Foragers

by Charles Oberndorf

  Had the animal come out to take the dead man? Had the animal dragged it down into the boulder? But why? She didn’t want to believe what came to her mind, but it made too much sense. They had never seen the animal eat. They had never let it out to find food. What else was the animal to have done?

  Beside the rock was a place where a hole had been dug and refilled. Here is where the animal must have buried the bones after she had finished her butchering.

  It was too much for I. The boulder falling from the sky; the true bodies in the night sky who grew large, changed color, and disappeared; the number of people who had come: Lightfoot Watcher’s terrible request, one man and another pacing near Crooked, Far Hunter’s anger and midnight cries, Huggable’s strange daughter—and now this, this animal who would eat each one of them if she was hungry enough.

  The dizziness came over her entire body, and she fell to her knees on the hillside. The boulder wavered before her. She shut her eyes, but the wavering continued in the darkness. She didn’t know later if she had lain there a long time, but when her empty stomach had settled, when her head no longer felt the rush of water, she opened her eyes. She was still on the hill. The boulder was still there. The animal must still be in it. She had to do something, but she did not know what.

  When she returned to hut and hearth, I found Lightfoot Watcher and her daughter still there and Arm Scars and her sons gone. The land had been brushed clean of all debris, firewood had been neatly piled near each fire, and fish, eggs, and greens were laid out before the cooking fire.

  Lightfoot Watcher said, “The woman from the river’s mouth fished and gathered the food. She said a healer as well-known as you should not go without food.”

  Lightfoot Watcher did not say why she and her daughter had remained. I wanted Lightfoot Watcher with her big belly to leave and to be somewhere else when she gave birth, but I’s mind was more filled with thoughts about how to get the animal to leave.

  In the shelter were several baskets that she had not gifted to someone else. The first had been given to her by a man who had come with a twisted and bloody hand; Old Sour Plum had crushed it with a rock. The second had been given to her by Squawker after I had stopped a baby from coming while Squawker was still nursing her son who could not yet stand. Hugger had made the basket for I, and it was too poorly made to be a gift she could give. The third had been made by Long Call last autumn when he had wanted to mate with her.

  She set several of the eggs near the fire, and she cooked a portion of the fish. She placed the greens, the nuts, the cooked fish, the fire-hard eggs, and three raw eggs in the first two baskets.

  “I will carry a basket for you,” said Lightfoot Watcher.

  “The food is for the animal in the rock.”

  “Do you think so much food will make it go away? Or will it want to stay?”

  It was a good question, but a person’s questions sometimes revealed more about herself than about others. “It needs food,” said I.

  “It would be better if it left. Nightskin was here.” Lightfoot Watcher said nothing for a while, then: “Nightskin did not leave with Arm Scars or with Chest Scars. She told Arm Scars that she wants to stay. She said the animal caused the trouble. She said if the animal had not been here, Clever Fingers would still be alive. Nightskin said that she wants to put an end to the troubles the animal started.”

  I considered this for a moment. As long as Nightskin, whom I had called Far Hunter, thought the almost-a-man lay dead in the clearing, she would stay far away from the boulder. But after each full moon had passed overhead, when the true body was gone, Nightskin would return to the clearing. If she saw the body was gone, if she thought what I thought, what would Nightskin do then? Lightfoot Watcher had not asked Nightskin any questions. “A woman who threatens another woman scares me. This person scares me more.”

  I placed both baskets on the ground. She looked to Lightfoot Watcher, who said nothing, so I asked, “Did she say she would do something?”

  “She said nothing to me. I said nothing to her. She might have looked into my womb and harmed each child.” Lightfoot Watcher looked as if she had more to say, but instead was silent. “Perhaps,” she said after a while, “neither you or I should give the animal food.”

  Lightfoot Watcher was respectful. While I thought about what to do, Lightfoot Watcher averted her eyes and told her daughter to eat some tubers.

