"Luke, if I was you," George said, "I'd keep me a gun handy till they flush Lester out. Never know where he'll show up. Just wanted to warn you, is all." George's thick, compressed head shone with sweat, his gray bristles shining. "Killed his wife, his boy and the baby. Shot 'em!" His excitement made him tremble beneath the stolid flesh. His hand crossed his lap below Luke's vision, probably to touch his holstered pistol. The thin metal clips of a gun rack came over the top of the front bench seat, and Luke's hand, over the back of the seat, felt the steel of a racked gun.
Luke got out and they made a U-turn, tires whining.
At the roadblock, a State Police car and some red rubber dunce caps, he was questioned and warned by a large trooper, then allowed to go on. He turned on his AM radio to country music. He wasn't sure where the local station was on the band, thought he had it once when a bulletin stated that a "massive manhunt" was on in New Hampshire, but the station turned out to be in Wentworth Junction, Vermont. The rest of the information was about the same as George's.
The yellow Dodge was around Cascom somewhere, no doubt. He believed the information. Where else would Lester go? He was not about to run to Rio, or hijack a plane to Algeria. He'd tried to shoot himself; Luke believed that, too. On the way up the mountain he passed a pickup, men with guns in the back. They waved, and he waved. He looked for the yellow Dodge too, but had no idea what he'd do if he saw it. He wouldn't turn around now, he didn't think, even to report it—or maybe he would, he didn't know. Lester must have got the car back from Claire, maybe the day he'd shot her and the children. Christ, did all that really happen? It happened every day; why did he have to think it strange, even for a few transitional minutes, before it became fact hard as rock.
But there was no sign of Lester. When he reached his valley, his cabin, shed and equipment were untouched, waiting for him, though Jake was gone. He wished Jake were there, but Jake had his daily travels to attend to, his favorite rabbits to exercise.
Now that he had a real, an official, reason to wear the pistol belt, he didn't want to, and left it in the truck. He did load the .35 caliber Marlin, however. The day was mild clear September, the leaves darker and a little dry now toward the end of summer, crisp against the blue. A small breeze twirled the round aspen leaves on their stems, as though it touched only them. He thought to listen for Jake's distant voice, but heard only birds—bluejays complaining back of the spruce, a robin's long melody and the five clear notes of a white-throated sparrow, that wistful plaint that was really a warning.
He had some work to do outside, some shoveling around his basement bulkhead, work too close for the tractor, so he did that until noon, then wheeled some humus over, spread it and seeded the dark stuff with bluegrass and rye before dampening it with the hose. In a few days it would all be pale green needles.
The man hid somewhere in the woods, in an unused camp or even in his car, where he could listen on the police and CB bands to the coded words of pursuit he must understand very well. They were after him and would find him. Maybe at this moment he put his revolver against his head and tried again to keep it there as he pulled the trigger, the crisp metal of the sear sliding its fraction of an inch, the hammer spring's energy waiting, the mass of the hammer about to begin its fall toward the silver primer. Then the real energy. If he'd tried to do it once and blasted his ear, he must be mostly deaf on that side, burned black because he wasn't ready for darkness at the last tic of intent. Then he must have been called to his home, thinking that if he could get back to the woods and mountains of his childhood he could find his way out of the present, back to a time when he wasn't yet what he was.
The day was changing, the blue over the mountain sifting into white, as though the blue were the overcast and the white of the high mist the base color of the sky. Weather always came over the mountain, masked by dark spruce and rock until it was nearly overhead. The breeze had died, and he thought he heard, far up the mountain, Jake's excited yelp. He waited, listening, but it didn't come again. Then, as he turned to wash his hands at the hose, he thought he heard it again. Ki-yi, ki-yi. Silence, then just as he'd stopped trying to listen, Roup, elp, so far off it seemed lonely. He wished Jake were here, as though the small dog were a missing possession he needed to have safe here with him. There might be intruders in the wilderness up there inclined to hurt an animal so intent on his pursuit he saw nothing but a haze of brush and branches leading him through the tunnel of scent. Luke would go up the trail and see if he could hear Jake's voice more clearly and perhaps intercept him somewhere on the rabbit's long circle. He might even shoot the rabbit for Jake, though the season didn't begin until another two weeks. He was not a breaker of most laws, though, so he wouldn't take the shotgun. Bear season was on, but he doubted if he would shoot a bear, not now, even if a miracle of chance and timing happened and a bear let himself be seen. The woods were full of their bounty of meat, but the meat was not prisoner and had its ways of avoiding death.
