As I headed down the slope toward that pond, I didn’t make the connection. About people disappearing, I mean. I didn’t peep to the fact that I was being lured in. All that stuff about social skills had confused me. I was sure that nobody really wanted to be in my skills group. Well, maybe Devo did. Maybe even Pits, who seems to think I’m not half bad. Although maybe I was fooling myself. It was dangerous to start liking people and assume they would like you back. Why would anyone else want to make me part of their circle? The farther I walked, the more confused I got. Did I really have some friends now? It messed up my thinking. For the time being, I lost my edge. I walked right toward the pond, almost right into it.
Even covered with ice, the pond looked dark and shadowed. It wasn’t that big. Only about half the size of the soccer field at the school. But it was way deeper than you might guess and a whole lot older. I know that now, but then I thought it was just one of those shallow boggy ponds scoured out of the rocks by the last glaciation maybe ten thousand years ago. So I made a beeline for it. Happy little frog hopping toward the big black snake. How dumb is that?
The fox must have thought it was plenty dumb. It trotted right out of the small black spruces and hop hornbeam shrubs and sat down in front of me.
3
THE FOX
IT WAS A FEMALE FOX. I could tell by the look in her eyes. Don’t ask me how I knew that. I just did. It is one of those things I can’t explain, like why animals seem to like me so much and listen to me. (I’m not sure I should include birds in that, since they don’t so much show affection for me as they treat me like I am just a useful part of the scenery.) Bad as I am with most other people, I’m that good with animals. Even dogs and cats buddy right up to me. This cop once brought this specially trained police dog to one of my old schools. It got really embarrassing when his big German shepherd that was supposed to obey its master’s every wish kept crawling over to my desk on its belly so it could lick my hand.
“Hi,” I said to the fox.
She was right in my way, blocking my path. But I didn’t feel it would be right to ask her to move aside. Just because this kind of thing happens to me with animals doesn’t mean I take it for granted. It is always kind of a thrill for me. It makes my skin tingle and I feel this warmth all over. It’s like I’ve stepped back again into the old times in one of my mom’s stories and I only have to walk around the next turn in the path to see an old-time village with bark houses and cooking fires and people dressed in deerskin all smiling and welcoming me back.
The fox looked up at me. It was close enough so I could touch it. Of course I didn’t try to. With wild animals, you shouldn’t try to touch them first. That’s one problem with most people. They see an animal and they just about all do one of three things:
Number one is run from it. Not a good idea. Not. A big animal like a grizzly bear or a mountain lion or even a mean dog will chase you if you run away. Good way to get mauled, bitten, or even become the main course.
Number two is try to kill it. Unfortunately, people have gotten real good at this over the ages. That is why most animals give human beings a very wide berth. Animals either get wiped out or make themselves scarce when there are too many humans around. Those two-legged people, the animals tell their little ones, don’t trust them!
Number three is, to me, the worst of all. “Oh, isn’t it sweet? Let me pet it.” My dad, who is almost as cued in to Indian ways as my mom is, says that third response can be described by the three Ds: Disrespectful. Dumb. And Dangerous.
So I just squatted down and nonchalantly studied the fox out of the corner of my eye. It isn’t really polite to look straight at an animal. When two animals of different species stare straight at each other, that usually means one of them is thinking about dinner while the other one is making rapid plans to avoid being the entree.
She was such a beautiful animal. I’d noticed other wild foxes around the school, but I’d never seen her before. You get up before dawn like I do every day, you see things most people don’t. Looking at this fox head-on, I saw how fat she was. And it seemed to me like she had that sort of knowing look on her face that female animals get when they are going to have babies. If I had been in this very spot back in January, I probably would have seen the tracks on the snow from that mating dance foxes do with each other. From mating time until having her babies is usually about fifty or sixty days for a fox. So she had to have a den somewhere nearby, one she and her old man dug together.
Which brought a question to my mind. Where was her mate? After they mate, foxes stay together to help take care of the pups. Maybe he was hiding nearby, just making himself scarce. But maybe not. I had one of those feelings, the kind of knowing that makes people call me spooky. This mother-to-be was alone. Her old man was gone, not coming back. She was on her own, like me.
The fox whined. She yawned so wide, it looked like her head would split open. Then she ducked her head down to the snow and stuck her nose into it up to her ears. That was when I noticed the black markings on her back. One wide line went right down her spine, while the other crossed over it from one shoulder to the other. I took a real deep breath then. I’d never seen a cross fox before. Back when they used to trap foxes for their pelts, this kind of fox was really rare and valuable. The old Shawnee people, who never would have dreamed about trapping an animal like this, would have said those markings of the four sacred directions meant she was powerful, maybe even some kind of messenger.
“Jeezum,” I said. I couldn’t help it.
The fox lifted her head out of the snow and shook it. She had a stick in her mouth. She stood up, trotted over, and dropped the stick on my boot. Then she stepped back and sat down again.
Tentatively, I tossed the stick a few feet away, just using my wrist so I wouldn’t startle the fox. She jumped up, ran for the stick, grabbed it, and ran in a big circle around me. Fat as she was, she was really moving, spraying snow. Then she dropped the stick. Not at my feet this time, but farther up the slope, away from the pond. Once again, she sat down.
