Julius Winsome

by Gerard Donovan

  I said read it.

  Okay, okay. He traced the words with a finger, the finger falling behind his eye, his voice trailing the finger:

  Let’s make us medicines of our great revenge,

  To cure this deadly grief

  .

  What do you think, I said.

  It’s a foreign language, I don’t understand this continual talk of yours.

  It’s English, I said.

  What—you mean like intelligencer, and that other word you said? That’s not English.

  I knew what he was saying and felt for him.

  You mean it’s English like a dog’s bark, I said.

  Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean, what it’s like.

  I said, They might be the same thing now.

  What’s the same?

  What dogs and Shakespeare have to say.

  Who says? He snapped the book shut and pointed to his chest: What’s with this lecturing me? What are you going to do? I’m a police officer.

  He shouted these words to give them force, but they were the right words and didn’t need shouting. It was true for him, I had far too much to say all of a sudden, a form of impertinence.

  I kept the rifle high. My intendment? I don’t know, I said by way of a fast retreat. Read a little, make some tea, get a fire going with this chill coming, something along those lines is what I will do.

  His voice softer again: I meant do with me.

  I shook my head to let him know, and at that he melted for his final moments, they loosened him into talking more, complaints about his life and his business, how hard he had worked, how everyone respected him, and then his lists of responsibilities, and I waited till the complaints echoed themselves into the silence of the forest that eats up everything a man might ever say till he has talked himself out and the echoes peter because no generation follows them into the trees.

  I knelt on one knee and wiped off the snow from Hobbes, from the clay above him. He was a couple of feet away from my hand, and I felt I could almost rub his back, pat his head.

  Had Troy shot Hobbes? I believe I was leaning that way. His manner when he denied it, the quickness of his explanation, what he knew. He admitted being around the cabin and had the streak required for such an act, to silent what was already voiceless.

  I stood with the Enfield, pointed it at his stomach.

  Tell me she’s happy, I said.

  * * *

  He looked surprised and said nothing for a change, maybe because the lights were out in the sky, only stars in the clear night ahead of tomorrow’s storm. He thought for a minute or looked at his boots without thinking, I couldn’t tell. And that chill at my arms, at my ears. The trees seemed to move differently behind him, surely the numbers on their way, that’s what it was, sucking any heat from the air.

  Is she happy? I haven’t—I think so.

  The first uncertainty out of him all day. I looked again at the beds, the width of snow I’d scraped away, a small scrap off the face of death, as useless as digging him up and holding him again. To have him so close and not have him at all.

  So she was happy. I knew at those words that she was truly gone and likely never to pass before me again, no woman come out of the woods, no ointment in the air of the cabin, no voice reaching out a hand for mine in the kitchen after nightfall, by the fire. I still loved her, if that’s what this feeling was in me, this memory. But there was Hobbes, taken from me, taken from his own life, his joy.

  I stood and said, That’s good then. You’ll need to be on your way.

  I glanced to the trees that led to Fort Kent, as if some trees held a highway in them and those were the ones for him to follow.

  You’re going to kill me, he said.

  I said nothing to that, but it was true, I had gone back and forth. He was the one. I had him now.

  49

  HE LOOKED WHERE I POINTED, AT THOSE TREES, THEN at others around him as if to confuse me or himself as to where he intended to run. He breathed deeper, storing air for the dash.

  You’re going to shoot me.

  I told you to go. How many times do you have to be told something?

  I owed Claire that much, to bring this man back to his house and to her. The impulse to let him go needed quick nurturing before a stronger one came back, before my eyes passed over the flowerbeds where Hobbes lay on his side, silent in his end, what waits for everyone.

  He stepped to the rear, one foot searching, then the other, facing me, not taking the chance to turn his back and run.

  You will do something for me, I said.

  He stared.

  Never, I said, never on your life say another word to me, and don’t look in my direction ever again, unless it’s to be your final glance.

