by Alex Miller
Kabara’s senses are stretched to the limit here. Picking up the smell of the male deer close by. A slight tremor of expectancy running through his withers, transferring his readiness to me. There is a balance now in the horse, as if his hooves are not quite touching the ground, an alertness that almost tempts me to action. To leap miraculously into the dark forest after the deer . . .
I keep still.
Watching.
But we are not going to see the nott. He is in the shadows, watching us I dare say. I examine each dark patch of shade with care, letting my gaze rest for a moment on every uncertain shape amongst the gloomy conifers. But I can’t tell where he might be. A knowing survivor. Somewhere between sixteen and twenty years old, Morris has told me. Surviving now by infinite skill and care. Old for a red stag. He’s eluded the hunt on numerous occasions. Tricked them. And created a legend for himself. Many consider him dead. And none of them know he has moved to these woods or they’d come after him again. It is their practice always to take a nott stag whenever one presents himself, for they fear that notts will breed and diminish the elegance of the species.
I’m not about to tell them where he is.
Tell them nothing. They’re the locals. And he’s a long way from Tivington now. They chased him once too often and he shifted his ground right out of the district, crossing the Beacon and the Quarme and the Exe and setting himself up way over here.
I discovered him by chance and swore Morris to secrecy. Being from Wiltshire makes the secret easier for him to keep. A local couldn’t hang onto such a hot piece of information for long. To harbour a stag for the hunt is the ambition of every yokel in this neck of the woods. And keeping the whereabouts of the Tivington nott a secret would burn a hole in their brains. Simple as that. You couldn’t trust them with it.
The Tiger would give money to know it!
They’ll find him anyway. One day. Of their own accord. And when they do he’ll be on the run again. Sooner or later, when the Arctic weather is tightening his belly, he’ll sneak into someone’s turnip field. And then some half-witted labourer, arriving to shift the hurdles, will see his great slot there, superimposed on the sheep tracks of the day before and frozen into the mud in the morning. The footprint of the devil staring him in the face!
The yokel will drop everything and run to tell his master. Crazy to see those big hounds having a go. Howling and wailing and crying on the trail! Lighting everybody up with his news that there’s a warrantable stag harbouring in the area.
Except you don’t need a warrant to hunt a nott. It’s open season on them all year round.
Solitary. Always on guard. Never at ease with the herd.
It was late one October afternoon a year ago that I found him. I’m following this stream to its source. Just for the pleasures of exploration and of being on my own. It’s Bampton Fair day and the Tiger’s been forced by one of his own traditions to give us most of the day off. He’d squirm out of it if he could, but Morris doesn’t ask on these occasions. The local custom is good enough for him. He makes sure the Tiger knows what his plans are in good time, and he and his wife go visiting her parents, over to Monksilver for the day.
Too bad for the Tiger!
I get out as fast as I can too. As soon as the milking’s done I’m gone. It’s either that or get trapped by Tiger into doing some five-minute job that ends up taking all day.
I get away!
Right out of the place. Gone. Saying nothing. On my own. Heading off by a roundabout route till I’m way out on the moor. Keeping always to cover. Making the most of my opportunity for penetrating the wilderness.
Soon I’ve got my head down and I’m moving along quietly. Up the twisting track of the steep combe. Going deeper into the woods. Following the stream-bed and checking the small things. On the lookout for the unusual. Letting nothing pass. Turning the stones in the water. Sniffing at the weeds and herbs and seeking among the dense variety to get to a knowledge of it. It absorbs me. I never know what I am going to come across next. Human beings have been moving through this land for thousands of years. Leaving this and that behind. Not much, but something, every now and then, a thing out of place among the leaves and water-worn pebbles because of shape or texture. No more than a stone itself maybe. Odd man out. Giving you the sense it has been brought. And the flow of the stream is always uncovering new layers.
