by Brian Hart
“He ain’t here.”
“Where is he?”
“How should I know? House calls occur in other people’s houses.” He turned and went out the door, shoulders wide enough to fill the frame. Bald spot on the back of his head was a scar, not a normal baldy spot at all. I studied the crust on my wrist. Real enough. I rested my hat on my face and fell asleep pleased with myself, like I’d passed some sort of test.
“The miracle man,” Jonas whispered. “Rise up and greet us.”
Eyes open, yet too bleary to see, words in my mind: Blessed are those whose way is blameless. I slid from under the blankets, blinked my past into my present. “Go find me some clothes, would you?”
Jonas left for a moment and then came back with my things folded in his arms, strange boots hanging from his fist. He waited while I dressed, didn’t watch me. He kept his eyes on the sheet. My feet hurt awfully going into the boots.
The doctor’s new wife was in the hall.
“Is he here?” I asked her.
She scowled at me, pretty, pretty quick to go ugly. “You’ll get back in that bed if you know what’s good for you.”
“Answer my question,” I told her.
“No, he’s out. Let him rest here,” she said to Jonas, “until the doctor gets back.”
“When’s that?” I said.
“Tonight, could be late. He wanted to speak with you.”
“There’ll be time for that later. Tell him I’ll come find him.” I dragged Jonas by his shirt to the door so we wouldn’t have to talk to her anymore. I felt like I’d start screaming if I made a peep about my mother. Tartan and I would come back later and get it straight. A hundred times Haslett could’ve told me the truth. Selfish is what that is, or loyal. To what and who? She’s my mother, isn’t anything to him. Down the stairs, and we turned left on Water Street toward Beacon. Work crews were cutting tree roots at the roadside with axes, making a path for more new walkways. With all the buildings burned down, they were making adjustments to the streets, squaring and leveling what before had been mostly vineal and random.
Jonas gave me a sidelong look. “Boyerton fired me because of you.”
“I didn’t do it on purpose.”
“I wouldn’t like to think that you did.”
The bridge was down and the tender’s shack was empty. I stopped for a moment in the middle, straddling the gap in the two pieces of bridge, and eyed upriver, sighting the pilings and the masts of ships, reliably plumb. Jonas nudged my shoulder, and we moved on. We climbed into the low hills, and the rain turned to snow.
When we got to the Wynooche there were tracks on the road and down to the riverbank. People had been out in the storm, and after it too. I wondered if they’d been looking for me. Been to Cape Flattery? I hear it’s nice.
We walked in step. I was scared. There was no life or uplift, no planks to walk on. We went in the streets and in the wilderness, in the mud. Let us go into the fortified cities and perish there. Poor Jonas, I thought. He’s stuck with me now. And aren’t we all standing in a cloud of gnats, and each one black and buzzing, a little death. I couldn’t tell him what I’d done to his father, and I didn’t know what lie I would invent when we got home. I labored under the heat in my head and in my arms, Jonas beside me moving like he was made of pig iron and lead, and the sun dropped away and we were soon in the dark. The lights were on at the Parkers’, but we didn’t linger.
When we arrived at the house, the door was wide open and snow had blown in like a clamshell onto the floor. Jonas lit the lantern in the kitchen. I could still see the bloodstain on the floor, but I doubted if Jonas would notice.
“Where is he?”
“Don’t know.”
He checked behind the door. “You take the shotgun?”
“Yes.”
“Where is it?”
“Lost it somewhere.”
Jonas shook his head. “Couldn’t a got far with that foot a his.”
“No, probably not.”
“Would he have gone to the Parkers’?”
“No, he wouldn’t be any more welcome there than I would.” I remembered the ghost and Zeb’s threat. I should write him a letter, I thought. Apologize for what I did.
Jonas was bent over looking at the jagged shotgun hole in the wall. “What’s this?” he said.
“It went off.”
“What’d you do?”
“We can patch it.”
“Sure, but I’m wonderin why, that’s all I’m askin.”
“I was messin around and it went off.”
