Wilderness

by Lance Weller

  He skinned the gloves from his hands. Wiping sweat from his face with a red rag plucked from his back pocket, he stood waiting, watching them on the road where they came slowly though the fog.

  They were insubstantial in the gray mist, like weary, lonesome ghosts, and the trees to either side shed a gray haze that parted sluggishly before them and closed again behind. And when they saw him, they stopped and stood staring until the smaller of them said with a wet, terrible voice, “Well, lookit here.”

  Glenn breathed and his breath steamed and parted, blown back past both his shoulders by a soft, cool breeze that disturbed the mist but did not break it. Nodding, he told them good morning and the larger of the two cocked his head. “You see an old fella come this way?” asked the Indian. “Maybe a few days ago? Maybe had him a dog with him?”

  Glenn sniffed and pursed his lips. He glanced to the axe where it lay propped and looked back at them. “No,” he said. “I’ve not seen anyone come along.”

  “You sure? Think about it now. We’re lookin’ for this fellow.”

  Glenn nodded. He was stepping toward the axe when the smaller man said, “Hey, Joe, you reckon he kept that little old mud shark? She was a sweet peach.”

  Glenn Makers blinked. Between the emotion and the act came a brightness, shading off into degrees of red. He came leaping over the branches of the fallen tree.

  At the end of the lane in the cabin above, Ellen Makers woke to gunfire.

  Ellen dressed quickly in the dim, bruise-colored light, then hurried to the gun cabinet. Her hands trembled, and when she finally managed the clasp, she scooped the rifle up and broke it open. With the slightest insuck of breath, she pressed the pad of her finger into the empty chamber as though her eyes had tricked her. Grit and oil and the acrid stink of old powder.

  Outside were wind sounds and creaking trees; no animals called and there was no birdsong. Ellen turned and set the gun on the table that still yet bore pale white streaks of flour from her pie-making. Pressed into the tight grain, they stood in stark contrast to the dark wood. The apples still left in the bowl jumped and rattled, and one fell from the table to roll across the floor.

  She went frantically about, throwing open cupboards and upending drawers, looking for the little green paper box of shells. After a few moments of this, she stopped in the center of the room. The gun cabinet stood half open and with the box on the top shelf. She could not think how she’d missed it. Pushing the hair from her face, Ellen went forward, but a sound from outside drew her attention to the window where she saw them coming into the yard.

  She knew they would come again, one day. They had as much told her so that night when the small one went at her while the Indian watched. She squeezed shut her eyes, took a deep, steadying breath, opened them. Her hand was on the shells when the front door came open and Willis walked in.

  When he saw her he knew what she was about and with a snarl shoved her back and sent the shells scattering madly across the board floor. And then his hand was fisted in her hair and he flung her against the hearth where the fire had died down to but a few live coals and the stones had cooled.

  Ellen cried out with the pain of it and dropped the rifle. Willis kicked it across the floor as the Haida appeared in the doorway. The big man filled the frame and blocked the light as though he sucked brightness from the air and his body or his heart gave back dark and his eyes were cold. Willis crouched and wrapped his hand in her hair again and she lay beneath him limp as he raked her face across the hearthstones. She felt one of her front teeth break at the gum line while another snagged and bristled apart like an old broom.

  He pulled her back against himself then threw her forward again. Her forehead had come open and blood stung her eyes and the side of her face went numb. Willis bent her head back and put his face close. She smelled the stink of his ill-healed mouth, his unwashed body, and could feel him against her thigh where he pressed himself.

  From the doorway, the Haida watched. “Where did that old man get to?” he asked her. It was the first time she’d heard him speak. “That old soldier?”

  Willis knotted up her hair, and she cried out and told them. The Haida looked up to the foothills where they rose greenly toward the close, blue mountains. And when he asked her, she gave him directions as to the better, faster route. She did not know why she did this save from fear, but as Willis giggled softly against her ear with the fingers of his good hand twisting and pinching at her, she told him Abel had used an older trail and that the Haida could cut him off if he hurried, if he hiked through the night, if he left right now. The Indian nodded and looked at Willis. “You hear all that?” he asked.

