But I don’t mind.
I’ll do the talking for myself.
Old enough to talk to myself if I want to!
As for God, you know they say
they don’t dare leave alone
religious men
in those deep sea-floor houses.
They can be alone in cells,
I take it, but not as scientists.
They can’t endure the solitude.
It’s not the solitude you know,
it’s Him. No talker, and so critical.
You know it’s tactfulness that He won’t speak.
Sam lazes along, his eye on the ground,
then starts with fascinated glee.
That’s cat tracks on the soil.
Hope Sarah sees him. All this time
reading about them in that book,
the Eastern panther.
They say they like to follow us.
I’ll follow it.
It’s after Sarah maybe, she likes cats.
Sam exits, tracking, from our sight.
III
The sun slips, lowers, sinks.
The sky turns red.
Young Jerry enters, catchless,
with his stick.
Jerry: Not one lousy fish!
Spring run for you.
It’s pesticides. Environment!
Why doesn’t anyone turn up?
I’ve traveled all day along the stream
spearing at shadows.
He sees the hut, goes over,
fiddles with the door,
examines a rusted saucepan —
Rusted through.
and throws it on the ground.
He shudders at a red axe
hung by the door,
the red rust staining the shingles.
Like blood.
It’s like an evil dream.
Nothing that works.
Nothing that’s sound.
Nothing alive in all these woods.
He seats himself beyond the hut
among the small spruce bushes,
rigid, angry, hungry, scared.
A map
that only means my getting lost.
Frost coming.
I must make a camp.
Windbreak. Dry wood.
My God, I’ve got to eat!
Ed Bear has entered from the woods,
and leans against a distant tree;
he chews and spits; watches the boy.
Ed Bear’s not there
for Jerry, who is still alone, still lost,
still fearful of the night.
Jerry: Don’t things make home in old foundations?
Jerry opens his knife, picks up his stick,
peers round the door, steps halfway in the hut.
Frost on the ground like ashes,
ashes like frost.
A hole on the hearth where no warmth’s been
for fifty years.
He probes it with his stick,
jumps back —
Ee-Yah!
He screams in a high voice,
half yelping, like a little dog.
A snake!
Pause. Triumphing, surprised:
I got him!
A long black snake numbed with the cold
hangs pierced two times, both knife and stick.
The young man holds it out from him,
afraid to touch it.
He lays it out across the stone
and cuts its head. Then starts a second time.
A rattler! I’d been killed!
Ed Bear laughs silently, moves off.
Jerry: Could be a nest in there.
He backs away from the hut again.
Glands in the head.
I’ll keep the rattles for Elaine.
Scout fashion, he makes camp.
He slits the snake and flings the guts away,
and strings it on his stick like hot dogs,
wipes his hand off on his pants.
He makes a tiny smoky fire
and hovers by it tensely.
Bears.
They’re mean in spring.
They don’t like fire.
I’ve got to have some firewood close at hand.
I killed that snake by accident.
The Indians had snares.
I don’t like killing things.
I’ve got to though.
He makes a snare with his shoelaces,
remembering knots, bent saplings.
Then he eats.
The snake is burned in some parts,
raw in others. He scrapes the charred skin off
and nibbles the flesh from the small bones.
picking them off with his fingernail.
He gathers brush, a windbreak for the night,
more firewood, and beds down.
The evening darkens over him.
At the same place, not early spring
but autumn — the same time, but
no two get lost in the same time,
the woods being different for each one —
comes Sarah to the hut. For her
it’s not as frighteningly old.
Sarah: A hunter’s camp. Just when I thought
I couldn’t step another inch.
She tries the door.
Not locked.
And nice kept up.
She puts her bag down on the stoop.
An apple tree beside it.
That’s my luck.
The frosts have barely touched them yet.
She fetches down an apple, sits,
and eats.
I surely can’t complain,
I’ve food enough,
though being wild
should make it better than it is.
No taste to these. They may need wintering.
But don’t we all, some way or other.
She stands as if to go indoors,
then checks herself.
No, first I’ll plant this orchid.
Carried all day, it won’t last longer
if it’s held on this long. Soil’s right.
Years from now
they’ll find it growing here and think
it’s natural, not that I planted it.
She lifts the rusted sauce pan,
finds it sound, and steps out shortly
to the stream behind the hut.
