Wilderness

by Lance Weller

  After a time, the dog came out of the woods like it had the first night it had come to Abel. It materialized out of the dark between the trees and came down the beach to sit across the fire from him with a look composed upon its features as though it sat in judgment on the old soldier. After a few long moments, the dog sighed heavily and faced the ocean, seeming to watch the otters out amidst the waves where they floated on their backs or dove beneath the surface for shells and stones.

  Abel moved the little deer steaks about on the coals with his bare fingers, quickly touching each to his tongue afterward to ease the heat from them. He cooked the strips on one side and then the other until they were just brown with the blood running from them in watery pink streams that went sizzling onto the coals. The meat smelled rich as it cooked, with tiny, snapping flames coming up all around it, and when it was done to his taste, Abel set the steaks on a flat stone and used his knife and fingers to cut and eat them. Juice ran down into his beard and fell dripping onto his shirt. The old man breathed deeply through his nose as he chewed, grunting softly his satisfaction and enjoyment.

  When the cooked meat was half gone, Abel set to it with his knife again, dividing what remained into small cubes. He jerked his chin up to the dog, and it came around the coals to stand nearby. It looked at him as before, and the old man nodded and watched as the dog ate very carefully from the flat of his hand. “You poor, dumb son of a bitch,” he said softly.

  Their meal finished, Abel threw sand on the remains of the fire before walking with the dog out across the beach into the surf. The massive, dark sea stacks rose from the water like strange teeth from the floor of the ocean’s jaw. Occasionally the setting sun would come flaring through the clouds to silhouette a tiny hogsback island farther out to sea. The old man and the dog sat together on a boulder and watched the tide come in all around them.

  Here, in the cool evening under a sky of gray cloud behind which the sun was setting, the water was a dark green color. Wisps of dirty foam veined it weirdly, marking the subtle motions of tide and current the way a field of tall grass will mark the shape of the wind passing through it. Farther out, on other, smaller stones, stood cormorants like Old World gargoyles of strange sculpture, wings outstretched to dry fingerwise against the failing light, their eyes black and dull as chips of coal, their faces bright and baboon-gaudy.

  All around them were shallow tidal pools cut into stone by ages of oceanic labor. They refilled slowly with the tide, and beetle-sized crabs came scuttling from the shadows to explore what new terrain had been wrought of their sand patches. Orange and red sea stars clasped fast to the undersides of wave-splashed stones, and everywhere were hard clusters of mussel like fat grapes amidst foam and rock and wave. Abel stood and the dog jumped down into the surf to start back up the beach, the rattle, suck, and roar of the ocean loud as he followed the dog into the cold, knee-deep water. Abel kept his eyes down as he waded ashore, and when he did look up it was to the sight of a thin taper of smoke rising from the northward beach.

  He stood with the tide push-pulling at his calves and watched the smoke rise and scatter through the forest. Abel reckoned the fire near the spot he and the dog had camped the night just past. After a time, he shrugged and left the beach for his camp, where the dog stood waiting for him.

  After nightfall, they sat up to watch the ocean dark under the nightblue sky. Abel and the dog. The rain clouds lay far to sea and they watched a single star fall arcing soundlessly across the heavens and then another and another while myriad others glistened and shined and moved slowly through the heavens like things alive, and who was there that could tell they were not? They were quiet and still together. The old man knew that in the all the world’s turning there had been but few moments such as this and so did not speak. And beside him, the dog’s strong, inarticulate heart beat softly and together they sat under the bright, spirited stars until sleep overtook them.

  He dreamed again that night of his youth and of absent friends, of the land disturbed by war. He woke once, rising up on his elbow to look seaward. The air was clean and cool and he could see forever across the water. The stars astonishing. And the pale band of the Milky Way. His breath appeared and vanished and appeared again in the starlight, and he wondered what had become of the rain clouds. He saw distant lights on the horizon—ships moving silently over the water. Slotted to their trade routes, they spoke among themselves in the cold, lonesome language of flashing lights and low, doleful horns whose notes came rolling slowly over the dark waves. A deep, heavy, lingering sound that spoke to Abel of vast distances, isolation, infinite sadness. But the dog was a soft, warm shape in the dark beside him, and after a while he lay back down and slept once more.