  The little man licked his horrid lips and craned his face into her hair as though to better get the scent of her. “I heard it,” he said.

  “Well,” said the Indian as he moved off into the yard. “You finish and don’t take too long catchin’ up. I ain’t waitin’on you.”

  Beside her, Willis made a sound—a wet sound of longing coupled with a mindless delight. Ellen turned and closed her eyes. She spit away a fragment of tooth and felt the other, frayed and chipped as it was, saw against the inside of her lip. He whispered against her ear but she could not tell the words for the mangling of his mouth, only his intent. He let go her hair to fumble with his belt and she kept her eyes shut as he went fishing around beneath her skirt. And when she opened them again she saw the poker lying athwart the firedog where Glenn had left it the night before and she thought of her husband and knew rage.

  Ellen felt cold air on her thighs and his reeking breath warm and close as he pressed against her. He began to wheeze and his hips shimmied about as he struggled with his trousers. She took a breath and with a cry lunged for the poker, wrapped a fist around it, and with another cry swung it around, laying him open from temple to chin with the barb.

  Willis crabbed back, shrieking, one good hand covering his newly bloodied face, and went thrashing about, his trousers bunched around his knees. Ellen stood and snatched up the rifle. She plucked a shell from the floor, broke open the gun, loaded it, and shut it again. Willis blubbered wetly his fear, but she was stone. She put the barrel between his legs and pulled the trigger.

  The body twitched and kicked and shuddered for a while before finally giving in. During that time, Ellen drew up a chair, set the rifle across her knees, and, as she reloaded, watched Willis go about his dying. A rank stink, like rancid fat thrown on flames, filled the room. After a while, she stood and went out into the yard, but there was no sign of the Haida though she could feel him watching from somewhere on the trail above. She stood motionless for some time before finally going to the stable and hitching Emerson to the wagon. Then, with rifle set stock-down on the seat beside her, she drove down the lane to fetch Glenn.

  When she saw the half-bucked tree, saw a section of gnarled gray bark and the mud close by all splashed with blood, she cried out and stepped from the trees. And when she saw Glenn where he lay, the rifle fell from her inarticulate hands. Ellen sank to her knees with her skirts belling out around her wide and bright against the dark earth and her hands covering her ruined face.

  But then he moaned and she cried out and went to him.

  Ellen crouched beside her husband, her thin white hands fluttering over him like two doves as she spoke his name, shouting to him as though she’d call him back from the dark place he was bound. After a time, his eyes opened, and his eyes showed her the pain of it.

  “All right?” he finally whispered, his voice thick with hurt. When she began to weep, he put out his hand out to touch her cheek, then drew it back and closed his eyes.

  In the end, it took the better part of an hour to get him back to the cabin. Once there, she stripped away his bloody shirt and his trousers where his bladder had voided. And when he was swaddled in blankets and resting beside the rekindled hearthfire, he said her name and began to weep with quiet, little-boy gasps that broke her heart but brought no moisture to his face. She touched the t
op of his head with her palms and told him hush.

  She stayed beside him for a long time with her hand lightly touching him here and there as though to assure herself of his presence, of the still-strong heart beating within him. She watched him sleep. She watched the fire in the hearth. The day ended. She put more wood on the fire and went out onto the porch. She looked up the slopes, where the mountains were lost to clouds. A cold wind blew down from the heights, and she thought of the snow high on the slopes where it fell unceasingly. She thought of the Haida on the Marmot Pass Trail and the little trapper’s shack below the saddle of the mountain. Ellen’s hands ached upon the rifle. The cold would keep Willis’s body and she was thankful for that, for she had not the time for burying or burning.

  Swearing softly Abel’s name, she went back inside, found Glenn sleeping peacefully, then went into their bedroom to change out of her dress.