Crawling, when I have to, through the tough undergrowth, and wading when there’s no other way. Squirming and pushing and scrabbling my way right into the silent coverts that no one visits. To see what’s there. And I sit without moving under the ripe canopy of thorn and bramble. Staring. Hardly breathing. Feeling it all close and intense around me. Waiting for me to move on so that it can return to action. And rising in me the feeling that I want to break my alien fears against its wary inhabitants. Surprise them. Hunt them.
And that feeling keeps me there for a while.
Then I go on. Moving away from it. Returning to the enjoyment of the day. And I don’t notice that I’m entering the mouth of a hidden glade under the dark canopy of the larches, and the stream-bank on either side a bed of needles. Soft and deep. Undisturbed.
Until the nott barks a sudden warning. I stop dead in my tracks. My heart thumping. I don’t know what it is and can see nothing at first.
Then, stationary in the dark jumble of shadows, I see him. The wide-set, slanting eyes of a satyr. Wild and aggressive. Staring directly into mine. Neither of us moving. His thick neck-hair shaggy and standing out, knotted and sopping, with black mud cascading from his flanks. Something mad and savage rising from the wallow to confront me!
Staring at him it takes me seconds to work out that I am looking at a red stag and not at something from rumour and fear.
Alone in the woods with an escaped maniac!
Running won’t get me far. One swift stride and he’d be on me. It’s October and the rut is in full swing. And although I’ve heard often enough that stags will not attack humans, even during the rut, I feel sure this sudden confrontation will prove the exception to that.
Dripping with muck, caught unexpectedly in his most private moment, the breath steaming from his wide nostrils, surrounded by the rich peaty stench of his pit and the acid aroma of his heated body. This animal does not look afraid of me.
Despite his lack of antlers there is no mistaking him for a hind. His stink is of maleness and there is in his gaze that obsessed look of arousal that is not something to be argued with. The general belief is that notts do not achieve breeding rights over their antlered brothers during the rut, but with the belief is a superstitious fear of the exception. I have never seen a nott before this day, but this one is unmistakable. He is something different. An aberration even among such outcasts. I can see that. Who knows what he might do? He looks to me to be capable of anything. Any sudden extreme.
I’m not hanging around to find out.
I ease my weight onto my toes and very slowly, taking extreme care to make no sudden movement, I make ready to start backing off. The instant I tense up he barks again. I freeze. It is a sharp, urgent warning. A mad shout in the forest! And a wave of fear goes through me. As if in slow-motion I see him gathering himself. Then he leaps away to one side and is gone.
I take hold of a branch, steadying myself, listening . . .
The woods are silent again and still. Only his smell remains. As if I have imagined him but for that and for the fact that my heart is racing. I stand there for some minutes. Uncertain whether to go at once or stay. Cautiously, then, I approach his soiling pit. An intruder now in this glade. I look down at the watery slurry of the pit where he was cooling himself a moment ago. It is in a depression to one side of the stream and hidden by a stand of bracken that has asserted itself despite the larches. It is a soak. A source that perhaps becomes a running spring in wet years. Though these sources seem to stay the same whether the years are wet or dry. All around me is the intimate evidence of the old stag’s activities . . . He was
here before the bear and the boar and was hunted by the wolf since the beginning of his line. And he is here still. The wild red deer has survived them all.
Preserved for pleasure.
Standing here in the intense quiet I get the feeling I am being watched. I look around. Stare into the deepening shadows of the wood. Nothing moves. There’s not the sound of a bird or the least rustle of a branch. No breeze. The late afternoon air of the high combe is growing cold. I hold my breath, straining my hearing, staring hard at the grey lichened trunks of the larches around me—thousand-year-old granite pillars!
Nothing!
Only there, faintly, in the extreme distance and barely penetrating this deep wooded cleft in the hills, the sound of a clocktower bell from a village somewhere. That’s all.
I head, for home.
Striking down the stream at a good pace. And then from behind me there comes the sudden roaring challenge of an old stag assured and firm in his rut. The whole darkening combe around me filling and echoing with his deep bellowing, low, archaic and malicious towards men and hounds and horses, tailing off into a bolking and rattling in his throat.
