In the Garden of the North American Martyrs

by Tobias Wolff

  Over the mountains to the east a thin line of clouds was getting thicker. Wharton felt a growing dampness in the air as he turned into his neighbor’s gate.

  He disliked having to ask Vernon for favors or advice, but at times he had no choice. Twice during the winter his car had slipped off the icy, unbanked road, and both times Vernon had pulled him out. He showed Wharton how to keep the raccoons out of his garbage, and how to use a chain saw. Wharton was grateful, but he suspected that Vernon had begun to think of himself as his superior.

  He found Vernon in the yard, loading five-gallon cans into the back of his truck. This pleased Wharton. He would not have to go into the dirty, evil-smelling house. Vernon had rented most of the place out to a commune from Seattle, and Wharton was appalled at their sloth and resolute good cheer. He was further relieved not to have to go inside, because he wished to avoid one of the women. They had kept company for a short, unhappy time during the winter; the situation was complicated, and Wharton already had enough to keep him busy for the day.

  “Well howdy there,” Vernon said. “And how’s every little thing down at the lower forty?”

  Wharton noticed that Vernon always countrified his speech when he was around. He guessed that Vernon did it to make him feel like a city slicker. Wharton had heard him talk to other people and he sounded normal enough. “Not so good,” he said, and lifted one of the cans.

  Vernon took it from him very firmly and slid it down the bed of the truck. “You got to use your back hoisting these things,” he said. He slammed the tailgate shut and yanked the chain through the slots. The links rattled like bolts in a can. He took a rag out of his back pocket and blew his nose. “What’s the trouble?”

  “Someone’s been shooting on my land.”

  “What do you mean, shooting? Shooting what?”

  “I don’t know. Deer, I suppose.”

  Vernon shook his head. “Deer have all headed back into the high country by now.”

  “Well, whatever. Squirrels. Rabbits. The point is that someone has been hunting in the woods without asking my permission.”

  “It isn’t any of us,” Vernon said. “I can tell you that much. There’s only one rifle in this house and nobody goes near it but me. I wouldn’t trust that load of fruitcakes with an empty water pistol.”

  “I didn’t think it was you. It just occurred to me that you might have some idea who it could be. You know the people around here.”

  Vernon creased his brow and narrowed his eyes to show, Wharton supposed, that he was thinking. “There’s one person,” he said finally. “You know Jeff Gill from up the road?”

  Wharton shook his head.

  “I guess you wouldn’t have met him at that. He keeps to himself. He’s pretty crazy, Jeff Gill. You know that song ‘I’m My Own Grandpaw’? Well, Jeff Gill is his own uncle. The Gills,” he said, “are a right close family. You want me to call down there, see what’s going on?”

  “I would appreciate that.”

  Wharton waited outside, leaning against an empty watering trough. The breeze rippled puddles and blew scraps of paper across the yard. Somewhere a door creaked open and shut. He tried to count the antlers on the front of the barn but gave up. There were over a hundred pairs of them, bleached and silvered by the sun. It was a wonder there were any deer left in the province. Over the front door of the house there were more antlers, and on the porch a set of suitcases and a steamer trunk. Apparently someone was leaving the commune. If so, it would not be the first defection.

  Vernon’s tenants had had a pretty awful winter. Factions developed over the issues of child care and discipline, sleeping arrangements, cooking, shoveling snow, and the careless use of someone’s Deutschegrammophon records. According to Wharton’s lady friend, Vernon had caused a lot of trouble. He made fun of the ideals of the commune with respect to politics, agriculture, religion, and diet, and would not keep his hands off the women. It got to where they were afraid to go out to the woodshed by themselves. Also, he insisted on calling them Hare Krishnas, which they were not.

  Wharton’s friend wanted to know why, if Vernon couldn’t be more supportive of the commune, he had rented the house to them in the first place? And if he hated them so much how come he stayed on in the master bedroom?

  Wharton knew the answer to the first question and could guess the answer to the second. Vernon’s father had been a wild man and died owing twelve years’ back taxes. Vernon needed money. Wharton imagined that he stayed on himself because he had grown up in the house and could not imagine living anywhere else.

  Vernon came back into the yard carrying a rifle. Wharton could smell the oil from ten feet away. “I couldn’t get anybody down at the Gills’,” Vernon said. “Phone’s been disconnected. I talked to a guy I knew who works with Jeff, and he says Jeff hasn’t been at the mill in over a month. Thinks he’s went somewhere else.” Vernon held out the rifle. “You know how to work this?”

  “Yes,” Wharton said.

  “Why don’t you keep it around for awhile. Just till things get sorted out.”

  Wharton did not want the rifle. As he had told George when George asked for a B-B gun, he believed that firearms were a sign of weakness. He reached out and took the thing, but only because Vernon would feel slighted if he refused it.

  “Wow,” George said when he saw the rifle. “Are you going to shoot the sniper?”

  “I’m not going to shoot anybody,” Wharton said. “And I’ve told you before, the word is poacher, not sniper.”

  “Yeah, poacher. Where did you get the gun?”