  I’s mother had told I the story of the hungry woman several times, and each mother who lived near the river had told each of her children the same story.

  There was one woman and another who had shared a mother. The first woman was old enough to have children. The second was old enough to mate. The three had not eaten for a long time, and perhaps this was why the first daughter had not had a child. It was winter now, and they roamed the land looking for meat. They found none. The mother died. They were so hungry that each daughter ate half of the mother. They roamed and hunted and found nothing. The second daughter died, and the first daughter ate her. She came to live by the river where there was food, but she liked the way a person tasted even more. When she tired of lightfoot or darkfur meat, she found a small child who had run away to play, and she ate her up. One by one each woman who lived by the river realized what horrible thing was happening. One woman, whom many called Steady Bow for the way she took careful aim, lost first a son and second a daughter. In her grief she took her bow and her quiver full of arrows, and she hunted down the hungry woman and shot her dead. After that no one talked to Steady Bow. No woman would hunt with her. No woman shared words with her. No full-grown man would mate with her. No one made her gifts. Each one turned away when she offered a gift. She left to live some other place where no one would have heard that she had drawn her bow on a person. It was winter when she found a place where no one had heard of a woman called Steady Bow. Snow covered the land, and she did not know what food you could find in this strange place during the winter. No one knew her mother, so no one told her where the lightfoot grazed. She died of hunger; her only happiness was her solitude.

  I thought of this tale because she felt the need to retrieve her own bow and arrows from within her hut. If the animal did accept the food, if she did decide to leave the boulder and the area, it would be wrong if Nightskin was there on some distant path, waiting for her.

  When I had been a waist-high child, an old man had wandered near the river. He was confronted there by an almost-a-man‚ a son of the woman who had given birth to Flatface and I’s mother. The old man yelled at the almost-a-man to go away. The almost-a-man yelled the same. Each one stood as if planted. Then each one approached the other. Neither looked away. Neither found something of interest in the distance to walk after. The old man came mating close to the almost-a-man and broke his arm. The almost-a-man went to his mother, the healer. The healer called for each daughter. I had walked with her mother, with Flatface, and with the mother they shared until they found the old man, who faced them and stood as if planted. I watched each woman take her bow. I watched each woman hold out her bow arm and stand there as if ready to reach into her quiver and pluck out an arrow. The old man looked to I’s mother and her bow. He looked to Flatface and her bow. He looked to the mother they shared and her bow. He looked to something off in the woods. He walked after it and was never seen again.

  I returned to her hut. Upon seeing I emerge with quiver and bow, Lightfoot Watcher retrieved hers. I looked at the mother, her belly large enough that she should consider the coming child over other matters, and she found herself struck by Lightfoot Watcher’s womanly bravery, her trust for the healer, the questions that she could have asked but didn’t. Each woman picked up a basket. I walked first, followed by Lightfoot Watcher, followed by Lightfoot Watcher’s daughter.

  As they got closer to the clearing, the paths became large, brush that used to line the trail now trampled or uprooted and cast aside. In the distance Sour Plum called out his “I am here you are there.” His voice became louder the close
r they were, and I remembered the old man’s threat. I walked more quickly, pulling ahead of Lightfoot Watcher, who could not follow at that pace. She heard something thud, fruit that had fallen from the basket. She slowed her pace but did not trouble herself to pick up what she had lost. Soon there was a second voice, a young male voice, a voice without resonance.

  The path she had chosen brought her near to where Clever Fingers had died. It was past midday, and the brightness of the sun made everything in the shade look dark and cool. A breeze from the north carried the sun’s warmth to her. Across the way, in the woods, she could see one then the other, the old man and, farther down the path, Flatface’s almost-a-man son.

