by Brian Hart
“I’m patient.”
Kozmin continued:
As I said, Tarakanov first arrived in the year 1799, sailing on the Konstantin. Chief Manager Baranov was building a fort after a false purchase of rights from the Tlingits. Tarakanov helped build the barracks and storehouses, and later he was at New Arkhangel after the battle was won or lost, depending on how you see these things, but before all that, he was among the twenty-five of his countrymen led by Medvednikov who stayed when Baranov returned to Three Saints. For the years that followed, until the first battle, he guided the Aleut hunters, upward of two hundred in number, on relentless otter and seal expeditions. He alone extended the Russian grounds for miles in every direction, and I should say, making no friends among the Kiksàdi, and the storehouses filled to the rafters and pelts had to be packed into the stockade and in the bunkhouses too.
So it was in the spring of 1802 that Tarakanov saw the smoke above the trees and picked up his rifle and his pack and ran toward the shore. He could’ve stayed in his shelter under the roots of the great tree and never been bothered. He was a young man and taller than most, and he flew through the woods like a wolf. Behind him was a gutted and skinned black bear, hanging limp from the spikes he’d driven into a fir tree for the purpose.
He prayed then for his friends, for their safety, for the very timbers of the fort to protect them and not to be burning. Surely it was something else that was aflame, a smoke of nothing, a celebration: ocean fires; he prayed for this to be true, but when he finally broke from the forest he was faced with great walls of fire and smoke pouring into the gray sky, and on the ground among the buildings he saw his comrades dead and dying and some headless, and alongside them many of the Aleuts in similar condition, and nearer the water there were dozens more. It was over, nine at night or three in the afternoon; the fight had been done for some time. The blood was black, and the gulls and ravens and eagles with pink and bloody crowns were feasting. The raiders were mostly Kiksàdi, but there were others; he could tell by the war canoes, some hooked, some sweeping. They came out of the smoke hauling the Russians’ pelts and the unburned supplies by the armload, some of their heads still covered by large wooden animal masks that made them teeter like giants when they bent down to relinquish their burdens and stood again. Some were dressed in clemmons armor fashioned from leather and wood. Chinese coins flashed on their chests and arms even in the misting rain, and the quillwork of others gave the appearance of raw bone warriors. They had rifles slung across their backs with rawhide, and some had daggers and hammers fastened to their legs and torsos.
Tarakanov retreated a few paces and settled himself behind a stone wall they’d left unfinished the year before. If they were overrun, they were to retreat to the wall and stand them there. But they had no chance to flee. The ship they’d been building was on fire, the steambox as well. Baranov’s house was burning. Anchored in the harbor were an American and a British ship that had been there since before Tarakanov left. He’d long suspected that they’d have something to do with this if it happened, and he spotted two American sailors gathering weapons from the dead. He nearly rose up and fired on them. His heart broke, thinking of his friends and that he was alone now, when before that’s all he’d wanted. Grief filled him like wax in a mold.
He never saw the club that came down behind his ear and knocked him unconscious. The Kiksàdi carried him to the beach and threw him in a canoe with a few surviving Aleuts and rowed them, along with the Aleut’s women and children to their village. If it weren’t for Captain Barber anchored in the bay, he would’ve stayed there and might have died there, a servant to his enemy. At the time he thought this to be the worst possible end.
“He was right,” I said.
Kozmin smiled and continued. So it was Barber that lured Shkàwulyéil’s raiding party onto the deck of his ship Unicorn with a promise of an execution. The condemned man was an Aleut, an elder who had angered the Kiksàdi years before—a thief and a murderer, they said. As soon as the raiding party was on board, Barber’s crew surrounded them, placed them in irons, and threw them in the brig. It was these men who were traded for Tarakanov and eighteen other Aleuts, along with the bales upon bales of otter pelts that were taken from the storehouses before they were set on fire. Barber ransomed Tarakanov back to Baranov for ten thousand rubles at Kodiak. Despite himself, Tarakanov had grown to like Barber, and if he had the choice he’d have stayed on board with him instead of where he was now—
“What do you mean, where he is now?” I said.