  Wharton looked down at his son. The boy had been sawing up and nailing together some scrap lumber. He was sweating and his skin had a flush on it. How thin he was! You would think he never fed the boy, when in fact he went out of his way to prepare wholesome meals for him. Wharton had no idea where the food went, unless, as he suspected, George was giving his lunches to Rory. Wharton began to describe to George the difference between a rifle and a gun but George was not interested. He would be perfectly content to use his present vocabulary for the next eighty years.

  “When I was your age,” he said, “I enjoyed acquiring new words and learning to use them correctly.”

  “I know, I know,” George said, then mumbled something under his breath.

  “What was that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You said something. Now what did you say?”

  George sighed. “‘Jeez.’”

  Wharton was going to point out that if George wished to curse he should do so forthrightly, manfully, but he stopped himself. George was not a man, he was a boy, and boys should not be hounded all the time. They should be encouraged. Wharton nodded at the tangle of lumber and congratulated George on doing something both physical and creative. “What is it?” he asked.

  “A lair,” George said. “For a wolf.”

  “I see,” Wharton said. “That’s good.” He nodded again and went inside. As he locked the rifle away—he didn’t really know how to work it—Wharton decided that he should let George see his lighter side more often. He was capable of better conversation than reminders that “okay” was not a word, that it was prudent not to spend all one’s allowance the same day, or that chairs were for sitting in and floors for walking on. Just the other day the plumber had come in to unclog the kitchen sink and he had laughed at several things Wharton had said.

  For the rest of the morning Wharton sketched out episodes for his old bread-and-butter strip. This was about a trapper named Pierre who, in the course of his adventures, passed along bits of homespun philosophy and wilderness lore, such as how to treat frostbite and corns, and how to take bearings so that you would not end up walking in circles. The philosophy was anti-materialist, free-thinking stuff, much like the philosophy of Wharton’s father, and over the years it had become obnoxious to him. He was mortally tired of the Trapper and his whole bag of tricks, his smugness and sermonizing and his endless cries of “Mon Dieu!” and “Sacre Bleu!” and
“Ze ice, she ees breaking up!” Wharton was more interested in his new strip, Ulysses, whose hero was a dog searching for his master in the goldfields of the Yukon. Pierre still paid the bills, though, and Wharton could not afford to pull the plug on him.

  There was no shooting from the woods, and Wharton’s concentration ran deep. He worked in a reverie, and when he happened to look at his watch he realized that he was supposed to have picked up his wife ten minutes earlier. The station was an hour away.

  Ellen kept after Wharton all the way home in her flat, smoky voice. She had old grievances and she listed them, but without anger, as if they bored her: his nagging, his slovenliness, his neglect of her. Oh, she didn’t mind waiting around bus stations for an hour now and then. But he always kept her waiting. Why? Did he want to humiliate her? Was that it?

  “No,” Wharton said. “I just lost track of the time.” The other charges she had brought against him were true and he did not challenge them.

  “If there’s one thing I can’t stand,” Ellen said, “it’s this suffering-in-silence, stiff-upper-lip crap.”

  “I’m sorry,” Wharton said.

  “I know you are. That doesn’t change anything. Oh, look at the little colts and fillies!”

  Wharton glanced out the window. “Actually,” he said, “those are ponies. Shetlands.”

  She didn’t answer.

  It rained hard, then cleared just before they came up the drive to the house. Ellen got out of the car and looked around skeptically. In the distance the mountains were draped with thick coils of cloud, and closer up in the foothills the mist lay among the treetops. Water ran down the trunks of the trees and stood everywhere. Wharton picked up Ellen’s bags and walked toward the house, naming wildflowers along the path.

  “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove,” Ellen said, “living out in the middle of no goddam where at all.” She saw George and shouted and waved. He dropped the board he was hammering and ran to meet her. She knelt on the wet grass and hugged him, pinning his arms to his side. He tried to hug back but finally gave up and waited, looking over Ellen’s shoulder at Wharton. Wharton picked up his bags again. “I’ll be in the house,” he said, and continued up the path, his boots making a sucking noise in the mud.

  “House?” Ellen said when she had come inside. “You call this a house? It’s a barn or something.”

  “Actually,” Wharton said, “it’s a converted stable. The government used to keep mules here.”

  “I’m all for simple living but God Almighty.”

  “It’s not so bad. We’re getting along just fine, aren’t we, George?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Why don’t you show Mother your room?”

  “Okay.” George went down the passageway. He waited outside, holding the door like an usher. Ellen looked inside and nodded. “Oh, you set up a cot for me. Thank you, George.”

  “Dad set it up. I’ll sleep there and you can have the bed if you want.”

  Wharton showed her what was left to see of the house. She hated it. “You don’t even have any pictures on the walls!” she said. He admitted that the place lacked warm touches. In the summer he would throw on a coat of paint, maybe buy some curtains. When they came down from the loft where Wharton worked Ellen took a package from her suitcase and gave it to George.

  “Well, George,” Wharton said, “what do you say?”

  “Thank you,” George said, not to Ellen but to Wharton.

  “Go ahead and open it,” Wharton said.

  “For Christ’s sake,” Ellen said.

