I knew I was pushing but had to ask. “Can you tell me, I mean, how do you do it? What about work, family?”
He turned toward me and brought both hands to rest on the top of his staff but looked down the trail when he replied. “Worked my last job over fifteen years ago. Didn’t save a lot, but you’d be surprised just how far it goes once you get down to what you really need.” This time, when he looked at me, his beard rose high enough to let me know that it did frame a smile, but I saw none of it shining from the haunted depths of his eyes. “Family,” he said, “is another story. Goodbye, Paul.”
I took less than a dozen steps before I turned around again. Given my state of mind that morning, I guess I could have been wrong. But when I went to wish Lupus good luck on the final leg of his journey, the only thing I saw was a long and empty trail.
47
Lost Pond
The job was going to be a bitch. I stood in the middle of the trail and looked up at the mess that stood between Lost Pond and me. The thing was a big mother—an ancient white pine, more than four feet wide and maybe a hundred feet tall. It had come down diagonally across the trail. On its way it had taken a couple of its smaller neighbors with it, creating a nest of three trunks that blocked the path.
I dropped my pack and began bushwhacking around it to scout the problem, following the big pine’s trunk till I found the huge root-ball raised during its fall, hovering farther up the trail.
It was really a two-man job, maybe three. But I’d come to work and figured that even if I couldn’t clear the thing alone, I could at least start the job before Tyler and whoever else was available came back to help me finish it.
A forest blowdown can be a dangerous beast, and this one looked particularly complicated. The trees weren’t completely down, and as I worked my way around them, I tried to locate the larger supporting limbs that kept the higher ends of their trunks angled far over my head.
The crossed limbs were held tenuously in place by opposing forces. My job was to continuously assess the tension and compression as I attacked the puzzle with my saw. All the while, I’d need to prevent my blade from binding and—most importantly—keep myself safe. Any one of those thick trunks or branches, or even the smaller “spring pole” saplings underneath them, could make things go bad very quickly if I made the wrong decision. The same was true of the branches in the trees overhead that the blowdown had weakened. I took quite a while to scout them all, as I eyed each with the respect demanded by their backwoods name: widow-makers.
I walked back to my pack and geared up, pulling on gloves, helmet, and safety glasses before carrying the saw to the middle of the trail. The job started easily enough. I slashed through the thin saplings between the trail and the place I’d planned for the start of my work, clearing the escape path I might need if things went the wrong way.
For the next hour, I relished the chore. The buzz and whine of the saw was loud enough to be heard through my earplugs, and that was a good thing. The work was noisy and stressful—just what I needed to take my mind off everything else.
When the saw slowed, I shut it down, lugged it back to my pack, and took out my files. Sharpening the chain was slower, quieter work. I had to still myself to make the small, even passes, working the round file from tooth to tooth.
While I worked, my mind drifted to the person who’d first trained me for this chore. I could still hear my father’s instructions—his words floating to me from his perch on the ladder as I sat bent over a saw next to a bough from the half-downed apple tree in our back yard.
I shook my head to clear the memory, topped off the tank, and hustled back to my target. Once in front of it, I barely took time to plant my feet before I pulled the cord. Then I buzzed and coughed and spat as I wielded my newly sharpened weapon on one limb after another. After every break to fill my tank or sharpen my chain, I rushed more quickly back to my work. Each pause brought more memories that I tried to push away: my boot heel grinding the glass hash pipe I found in Tommy’s room, an angry car ride through a blizzard back to Drexel from BU after Robert eclipsed my attempts to talk to Kim about Tommy, the cheery sound of Campbell’s greeting every time I called home, before I stopped calling home at all.
As I filed the chain for the third time that morning, I missed my mark and hit my finger with the file, cursing the tiny teeth that bit my skin. I stood up and shook the blood from my fingers. The chain was only half sharpened, but I didn’t care.
My arms were heavy as I lifted the saw for the next phase of my work. I’d finally reached the larger limbs under the big pine and started making shallow, nipping cuts into their sides to relieve some of the tension. When I began my work, I’d thought about the counterweight at the other end of the tree. The tangle of branches I picked my way through was only half of the story. Each time I removed one, I tempted the balance between them and the huge mass of dirt, roots, and rocks at the tree’s base. It was the first thing I had told myself to remember that morning. Sometime before noon, it was the first thing I forgot.
There were three ways I could have been killed when it happened.
The first was the saw. The tree’s trunk came crashing up to launch it after I cut the critical limb. My hand was still on the trigger when the blade went buzzing by my ear.
The trunk was number two, rocketing so close to my face that I smelled the musty scent of its bark as it fanned the air an inch from my nose.
The third cracked like a rifle shot high above. I tasted bile flooding the back of my throat in the long seconds it took the thing to fall. The huge branch shook the ground when it hit, five feet behind me, exploding with a second crack and pop that echoed louder than the first.
I stood there, shaking, arms stretched, fingers splayed, knees buckled over watery legs—waiting, waiting, waiting for my luck to finally run out.
