The Signal Flame

by Andrew Krivak

  She came to a stop. There was little ground cover but for some crow’s-foot and wintergreen, and the area took on a quality of seeming enchantment for her, no different in her middle age than it had when she was a child. The enchantment of some ancient world, unlike the one that surrounded it. An untouched world. She stood looking up at the council of trees among which she was present. Trees so old and independent and in command of what land lay about them that they might have been summoned for advice on what to do with anything that time had placed beyond the grasp of mere humans.

  Her father had seen the beauty of these few acres of forest and insisted that if someone before him had preserved them for a reason, he would do the same. Hannah (unlike her father) had never surveyed entirely and on foot the land that now belonged to her. She knew on paper where the boundaries were, and she knew her father had driven iron rods into the ground at various points of intersection with the border, or made distinguishable marks on boundary stones, but she had not gone out and kicked those rods or stood on those stones. When would I have done that this past year? she wondered, although the walk itself might have done her good, and she decided that in the spring she would go. Before the snakes came out. Take a day and walk her property alone. Until she did that, she would not know what the men before her had known about this land.

  She walked up to a beech and touched its bark and saw what she had placed there years ago with Becks and his knife, below a smooth and nearly indiscernible JV+HP. The initials BK+HV. And she saw the line of all those who had come to that spot, her boys, to record whom they loved in the smooth silver of the majestic beech. BK+AD and SK+RY. Each one clearer, more visceral, in its presence on the tree’s skin. Her fingers probed the last of these etchings, wondering when it would heal and grow over and lighten like the rest. Then she stepped away from the tree and let the quiet of the woods engulf her like an absence.

  She looked around for the dog and thought she heard a noise. She walked out into a large round patch of moss and stood listening to the air.

  Krasna, she called into the stillness.

  She saw the black coat flash for a moment in the distance of the grove, the dog’s head down, the nose no doubt after something.

  Krasna, she yelled louder, and began walking at a trot. But the dog was moving away, and Hannah thought, She can’t hear me. She’s found something she won’t let go of.

  It unfolded then as though she were a lone spectator before an outdoor stage. The dirt floor beneath. The lack of brush and low-growing trees. The late-morning light. And the way that sound carried on a breeze. She saw the swatch of orange first, saw it rising in the distance like a paper cutout lifted up to take its part in the play. She turned and willed her dog to bark or move, to come back in her direction, but the black coat froze by the log beneath which it had stopped to sniff and paw. The orange cutout lifted its stick and she saw the hunter pushed back hard by the butt of the rifle before she heard the blast, and then the black fur as it jumped and rolled and lay still in the dirt as the report reached her.

  She ran waving and shouting toward Krasna and fell to her knees beside the dog. The eyes were glassy, the mouth open so that teeth and gums showed, the shoulder a bloody mass of fur. She heard branches break behind her, the sound of someone bounding with fear and excitement through woods, and she stood up fast and turned.

  It was not a boy but nor was it a man, such as she would call a man. He was decked out in hunter’s orange from his hat to the vinyl chaps on his trousers, and his face bore patches of unshaved fuzz around white sores of acne across his neck and chin. He held his gun to his chest and stared wide-eyed at Hannah.

  You shot my dog! she screamed. What are you doing hunting on this land!

  His mouth was open too wide even if he had wanted to speak, and Hannah yelled again at him across the open forest floor that separated them, What are you doing hunting on this land!

  She was shaking now, grief and rage growing, and the boy looked at her and down at the lifeless black dog on the ground, and began to walk backward, then turned and ran.

  No, you don’t, Hannah said. She reached for a stone as he moved faster through the brush, and threw it at him, but it fell short of where he had stood. What faintness of orange she could make out through the trees in the direction of the logging road became a blur through her tears, and she slumped back down on the ground next to the old Lab.

  The others who had gathered at Bo’s house for Thanksgiving were all before the fire in the living room drinking brandy when Ruth stood and pointed out the window.

  Bo. It’s Hannah. Something’s wrong with Krasna.

