Starwater Strains

by Gene Wolfe

  And so it is that the sun swims far from earth sometimes, thinking of its sore mouth; and we have winter. But now, when the days are very short and we see the boy’s line stretched across the sky and powdered with hoarfrost, the sun recalls earth and her clever and foolish men and kind and magical women, and then it returns to us.

  Or perhaps it is only—as some say—that it remembers the taste of the bait.

  Try and Kill It

  His name was Tom, Tom Hunter. He had gone to bed early the night before and risen at three, having enjoyed six and a half hours’ sleep, which was about as much as he ever got. His bow and his quiver of broadheads had been in the van already, along with his hunting knife and most of his other stuff. He had put on coffee that perked while he fooled around with the rest, mostly looking for the silver flask Bet had given him on his birthday four years ago, so he could fill it with rock-and-rye. At about the same time the coffee perked, he woke up for real and remembered that he’d filled it the night before and put it in a hip pocket of his hunting pants.

  He’d washed his face again (no shave today), put on the pants, and filled his thermos with fresh hot coffee—light cream, no sugar.

  Now here he was, and the sun not up. He got out of the van, shutting the driver’s-side door as quietly as he could, switched on his flashlight, and got his stuff from in back, shutting that door quietly, too, and making sure the van was locked.

  The night wasn’t even getting gray, the stars obscured by an overcast and the moon already down. Padding along in crepe-soled boots, he jogged down the little path and turned onto the game trail nobody else knew about. It was possible—not likely, but possible—that his light would spook the deer, though he’d taped over most of the lens and was careful to aim the beam low. Noise would spook them sure, so he moved as quietly as he could, which was not quietly enough to satisfy him.

  The tree looked different at night. Alive, somehow. It was a live tree, of course, with green leaves and even little winged seeds early that summer. He had always known it was alive, but it had looked no more alive when he had built his blind on the big limb than the plastic trees that would appear in Wal-Mart in another week or two. It was different now, a placid thing that stood in the night like a huge horse and let him touch it and even climb it using the spikes he had driven into its rough hide in June, not because it liked or was afraid of him, but because it didn’t care.

  He thought about Rusty then, whether he ought to have taken Rusty hunting, was Rusty too young or what? He had decided no, not this year, not this Saturday which would be today when the sun came up to make a new day. Rusty was too young, would whine at being awakened so early and wake up Bet, who would insist on oatmeal. And it would be seven o’lock before they got into the woods, maybe eight, and the best part of the day wasted.

  But he had been wrong, and knew it as he eased into the blind, gripping the familiar handholds. He could have, should have, carried Rusty out to the van and let him sleep a little more on the drive out. Waked him before they got to the woods so he could get dressed, and brought him to the tree so he could feel this, feel it standing here in night waiting for a rider who might not come this year or the next. Who might not come at all but who was worth waiting for in rain and wind and snow, because waiting for the rider (who was certainly not himself, no, never Tom Hunter) was the only worthwhile thing anybody could do. And if Rusty could just once be made to feel that, Rusty would be all right forever, good and decent at the core even if he gave them trouble sometimes or got in trouble with the law, even.

  So he should have brought Rusty, and perhaps next year it would be too late. Bow season was only a week, but there would be rifle season after. They could do it next Saturday, maybe.

  He stood and took his bow out of the bow case as quietly as he could, then pulled out a broadhead quietly too, nocked it, and drew the bow just to satisfy himself (as he had so often before) that there was room enough up here, letting the bowstring go straight again without letting fly. The broadhead’s razor-sharp blades gleamed dully in the night, and he realized with a little start that the night was not quite so black as it had been. Soon— very soon, now—the sun would peep above the horizon and bow season would begin officially.

