Keeper

by Mal Peet

  The Keeper was silent for several moments. I began to fidget. I had never liked these silences.

  Then he said, ‘Instinct. I am sorry that I cannot think of a simpler word for it. Come, give me the ball.’

  He took it out to a position about thirty-five yards down our field, in line with my left post.

  ‘Here is the situation,’ he instructed me. ‘I am a midfield player for the other side. Looking toward your goal, I see that one of your defenders is out of position, so that for just a moment there are three of my players against two of yours. I send a long, high ball, a good one, which goes over the heads of my attackers so that they will be facing your goal when they run onto it. I’m aiming at the penalty spot. One of your defenders might be able to head it clear. What do you do?’

  This wasn’t difficult. ‘Defensive headers are always risky,’ I said. ‘So I scream like hell for the ball and go out and take it.’

  ‘Very well,’ the Keeper said. ‘Do it.’

  He sent the pass exactly as he had described it. I knew that he would put some backspin on it, to deaden the bounce when it landed in my penalty area. I came roaring out of the goalmouth, jumped well, took the ball cleanly, high, pulled it down onto my chest, and landed, well balanced, facing up the clearing. Nothing wrong with that, I thought. I looked at the Keeper, pleased with myself.

  ‘You put yourself in danger, collecting the ball that way.’

  ‘I do?’ I said. ‘How?’

  ‘You show too much of yourself to attacking players. Your speed is good and your jumping is good, but you always have the front of your body facing players coming in at you. This makes it easier for you to get hurt. And it makes it easier for you to be obstructed. Understand that when you are making a catch like that, there is a dangerous moment. That is when you are high in the air, with your hands on the ball, but before you get it down to your body and under control. Opposing players will be very close to you, jumping at you with their arms high, and if you lose balance at that moment, you may lose the ball, even though you have big, strong hands.’

  I understood this. ‘So what should I be doing?’

  ‘Your body must turn so that it meets oncoming players with the shoulder and the hip, not the chest and stomach.’

  ‘Show me,’ I said.

  We changed places, and I sent in the long pass, not as well as he had done, but well enough. From a standing start he came out of the goal like a tiger, in great strides: no more than four of them before he leaped. At the instant he took the ball, his body swiveled; by the time the ball had been clutched to his chest, he was descending sideways, left shoulder down, weight thrown forward. I would not like to have been in his way. He looked as though he could have smashed through a brick wall. His leading left foot touched the turf first. As soon as both feet were grounded, he was in a half-crouch, the ball held slightly away from his body, so that he was perfectly balanced to make either a long throw or a kick.

  It seemed so easy and natural that I thought I must have missed something.

  ‘Again?’ I needed to be sure he hadn’t done something too quickly for me to see.

  ‘Very well,’ the Keeper said, and rolled the ball out to me.

  This time I pitched the ball a little shorter, so that he had farther to go to reach it. It made no difference. Again, the tigerish run and leap, the hands behind the ball when he caught it, the pivot in the air, the shoulder-first descent, the landing in perfect balance and readiness. And this time an overarm throw the instant his feet touched the ground. The ball flew true to me, and I took it on my chest.

  ‘Okay.’ I trotted over to the goalmouth while he went to the ball.

  He sent the long pass to exactly the same spot as before. I took the ball high in the air, my hands well positioned. I pulled it down to me and swung the balance of my body sideways as the Keeper had done. I immediately lost control of my legs. My hips were out of line with my shoulders and didn’t know what to do. I was still trying desperately to get my weight in the right place when I hit the turf. To save myself from injury, I got my left hand to the ground and threw myself forward, rolling awkwardly. I had no idea where the ball went. I ended up on all fours, facing the wrong way, feeling stupid.

  I stood up to face the music.

  All the Keeper said was, ‘Goal.’

  I looked behind me and saw that the ball had come to a stop exactly where an intelligent forward would be. Yes, goal. No doubt about it.

  ‘Let me try again,’ I said.

  The same thing happened. I couldn’t understand it. It was such a simple thing. Just a turn in the air. So why did I get it so hopelessly wrong?