Because it weighed less than the other guns he took the pistol, fixing the webbed belt around his waist with its brass connector, the holster and gun a familiar weight at his hip, and climbed the Carr trail, up from the hiss and splash of the brook. Several times he thought he heard Jake's voice, but the sounds, filtered by the trees, would not grow closer. First they seemed to come from the mountain, which he could no longer see through the trees along the leaf-drowned stone walls; then from the brook valley below and to his left. The distant cries were never quite clear enough to be sufficient evidence to leave the trail and bushwhack into a climb or a descent.
It seemed more and more possible that Jake could be in danger. Maybe it was just the anxiety of the days, and of this day, but life was too fragile, Luke knew. The young boy with the straight black hair and ears like cup handles, his white look at a life that ended soon, shot by his father. Shot by his father. And the baby, who never knew what hit it. An estranged wife—what sort of monstrosity was an "estranged" wife?
Was that Jake, over there on a ledge, the little dog frantically casting and calling? He left the trail and pushed through blackberries and juniper. Just to be nearby, in the vicinity of the dog, might be protective enough. He heard a yelp that was certain, though it might have been a yelp of pain or fear. Maybe Jake had hit a strand of old barbed wire strung taut by the growth of the trees that held it, or a sharp broken branch had stuck into his soft lips or his eye. When Jake was on a rabbit, the cool, dignified rabbit loafing, turning, easily keeping far ahead of the noisy pursuit, he had no time to be careful. He was the one driven, locked by genes into his single mission. Why couldn't Jake be more careful, though? No one was careful; only he was careful. He climbed up the side of a gulley, not hearing as the sticks and brush crunched under his boots. A wand of hemlock brushed lightly over his face, but in it was a sharp dead stick that stung his cheek and made his right eye water. He was sweating, hot along his back where his shirt stuck to him like tape, needing still more altitude up through the thick saplings and hemlocks so he could stop and try to listen. The trees here stifled his hearing. He could stop his crashing now and listen, but he wasn't high enough. A dead branch held him back with the insistence of a turnstile, and when he broke it off he thought he'd simultaneously heard a shot—his luck to break the branch at the precise time of the shot. He wasn't certain about its direction.
What he saw in his mind as he climbed were some local, self-appointed posse-vigilantes going through the woods, spread out, shotguns and rifles held at the ready, eager to shoot. A strange dog then appears and the instinct, the eagerness of the excited man is too much so he shoots and the number one buckshot whacks across the woods and one pellet travels through the body of the dog; the man then shouts ecstatically that he got a dog that was running deer. "Ran this little spikehorn right by me, near as me to you!" The dog writhes in the hemlock needles, gut-shot and screaming, so the fellow points his gun at the head and finishes it off, just as Luke appears.
Maybe he did
n't hear a shot. Though why not Jake, too? Was Jake being saved just because he was a dog and didn't matter that much? "I cared very much for that hound," he says to the vigilante. "In fact, I loved that hound dearly." The pistol is at the small of the man's back. "Why do you people do such dangerous things?" Luke asks reasonably. "Don't you know the consequences? Why do you take such risks?" He lowers the muzzle of the pistol and fires downwards into the man's coccyx, the big bullet traversing down through bone, anus, prostate and the penile root. Lots of writhing and screaming now, and lots of satisfaction: you have sacrificed your innocent dog just because you want to punish a man.