“Where is he?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened.” I was picking through the discarded food on the plates and the counter and what was left in the pantry, and I found enough to make soup. By the time it boiled, the house was warm and orderly and clean enough. We sat at the table to eat, and it felt official, like we were getting down to business. I expected him to ask about Matius but he didn’t.
“How’d you fall in the river?”
“I was more thrown than fell.”
“By who?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“You could’ve been killed.”
“He didn’t mean to kill me, I don’t think.”
“Tell me who it was.”
“Some other time.”
“No, you’ll tell me now.”
“Tartan, Bellhouse’s man.”
“I won’t ask why, then.”
“The why don’t matter.”
“I thought you liked Teresa Boyerton.”
I wanted to tell him that betrayal felt the same as a fever, that murder and frostbite are only differentiated by the layers of damage, the perception of the wound. My blackened and yellowing toes weren’t any different than what I felt was my rubiginous heart.
“It was almost an accident.”
“Almost.”
“I hadn’t planned it.”
“All the things you coulda done.”
“I’m not proud.”
“If you were, I’d beat you bloody.”
“I said I’m not.”
“Yer havin lots of accidents of late.”
“Feels that way.”
“Yeah, well, we better get some sleep.”
Jonas stoked the fire and undressed to his union suit and then climbed into bed. I shut down the lantern and climbed in beside him. One of us could’ve stayed in Matius’s bed, but we didn’t. The blankets were damp and cold against my aching feet and smelled of mildew. Dark as tar; nothing moved or seemed capable of ever moving again.
“I told you before he wouldn’t have you marrying his only daughter.”
“I know.”
“You had ambitions.”
“Yes.”
Jonas was silent for a minute or more. I imagined his mouth moving with thought. “The wanting of a thing doesn’t make it different. It’s still the thing it was before you wanted it.”
Talking in the dark was like listening to someone else think. “I don’t deserve more than this?”
“Who am I to say what you deserve? I’m nobody. I don’t even have a job.”
I didn’t say anything more. I stayed awake and waited to hear Jonas’s breathing change, and when it did I rolled over and slept.
By the time I woke up, Jonas had already left. I climbed stiffly from bed onto my wrecked feet and drank almost the whole pail of water and stoked the fire. I heated the dregs of the soup and ate it from the pan. Looking out the window, I saw that the barn doors were open and the cow was gone. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a chicken.
I wrapped myself in a blanket and sat down in front of the fire and picked at the skin on my feet, marveling at the colors. Cold sweats left me clammy, and my thighs stuck together. I caught myself staring vacantly at a dead spider; I didn’t know how long I’d been doing it. I imagined a road paved with dead spiders. I stared at Matius’s bloodstain until I’d mapped the shape and burned it into my min
d, a country of itself, fluid borders of a land unexplored, not straight-edged or surveyed but river stamped, a territory.
I carefully made the bed and then climbed in. I curled up on my side and shivered uncontrollably. The bedroom door was open, and I could see dust in the light coming in the front window and stamping four dim diamonds on the floor.
When I woke, I forced my feet into boots and went outside. The snow had settled on the slash piles and the stumps, and the ground was white and smooth. You couldn’t tell I’d dug around the posts or even moved them there recently. I hoped it snowed enough to bury the world. I followed my own shadowy path to the river. The sun was behind the clouds, and a cold wind had come up and was blowing through the trees and making them yaw.
Kozmin’s bear hide was still there on the boulder, frozen stiff in the shade, white with frost. Didn’t make any sense that he’d left it. A bird or something had hollowed the eyes from the sockets, left it pink and black-lidded, no blood to be seen. No life remained, no pretense of life, not sensible at least. The permanence of death settled like a wet leaf on my mind.
The water had come down, and the bank was shiny and slick with ice. I kept to the margin between water and the ground too steep to traverse and walked downriver. When I came to the bridge, I climbed down and studied the undersides of the timbers and planks, watched the yawning pocket of water where I’d been thrown. I made my way slowly downstream and found my coat, like a rag, hanging from a limb in the middle of the river, Kalypso’s cloak. I squatted down on my haunches under the gray sky, thinking: If the water drops a little more, I’ll be able to wade out and grab it. But I might fall in again. A chill ran through my blood, black as pollywogs, and quickly ended my breezy pontification. I wasn’t going out there.
