Deep River Night

by Patrick Lane

  “What did Isabel give her?”

  “She told me it was fennel, goldenseal, and black tea. There was something else in it but she said it was a secret her grandmother told her years ago and she couldn’t reveal it.”

  “The baby kept it down?”

  “Yup. A tiny spoonful.”

  Art looked off into the dark. “She’s just skin and bones,” he said. “I saw babies like that in the war.”

  “This isn’t the war, Art.”

  Art smiled quietly at what she’d said. “I have to go.”

  “Are you okay?”

  He shrugged.

  “What’re you going to do with that rifle?”

  “Rifle?”

  “The one you’re holding.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Okay, Art,” said Molly softly. “You take care. And Art?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Gerda thanks you and so do me and Isabel and Raaka.”

  Art shifted the rifle to his other hand and watched as Molly walked back to the house and joined the women at the table. Molly said something and it looked like Gerda was going to get up, but Molly stopped her. She spoke and Gerda sat back down. She raised her hand to the window, a kind of farewell, not a goodbye.

  Art wondered at what he felt and then he didn’t.

  He couldn’t hear the boys but he knew they were only a little way behind him where the road took a hairpin turn around a rock bluff. They had Piet’s dog with them. He’d heard it whine a hundred feet or so back. The three of them had been with him since he passed behind the store. They’d been standing under the lean-to window. Joel must have been stealing a look at Alice and Emerson had come to stop him. The boy had his sister in mind when it came to Joel. They had looked his way when he was passing and took up behind him on the path and along the road. It didn’t matter, he thought. Joel knew what Irene McAllister had done to herself and the Turfoot kid had slashed Jim’s truck tires. They were a part of it now.

  “A baby,” he said, thinking of Arnold Turfoot’s Myrna carrying a child and of Gerda Dunkle’s baby too. We come into this world weeping, he thought.

  The road lay ahead as he walked into the gut of the mountain. Art didn’t call the boys to catch up. He let them stay back out of sight as he climbed slowly through the shadows till he came out at the lot overlooking the dump. He went over to the D4 tractor and rested against the worn seat. This’s what Jim used, he thought. He’d needed to cover up what he’d done.

  As he picked his way down into the wreckage he glanced back and saw the boys come to the rim with the dog. He clambered over the garbage to the timber sticking out of the junk. The stained white dress he’d taken from the timber that afternoon was still inside his jacket. He remembered the blood on his fingers when he’d taken the dress down. He hadn’t taken the dress to show Claude or to show Jim either. They’d both acknowledge the dress and the blood, but without Irene it meant nothing. It was just something Jim had gotten rid of. And too, the dress was somehow a comfort to Art, a promise he’d made to Irene. He put his hand inside his jacket and pressed it against her dress. The cotton felt soft and somehow safe where it was, far away from Claude’s heavy fingers, from Jim’s white hands.

  He stood there and looked down at a rotted tarpaulin at his feet, the cotton weave cracked and torn, weeds sticking through its mesh. It lay as if flung down a ridge of gravel into the dump. Art stepped out on a corner of the canvas sprawl. At his feet a cluster of rusted cans floated in a truck fender turned upside down, the rusty water shining with oil. The broken moon rested on its glaze.

  Art didn’t move as he stared into the pit at the grizzly bear swinging its huge head from side to side. When it located him the bear stopped moving and Art felt it breathe him into its body. There was a stillness then in them both. It was strange and perfect, he thought, the great bear standing at the heart of everything people had refused.

  And him too, what he had refused in his heart.

  They were quiet for a long time, his breathing and the bear’s breathing one thing, and then the bear turned from him and made its way over and around and through the wreckage to a mass of junk fifty feet away on the other side of the dump. On the rim above the bear’s head long clusters of yellow grass hung down like a fallen shawl and it was under the cape the bear stopped and turned its head toward Art.

  He knew the bear couldn’t see him now it was dark, its eyesight poor, but it could smell him still. The great head raised itself up and the bear held Art in its body, breath upon breath. The bear knew where he was and who he was and the bear knew too what he was looking for. The grizzly had known that ever since Art had taken the dress down.