  Bo stood and saw his mother laboring to carry the dog as she trod from the dirt field onto the grass and stumbled. He bolted through the kitchen and out the door to meet her, took the Lab from her arms and felt the stiff heaviness of the animal, saw the wet and red cheeks of his mother, who had wept the whole way back through the woods without being able to wipe her eyes and face, and said, I’ve got her, Mom. I’ve got her now.

  Ruth came out of the house right behind him and held Hannah up so that she would not fall. Bo turned and laid Krasna in Ruth’s arms and told her to put the dog on his workbench in the barn, then he walked Hannah into the house and sat her down at the kitchen table in front of the stove.

  After camomile tea with a shot of brandy in it, Hannah told them what had happened among the old hardwoods, Krasna running ahead of her, which she was happy the dog was doing now, and then that flash of the hunter, the rifle crack, and the dog dead before Hannah even got to her.

  You got a look at him? Bo asked.

  I don’t know. He ran when he saw what he’d done. I’m so sorry, she said, and put her head down and began to cry again.

  Bo looked at Rovnávaha and the priest said, Hannah, let me help you upstairs. You should lie down. Bo is going to talk to the police.

  Hannah shook her head. I want to see her again, she said.

  Ruth had come back in the house and was standing by the door. She’s in the barn, Hannah. I’ll take you.

  Ruth led her out of the kitchen door, and they walked together across the grass and into the barn, and there lay Krasna on a blanket spread out over the top of Bo’s workbench. Hannah stood at a distance at first and stared at the dog so as to take in the entire length of her, then walked toward her and touched her fur, petting her gently, as though unsure it was the right thing to do. She touched the blood at the bullet hole below the shoulder that she knew had gone right through the dog’s heart, then she scratched the ears as she had so often in the past.

  She turned to see if Ruth was still there.

  Sam wanted a dog when Bo went off to college, she said. We’d had a Lab named Duna, but she died the spring before. I asked him who was going to take care of the dog if we got one, and he said, I will. Guess who took care of her?

  Ruth said, He talked about her all the time. The first letter he ever sent me from boot camp, he wrote, I miss you more than my dog, and I thought, How could he say something like that? Then that morning I came to your house? The first thing I thought when I got out of the car and she licked my hand was, This is the dog Sam missed. And I knew everything was going to be all right.

  Hannah stepped back and wiped her eyes. I wish they could have seen each other again.

  Ruth nodded but said nothing.

  The police came, and Hannah gave what description she could of the hunter and made a statement that his rifle was raised and at his chest when she confronted him. They went into the barn and looked at the dog. Bo guessed it was a thirty-thirty that had killed her, and one of the officers said it could have been anyone within a hundred miles.

  The police asked Hannah if she would be available to come down to the station if they called her to identify anyone, and she said she would. An officer who had come in another car and walked into the woods to canvass the grove came back up the hill. He held out an empty shell casing and handed it to one of the cops who had shown up first a
t the house. Thirty-thirty, he said, and looked at Bo.

  You don’t post that land, Mrs. Konar? the other policeman asked.

  No, we’ve never put up signs. Never had to.

  Well, you might have to now, if you don’t want those woods to become the local playground.

  They won’t, Bo said. Not while I’m living here.

  All right, Mr. Konar. But you call us first. You hear?

  I hear you, Bo said.

  When Bo and Hannah went back into the house, the others were sitting at the table and passing around the bread Hannah and Ruth had brought.

  Bo said, I’m sorry, everyone. It hasn’t been much of a Thanksgiving.

  Don’t worry about us, Rovnávaha said. What do you and Hannah need right now?

  Bo did not have to look at his mother to know what she wanted done. We have to bury her, he said. Back at the farm.

  In the orchard, Hannah said.

  Then that’s what we’ll do, Rovnávaha said. There’s plenty of daylight still, and we have the hands. We can eat afterward.