The sweat was cold on my skin as I walked back to the barn. The fever made my mouth taste awful, and I kept spitting and eating snow. I chewed some fir needles, and that helped.
I used the doorframe in the barn to snap a tine off the pitchfork and then used the bench vise to bend it into a hook. Rust flaked off in my hands like dried blood. I lashed fifty feet of neckweed rope to the hook and wound it around my elbow and shoulder and returned to the river.
From the bank it was an easy toss to my coat, and I hit it the first time, but it was sheathed in a thick layer of ice and I spent fifteen or twenty minutes on every throw, hauling the hook through the mess of snags again and again. I went up and down the bank like a pacing animal. You’ve winked out. Get yourself to bed. My bones hurt, and my muscles were stiff all the way up my back and into my neck.
My coat looked stupidly back at me. The chill was taking me now, and the world looked watery through my delirium. Absolution didn’t go by valley or ridge; it wasn’t even bound to the land. Forgiveness, for my father, meant all kinds of surrender. I wasn’t ready for that. They’d throw me in jail if they caught me digging up Mother’s grave. Never think such a thing. You can’t. They’ll throw you in jail anyway. I picked up my thoughts and threw them to the other side of the fence.
Through nothing but obstinance I managed to snag the coat, but when I was bringing it back, it fell free and landed in the river and, after a brief swirl, washed quickly away. I left the rope and hook and went after it. There’s people that’d never do such stupid things as this. People that can afford not to act so repugnant, wasting half a day trying to foul-hook a shitty old coat. The rocks tripped me up, and I slipped and bashed my shin. I kept going, but slower, used my hands so I didn’t slip as I traversed the cold boulders. My coat was up ahead in a pocket of slow water, and without hesitating I waded in and hauled it out.
The walk home to the fire and warmth was, like the near drowning, elongated by the cold. I’d be drying out for the rest of the day. Things were never as bad when you knew they would end. Unfamiliar boot tracks crossed my way three times, like I’d been flanked and flanked again. Someone was spying on me. I stopped and whistled, owl-hooted, thinking it had to be Zeb. With my arms out I waited for him, offered myself to whatever vengeance he wanted to take. A minute went by, then two; nothing moved. I covered my ears with my hands and went on, everything sounding underwater and in the wind. I imagined him running up behind me and clobbering me with that ax handle, but the blow never came. It took everything I had not to look back.
Stretched out naked in front of the fireplace, I rubbed the stiff hair on top of my head, played absently with my testicles, thought of Delilah and jerked my prick a few times but gave up for the feelings of guilt it brought to my mind, tainted by all that I’d done. On top of it all, I still loved Teresa.
My boots steamed, one on either side of the fireplace, and my jacket did the same from the hook on the hearth. I hadn’t bothered lighting the lantern, and the only light was from the fire. The bloodstain on the floor seemed to have faded. The hole in the wall stared back at me.
After it got dark I heated some water for coffee and used the last of the sugar. The front door had been open for days. In my mind I saw the door swinging in the wind. A memory like that might stay forever. Some memories are sapphires and others are just dirt, full of bugs.
The brass handle on the trapdoor that led into the attic was wet and beaded with water droplets. The roof wasn’t leaking; it was just the handle that glistened. My mother’s books were in the attic, all with her name in them. The ones from Dr. Haslett read, “Nell Anne.” The older ones and her diary: “Nell Anne Lansing.” The books that had been given as gifts by a grandmother I’d never met had “Genelle” written in them. I quietly moved a chair from the table and opened the door; only darkness. Of course there was nobody up there, or I would’ve heard them by now. I pulled myself up and crawled around and scraped my knees and was stabbed in the palm by a shined nail. The small pine box, the one from her dresser, I reached for it, and it was gone. Maybe I’d moved it and forgotten. I probably had. I’d have to think about this. I wasn’t right in my mind just then. I’d need to focus. The crates of books were still there, and when I climbed down, I brought one with me. I knelt on the floor and lifted one book and then another to the firelight to read the title until I found the one I wanted. I feared that my father had come back. There was no reason to think this; I was being foolish. He wouldn’t dare. The box belonged to Mother. My father didn’t even know I had it.