  The bear growled deep in its chest. Art lowered his head as the bear’s jaws chopped the air. Hearing the sudden jolt dropped him to his knees.

  He stared across the dump at the back of the grizzly as it rolled its heavy shoulders and then with its great paws began tearing at the wall of garbage in front of it. As it did, the wall began to collapse, heaps of garbage and junk falling as the bear dug deeper, digging at what remained. When the rest of the pile had fallen away all that remained was the top half of McAllister’s small box freezer. Art knew Jim had used the D4 tractor to bury it there where no one would ever find it.

  The bear batted the white metal box with a heavy paw and, done, shouldered its way past what it had unearthed and climbed up the steep slope, the grass shawl parting as it pulled itself onto the rim and on into the forest where it disappeared into the arms of the cedars. The limbs closed behind and it was as if the grizzly had never been.

  Art stood and remembered when he first smelled the bear. It was when he’d gone back to McAllister’s trailer that he smelled the stench of the animal in the dark. Art looked down and saw the moon shine upon oily water in the upturned fender. The bear had been breathing Irene’s blood spoor outside the trailer and it had been breathing him too. The bear had known even then.

  Across the dump was the box freezer.

  It was still half buried in the garbage, beside it a rusted ploughshare from a far-off time. The freezer had sat in the shack at the trailer. The only thing different about it was the long strips of duct tape pulled tight across the lid, binding it to the box below, sealing what was inside.

  * * *

  —

  A DOOR BANGED AND THE FOOTSTEPS of the boy crossed the floor above. Wang Po waited quietly, Joel coming down the stairs, his boots barely touching the steps. Wang Po turned as Joel came through the door.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s Art,” Joel said, his breath moving in wisps. “You have to come.”

  “You sit and wait a few moments.” As he spoke he gestured to the chair by the mattress and told Joel to sit down. The boy was shaking. “Breathe,” he said.

  Joel gulped air.

  Wang Po raised his hand and said, “Slow, slow,” his hand hovering like a hummingbird. It was as if he was pressing down on a column of air, forcing it into Joel’s lungs.

  Joel gasped and swallowed, took a breath, and then another.

  “Sit,” said Wang Po. He waited as Joel went to the chair and put his body on it, each move careful, his hands on his knees trembling. Wang Po waited, knowing Joel needed to hold all of himself together before he could speak well enough to make sense.

  “Three breaths,” he said and waited. “Yes, good,” Wang Po said, Joel finally still, each breath quieter than the last. “Nothing can’t wait. This long, yes?”

  The cook composed himself, his eyes at rest, his hands folded together on his lap. “Now say what is wrong about Art.”

  And Joel did.

  He told Wang Po about how he and Emerson had followed Art and how Art stopped at Jaswant’s shack and talked to Molly Samuels and then went up to the dump and the bear looked at Art and Art looked at the bear for a long time and how Joel was sure the bear was going to charge, and he wondered if the Winchester would bring it down if it did charge because the bear was o
nly twenty feet away, no more, and the rifle’s caliber wasn’t large, a .308 would have been better, but Art didn’t raise his rifle at all, and Joel said it was the grizzly bear, the same one that had been on the path behind McAllister’s trailer, and after a long time looking at each other they seemed to know the things each of them had to do. The bear left after it tore away everything covering the freezer, and that was when Art went over to what Jim had thrown away. Art took his knife and cut the duct tape around the rim. He lifted the lid and looked into the box for a long time and then he reached in and took something out and put it in his pocket. After that he took the loose tapes he’d cut and stretched them back over the freezer again, the lid sealed down like it was before.

  Joel breathed and said how Emerson and him had gone down the road with the dog. Art was with them but the first-aid man wouldn’t talk to them. Joel asked Art if it was Irene in the freezer, but Art wouldn’t say anything and he wouldn’t say what he took out of it either.

  “Do you think it was the woman in the freezer?” Wang Po asked.

  “What else could it be? It’s where McAllister took her.”