  When he woke the next morning, the sun was well up and the dog was nowhere about. Abel looked onto the beach, the broad panorama where the tide had risen and fallen and was yet on the rise once more. The sand was rearranged, and he marked high tide by the softly undulating line of dead link confetti, dulse, and bleach-weed waving north and south along the beach like the hem of a curtain. Sunlight reflected brilliantly in the tidal pools. Long, pencil-straight lines of golden light lay where the light fell on seawater that filled the trenches of tide-cut stone. And light burst off the sea itself—variegate upon the undersides of sea stacks and silvery in the choppy cove—and through this ecstasy of brightness two men walked across the sand toward the dog, which backed away, head lowered, teeth showing.

  The smaller of the two held a looped length of rope swinging slowly from his fist while the other, larger man stood behind, holding a rifle in the cradle of his arms as one would hold a sleeping child. Abel heard the small man’s voice beneath the wind-and-surf sounds: a thin, wet rattle contrapuntal to the dog’s low growl. The hackles were raised along its back and Abel leaned, spat, then snatched up his rifle and walked out onto the beach.

  When he saw the old man come clambering with purpose over the sea-tossed driftwood, the small man let the rope fall to the sand. He pulled a handkerchief from somewhere about his person and held it to the side of his head, then moved it before his mouth and held it there as Abel approached. Abel could tell there was something badly wrong, and as he drew closer, he could see dried blood scaling his face and neck. Behind him, his partner turned, still holding the rifle in the same tender fashion. This second man was an Indian of the Haida tribe whose eyes, beneath long, raven-black spikes of hair, were dark and lusterless as gutterfound pennies. Old white scars tatted the brown flesh there as though something had once tried to scratch those eyes from their sockets.

  Abel stopped before them and spoke sharply to the dog. It looked his way then sat uneasily, growling still. With slow ceremony, the old soldier set the butt plate of his rifle squarely on the toe of his right boot. He held the barrel lightly with the fingers of his left hand and stood before them in such a way that his body might help hide his withered arm. Putting the fingers of his strong right hand to his back pocket, Abel affected an air of unconcern by squinting at the sky, looking to sea, then, finally, glancing sideways at the two men before looking to sea again. “Mornin’,” he said quietly. “Don’t appear we got a lick of the rain I thought was comin.’”

  The two men looked at each other. Abel saw the side of the smaller man’s head; saw that his ear was half gone along with part of his cheek and the wound still angry and seeping. The man turned to face Abel, and when he spoke his voice was strained, wet and hard to listen to, as he pressed the bloodstained handkerchief against his cheek. “That yours?” he gurgled, pointing at the dog.

  Abel looked over at it, looked back, and met the little man’s eyes. “He travels with me,” he said. “I don’t reckon I give you my name. It’s Abel. Abel Truman.”

  “Willis,” said the small man as the Haida stepped forward to block the sun from his hurt face. Willis glanced up at the Indian, blinked slowly, and looked back at Abel.

  “Well,” said Abel. He pressed his tongue against the inside of his cheek and nodded
to the rope lying on the sand. “What’s all this about?”

  “Ours got loose,” said Willis, his voice a slow torture. Wincing, he swallowed and grimaced. “Big fucker, he was. Went to put a collar on him and he up and got mad about it and run off. Reckon he was more wolf than dog, ’cause when he saw the chain … well, there was no holding him.” He squinted at Abel and shrugged. “We fight ’em,” he went on. “One we lost might could’ve really been something, but he’s gone, so we figured to replace him with this one.” He lifted his chin toward the dog where it sat growling, then stared at Abel, his eyes two crescents as though he’d hide a darkness behind them.

  Abel looked to the Haida, the man with the gun. “It don’t look like this dog is much interested in any of that.” He cleared his throat. “Tell you what,” he said. “You head north, on back the way you come three, maybe four, days’ march if you don’t catch the tides right, and you’ll come up on a village. Up past the Arches. Makah. You probably know it already. You go on up there, and old Pete’ll most likely have a dog or two abouts he’d be proud to trade for.” Abel cleared his throat again, swallowed painfully, and felt a hot scrim of sweat break high on his forehead.