  It was getting dark when Bo threw the last shovelful of dirt onto the mounded grave that he and Jeff and the priest had dug beneath a crabapple tree at the far edge of the orchard, and into which Hannah and Ruth had lowered Krasna with a bedsheet. Rovnávaha said a blessing for the animals and asked Saint Francis to pray for all living things, and then they walked in a line across the orchard and went inside Hannah’s house. Ruth heated the stew she had brought back in a pot from Bo’s. Angie Lamoreaux sliced another loaf of bread, and Jeff opened the bottles of Rovnávaha’s wine and filled the glasses set around the table in the kitchen.

  And they sat there, eating, drinking, and talking, all six of them, each with stories about his or her first encounter with the black Lab they called Beautiful in Slovak, then with memories of all the animals that had lived on that farm. Duna years ago. Goats that once roamed the grounds. Horses they kept when Becks was alive, especially Pushkin, his favorite. The chickens Hannah bought from Virgil each year and raised. Ruth sat next to Bo, her hand folded into his beneath the table. And when the chimes for eleven echoed down the hall from the clock in the living room, there was a long silence during which it seemed time had become once again a reminder that there were days ahead of them, and each one stood and said goodbye until the kitchen was empty of all but Hannah, Bo, and Ruth, and they sat until the dark settled and the stove burned down, and not one of them moved, too tired were they even for sleep.

  CHAPTER

  EIGHTEEN

  CHRISTMAS EVE FELL ON A Sunday that year. Bo and Ruth woke early and took a saw and a hatchet from the barn and went across the field and into the woods in search of a tree for Hannah. The temperature, warm all month, dropped below freezing that night and there was the smell of coming snow in the air. They hiked in wool field jackets and wore gloves for the work. They found a balsam fir that Bo said he had been eyeing for some time, and he notched the tree trunk on the side he wanted it to drop, then he put the saw to it and the fir leaned and fell in a soft hush onto the ground. He took the hatchet from a holster around his waist and gave the base of the tree a thwap, and it separated from the stump.

  Timber, he said.

  Ruth shook some dead twigs and a few needles out of the top, and Bo wrapped a plastic bag around the trunk end where the sap was running and made a loop with a small piece of rope that he slid over the bag and used as a handle to carry the tree. Ruth took the front, and they walked out of the woods back up the hill with the fir, cinched it down into the bed of the truck, and drove over to the farm.

  Hannah was waiting in the kitchen with coffee, and after Bo and Ruth had placed the tree in a stand and stood it in the living room across from the fireplace, they sat down and talked about the weather and the storm that was forecast. Bo wondered out loud if folks would make it for dinner that night, and Hannah said, It’s never stopped anyone in the fifty years I’ve been alive.

  She spoke about the news she had heard on television the night before, the bombings that had been going on in North Vietnam, and she said it was a shame Nixon had to do that on Christmas.

  The whole damn thing’s a shame, Mom, Bo said, and knelt down to lay a fire in the fireplace.

  It was nine-forty-five by the clock on the wall, and Hannah stood and said, Well, I’m going to church. I’ll leave you two to decorate this tree. There’s plenty of food and coffee in the kitchen.

  She walked over to her son and put her hand on his shoulder and said, It’s nice to see you not running off to the mill for a change. Then she went into the foyer and took her coat from the rack.

  Take my truck, Mom, Bo said. He tossed her the keys and she went out by the front door.

  When she had driven away, Bo and Ruth rummaged through boxes on the floor for lights and strung those on the tree from top to bottom. Bo rested an alabaster angel at the tip of the tree around the first three lights, and when he plugged them in, the angel glowed with a soft nimbus. Ruth opened boxes of ornaments, some that had been made by the boys years ago in school or with their grandfather out of pinecones, wood scraps, rounded-down glass, and tree bark dipped in shellac, so that she studied them and tried to attach the boy and the age before asking Bo if she had gotten it right, and she often had. Then she placed them on the tree, and when it looked something close to decorated, Bo stepped back and looked at the clock. I need your help with something, he said.

  They walked outside and through the orchard, the air damp and colder now, though it was late morning.