  The sight was comical, even when seen from a distance, the sort of thing that attracted one woman and another to watch. Flatface’s son was standing still, chest puffed out, yelling in his boy’s voice: “I am here. I am walking.” Old Sour Plum’s chest wasn’t puffed out; it was large with his age, and his voice had the deepness of an old man’s voice. “I am here. You are not,” he said, not a long call, because he wasn’t challenging Flatface’s son. The boy wasn’t any kind of rival: no woman worth mating would mate with him, except maybe early in desire when it didn’t much matter, and he had not yet become an expert at making anything a woman would want. He had ruined a lightfoot hide that Flatface had given him. Old Sour Plum wouldn’t hurt him, but being a man, and an old man at that, he wouldn’t let the boy walk the path as if he owned it.

  Someone else was watching, too. The rock was open, and the animal had stepped out. She wore just her pubic apron and sandals. She looked thinner than before, and her limbs hung loose as if she were exhausted or sick.

  I stepped back and crouched down so she might not be seen.

  “The body’s gone.” It was Lightfoot Watcher, and she had spoken in a woman’s whisper, her voice made so a hunting companion could hear but not the hunted. Both mother and daughter were crouched low behind I.

  Neither Flatface’s son nor Old Sour Plum had moved. First one called out, then the other, and it looked almost like Old Sour Plum might be teaching the almost-a-man bravery for the time when he finally left his mother and found another place to eat and to mate. One and the other were oblivious to being watched, and the animal seemed to be aware of that. With each call back-and-forth the animal approached the edge of the clearing, then scurried up the hill, staying close to the large trees, to get a better look. Her ability to move with silence impressed I, but the truth was that even if she had stood and waved her arms, neither rival would have noticed her.

  What I noticed was this: the animal was now far away from the rock and watching Old Sour Plum and Flatface’s son yell at each other while the rock sat there, open and empty. The calling could last a long time, unless a woman and another came to watch and tease, because Old Sour Plum would most likely wait until the other became tired and walked off the path. Flatface’s son was as stubborn as the mother.

  I knew if she stopped to think she would think like a woman who was pregnant and take no risks, so she kept low and strode as quietly as she could down the hill, halting every now and then to look up at the animal and make sure that her eyes were on the sight above and not on I’s approach to her abode. And just before she broke from the woods, that last thought stopped her. The animal did live there. I was uninvited. But after the lean time of winter, a group of women would go into a cave to kill a darkfur for its meat; animals don’t offer invitations, and she wanted to see the infant that suckled on the animal’s teats, she wanted to see the butchered remains of the almost-a-man so she could know for sure that her thoughts had been correct, so why was she standing there thinking?

  She ran toward the rock, came to the opening, and jumped in the way she might jump up onto a rock. The ground inside was smooth; she lost her purchase and fell. The inside was dark, like a cave during the daytime, but at the same moment she was aware of all the light. It was like the night sky, darkness full of lights, nice round lights, the color of true bodies, the color of blood, the color of the water, and colors that were vaguely familiar, but she couldn’t name the source of those colors, not right away because along with the lights there were drawings.

  There was a drawing of the inside of a hut made like you were hanging from the ceiling. There was a drawing of different paths. There were drawings of Huggable’s hut and hearth. But the drawings looked like the things themselves. And the drawings moved. And talked. Huggable’s daughter asked if she could nurse. Huggable turned her back to her daughter. The stick that changed colors, and now this. I was so scared, she couldn’t move at all, not to look for where an infant might be sleeping, not to look for signs of butchering, and not even when she felt the inside of the rock get darker, when she knew without looking that someone was standing at the opening, that it had to be the animal, and when she turned, there she was, all shadow and daylight behind her. The animal wasn’t moving either. She was standing as stiffly as I was. Why didn’t the animal just kill her?

  A foot swung back and fell out of sight to the ground. Sunlight caught the face and teats of the animal, whose eyes were wide-open, whose mouth was spread in an impossible-to-read expression. She brought her other foot down and took several steps back. If she was going to let I step out, why hadn’t she earlier made some polite noise so I would have known that she was returning? The animal said something.

  It could talk.

