The man emerged from the front seat. He stepped gingerly down the trail, still wearing his suit and tasseled loafers. Ignoring Laurelie, he handed the hiker a flashlight as big as a car battery, twin to the one in his other hand.
“A boy that small couldn’t have gotten far,” he said, then began sweeping his light back and forth across the trail and into the forest on one side, instructing the hiker to do the same on the other.
They crept along at a snail’s pace. The hiker’s frustration was plain on his face, but he said nothing until they reached the river. There he broke away like he’d been torn and headed into the ferns. Laurelie followed him, but the landlord stopped and stood scanning the river banks, his light bobbing futilely over black water and countless amorphous shapes on the other side. Then, turning around, he shined his light at the hiker, who had just reached the trees. “I don’t think he would’ve gone in there,” he called. “In fact, I doubt he even got this far.”
When no one replied, he took a few steps into the ferns. The sticky plants clung to his pant legs and draped the ground in layers, making it impossible to see what lay beneath even when directly illuminated. He bent and peered under a dozen stalks before rising with a snort of frustration. “This is ridiculous!” he called. “He could be anywhere in here.”
“No,” the hiker said, and now his own frustration rang clear. “He left a trail, and I’m following it.” He had turned his own light off but even in the weak reflection of Laurelie’s own she could see his eyes were streaming and his nostrils were pulsing hard.
For an instant the landlord trained his light directly on the hiker’s face. Then he lowered it to the hiker’s legs where they disappeared behind the feathery fronds some twenty yards away. “I don’t see any trail,” he said.
Without a word the hiker turned and started into the trees. He seemed not to care who followed him, maintaining a silent creeping pace if he were stalking something, and when he reached the clearing he began traversing it with his head down and his body bent almost double, moving steadily away from the river that had curved around to meet them and glided past, black and full of secrets, half a dozen yards away.
The landlord remained at the edge of the trees, shining his light in quick indecisive arcs, over first the water and then the clearing. Laurelie stood near him, following the hiker’s progress as best she could. At one point when he abruptly crouched she nearly ran to him, but he only brushed the ground with his fingers and lifted them to his nose for a moment before continuing on again. He did this multiple times before reaching the far end of the clearing where the forest took up again. He disappeared then, and she simply counted breaths, hundreds of them before he reemerged again. He did not look up at her, was focused intently on the needled floor, but he shook his head in answer to her unspoken question and said, “He wasn’t in there. No one was. He was here though. And there was a dog with him.”
“A dog? What dog?” the landlord repeated.
The hiker ignored him, staggering not unlike a drunk as he followed an erratic path back across the clearing, dipping to touch the ground and smell his hand again and again. Reaching the river he skidded down its steep bank and then turned sharply left, following it back in the direction from which they’d come.
The trees rising up soon blocked him from view. Together Laurelie and the landlord scrambled down the slope after him and found him already yards ahead, hopscotching a tangle of exposed tree roots that reached down all along the bank to embrace the rocky waterline. The landlord’s strong flashlight bathed their tops and deepened the shadows beneath, so that it looked like the ground had dropped away and the hiker was leaping through loops of thin black space.
And then suddenly the hiker was stopping, stooping, reaching out his arms and leaning in. Whatever he sought there was obscured by a tree root that stuck out from the steep bank as wide and flat as the back of a chair.
Long seconds passed before he stood again, and this time there was something in his arms.
“Rowan!” the landlord called and then, leaping and tripping, he fell to his hands and knees. Rising again, he paced a single square foot of space impatiently, waiting for the hiker to pick his way back to them.
He was moving slowly now, his streaming eyes squeezed shut against the light the landlord kept trained on him. His nostrils were flared white and he was panting, but no one was looking at him. All eyes were fixed on the boy. He lay curled and still in the hiker’s arms, and there was something small and dark curled in his own.
“Is he alright?” the landlord called.
“He’s fine,” the hiker said. “He’s sleeping.”
