Cloven Hooves

by Megan Lindholm

  “Looking for grubs?” I ask Pan hesitantly.

  “Probably,” he replies nonchalantly. “Survival skills are among the first memories to waken.”

  I am relieved when his search is unsuccessful. Pan lets him thoroughly explore the area before announcing, “Time to head back.” He hands me the sack and takes Avery up on his shoulder. We begin the long, steady trudge back up the mountain. When I judge we are about halfway there, I ask curiously, “Aren’t we going to reset any of the snares?”

  “No,” he says, so softly I can barely hear him.

  Trepidation fills me. I know what is coming, have known it for weeks, have sensed it as geese sense migration times and fish remember a spawning creek. “Why not?” I ask, hoping to be wrong, knowing I’m not.

  “Because it’s spring,” he says, and his voice goes suddenly husky. But it’s on the next words that it breaks. “It’s time for me to take you home. Back to your own kind.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  * * *

  “I don’t want to go.”

  His fingers are working tallow onto the metal surfaces of his traps. His head is bent over his work. I am lying on the bed, his son curled beside me. Pan is facing the fire, not me, so I see him as a darker form outlined against the flames. I notice that the curls of his hair are down to the nape of his neck now. It softens his silhouette, and makes him appear younger.

  “I don’t want you to go,” he says finally.

  “Then why do I have to go? Why can’t we just stay here?”

  He sighs. “Staying in any one place for very long becomes dangerous. Paths through the snow will melt and fade, but if we continued to stay here through the summer, our comings and goings would soon be plain to read. And some hiker or backpacker would eventually get curious. Besides, this cave is a much less pleasant place in summer. The glacier melts and runs, so you at least get drenched every time you come in or out, and sometimes the flow is enough to make it dangerous, strong enough to nearly wash you away. And there’s the noise of it, like living inside a drum. And … it’s just not very pleasant here, Evelyn. You wouldn’t like it.” He rewraps the trap in a piece of the hoarded brown paper, sets it atop the others in the chest. Already, it is almost full.

  “I don’t mean I want to stay here. I mean I want to stay with you.”

  He is silent for a very long time. I long to go to him, to touch him, but I know it would not be fair. It would make him want to lie. “It wouldn’t work,” he says finally.

  “Why not?”

  “It would be too hard on you.”

  “I don’t care!” I cry out, and Avery pops awake with a jerk. His little head swivels as he tries to determine the source of danger. Pan comes to put a comforting hand on him. He sits on the edge of the bed, leans against me. The closeness of him is a body language. He does not want to be parted from me any more than I want to leave him. His words come reluctantly.

  “Evelyn. I have to take Avery to a safer place than this. To a wilder place, to a place where humans almost never come. I have to watch over him until I’m sure he can cope on his own. That means living more … basically. Not what you would call primitive. What you would call bestial. Like the animals we are. Do you think I always cook the meat I eat? Will you join us when he splits open a rotting log for the grubs inside it? When we huddle under a tree through a winter storm, will you crouch beside us? Run beside us when we chase down a deer? Evelyn, dear heart.” His fingers wipe tears from my cheeks.

  “I could do it,” I say brokenly.

  “Perhaps. But neither of us could stand to watch what it would do to you. And so we’d make compromises, dangerous compromises. And when the time comes to let go of Avery, to put him out on his own, to walk away from him, could you do that, too? I don’t want to leave you, Evelyn. But I have to, if our child is to survive.”

  I crawl into his arms, taking Avery with me. For a long time he holds us both. “Please,” I whisper. “Please. I can do it.”

  “We’ll see,” he says guardedly.

  Late the next morning, we are ready to leave. The bed frame is bare, the two chests have once more been pushed back into the darkest corner of the cave. The worn-out bag is packed, as well as a bundle wrapped in the fur coverlet from our bed. The second one contains mostly bedding and smoked meat. Just before we leave, Pan refills his lamp, and hangs it from a spike just inside the cave. “You think you’ll come back here, someday?” I ask him as I watch.

