A Slepyng Hound to Wake

by Vincent McCaffrey

  The voices came through the trees, from up the hill. He calculated that they were roughly in the direction of the other road he had not taken, in any case. At the very last moment, Henry grabbed at the blanket roll Albert had made for him. The map had fallen to the floor in the night, unseen.

  The ground was clear on the rise, well carpeted with pine needles, and he began his climb with increasing strides, covering ground quickly. It felt good to be moving. In ten minutes he was on a ridge with the pines spaced almost evenly apart. The ground falling away from him appeared to be even more clear of undergrowth as far as the eye could travel. The pines there stood taller, the trunks considerably wider. Above him the clouds had broken in tatters against a hard blue. There was no sign of the other road. The sound of voices ahead had quieted.

  At first he tried to stay near the top of the ridge he had crossed. This played out and reformed and rose to some point higher in the trees repeatedly, until he was too tired to follow. When the trees cleared unexpectedly, he found himself on a low cliff, looking across the tops of oak and maple toward the side of another rise. Directly below him, the face of rock was streaked green by seepage, drawing his eyes into a dark crevice with no visible bottom. His balance wavered, and he drew back. He had never been good with heights. He looked out again, over the trees, trying to ignore the void beneath him. When his head began to feel light, he turned back.

  There was still no sign of the other branch of the road, so he tried at least to stay on the same level, avoiding going up or down. The voices he had heard before returned, and became stronger again, closer, as if they were traveling in the same direction. He repeatedly stopped to listen. Still no words could be understood.

  When once he was sure the voices had changed direction, coming now from below, he let gravity take his feet downward through the open space between the sap-streaked trunks. He reached a small river of rock, with no sign of water. The woods were denser here, and because the rocks were larger and made walking more difficult, he climbed back toward the ridge and the clear spaces below the pine.

  Sounds reached him occasionally from other directions—knocks and cracks he figured to be from the trees. Once he caught the sound of a small plane which he followed with his ears. It was not circling. It was not for him. It was headed straight on for something, perhaps north to Moosehead Lake. That might have given him a sense of direction if he had the map. He had already cursed into the quiet air for forgetting that.

  As he stepped across another ridge of rock, the voices, louder now, were somewhere below him again.

  He let his weight carry him through the open space as he had done before. Moving quickly again made him feel briefly better—at least until his body jerked forward suddenly, his knee buckled with a step across the pale green lichen on a rock, and he collapsed, tumbling to a stop against a large tree. Sap came off on his hands as he pushed himself up.

  There was no pain. Nothing broken. Nothing even sprained. But the voice was clearer here. It was then he saw that it was not a voice at all. It was the babble of running water—and he was thirsty.

  A clear dark flow filled the space between shattered grey rock. He knelt to it and watched small insects swarm inches from his head. The water was as cold as ice melt and numbed his tongue.

  Henry unrolled his blanket on a flat bench of rock to see what he had. There were matches in a plastic bag, insect repellent, a pack of Fig Newtons, several rolls of heavy cord, a flashlight, a knife. One larger packet unfolded into two thin plastic sheets—silvered on one side—each of which he figured to be about six feet square. There was a small wad of toilet paper inside a sealable plastic bag like the ones Albert used to pack his fish in his basement freezer. This afforded Henry what he thought momentarily was a humorous view of Albert’s mind. He laughed. He did not like the sound of it as it echoed in the trees. Albert was too often right. Henry took the toilet paper out and kept it aside, but reused the bag to carry water.

  The shadows had gone from green to blue. He knew he should be headed back to the truck at this point, but he just as surely knew, as he stared up the slope he had just come down, that he could not retrace his steps. He was the fool. He was lost. Another mosquito found him with that thought still fresh.

  At a place where the earth briefly flattened, he could see the way ahead was not as clear as it had been, and that it was not undergrowth he was seeing, but the grey of darkness.

  He tied a cord between the two smallest trees close by and made a lean-to of sorts from one of the sheets. The other he placed on the ground beneath. He walked far enough away and dug a hole and used a bit of the paper Albert had so thoughtfully provided. Then he covered his exposed body with the insect repellent. After gathering a small nest of firewood, he made a teepee of sticks as he had seen in camping books through the years, and lit a fire. Instead of illuminating the woods around, the shadows that guarded him disappeared suddenly into darkness. He created a hearth of small rocks, watched sparks drift upward into the branches overhead and worried about causing a forest fire, then let the fire die down to smaller flames and began to eat his Fig Newtons. Once begun, he could not stop himself. The package was empty in minutes. He put the blanket down on the plastic and laid down on that, pulling half the blanket over himself, and fell asleep.

  Henry awoke to a smell he knew, even in Brookline. A skunk had found him.

  The darkness beneath the pines was dense and the fire was dead. He was not sure he should use the flashlight, if it might frighten the skunk.

  He thought twice.

  As he did, there was the sound of someone walking close by. The sound stopped. He stopped his own movement to listen. The pumping of blood in his ears roared. The walking began again.

