It was a much smaller article, smaller news, Benson not being as important to the community as Jack Meeker.
BEAR KILLS HUNTER
The mangled body of Merriwell Benson, a hunter and trapper, was found in the dense woods two miles east of the Great Northern Paper Co. dam. Forest Ranger Ed McAfferty made the initial identification even though the body had been rendered close to unrecognizable.
“It was a bear,” McAfferty said, “and a big one. And judging from the tracks, the bear was hunting Benson. It’s still out there and I’d advise everyone to take special precautions. Burn all refuse, don’t leave any food around.”
Austin handed the newspaper back to Ara. “If the body was so mangled, how could they make an identification?”
“Was a chain around his neck with his name on it. Time ya started believin’ people, Austin. That paper don’t lie.”
“Just the same—”
“Just the same, they’re both dead. Like I told ya.”
He looked at his postbox, smiling sorrowfully, all the fight going out of him, all the heart, all the fun. “I never got to put my name on this.”
“Ya still can.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“All ya need’s a little paint. Blue’d be nice.”
“No, Ara.” He smiled at her, half in defeat, half in relief. “That’s it for me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’m leaving.” Saying it aloud, to someone else, made it more definite and most irreversible.
She stiffened, her face wreathed in surprise, a nervous smile forming as if to put the lie to his words. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Just because some people died?”
“They didn’t die, they were killed. There’s a difference.”
“Die or killed, they’re dead. That’s no reason to—”
“It’s weird, but they were the only two people I knew up here.”
“Ya know me and Froom.”
“Do I?”
“A-yuh. I’m Ara. He’s Froom.”
“I’m goin’ home, Ara—wherever that is. I’m goin’ home.”
“Ya quittin’?”
“I guess so. But I’ll tell you something—I’ve been gettin’ a lot of encouragement to quit. The most recent being that bear. He paid me a visit last night.”
“A-yuh. He’d be in the area.”
“He was ten feet tall on his hind legs and came close to knocking the chimney off my house.”
“A-yuh. Bear that big could do that.”
“Ara, he damn near killed me.”
“Nope. If he wanted to kill ya, he would’ve.”
“He’s wounded and he’ll be back.”
“Nope. If he was wounded and wanted to kill ya, he’d of never taken off.”
“I shot the sonofabitch! He’s got a bellyful of buckshot and, unless I’m wrong, he took two other hits!”
“Nope.”
“Ara, I saw his blood in the snow! He’s wounded!”
“Ain’t arguin’ that he’s wounded. Only arguin’ that he won’t be back.”
“Jesus, you are the most—I swear, talkin’ to you is like, like…”
“I thought this was ya home.”
“I thought so, too—but it isn’t.”
“Ya don’t like it anymore?”
“I liked it better before I got here. I liked the idea of it.”
“Don’t ya still? Like the idea of it?”
“Yes. But it’s not enough. I’m cut off here, kid. That’s not new for me, it’s just that here I feel more cut off than ever. Like I’m floating around, like I have no weight. Like something’s been keeping me here for some reason I’ll never understand. And now, with Jack gone…”
“I can bring ya packages and write ya notes.”
“Ara, at night, that house—there’s noises I can’t figure. Lanterns that keep goin’ out. My fire, it can have flames as high as a mountain, but it’s not always hot. There’s an owl whose only job is to keep me awake. I hear those dogs, goddamn ’em, all the time. And a rocking chair, squeaking on its own. And now there’s a bear out there that can kill hunters! I mean, Jesus!”
“I’ll get Froom to give ya pencil and note pad back.”
“Ara—”
“Else I’ll buy ya new ones.”
“Ara, the truth is—I mean, now that I think about it, the truth is,you’re the only thing keepin’ me here.”
She took a moment before speaking, and when she did speak she doled out her words very carefully and most perceptively. “That’s no good.”
He smiled and touched her face, wanting to drown himself in her eyes. “I know. Jesus, don’t you think I know?”