I walked upslope and picked up the stick. I made a motion as if to toss it downhill toward the pond, but something in the fox’s eyes stopped me. I threw it upslope. Just like a terrier, she grabbed the stick, played with it, and dropped it. Farther away from the pond.
I bent to pick up the stick a third time. I had walked away from the pond now. I no longer felt the urge to walk out on its thin ice. Why had I wanted to walk across it? That was the kind of dumb thing I’d usually never do. I tossed the stick a little ways downslope. The fox trotted right down, picked it up, and took it a much longer way back up the hill this time. No playing or running in circles. I swear the fox looked disgusted.
This way, stupid.
As I trudged up the slope toward where the fox was waiting with her stick, it came to me. I got it. I looked back at the pond and squinted to be sure I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. The slanting sunlight was just right, so that the animal tracks in the snow were clearly visible. There were lots of footprints. There had been a small storm the night before. It brought what my mom calls tracking snow—not the light blowy fluff that doesn’t show a clear track, but snow just wet enough to hold the impression of the feet that pass.
I saw the tracks of grouse, the little snowshoe feathers on their toes. There were rabbit tracks that looked like exclamation points. There were the dotted-line trails of jumping mice and voles. A deer trail that had been followed by more than one animal stretched back and forth across the top of the slope near the cedars.
But the weird thing was that all of those trails came together at a certain place. Those footprints of mice and grouse and deer all led down the slope right toward the pond. They continued right out onto its ice toward the place in the middle where the ice was broken, and there was an open spot of water like a dark, expressionless eye staring up at the gray sky. All those tracks led out onto the pond. Not one track came back again.
A chill ran down my back. I t
urned to look at the fox. The stick still lay there, but she was gone. All that was left were her tracks, leading away into the woods upslope.
A hundred questions went through my mind. But I didn’t give myself permission to ask them. I remembered one of the old Shawnee lessons my mother taught me about things you can’t understand. When Rabbit tries to understand Lynx, Rabbit ends up understanding what it feels like to be dinner. Sometimes all you need to know about something strange is that you need to get away from it.
I followed the fox’s trail away from the dark pond.
4
THE DREAM
I SAT AT THE DESK with my head down, my long hair hiding my face. Usually I keep it tied back in a ponytail and sometimes I put it into a braid. But when I want to be left alone, I wear it loose so that it hangs like a curtain over my eyes. Then you can’t see my broad face—so flat it looks like I got hit in the face with a shovel, according to Devo.
I couldn’t help but laugh at Devo’s remark. I guess it was because it made me think of the story my mom told me when I was a little kid about when Lynx sneaked up on Beaver. Just as Lynx was about to pounce on him, Beaver whomped Lynx right in the face with his tail and then got away, leaving Lynx with a big flat face. Mom used to tell me a lot of stories like that, until she passed her bar exam and got too busy.
I leaned over the notebook on my desk. My right hand held it open while my left hand played with the little silver cross I always wear around my neck. My eyes were closed, but nobody could see that with my long hair blocking my face. Not even Scoops. He was standing up front, waving his arms (last time I looked) and yammering about this old English poem. He was really excited because it had just been translated by some Irish poet he really digs. I usually like what Scoops has to say. The man has a brain and a half, but he never talks down to us. And his enthusiasm is catching. I mean, anybody who can get a bunch of teenagers talking about a sonnet by Shakespeare has to be good.
Today, though, I didn’t want to be enthusiastic. I wasn’t daydreaming, I just wanted to hide behind my hair. I am the only guy in school who is allowed to have long hair. When I first arrived at North Mountains, I was told that there was a dress code and hair was part of it. No long hair allowed for boys. I hated what I had to do next, because I’m not really into confrontation, like my mom. I really prefer not to be noticed. But I also did not want, no way, to cut my hair.
“S’cuse me, sir,” I mumbled to the headmaster. Then I handed him Mom’s letter, the same one I always proffer to every principal, headmaster or kommandant whenever I check into a new institution of learning.
“My son,” it reads, “is Shawnee. It is part of our tradition that a young man be allowed to grow his hair long. Kiji Maneto, the Great Spirit, is the one who made it so. It is a sacred thing. Regardless of your school policies, you cannot require him to cut his hair.”
That letter, plus the usual follow-up phone call to my mom during which she cited the Native American Freedom of Religion Act and reminded the headmaster that she was a practicing lawyer in Washington, D.C., was plenty enough to convince them. They were lucky that they gave in as quickly as they did. I still remember what my mom did at this military school I attended for a while called the Academy. When the hair thing came up, she demanded a private meeting with the Board of Trustees and got it. There was a grim smile on her face when she came out of the door, leaving a dozen supposedly powerful men sitting stunned around their antique mahogany meeting table and looking like they had just gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson.
So it was that the Academy, with its “proud century and a half of discipline and tradition,” hadn’t been able to force a buzz cut on me. All they could do was require me to keep it tucked up under my cap when I was in public.