Still a yard from them, the hiker stopped. He raised his face as if they’d spoken, but his shaken gaze moved past them, tracking something in the clearing behind.
Laurelie turned around. She saw nothing, only blackness.
Then something growled. The sound seemed to come from everywhere at once, a guttural fury that did not end but rather slowly rose in pitch and intensified into a scream, before finally tailing off in a long sibilant hiss.
Far back in the clearing, two yellow eyes flared. Then they were gone, but only long enough to convey how fast the creature could move, reappearing again a moment later at the top of the bank.
The bobcat looked giant, standing there in the night with her teeth bared in fury and her eyes slitted against the light.
The landlord shouted. Splashing backward into the river, he raised his flashlight like a club. His light kaleidoscoped through the tops of the trees, illuminating not only his face but also the violence he intended.
Then the hiker was there, pushing the boy into his father’s arms. There was anger in his face too, as in two long strides he climbed the bank. The bobcat did not move or even blink, but she made a noise as he came, a birdlike chirrup that he answered in the same voice before they slipped back into the darkness together.
The hiker led the way home, keeping yards ahead of them. The landlord came next, carrying his son, and Laurelie followed last, holding the flashlights and lighting the way for him. She kept peering over his shoulder at the animal in the boy’s arms, finally deciding it was some sort of terrier, although in the dark and being so scrawny and filthy, it was hard to tell. Neither boy nor dog ever fully awoke, although periodically the animal would tremble, and then the boy’s fingers would flex in its fur.
Back at the main house, the police checked the child over carefully. No broken bones, they said, and his pulse was steady, his skin wasn’t hot or clammy and his pupils responded to light. Apart from a few scratches, they pronounced him healthy and said his stubborn sleep was a normal stress response, and the best medicine for him now. Still the tearful landlady wanted to make him wake and argued hotly for taking him to the emergency room. It took all of their combined efforts to convince her to wait until the morning.
The hiker stayed outside while they conferred, and once they reached Laurelie’s cottage he too fell asleep. Within minutes of pushing her windows wide and lying down on her bed he was out. But she was unable to follow him. Her mind wouldn’t release the night, kept replaying scenes until finally she got up and released them, let them rise through her mind like bubbles and burst onto the page. She drew the black silk river with white wisps of a broken and bitten boy hovering over it. She drew the bobcat, barely visible, watching them from the trees. She drew the hushed oval of the clearing and the triangle of forest beyond, the giant tangle of brambles alive with the bob-kittens hidden at its heart. She drew the hiker lifting the boy from a cradle of roots, his strong brown arms shining like a god’s in the half-light, and she drew his stricken expression when the bobcat appeared at the top of the bank, his anger when she screamed. She drew the landlord’s flashlight raised like a club and his light whirling through the trees. And in her panels all that fury seemed indistinguishable from fear.
16
When she woke the next day the hiker wasn’t there. Knowing he’d gone to check on the bobcat, s
he went up the hill to check on the boy. She found him crawling in the grass, barking in concert with the little dog he’d found the night before. In the light of day it wasn’t black as she’d thought, but rather a very dark gray. The two of them were playing a game of fetch, although it wasn’t clear most of the time who was fetching, or even who had the ball. The boy’s mother hovered nearby sipping her coffee and watching them with anxious eyes. She told Laurelie she wasn’t happy to be taking in a stray, that if the boy wanted a dog that much she could find him something far better, but he was already so attached to it and after his ordeal her husband was afraid of what he might do if they took it away. She said he’d even given it a name already, had been calling it Dark in this weird little whisper ever since he’d woken up that morning. They’d thought for a while he was calling it “Dog,” but each time they called it that too he shook his head and then repeated it, “Daak, Daak!” She said it had taken them forever to figure it out.
