The Followed Man

by Thomas Williams

  He tripped and fell to his knee, and his mouth opened as wide and round as a child's, his random teeth and red gums showing. It was a cry Luke couldn't hear, repeated after a short breath. Lester was not armed; he didn't even have a belt, and the pockets of his soaked green chinos had been torn off or cut off, showing white, hairy thigh that seemed cold and vulnerable. One of his workshoes was unlaced, the black sock down and his Achilles ten­don silver.

  Still on his knee, he retched, one hand on an alder, his head down. He seemed to hear something behind him and turned, his face so wrinkled with terror Luke had to look where he looked. Nothing was there, but Lester's mouth squirmed like part of a phantom face seen in the embers of a fire. He still thought he might have seen a man back there, and all men were against him.

  Across the brook, Luke felt himself to be lateral to this hunt. He could step across the brook on stones and ledge, draw his pistol and remove the last of Lester's possessions, but that was not the direction in which he was going. Having been given an excuse, in this fellow's case, the men with guns would have him soon enough.

  Wet and friendless, Lester got back to his feet and began to move again. Fresh blood washed down the cloth below his dam­aged knee, where he might have taken a buckshot pellet or a bul­let. A wound was like a little leash or hobble, giving the hunters a certain edge.

  Luke was not without pity for the animal that didn't want to die, but he had nothing to say to the man. What he saw across the brook was an animal about to be destroyed by its own kind, like a brown rat touched with a foreign scent. He would not join the hunt, but responsibility, he knew, would not be so easily denied, whether the man was supposed to deserve it or not. He had touched the man's life. He was not neutral, even if he seemed to have no control over the curse of his touch. He watched Lester go on up the brook, the wide face, when it turned to look back, so beaten and simple he wondered how the man could ever have in­spired caution or fear. Lester's fear, however, spoke to Luke and made him cold.

  He hurried down the brook, a little faster because the rain had lessened and he could see the traps and hurdles that had grown into his path. After a while he came to a bridge that couldn't be there, made of maple logs and boards. As he recongnized it for what it had to be the world shifted with a giddy lurch, like a slide in a projector, and he had been on Zach Brook all the time and was at his own bridge, on his own land, a hundred yards from home.

  He climbed up out of the brook bed and sloshed across the field toward the cabin, his disbelief at where he was fading slowly be­cause it seemed that he had spent hours in another valley, on another brook. When he was halfway across the field, Jake came from the cabin porch, looking as hard as he could, hesitant, suspi­cious, shy, eager, wanting the upright figure who came toward him to be the one he wanted. When Luke spoke to him he trusted his eyes and came running and howling, prancing sideways out of joy and the torque of his tail. He stopped to shake a mist of water from his coat and came on, safe and happy—this time.

  In the cabin the warm dryness was another shift in the way to look at the world and the human condition. To be dry instead of greasy, the penetration of the cold solvent gone. The cabin was still warm from the morning's sun, but before he took off his sop­ping clothes he took some lumber scraps and made an open fire in the black iron stove, the wood dry and light, the paper rustling. The new clothes were light and soft, and slid furrily over his skin as he warmed. He gave Jake a towel and Jake took it to the hearth to roll in it before he settled himself down to lick and steam before the fire.

  Luke took the pistol out of its holster, removed clip and shells, wiped it and left it on the table to dry. His soaked clothes he took to the porch to wring out before they steamed dry on the back of a chair. The long log walls were bulky and tight, gleaming in the light of the fire, and his windows, though they let in a cold gray light, kept out what they let him see.

  Another singular man, wounded and cold, tried to escape over there in the dripping swamp of the woods, climbing up along a brook that began in farther and higher wilderness where there was no warm haven like this one, and not even a hound for com­pany. Luke made himself a drink of bourbon, death's little an­tidote, to try to fool reality somewhat and perhaps to reconcile his own comfort with the agony of another. And of others, the poor wounded and self-wounded that were all he seemed to touch.

