Wilderness

by Lance Weller

  The soldier turned from the edge of the poplars. Pale flowers fell and caught the moonlight as they tumbled. “What?”

  “What’s the date, anyway?”

  “April twelfth,” he said, his voice falling off with distance. “Wednesday.”

  Abel nodded. “And where’s that bottom rail now?” he called out to the dark, and from the dark came Noé’s voice, soft with the suggestion of laughter: “Still up top.”

  The drivers were a Greek father and son from Ohio whose English was spotty at best and who were given to vast, deep silences. They lit two hurricane lamps, hung one from a nail set into the over-tall brake lever, and set the other on the ground within the barn, its yellow light turning the dead men’s darkening soles darker still.

  The night was cool and the wind was fine and the pair worked without their scarves, moving with brisk and orderly composure. Abel made to help them but they waved him off, preferring to treat with each corpse themselves. By necessity, they heaved the bodies into the bed one by one, and when they’d four in a row, the son clambered in among them to straighten legs as best he could, to fold arms across chests, and to unbend necks from positions sad and horrible. The Greeks had blankets with them, some of proper wool and some of thin linen that they’d soaked in the bay—Abel could smell cold salt and bladder wrack rising from dark folds—and one of these they draped over the first layer of corpses, then settled a second layer of bodies upon that. And then another blanket and a third layer in an ever-deepening stratum. One of the last bodies they pitched into the wagon Abel recognized as the johnny from the cot across the aisle, his face in death become softened, slack, pitiable. Abel looked away as the Greeks shook the blanket over him and tied the load off.

  They mounted the wagon, and the father gathered up the reins. There were still a dozen or more bodies in the dead-house behind them, and at least as many more would join them before the wagon returned mid-morning. Like players in some ancient tragedy, they looked down at Abel standing in the cool dark.

  “You are … a Lincoln man?” the driver asked.

  “I don’t reckon I got a choice in the matter no more,” said Abel, swinging himself up beside them. And when the driver cocked his head and looked to his son for translation, he quickly added, “Yes. I am a Lincoln man. Through and through.”

  The wagon followed the sandy track until it became a proper road, then left it and doglegged west upon another road before turning toward the capital. The sun rose and the day stood fine and clear and cool. They passed through little hamlets where celebrations of Lee’s surrender were still in evidence. In Leonardstown, they saw six Union soldiers passed out before the doors of a depot half filled with crates of shoes, hardtack, and overcoats. Off the beaten track and not expecting much in the way of official traffic, they’d mounded up great heaps of straw for their comfort and stacked emptied flasks, bottles, and mugs in little cairns at their feet. In Bryantown, their passage disturbed streamers and curls of confetti in Union colors that had washed up in the lee of storefronts and parked wagons, and the surface of the road was scorched by the blasts of fireworks. In both towns, folk who were awake ceased whatever business they were about, uncovered their heads, and lowered their eyes as the dead-house wagon trundled past.

  Abel left the Greeks at a bleak and nameless crossroads west of Nottingham. He stepped down from the moving wagon as it swung slowly about to take the south-running road, and the teamsters watched him without comment before easing the wagon to a halt. A discussion ensued between father and son that entailed much gesticulation and sharp tones. Their ancient, inflected tongue, coupled with the morning birdsong and the crisping of leafed-out trees beneath a springtime wind, put Abel in the mind of other mornings in other lands in eons long, long gone. After a few moments, the father having obviously won the argument, the younger Greek stepped off the wagon and gave Abel two dimes, pressing them to Abel’s palm with fingers whose nails were raggedly chewed to the quick. He removed his hat to thank the lad, but the boy turned back to the wagon, and without a word father and son ferried their cargo southward toward some distant necropolis.

  Abel went on up the road. Amidst the easy green hills and swampy woods outside Upper Marlborough, he came upon a sutler in checkered pants and lime green waistcoat taking his ease in the shade of his wagon. Abel bought from him a pair of socks, a double length of twine to lace his shoes with, a pair of raddled brown wool pants that had the benefit of not having a soldier’s stripe, a little wedge of cheese, a fist of bread, and, on impulse, one thin cigar. The sutler looked at the paper and the coin in his hand after Abel paid him and, with a smile and a waggle of his eyebrows, gave back half.