Returning, puts it on the stoop,
kneels down, and pulls out from her bag
a plant in a plastic baggie,
a trowel, and half a dozen other things
she puts back in. She digs a hole,
spreads out the roots, and tucks new soil
around the plant, pouring some water
around it, motherly, not too much,
tamps down the soil. Then smoothes the
wrinkled baggie, taps out the trowel,
returns both to her bag. Then Sarah stands,
fetches the axe down from the wall,
removes some kindling from under the stoop
and splits it, recalling her mother’s skill.
Hangs axe back up, takes
pan and kindling in.
Sarah: It’s strange about the stove.
The ashes are cold,
yet I fancied I burned my hand on them.
I like an old stove.
These old things seem to speak to me.
She bangs on the pipes for birds’ nests,
checks the shelves.
Cocoa. And tea bags.
Stale. Smell stale.
I’ll set some water on to boil.
Fish net.
Not that she’s found one,
that she’s thought
of how to make one: underpants —
sew up the leg holes,
loop them to a stick.
She has a sewing kit, of course,
in her carryall.
Quietly! Quietly!
She noisily steps
/>
out of the cabin and into the brush
waving her “net” above her
like a flag.
Sarah: There’s one!
Ha!
Got him!
Ha!
Another one!
She’s caught three frogs. Comes back,
divides her water, tea, then frogs to boil.
Back to her bag to slice the Indian potatoes
for her stew.
Ed Bear emerges from the woods.
Sarah: Hello! You there. You want some tea?
I’ve got some frog stew. Or will have soon.
You got some fish?
Ed grins, but doesn’t answer.
She talks a little louder.
Sarah: You see my old man back at camp?
Tell him that I’m not lost.
I’ll stop the night right here.
Ed Bear nods, slouches off, an errand boy.
She sits down with her tea,
her back against the mouldering door.
That lovely quilt!
Mice have been at it. What a shame.
Aunt Rhoda had that maple leaf pattern
on her guest bed. Imagine leaving a quilt like that
out here to rot away.
She gets back up and goes in for the stew,
using her sweater to hold the pot.
Poor little things. Sam always says
I’d be a vegetarian but I haven’t the heart.
Pause
It’s getting cold.
I won’t mind if mice do share that bed.
She goes back in.
No light emerges from the hut.
IV
The night moves in.
The pink light in the forest fades;
a patter of leaves as of light rain,
an owl in the distance, and somewhere far
off a light streaks through the trees
as if a swinging lantern crossed the dark.
Far cries, faint barkings, dogs perhaps,
then silence. High above
the clearing swims a brilliant moon,
whose light we see, but not its orb,
like a spotlight shining on the stage.
The youngster’s stirring in his sleep.
A Panther’s scream.
Jerry jerks up,
Jerry: My God.
and grabs his stick
for a brand from the fire,
for his pocket knife.
His fire is dead.
That can’t be a panther.
There aren’t any left.
All have been shot.
He pokes at his fire as to stir it up.
The cat walks in, quietly, like a slender man
on his dignity, barefoot, African, Asian, perhaps,
tidy, reserved, a shade apprehensive,
as in a foreign land
preferring not to be noticed,
but Jerry:
Jerry: BACK OFF BACK OFF I’LL KILL YOU! YOU GET OUT
OF HERE I MEAN IT YOU GET OUT!
The cat backs off, still silently.
The young man sits and rubs himself
shivering, agued, by a hard dream.
Jerry: I’ll freeze.
He swallows.
I don’t know if
that animal was real.
I dreamed it was.
Oh Lord
(he’s not religious here)
that moon’s so bright
it’s on me something personal
as if I’m being stared at, and I’m lost.
Nobody knows where I am.
I thought I heard
some creature stirring in the hut.
I shouldn’t have camped close to it.
That old snow in it like a dirty sheet,
the leaves on the floor that seemed to move —
It smelled the bones.
I’m cold.
The moonlight shines like a searchlight
on that shack. I can see that axe
like a sign of death, somehow.
I don’t know why. It’s just the cold.
Pneumonia. Hospitals.
Always so hot.
You think they would have found me now.
A vague sound catches at his ear.
Jerry: It’s somebody crying!
A young girl crying!
Somebody else has got themselves lost!
The Moon comes in the clearing,
fearfully, panting a little,
its hand at its throat,
as if worn out from crying so hard.
It is thin, white-skinned, with
shadowed eyes, in a big white shirt,
bleached jeans, bare feet —
tiny, short-haired, a girl-boy Moon,
definably lost.
Jerry: You’re cold. You’re cold.
He reaches for its hand
but startles at the touch of it.
You ARE cold. There,
don’t be afraid.