The hiker was there when Laurelie got home. He was standing by his truck, and for a moment she thought he was going to leave, but then he asked her if she wanted to take a ride. She thought he seemed preoccupied, and this impression only grew once he’d turned north onto the river road. He drove so fast and with such a serious expression that she found herself imagining they were fleeing.
Then the road forked and he drove up a long slow gravel road to the top of a hill. There he stopped and they got out and sat on a grassy patch overlooking a granite outcropping that dripped like icing into the valley below. Wildflowers exploded down the slopes, looking more formidable than beautiful in their profusion and their autumn hues. His nostrils rippled tightly but his thoughts still seemed far away and so, seeking a path in, she asked him their names. Thistle, he told her, bee balm and goldenrod, tiger lily and dead nettle, staghorn sumac and switchgrass. Each word he spoke seemed to carry the prick of a hidden knife and looking at him she had an urge to squint and weave, as if seeing him through thick patterned glass.
On their way home they stopped at the organic farmer’s market. He seemed to lighten as they perused tables and crates laden with speckled eggs and soft cheeses and loaves of bread still warm on the bottom and impossibly fat blueberries and ears of corn that smelled sweet enough to eat raw. But back at her cottage he cooked their meal like there was an ax at his neck, and then stayed on the porch long after they’d eaten, drinking mead and watching the sun go down.
She could not imagine what might be wrong, and each time she asked he only shrugged and said maybe nothing at all. He didn’t seem to want company, and so she left him with his thoughts, did the dishes and then sat on the couch flipping through channels in the hopes of drawing him in. She found a nature program about Africa on PBS, and after a while he did come in and sat down on the floor beside her.
A group of lions stalked a herd of springbok across plains blanketed in sweet grasses. Half an hour later all the green was gone and the pools were shrinking and crocodiles hid in mud up to their eyeballs, watching their prey crowd in, made reckless by their need to drink. There were scenes of death then, while the blue sky dazzled and the salt pans deceived, looking full of water although they were bone dry. But some life survived, and then the rains returned and elephants filled the screen, kicking up puddles and lying their heavy bodies down.
When the credits rolled, she ran up to use the bathroom. She didn’t hear him coming up the stairs, and so didn’t know he was already there when she went into the dark bedroom and opened the windows.
She startled when he touched her. But his hands were hot, and slow, slipping down her arms, ruffling her skin like fine sandpaper, sliding through her sides to the valley of her belly, and when they glided up again and brushed her breasts, she had to open her mouth to breathe. The darkness fractured into a million sparks as his lips touched her neck. Her body felt heavy, like ripe fruit. And then he was lifting her, scattering kisses wherever his mouth could reach. They lay down on the bed, and blackness surrounded them, an infinite expanse, in which each touch was a miracle, of lips and hands and skin, and her eyes were wide, anticipating the moment their bodies created light.
Then there was great pressure. Her body went tight. He went still.
Only his thumbs moved, smoothing her temples.
Not broken. Wide open. No barriers at all.
Whether the words came from him or her own mind she wasn’t sure, but when she looked across the darkness and found his determined eyes, she shuddered.
Then there was fire. It caught in their mouths and spilled over and spidered down, and when finally it subsided, his harsh breath still smoldered in her hair.
“We could leave,” he murmured at some point later. “We could just—go.”
“Go? Where?”
“I don’t know. Anywhere. Africa, maybe.”
“You mean . . . now?” She tried to imagine it.
He didn’t say anything more. His breath stirred her hair like butterflies, alighting and lifting off again.
And after a while, they slept.
His sleep was restless all night, and finally at dawn he rose, and then she slept the kind of sleep nothing penetrated. Even after peeling herself from the sheets she sat on the bed for a long time, still saturated in dreams.
Going into the kitchen she found she could measure the time that had amassed while she’d slept by the food arrayed there, all of it made from the leftovers of the night before. There was bruschetta with melted cheese and an omelet topped with corn salsa and a purple smoothie. But the cook himself wasn’t there.