  He did not wait for further instructions, and I saw that he was walking away from town and my cabin, back into the woods where we met earlier. That meant he had a vehicle parked somewhere near where I found him.

  Very presumptuous, I said.

  What? He did not move to face me again.

  You’ll be walking back to Fort Kent, I said, or some of the way. And Fort Kent is that way. I waved the rifle at the invisible town in the other direction. Go on. Forget your car. And cover your gulf.

  He did not ask what a gulf was but curled the scarf around his throat anyway and walked across the yard in front of me, this policeman heading off to Fort Kent on foot. When he was twenty yards into the brush, fifty steps distant in the snow, I aimed the rifle at the back of his head, as he no doubt expected me to do, and pulled on the trigger until a finger’s tension and release balanced him on this and the far side of life.

  Look around, Troy, I said.

  He did not. That surprised me. He struck me as the type who has to do what you tell him not to. I thought he would shout something at me then as he flitted along the floor of the woods, walking faster. I would shoot him if he did, pursue him to the very end of him. He ran finally, sifting himself away into the trees, and I loosened the trigger and brought him back to this life, and he was gone, along with my chance of shooting him into the next, gone carrying my last embrace to Claire, this man who took her from me and whose life she had just saved.

  * * *

  There were no houses this side of the first major road, and that was a good three-hour walk in these conditions, at the very least, assuming he didn’t get lost. Then he would be picked up, someone would be driving the St. John Road on a Saturday night, and then there was another twelve miles to Fort Kent, so at least five hours until they came this way, more likely after midnight by the time they had all their men and cars and plans, and he with them, of course, to regain his dignity. That was fine. I leaned the rifle on the porch and went inside.

  50

  FIRST I MADE TEA AND GOT THE FIRE BURNING HIGH, packed with logs, then did something I could not remember having been done in all the time I had grown up in that cabin: I took the New England chair from its place in front of the woodstove and carried it out to the clearing, set it down in the middle between the porch and the flowerbed, facing the space in the trees where the sky held most of the stars. When I walked back into the cabin I saw the giant space where it had been and the man who sat in it, and all the reading that had passed months and years in it, the stories that turned the pages on that chair.

  In the spare bedroom I lifted the cover from the gramophone and placed a record, turning the volume till I knew I’d hear it outside and setting the arm to repeat; all that was left to do was select a book. I walked the shelves to S for Shakespeare, midway between the cold books at the back and the warm ones on the other side of the horseshoe of bookshelves that ended at the kitchen counter. With my coat and gloves with the fingers showing I took it outside to the chair and sipped the tea as the song floated overhead.

  Wouldn’t be long now, not that long to wait. I leaned back in the chair and watched the stars and guessed from the disposition of cloud that it was snowing in a corner of the woods, yet I hoped that my
patch of sky would stay open for another hour. The record played from deep in its scratches the lute and a tender voice from long ago and far away. I closed my eyes and let it drift over me, kept the cup against my fingers for the heat:

  Greensleeves was all my joy,

  Greensleeves was my delight,

  Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

  And who but my Lady Greensleeves.

  I thought I might as well read for a while, the part of The Winter’s Tale that she held up to me near the end, the part I thought she must have meant, though she was not the type to read much of anything aloud:

  A sad tale’s best for winter: I have one

  Of sprites and goblins.

  I drew the gabardine around me to wrap out the chill, and at that second the page brightened and I knew, looked up, there, sharp and icy in the night, now above the trees and out of the ringing cloud, the white rock spun its stringed music, unheard, above the white lamp of ground and into the black rooms of the air.

  Won’t be long now.

  Soon the cold was upon me, the merciless and nameless cold, and I needed the blanket I’d draped on the porch railing. Walking it back to the chair reminded me of my grandfather, when he lived under that same cloth as now kept me warm and had earlier saved my life: he spent the day long under it by the fire, and when I asked him once what he was thinking, he put his hand on my shoulder and said he was thinking of my mother, as she had died only six few years before, and that he had been fond of her, that I would have liked her, and not to worry about the bits of me that didn’t make sense because I never knew her. She was in me, and that was all.