  Willis clicked his teeth together and hissed as though the action pained him. He shook his head. Said: “The dog we lost we bought from them goddamn nigger-Indians up near the border.” He shook his head. “I don’t guess I’d be too goddamn eager for another from the like of them. Like I say, thing was about half wolf.” Pausing, he looked hard at Abel. “You want to see what that wild fucker done to me? Besides my goddamned ear? I’ll show you what that mean, wild fucker done to me.”

  Willis lowered the damp, red cloth from his face, and Abel saw the man’s right cheek had been mostly ripped away, leaving a moist gash studded periodically with teeth stained yellowbrown like rotted pine-wood. His tongue was in constant motion over the edges of the hurt—sliding out across his exposed gums to moisten them and setting pink slobber running in pale streams down over his jaw. Willis scratched his neck and clicked his teeth together like some weird, half-fleshed skull made animate. “You see my goddamned face?” he rasped, swallowing and grimacing as the shreds of his cheek flopped about.

  “I see it,” said Abel.

  “Well, what do you think of that?” Willis leered.

  “I think you ought not to swallow anymore of your own nasty blood, else you’ll start cramping something fierce.”

  “Goddamned beast what done this to me is still out there in them woods,” said Willis, gesturing toward the quiet green expanse standing at Abel’s back. “Done all this without even thinking about it.” Willis’s hand moved in the air before his torn face like a magician’s assistant directing the audience’s attention toward the mystery.

  Abel nodded. “Makes a man wonder how you were treating it that set it off,” he said.

  Willis opened his mangled mouth as though to reply, but the Haida spoke first. “How much lead you got in your arm, old soldier?” he asked quietly.

  Abel blinked. He blinked and swallowed and winced, then said, “What did you say to me?”

  “I asked about your arm,” said the Haida, nodding. “You favor it even when you’re trying not to.” He spat and watched the surf snarling about his ankles suck the white spittle oceanward.

  Abel felt a slow heat working his way across his chest, up his throat. He shook his head. “My share,” he said. “No more’n that.”

  The Haida pursed his lips, narrowed his eyes, and studied the old man. “Your share,” he said, then nodded with a small smile. “I’ve heard of you. You were in that war they had. In the olden days?”

  Abel nodded. “That’s right.”

  “They talk about you sometimes. People on the coast,” the Haida said. “They say that that war broke you.” The Haida blinked and cocked his head. “We passed your house a few days ago,” he said. “They call that place Broken Man Cove.”

  Abel was silent. His throat burned.

  “Then, of course, you’ve seen worse than this,” the big Indian said, nodding to Willis without taking his eyes from Abel. “You’ve probably seen everything that can be done to a body to get the life out of it. Shit. You’ve probably done most of those things to other men and been glad to do it. Ain’t that right? You reckon that’s what broke you? Inside, I mean?”

  Abel didn’t answer. He doubled over suddenly with a hot spasm of coughing. Willis stepped back. The rifle slipped from Abel’s hand and his body shook. He tasted blood against the backs of his teeth but did not spit onto the sand. When he’d mastered himself, Abel quickly scooped the rifle up and held it awkwardly crosswise before his body.

  Neither of them had moved, but when Abel faced them once more, the Haida said, “That’s a bad cough. You sound like you’re a sick man.”

  Abel shrugged and sniffed wetly. He moved the rifle to its previous position with the butt on his right boot toe and the fingers of his left hand curled about the barrel.

  “Jesus Christ,” snarled Willis abruptly. “What’ll you take for the goddamned dog?” He leaned and gingerly opened his mouth to let a bloody length of slobber spool off his tongue onto the sand.

  The Haida shook his head. “He’s not going to take anything for it,” he said. “Are you, old soldier?”

  Abel shook his head. He stared at the Haida until the big man grinned a wide, malicious grin and tilted his head as though in deference. As he did this, Willis jumped forward with a long-bladed knife that seemed to appear in his fist as though from the air.

