and took a great, shuddery breath, but fell quickly quiet to hear the sound of the girl sobbing from within the shack.

Abel stood quickly and winced for the sudden pain of it. He stared at the door and wondered what he should do.

Swallowing and wincing, he gripped the rifle and stepped forward as quietly as the snow would let him. He went to the door. The wind picked up and blew against it, rattling and moving the old,
rotten boards, and from its motion Abel could tell it was unlatched. Behind him the dog whined and struggled in the snow. He put his palm on the door and pushed it open.

The Haida sat spraddle-legged before the hearth, where only two coals still lived. He’d ruptured sometime in the night but the blood had barely soaked his clothing before freezing. Abel sniffed. A wave of nausea broke over him and he reached out with the barrel of the rifle to touch the Indian’s shoulder. He did not move and no breath played from his lips. His eyes were closed and his raven-hair fell cold and stiff down his long face. The big Indian had a length of filmy, pale blue lace, as of a bride’s garter, wrapped around one hand as though he meant it to be the last thing he’d see before dying.

Abel looked at the lace, then looked at the Indian. “No,” he said. “You had too much badness in you to be comforted like that.” And setting the rifle down, Abel worked the lace from the Indian’s cold fingers and tossed it in the hearth where it lay smoking a moment before tiny yellow flames came dancing up along the tatting to throw about a shivering light.

Abel watched it burn, then stood and dragged the Indian’s body outside. The moon went behind a cloud and it was fully dark. Snow fell. The snow raced over the plain on the wind as the wind rose once more. His clothing snapped and popped. He trembled and swallowed, could taste blood in his mouth, and swallowed again.

Abel walked to the dog and knelt beside it where it lay dead in the snow. He brushed snow from its face, then sat and pulled its head onto his lap. He told it what a good dog it had been and spoke softly, telling it things. Abel closed his eyes and said its name and rocked it back and forth in the cold and the falling snow. Save the wind, the only other sound was the ticking of the snow falling like soft laughter, like lost time.

After a while, Abel stood and went into the cabin to tend to the
girl, to build the little fire up, to take care of what he could and let go the rest.

The man who smelled of dogs and leaves and sweat returned. Jane Dao-ming remembered hearing him outside with the dog and then, after he came in, how quiet he was. A leaf-colored blur that moved across the floorboards and soon heat came from the hearth. And then a dragging sound and the old man’s soft curses. And then he came back again and sat on the edge of the bed to help her dress. Speaking to her all the while, with a voice meant to be soothing but pitched all wrong for such work. The old man made small, sharp sounds when he came upon the places the Indian had put the knife on her and his voice was thick when he asked her name and thick again when he repeated it back slowly and carefully.

He asked could she see him. She felt the air disturbed before her face and realized he moved his hand there so told him yes. The man made a doubtful sound, then described for her his actions: how he was building up the fire and how that was all they needed, a good, strong fire. And the more he spoke the more tired and pale his voice became. And when Dao-ming’s leg brushed against her mother’s cold, dead arm in the bed beside her, she began sobbing.

The man who smelled of leaves and dogs sat beside her on the bed while she wept. He held her hand and stroked her hair and let her carry on without comment. And when she finished, he asked if she was hungry. She told him yes and then began to weep because of that particular, sharp, and constant pain. The old man did not move for a long time. Finally, he took a deep breath and stood.

She heard him go outside and he was out in the snow a long time before coming back. He rummaged noisily around the shack and soon she smelled meat cooking. When it was finished, he fed her carefully and the meat was stringy and tough but very sweet. It
made her cry again to taste it and the old man told her try and sleep because in the morning they’d be leaving.

After the girl was asleep, Abel went outside to gather the last of the firewood. It didn’t take many trips to exhaust the woodpile, and when he finished Abel stood in the center of the shack and watched the girl sleep. “What the hell are you goin’ to do?” he said quietly, making fists with his strong right hand.

There was a sudden, burning itch high in the back of his throat, and he staggered outside to cough and retch into the snow. When he was finished, Abel went to the dog and carefully lifted it. It was very light. When a single tooth clicked like dumb stone against his thumbnail he thought his heart would break, and he could not look at the place on its thigh where he’d used his knife.

Morning found him sitting on the floor of the shack with the dog’s head cradled in his lap. There was a small smile on his cracked, bloodied lips and his fingers turned ceaseless circles through the soft fur behind the dog’s ear. When sunlight touched his face, he carefully eased the dog to the floor and went outside.

He found Dao-ming’s father buried by snow and grimaced when he saw what the cold had done to him. Going back into the shack, Abel woke the girl and sat her on the floor so she faced the fire, then carefully eased the thin, stained sheet out from under her mother and took it outside.

There were no tools about the shack, so Abel had to use the butt of his rifle to lever the man’s body from the ice. And in the end the stock broke and the baling wire cut his hand. He stood looking at the ruined rifle. Then he leaned, spat, and wrapped the man in the sheet and carried him inside and laid him on the bed with his wife and covered both of them with the blanket.

The girl sat on the floor where he’d left her, her blind face tilted toward the fire where it crackled in a yellow dance upon the firewood.
One hand rested on the dead dog’s cheek and her face was wholly wet. He said her name and she stood to face him. Abel told her they were going and she held out her arms to him in the way he’d always imagined his own daughter would have. Sniffing wetly, he wrapped her in an extra blanket from the bed and leaned to lift her onto his left hip. Abel’s crippled arm fit snugly around her as she set her arms about his neck and he knew that even though he might weaken, the arm would not. Nor would it bend from its crook so she would not fall from his grasp. Abel looked at his old, ruined arm where it fit around her and held her as though made for that purpose. “Well, imagine that,” he murmured, rocking this way and that to test his grip. “Well, my Lord in heaven.”