  After an hour or so of that tune I was ready for the next. The fire was turning to a mush of red-hot ember as I passed quietly to the bedroom and placed another record on the turntable, songs by John Dowland, a lute player from Shakespeare’s time: I saw the first three titles circle on the label: Flow Not so Fast Ye Fountains, Come from My Window, Flow Now my Teares.

  On the way out I poured hot water for coffee to keep myself awake and carried it on top of a pillow so I could lean back and see the sky without straining. Before I got too comfortable, I went into the barn and spread all the seed, the cracked corn and pellets for the birds, all of it across the floor and into the yard, and wedged the door open so they could get in and out. From the window I heard more scratches and wondered how the sound of the record could reach this far, then saw the bundle of wings unfurl in the light of the moon and the claws scratch the glass, and the small bird flung itself once more at the sky it couldn’t reach. You think the moon is the sun, you do, I smiled, and you should be asleep, and I walked to it with my coat spread wide. It scattered itself into the folds, caught as I closed them. Goodness knows how long you’ve been trying. I carried the soft punch of its feathers into the yard and opened wide, and it flew up and was gone.

  Not long now.

  I was restless as a man waiting for a performance, an empty hand stretched out too far for another hand, an ear lost between notes. There was only one thing for it, the pipe would calm me, that and another sherry. I stoked the fire first, then poured a glass and lit the pipe, puffing my way out to the clearing.

  * * *

  The wind came and slit me along the skin. This time I knew it for a snow wind, the way the trees rattled like fine silver, the sound of a trembling arctic sea across the tops of the forest. That same wind must have bounced off the trees and brushed the moon too, because when I looked up I saw it bulged slightly on the left side, like water in the thinnest reach of the wave when it spreads and then seeps, a bright salt stain on the sand.

  My father’s astronomy book was correct to the hour in predicting the event to come, what he pointed out to me over thirty years ago one day when he told me to keep a look out for it. I said I would. Now here it was, the covering, the moon and sun and the earth arranged into a song, knowing nothing of the magic they made in the night. I let the book fall to my lap and sat back, my eyes steady on the shadow, the ground to which my chair and I were pinned, in which Hobbes lay curled, turning to cloth under us and spreading a giant cloak across the void. More wind blew like cutlery, a long, slow tinkling over Maine, what I would see if I rose up on wings over the forest, north to Quebec and east to Newfoundland, the bright foil of rivers, woods shook with frigid streams, wilderness run through with eagles, hawks, owls, bears, caribou, hungry herds gliding over the stones, the expanse of mountains and ice, roaming from night into day into night past wet towns nursed in valleys, the wide St. Lawrence salmon spearing ocean miles and river currents with a compass set for the narrow pond of their birth.

  I passed an hour going from the clearing to the kitchen and back, more sherry, more music, more wood. And all the while the shadow passed across the moon until the reflected light dimmed to the color of paper, and then stone gray, and then burnt wood. And then there was no more in and out, and I was sitting in the big chair in the yard, arched for viewing through the trees with the pillow at my neck, the pipe in one hand, the book on my lap, the coffee in the other. Look at the hole in the sky, I thought, that was no giant glittering star in the night leading no men to their king. I waited, watching the faint stars find their places as the sun went behind the earth with all its light and switched off the moon.

  When I felt the rushing through the woods behind me scurrying along the trails, I thought the whole world was sweeping itself clean in the vacuum, a piece of airless lightless space drenched down through the atmosphere. But it was just the snow wind again, this time reaching as far as the yard, and the first drops fell from the sky, from where I do not know, I saw no cloud. I was warm enough with the blanket and the coat, the gloves, and I wanted nothing on my head.