“We’ve moved on in the story.”
“Well, go on and tell it then. Stay on the scent, if you can manage.”
Kozmin smiled. “No, that’s all for tonight. It’s late. We’ll finish it another time.”
“Go on and tell it. I’m not a bit tired.”
“Well, I am.”
The hermit gathered his pack and went out the door. I went to the window and watched him go into the barn. A few moments later I followed him. I couldn’t be there alone if Duncan woke up.
Duncan
There was something breathing in the darkest corner of the room. I watched and waited for what seemed like hours, could’ve been days, my stomach full of fear. Eye shimmer, big wet eyes, then a blink. Eye shimmer. It squatted there, the beast, and watched me back.
I could hear the murmur of voices on the other side of the door. I’d been moved here at some point—this was my room—but from where, I wasn’t sure. There’d been a winter swim, and I’d nearly drowned. Nearly been murdered, was what it was. Rescued by the same that tried to kill me. After that, going for my coat. Sick again. Stay off the ground if you don’t want to be mistaken for carrion. Jonas was out there with Kozmin. My father. They’d found me on the floor, him and Kozmin, much like I’d left Matius. That’s who moved me, I remembered now. I wanted to throw something at whatever it was that was watching me, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. Over the course of hours, what felt like hours, I made myself accept what it was. I couldn’t be afraid. I made myself take the unthinkable into my heart. I had to believe it was there, and that it didn’t mean me any harm.
The voices were quiet when I climbed out of bed and dressed and pulled on my boots. I opened the window and pointed so the bear would go out. You can’t stay in here. No old death indoors. Get out. The bear ambled from the dark corner where it had been crouching and climbed through the window. I could see its spine and its beehive of muscles, the white lines of its ribs rimmed pink and black; an amphibious looking tail and wet, bloody haunches. I closed the window quietly behind it and went out the door.
The living room was lit by the fireplace and smelled of tobacco and fried beef. My father wasn’t there. I checked all the cracks and corners, but he was gone. Jonas was asleep on his bedroll in front of the fireplace. His face was open and unguarded, a bead of drool on his cheek. He appeared much older than when he was awake. Men wear out like leather wears, in the end useless. I knelt down and pulled the blanket up onto his body and tucked him in with the care and tenderness he deserved.
I found paper and a pencil and wrote a letter to Jonas, telling him what I’d done and where his father was buried. I told him why. I went back to the bedroom and put the note on the pillow. He would hate me now too. Everyone would. I made the bed and went back to the kitchen.
My legs felt too long and too skinny beneath me. I picked at some scraps on the counter. When she got cold, my mother used to say she felt the worry of death in her bones, and that worry had been in my hand and I’d snapped it and the worry went to Teresa, the pain, just for a moment, then it was back in me. I brimmed with it. And her father, he’ll be coming, even though it was an accident. She said she wasn’t mad. She was sorry it had to end, and confused as to why I’d hurt her. If I were in her place, I could never react that way, and didn’t really understand how she had, wounded without malice, without blame. I knew love like I knew folly; I wanted to go back. I wanted to find her and I wanted to hide.
<
br /> I found a box of groceries on the back step. Jonas must’ve brought them. I picked up an apple and looked at it but couldn’t bring myself to eat it. Back inside, I pocketed a beef bone from the pot to give to the bear because he was of course outside, waiting for me, and then tossed it back onto the stove because that was crazy. It was then that I found the pistol wrapped in a scarf in the cupboard, loaded and ready. The weight of a single jack. Beautiful and smooth. “Nightwalker,” I whispered, “let’s go for a stroll.”
Mother smiled when she saw me walking toward her on the road. Then she saw the gun in my hand, and her face changed. “No,” she said. “You can’t do anything about it. You’ll make things worse. Go back home.”
The idea of killing Charlie Boyerton coalesced in my mind. I hadn’t planned it, not really, not until now, until Mother said something, warned me not to, like she had the right to warn me about anything. She tried to hug me, but I held her at arm’s length and went on. Behind me I heard the latch on the door close, and I was relieved that she’d gone inside and gotten out of the cold. She’d be there when I returned. I thought this and then remembered, could never forget.