  There was talk of having a black-powder season, too, a week for black-powder hunters after regular deer season. It meant he would have to get a black-powder gun, a good one, just as he’d gotten the Ruger Redhawk for handgun season. Learn to load and shoot it before next year, to be safe. If there was overtime this winter, maybe he could, a long Kentucky rifle to get the highest possible velocity out of the feeble propellant. He’d—

  A thump. Not exactly loud but not soft either, not near and not far—middle distance and very, very impressive. Impressive enough to spook every deer in the county.

  He gnawed his lip as he tried to think what had made it so impressive, why he’d known at once that it was an important and a significant thump—that something big had happened not very far away. Without training in logic or any other science, he was of an analytical turn of mind, getting to the roots of things when he could, and when he couldn’t returning to them again and again to paw at the earth and sniff (he smiled to himself) like Dad’s coonhound. This one wasn’t too hard for him though, not nearly. Not rooted too deep for him at all.

  It had been because he’d felt the thump as well as hearing it. It had shaken the ground, if only a little, and the ground had shaken the tree, which might even have acted as an amplifier or a sounding board, like the back of the fiddle he’d built from a kit about the time he met Bet but never learned to play. The old fiddle collecting dust in the basement, not a very good fiddle really though something might be made of it now, stripped and refinished after some sanding and regluing. He was a whole lot more patient these days, a better worker.

  A craftsman.

  A supervisor had called him a craftsman back in July, and Dean and Juan had kidded him about it; but he had felt at the time that it was the greatest compliment he could ever get or would ever get, and if he died after that it would not really matter—would matter to Bet and Rusty, no doubt, but not to him.

  It had worn off a little since. He had come to realize in his analytical way that it didn’t really matter much whether the supervisor thought he was a craftsman, or what the supervisor said. What mattered was whether he was; and he had worked more carefully than ever after that, taking no more time than was needed to do the job, but always taking the time to do the job right, fixing any little thing he came across so nobody would have to come back and do it later, and leaving each machine clean and tight, running as much like new as he could make it.

  Dad … . He hadn’t thought of his father much in probably a year, but here he was again. Dad had bought a used pickup and said later that if only the guy who’d sold it had told him what the little scraps of wire in the box under the seat were for it would have saved him a hundred dollars. But he didn’t like the kind of fixes you did with little scraps of wire. There was magic in the first drop of oil, and magic in a good, clean oily rag. Out past that it was what you knew and how much you were willing to think, making your mind go like the parts, not just replacing stuff and walking away.

  But what had the thump been? What could it have been? Trucks hitting out on the highway?

  Trucks hitting out on the highway couldn’t possibly have shaken the earth in which this tree stood on a wooded hillside three valleys away; but maybe he had been wrong about that.

  An explosion at the plant; but this had been closer, he felt sure. He tried to think whether there was another plant closer, or whether it could have been a truck blowing up; and decided it had not been an explosion at all. More like a tree falling, but that wasn’t quite it either.

  Now he could see the ground below, and the place where the game trail turned, the place where he would take his shot-twenty-two yards, he had measured it in July. An easy shot for a compound bow as powerful as his, a bow that could send an arrow straight
and true a hundred yards easy.

  The little wind that had brushed his cheek once or twice in the dark could be seen playing all around now, shaking leaves and stirring the few dead leaves that had already dropped, leaves red and yellow or brown, sometimes with green patches on them, alive in death.

  Like Mom. Dad had been old and tired and dead, that was all, dressed up in his coffin in a fashion that would have embarrassed him if he had been alive; but some part of Mom had still been alive, had not given up until they had closed the lid and screwed it down, so that he had half expected to hear her rapping on it when they lowered her into the grave. Although she was dead, of course, and only some small part of her that death had not yet claimed still living in his mind, a green patch that worried about him and Bet and Rusty, and planned to bake more pies, to teach Bet stuff she already knew or did not want to learn, make another quilt with Dora Skinner, because a real cold winter might come someday when he and Bet would be grateful for a nice—

  Something was moving away down the slope, down where the little creek barely trickled along the valley. Something bigger than a deer but just about as quiet. Another hunter, probably. Not driving deer toward a partner, because anybody trying to drive deer would make more noise. Just prowling through the woods with his bow, pretty quiet, hoping to get a shot.