“I think ya know.”
He looked around, at the fluffy whiteness of the land, at the sweet sky and quiet hills. “I wanted this place to be my place, because of Maynard. But also because of me. I mean, I never really had a place and I want one. But this isn’t it. It just isn’t it.” He turned back to her. “And neither are you. You’re just a baby.”
“When ya leavin’?”
“I don’t know. First chance. Tomorrow morning.”
“What’ll happen to ya house?”
“I wouldn’t care if it burned to the ground.”
“Won’t burn.”
“How do you know?”
“Can’t burn.”
“Ara, how do you know that? Why do you say that?”
“I know it because it’s true. And I say it because it’s true.”
“Baby, I’m goin’ to miss you like crazy, but what I won’t miss is the way you talk sometimes. Saying things with such a certainty. Changing subjects whenever you feel like it. You do that, you know. Do you know that?”
“Shame is, I’m doin’ better in school now. Lots better.”
He shook his head in smiling resignation, joining her in the new subject. “Been goin’ every day, like you should?”
“Not every day, but—more’n before.”
“How much more?”
“Even Froom’s gotten to like ya, though he don’t like to show it. He hardly likes anybody. Hates me.”
He could see the tears gathering in her eyes. “Ara—”
“Ain’t ya noticed how he don’t razz ya all the time? How he likes to play with ya if ya let ’im?”
“Yeah, like with that snow witch when he bombed me like I was Hanoi.”
“We both like ya, Austin. So it’s not like ya don’t have anyone.”
“I think you’re tellin’ me to stay.”
“Nope. Just tellin’ ya ya’ll be missed.”
“If I am, it’ll be the first time.”
“First time for everythin’.”
“Ara, I have to go.”
“No skin off me.”
“Will you and Froom help me? I’ve got no transportation into Belden. Maybe, with your sled…I’ve always wanted to ride your sled with you.”
“Ya got ya own sled.”
“I guess I do, but—I don’t know the way.”
“Ya can ask a traffic cop.”
“Ara—”
“Ya got here without my help, ya can leave the same way.” She turned and walked away, as icy as the snow underfoot, her chin farther out than her nose, so apparent was her annoyance. Halfway up the hill to Froom she turned and shouted back at Austin. “And ya a lousy kisser, Austin!”
“Ara!” he called. “I love you!”
“Fat chance!”
She was over the hill and gone, Froom, faithful chauffeur, steering her home on their obedient sled—and Austin felt a wrenching in his gut like a bayonet being twisted. He loved the girl but hated the house. The girl was too young, not to be tampered with; the house too old, not to be endured. It was a dilemma and a paradox and a pain in the ass. Everything was wrong that could be wrong. His old luck was coming back—like swallows to Capistrano, like the proverbial bad penny. He felt star-crossed, snake-bit and faked out. He was the Flying
Dutchman and there was no friendly port. And the sooner he lifted anchor and shoved off, the sooner he could try his luck elsewhere.
He picked up his rifle and trudged back toward his house, stopping at the snow witch to tell her off. “Listen, you ugly mother, I know you don’t like me and I don’t like you. But I’ll tell you a secret, okay? Come next summer, I’ll be around, somewhere. You? You’ll be melted into nothing but a broom and a hat and a couple of lumps of coal. How do you like them apples, Miss Maine of 1640-whatever?”
At the witch’s tree he stopped again, addressing the skeletal abomination with the contempt it deserved. “As for you, tree, I don’t know who they hung on you, but don’t get any ideas about me because I ain’t hangin’ around. Get it? And if you give me any more crap with your no-show shadow, I’m goin’ to come back on Washington’s Birthday and chop you into kindling with my little hatchet. I cannot tell a lie.”