Moon: J’ai peur; j’ai froid; je suis si seule —
il y a des siècles que je suis seule!
and then demandingly cries out:
Moon: Qui sont ces gens qui crient dans le bois?
Que cherchent-ils? Ils on des chiens!
J’ai peur des chiens!
Ils jappant après moi!
Jerry: Can’t you speak English? I don’t understand.
Moon: Mais je suis la lune; je ne parle que français.
Jerry: My fire’s gone out. I’ll start it up again.
Are you ok?
Moon: N’entendez-vous cet aboiement?
Jerry: I’ll start the fire. You don’t look well.
He kneels to pile his sticks.
The distant noise of dogs augments.
The Moon runs off.
Then Jerry hears the dogs himself
and stiffens.
It can’t be wolves. Not here.
It is wolves though.
They have them in the game farm.
He looks for the Moon.
Don’t go! Don’t go!
It’s not safe!
I’ve got a knife!
I’ll have a fire!
She’s not safe running out like that.
He hesitates, turning to look
at the searchlight moon-shaft.
She wasn’t real. That was a dream.
That’s why I couldn’t understand her words.
The wolves are real.
I must have fire.
His kindling’s damp.
Holding his weapons he moves off
to the felled logs at the clearing’s edge,
working in darkness.
The barkings fade; the moonlight
lingers after him. He’s out of sight.
Sarah comes out of the hut.
Sarah: I thought I heard a noise.
But it’s only the moon. I dreamed:
an Indian, holding a lantern like a cage,
like a big birdcage,
a humane trap
with a light inside. He opened it
and the light flew out —
and there it is,
it’s hanging in the branches like an owl.
The harvest moon.
She sits down on the stoop,
looks to her right
and spies the panther, calls to it,
calling the neighbor’s cat.
Sarah: Come on, come on out, come on!
She pats the stoop beside her.
The cat comes closer.
She puts her hand out towards it.
Sarah: Oh look at you. Your tail’s all fuzzed.
You’re frightened.
I’ve not got much.
Some frog heads in a dish.
I only ate the legs.
You’ll think that queer.
You wait.
She reaches slowly behind herself
for the cooled pan, puts it on the ground
then moves back.
The panther walks up slowly, eats from it
daintily, not observing the food,
his eye on Sarah.
Sarah: You like that then?
I’ve got a fire.
But you wild cats don’t like that much.
Panther: Thank you, we don’t. Do you hear dogs?
Sarah: Yes.
Panther: I’m off.
He drops the pan, runs off.
Sarah: He seemed a bit on edge.
I thought of telling him there’s no hunting here,
but then, dogs mightn’t know. Besides,
there’s only so much you can say
to an animal. They only understand
what’s in their own experience.
She sighs.
A lovely moon.
It makes me feel so lonely. No,
it’s more than that.
It’s not just me that’s lonely here.
There’s someone else that’s lonely,
terribly lonely. Yes, yes —
I hear a child’s voice,
whimpering, sobbing!
Some little boy lost in the woods.
Sonny? Sonny?
She stands to call. The Moon runs up to her
and shivers in her arms.
Sarah: There, there.
Moon: Maman, j’ai peur; j’ai froid! Je suis si seul!
Sarah: You’re cold poor child. You’re shivering!
She takes her own white sweater off
and puts it over the Moon’s thin shoulders.
Then, speaking slowly as if the Moon
could understand English if slow enough:
Sarah: What’s your name, dear?
Your name?
Moon: Je suis du ciel la fleur niveale.
Sarah: Sit down, dear. I’ll make you some cocoa.
I’ve got a map. I’ll show you on it where we are.
As she steps back inside the hut she calls
back to the Moon:
Sarah: Or maybe you already know?
You can’t be too far out from home!
Moon: au seuil blanc —
Sarah: Blanche I know. That’s white.
You’re white as a candle end.
The Moon shrugs, slips the sweater off,
and wanders listlessly away,
as Sarah comes back outside with a mug.
Sarah: Well, I guess I dreamed that.
She picks the sweater up
and drinks the cocoa herself.
Sarah: Last time I held a real child in my arms,
my own child’s child, it seems a hundred years.
I feel like crying.
A real child’s warm.
It’s lonely without Sam.
V
The moonlight fades.
The clearing, hut, and saplings vanish,
darkness holds, then turns to grey.
The twilight hours of the dawn
show the closed hut, and Jerry sleeping
by it curled in a ball
like a dog outdoors,
with Ed Bear standing over him
as if he’d been standing there
The Witch of the Inner Wood Page 9