The book’s spine cracked like a pullet’s breastbone when I opened it. There was no inscription, only a date. This book was mine, given to me by my mother. I started at the beginning but still remembered it word for word, so I skipped ahead and started where the terrain seemed new. Nestor told the story. Telémakhos listened and urged him on with kind questions. I had the idea that I lived in the night of this story, the darkest corner, as if the story existed only in the day. Because who had ever spoken kindly of Jacob Ellstrom? Who wanted to find him except those that he’d done harm? The sun went down in the story as Nestor spoke, and the sun went down in the dark woods too. I moved closer to the fire and read until my eyes grew too weary, and then I curled up and slept on the floor.
I woke with a start, but I’d closed the door, and it was still shut when I rolled over to check. I smelled the full pulpy heaviness of the open book on the floor beside me. I watched the door for a long time, and the dance of the dying firelight on the knob and plate. All the rooms of the world are the same once the door is shut.
The Hermit
He heard the deer moving, the gentle pawing sound, even through the rhythmic dripping of the water from the trees. He corked the bottle and set it aside and crawled drunkenly to his pack. Frustrated inebriate, his hands confused by straps and buckles. He soon quit the struggle and lay back and faced the sky. The trees turned above him. When he closed his eyes, he felt sick. He moaned a little and spied the dancing giants through one reddened slit as if he was taking aim.
“There is no singular David that could level you all, but He could with no effort, all or one at a time. And does, you know. He does it already.” Kozmin talked to the trees when he was sob
er too. The old man reached for the bottle but didn’t find it. No more for now. No more. If he found his pistol, he might shoot himself and it wouldn’t be an accident. “Might be.” Clumsy sot that he’d become, helpless really. Baby with a pistol. With regularity he waged these little wars on himself, no matter if someone had drowned or come close or not gotten wet at all. Search party celebration. Bellhouse is buying. Bellhouse has never given a thing away in his life. You take a drink from him, you’re signing a contract. Not that anyone pays me any attention, but if a man keeps nothing he should keep his pride: a piece of down in my hand. As a young man he’d found work plucking chickens, and a child on the farm knocked over the boiler pot while chasing a dog. Feathers stuck to the blistering skin on his feet and legs and someone picked him up from the dirt and took him inside the house, screaming, covered in feathers. Kozmin couldn’t remember what had happened after that. Saying it was a lifetime ago wasn’t a lie. Depending on the life, he could’ve lived fifty of them. He didn’t want to sit up to drink anyway, didn’t want to sit up at all, and he couldn’t do anything lying down, not without making a mess of it. I’ll feel like a baby with a bottle if I lie down, might as well put my feet in the air and coo and burp. Something in drunkenness was like going back to the womb or being just born—safety; if not that, then definitely helplessness. How can a person do this to himself? I could be murdered by a blind, crippled midget armed with a blade of grass. No defense. He tried to roll up and stand but failed, lay back down. He was staying, surrendered, recollecting, guilty swimmer, muddy water.
He’d worked with a man on the Salmon River who ate lying on his side, propped up on one elbow, like he thought he was some kind of Persian prince or a dying gladiator. A benefit to digestion, he said.
Above, the ridiculous spinning trees. “I hope they take you all.” He smiled, but it was a fragile thing, and he was naked beneath them. Water dripped directly onto his face, but he didn’t so much as twitch. “Grand firs, I’ll make a pronouncement. We will all be sorry when you are gone.” This was one of those occasions when he was truly afraid of sobering up, but he needed to move, get to some shelter and warmth. Soon, he decided, closed his eyes. Aldacot had a bed for him at the still. Since it’d blown, no one would bother him there. You have a dozen places you can go. You can go to hell. Or try sober. Take hell. Might as well be drunk while I’m burning.