Luke Baldwin's Vow

by Morley Callaghan

  When he saw Sam Carter sit down on the boat and cross his legs comfortably, Luke felt such a heaviness in his heart that he wanted to moan. As if he were very close to the dog in the water, so close he could whisper to him or make him feel his thoughts, Luke kept repeating desperately, “Just a few seconds more, Dan. A little more. It can still be all right.” He was trying to measure the seconds by the beating of his own heart. It seemed to be important to the collie that he should keep on counting, “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten.” But the seconds, as measured by his heartbeats, came very slowly and when his heart did thud, it was so loud and painful and so high in his throat that it frightened him. He couldn’t bear to go on dragging the moments out by recognizing and counting each one. “I’ll give him ten seconds more,” he thought. “If he doesn’t go then, I’ve got to jump in.” But the ten seconds were too hard to count; he couldn’t bear to go on with a count that seemed to be measuring what was left of Dan’s life. Crouching on his bare knees, a pebble under the right knee bruising it, a twig sticking into the left one, the palms of his hands flat on the ground, he peered through the brush at Sam Carter.

  The delicate white ash at the end of the cigar got a little heavier; it was an inch long; and Sam was looking at it as if he understood that a seasoned smoker of fine cigars never knocked the ash off until the last moment; even a fine tobacco leaf would not burn evenly if the ash were removed too cleanly. The removal of the ash was to be a neat, calculated little operation. The slow, dull, weary man was having his little stolen sensual moment with the good cigar.

  Then Sam turned slowly and his eyes narrowed and he listened, his bearded face full of suspicion, for Luke had made a little sound as he shifted his weight from one knee to the other. A twig had cracked. It was as if Sam sensed that he was being watched, and if he were being watched, it meant that he was being rebuked for loafing on the job, and such a rebuke would be unfair and intolerable, for Sam Carter never loafed around the sawmill. With an apprehensive, guilty, self-conscious air he stood up, puffing the cigar rapidly and making thick blue smoke. He began to stroll up the river, his heavy work boots scraping on pebbles and twigs.

  “Not just yet, not just yet,” Luke thought as his heart jumped, for he was trembling with eagerness to leap at the water. Sam was slinking furtively around the bend as if he felt that he was being observed, but the slosh, slosh, slosh of his boots could still be heard.

  As the sounds faded, Luke was watching raptly the spot on the water where Dan had disappeared, and just as if he were a keyed-up sprinter waiting for the moment to break, cried out within himself, “Now!” Running down the bank, he took a wild-eyed leap at the water, the sun glistening on his slender body as he splashed out to the deep place. He arched his back and dived, swimming underwater, his open eyes getting used to the greenish haze. He held the jackknife in his right hand.

  Through the green haze of the water he could see the sandy bottom and some embedded rocks; but it was hard to see clearly for there were lines of light and dark from tree shadows. He was looking for the one line – the rope attached to Dan’s body. Then it flashed in his mind that Dan would be lying there on the bottom like a rock or log, heavy and still, and he wouldn’t know which was Dan and which was the log or the rock. In a panic now, he scraped with his fingers at the first dark object he saw and swung his arm around groping for the rope. But it was only a rock jutting up from the mud. His lungs were swelling painfully; he seemed to be suffocating, and letting himself shoot up to the surface, he sucked in some air, tried desperately to get an accurate bearing from a familiar tree at the point on the river bank where he had been, then dived again. All his strength came back, for the new dive meant new hope. Again he scraped at dark objects, a log, a rock, until that blank dark moment of terror came when there were singing noises in his head and his chest was hurting, and within himself he cried out for help – he cried out to his dead father, “Oh, Dad, Dad,” as if his father were beside him.

  The pain in his chest was so heavy he could hardly bear it; yet he could still think. He remembered that the current would probably sweep Dan down from the spot where he had gone into the water, a falling stone might even be dragged at an angle through the water. He shot up to the surface, sucked in air and dove again, swimming underwater with the stream for five yards. Then he saw it; he saw it there in the green watery haze. It was motionless and shadowy against the greenish light. He had enough strength to claw his way toward it. With his left hand he reached out and touched it, the fingers sinking into the wet fur.