  He pulled Shem's old Morris chair up to the fire, the new cush­ions clean and tailored as once the old ones had been new and clean for Shem, and let his tired bones into it. How good to be re­warded for industry and foresight, to be dry and warm in a snug harbor, plenty of food and tobacco and booze. These were the realities after all. He was not out there bleeding and weeping.

  24.

  In October, as the sun waned, the animals grew sleek for win­ter. After the first hard frost the deer came under the apple trees for the softened fruit already pecked over by grouse, among oth­ers. A bear, glutted on apples, left recognizable cores, skins and stems in the loose piles of his spoor. The sun was clear in cool blue, not a force now, just a broad light the hardwoods trans­formed, each species and then each tree in its own way turning lu­minous, as if answering the sun's departure with a last bright sig­nal from earth. There seemed to be no air, it was so clear. Warmth during the day was just radiance, from everywhere, and the cool nights seemed to go all the way to the stars, as though the whole universe were a perfect benevolence.

  Luke used this harvest time to prepare his place for the winter. AH of the machinery and appliances had come and been installed. In his shed, now closed by sliding barn doors, was a small diesel generator, his tractor, storage tanks, room for his truck and sever­al cords of wood, though as much wood was stacked on the cabin porch and in the wood room off the living room, drying quickly under cover. His books, furniture, pictures and miscellaneous items, some handy and others not, had arrived by Joe the Mover. Other furniture he had bought or made, and now the cabin's main room was warm, a little spare in furnishings, but there were a comfortable leather sofa, chairs, Shem's Morris chair, a long old table desk by the main window, drawers, cabinets, lamps, books in shelves, a view of the mountain through triple glass above the kitchen end. The room began to have its patterns of use, to be his, or even him, as if it were an exoskeleton, or a finely, genetically perfected organic shelter made of his own labor and glands, in which he was comforted in all functional and aesthetic ways. Jake had a little self-closing, insulated tunnel next to the eastern door for his use, and the bedroom had a door which kept Jake's hairs and dense musk from Luke's pillow. A small thick rug near the hearth was Jake's, though he had alternate places on sofa and chairs, according to his temperature and other atavistic hound ne­cessities, such as elevation or the mammalian need for a kind touch.

  As the sun's route across the southern arc grew lower, its heat entered the southern window, crossed the room and was absorbed by the stone column. At night the column was warmed internally by the long sloping tiles of the stove's flue, the window shuttered and the stove in its closed, controlled mode so that it gave even heat for twelve hours or more. He would see how this worked in the real cold to come; in October he often didn't fuel the stove for a day or two at a time, or used it as a fireplace only, and that most­ly for the sight of a fire. He hoped not to have to use his backup heating at all.

  In his cellar were shelves for foodstores and that category of former possessions he hadn't decided what to do with. Among these were the boxed contents of Helen's desk at^iome and anoth­er box of papers and books her department chairman had collect­ed from her office at Moorham.

  He didn't know what to do with Helen's relics. Maybe they were sacred, each unclaimed theme, annotated schedule, calendar or text. If so, they should be in a monument, or laid to rest with cere­mony, and he hadn't any monument or ceremony. A musty card­board box in a cellar seemed less respectful than incineration. He should go through them, but what news would he find there ex­cept loss? Every paper he touched would
proclaim that she hadn't planned to die, and if he began he would read every one.

  That night he brought the boxes up from the cellar. There had been on this bright day a sense of the near-completion of his ca­bin. There were more things he wanted to do to it, and to the land, but most of those would wait until spring. He was almost ready for the long sleep of the wilderness. With Shem's knife he cut the paper tape on the boxes. An open fire waited; he was not here to fondle relics and mourn, but to try something else.

  The Moorham teaching, committee and personnel material went into the fire, as did marking books and catalogues, the slick paper of the catalogues opening slowly, like black flowers. The let­ters to a woman who didn't exist, letters concerning recommenda­tions, schedules, salary, the strange half-democratic governance of a college, went into the fire. From that box, the one from her office, he found nothing that wasn't to or of the official person she was.