  The little man made to jab at Abel’s face, but with a single motion the old soldier kicked the rifle up into his right hand and shoved the barrel forward into Willis’s thin chest. Abel curled his forefinger around the trigger. “You better believe I keep this ready to go,” he said quietly.

  Willis dropped the knife to the sand.

  When Abel made his move, the dog began barking savagely—advancing on the two men with short, jerky steps until Abel shouted it down again. He pushed the rifle barrel forward slowly until Willis rocked back on his heels. Abel looked at the Haida, who looked upon the scene with unconcealed mirth. Two points of light danced in his dead, black eyes.

  Finally, the big Indian bowed from the waist with shabby decorum. When he straightened again, he broke open his gun and let the shells fall into the surf, where they disappeared.

  Abel nodded and lowered the gun and kicked the knife into the surf, then jerked his chin, and Willis made feeble little brushing motions at his clothes. He wiped his ragged, bloody mouth, retrieved the knife and started north back up the beach.

  For his part, the Haida stayed behind a moment to study Abel. Then, as if he’d come to some conclusion, the Indian shrugged and turned to follow the other. Abel saw that he wore a crude pack, and from the outside dangled a fly-speckled haunch of deer that bumped against the small of his back as he walked.

  Neither man looked back, and Abel did not move until they’d rounded the next headland and gone into the cove there. Then he looked to where the dog sat watching him with his mouth open. “You’re some kind of pain in the ass, you know that?” he told it.

  The next day was much the same as the previous and the one before in that the old man and the dog traveled south. As he walked, Abel stayed alert for signs that the pair had doubled back through the forest—tracks, traces of campfire, the pale, shivery foam of urine cupped into dark sand, and the certain, indescribable awareness of something other than otter or deer or eagle watching after them—but he found and felt nothing. All the same, he walked slowly and shouted for the dog whenever it left his sight.

  That night Abel was compelled to a simple meal of dried venison and water, for the meat of gulls was not to his taste. He gathered the makings for a fire but stopped short of lighting it, preferring, instead, to walk a short distance out upon a long finger of stone jutting into the sea near his camping place within the forest. The old man crouched at the end of the stone as the sun sank slowly down the fading wa
ll of the day. The waves were gentle, slapping softly along and over the rock so that soon his boots were wet and then his feet within. The water was cool against his tight, dry flesh. He crouched as though in deep thought while the dog sat on the beach watching him with its ears cocked. Abel sat listening for a long time, and his hearing was very good despite his years, yet he could not hear them. There were only the ocean-and-wind sounds and the occasional thin, high screams of two mated eagles calling from their aerie somewhere back in the dark forest.

  Satisfied, Abel stood to study the northward beach and by and by found a thin taper of smoke rising from a campfire some two miles away. Their smoke rose straight and unblown until it had well cleared the canopy, so Abel figured their campsite to be a little, wind-sheltered hollow he knew well.

  Nodding to himself, Abel spat and walked back to his campsite. As he went, he clucked his tongue and the dog barked once and loud, then ran joyously to him. The old man told it hush and the dog sat quietly beside him as he kindled their fire.

  When the fire was burning, Abel took from his haversack two small tins that decades past had held a child’s candies. He laid one on the pine-needled earth and opened the hinged lid of the second. It was half filled with dry brown coffee beans, and he pinched up a measure between thumb and forefinger, then set them in his handkerchief. After beating the beans between two stones, he poured the grounds into a tin cup of water and set it directly on the fire. Abel stood and for a moment feared he might begin a coughing fit, but it did not come, and so he wandered about the margins of his campsite until he found a small, round stone to drop into the boiling coffee. As the grounds swirled and clustered about the stone, the old man opened the second tin, took from it paper and tobacco and rolled a thin cigarette to draw on as he drank his evening coffee.

  Despite the mildness of the weather, the dog lay close beside him near the fire. The stars came out over the ocean in fine sprays of light and the moon as well and soon the smooth, dark sea was bright with reflected light. As though there were two skies and two moons, and the old man watched seaward, wondering would he see there some other self rising from the swells and, if so, what would that second self have learned that he had not?