He gave the tree the old “fuck you” half of his arm and stormed off. He had had enough of all of it and he was checking the hell out. As to paying the bill, he wouldn’t. He hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep since arriving, it was noisy, the heat never came up, the food was lousy, the room was not comfortable and there was no room for him to sign the register.
The house was in sight and the bear wasn’t, and that had to count as a plus in his then state of mind. If Jack Meeker was dead, Austin Fletcher was alive. And if the sun had ducked in at the witch’s tree, it was on in full as he passed his woodshed. And if he felt bad about leaving Ara, he felt good about leaving Maine—and that went triple in spades for his chimney, and quadruple in clubs for his backhouse.
Feeling headier than he’d felt in days, he sucked in huge drafts of blessed winter air, clearing his mind, adding length to his stride and determination to his gait—and all was well with him except that something was behind him.
He didn’t see it, he felt it. It didn’t touch him, but he knew it was there. He couldn’t hear it, because it made no sound. But it was there and he ran for his life, and the screaming in his head he recognized as his own.
Whatever it was, it was low, down around his ankles—and he kicked his feet high as he ran, like a strutting drum major, afraid to let his rear heel linger too long on the snow, for fear that it might be snapped at. He was Achilles on ice, terror gnashing at his heels, and his house seemed farther away than ever.
It touched him, grazing his ankle, and he kicked higher, almost falling and caused to veer slightly from his straight-for-the-house course. And he saw it, conical and black, the high-pointed hat of the snow-witch, rolling erratically after him though there was no wind to so propel it. It bounded over the snow at him, like a bloodhound with a scent. It pursued him frivolously, funny in its tumbling because its shape inspired no grace. Still, it was a hateful thing in concept, clinging to his ankle as if on an invisible thread, changing its course as he changed his, vexing him, plaguing him, frightening him to yelling out loud—and he ran all the way home.
19
It snowed. Late that afternoon the sky turned dull gray and released flakes the size of nickels, a million dollars’ worth piling up in his trenches, quilting his roof, dusting his sills. It was a holiday snow, picturesque, descending slowly like small paratroopers. The wind slackened and the air warmed and animals ducked predictably into their lairs, birds tucking their heads under their wings, deer taking shelter in safe caves and covering bushes, while in his house daffy squirrels dug into the food hoards they had laid in for just such weather, and in his ceiling and below his floor he could hear them at their banqueting, singing songs and telling stories, happy with their host who had so beneficently turned up the heat.
He kept his stove door full open in hopes of coaxing even more heat out of it, and the light of the fire projected lazy shadows upon the walls—of beams and buckets and of himself, and of his Boston rocker which he disdained sitting in, its silhouette magnified to such a degree that a giant could have occupied it and not have felt cramped. The shadow did move, but only when provoked by the dancing flames, the chair itself remaining motionless and certainly not creaking.
He was trying, hard, to gather his capacities, to think, to judge, to act, for what had happened couldn’t possibly have happened, and his sanity, sorely tested, was up for grabs.
Earlier, the witch’s hat had stopped upon reaching his door, not of its own choice but of his, for he wouldn’t let it in, clubbing at it with his rifle, pulling the door shut before it could gain access, stuffing a towel at the base of the door to prevent its sliding under.
From his window he had watched as it thrashed angrily about on his porch, making a scoop of itself, filling itself with snow and hurling itself at his door. Twice it had flown at him, as if to crash the window, but, lacking a weight to match its temper, it succeeded only in denting its crown.
For a time it had hung on the sky, assessing the situation like an oversized hummingbird, after which it flew straightaway up to where he heard it on his roof, squeezing itself into a bundle and inserting itself into his chimney. He heard it funneling down the flue, causing the damper to rattle like a rock in a tin can. He heard the frustrated thumping as it came to realize that the flue was blocked. And he heard it whoosh back up the chimney, where, resuming its natural shape, it fluttered down again to his porch to flagellate itself further before tumbleweeding off to whatever hell would give it haven. And in its leaving it seemed to have punctured the sky, causing the big snow that came after, first as a trickle but soon as a flood, flake after flake of it, nickel after nickel. And, watching the snow, he had the feeling that he was watching his brain, shredded and tossed and coming down like confetti. And he knew that if he could not gather it all up and roll it back into his head, and soon, he was psycho ward bound and Section Eight doomed.