  Henry slipped his hand down by his body, encountered the flashlight where he had placed it, slowly pulled it out from beneath the blanket, pointed it and pushed the button. Four, six, eight pairs of eyes stared back at him. The deer did not move for most of a minute before elevating in the air, like a ballet troupe, and bouncing away into the pine, flashing their tails at him handkerchief-like as they did. The skunk waddled after them. The blue light of morning was announced with the knocking of a woodpecker and a loose chorus of birds at a distance. Henry calculated the direction of the birds as he opened his eyes and before he actually moved. The air was crisply cool. He had slept very well and was happy with himself. To his memory, this was the first night he had ever spent alone in the woods, and it had been a success.

  Then it began to rain.

  He rolled up his blanket quickly, with the contents he wanted dry and then turned the blanket into one of the plastic sheets, tied it at the ends and began to walk in the direction of the birds, with the other sheet over his head and held by his free hand. He imagined himself looking like an odd grandmother figure, huddled beneath the plastic as he walked.

  Shortly he was at the bottom of the fold of the hill. The direction of the birds, which were silent now, took him upward again. In the rain, there was no direction to the light. In any case, he had walked less than an hour when he found the marks of someone else who had been by recently through the pine needles. He followed this trail for less than half an hour before he recognized one particularly ugly mushroom at the base of a fallen tree and knew that the trail was his own. He was going in circles.

  Below him was the camp he had made the night before. He found it fairly easily. He knew what lay in the direction of the birds, and this time set out simply downward, toward the lowest point he could find. In less than an hour he had reached a lake.

  Swamp, marked by a disorderly fence of dead pines, played out to the right of him. To the left, a small ridge rose from the water and headed back in the direction from which he had come. Following the shore to the left, he soon found the creek again. After drinking with his face submerged in the water, he sat there on what appeared to be the most comfortable of a bad selection of rocks larger than himself, and thought about his situation. It was not long then
before he heard a voice again. He ignored it, until it spoke his name. And spoke it again. Not so much spoken, as sung.

  “Henry, oh Henry, where are you my Henry / Oh Henry, oh Henry, where have you gone.”

  The song had something of the lilt of an Irish folk melody, but the voice belonged to Della Toth.

  And she was alone.

  Her white knees flashed between the trunks of the trees. She screamed when she saw him. He had never heard her scream before. And then she collapsed on the ground, as if in a faint.

  He stumbled, running to her, scraping his hand. She was laughing when he reached her.

  “What’s up, doc?” She said, looking up at him from the ground.

  He could not speak. He sat down beside her.

  “Well, I don’t know about you,” she said. “but I’m lost. … Do you have any Fig Newtons left? I’m hungry. And I’m thirsty.”

  Clouds had divided in the open space above the lake, and the gray had gone to blue. As she spoke to him, lying there on the pine needles, exhausted, she told him what she had done. She pulled the wadded Fig Newton wrapper from her back pocket and presented it to him when he admitted to her that he had eaten them all.

  She said, “You shouldn’t litter.”

  Finished with her account she announced she was thirsty again. The sun had bloomed above the water, and in the near distance they could see a mountain. He had no idea what mountain it was.

  It all seemed incomprehensible to Henry. Della had asked Bob to drive her to Maine. And Bob had done it. Henry could not imagine why she would ask Bob, or why Bob would agree.

  “I didn’t ask. He volunteered. He loves me …” she said.

  “But to take you all the way to Maine to find me. Me!”

  “He was there when Barbara called.”

  “Where? In my apartment?”

  “Yes. I came looking for you. You didn’t tell me you were going to Maine.”

  “How did you get in? Mrs. Murray?”

  “No. She came up later, after Bob came looking for me. No, it was Sasha who let me in.” She looked at him critically. He did not understand.

  “How did Sasha get in?”

  “Down the fire escape. She said she always did it that way. … I wondered what she meant.”

  “She only meant—”

  “Then Barbara called. She had something to tell you. I told her you weren’t there and she told me to call Albert, which I did. It was then that Alice told me what you were doing, which sounded pretty adventurous for a guy like you. Then I told Alice that I wanted to go to Maine, and she told me—”

  “What do you mean, ‘A guy like me’?”

  “Well, you don’t hear the words ‘bold’ and ‘bookseller’ used together very often, do you?”

  Alice had given Albert’s cell phone number to Della. Albert had directed them straight to Red Hill, worried that no one had heard from Henry the evening before, and maybe concerned about Mr. Duggan’s reception. Bob had volunteered to pick her up before dawn, and they had arrived at Red Hill by 8:30. Della figured she had been lost since about nine o’clock. She had forgotten her watch.

  Henry wondered, “Did the guy at the store direct you up the road?” He must think there is a convention at the camp.

  “No … Do you think Bob would ask directions? Noooo. He’s got some kind of satellite connection in his Jeep, a GPS, and he coordinated it with an old map he found somewhere. A gas station map. Bob collects old gas station maps. Did you know that? You ought to talk with him about that. You might be able to sell him something. And Red Hill Camp used to be a real camp. A boys’ camp.”

  Henry did not interrupt her to say that he knew nothing about old gas station maps. Perhaps because the idea intrigued him. But she had last seen Bob as she called Henry’s name and wandered off up the hill following the sound of voices, away from where Bob’s Jeep was stopped behind Henry’s truck on that narrow bit of road.