  The other box, in which he had piled the materials from her desk at home, was at first not much different. He had seen most of the letters here, because mail was read in common at their house, and Helen was not a saver of correspondence. Most had been re­ceived within the few months before the accident. The household bills had all been paid and dated. She hadn't yet answered, and hadn't noted that she had answered, her mother's last letter, which must have made her unhappy as she flew toward her moth­er's funeral.

  When he came to a typewritten note in elite he read it before he recognized what it was, not expecting or wanting to find, with a sudden loss of breath that was also the loss of mystery, the Aveng­er's certain identity this close to Helen.

  Dear Helen,

  Yes, I'd have to say it's plagiarism, if only because of internal evi­dence. I can't quite lay my memory on the lines that seem so un­characteristic of this student's other work (especially the in-class theme), but I know so much about her! Examine, for instance, the word "Tho." I'd say lower middle class, a note-passer in high school (in the in-class theme she dotted her i(s) with little circles). Also the multiple exclamation marks and question marks, the possessives that are plurals half the time and vice versa, willy-nilly; a careless­ness or grayness of the mind rather than error. I mean that in such a messy cranium the possibility of error has not inkled. Contractions, such as "you're," are also used for the possessive, and question marks are left off questions. Oh, Lord, what hope is there?

  We must talk. Lunch Wednesday?

  Coleman

  There, without the possibility of doubt, was the short serif on the capital T and the bent lower case e. How could this not be proof of identity, the puzzle solved? The other question was how long had he really known without wanting to know. Mr. Death; it was all just a little too sick, a disease that couldn't be left untreat­ed. He could not ignore or withstand pathological malice. It had to be dealt with.

  With this note was another:

  Helen: I can't bear to be near you in the presence of others. I am blinded and struck mute. It is passion; it is an obsession. Can't you arrange to stay the night somehow? The gift you have to give!

  C.

  And another:

  Helen: I can't bear to face you, your irridescence—it blinds me. I apologize to you, but not, never, to the swine who possesses you. You are in thrall, sick, infected with the banal, and that is your only flaw. I hate him, not you.

  C.

  Helen had saved these notes, and never shown them to him. She must have been flattered, no matter what else her feelings might have been. She couldn't have known that after her death this madman would play with threatening letters. Luke could not follow the mind that called itself Mr. Death.

  He was, he thought, cool as he went to his truck. It was Saturday and Coleman might be at the house in the village for the weekend. He would shake Coleman like a rag doll, shake some reason from him. He would not break Coleman's scrawny neck. It was as if he had taken a step off into nothing; he couldn't understand, and Helen was infected by the void that kept opening, now here, now there.

  His headlights pushed away the darkness as the truck climbed out of the valley to the mountain road. He was going to initiate an action he didn't think would work. Surely reason wouldn't work, nor would threats or violence. He might dislocate Coleman's an­kle, for a start, and maybe, if Coleman found that unpleasant enough, he might see the light. No, he would be dealing with madness, with a man who would punish someone who had just lost his wife, son and daughter. He must remember that. Should he carry the pistol in his hand, in his pocket, in his belt, none of these? He could kill Coleman easily with just his hands. Murder was just a thought, yet it was plausible. Death was not that odd, or that rare, Mr. Death.

  The Sturgis house was dark, no cars in the driveway. He left the pistol in the truck and walked up to the house, to the front door. In his strength the house seemed flimsy. The front door was locked so he kicked it in easily, with little noise, as if the frame were made of cardboard. He turned on the hall light. The floor­ing was still unfinished; nothing had been done since he'd been here last. In Louise's room her bed was unmade, the wrinkled sheets as still as carved marble. If no one had touched them of course they would not have changed. He shut the door again on that room and went on into the living room, his hand remember­ing light switches. The pale paintings gleamed from the walls, Louise's pots and platters silent on their shelves and tables.