  “Not me. But someone else might,” he says, and I get a glimpse of his strangely hyphenated existence. The I he is today provides for the I that may come tomorrow. Not just Avery, but whoever carries on his memories and may someday need a shelter. Whatever he does for his son, he does for himself, I think. And then I realize that is just as true for humans. We only pretend it isn’t so.

  We leave. Once more Pan shoulders Avery until we are safely on the flank of the mountain. Then he sets him down and we go single file, Pan, Avery, and finally me. The snow is even softer today, and we break through more often. I am relieved when we work our way down past the snowline and into a part of the forest where the snow has been reduced to patches and islands. Pan sets a steady pace then, and we travel swiftly through the trees, going like I used to imagine Indians going. Without pause or hesitation, weaving through the forest like water flows. I am amazed at how quickly and quietly we go as we thread our way through the shadows. Living so long with him, I have picked up more of his physical habits than I had realized. It is a way of setting one’s feet, and in how the path is chosen. We go as the wild creatures go, slipping in and out of the dappling light.

  We stop only to let Avery nurse. The second time I feed him, I notice how restive he seems. He suckles, then pulls away and works his mouth, and then nurses again. Running my thumb along his lower gum, I find what I have suspected. Two tiny teeth are breaking through in front. We give him a strip of dried meat to teethe on and Pan carries him for several miles while he gums it down into a slimy mess that he finally devours.

  We travel through all of the daylight and most of the twilight before we reach a stopping place. We are on the banks of a stream. The lake it feeds is back the way we have come, but it was covered with ice still. Our camp is minimal. No fire. Only dried meat and cold water. After we have eaten and Avery has nursed, I spread the bedding. I take off my wet sneakers. They are little more than tatters of canvas and sole now. Soon I will have to start wearing the leather slippers I made for the cave. I try not to wonder how they will stand up to steady use.

  Avery has been eagerly exploring the bank of the stream. Now, in a sodden tangle of brush, he has found the remains of a paper wasps’ nest. He pulls it loose from its attachments and gambols up to his father with it. Pan crouches silently beside him. The boy shows it to him, and searches his face for agreement. Pan evidently concurs, for Avery’s small fingers quickly peel away the papery layers of nest to bare sealed compartments of larvae in the comb. I watch as his little fingers worry the larval wasps out of their casing and then into his mouth. He offers one to his father, who accepts it gravely. Pan is sitting, back against a tree, and Avery casually leans against him. As I watch, the boy’s eyes droop. In moments he is asleep.

  I smile at Pan as his gaze meets mine. I hold out my arms, and wait for him to bring me the child. He closes his forest eyes for a moment, then slowly shakes his head. For a moment I am dumbfounded. It dawns on me that he intends to sleep there like that, with the child beside him. I look at the bare downy shoulders, the little rounded arms curled on his chest. Something like pain divides me. I feel challenged, mocked almost. Slowly I get up from the soft warm blankets. I go barefoot to where they huddle together. I sit down on the other side of Avery, my shoulder just touching his hunched little back. I meet Pan’s gaze unwaveringly for a moment. Then I lean my head back against the tree. And try to sleep. I am tired and achy after the long day’s walking, but it is hard to even doze. I keep feeling set apart. Rejected by their faunness. The loneline
ss it wakes in me is too familiar.

  Morning comes too early. I am stiff and chilled despite the blanket some traitor has tucked around me. Both Pan and Avery are up already, and involved in some fascinating splashing game by the stream. I struggle out of my blanket and join them, but the water I splash goes on my stiff face. As soon as I have cleared the sleep from my eyes, I confront Pan.

  “I didn’t need the blanket,” I tell him. “I was doing just fine without it.”

  “I know,” he says, refusing the quarrel.

  “You think I’m soft,” I charge him. “You think I can’t take things that you and that baby can.”

  The trouble with this satyr is that he doesn’t know how to have a decent fight. This sort of thing just perplexes him. His brows knit over his eyes for an instant. “My love,” he says gently, explaining the obvious. “Avery and I were not uncomfortable. We didn’t shiver in the night. You did. So I covered you, against a cold your body could not fight off on its own. That’s all.”

  And that is all, for him. But I have to add, “It hurts my pride when you act like I’m …” I trail off in frustration, unsure of what word to use. Weak. Inferior. Helpless.