  “I tried to get back, but when I did it was all gone, like the road had disappeared.”

  “You were on the wrong side of the ridge. I did that too.”

  They decided not to move. If she had found him, someone else could as well.

  Then she began to remove her clothes.

  The sun fell directly on the water where she waded in. Henry took a deep breath and followed her example.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Henry was surprised that her nose should be cold, or even wet. Her naked body was close behind his, beneath the blanket, and felt warm. The work of woodpeckers sounded across the lake. An owl hooted forlornly in the blue light beneath the pines. He opened his eyes on the red and gold sun trapped in the rock faces of the mountain across the lake.

  A cold nose touched his ear. His hand went up to wipe it away, and found the soft warm muzzle of a dog.

  “Here, Matty,” came a voice.

  Henry knew the voice. Della’s head was already turned as Henry looked back through the woods beneath the back opening of their lean-to. It was George Duggan.

  The dog was an English foxhound. White and brown and black. Large and slightly stocky. Its ears flapped loosely as it turned its head at Duggan’s command. When Henry was a kid, in Brookline, their neighbor had kept one like it, along with an Irish terrier. It was the kind of humor their neighbor was given to.

  Duggan turned his back as they dressed. The dog watched.

  “I made your friend Bob stay at the camp. He seemed a little flustered. Worried about losing Miss Toth—”

  “Della,” she said, hopping on one foot as she wiped the pine needles from the other.

  “He showed up at three in the morning with that Jeep of his blazing. He was just likely to get lost again. These woods are great for that. … Matty is the hound to find anybody though. He was on your trail in half a minute.”

  The dog stood still at the sound of his name and looked up at George Duggan for instructions. Duggan bent and scratched him behind the ears

  “I used to get lost here on purpose back when I was a boy. Used to come to the camp every summer then. When they closed it and the lumber company bought it, I got upset about all these old trees being cut down. So when I could, I bought it back from the lumber company. Twenty-four hundred acres. And I’ve bought the lumber rights on four thousand more… . That’s a nice lake. I swim there most mornings over from the far side… . But this is pretty nice right here, now that I think about it.”

  Henry had certainly taken the wrong fork. He had figured that already. He was thankful Bob had turned back on the right one. It seemed he had coasted slowly along the road through the woods, honking his horn, with all his lights on or flashing. Henry and Della had heard nothing.

  Duggan led them on a path made invisible by low ferns around the edge of the lake, and in half an hour found Red Hill Camp scattered in small green shuttered buildings beneath enormous pines. The largest building, a log cabin of two floors with shelter overhangs displaying the beams of the roof was like something in a postcard from long ago. This structure was closest to the lake and attached to the short body of a pier being suckled by canoes.

  Duggan started cooking them breakfast immediately, assuming a position behind a broad stainless-steel stove. In shorts and a T-shirt it was obvious he was a very fit man. He might be pushing sixty, but his hair was cut short enough to hide his balding. He was at least Albert’s height, less a few pounds.

  Bob had already eaten with Nora, and had previously paddled with her to the center of the lake where the view was best, with the thought of spotting them. She now sat in a corner of the cabin by the window which faced the lake and shuffled paper in folders while making phone calls. Henry felt as if she were ignoring them all.

  Bob was effusive. The white of his skin was mottled in red at his cheeks.

  “This is great! This is the way to live!”

  “When I was a kid,” Duggan interrupted, “it took two hundred and fifty dollars to stay the summer. Now I get offers of ten million just for the lake f
rom outfits that want to subdivide it into fifty lots and sell each parcel for a million. Sadly, everything costs too much.”

  Duggan blew a great plume of cigar smoke toward the beams above.

  Bob offered, “I’d buy one, if I had the dough.”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it though? There are so many people who would. I don’t know what’s happening to the world …” Bob’s face fell. Duggan finished, “It’s not your fault. I’m not blaming you. If I was in your position, I guess I would too.”

  It was Duggan who suggested that they stay the day and spend the night, even before they had pulled the truck from its trap on the road. Henry called Albert and was told everything was fine. Bob was less sure. He looked toward the window, where the mountain had gone from gold and red to grey and silver in the sun. Nora sat there with her back to them, speaking to someone about paper sizes, and it was as if the red of the mountain had settled in her hair.

  “I’ve got to go … I better go …” Bob said. “Business … someone’s computer has crashed somewhere in the universe, and I’m the only one who can save it.”

  Henry sympathized with the predicament. Bob was the fifth wheel.

  He turned to Della and told her he would be seeing her soon. He said goodbye to Nora, and she waved while talking into the phone. He did not look happy to leave, but Henry was glad to see him going.

  When she finished with what work she was doing, Nora remained aloof. It was nothing she actually said, but in her tone and the contrast with George Duggan’s friendliness. She did not ask about Sharon or Barbara. Her questions about internet sales and the current used book market were only polite.

  To Henry’s tale of complaints, she said, “Publishers can play that game as well, of course. They can sell directly to the public. It’s the bookshops which are on the short end of this revolution.”