  The truth was that I had lost track of the clock. I felt suspended in time not my own, not my choosing, a place I fell into by some omission or error, and grew. I might have risen then in my chair and be blown to the right time, backwards to an age I could breathe in, where my all waiting was right, a living place and pace, wine and hot meadows spread out under steeple bells.

  Sitting in the chair, I watched the moon go a damp orange, then some blood seeped into it: and there it stayed, the true face of the moon, its true art, that cold, red flesh, a gunshot wound hung up in the night.

  I watched it till I was so tired I had to close my eyes for a bit.

  I had no logic, no excuse, no dreams that drove me to act or conjured a different man in me: every part of the last few days, everything I had done and not done, was my doing and mine alone. He was my friend, and I loved him. That is all of it.

  * * *

  When I woke, the cup had fallen, the book too, but the pipe still lay in my fingers. My ears were stones rubber-banded in skin, my lips and nose sore and numb at the same time. The moon had moved to the right and found its light, and the sky had collapsed, a good few inches of more snow fallen already, snow white-hot with light, snow on my coat, snow down one boot where the pants went inside, my sock drenched. Still I wanted to stay, to wait for morning, to cover myself and sleep the night out, but the fire was out for sure, and I wondered idly about the time.

  I carried everything inside, the chair last, and resuscitated the flames. I watered the plants, stood briefly in my bedroom, bending over the mattress on the box springs, so much of my life spent unconscious there. The clothes in the closet were few, a couple of summer shirts. They could stay. An extra pair of summer shoes. Best leave them here. I turned the gramophone off and stored the record.

  Since the cut in my shoulder was seeping red, I looked for some calendula in the bathroom cupboard. I opened the window, peered out then, and heard the hiss of dead brittle leaves. I heard the sound as if a name was being spoken, but the forest did not have a word for itself that I knew. And what was I to call myself now in any case? To the woods, I was doubtless a wound living in a clearing, a patch of infection.

  I passed the books, so many books, and wondered how they would fare without a fire. Now they would all be co
ld books, if they stayed together. I stood by the chair and placed my grandfather’s pipe on one armrest, The Winter’s Tale on the other, then stepped out past the porch and glanced again at the grave, wondered if another Hobbes would grow in the spring, and who would be there to see it if one did. I did not care to be there: I should be wiped away, erased like pencil, cleaned like wood dust from the grate. They’ll have plenty to say now. What I wanted to say to that man as he walked ahead of me in the woods was that I didn’t have feeling where I should and too much where I shouldn’t. You keep away from men like me and you’ll be alright in life.

  I meant to say that to him, but it never came up.

  Five young deer ran in the moonlight between the trees. I saw their eyes shine as they passed the cabin, bunching briefly before loosening into a quick trot, an accordion of hooves bounding through the downy white.

  I don’t know why but I waited a while watching the woods from the flowerbeds, as if Claire was going to come again out of the snow, for I had never figured how a woman who lived all those miles away in St. Agatha had ever walked out of these woods by accident.

  * * *

  But I did not have the time. I hoisted the rifle and began walking, leaving the two bullets remaining in the clip on the off chance I met Troy in the woods and he looked at me or had anything to say. He was wandering somewhere still, I guessed. I looked back from the edge of the clearing, remembering again, knowing again, and leaving for the first time everything my father knew. Although it was dark, I was familiar with the way and the light was good above me; once I reached the paved road it was only those twelve miles to Fort Kent. I would stay off the road and be there by dawn.

  It being early morning on a Sunday, the police station would have one man on duty, it would be brightly lit and most likely warm, and somewhere in that building a hot cup of tea might be found, and we could talk for a while until some others came to take the details, driving straight from their beds maybe, running to their gates in long coats, from late fireplaces, from bottles. All this was clear in my mind as I took the dirt road with the Enfield. I saw the living flowers, my living father and Hobbes, and kept them firmly before me, but when I glanced again after only a minute the trees had closed in around and the cabin was lost to view.