Luke came out into tall beeches on a minor ridge, breathing heavily, wet and shaking. Silence. The sky was darkening quickly now, so that it was almost twilight among the gray, skinlike trunks of the beeches. He almost called for Jake, feeling the name, Jake, in his throat and lips. But that would be stupid, a sign of panic. He rested, listening.
The other man must be listening too, at least with his one good ear. There must be some place he wanted to find, where he could rest and be safe. There would be no reason now for defense, for rage or the desire to hate or kill his pursuers. His guilt had taken all of that out of him and left him empty, just an organism abhorring simple death. No matter what he had done. He couldn't kill himself and that was that, so he moved away, as well as he could, from nonexistence. No matter that he didn't have a chance, that he wasn't a bear but only a man covered in thin green chino, with bad teeth. Lester wouldn't think of his teeth.
When a helicopter came toward you it went fluff, fluff, fluff, fluff, and when it left it sounded more like a light plane. It went on over, looking for Lester.
Luke listened for Jake. The dog couldn't help it; he was not responsible for giving him this pain, yet he felt anger toward him along with the impossible feeling of the infinite value of the being that caused the anger.
"God damn it, Jake," he said. "Where are you?" The timing was all off; Jake shouldn't be out in the woods now, but Jake couldn't know because he hadn't the equipment to know. Luke knew that; his irritation was anxious and foolish. How easy a drama it was to sentimentalize a dog.
Rain was coming. The sky, visible only in leaf-enclosed patches, was now darker than the saw-edged beech leaves and their smooth gray branches. Maybe the coming rain would convince Jake to let up, or if it was heavy enough erase the rabbit's scent.
He was a little lost, disoriented because he couldn't place the sun in the sky. A cool invasion of wind from the storm felt its way through the trees, and his sweat was quickly not warm, just damp. Which side of this knoll had he come from? Memory said there, from what he thought was north. The storm came from the west, but in the woods the wind could sweep and counter-sweep. The dark sky, though it must be moving, was a solid tone of false night. Thunder began, a shake and a thud, valleys echoing without giving him a bearing. He moved with his memory down through the trees that were here wild, unlike those around houses, and couldn't be remembered from the side he hadn't seen in coming. Too many burls and forked branches imitated each other. And the levels of the woods moved their declinations around slopes so that the world turned but not in his mind. He went down where he really knew he hadn't climbed, the false compass of his mind more powerful than logic. He could move and cover ground, so he moved, wanting this to be the way home. He heard the gray noise of the rain before the trees let it come through to him, and when it came, gathered into dollops by the leaves, it was cold. This September storm must be high, from a reservoir of ice.
Then he was at a steep embankment, almost a cliff, but he didn't stop or try to find a way around. Cherry and basswood branches were slippery in his hands as he eased and slid his way down, stepping occasionally on shiny embedded stones. Green swamp grass in hummocks let him cross water frothed by the rain. On the other side he climbed a steep soft bank among hemlocks, using their rough trunks as handholds. The rain was solid and visible now and there was no dryness anywhere. All this place was roofed, dark, a submarine cavern in which it seemed strange that he could breathe. The water came into his boots with a naked feeling, his socks liquid, the soaked leather of his boots flexible as skin.
He couldn't stop going, though he should wait and try to think. It was as though he would, if he kept moving, come through something like a doorway out of the cold swamp into the clear day he had left, his cabin there and Jake to greet him. Or he might just pass out of all of it, back to anything predictable. He should be back at his cabin now, right now, or in some looming way it would be too late. George and Pillsbury might stop by on their way around the mountain, and even that little thing increased his worry. He couldn't stand to wonder what they would think if they found his truck there but not him. It was ridiculous, but still he crashed on, too careless of his footing, between trees and boulders, the wind moving everything but rock, the thunder so directly overhead he felt he was about to be hammered flat on an anvil. He didn't know where he was or which way he was going; the geodetic map, green, brown and white, flickered there in his mind, no doubt oriented wrong. There were too many small hills and valleys in the woods. Sooner or later he would have to come out somewhere. He thought he might be near an old logging road that came out by the two hunting cabins, but he might be a mile in another direction.