  ‘Because you still have to think about it,’ the Keeper said. ‘You still have to picture what your body must do. There is no time for that. There is no time for your head to send messages to the rest of your body and for your body to turn these messages into actions. It must be automatic. It must be instinct.’

  I was discouraged. ‘I don’t think I have this instinct,’ I said miserably.

  The Keeper’s reaction to this was so quick and fierce and out of character that I think my mouth fell open.

  ‘Do not say that. Never say that! Are you telling me after all this time that I was wrong about you? I am not wrong about you. I cannot be wrong about you. If I am wrong about you, we are all . . . stuck.’

  He turned away from me. His shape seemed to wobble, to look frail.

  I thought, All? Stuck? What does he mean?

  He turned back to me and became more solid. He seemed to be keeping himself visible by sheer willpower. I could see that he was struggling.

  He steadied and said, ‘You have this instinct. I see it in you. It’s just that you do not see it in yourself. It is because you think you are still that awkward boy who walked into this clearing long ago. You think you are still that boy, except that you have learned things from me.’

  He was right. Deep inside of me, still, that clumsy Cigüeña lived. All legs and struggling wings and shame. Laughed at.

  ‘You are not that boy any longer,’ the Keeper said. ‘He has gone. You have become someone else.’

  He turned away and walked toward the shadow wall of the forest. Before he disappeared, he faced me and said, ‘Tomorrow I will show you who you are now.’”

  “I STEPPED INTO the clearing and saw him right away. He was standing, motionless, at the very edge of the sunlight, where it was broken into fragments by leaf shadow. When he stepped forward, my eyes played a strange trick: some of that complicated shadow seemed to come with him. A piece of that patchy yellowish shade became solid and slouched beside him as he moved. It rippled. It kept pace with the Keeper as he walked calmly down toward me. A light wind was blowing into my face that afternoon, and I smelled her at the same moment she turned her pale muzzle and cold, yellow eyes toward me.

  A jaguar.

  I saw her beauty while I struggled not to wet myself from fear. I saw how she carried the broken light of the forest on her fur, the dark markings against the pale gold, and I saw that these markings gathered themselves into circles like the petals of black roses. Her shoulder blades almost met at the top of her back, sliding against each other as she paced. Her feet were huge, and she placed them on the turf with a lazy precision. Her pale, narrow belly swung slightly as she walked. She carried her tail in a stiff curve just above the grass.

  The Keeper strolled beside her as calmly as a man walking his dog in a city park. But there was nothing tame about her. She was alert in this unfamiliar open space. Her eyes were fixed on me; her nose read whatever scents were on the wind.

  The Keeper stopped fifty feet from me, but the jaguar came on. She came toward me with the same slow, loose stride, but I thought there was a tenseness in her now, a slight lowering of her body. The trembling that had begun in my legs took complete control of me.

  ‘Don’t move,’ the Keeper said.

  As if I could! As if my body would do what I told it to!

  The g
reat cat stalked past me, just a yard away. Then she turned and stopped where the breeze carried my scent to her. She lifted her head and narrowed her eyes. What she smelled, of course, was my fear, and this seemed to satisfy her. She sat. She was close enough to rip open my legs with one sweep of her claws. I had a mad desire to reach out to her and stroke her head, as if she were an ordinary cat, a domestic pet.

  ‘Keep still,’ the Keeper said, beginning to walk toward me. The jaguar turned her head and watched him approach. Then she stood and ambled off to the shaded side of the clearing, where she lay down and began to wash the underside of her right foreleg with her tongue.

  If the Keeper knew that he had terrified me, he gave no sign of it. ‘She recognized you,’ is all he said, looking at her, not me. Then he said, ‘Come.’ I was surprised to discover that I could walk. We moved to the edge of the clearing opposite the jaguar. I felt her yellow gaze on my back. When we stopped, she returned to her grooming. The light seemed to be concentrated in her: she glowed; she burned. The silence was intense; I could hear the soft rasp of her tongue against her fur.