  “Yes,” said Wang Po.

  “Then he told Emerson and me to go home. He told me Myrna was waiting.”

  “The girl with the baby, yes?”

  “After that he didn’t say anything again,” said Joel.

  “Tell me,” said Wang Po.

  “He went to McAllister’s trailer. There was a lamp burning in the front room,” said Joel. “Art went in there. He didn’t knock. He just walked in and closed the trailer door behind him.”

  “Yes.”

  “Art has his rifle,” said Joel. “McAllister’s in there with him.”

  Wang Po nodded.

  “Emerson snuck into the shack and looked through the trailer window. He said McAllister was sitting on the couch and Art was sitting on the chair by the sink. He’s just looking at Jim.”

  “Yes.”

  “We don’t know what he’s going to do. Art’s rifle is pointed right at him.”

  “How?”

  “How what?”

  “How does he hold the rifle?”

  “Like this,” Joel said, and he leaned against the back of his chair, crossed his leg, and pretended to rest a rifle on it so it pointed at the cook.

  “Yes,” said Wang Po. “His finger on the trigger?”

  “I think so.”

  “Think?”

  Emerson had said his finger was inside the trigger guard. “His finger is on the trigger.”

  “And they are not talking. No?”

  “Yes,” said Joel. “I mean no, no, they’re not talking. Emerson said they’re just looking at each other.”

  “Emerson is at the trailer now?”

  “I told him I was coming to get you. I told him I’d be back.”

  Wang Po held up his hand, thought a moment, and then told Joel what he had to do. “And make Joseph come. Vern Lupich and Oroville Cranmer too. Bring no one who is too drunk. Don’t tell Ernie Reiner, he will only make trouble. The foreman Bill Samuels and Claude Harper. At the dance,” he said. “They will all be there.”

  “You know their names,” Joel said, surprised.

  “I’m the cook,” Wang Po said. “I feed them.”

  He waited, but Joel never moved.

  “Wake up,” said Wang Po.

  Joel blinked his eyes and took the stairs two at a time.

  Wang Po listened to the running steps on the floor above and the far-off slam of the cookhouse door.

  He turned to the table, took up his wolf-hair brush, cleaned it, and placed it in the case. It was a little longer than the other brushes. He was very careful not to crimp the tip. He put away his ink-stick in a Redbird matchbox with the others and covered the inkstand with a piece of damp chamois so the ink wouldn’t dry out. Perhaps there would be time later to work on another drawing.

  His tools safely put away, he got up and shrugged into a heavy red shirt, the one given him by Murray, the chokerman who had quit two years ago and went south. They had strange words for things in Canada, he thought. Chokerman. Wang Po climbed the stairs, looked at the bread in the kitchen, and thought about putting it into the ovens. The loaves were covered. He slipped on his shoes and went upstairs. He made sure the door to his room was closed behind him. There would be time later for the bread. Right now Art was pointing his rifle at Jim McAllister.

  Wang Po stepped out onto the gravel and began walking. The moon was up in the southern sky. Pebbles were strewn across the empty lot. They glistened with evening dew. Their backs looked like thousands of tiny turtles swarming. The pebbles and the deodar branch he’d finished drawing brought back his childhood home and memories of his mother. She had told him long ago his name meant “white soul.” The name was about the earth where the feelings are born. His father told him he had to work hard at removing the heart, that he had to drive out the bad demons there, but his father was Confucian, not Buddhist. Wang Po had spent many years with his father’s wishes. He had nurtured patience and kindness as best he could after leaving Nanjing, his mother and father dead, buried alive in a trench in the park by the river. The Cipango laughing as they covered his parents’ heads so slowly, his mother staring at his father’s eyes as he tried to breathe, her eyes and nose covered last. Revenge had left him long ago, just as anger and greed had fled. He remembered, that was enough.

  Turtles had swarmed on the banks of the Qinhuai River when he was a boy. One day he’d brought a bucket of young turtles home to his mother. She made him take them back to the river and instructed him to ask their forgiveness when he released them. Po, his white soul, his heart made of earth and darkness. When he died he would return to the earth as kuei, a ghost. His mother told him not to be afraid. The earth is your mother too, she told him.