  Bo said, It’s really supposed to come down tonight. A foot, maybe.

  Finally some winter, Ruth said.

  When they got to the shop, Bo turned on the light and he and Ruth went to the back, where he pulled off the bedsheet that covered the hutch he had made in the summer. Hannah’s Christmas present, he said.

  Ruth approached and ran her fingertips across the hard sheen of varnish. It’s beautiful, she said.

  I hope she likes it.

  She’ll love it. You sure we can carry it out of here?

  Bo pointed to a corner of the shop, and said, I brought that hand truck over from the mill. That’ll get us to the front porch. If we take the drawers out when we get there, we should be able to lift it up the stairs. Ruth made a muscle with her fist and arm like a strongman at a fair. Bo squeezed her bicep between his thumb and fingers, and said, Yep, that’ll do.

  He padded the hutch with cardboard at the exposed surfaces and corner points, then rocked the nose of the truck under and wheeled it through the door of the shop and down the drive to the front of the house. They took the drawers out and put them on the porch, then lifted the hutch up the steps. Inside, they set it in a corner of the foyer where Bo had measured it to fit when he first drew up his plans. They took the padding off and put the drawers back in, and Bo dusted the top and sides with a soft cloth. Then he opened one of the drawers and placed inside a white card that read, To Hannah—Veselé Vianoce! and left the drawer open.

  Ruth stepped back and eyed the piece from every side. It looks like it’s always been there, she said.

  Bo nodded. It does, if I do say so.

  She crossed her arms at her chest and glanced outside through the glass door. Starting to snow, she said.

  Feels like it. Let’s keep that fire going. For Hannah.

  They went into the living room, and Ruth walked over to the fireplace and moved the screen and placed a log on the embers, then knelt down on the stone in front of the hearth. Bo sat in the chair across from her and said, I see you do that, and take care of those chickens, and move around next to Hannah like the two of you are sisters, and I think the same thing. It’s like she’s always been here.

  Ruth gave a small laugh. You make it sound like I do more than the two of you.

  As much, Bo said. That’s what I mean.

  She stared back into the fire. Mr. Lavendusky asked me if I wanted to come back to work at the hardware store in the New Year.

  What
did you tell him?

  That I would.

  Good. You ought to.

  She took an iron poker from the fireset and pushed apart two logs that were close and smoldering, watched them catch, and remained kneeling on the floor.

  Wait there for a second, Bo said. I’ve got something for you, too. I was going to give it to you tomorrow but— Well, hang on.

  He went into the foyer where his coat hung on the rack, and he took a long thin box from the pocket and walked back into the living room. She stood and turned to face him, and he handed her the box.

  You had this on you while we were cutting down that tree? she asked.

  I kept trying not to move funny so that you wouldn’t see it. Go ahead. Open it.

  She lifted the lid and unfolded a piece of red flannel. Inside was a small polished silver spoon.

  I found it behind the sink in the old kitchen, he said.

  She cradled the spoon in her hand, then turned it over and paused on the silver mark. BK was Bartley Kelleher, she said. My great-great-grandfather.

  I know. Rovnávaha told me. The day we brought you here.

  She pressed her thumb into the mark and studied the impression, then pressed her thumb into it again, as though it were only a matter of time before the letters disappeared. She shook her head, wrapped the spoon back up in the flannel, and said, Thank you, Bo. I used to think the hardest thing about last summer was coming out of that flood with nothing left. But I don’t feel that so much anymore.

  Well, I hope this helps, he said.

  It helps.

  She leaned into him and buried her face in his shirt. He pulled her in closer and felt her breathe. She raised her hands to his shoulders and lifted her head up, as though there was something more she wanted to say, but she just gazed at him, a sadness in her eyes (it seemed to Bo) like so much of the sadness to which she could already lay claim. He stroked the hair that fell down the back of her neck and smelled his shampoo in it from her morning bath, and he stared down into the flames of the fire in the fireplace behind her and watched them burn.