  It said the same thing again. And again. She sounded like a child just learning to say the words she had first heard in her head. “I am here. You are there.” Could she really be saying that? Could she really know how to speak and tell I that she could stand here, where the animal lived, with the lights and the drawings that moved and spoke?

  The animal said it again, maybe because I hadn’t responded, and now she was certain that the animal was actually talking, and somehow an animal talking was worse than everything in this rock that scared her so. She moved forward, and the animal walked back, giving her plenty of room. I could stay and talk, or she could run for the hill. The animal had given her plenty of room to run. I stepped down from the rock, and she became uncomfortable at how close the animal actually was, so she backed away, her heel scraping the side of the rock. She malspoke the pain, and the instant she did that, the animal leaned toward her. The gesture alarmed her, and she cried out. The animal stepped away and tilted her head as if she hadn’t quite understood what I had said.

  Now I wished she hadn’t cried out. Old Sour Plum must have heard, because he was lumbering toward them at a speed that surprised I. She didn’t know if she should warn the animal or Old Sour Plum, and she didn’t really believe that Old Sour Plum would get that close, but he already had his arm out just about when the animal had heard the approaching man, and the animal was turning soon enough to watch Old Sour Plum’s hand snake out and take hold of her shoulder. The old man turned, let loose, and the animal was lifted off the ground for a moment and fell back stumbling, never regaining her balance. Old Sour Plum called to her like a rival, “I am here. You are not,” and the animal was scrambling back. But she stopped and stood up. She watched Sour Plum. Sour Plum called out again, and the animal said nothing. She must not have known how quick the old man could be, because she tried to sidestep him and instead was thrown back to the ground. Now it was terribly easy for Old Sour Plum to lean over and strike out at her. Once, twice, a third time. There was blood on the face, blood on the teats, and it was the blood that made it impossible to watch.

  I pushed at Old Sour Plum. “Stop this,” she called to him, her voice hard, speaking with an edge, something to be heard even by an enraged old man. “Stop this!” She struck Old Sour Plum against the cheek, then darted back just before he returned the blow.

  His eyes rounded in anger, and he stared at her.

  “Stop, old man!” It was Lightfoot Watcher’s voice.

  Old Sour Plum looked up the hill. Lightfoot Watcher had stepped out of the woods and onto the bare hill. Her one arm wa
s outstretched, in her hand the bow.

  The face of Old Sour Plum’s anger changed. He had come down to save I, and now a strange woman threatened him. He said nothing. He stared I down, full face, forcing her to avert her eyes. She heard him breathe, and she expected him to say something. She drew up her courage and met his eyes.

  Old Sour Plum spat on the ground at her feet, then spat on the animal and walked away.

  The animal lay there, dazed, a thin sheen of blood on her body, her skin the color of wood. Her useless teats moved with each breath. Lightfoot Watcher remained where she was, her arm lowered, her gaze surveying the clearing as if looking for someone else to approach.

  What should I do about the animal? She could leave her there. And if she died? Then her worries and the old man’s worries and Nightskin’s worries would all be done with. But I am a healer, the voice within her said. When you have to hold a body, you hold it like the body of a child or the body of an animal. This indeed was an animal, and she picked the animal up, surprised at how heavy she was, and carried her to the rock and laid her body inside it. The animal would be out of the sun and out of sight, and I would have time to return to hut and hearth and get her gzaet. Would the music work on such an animal?

  She looked around, but each thing was so strange that she had no idea how to think about it. But there was no sign of blood, no sign of butchering. What had happened to Clever Fingers’ body?

  When she stepped back into the clearing and the sunlight, Lightfoot Watcher was waiting for her, a basket in either hand. The daughter was still up the hillside, half-hidden behind a tree.

  I quickly took the two baskets and placed them both in the rock. She returned with Lightfoot Watcher to the hillside and the daughter. I said, “I am going to get the gzaet from my shelter.”

  “Should I stay here?”