  He was so excited that he could hardly keep himself underwater and work effectively. From the collie’s neck the rope stretched to the now embedded rock, and when he grabbed the rope and tried to slash it with one swift cut there seemed to be no strength in his arm; the rope seemed to slide away from him. Again he slashed and the knife came drifting feebly at the rope, bending it as if the knife and the rope were made of rubber. He knew he couldn’t stand it any more, not if the rope only bent like that again; he couldn’t stand it because his own strength was failing and he knew that each passing second took what was left of Dan’s life. Wrapping his legs around the rope, and with his left hand to hold it, the heavy shadow of the dog sinking slowly into the water beside him, he began to saw at threads of the rope, hacking away as the strands parted and flowered out in the water until the last strand snapped. Again he let himself shoot up in the water, and as he sobbed for breath, his mouth wide open, the dog came drifting up slowly, like a water-soaked log. Even as he sucked in the air, Luke was treading water and pulling the collie toward him. And then after fifteen rapid strokes he was away from the deep place and heading across the river. His feet touched bottom.

  Hoisting the collie out of the water, he slung him on his shoulder and scrambled toward the bank, lurching and stumbling, for he had no strength left, the collie like a dead weight.

  He staggered up the bank and through the brush and among the trees to a little grass-covered clearing twenty paces from the river, where he fell flat, hugging the dog and trying to warm him with his own body. The touch of the wet cold fur frightened him; for no matter how hard he pressed the dog against him he felt no warmth, no heartbeat, the collie didn’t stir, the good amber eye remained closed. “Oh, Dan, Dan,” he wailed, and he sat up and looked around helplessly. Then suddenly he wanted to act like a resourceful competent man who couldn’t be flustered, and who could do all that could be done for the collie. On his knees now, he stretched the dog out on his belly, drew him down between his own knees, felt with trembling hands for the soft places on the flanks just above the hip bones, and rocked back and forth, pressing with all his might, then relaxing the pressure as he straightened up. He hoped that he was working the dog’s lungs like bellows. He had read that many men who had been taken from the water when they seemed to be drowned had been saved this way.

  “Come on, Dan. Come on, old boy,” he pleased softly. “I won’t let you die, Dan. I just won’t let you. I won’t leave you. You’ve got to be here with me.” All that he had ever read, all that he remembered about efforts to save the drowned came back to him, and the parts that he remembered were those instructions that made him fiercely hopeful. “You shouldn’t give up for at least an hour,” a voice seemed to say. “It’s a mistake to quit too soon. Sometimes a man can be underwater for half an hour and still be saved. A lot of water is taken into the stomach. But the larynx tends to close and block the passage of the water into the lungs. So don’t give up. Keep at it for at least an hour.”

  As far as he could figure out, the collie had been underwater for about five minutes. It had seemed like an hour, or like the large part of a long day, especially when he had been watching Sam Carter; but now as he worked his hands like a bellows he was checking on those movements of Sam’s, and he knew that everything could have happened within six or seven minutes.

  “You can do it, Dan. Come on, old boy,” he pleaded softly, but the way the head lay
on the ground scared him. He kept watching the jaw and the closed mouth which seemed to be like the mouth of a dead dog he had once seen lying on the side of the road. While this picture of the dead dog grew large and hideous in his mind, a little water suddenly trickled from Dan’s mouth, and with his heart jumping Luke muttered over and over, “There, see, Dan, it’s working, so you can’t be dead. Come on, old boy. Why, you can do it, Dan.”

  Rocking back and forth tirelessly, he went on applying the finger pressure to the flanks till a little more water dribbled from the mouth. Now he was afraid his trembling hands would get out of control and he would break the even rhythm of the pressure. In the collie’s body he felt a faint tremor, like a very faint pulsation, a kind of contraction under his fingers. As soon as he felt it he believed that he must have deceived himself, and then it came again. “Oh, Dan,” he whispered gratefully. “You’re alive. Oh, Dan.”