  He had never forgotten what she had told him.

  I am the ant on the pine cone, he thought. I am the wolf-hair brush at rest.

  He had forgotten the mouse in his pocket after they crossed the river. It was only after he’d walked miles into the rice fields that he remembered it. He was lying under a willow tree by a ditch when he felt the tiny animal move. He took it from his pocket and opened his hand in the grass. The mouse sat on his palm and cleaned its paws before walking off his fingers into the world.

  There is much to be grateful for, he thought.

  He heard the sound of music playing at the Hall down in the village, but didn’t recognize their song. All such music was foreign to his ears. He smiled at the word, foreign. He said it out loud.

  “Foreign.”

  He knew where the path to McAllister’s trailer broke away from the road. He knew the way. He had walked the village paths when he first came to the valley. He needed to know where he was, where others were. As he walked he remembered “The Song of the Cicadas.” The wind played music in the air around him. He imagined his woman waiting patiently in Shanghai. He could hear her plucking the pipa for him, the delicate sound of the strings in her small hands. “The Cicadas” was one of his faraway songs. Its sadness gave him pleasure whenever he remembered it.

  * * *

  —

  “TODAY I WAS DRAWING THE CEDAR BRANCH on the deodar tree, Art. I was sitting at my table in the cookhouse, but I was by the Qinhuai River too. When I was a child the river was my outside mother. The deodar I drew was down the street from where I lived. The third day of the invasion I was hiding in a house far down the street from the deodar tree. In the morning I woke up. I was still in the narrow place above the highest room. Soldiers were shooting into the ceiling. They did not kill me. I do not know what people had lived there. It is strange to lie still and hear soldiers raping a girl. When they stopped is when they started the shooting. It was very quiet after so I knew the soldiers had taken them away to be killed or the people were already dead. I don’t know what you call a room like that in your words. It was very tight to lie down and there was a small window with bamboo sticks to let in
the air and keep out rats. There were many rats in Nanjing, many rats in the house. I had been there two days and two nights. They burned down that house where I was hiding. I do not remember how I got out. We don’t know why we are saved, Art. I think we do not know why things happen. There were rats in the street. They came out when the burning started. Why was I still in Nanjing? Sometimes you fight and sometimes you hide. It is not important. Later I will tell you about the river and the mouse,” he said. “You will laugh, I think.”

  “Jesus, fuck,” said McAllister. “You crazy chink. Just take the rifle away from him.”

  Wang Po turned his head and held up his hand. “It is not a time to talk for you.”

  “Do something,” said Jim. “I have to piss.”

  “Then piss,” Wang Po said.

  “What?”

  “It is not hard to do, I think,” he said. “It is not good to hold water.”

  Jim was going to speak again and Wang Po reached out and touched the barrel of Art’s rifle.

  Art didn’t move.

  “For you, sitting still is good,” he said to McAllister. “Quiet is good.”

  Emerson sat cross-legged inside the dark joy-shack staring through the open door into the trailer where the men were.

  Wang Po inclined his head at the boy, his eyes on Art.

  “Yes,” Emerson said, nodding. “They’re coming,” he whispered.

  “Go get Claude,” said McAllister. “He’ll put a stop to this.”

  “It is okay to shoot him, Art,” Wang Po said. “If you want. It is okay for me.”

  McAllister sat very still inside his fear. He looked afraid.

  “Ah,” Wang Po said. “Quiet is nice.”

  “Listen, Art. I want to tell you about Chungshan Gate. Cipango made us pile the corpses in the street on the way to Hsiakwan. All day I dragged the dead there. Many had run away to that village in order to die. From Nanjing. Why? There was nowhere to go. Chungshan Gate was one place. The dead were everywhere, soldiers, women, horses and babies, dogs too. We piled them up. When we were done they drove their tanks and trucks over the bodies and ground them to meat and bones. They called that place Shi Jie, what you would call Wet Street.”