  As he walked, Abel Truman wondered if he would ever escape the sound of water. All his life it had followed him, dripping and gurgling and spattering like a whispered curse, a muttered reproach. For twenty years he had lived a meager life beside waters, and when he felt he’d had enough, he walked into the sea and the sea cast him back. Now Abel turned away from waters altogether and walked into the hills.

  But as he went through the forest, it rained. He looked, frowning, at the sky. Rain fell in gray sheets that sometimes seemed to cease, but when he looked, he saw it never did. The forest was dark with rain, and the old man grumbled as he walked.

  In the middle of the day, he came upon a talus slope that lay in a wide apron of scattered stone across his path. Muttering soft curses, Abel crouched in the shade of a boulder to rest and consider things. From the myriad crannies of the rockfall, pikas chirped nervously, and the dog, when it caught up to him, settled slowly and stiffly down beside him, ignoring the rock rabbits and closing its eyes. After a time, Abel began to slowly scrabble up among the stones.

  For its part, the dog got slowly to its feet and set out after him. It did not go far, for the path over the rocks was difficult. For a short time it paced back and forth at the base of the slope, whining softly and pawing at the stones. When the old man did not turn, it began a furious barking and only ceased and sat again when he stopped and came back down through the rocks.

  “What?” Abel asked. “What is it?”

  The dog panted as Abel’s fingers went exploring down its flanks and legs and when he felt a small, hard mass nestled deep in the dog’s groin, he sat back. His lips moved around the lower half of his face, and he turned his head. Rain spattered against the stones. After a time, Abel reached and took the dog’s head in his hand and pressed his forehead to its temple. If he spoke, his words were for the dog alone. Finally, sniffing and nodding, Abel stood and looked around again.

  “All right,” he said. “All right then. We’ll spend the night back in the trees, but so help me God, we’re going up in the morning, and I will leave you behind if you don’t come along.”

  Abel was sick the night long, and when he did sleep, he dreamed dreams of running. The grass beneath his heels green and fragrant, bent by wind, and you could hear the wind rustling and moving in the grass and you could hear the officers shouting and the sounds of artillery crashing somewhere on the left near where the line was anchored on the woods and then trees across the field burst with fire and smoke and metal filled the air but no one fell as the long blue line pressed forward and Abel dreamed this dream and others like it and then he woke.

  In the morning, the old man made his slow, painful way up the rockfall. The sun was but a rumor and the air was darkly cold. He staggered a little with the dog slung yokewise over his shoulders. Abel felt its tail working steadily against his side and turned to look it in the face. It panted happily. “You goddamn well better not be grinning,” he muttered. “I ain’t yet figured out how you talk me into this shit.”

  By late morning, they left the crumbling, loose stone to walk between black trees that grew twisting along the top of the slope, and presently they crossed into snow. What rocks lay about shimmered with frost. Abel lifted his face to sniff the sudden, metallic freeze and set the dog down.

  About the top of the slope, wind-stunted scrub pine canted from the snow fixed precisely to their shadows, while before them lay a wide meadow leveling off under the snow before climbing again into the trees. Dark clouds heaped at the eastern rim of the sky. He watched for a while the dog driving its muzzle into the powder, hunting for scents and coming up again bearded whitely. A few flakes fell and melted on the backs of the old man’s hands—both the crippled and the strong.

  Abel and the dog moved across the meadow. The snow was deep and powdery, shelled by a thin crust of ice. The dog’s breath appeared and vanished as it loped slowly ahead—as though the cold agreed with it. For a moment or two, Abel stood watching it—a lovely, redblonde blur suddenly fast upon the flowing, milk-white ground, its lean musculature rippled in constant motion flank and shoulder, its mouth a joyous red slant. Bounding through the snow, jumping up, coming down, turning back again to snip after its own tail, then running madly first one direction then another. Abel watched the dog at play in the snow and he smiled widely that it should leave its sickness behind if even for a moment and laughed out loud with a pure delight he’d not felt for a long while.