***
It took me a long time to start moving again. I didn’t take off my gloves or helmet. I didn’t pick up the saw. I didn’t stop to quench my parched throat. I watched the ground under my feet, every dry leaf and inch of muddy earth, wondering as I walked who was telling my feet to move and where they might take me. When they came to water, I folded them beneath me, looked across Lost Pond, and let the silence in.
***
It’s funny, the places you can go, if you can just stop going . . .
Mr. Buttons was ugly, even for a gorilla. He had a plastic nose and mouth stitched onto his big, furry brown head, and his hands and feet were plastic too. His eyes were a pair of glassy black marbles sunk halfway into his flat face, and he wore red striped overalls covered in bright green buttons. He was an absolute Frankenstein of a stuffed animal—and Jordan loved him. She took the damn thing everywhere.
Shortly after she died, I came home from school and peeked into her room to find Mr. Buttons gone. Only Jordan’s bare bed and one large cardboard box remained. Every stick of furniture had vanished, along with the Ghostbusters poster, the painting of the pink ballerina, and the magazine pages of animals she’d tacked up. It took me a moment to realize what else was missing from those bare walls: every inch of its yellow wallpaper had been stripped clean.
As I stared across the pond, the next image of that room that appeared was hazier, and I had to coax it from my memory before the scene it started would play in my mind.
I woke up one night to use the bathroom, almost a year after my sister’s death. On my way back to bed, I noticed a light coming from Jordan’s door. I peered around it to see my father sitting at the end of her bed next to the opened cardboard box. His head was tipped toward his lap, where he held Mr. Buttons. His fingertips moved lightly over the top of the toy’s head, brushing it over and over again, just the way you’d stroke someone you loved.
I backed away from the door and crept into my bed. I never said a word to my father or anyone else about that night. It was one more silence, one more secret, one more solitary sting from Jordan’s death that none of us would ever share.
; My eyes wandered over the wall of pines circling the water. A short walk through these woods can yield tales as ancient as the glaciers that carved its fertile floor and as new as each thin green thing that threads its way through it to be born above. But the ponds that lace this place tell a different story; their absence is their power. Every silver surface is an empty page waiting to ripple with the truth the wind writes about the wild world around it.
I stared at those shimmering white lines receding from where I sat. As my eyes followed them to the distance they disappeared into, I surrendered. Alone on that cold bank, I let myself imagine what happened in the last moments of my father’s life—and wept.
48
Fixed Blade
I looked down and picked up a flat, white stone, rubbing my thumb over its smooth surface. The soft clack, clack, clack I’d been hearing pierced my concentration and made me look up.
The sound traveled clearly across the water before me. I stood, trying to locate it. A light wind found my neck, sending a shiver down my spine. It was just after noon, but the weak sun was doing little to warm the day.
I heard another clack and turned my head, catching a flash of white in the brush on the eastern side of the pond. It was followed by another sharp rattle, louder this time. I rose and started down the trail skirting the pond, running through my mental inventory of natural noises to identify the hard, cracking beats. When I heard a long, low bellow, I knew what they were.
I turned off the trail to follow the sound, scrambling down a short slope of shrubby ground toward the pond. I saw the moose closest to the water’s edge first. His head was down. When he raised it, I sucked in my breath.
The Broken Bull picked up a hoof and pawed the earth in front of him. I had to pick my way down to the water’s edge to see the rival he faced. The back half of the other bull was screened by brush, but his massive shoulders, head, and rack towered above them. His coat was so dark it was almost black. There were only a few feet between the animals, and as my eyes went back and forth between their profiles I saw they were almost perfectly matched in size.
But the black moose that the Broken Bull faced had one advantage: he held the higher ground. His position above the Broken Bull meant the animal I’d come to know over the past few months would have an uphill battle.
My eyes caught a movement at the top of the bank behind the black moose, and when it flickered again, I could see the prize. The very top of a cow’s ears and the crown of her head poked above the green for a moment before she turned and disappeared into the woods.
A sharp snort brought me back to the Broken Bull, the sound turning into a crisp white crescent of frost that hung in the air above his nose. When his head tilted and lowered, the black moose charged.
They met head-on, low to the ground, their racks coming together with a mighty crash. I could see the force of their impact ripple through the Broken Bull’s body, traveling down his spine and shuddering through his back legs. He had been driven back a few feet before the black moose disengaged, turning to climb slowly up the hill.
But the Broken Bull found his footing fast. He made an uphill charge, bringing his head in low. The black moose turned, but he was too late to square his rack against the other beast’s. He caught a glancing blow from the crippled half of the Broken Bull’s rack. When I saw the black moose raise his nose again, there was a slash of pink across it.
He retreated three or four steps, backing up this time to keep his head low and ready. The Broken Bull took a single step forward, planting his feet on the firmer ground. He pawed the earth and made a low sound, more moan than bellow. Then he began advancing uphill, not charging this time but stepping slowly, deliberately, backing up his rival step by step.
The two disappeared into the brush. I scrambled back up the trail to get a better view. Once I was on it, I saw the cow farther down the trail, her rear to me. There was more scuffling and clacks in the woods between us. When they grew louder, she walked away.