He nearly fell over a ridge of tilted ledge, but caught himself on sharp wet rock that numbed his hands. Below him was a brook, but it couldn't be Zach Brook because he had crossed too many ridges. It must be Carr Brook. It became Carr Brook, the white water and rain-speckled pools not Zach Brook. Every stone and flow of the dark water and the white rushes of it were unfamiliar, elsewhere, in another valley, where he now was. It flowed, according to the flickering map, more or less to the east, where it met Zach Brook at a bridge. He could follow it down until it met Zach Brook, then go up Zach Brook to his cabin, or take the longer way by the road and come to the entrance to the farm. He stood there, seeing Carr Brook, these rational processes going on in his mind while the sky fell through the trees in gushes and whirls. He was under water, as wet as if he had been submerged, scratched and buffeted. It was like trying to think in the midst of battle.
Something big moved to his right, soundless in all this sound. A gray shape; two shapes, one darker and larger. Then the larger one leapt upward and outspread a tail like a linen-white flag, as did the smaller one, and the tilting flags flicked from one side to the other as the two deer flowed bounding through the rain and were gone between and behind the trees. They had been so close to him, he half-blind in the storm, that their great hunch and starting of weight had made his pulse jump, with a hesitation between each throb of blood that seemed too long, and made him short of breath. It was that, and the force and purity of the wild lives escaping from him.
He went down the brook, which rose steadily, every gulley in its banks now a tributary. The rain came down his forehead and passed over his open eyes in a blur sharp at its edges. His eyes cleared for a second at a blink, then were blurred again. He tripped over a dead alder and fell to his knees, the cloth sucking as he got up, a bent finger hurting. He asked himself to slow down, even to wait for a lull in the rain, but whatever made him run said hurry, hurry, be there right now, and there was such a long way to go. If he could just break out of here into the clear where he could put one foot after the other and not have to wrestle branches, duck his head, worm under and over and have to stretch his body past where it hurt.
Nothing pursued him except an anxiety not justified by events. He was not hunted with guns, though he too was a lone man without allies. He must get safely home, his possessions around him, and never leave that place. It was Jake who was threatened; if he didn't own that dog, if he hadn't been hung with that responsibility, he would just be a wet man out in the woods finding his way back to his camp, no hurry or panic at all. He should get rid of the dog as he had shed himself of his family. This pain was too strong.
In a clear blink somethi
ng moved. It was down the brook, on the other bank. The brook was all white now between black rocks, and the only sound was the crashing water. Something bulky and slow moved down there. It was dark, almost black; at first he made a bear out of it, but it had white and red splotches that moved with it against the mist-green and black of the woods in a strangely loose, toppling yet connected way. He couldn't seem to think it a man, or to make himself trace out a whole man there.
He melted back into evergreen boughs and watched the awkward progress of the thing as it came up the brook. It was a man, because it was more upright than not as it climbed and leaned its way through the alders. It was not armed, at least not with a long gun, which was the first warning of its identity. Then it was a big man, young but broken, a man who was followed. Long before the face could make its statement the signs of the hunted were there in the bones.
"Oh, no," Luke said, a soft exclamation he was unable to hear over the rushing water. It was Lester, who had to be somewhere because, after all, he was not yet dead. He had nothing left, but he was not yet dead and didn't want to be dead. Luke said no because in all the miles of hills and swamps around the mountains he had to be here to observe what was real. Lester came up the brook toward him, staggering as if whipped by each alder trunk that was only a stationary bar to his passage, but often looking back. He seemed to be trying to hear, though nothing could be heard over the white water. When he turned his head Luke saw that one side of his neck was grizzled white and pink, his ear enormous and a darker red. His black bristles of hair stood up straight, washed and shiny. His awkwardness said fear, exhaustion, despair, a knee locked half-bent and whatever other disasters could beset a man. He didn't seem to know where he was going, but he looked back, knowing what he tried to escape.
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