  Abel went on up the road. He had the expectation of violence against his person if it was thought he was an escaped prisoner, so out of sight of the sutler and with no traffic visible, he stepped into the trees to change his trousers. It was watery country, and he found himself beside a little creek running sluggish and dark between drooping trees. Water skippers by the dozen plied the surface tension of the sulky run, maneuvering between leaves floating curled and upended like green Chinese junks. Abel removed his shoes and changed his pants, then stripped off his shirt and splashed his face. He lifted palms of water to his hair until it was soaked, then clawed out the tangles, washed his feet, and dried himself on the shoddy pants, redressed, and went on.

  By and by, he found blown up into the grass at roadside a number of sheets of oyster-colored butcher’s paper of the sort used to pack firearms. Sitting down, Abel selected one, then crumpled and folded and snugged it down into the floor of his right shoe. When he stood again, he saw a broadside amidst the packing papers and picked it up. A Special Printing from the Washington Star, with Lincoln’s Second Inaugural printed thereupon. Abel sat again, reading the words that Noé had tried to explain to him. A rider cantered down the road toward Bryantown, paused to look him over where he sat, and rode on when Abel did not look up. Two men on lunch break from the sawmill south of town came along and nodded the afternoon to him, but he did not reply, and they went on their way. Abel sat a long time in the grass, reading and rereading, and when he’d finished he folded the paper carefully, empaneling the words so that in his breastpocket they’d lie near his heart just so.

  Three days later, as fine a Saturday as he had ever known, he was in an outdoor café in Millersville north of the capital enjoying the first cup of real coffee he’d had in three years when a great cry of anguish spilled from the telegraph office at the end of the street. People looked up from their concerns as the news traveled along, drawing after it a palpable bubble of grief. Abel set his cup down on the saucer and waited for it to wash over him, and when it did, he took a great, deep breath as though he’d been dunked in cold water. Setting a three-cent piece down on the table near the saucer, he stood, put on his hat, and followed the other folk heading toward the office.

  A week later, he was camped on the outskirts of Baltimore, where a blond girl in a passing wagon tossed him an apple. When he moved on, it was along the Northern Central Railroad as it wound its way north towards Harrisburg. Abel walked the rails. He’d wandered for a week, just walking and getting reacquainted with freedom. He did not know where to go.

  At some point, he crossed into Pennsylvania. Small groups of people had begun to collect where the rails crossed roads and near little woebegone shacks. A dark stain of cloud spread northward from the direction of the capital, and a wind disturbed the heads of blooming flowers. Nights prior, the moon had risen red.

  Abel left the tracks for a little patch of wood and settled down for the night. The wind gathered itself and the trees creaked. The rails nearby crossed a dusty road, white and filmy in the dark, and at the crossing waited a family of blacks standing quietly. Abel rubbed absently at his ruined elbow as was fast becoming his custom and sipped from his canteen, cool water tasting of brass and stone.

  A single engine came along the tracks, a long chain of white smoke spreading from its belle
d stack. A machine shape, moving swiftly down the line; the fast, transitory image of the conductor standing ramrod straight, then gone. The smoke slowly lifted through the dark. The waiting blacks began to sing the Battle Hymn, slow, soft, and mournfully. One of the women wept and one of the children held up a little Union flag and all the men uncovered their heads.

  Not long after came another engine, going slower, pulling seven cars all draped in black crepe, the engine itself festooned with pale garlands. The train came along, side rods pale silver, steam from the balloon stack falling away in heaps. An iron mechanism low upon the land, stirring wind into the hayfields and the trees where Abel sat watching. And then it was gone, fading in echo and vanished from the night.

  Abel went down to the tracks where the blacks still stood. They’d lit lanterns now to guide them home, and by that soft, yellowy light Abel saw their wet faces dumb with misery. They looked up at him as he approached.

  “Evenin’,” he said. He tried a smile on for size, but it was cramped and uncomfortable so he let it go. Tilting his head in the direction of the vanished train, he asked, “Was that … ?”