In a little while she saw him through the window coming up the trail, and her heart beat faster as she watched his long strides and remembered the night before. Then he stopped, and his head came up, and he turned and looked up the lane. She saw his nostrils flare, and for an instant his lips parted in what she imagined was a snarl. Then he bent his head so his hair covered his face and continued on again.
He did not come inside, however, but rather walked around to the tomato plants on the side of the house and crouched there. Coming out onto the porch, she heard him mouth-breathing. Before she could ask what was going on, the landlord’s car came crawling along the lane, stray rocks popping beneath its tires like gunshots.
The car stopped before the cottage and the landlord got out. After nodding at Laurelie, he strolled over to the hiker. His hands were tucked in his trouser pockets and from them came a jingling sound.
He stood for a while, regarding the hiker with a small smile. “I still don’t know how you did it,” he finally said.
The hiker said nothing. Nor did he look up. Only his fingers moved, in and out of the tomato plants, pruning away the yellowed leaves.
Slowly the landlord’s smile faded. Turning to face Laurelie, he said, “Violet and I don’t want you taking Rowan into those woods anymore. You should know it’s no place for a little boy. I’ll call Montague’s building and grounds guys in the morning, see if they’ll come out and trap that—that animal.” He shuddered as he said these last words, causing another faint jingle.
His eyes were round and protruding, his neck thrust forward as he spoke, and Laurelie was still struggling to absorb these signs of his conviction, so at odds with what she herself knew to be true, when from behind him, the hiker stood.
“Leave her alone,” he said, and his voice was a growl. “She won’t hurt the boy. Or anyone.”
The landlord swiveled in surprise. Then his eyes gathered light as understanding crept in. “Your intentions were good, son,” he said. “But frankly, you should have known better as well. Approaching a wild animal like that! You could have been mauled. A bite from that thing—” He shuddered again, setting off another jingle.
The hiker’s nostrils flared white, and as they watched his eyes gathered tears. “She’d never do that,” he said, rapidly blinking them back.
“It’s probably sick, in fact,” the landlord went on, “to have attacked us like that. It probably has rabies, or—or—or mange
, or something like that.”
“She didn’t attack us!” The hiker shook his head hard and now a few tears spilled over, tracking down his cheeks and spattering the ground. He didn’t bother to wipe them, didn’t even seem to notice them, his words tripping over themselves as he said, “She was only trying to warn me about an intruder, that’s all. She doesn’t know you. She wouldn’t ever hurt you or any human though,” he went on as the landlord’s eyes widened. “You have to believe me.”
He sounded desperate and looked it too, with his eyes streaming and his nostrils flaring as if he smelled something terrible, his mouth twisting as if he tasted it too.
Suddenly, Laurelie felt afraid.
But the landlord only looked confused. He turned to her and widened his eyes and shook his head, as if to ask her what she thought they should do about this situation.
When she looked away, he said, “Well.” And then nodded a little. Looked down at his shoes and rocked on his heels and said, “Well, I’ll take that into consideration, son, I certainly will.”
He looked toward his car then and shifted his weight as if in anticipation of his first step, only to freeze as the hiker came hurtling toward him over the tomato plants. The landlord’s hands came up but the hiker came no closer. He never even slowed. He ran down the lane another fifty yards before he stopped and turned back.
“Whisper something!” he called.
When the landlord only frowned, the hiker repeated it.
“Why exactly am I supposed to whisper?” the landlord asked Laurelie.
Down the lane the hiker called, “You said, ‘Why exactly am I supposed to whisper?’ Except you didn’t. Do it again, as quietly as you can.”
The landlord’s eyebrows rose. After a moment, he stepped close to the porch stairs, at the top of which stood Laurelie. This time he turned his back to the hiker, and whispered a date so quietly that even Laurelie wasn’t sure she heard it correctly.
But the hiker’s voice rang out loud and clear. “December 21, 1933.”
The Bobcat Page 13