The Tiger smokes du Maurier cork tips. Out of a tin. The first time I saw his fat fingers groping around trying to get the silver paper unwrapped I laughed. I thought someone must have given him the fancy cigarettes as a present. A joke. They reminded me of people in the West End. But they are his regular smoke.
An affectation.
It shouldn’t have surprised me then, that he had dreams for himself. Looking back I see that things started to develop when we had our minds fixed on the harvest.
It’s the end of August and we’re carrying the last field. Barley. Seventeen acres called Solomon’s. On the point of achieving a record crop for the Tiger. Plenty of his cronies in the same boat. Those, like him, who miss the big storm the day before the Winsford meet. Those who don’t get their corn driven into the ground.
We’re building the rick bang in the middle of the hot sun. Not a patch of shade in sight. And I’m slapping the sheaves down on to the grappling rattling non-stop elevator tines as fast as I can. Faster! My arms are aching so much I feel like crying. The tendons most of all, inside my elbow. Scorching with pain. I want to crawl away somewhere cool and have a good old bawl all on my own. Roll around in agony and get it out of my system. But I can’t slow up.
It’s the boys from the village! There’s two of them up there above me on top of the load pushing the stuff down. Bombing me with it. The sheaves are rolling and tumbling down on me so fast if I stop I’ll be buried. I’m lifting a pair of sheaves on to the elevator and there’s more pounding right on to the end of my pitchfork. They’re aiming them. Catching my arms tensed and lifting. Wham! The pain shoots right into my shoulder. But I’ve got to do it.
It’s no good yelling out.
No one’s going to slow up.
It’s a race. And the Tiger’s showing me who’s master and who’s boy. He put them up there. We’ve all gone mad. And he loves it. I’m choking half to death in the dust and the heat and the flying straw. And the sheaves are coming down thick and fast. Straw and chaff and needles of dried thistle going down my neck and up my nose. I don’t even have time to think about when it might end. I’m too busy saving myself from being engulfed.
And the Tiger’s haring around here and there and everywhere with a huge shiny grease gun held out in front of him. He’s squirting and pumping and pushing the thick black stuff into every bursting nipple on the machinery till there’s grease popping and dripping out all over in the hot sun. He’s making sure this lunatic circus keeps going at red-hot top speed. Not going to lose a minute anywhere along the line. A mad grinder at full stretch!
As I heave the sheaves up on to the snatching steel claws, jammed into my airless pocket between the load and the roaring elevator, I catch a glimpse through the whirling haze of Morris’s face poking out of the pitch hole. He’s up there in the oven under the tin roof of the Dutch barn. Jammed up there by the rising rick. Right at the top where the elevator’s spewing its never-ending train load into the hot, dark cavity. He’s the builder. The skilled man. At the point of delivery. Putting the whole act together so it won’t sag or bulge or sink down or pop out before we get around to threshing it. It’s no fun being up there but no one’s going to be relieving him. It’s his responsibility. Tiger’s making sure of that. Morris is always the one. That’s what he’s been doing every day for the past three weeks.
No rain. Not a storm. Nothing. Not even a burned-out bearing or a busted gasket to hold up this harvesting streak that’s driving these farmers out of their heads with excitement. It’s been all their way. First it was the horse beans, then the wheat, then the oats, and now it’s the barley. We’ve all been at it. But Morris has got the killer job. The really bad one. I don’t even like to think about it. I’ve got my own problems.
I keep going.
And his face pokes out every now and then. He’s sucking fresh air and fighting off exhaustion. I slap the sheaves on as fast as I can. I’m praying he keeps that hole clear. I’m praying he doesn’t let a big snarl of sheaves get rolling and bouncing at the top, tumbling down and pushing everything aside. Creating a foul-up for me to clear. I’ll go under. I’ll collapse. I’ll come to a gasping standstill if that happens.