  They eyed him wonderingly. One of the women opened her mouth to speak, but then her face collapsed and she buried it in her palms, weeping bitterly against tough, dry skin. The man beside her slipped an arm around her shoulders and nodded. “Yes,” he said softly. “That was the Lincum train. They takin’ him home.”

  Abel knelt in the dust of the road to touch the dark, smooth rail where it was still warm from the lonesome train’s passing. He tried to understand how he felt, and the woman who’d been weeping sniffed deeply, breathing through her mouth in the way that people suffering will do, and finally asked, “Was you a Lincum man?”

  Off beyond the farthest trees, the line curved back around and straightened again, and Abel could see the lights of the train receding, dwindling down to yellow pinpricks coruscating against dark curtains of remote trees before finally disappearing with distance and with time. He took a deep breath. “I was,” he said softly. “I always was.” And all the while he wished, desperately, that it were true.

  Chapter Eleven

  The Forest Behind, the One Ahead

  1899

  In the gray damp of early morning they came along the road between dark trees. Walking together, moving slowly with the muddy road sucking audibly at the floors of their shoes. As though the earth or something in the earth was wanting them. Walking single file with the Haida leading, rifle cradled in his arms, his cheeks wet with mist. And Willis stumbled along after, his mangled face bare and damp. His demolished hand was wrapped in filthy rags, and the flies harassed him even at this early hour, even in this cool wet.

  A decade of wandering without purpose they’d had already, a decade more they could reasonably foresee if they were of a mind to contemplate it. Railroading in the cold north wilderness—hammering spikes into frozen soil and living in a thin-walled tent. Eating stale bread, onions, and hot broth. Returning to the shelter one evening, they found it vanished, carried away by the cold, cold wind as though it had never been, and so they left off that work, turned south for warmer climes. Willis carried only the clothes he wore, a skinning knife and a small cameo wherein rode the blurry, faded image of a woman he said had once been his sister.

  The Haida carried the rifle.

  They did not reach the States. A rape at Barkerville. Petty thievery gone bad, and a stagecoach with all hands dead save one at a thickly wooded crossroads between settlements. When the Haida cut the throat of a young girl at Soda Creek, they fled north to the Great Land and lost themselves in Juneau amidst the disheveled throngs of hungry gold seekers.

  They worked two seasons at the Treadwell Mine on Douglas Island, where neither lost fingers, before moving on to Nome, where they spaded up beach sand near a river that flowed into the sea. A season spent shoveling sand into rockers before the Haida turned up a nugget. It was no Wonder but it was big as a big man’s thumbnail and kept them warm and in drink and women through the winter. They used the last of the stake to buy a team of dogs with the idea of running mail and medicine, but the Haida killed a man the same week a local whore accused Willis of things too vile to utter, so they went south again.

  Within a month they were killing the dogs for food, and by the time they reached Iditarod they had but one big male left. They fought him, won, and worked their way about that land fighting dogs. Finally they found themselves on the northern beaches of Washington State, south of Makah Territory, with a wolf-dog they’d bought from the Indians there.

  Now they walked as they’d been doing for days and years, and when the morning finished bleeding dim light and dull color into the landscape, the Haida stopped.

  Wheezing, Willis drew up beside him. His destroyed hand was slung up with an old piece of rag, and he looked up at the big Indian as if he’d speak. The Haida shook his head and gripped the rifle. Setting stock to shoulder, he fired into the trees.

  A six-point buck came crashing from the green tangle and onto the road, where it fell, plowing little furrows into the mud. The Haida nodded, and Willis came forward to crouch beside the deer. Its eyes wide and brown and soft and not yet dead, it pawed the mud and tried to rise but fell back again. The little man reached out and fingered its antlers and the deer tried to lift its head again but could not.

  When the Haida came up beside him and touched his shoulder, Willis stood. They turned from the deer where it lay panting in the mud and dying. They walked on up the road.