  A random frieze of animal tracks crossed the meadow—designless and wild and from which Abel could tell but little of the creatures that made them, their habits, the directions of their homes. The trees ahead, where the land sloped up again into the mountains that now stood white and blue and close, stood feathered with fresh snow and silent. Abel’s boots made bright crunching sounds as he walked.

  He heard running water and, cutting to the left, found a little tributary of the Little Sugar Creek whetting the edge before the sudden upward surge of forest. The snow nearby was mud-smeared, and the water ran impossibly black between its banks. Abel looked at himself in the current; he stared for a long time at his dark, watery twin, then spat into its face and knelt.

  He rinsed his mouth with cold water. Beside him, the dog lapped bitingly as Abel examined the little handprints of squirrels and marmot where they’d come to drink and the split ovals of deer pressed parenthetical into the mud. As though they’d record their passage through the wilderness for those who could decipher such scripture. Abel read and frowned.

  He looked about, then kneeled again near one particular set. Whistling softly his amazement, he spaced its depth and width with his palm. He looked at the dog. “That’s an elk,” he told it. “Goddamn big. Old too.”

  Abel sniffed and looked about. “Funny thing,” he said softly. “Funny, funny thing.” He looked to where the tracks crossed the stream and disappeared into the forest. “Where in hell is he goin’?” Abel wondered aloud as he crossed over the water and into the trees.

  A whiskey jack flickered between the trunks like a shard of shadow falling through the light and more chattered from above and the sound of water faded behind him. Abel saw a sprig of green vanilla leaf sprouting through the snow beside a moss-bound nurse log and moved the soft fronds aside to pluck a delicate scallop of chanterelle. It smelled of apricots and tasted of chalk and rubber, but he was hungry and so chewed thoughtfully, wishing for his haversack. Abel looked for the dog but it was still down in the meadow so he ate the rest of the mushroom himself. He could see the passage of the elk through the trees, was already beginning to visualize it—the way it moved, its path upmountain—and after a time he threw the thick stem to the side and followed.

  From time to time, Abel stooped to touch the track with two fingers. He knew it was a bull from the size of its print, the way its back hooves cleft and the tiny indentations of its dewclaws in the snow, and by the way it left its droppings in a trail, not clumped tidily in the fashion of a doe. Abel tracked it the rest of the day, leaving the trail sometimes, walking parallel to it, then cutting back to find the tracks once more. When he crouched he could see the
m where they ran between the trees and when he stood they disappeared into the snow—a trick of light, shadow, and snowfall. A phantom elk that went before him and he its spectral hunter. The dog watched him at this business. “I might could call him if I wanted to. Maybe,” said Abel. “But I don’t know what in hell he thinks he’s doin’.” He stared at the dog and rubbed his palm up and down across the prickly whiskers that had sprouted across his jaw. Abel winced when he brushed against the cut and shook his head.

  The sky darkened with evening and with clouds the color of gun-metal. Snow shed fitfully down between the trees, and the tracks followed the slope as it rose. The old man paused and grimaced and put out his hand to grip a thin slide alder growing slanted from the snow. He propped the walking stick into the snow and clutched at the little tree, struggling to stay on his feet. Of a sudden, his face was cold, tingling. He felt heat rushing into his chest like steam, scalding his throat until he finally leaned to vomit. Swearing and panting, he fell to his hand and knees, then slid a short ways down the slope. After he’d come to a stop, Abel lay on his back, staring at the dark sky, and when the spell had passed, he rubbed handfuls of snow over his face. After a while, he sat up with his legs pointing downhill. “Well,” he said quietly. “Well, shit.” The dog walked three tight circles and lay down in the snow.

  The old man sniffed and spat a little blood. The tincture of sickness spread across his tongue. He began coughing and the dog raised its head while he leaned over to try and better breathe. Rolling onto his knees, he sat in the snow with little white ropes of saliva depending from his lips. He looked at the dog when it whined and clawed the snow nearby. “You just be still,” he told it.