I moved cautiously now. I’d almost been killed once today, and getting between two horny three-quarter-ton beasts was an excellent way to finish the job.
In the next instant, the back haunches of the black moose popped from the bushes and onto the path. I froze. I’d misjudged my distance. I was a lot closer to the bull than I’d thought. But a moment later, he disappeared back down the slope, and from the thunder of his hooves in the brush I realized his rival was much farther below. It was several seconds before I heard their racks hit—a single clash this time, followed by a sickening, loud, wet pop. The air was silent for a long moment after. Then the ground shook, and all was still again. A softer scraping broke the silence, and a minute later I heard the brush rustle close to the trail. I saw a stand of three pines a few feet off the path and crept over to hide behind them. When I looked up, the black moose stood in the middle of the trail, staring straight at me. When his ears flattened I slid my eyes right and left, not daring to move my head an inch as I looked for better cover. Once I saw the full size of his body, I realized the thin pines I cowered behind would do little to stop him if he charged.
He lowered his rack until I was staring straight at it, and pawed the ground. My stomach flipped, and I fought an overwhelming urge to throw up. Then the thin bleat of the cow paused the black moose’s paw in midair. Slowly, he raised his head, gave me a final look, and turned to clop off down the trail.
I waited a full five minutes before I went to investigate the battlefield. Broken branches were spilt at the top of the slope where the black moose had exited. I looked down the matted chute of brush below and saw splashes of red among the green. There was no way I was going to wade into that slick tunnel to find what waited on the other end.
I’d retreated twenty steps or so when the screaming started. That was what it was—screaming—though deeper and louder than any human cry I’d ever heard. It carried, however, the exact same note of naked fear. Some dark, hidden recess within my own chest opened in response to that terrible sound. My skin prickled and my mouth went dry as the cry gave voice to the grief buried inside me that had stayed silent for so long.
I ran another few paces before crashing through the brush to the pond. Then I picked my way along the water’s edge, eyes wide as I searched for the source of the wail.
It took several seconds to register the thing before me as a moose. I saw only a long, black hump with a bright red crease rising and falling amid the faded green leaves. I studied it for a long moment before I knew there was no way it could rise to threaten me. I moved closer.
The Broken Bull stopped screaming when I approached. As I surveyed his twisted form, I could read the history of the battle that brought him to his end. He had backed his opponent up the slope too far, and at some point the black moose had increased that advantage to open the ground between them. He’d charged from on high, and when the two beasts hit, his speed and weight simply crushed his opponent. Unfortunately, the red crescents his sharp hooves sliced into the Broken Bull’s side made for a clumsy coup de grâce. The job wasn’t done.
I looked at the animal’s inverted head, tilted back on the remnants of his rack. Puffs of frosty breath chuffed from his red, foamy mouth and drifted toward the pond with every labored heave of his chest. The eye that stared back at me was wide and aware, with no trace of the glassy stare that would usher it into death. It rolled over white once before settling on my own. Then the creature’s broken chest began to rise.
The next scream was so loud I stumbled back and fell into the brush. I wanted nothing more than to turn and run. But instead I moved toward it, shaking. I’d think about that decision later, trying to decide what drove me. I’d never solve the riddle of whether I was motivated by the mercy that would end the animal’s suffering or the guilt I was sure would follow me to my own death if I didn’t.
I’d have given anything to have Cassie’s service revolver at my side. Cassie herself was the one legally sanctioned to perform the act I was about to commit. But
man-made law was the last thing on my mind as I moved toward the mangled beast lying above the shore of Lost Pond. My hand reached for the only weapon I had on my hip. I slid my father’s fixed-blade knife slowly from its sheath—then steeled myself to its use.
From the angle of the bull’s neck, I thought it might be broken. The way his abdomen arched toward the sky made me think he might have fallen on a rock or log that cracked his back too. The foreleg closest to me clearly wasn’t a danger, bent at a sickening angle that exposed the red gristle of the joint above it. My thumb brushed the edge of the knife as I studied his neck. My blade was sharp—very sharp—but I needed to be too. I waited for him to fill his lungs for his next scream. Then, I sprang.
My mistake was going for a slice instead of a stab. I felt the bull tremble as I drew my blade across his neck, but his coarse coat was tough, and my cut was shallow. I adjusted quickly, but it took time—the one thing I couldn’t waste in front of a dying, deadly beast.
I shifted my grip to pivot the knife handle in my fist. In that instant the scream he’d filled his lungs for split the air. I gritted my teeth and reached farther across his neck, raised my blade and punched it in to its hilt. I cupped the fist holding the handle with my other hand and dragged the knife toward me in a quick, clean jerk. A bright red fountain erupted, turning to a pink spray that followed the path of my blade. It showered my arms and face, stinging my eyes and surprising me with its heat as I listened to the wet gurgle of the animal’s aborted scream. I was just finishing the incision when somehow he managed to move. I was still stretched over him when his head whipped toward me, and the ragged edge of the broken side of his rack flashed.
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