  With a sudden cough the collie jerked his head; then came another spluttering cough, the amber eye opened, and they were looking at each other. For a long silent moment they looked at each other steadily. The amber eye didn’t even blink. It was a very strange moment of recognition.

  Then the collie, thrusting his legs out stiffly, tried to hoist himself up, staggered, tried again, stood there in a stupor, then sat down slowly.

  “Take it easy, take it easy, pal,” Luke whispered. For a while the dog remained quiet, his flanks trembling, his tongue hanging out while Luke stroked its head gently.

  After resting like this for a few minutes, the collie shook his head stubbornly and staggered to his feet again. This time he stood still, the feet planted firmly on the ground, the head down as if making sure where he was and then not believing, for he turned his head and looked back toward the river. It was odd the way he kept on looking back at the river.

  Suddenly Dan shook himself like any other wet dog and the splendid spray splashed over Luke’s white eager face. Then Dan turned, eyed Luke, and the red tongue came out in a weak grateful lick at Luke’s cheek.

  “Okay, okay, I know how you feel, Dan. Only now you ought to lie down for a while,” Luke whispered, and as the dog lay down beside him Luke closed his eyes, buried his head in the wet flank and wondered why all the muscles of his arms and legs began to jerk in a nervous reaction. “Please stay there, Dan,” he said with a deep sigh. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me now. I just can’t move.”

  Soon he felt strong again, and as his thoughts cleared he lay there trying to make a plan. All that was really important, he decided, was to get Dan far away from the house and hidden in some spot where nobody at the house could see him. In some spot in the woods he could tie up Dan and leave him, and go back to the house and get food for him. Luke believed he was thinking very clearly. He wanted to be cunning and resourceful. If he crossed the river again and got his bike and then went into town and purchased the cigars for Uncle Henry and returned to the house, both Aunt Helen and Uncle Henry would pretend they didn’t know what had happened to the dog, and Aunt Helen would say, “Well, I told you, Luke. An old dog like that will wander off the place when his time has come,” and Uncle Henry would agree, “Yes, the dog knew his days were numbered.”

  Ah, it would be fine to hear them talking like that; he would grin to himself, and later on go into the woods and get Dan and return and say, “What do you know? I found Dan in the woods – just like you said,” and how could they protest? He would be tricking them as they had planned to trick him. What a resourceful cunning plan it was, he thought. Naked though he was, he got up and said, “Come on, Dan,” and he began to lead the way slowly through the woods. Every few paces they took, the dog stopped to shake the water from his fur. Luke wanted to get to the clearing with the big white stone where he had so often gone with Dan and which now seemed like a sacred protected grove.

  But as he made his way delicately over the broken boughs and the twigs and the embedded stones, his feet began to hurt him painfully. One sharp jutting stone hidden beneath fallen leaves cut his left foot, which began to bleed. Low branches from the spruce trees scratched his body. Black flies began to bite his shoulders.

  As the way became more painful, his cunning plan seemed to lose its power over him. It began to collapse. It did not make sense. He wondered how he had been able to persuade himself it could be successful. His clothes were back on the river bank on the other side very near the path, and a workman going down the path, or his uncle looking for him, could see those clothes and realize at once that he had intervened to save the dog. Everybody would know exactly what had happened. The main thing was to get those clothes before anybody saw them. He began to make his way back quickly.

  Even if he had got to the big stone, he told himself, and had tied up Dan, it would have been no good. Dan might have howled in the night, or if he got loose he would certainly come home. Sooner or later Uncle Henry would become aware that he had been thwarted; then he would order Sam Carter to shoot sthe dog.

  Back at the river Luke stepped quickly into the water to cool his bleeding feet. “Come on, Dan,” he coaxed. At first the collie shied away from the water, and it was only when Luke started to wade out that the dog reluctantly followed, swimming jerkily, with Luke keeping close beside him; when he was swimming himself, Luke still kept within a foot of the collie.