  “Different?” he supplies helpfully. “But, my love, you are. Why do you want me to watch you shiver all night when there are blankets to wrap you in? What purpose does it serve?”

  I have no answer for that, and the conversation dies when Avery suddenly deigns to notice me. He charges across the stream in a spray of silver and frolics over to me. And frolics is the only word. He is goat-kicking high as he comes, bounding sideways, pausing to defy gravity with an improbable bound that changes his direction in midair. I am helpless with laughter by the time he reaches me, and even his father is grinning with delight. I stoop down immediately, opening my shirt for him. But he surprises me by flinging his arms around my neck and clinging tightly for an instant. I close my arms around him, and feel how his muscles are developing, how he is already lither than he was when he left the cave. But the embrace lasts only for a second. Then he is tugging at my breast, reminding me that there is more important business to be tended to than hugging. But it is the hug that stays with me through that day’s long hike.

  That night Avery comes to me to nurse as I curl on the blankets. He stays beside me, drowsy-eyed, but as I am dropping off to sleep, I feel him shift impatiently. He kicks the blankets aside, edges over to where his father is already sound asleep on the moss nearby. Too warm for him, I realize. And all the times Pan slept beside me under the blankets? Sharing his body heat with me, supplementing my poor human system. A biological thing, I tell myself. Different, not inferior.

  But in his world, I am undeniably inferior, and every day rubs my nose in it. We are traveling north, following winter’s sullen retreat, so the days and nights warm only slightly as we travel. I cannot pretend I do not suffer more from the cold than they do. When the dried meat finally runs out, I am almost relieved, for it means that Pan and Avery hunt fresh meat for us, and that Pan builds a fire for me to cook over. Avery is often too impatient to wait for such niceties, and eats his raw. I try not to cringe when he goes digging through the entrails for the juicy bits. I want him to do well, I want him to survive, I tell myself. The teeth are coming into his mouth like tulips sprouting in a spring garden. There is no denying that every day he takes less milk from me. My supply dwindles proportionately. Soon he is taking no more than a morning and evening nursing, and those more for the comfort of being held than from any hunger.

  And Pan? He says very little, but notices all. I sometimes surprise a look of sympathy upon his features when he catches me watching Avery as he sleeps, or forages for grubs or samples independence by bounding ahead of us on the trail. Only once does he speak of it. “It will be hard for me,” he says softly, his eyes upon Avery’s eagerly wagging tail as it disappears around a very interesting stump, “to let him go when the time comes. Even knowing all I know, it will still be hard.”

  I do not answer.

  There comes a night when Pan awakens me in the darkness. At first I mistake it for a romantic intention. We have not had sex since we left the cave. Avery is always too wakeful, or I am too weary. I come into his arms, clinging to him, kissing him. He returns my kisses and holds me, but after a moment I sense he is preoccupied. “What is it?” I ask.

  “The border,” he whispers. He is gathering Avery up, trying not to wake him. “I went to look at it, while you slept. Evidently they are taking things more seriously than they used to. We’d best cross now, in the darkness.”

  I try to suppress my disappointment as I gather up the little he has left unpacked. The notion of worrying about the border takes me aback. The Canada-Alaska border is ahead. This artificial division of the land into two separate countries seems even more foolish than it used to. I had almost forgotten such things, for Pan has meticulously kept us away from towns and roads. For an instant I glimpse the peculiarity of the human race as he must see us. A border.

  I follow him through the woods, trying to move as silently as he does. He carries a sleeping Avery against his shoulder. We come to a break in the trees, a long straight slash down the hill that is a bare stripe in the forest. At the bottom of the hill, I glimpse a road. A dim light that is neither moonshine nor starlight is breaking up the night. He motions for a halt, and comes to stand close beside me. Avery brushes against me as Pan leans to whisper in my ear.

  “If we are seen,” he begins. “If we are chased …” He stops, and waits for me to finish the thought.

  I peer in the direction of the vague light that is greying the forest and felling shadows across our path. I imagine border guards with rifles and flashlights down there. Tall, bulky men in stout leather boots. “Carry the child to safety,” I tell him. It is the only possible reply.