  Then, suddenly, I saw her ears lift and twitch. She became absolutely still.

  ‘Now,’ the Keeper said softly.

  From off to our right there came the slightest of sounds, a whisper of leaves moving against other leaves. Then a tiny disturbance in the undergrowth. I could just make out a pale shape, and then, concentrating, I saw the head and shoulders of some sort of animal. It moved, anxious and alert, into the clearing. I knew what it was, even though I had never seen one before. A small deer, not much bigger than a large dog, with a narrow, intelligent head, big ears, and a long, slender neck. Uncle Feliciano called these deer ‘little ghosts,’ partly because they were pale, partly because they were hardly ever seen. I had seen their droppings, like little black beans, but never the animals themselves. They were intensely shy and cautious. Some power greater than its own nature must have brought this one here, to where something terrible was waiting. It hurt my heart, knowing what was going to happen.

  The jaguar had moved. She was now flat to the ground, facing the clearing. Her ears were down on her skull. Her great haunches were the highest part of her body, ready to propel her forward. The shadows of the leaves blended with her markings to make her almost invisible.

  The deer was now clear of the trees. He moved, stopped, listened, moved again. His forelegs were very thin and delicate, although the knees were large knobs of bone. All his strength seemed to be gathered in his hind legs and haunches, which looked as though they belonged to a much larger animal. As I watched, his thin tongue slid out of his mouth and into his left, and then his right, nostril. Then he lifted his nose and tasted the air.

  He was clearly nervous and confused to find himself in an open green space; such a thing was not part of his experience. He lowered his head to nibble at the turf, then lifted it again, quickly. He moved in little jerky paces farther into the open. Then he seemed to hear something, and turned, head high and ears swiveling. His eyes were big, and moist as if with tears.

  As soon as the deer turned, the jaguar came along the shadow line, fast. She carried herself low to the ground, so low that I could not see her feet move beneath her. As soon as the deer moved again, the jaguar froze, blending into the dappled light beneath the trees. I glanced sideways at the Keeper. He too was watching this dance of death, but there was no expression in his shaded face.

  It took about five minutes. Each time the anxious deer moved and turned, the jaguar rippled along the ground. And as soon as the deer lifted his head to smell the wind and search the shadows, she flattened herself and became invisible. I realized what she was doing: she was positioning herself so that the deer would eventually be caught between her and the goal. The goal and its net were the trap; that was where she would make the kill. But the cat had to time it very carefully, because the breeze would carry her scent to the deer at the very moment she reached her perfect position.

  It happened suddenly. The deer was thirty yards from the goal, facing it, perhaps trying to puzzle out what this strange thing was. The jaguar came into the open behind him, belly touching the grass, tail snaking from side to side. She covered twenty yards, and then went into a crouch, her shoulders shoved forward. The huge muscles of her hind legs tensed for the spring; I could see them shifting beneath her skin. The deer had only to turn his head to see her, but the sharp, fierce stink of the cat reached him first. He took off in a vertical leap, all four hooves clear of the ground, and spun around — all in one frantic movement. Before he touched the grass again, the cat had completed her first enormous bound, and her hind legs were swinging forward to launch her into the next. The deer twisted and leaped again, in high wild arcs toward the goalmouth. And then he seemed to understand what the net was, and that he had to escape it. He leaned to change the direction of his next leap, but the jaguar was almost upon him now, and she had known that he would do this. She made her final spring. I could see clearly what was going to happen: the arc of the jaguar and the arc of the deer would meet; she would take him in mid-flight.

  But then the deer did something incredible. He turned, in the air, onto his back, and arched himself, switching the direction of his flight, and for just a fraction of a second he was clear of the cat, and she was passing beneath him. What happened next took place in the flicker of an eye, but I saw it in dreamy slow motion. The jaguar seemed to hang in the air, as if gravity had stopped working on her. She rolled, and turned her head and shoulders back so that she was bent almost double. Her heavy right paw swung up at the deer. And she reached him, just. Her claws snagged and tore the muscle of the deer’s hind leg. I saw blood in the air, droplets of blood like a string of red beads.