The last of the light from the moon was gone from the path and had drifted high onto the trees. But before I reached the road, the door opened again and Mother came out into the snow and ran to me in her bare feet and gave me a scarf and my hat and gloves and Father’s old oilskin coat. I took what I was given and—Mama, go on, go on back inside—ushered her once again indoors. I set the pistol on the dwindling woodpile and put on the extra clothes. The coat was fur-lined and stiffly molded to my father’s shape; it smelled of him. I thought I’d burned it, but here it was, short in the sleeves.
The bear came out of the shadows, and without any ideas on what else to do, I followed it down the road.
“What am I going to say to her?” I asked myself aloud. “If she’ll even speak to me. She might not.”
“She won’t go with you no matter what you say,” the bear said. He had an old man’s voice, like Doc Haslett, and not foreign at all.
Ridiculous, I wasn’t talking to the ghost of a dead bear or the spirit of the doc or whatever it was. The vision of my mother had already started to fade, and I fit it into the back of my mind.
“I wasn’t asking for opinions.”
“Well, I’m the only one here. Who else would you be asking?”
“You aren’t here.” Dreaming something out here, wandering, seeing my terribly gone and most likely dead mother. If I knew one true thing, I wouldn’t be so worried, but not even the gun in my hand could tell me the truth. I thought I’d take a piss, and if I didn’t wake up in bed like I always used to with the pissy blanket, then I was awake, and if I was awake, I was on my way to see Teresa.
“Maybe I’m dreaming, and you aren’t here,” the bear said.
I stopped and looked into the darkness, not seeing but knowing that I’d somehow strayed from the road. I thought it was nice of the bear to break trail because, outside the horse and wagon tracks, the snow was quite deep. Then I caught myself and caught myself again, truly shaken, standing in the dark, lost. Dreams can scare a person into a real death, is what they said.
“We’ve lost the road.”
“Nah. It’s before us, just so.”
A few steps forward, and there it was. Deal me in. “So it is. Say, how’d you find your head? Last I saw of it, it was attached to your hide, stretched over a rock.” I remembered that Kozmin said he’d retrieved the dead bear from the flooding river, and it suddenly made sense that the bear had returned to the spot and found his head there, or wherever Kozmin had stashed it, and simply put it on like I’d put on my father’s coat.
The bear ignored my question.
“I want Teresa back.”
“It’s best you brought a gun.”
“What will I do if she won’t talk to me?”
“Couldn’t say. My question is this: What will you do when you have her? Will you try and explain how your very blood holds claim on your behavior?”
“Shut up with that.”
“She’s scared of you now. You, small brute, damaged her slender and delicate arm.”
“I’ll tell her how sorry I am, and that I’ll take care of her no matter what.”
“Her father is going to kill you. You, my friend, are stuck. Stuck as a thing can be.”
“Do you think she’s told him what I’ve done?”
“She didn’t have to tell him. He knows. He fired Jonas, didn’t he?”
“He did. That’s right.”
“He’s coming for you. He’s her father. He doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter.”
“Jonas could’ve done something and got himself fired.”
“You know that isn’t true.”
“Then I’ll kill the bastard first before he comes to kill me.” Weapon in hand, feet under way. The fear I felt was equal, dying to murder, the light of the sunrise against the light of sunset, simply directional, not diminished. I pointed down the road so the bear would get going. “She still loves me.”
“Oh, but she might forget you anyway, might deny you out of love. She might already be gone.”
I stopped, and the bear turned its head to look back, torn skin hanging from its jaw. “You’re just a dead bear, and I’m being slint enough to talk to you.”
“I’m not as dead as you might think.”
“With your knife-hacked meat and lack of hide.”
“How sure are you that you got out of that river?”
The memory was fresh and terrifying, icy hands pulling me down to a place somehow warmer, deeper and warmer, like forgiveness.