The fire burned brightly in the stove as Abel took a final look around. He looked down at the dog where it lay. “Goddamn you anyway, Buster,” Abel said softly, and he kicked over the stove and stood to watch a moment as the flames spread like water.

Afterward, they stood together to watch the shack burn, the girl with her half-blind face turned toward the heat. Abel smelled the sweetness of her childish breath and thought of green grass and springtime, of horses and things running wild with joy. He took a breath and turned to start across the bright, snowbound plain.

At the tree line, Abel sat heavily down, wheezing with his breath burning in his chest. “All right,” he panted. “All right now.” He struggled to his feet and went weaving through the snow between the trees. Behind them, the burning shack threw a pillar of smoke into the sky.

“Am I too heavy?” asked Dao-ming, her accent thick, but her English clear.

“Naw,” Abel panted. “No, I’m just too damn old.” He glanced at her face and by the daylight could see the damage the cold had done to her dark eyes. Two pale stains rimmed by blood. Her feet were
frostbitten, as were her hands and nose, and while Abel had wrapped her for warmth as best he could, he knew there was no way she could walk on her own. Swallowing, he staggered on, the breath rattling out of him. “It’s just a march,” he said. “Only a march.” And he struggled on through the snow, down the slope between the trees.

They walked the day long and into the evening. They walked until the light was such that Abel could no longer be sure of their direction, and then they stopped in a small clearing where the trees stood windrucked in strange, tortured shapes like some wrongful orchard.

The girl was sobbing now. Her hands and feet were swollen red and hard. And the night, for the child, was long and cold. Abel did what he could: built up a tiny fire that constantly blew out, opened his coat and held her tiny, cold body against his own. And he spoke to her. He spoke all night long but did not know if she heard. Abel knew no stories to tell a child so instead described for her the stars and the planets in the heavens above. How his father would take him those long ago years to the hill south of their home where they would listen to the singing from the Negro church near the pine woods and look up at the stars. The pale ribbon of the Milky Way. Proud Orion in his glittering belt. The majestic ruin of the harvest moon and far, distant Mars that stirred men’s blood to warring. He described for her the Leonids and pointed out four stars that fell for them that night. At intervals a wolf howled from the slopes above, lonely and long and wild and sad. And sometime that morning, well before the sun rose to pale the dark, Abel Truman rose with her from the snow and carried her onward.

As they went along, he described for the child’s blind eyes the look of the snow in the forest and the characteristics of the trees around them. He told her how to make a tea from certain types of moss and how the sun pressed cups into the snow on the upper slopes. He recited all the hidden colors of the gray ocean and how it
looked on summer evenings when warm winds blew and the stars lay reflected forever across its surface—as though there were two skies and no earth—and he described the mornings, too, when the fog lay close upon the waves and spilled from the forest so it seemed you were at the bottom of a great, warm cauldron. All these things and more, he told the child as they went along.

Abel walked until his feet went numb and he began to stumble. He spoke until his voice was croaking. And once, late in the day, Abel Truman raised his strong right hand before himself as though to push something back, away. He bent to lace his boots tighter and ate handfuls of snow to cool his throat. And he went on.

He told the girl of things he’d seen in his life—his soldiering days and the good people he’d known. He told her the story of the Wilderness where he fell and of Hypatia, who saved him there. He spoke to her of Glenn and Ellen Makers, and as night fell once more, Abel looked for stars above the canopy but saw only dark clouds. After a while, the snow began to fall again and steadily. A cold wind shifted. He carried her on, down the mountainside, through the dark trees.

Ellen Makers went slowly up the mountain through the snow. She held the rifle tightly crosswise and smelled the smoke long before she saw the column standing over the trees in the place she knew the trapper’s shack to be. She stood watching it a moment, then rubbed the damp from beneath her nose and went on.

The track gave out onto a broad, snowy plain ringed by ice-veined mountain rock, and on the far side of the plain lay the smoldering ruins of the shack. Ellen crossed to it and stood warming herself beside the embers, wondering what to do. There were wolf tracks round about, and off to one side a dark mound upon the snow. She walked to it and took a fast breath to recognize the Haida laying there. She stood for some time thinking about things and trying to decide how to feel. It was not as she thought it would be, and she was fretful, her
stomach knotted up with worry. She tried for some time to piece together a picture of the events by the clues left behind, but her skill for such unriddling was wanting and the day grew long and the embers cooled.

Eventually, the sun set and moon came out and by its high, blue light she saw a set of footprints leading into trees that stood silently and dark where the slope plunged valleyward again. A wolf howled close by, and Ellen jumped. After a moment, she turned to follow the trail down.

By morning, it had clouded over and begun to snow again. It fell thickly and fast, filling the steps behind her and painting the white world whiter still. The tracks she followed weaved ever downward through the trees and Ellen worried that she’d lose them to the snow. Late in the morning, she found where they’d camped and realized another set of tracks there. Smaller, as of a child’s feet shuffling through the snow, they disappeared after a very short distance. “He’s carrying someone,” said Ellen. She took her gloves off, and as she crouched to touch two fingers to Abel’s bootprint, a wolf stepped out of the forest.

The rifle was cold and heavy in her bare hands, and she had no way to know how long the wolf had been watching her before it came out of the trees. Dark about the face, the wolf was speckled with snow. Ellen could see the dog in it; in the folds of its ears and in its eyes, which gave glimpse to the workings of its innermost heart. She saw the collar it wore: crude and dull and handmade. The wolf stood without moving, watching her with its mouth open and its breath fogging the cold.

Ellen swallowed and brought the rifle quickly to her shoulder. As she sighted down the barrel the wolf lay down in the snow. She blinked and the wolf rolled over and stood, crusted in powder and beautiful amidst the snow-feathered trees.