Dad, like Mom, is a high-powered lawyer. That is why they are so busy that they don’t have much time for me now. So I’ve been ending up in private schools far away from the snakepit—as Dad calls D.C.—for the last ten years or so. I liked it better when I could be home with them and they could be home with me. But as they have very carefully explained to me, every lawyer willing to work for the interests of Indians and indigenous people around the world is truly needed.
I know that.
It doesn’t make me miss them any less.
Anyway, being in class and semi-ignoring a teacher meant things were sort of back to normal for me. I wasn’t all creeped out like I had been last night when all I could think of was trying not to think about the dark pond. It was like I had stumbled into a Stephen King novel and some nameless awful evil was after me.
I mean last night was bad. Capital B–A–D. I don’t know how many times I woke up listening. Just listening. Like I had heard someone, no, something, call me. Not by my name, not with words. But in a deeper, scarier way. The way a river calls to the salmon telling them they have to swim upstream now. Swim upstream and die.
As I lay in bed I thought about the tracks of all those animals leading out onto the surface of the frozen pond. My footprints could have been right next to theirs.
I shivered and burrowed in deeper, wrapping the bedclothes tighter around me. I kept wrestling with my blankets and with my thoughts until just before dawn. Then I fell asleep.
Falling asleep was the worst. No sooner did I close my eyes than I opened them and I found myself standing by the dark pond. There was no ice on it. Instead, leaves were on the trees. Spring. But there were no birds singing, no frogs chirrupping. The only sound to be heard was the slurping noise of feet slogging through mud.
My feet. I was at the edge, wading in. The mud was sucking at my feet. Then something cold and clammy started wrapping itself around my legs. But I didn’t stop or pull back. I just kept walking in deeper and deeper. I looked around for the fox. It should have warned me. But it wasn’t there. I couldn’t get away. The hideous dark black water closed over my head.
When I woke up I had a moment of panic. Something really did have me by the legs! I didn’t yell, but I fought back. I reached down and grabbed hold with both hands and yanked as hard as I could. There was a loud ripping sound as the sweaty sheets that had gotten tangled around my legs tore in half.
It had taken me half the morning to reach the point where I felt even halfway calm. I tapped my pencil on my notebook and let out a sigh. How was I going to stop thinking about that dream from last night?
Just listen to Scoops.
Pay attention to what he’s saying, the duller the better, let him take your mind in another direction.
He was reading from the book now. I still hadn’t caught the name, but it was a capital-C Classic.
“So times were pleasant for the people there…” Scoops began.
Okay, I thought, pastoral, peaceful, just what I need.
Then Professor Scoops read the next few lines and the hairs stood up on the back of my neck.
“…until finally one, a fiend out of hell, began to work his evil in the world. Grendel was the name of this grim demon haunting the marches, marauding round the heath and the desolate fens….
5
CREEPED OUT
OUR FEET SCRUNCHED through the snow. For once Devo wasn’t yammering about something. Good thing, too, for I was in no mood for it.
Fens, I thought. Fens are swamps, sort of. And the heath, that’s the part of the English countryside away from the villages. That, in fact, is where the word heathen comes from—from the people who lived away from the villages and were following the old ways. The heath is where Macbeth meets those three witches.
Of course.
Don’t be so surprised. Just because I am as broad as a barn door and twice as thick (thanks, Devo) doesn’t mean I am stupid. I also remember things. Pretty much everything, to be honest. My mom says it’s the kind of memory most people had before writing was invented. If I think about something that happened, something I saw, I can almost see it happening again. Like the way I remember what just happened in class.
Scoops finished reading the p
assage about Grendel, the horrible monster who came from the swamps and liked nothing better than to eat people.
Pits raised his hand. Pits is always doing that.
“Professor Scopson,” he asked, “where did Grendel live?”
“It appears,” Scoops answered, “that our antisocial friend dwelled at the bottom of a deep, dark pond.”
Like I really needed to hear that?
“So does this mean he was the inventor of the first aqualung?” Devo asked. Just about everyone laughed, even Scoops.
Everyone except me.
“This ability,” Scoops said, “to pass from one world to the next, from the aqueous environment to terra firma, exemplifies Grendel’s supernatural endowment. It is a common motif in tales of the uncanny.”
Most of the kids in the class tried to write that down. Partially because they admired the way Scoops could fit more jawbreaking words into one simple sentence than anyone else. And partially because they knew that if they parroted his exact words back to him during the next test it’d mean extra marks for them. Scoops likes to know his classes are paying attention.
But I wasn’t paying attention. Not anymore. I wasn’t taking any notes. I was just putting my head down farther until my wide nose was touching the wooden surface of the desk. Just when I had finally been able to start thinking about something else, the Grendel tale had brought it all back to me.
Let the bell ring and this class be over.
And finally it did.
Devo and I were halfway across the field when something struck me in the middle of my back. It startled me so much that I roared when it hit. It actually took me a second to remember where I was and to realize two simple things. The first was that I’d been struck by a snowball. Just a snowball. The second was that whoever threw it hadn’t meant to hit me. No way. Nobody had that big a death wish. He was probably aiming for Devo.
Joseph Bruchac Page 2