  As he walked up into the mountains, Abel followed the course of the Little Sugar Creek as it ran down from the peaks where alders leaned over the rushing water to stir eddies into the current. Leaves of orange and red and yellow and brown and every other color swirled madly past him in clusters and long chains like a strange, bright parade. From time to time, he knelt to cup his hand into the creek. The water was cold and milky with rock flour. The dog drank beside him, staying close as he traveled through the forest. Such proximity was not its custom, and Abel chided the dog, and for its part the dog looked at him with tired brown eyes and plodded slowly along. They followed the creek into the hills rising green and brown and powdered already with early snows. Fat clouds, brimful with more snow, swung up against the hard faces of the mountains beyond and scattered silently.

  The day after leaving the Makerses he thought of the long train ride ahead of him. Envisioning Port Angeles and wondering what work he’d find in town to pay his fare east, he did not think beyond that to the journey afterward or himself making it. He walked the day long, thinking these quiet thoughts, and when Abel reached for his haversack he could not find it.

  Swearing, he stood and stared back the way he’d come and wondered if he’d left the sack behind when he stopped for his lunch. It was too far back to retrieve and would have been plundered by animals at any rate, so that first night and much of the next day neither he nor the dog took food. And when the dog glowered at him, Abel shook his finger at it and told it hush.

  So late in the afternoon, when the dog flushed a hare from the brush beside a foam-cluttered creek pool, Abel raised the rifle and fired. That night, he built a fire on the slim bank and took out his knife, cut away the hare’s head and long feet and buried them, then cut open the stomach, scooped entrails into his palm, and fed them to the dog. It gulped and licked and Abel watched it with a frown. “Did you even taste it?” he asked. The dog blinked tiredly and watched as Abel stripped the hide from the carcass and skewered the meat on a branch, then squatted by the fire with his breath steaming into the cold. Tiny dollops of fat bubbled up then slid sizzling into the coals, attended by tiny yellow flames that jumped and shivered. He watched what stars there were through the canopy. How they sparkled there, so cold, so remote. He ate the meat off the point of his knife while the dog watched him intently. “Shut up,” he said. “You had yours.”

  Abel chewed as though he had a grudge against the meat and stared into the fire. The meat was tough and
dry, and after a while he leaned his face over the creek to drink. The dog watched as he passed his sleeve over his mouth. “Old cuss,” Abel muttered as he tossed it the rest of his meal and lay down.

  That night came a windstorm that set the trees to clashing. Sometime near dawn the wind calmed and Abel woke to hear the wolf howling from the hills above. The dog stood stiffly, its tattered ears cocked. “Don’t pay him no mind,” Abel told it, patting the ground beside him, and the dog hobbled over and with small groans settled in with its chin resting on the old man’s chest.

  In the morning, Abel rose and sat to watch the creek run down the hill. A little sluggish here but still running quick at the center, as though in anticipation of a journey ending. After a while, he stood and shouldered his rifle, picked up his walking stick, gave a heavy sigh, and left the creek to follow a trail that led up into the snowy hills.

  The dog lay beside the dregs of the fire for a time after. Its eyes open, it did not raise its head from the floor of the earth, but you could tell it was listening carefully to the old man as he went through the woods. After a while, the dog stood stiffly and followed.

  The night Abel left, Glenn and Ellen Makers made love in the bedroom of the cabin while outside trees shuddered and swayed and clashed under the blunt touch of the wind. In the morning, Glenn rose early as was his custom and walked the long hill down to the road to the blowdown blocking the lane. When he returned, Ellen was still sleeping, so he gathered the crosscut and the kerosene, the axe, and the maul and, carrying the tools yokewise across his shoulders, walked back down the lane.

  He bucked the tree first, feeling his tired, cramped muscles loosen as he went along—using the crosscut on the thick branches and lopping off the smaller with easy strokes of the axe. It was cool and damp but the morning was fine and he warmed with the work and the work was good. He rubbed kerosene on the teeth when they gummed with pitch and took a break after an hour to eat a soft apple he’d slipped into his pocket. Chewing, he watched the squirrels cavort in the branches, and when he’d finished his breakfast he tossed the core off into the brush for their delight. He had just begun to section the trunk, was in the midst of pushing the old saw forward and drawing it back again, watching pale flakes of sawdust go spiraling down onto the dark mud, when they came out of the mist.