He was shaken, as close to flipping as he’d ever been. Two men had been killed in the action, Al Obermeyer and Jimmy Schaefer. And they lay there, side by side under the unperturbed sky like newly felled young trees, each with his dogtags in his mouth.
It was some kind of ritual that he never did understand. All he knew was that dogtags came notched so that if you were killed and still had a face, the metal tags could be slotted over your front lower teeth, holding your mouth open as if you were a baby bird waiting for Momma to come feed you. Why the Army wanted your mouth open in death was beyond him. Was it to let your soul out? Was it to let you look as though you were having the last word? Was it so that the flies could go inside you and do their work there, rather than work on the outside and make newsreel photographers ill?
“It’s so Graves Registration can get at ya dogtags easy, Austin, and make a quick identification.” Maynard had the answer. Maynard had all the answers all the time.
Austin felt an airiness, a lack of ballast, as if the death of the two soldiers had stolen his weight, making him too light for the world, a proper wind or a quick spin able to send him spinning into space.
Both men had been his friends, as much as he had friends. Both were younger than he was, were better people, and had more to lose. Obermeyer was married, was a college grad with a degree in sociology and had volunteered. Jimmy Schaefer had a football scholarship to Tennessee which was his for the asking as soon as he got out of the Army. Austin Fletcher had nothing, was nothing, and knew nothing. Why, then, had he been spared? The shell had landed right in their midst, killing the pair of them outright, yet not so much as scratching Austin or even slightly ruffling Maynard. Why?
“Hard to answer that, Austin. Maybe it’s best we don’t try. ‘Specially since ya don’t look so steady to me.”
“I think we should try. How come they’re dead and we’re not? The four of us were in the same high grass—Obermeyer, me, Schaefer and you, in that order. How can a shell explode, kill one and three and miss two and four?”
“Well, ya might call it luck.”
“Luck, my ass.”
“Okay, then—design. Will ya accept design?”
�
�I don’t know.”
“Luck or design, Austin. One or the other. Can’t be both. Not at the same time. Be a contradiction in terms.”
“I don’t know. I was hoping you’d know.”
“You a fatalist?”
“I’m a nothing.”
“Fatalist thinks when ya number is up it’s up. Fatalist thinks things come to pass by design and can’t be changed no matter what.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Then ya not a fatalist.”
“What’s the other again?”
“Don’t know any word for it ’ceptin’ luck. They had bad luck. We had good luck.”
“What do you believe?”
“Well, I guess I believe in design.”
“A fatalist.”
“I guess so. I think what’s goin’ to be is goin’ to be. I think the cards are dealt out a long time ago and all we do is ante up and play out the hand.”
“You think they were supposed to get killed?”
“A-yuh.”
“Today?”
“A-yuh. Guess I do.”
“Isn’t that cuttin’ it pretty close? I mean—to the day?”
“Well, if things are scheduled, why not? Why allow any leeway? Only get people to bouncin’ into one another. I mean, if a reservation’s made ahead of time, no sense in not showin’ up on time.”
“And you and me—we didn’t have a reservation?”
“Seems not. At least not for today. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe never.”
“You think you’ll never get killed?”
“Well—I think I’ll die, one day. But, no, I don’t think I’ll ever get killed.”
“Why don’t I feel that way?”
“I guess because we’re different.”
“Do you think I’ll get killed? Come on, give me a fast answer with none of your deep thinkin’.”
“Well, I think you stand a better chance of gettin’ killed than I do.”
“Why?”
“Because ya believe it about yourself, and I don’t.”
Maynard’s House Page 18