  Then the laws of gravity and normal time were switched back on. The stricken deer fell, landing on his side, legs flailing. The jaguar landed on her feet two paces from her prey. There seemed no time at all between her landing and her going in for the kill; the actions flowed together.

  I steeled myself to watch. I expected ripping and tearing, but it didn’t happen. The jaguar pressed one heavy foreleg across the struggling deer and, almost gently, took his throat in her jaws and clamped them shut, closing his windpipe. She throttled him. When the wild jerking of his legs stopped, she released his throat and lowered herself onto the grass. She lay there, panting, for a minute, then walked cautiously around the corpse. Twice, she pulled and poked at it with a forepaw. Eventually, she took the deer’s neck in her mouth and dragged the corpse beyond the ancient goalmouth into the darkness of the forest.

  The Keeper did not speak, so after some moments I turned to look at him.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘what am I? The jaguar or the deer?’

  It was meant to be a joke — the kind of joke seriously nervous people make. The Keeper gave no sign that he had heard me.

  ‘Did you see what I wanted you to see?’ he asked me.

  ‘I think so,’ I said. ‘But I could not do what she did. I am human. It is not possible.’

  The Keeper walked a few paces from me, faced me, and said, ‘Are you saying that it is impossible?’

  I chose to say nothing.

  He said, ‘You are still very young. What do you know about what is possible or impossible? I tell you this: you will do things that now seem impossible. They seem impossible now only because you cannot imagine them. Because you do not believe in them. But you will do them, and afterward you will be amazed that you ever doubted yourself. Now, let me ask you that question. Which are you? Are you the jaguar or the deer?’

  ‘The jaguar,’ I said. What else could I say?”

  “I HAD MY fifteenth birthday two weeks before Easter, and when the holiday came, I left school and did not go back. A week after the fiesta, while the little kids were still finding burnt-out rockets from the fireworks display, I climbed into the back of a pickup truck with my father and other men and went to work. It was raining, and we all wrapped ourselves in black waterproof poncho
s. The road was cut into deep ruts by the heavy tractors, and the truck slid and lurched. In the back, we constantly fell against each other, and there was a great deal of cursing, which distressed my father because I was with him.

  I asked him how long it would take us to get where we were going. I was ashamed of myself, realizing that I did not know even this basic detail of my father’s daily life.

  ‘In this weather,’ he said, ‘almost an hour.’ From the way he said it, he seemed to expect me to be impressed. In fact, I was dismayed.

  ‘You know,’ my father said, ‘when I started logging, it took maybe fifteen minutes to get to where we were cutting. Every year it takes longer. It’s amazing how much of the forest we have cleared.’

  And as we traveled, the forest began to show its scars. On both sides of the road there appeared vast areas from which every tall tree had vanished. What grew instead was a thin green skin of scrub and creeper. Above these shaven landscapes the gray sky was suddenly huge.

  Farther on, the forest showed its open wounds. It had been scalped. Vast hillsides had been reduced to red mud and blackened stumps. Here and there, low cliffs of rock poked through the soil like naked bone. I simply stared at all this, too dazed to speak.

  We arrived at last at what Father called ‘the camp.’ The rain had stopped, but the air was still wet and heavy, and getting hot. Steam rose from the soaked earth and from puddles the color of tea. I threw off the heavy poncho and jumped out of the truck to stretch my aching legs. I looked around and saw that I had been brought to a place where a terrible battle had been fought. Looking around at where I might spend the rest of my working life, I felt as though my heart were dying.

  Our truck was one of many parked at the edge of an area of leveled gravel about the size of a big city plaza. Along one side of this space there were several metal sheds, blue or yellow, all blistered and streaked with rust. They had numbers painted on them, but the numbers were not in any particular order. Some of the sheds had great openings in their sides that could be closed with heavy roller blinds made of steel strips. Each shed like this had a huge workbench in front of it rigged up out of scaffolding poles, timber, and sheets of steel. These benches had roofs made of filthy, heavy plastic sheets bolted onto scaffolding.