  “On the other side,” he whispers, “you’ll come to a river. Very swift, very cold. Don’t try to cross it alone. Go downstream. We’ll wait for you there.” He reaches once to touch my cheek. And then we rise and move on.

  The border here is a shaved stripe through the forest. There is a minimal tangle of barbed wire down the middle of it. Far down the hill, there is a black strip of road, a parking lot, a huddle of cars and small businesses. Lights illuminate it and other lights, mercury lights, point up the hillside. I see no sign of any humans. Still, my heart thunders as Pan hands me both packs. I wait in the shadows as he ventures out. He picks his way as carefully as a stag, and to me he looks as stately. Avery sleeps on, his head nestled on his father’s shoulder. As Pan approaches the barbed wire, he closes the last bit of distance with a few running steps, and then suddenly springs over it. He doesn’t pause on the other side, but bounds off into the darkness of the sheltering trees. As he disappears, I let out my breath in a silent sigh.

  I count to one hundred, very slowly. Surely by now they are well back in the trees. Surely now it is safe to follow. But I take another breath, do another slow count to one hundred. And another. And another. Then I rise and follow. Not for me a run and a leap. Instead I creep like a mouse. I am even too afraid to throw the packs over, afraid they will make some sound as they land and rouse some unseen guard. So I step into the wire, let it catch and bite me, cloth and flesh, and slowly and deliberately work myself free of it as I move forward. It takes an eternity, for no sooner am I clear of one set of prongs before another sets in me. I think I am nearly free of them, when I hear the unmistakable slam of a car door. An engine roars to life as headlights flare in the parking lot below. It galvanizes me, for no sensible reason, and I pull free, letting barbs tear out of my skin.

  I run, in a shambling, crackling rush that carries me into the woods and the horribly deceptive shadows cast by the lights from below. I leap over the shadows of trees, only to stumble over the real fallen logs. I am sobbing soundlessly before I am a dozen yards into the woods. I force myself to stop, to breathe, and then to walk on, picking my way as carefully as I can. I want to call out, to have Pan come and take my
arm and guide me, but I will not risk betraying them. Instead, I go stumbling on, for what seems like hours. Only when I can no longer see anything of the unhealthy grey light do I pause. For a time I stand perfectly still, listening. I hope for a crackling footfall, for the whisper of my name. I listen, too, for river sounds. But there is nothing except the normal night sounds of a forest. Eventually I sink down and tug a blanket free of the bundle. I push my way under the low sweep of a spruce’s branches, and roll myself up in the blanket. I fall asleep, refusing to wonder if I will ever see them again.

  Rain awakens me the next morning. It is not the first time it has rained on me in our journeying. But it is the first time I have awakened alone in the rain, and somehow this seems significant. It is nasty rain, rain with wind that bends the upper branches of the trees and shakes their burden of water down on me at unpredictable moments. As I reroll the blanket and bundle the packs back up, the full significance of my situation comes to me. Here I am, just over the Alaskan border, but with little idea of where over the border. Fairbanks could be three hundred miles away, or six hundred. Rivers to cross? Mountain passes to find? I don’t know. I have blankets, and I think there are a few matches left in the pack. No food. No way of obtaining food, other than my bare hands. No compass, other than the night sky. And from the way it is raining, there isn’t much hope of using the stars tonight.

  I put a brave face on it for myself. The river can’t be far, now. I’ll be with Pan tonight. And even if I’m not, well, hell, we’ve been doing this for days, now. No big deal. I can take care of myself. I shoulder my burdens and trudge off through the dripping forest. I try to stay on a straight bearing of the course I have traveled the night before. Not that I’m sure that’s helpful. Pan weaves us around in his travels, detouring us past the difficult obstacles. I’m not even sure that he was headed back for the Fairbanks area. My stomach is starting to get quivery again. I realize that if I read about someone, in a situation like this, I’d say to myself, the stupid shit deserves whatever happens to her. Imagine going off so ill-prepared! And I’d fold my newspaper and tell myself smugly that I’d be much more self-sufficient than that, much more woods-wise. Silly woman, silly little wailing twit, I’d think to myself. Soaked to the skin, foodless, no compass. What an idiot!