  It was too bad he wasn’t driving, whoever he was, because if he had been the deer might have run up here along the game trail. Probably would, in fact. And then he himself might have gotten a shot if he was quick enough.

  No does, he told himself again. No doe season this year, and he wouldn’t want to be caught with one—didn’t want to bag a doe anyhow. No little spike bucks, either. There were plenty of those every year; but they weren’t anything but meat, and Bet could buy meat at the meat counter. Let the little spike bucks grow up a few more years. Six points for him. Eight or ten if he was lucky, but he’d settle for six. A braggin’ buck.

  He grinned to himself, grinned to the little breeze and the silent wood.

  That other hunter was coming nearer now, and he might very well be driving deer even if he didn’t mean to. A deer heard better than a man, better even than most dogs. The lone hunter (Tom Hunter pictured a big man, middle-aged, moving quietly) was hunting upwind, which was the way to do it; deer had better noses than lots of dogs, too.

  A terrified deer was on the game trail, small hoofs trap-drumming the hard, dry soil. Tom drew his bow, but it made the turn too fast for him to have shot even if he had wanted to, coming straight at his tree for a moment and flashing past—a small doe, scared out of her wits.

  He got close to her, Tom thought. Got real close, probably kicked her up. Might have creased her with an arrow then. That would account for it.

  He himself had put an arrow completely through a deer two years before, and watched it run away. It had run for more than a quarter mile, and it had taken him nearly two hours to find it, following the blood trail. If the lone hunter climbing the hill was following a similar trail, he would see him soon.

  He listened for more, then for anything. This early in the morning, with the sun just rising, the birds ought to be making a fuss, but they were not. Had migration begun already? Even if it had, there should be plenty left.

  It was the explosion, no doubt. It had scared—

  Just then a jay started talking some distance down the hillside, the loud, hoarse danger-cries that warned all good birds of the presence of a cat or a man. Here he comes, Tom thought.

  And then, that does it—that wraps up the morning. I’m not going to get a damn thing. Not even going to get a shot.

  He had gotten up at three for this, left the house without breakfast. He returned the arrow to his quiver, put down his bow, and poured himself a cup of coffee, adding a few drops of rock-and-rye.

  He sipped, then swallowed greedily, admitting to himself that it tasted great.

  He would go home and eat, maybe take a nap. Bet would kid him, but it wouldn’t matter because he’d kid himself worse. And before sundown he’d be back in the blind again, and maybe he’d at least get a shot. For a moment he regretted not shooting at the terrified little doe, but he pushed the thought aside. He could have, and he had chosen not to, so no more complaining about not getting a shot.

  Maybe he should just go back to the van. He could sleep in the van for a couple of hours, then come back here. That way Rusty could make all the noise he wanted; this was Rusty’s day off, too, after all.

  He drank again, wiped his mouth on his right sleeve, and considered removing the wrist guard from his left. A wrist guard was there to keep the bowstring from slapping your wrist and to keep your sleeve from fouling the string. If he wasn’t going to shoot his bow, why wear it? Although it was just possible that he’d get a shot at something he wanted on the way back to the van.

  Or he could stay right here, hang in. The sandwiches he’d carried had been intended as his lunch. Was he going to tote them back to the van after carrying them out here? What would he think of himself—of the way he’d acted—when hunting season was over?

  The stainless-steel cup that doubled as the thermos bottle’s cap was nearly empty. As he swallowed the last drop, there was a sudden rattle as a deer broke just out of sight. Before he could grab his bow, it had flashed past, a little spike buck.

  He picked up his bow and nocked the arrow again.

  A minute passed, or an indeterminate time that seemed to him a minute or more; the playful wind carried the faintest possible odor of laundry day, a chemical smell from some factory miles away.