I’m down here in my own hole clawing at this mass of stuff and groaning aloud. Those boys are going to bury me if they can. They’re going to force me to bring this show to a standstill. They’re not going to be reasonable about it. They’ll keep the pressure right on me. Hard as they can. And the worse it is for me the more they’re going to enjoy it.
The Tiger’s tucked me in nicely this time!
There’s nothing I can do about it. Keep going. That’s all. They’re up there getting their revenge. Punishing me for staying out of their way. For being anti-social. Thinking I’m too good for them. For not going along and laughing at their jokes down the back of the bus when they go looking for a bit of tit in Taunton on Saturday evening. For being an alien. A foreigner.
They’re going to send me back to London in a box if they can.
Six o’clock this morning when Tiger started the motor. Now what time is it? Who knows? I feel as though I’ve been going for fifteen hours. More! I can still see those aisles of stooked barley stretching to the horizon. Solomon’s must have grown to ten times its normal size since this morning—and since the other day, when ancient Sam Jones and his silent white-haired brother Bill came up from the village and scythed the headland swathe under the Tiger’s anxious scrutiny. Before putting the binder in. Then it looked innocent enough. Just another field of barley. No threat to anyone. The last of the harvest. I had the feeling then that it was almost over. Nearly time to calm down. Just Tiger and his superstitious obsessions. Getting the old men to put the scythes in first. Avoiding mischance. Accidents that are always sudden and strange. In the middle of work. Having no explanation. Everyone shocked and looking on. The Tiger insuring himself against the possibility of ill-luck smashing him aside just when he’s got his mind fixed on big profits. Money! Taking no risks. Playing it inch by inch according to the rules that no one talks about. The rules they all think really matter most. Everyone solemn and waiting. Watching the Joneses whet their blades and no discussion now, at this late stage, about what the stand might yield. Nothing of that till it’s in the rick. Safe under the tin and out of the way. And those two old wrinklies from a hundred years of smoking hearths bowing and scraping and calling him Master and touching their caps. Leading him around by the nose! They’ve got him. Their, say-nothing-look-knowing attitude. That’s got him. He can’t go against it. He’s sure his machinery will fall apart in a rusting heap if he tries anything clever like that. Otherwise he would ignore them. And they know it. But he’s seen it happen. Seen a few smart alecs spewed aside. So he’s holding on. It’s only the profit that he cares about. And he’s going to do whatever he has to in order to get it. On the statement
from the bank. That’s where he wants it before he gets cocky. Then watch him go!
The little Ferguson drags its empty cart away and for a second there’s a drift of clean air washing over me before the Nuffield roars in hauling its eight tons behind it! It really scares me, this one. Towering over me and blocking off the air. And he’s too close in! He’s pulling it too close to the elevator feed tray this time! I can see it happening. He’s supposed to pull in on the old tracks. Here he is sneaking over another foot. I’m not going to have room to move!
I scream out for him to back off!
But it’s too late!
The big orange diesel practically brushes my shoulder going past and the sheaves are raining down before the load stops swaying. There’s nothing I can do about it. I rip into the falling sheaves. The stench from the exhaust of the elevator motor is knocking me out. It’s rich and heady, taking the lining clean off the back of my throat. Those yokels are up there. Way over my head. Breathing clean air. And they’re grinning at each other. It’s a massacre. They’re going to exterminate me if they can. They’re making the most of their last big chance. They must have clued the driver up and now they’re not going to hold back on this one.
I’m getting a beating!
I’m trapped in here and the handle of my pitchfork’s snagging on the side of the load. No room to turn. My hip bumping the polished, vibrating steel of the feed tray as I try to swivel around to pick up sheaves. I’ve been guarding this fork with my life for the past three weeks. Taking it home with me at night so no one would grab it ahead of me in the mornings. It’s just right for this job normally. Short and sturdy. But now even it is too long. Awkward. Dangerous. It’s what accidents are made of. I know. I can feel it all happening around me. I’m not in control. I’m in a hell-hole. Stuck at the bottom of a shaft, surrounded by screaming high-speed machinery, dust, prickles, fumes and falling barley!