We trudged on in silence, and I watched the bear, stepped in its tracks. Like forgiveness, like cold water; it went easier after a while. Then there was someone on the road ahead of us. I stopped, and the bear stopped. We were near the Parkers’, but I couldn’t make out any house lights through the trees.
“Zeb?” I said.
Whoever it was kept coming and didn’t speak.
“Zeb, I’m sorry for what I did. I swear. Please, Zeb. Talk to me.”
I still couldn’t make out if it was him, but whoever it was, they weren’t stopping. I lifted the pistol, and they jumped off the road and silently disappeared into the trees. When I got to where they’d been, there weren’t any tracks that I could find. The bear was sitting on its haunches. A thin layer of ice had formed on its body.
“You want my coat?” I said, embracing whatever I could, whatever face of the world was before me. Without a roof you find a tree, without a blanket you pile up the leaves.
“I’m a dead bear. Why would I need a coat?”
“Cuz Kozmin stole yours.” I shrugged off my father’s long coat and draped it over the bear’s back. It wasn’t going to stay on. I tried to force the bear’s paw into the sleeve but couldn’t manage. The thing smelled awful, and the ice was bloody in the palm of my hand. I needed to use both hands. “Hold this.” I passed over the pistol, and it dropped into the snow and was swallowed up. I reached for it and knocked my head against a tree trunk and fell back into the snow. The road was somewhere behind me. A strange coat, maybe Jonas’s, was draped lengthwise over a low limb. I got up and snatched back the coat and put it on, then dug the gun out of the snow and wiped it down with my bare hands.
Back on the road the snow was gummy with mud and felt like clay beneath my boots. Wagon ruts deep enough to show the axle dragging sectioned out the path.
The lights of town were glowing above the last hill. The widowmaker’s tangle, the Janko tepee. I’d lost my gloves, or maybe I never had any. I couldn’t be sure. The gun was an icicle in my hand.
Men were busy in the mill yard, walking the bunks and loading carts to go to the docks. The lights lit the steam and made the largeness of the place seem even greater. There was yelling and the hollow sound of chains snapping to against big timber. The screams of the giant saw blades in the mill were dampened only slightly by
the walls and the log bunks that surrounded them. Lantern-lit flat-bottomed boats steered by pole men were on the water, straightening out the booming grounds and bringing in strays.
Down harbor the big ships were anchored in the channel, waiting for the flood-tide dawn and the bridge to open so Cudahey could guide them in. I passed a few houses, all dark. Someone had forgot to put their chickens up, feathers in the mud, three or four birds’ worth in neat clusters, like they’d spurted up from the ground. Farther on, a dog tied to a porch rail barked at me, and I barked back. Shaggy, one-eared guardian, his chickens would be alive still. If he had any. I climbed from the snow and mud and onto the shoveled and swept planks.
The Sailor’s Union was locked up and dark. I went around back, but that was locked too. I’d been hoping for a warm reception. Young hero, come home.
The lights at Dr. Haslett’s were on. I went up the stairs and banged on the door. I heard footsteps and then there he was, looking right at me, bloated as a dead cow.
“Is my mother dead?
His eyes narrowed, and he stepped back and motioned me inside.
“I don’t want to come in.”
“I never wanted to lie to you. I tried to talk her out of it.”
“Where’d she go?” I took the pistol from my belt.
“Put that away and come inside.”
I didn’t put up the gun, but I followed him down the hall into the living room. The fireplace was roaring, and the doctor had to pick up an open book from his chair so he could sit down. I hunkered next to the fire and held the gun to the flames. “You knew what it meant, doin that to me, helpin her leave.”
“I had to do what she asked. I didn’t have a choice. I loved her. I couldn’t say no.”
Haslett’s new wife was up now, standing in the hallway behind him. She’d heard what he said, and I could tell he’d be getting a ration when I left. He turned and motioned for her to go back to bed. “Wait here,” he said to me, and followed her down the hall.
When he came back, he handed me a bundle of letters tied with string. I knew what they were. I slipped the gun back in my belt. “She wrote you and not me.”