  Then it sounded as if a riot were in progress just out of sight, the rocketing roar of a pheasant practically lost among clattering hooves and breaking twigs as an entire herd flushed from a thicket. He drew his bow as the lead doe rounded the turn and made for his tree, mouth open and tongue lolling, covering a good twelve feet with every jump, a big doe sleek and fat with autumn going full-out and still picking up speed. Behind her the ruck of the herd, bounding fawns and leaping does, perhaps eight in all, perhaps ten or twelve.

  Last of all the buck covering their retreat, muscled like a wrestler and crowned more regally than any king, thick of neck and large of eye, frightened yet still in command of himself if not of his panicky harem. For an instant he halted at the bend, head high, to stare up at the tree-limb blind and the point of the arrow aimed at his heart. His tail twitched; he plunged ahead and was gone.

  “God damn!” Tom said under his breath. “God damn, oh, God dammit!” It was inadequate, but what would be adequate? The bow had turned to concrete in his hand, its string sticking to his fingers as though they had been dipped in glue. Buck fever, he told himself. I got buck fever again.

  After how many years? He tried to count back to his first hunt with Dad. Sixteen. No, eighteen.

  Buck fever.

  Yet it had not been. He’d seen buck fever, had experienced it himself. Your hands shook with eagerness, and as often as not you shot too soon. Or you gawked openmouthed instead of raising your gun, or knocked it over when you grabbed for it. His hands had been as steady as ever in his life; he had seen the buck and sighted, had known what to do. Something had stopped him.

  Had Dad’s ghost returned? Said spare this one, son, and for the rest of your life you’ll know he’s out there?

  No. Tom pushed the thought aside. Only women saw ghosts. Ghosts! Women and nuts. Flakes, and he was no flake, was a rock-solid sober family man and a good bow-hunter. Something in his own mind had stopped him, and not for any silly, sentimental reason. What had it been?

  When he rooted it out and held it up, he had to laugh. He had not shot because he might need the arrow—because something awful was coming. But the other hunter was merely a man like himself, and might easily be a man he knew, a man in a hunting cap and a camo shirt, walking along with his bow in his hand and his quiver on his back like anybody else.

  Down beyond the bend there was a flash of brown, rich and reddish among the grays and blacks of
trunks, the green of leaves. Not a camo shirt. Some kind of a brown shirt, maybe an Army surplus wool shirt, but it hadn’t quite seemed like the Army color. A man—

  There it was, just passing in back of a bush then gone in the shadows, red-brown with a gray streak and bigger than a pony, bigger than any man, as big as a bull almost but not a bull or a cow or anything like that.

  A bear.

  Not a black bear, and not even the kind of a black bear they called a cinnamon. A grizzly, a bear like people went a thousand miles to hunt. A grizzly bear for sure, even if there weren’t any grizzlies in this part of the country and hadn’t been since the people here wore three-cornered hats and fought Indians.

  They said there weren’t, anyhow.

  There were coyotes now, and they said there weren’t any of those either. Coyotes were supposed to be Western animals like grizzlies, animals you saw on the prairie in Texas, and out in the desert. But there was a dead coyote on the road a while back about a half mile from the house.

  There it was again!

  He pulled the arrow to his ear, then relaxed. Too risky, even if it wasn’t too far. He’d only spook it, and this was the chance of a lifetime. Wait. Take your time. Even with a good shot, a big bear will need a lot of killing, and I mean to try and kill it, not just scare it away, and I sure wouldn’t want to have it go off into the woods and take two or three months to die.

  He put down his bow and wiped his sweating palms on his thighs. Where was it?

  The woods were quiet. Even the jay had stopped talking. The jay had been a ways down the slope, probably it was still there, and the bear had gone far enough uphill that the jay wasn’t worried, not that a bear would be much danger to a bird anyhow. The jay probably didn’t know—it was a big animal, so it was scary. It would eat a bird if it could catch one, that was for sure.