  It was a book, The World of Wolves. “Jeez,” George said. He sat down on the floor and began thumbing through the pictures.

  How could Ellen have guessed at George’s interest in wolves? She had an instinct for gifts the way other people had an instinct for finding the right words to say. The world of things was not alien and distasteful to her as it was to Wharton. He despised his possessions with some ostentation; those who gave him gifts went away feeling as if they’d made Wharton party to a crime. He knew that over the years he had caused Ellen to be shy of her own generosity.

  “Why don’t you read in your bedroom, George? The light here is terrible.”

  “He can stay,” Ellen said.

  “Okay,” George said, and went down the hall, not lifting his eyes from the page.

  “That wasn’t as expensive as it looks,” Ellen said.

  “It was a fine gift,” Wharton said. “Wolves are one of George’s obsessions these days.”

  “I got it for a song,” Ellen said. She put a cigarette in her mouth and began to rummage through her purse. Finally she turned her bag upside down and dumped it all over the floor. She poked through the contents, then looked up. “Have you got a match?”

  “No. You’ll have to light it from the stove.”

  “I suppose you’ve quit.” She said this as though it were an accusation.

  “I still enjoy one every now and then,” Wharton said.

  “Did you read what that doctor said who did the post-mortem on Howard Hughes?” asked Ellen, returning from the kitchen. “He said, ‘Howard Hughes had lungs just like a baby.’ I almost cried when I read that, it made me so nostalgic for when I was young. I’d hate to think what my lungs look like, not to mention my liver and God knows what else.” She blew out some smoke and watched it bitterly as it twisted through a slant of light.

  “Howard Hughes never let anyone touch him or come close to him,” Wharton said. “That’s not your style.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Only that there’s always a certain risk when we get close—”

  “You didn’t mean that. You think I’ve got this big love life going. What a laugh.”

  “Well, you did.”

  “I don’t want to get into that,” Ellen said. “Let’s just say I like to be appreciated.”

  “I appreciated you.”

  “No. You thought you were too good for me.”

  Wharton denied this without heat. During most of their marriage he had imagined that he was too good for Ellen. He had been wrong about that and now look at the mess he had made. He stood abruptly, but once he was on his feet he could not think of anything to do, so he sat again.

  “What’s the point, anyway?” Ellen asked, waving her hand around. “Living in a stable, for God’s sake, wearing those boots and that dumb hat.”

  “I was wearing the boots because the ground is muddy and the hat because my head gets cold.”

  “Who are you trying to kid? You wear the hat because you think it makes you look like Pierre the Trapper. Ees true, no?”

  “You’ve made your point, Ellen. You don’t like the house and you don’t like me. Actually, I’m not even sure why you came.”

  “Actually,” she said, “I came to see my son.”

  “I don’t understand why you couldn’t wait until June. That’s only two more months and you’ll have him all summer. According to the terms—”

  Ellen snorted. “According to the terms,” she said. “Come off it.”

  “Let me finish. I don’t have to grant you visiting privileges. This is a courtesy visit. Now if you can’t stop finding fault with everything you can leave, and the sooner the better.”

  “I’ll leave tomorrow,” Ellen said.

  “Suit yourself.”

  Ellen bent suddenly in her chair. Piece by piece, she picked up the things she’d emptied onto the floor and replaced them in her purse. Then she stood and walked down the passageway to George’s room, moving with dignity as if concealing drunkenness, or a limp.

  At dinner George announced his intention to acquire a pet wolf. Wharton had entertained a similar fancy at George’s age, and the smile he gave his son was addressed to the folly of both their imaginations. George took it as encouragement and pressed on. There was, he said, a man in Sinclair who had two breeding pairs of timber wolves. George knew for sure that a litter was expected any day now.

  Wharto
n wanted to let George down lightly. “They’re probably not real wolves,” he said. “More likely they’re German shepherds, or huskies, or a mix.”

  “These are real wolves all right,” George said.

  “How can you be sure?” Ellen asked. “Have you seen them?”

  “No, but Rory has.”

  “Who is Rory?”

  “Rory is an acquaintance of George’s,” Wharton said, “and Rory does not have the last word on every subject, at least not in this house.”

  “Rory is my friend,” George said.

  “All right,” Wharton said, “I’m willing to accept Rory’s testimony that those are real wolves. What I will not accept is the idea of bringing a wild animal into the house.”

  “They’re not wild. Rory says—”

  “Rory again!”

  “—Rory says that they’re just as tame as dogs, only smarter.”

  “George, be reasonable. A wolf is a killing machine. It needs to kill in order to survive. There’s nothing wrong with that, but a wolf belongs in the wild, not on a chain or locked up in a cage somewhere.”

  “I wouldn’t lock him up. He’d have a lair.”

  “A lair? Is that what you’re building?”

  George nodded. “I told you.”

  “George,” Ellen said, “why don’t you think about a nice dog? Wolves really are very dangerous animals.”

  George did not want a nice dog. He was willing to admit that wolves were dangerous, but only to the enemies of their friends. This carried him to his last argument, which he played like a trump: a wolf was just exactly what they needed to help them get rid of the sniper.