  On reaching the other bank Luke ducked, then darted across the path to the tall grass twenty feet farther away, and there he lay flat on his back. “Lie down, Dan,” he whispered, and he listened. No one could have seen him. “Stay there, boy,” he said. Crawling back through the grass he picked up his clothes and came back to the dog, which was watching him with great curiosity, as if they were once again playing one of their familiar adventurous games.

  When he had put on his clothes, Luke said, “I think we’d better get away from this spot, Dan. Keep down, boy. Come on,” and he crawled on through the tall grass till they were about seventy-five yards from the place where he had undressed and there they lay down together.

  In a little while he heard his aunt calling, “Luke. Where are you, Luke? Come here, Luke.”

  “Quiet, Dan,” Luke whispered.

  A few minutes passed and then Uncle Henry called, “Luke, Luke,” and he began to come down the path. They could see him standing there, massive and imposing, his hands on his hips, as he looked down the path, a frown on his face, then he turned and went back to the house.

  As he watched the sunlight shine on the back of his uncle’s neck, the sudden exultation Luke had felt at knowing the collie was safe beside him turned to despair, for he realized that even if he should be forgiven for saving the collie when he saw him drowning, the fact still was that Uncle Henry was not a man to be thwarted. And the more he was thwarted the more unshaken would be his purpose. Uncle Henry had made up his mind to get rid of Dan; in a few days time, in another way, he would get rid of him as he got rid of everything around the mill that he believed to be useless.

  Lying there, looking up at the hardly moving clouds, Luke grew more bewildered. He couldn’t go back to the house without the collie, nor could the collie be allowed to go anywhere without him. Wherever they went they had to go together.

  “I guess there’s just no place to go, Dan,” he whispered forlornly. “Even if we start off down the road somebody is sure to see us and tell Uncle Henry, then he would come after me and bring me back even if we went to another town, and you’d have to come back with me and then we’d be finished.”

  All the world’s misery seemed to engulf him as he lay there, pondering and concentrating until his head ached, yet unable to make a plan that would overcome and block his uncle’s plan. Dan was watching a butterfly circling crazily above them, watching with a twitching nose as he became interested and playful, following the butterfly with his good eye. The collie felt secure because he was with Luke.

  Raising himself a little, Luke looked first through the grass at the corner of the house, then he turned and looked the other way to th
e wide blue lake. A grain boat made a little speck against the skyline and a faint wisp of smoke trailed far behind the speck. The blueness of the lake and the distant ship and the wisp of smoke only deepened Luke’s dejection. With a sigh he lay down again, and for hours they lay there until the sounds from the sawmill suddenly ceased and voices could be heard in broken little bits of conversation as the men quit work. Finally two of them came down the path together, then a third, and then came Sam Carter in a slow sluggish stride as if nothing important had happened. The sun moved low in the western sky.

  “Well, we can’t stay here any longer, Dan,” Luke said at last, and he sounded tired. “We’ll just have to get as far away as we can. Come on, and keep down, old boy.” He began to crawl wearily through the grass, going farther away from the house. When he could no longer be seen, he got up and began to trot across the field to the gravel road leading to town.

  On the road the collie would turn anxiously as if wondering why Luke shuffled along, dragging his feet wearily. “I guess you can’t quite figure out what’s bothering me, eh, Dan? Well, I’m stumped, that’s all,” Luke explained. “I can’t seem to think of a safe place to take you.”

  Now they were opposite the Kemp place and there was the gate where they had so often turned in together to have their wild game with the cows. And there on the veranda was old Mr. Kemp in the rocking chair, smoking his pipe and enjoying the cool after-dinner breeze from the lake. Suddenly Luke stopped. All he could think of at first was that old Mr. Kemp had liked both him and Dan and had liked watching them playing and was aware of the happiness a boy found in a dog’s companionship. Some of the things that weren’t valuable to Uncle Henry had a strange value to Mr. Kemp, who seemed able to protect these things that were valuable to him alone. But more important than anything else, Mr. Kemp had been kind and sympathetic; in his own way he seemed to share Luke’s secret happiness, and for that reason it had been such a pleasure to help him get the cows in the evening.