  In the kitchen the dishwasher was full of washed dishes and in the refrigerator a quart carton of milk hadn't soured, so Coleman must have been here recently. He went upstairs to Coleman's room, his right to enter this house or any room in this house the incipient rage that made his arms tremble with strength. Cole­man's double bed was stripped to the mattress. The room was bare, the patterned wall paper faded and in places water-stained. On an old pine desk were manuscripts, books and an office-sized typewriter, its type not elite, fn spite of its clutter the desk did not look worked at, more as if the books and papers had been placed upon it long ago and just left there. The manuscript on top was titled, "Dream Images in Stearns Sloan's Repetitions."

  He went downstairs to the telephone table, found a Wellesley telephone book and called Coleman's number there. No one an­swered. He let it ring until he stopped counting rings and began to think that he didn't know what he would say to Coleman if he answered. He didn't want to speak to the man, he wanted him, simply, eliminated, he and his letters nonexistent. He could do nothing about it now, however, and surprised that he had come to that sane conclusion he shut off the lights in the house, jammed the front door shut upon its splintered frame and left.

  He drove back up the mountain in the dark. Why had Helen never mentioned a nut she worked with called Coleman Sturgis? Was it possible to be jealous over the dead? His anger now might simply have been caused by the violation of his own freedom; how selfish and cold he was if that were true. If she had told him, would he then have become demeaningly suspicious and angry? He didn't know the logic of love, if it had any, and there were no reliable witnesses to whatever had happened.

  In the morning his anger had passed and could not be sum­moned back; he was not the initiator of confrontations and had no hope for structure or resolution.

  The hardwood leaves paled and thinned, and the woods opened up to long columned vistas that revealed the old field lines and the rises of hills that were once pastures. Evergreens were dark islands here and there, hemlock groves far up a hillside re­vealed themselves and were walls where vision ended, though they were vague, seen through skeins of graying branches. Maple leaves twirled like yellow and orange stars down the brook, and the beech held their fading sienna leaves longer than the rest. Ash, that had turned dark mauve at first, were now altogether bare of the stems and branchlets of their compound leaves, and seemed over-simple, as if drastically pruned.

  Jake, as if he knew the season and the opening of the floor of the woods to Luke's surveillance, became more nervous and curi­ous about Luke's entrances and exits, watching him closely, the brown eyes
full of one question: now? Is that a gun? (No, it was a brush scythe). Jake didn't mind hunting by himself, because he had to when the scent called and crossed his senses, but that was not the real thing, which was to cast ahead, knowing the man was there, checking back, circling, needing the man as well as the vivid rabbit. So one day Luke took down the single-barreled shotgun and a pocketful of number eight shells and without explanation left the cabin. Jake had seemed asleep but knew perfectly the click of the opening of the shotgun's action, the hollow, musical clunk of the shell entering the chamber, and he flowed through his tun­nel and was there with Luke before he could cross between the porch woodpiles. "Which way?" Jake asked with a pause and a look. Luke pointed west, toward the mountain, and Jake began the hunt.

  Luke walked slowly through the woods, Jake ranging far out of sight. Jake came back once, on Luke's trail, an approaching gallop of small feet coming on so fast from behind Luke was startled, then saw that it was Jake, who passed him in a rush and went on ahead with no greeting, busy and serious. The day was dry, crisp, the blue above the mesh of trees so constant and pure it seemed opaque. From far to the south Jake found a cold trail and howled sporadically, minutes in between, not with the intensity a fresh scent would have caused in him.

  An hour later the voice came back high and sharp, this time from the west, and continued to ask a constant hysterical question as it moved. Luke tried to guess its course, and moved as quietly as he could up the hill, feeling and thinking himself into an arc of an imaginary, uncreated circle that existed only in the intentions of a rabbit. When Jake's voice seemed to turn toward him he stopped and studied the slopes and rises he could see, to find which planes of the forest's surface he could actually see behind folded dry ferns, witch hobble, low spruce seedlings, banks of windrowed leaves and the columns of hardwoods. Jake came on, closer and more piercing of voice, and passed just for a moment within sight, the white tip of his tail whipping back and forth, the dark back in sight and then gone. The rabbit had passed there, probably hadn't seen Luke, and might traverse this general area on his next round. Since Luke could see fairly well here, he stood still as Jake's voice receded in an invisible arc defined only by sound.