Medicine Walk

by Richard Wagamese

  “I don’t know. Yet.”

  He put his arms around her. The fragrance of her hair. The rim of her ear at his lips. She drew back and looked at him, squinting with the sun on her face. “This was a good thing,” she said. “Don’t let yourself tell you any different.”

  “I won’t,” he said, and she walked off.

  “Well, this here’s the last meal we’ll share. Here anyways,” Bunky said. “Dig in, Eldon. You earned it. That was some fencin’ you done. Proud of ya.”

  “Thank you,” he said. She’d roasted moose Bunky had killed the previous autumn. There were turnips, corn, and mashed potatoes and he ate slowly, enjoying it, making it last. She hovered around the table, adding portions to their plates. He eyed her. The memory of her body under his. He looked at Bunky, who ate with his head down. After a while Bunky looked up across the table and set his utensils down. “You ain’t looked in the pay envelope,” he said, easing his chair back. “All these days in the sun’n the dirt, that’s the pure sum of it. Yer ticket.”

  “Not real sure what I need most right now,” he said. He reached out and pulled the envelope to the side of his plate.

  “Well, she’s a good haul, I figure. Get ya anything.”

  “Don’t want much,” he said. He thumbed open the flap and looked at the wad of bills crammed there.

  “No matter. A man’s got cash in the hand, his mind’ll sort what to do with her.”

  He scratched at the back of his head and looked across at the older man. “I thank ya for this,” he said. “I ain’t felt better in a long time.”

  “Ya done good for yourself. All’s I did was give ya work.”

  “That’s lots,” he said. “Most don’t.”

  “Man’s past ain’t his measure.”

  “Most don’t think that neither.”

  “Well, I’m a different sort. Kinda always have been. Me, I figure ya prove who ya are in the day yer in.”

  “Thanks for that too then.”

  “Ain’t nothin’.”

  “It’s lots.”

  They bent to their plates again and he stuffed the envelope in his chest pocket. She came and joined them at the table. She had a small bowl and she picked at it.

  “You ain’t hungry?” Bunky asked.

  “I nibbled all the while I cooked,” she said.

  “Get you a cook’s belly,” he said with a laugh.

  “Hopefully not,” she said and reached a hand out to touch his. They shared a look across the table.

  “What say we have us a smoke, Eldon,” Bunky said.

  “No,” he said. “You two go on ahead. I wanna clean up.”

  “You ain’t paid to do that.”

  “Don’t need payin’. Something I just wanna do is all.”

  She stared at him and he picked up his plate and took it to the sink. “Well, I’m never the one to argue with a man wants to do extra,” Bunky said. “Let’s us smoke then, girl.”

  He could hear them stand and walk out to the porch and when they were gone he gathered the other plates and scraped them into the bin and stowed the food stuff in the fridge. There was a feeling in him like waiting for a punishment. It felt better to keep moving and he ran the water and held his hands under and let the heat calm him. He took his time washing the dishes and he could hear them talking in low tones. He wondered if she was telling him what happened between them and then he heard him laugh and tap the toes of his boots on the boards of the porch. He dried the dishes. Then he used the soapy water to clean off the counter, the cutting board, the stove and fridge, and finally the sink itself. He towelled the tap and faucets to a sheen and set the towel on the rack to dry. He craved a drink for the first time in days. His gut was agitated. His head was full of thoughts that sped past each other. Trapped. He was shifty-footed and it scared him and he walked out to the porch and leaned on the rail and faced them.

  “Think I’m gonna walk,” he said.

  “She’s near to sundown,” Bunky said.

  He couldn’t lift his gaze from his shoes. “No matter. Feel like a walk is all.”

  “Do you want company?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Thanks, but no.”

  “Well, come in when yer done. We’ll play some cards and maybe have one last story,” Bunky said.

  “I think maybe not. I think I’ll just book in. Kinda tired.”

  “You should be. That was some work. You okay?”

  He puffed out his cheeks and looked around at the barn and the fields and took his time speaking. “Feels good out here,” he said. “I kinda feel like walkin’ it some.”

  “Kinda suck at goodbyes myself,” Bunky said. “This was nice. Havin’ you here. Yer a good man.”

  “Am I?” he asked and risked a look at the older man.

  “I got no call to argue the fact,” Bunky said. “Hire ya any time. Tell others to give ya a go as well.”

  “That’s good of ya.”

  “You done it fer yourself.”

  “All right then.”

  “All right. Ya feel like it, come in anyhow once yer done.”

  He turned and walked across the yard. There was a feeling in him like a bruise, a purple ache that set between his ribs. He tasted a cry building at the back of this throat. It was too familiar and made him fearful. So he strode past the barn and out into the field and aimed for the line of the ridge. Ground squirrels nattered and whistled at his passing. The grass was wet with dew and his pant legs were soaked but he strode fast and purposefully, the feeling in his belly churning and rank like something turned to spoil. He wanted to scream, to run into the trees and let branches cut him, sting him like lashes. But he stopped at the line of them and turned and looked back at the farm. It sat in the hushed fall of evening, the lights from the house like pale yellow eyes. He thought he heard her laughing. He thought of her touching Bunky in that gentle way she had and the idea of that made him half crazy. She’d stay with Bunky. She’d choose what was predictable and safe and he didn’t blame her for that. But he’d miss these days. He’d miss her. He’d miss the lightning bolt thrill of her in his arms. He felt the impending separation like a shearing away of something pliant and soft inside himself and he wanted to drink.

  He dreamed of a valley. It shone in the glow of a setting sun. There was a river wending its way through with the backdrop of mountains and the smell of gum and sap and the feel of the breeze on his brow. He could hear the yap of wolves at play. He sat on a rock that faced the east and he watched the line of shadow creeping westward in time with sun’s fade behind the lip of another ridge to the west, the cool air like a curtain descending. The blink of the light of emerging stars in the purpling mantle of the sky. The susurration of the rising wind in the treetops. He closed his eyes and drew it into him and felt peace and he raised his face to the heavens and sat open-mouthed and breathing, seeing nothing but hearing the motions of life around him everywhere. He heard footsteps approaching from behind him and he listened, unafraid and trying to discern shape and substance from the fall of them, slipping through the rough tangle of root and stone, dropped branches and the dry husk of moss. He opened his eyes and he could see her standing on the top rung of the ladder. She clambered up and walked toward him stealthily, soundless and assured. She touched him and he turned and she kissed him and he fell into it again. Her hair draped around their heads, shutting out the world so that all he could see was her face, her smile, the line of her lips, and the glimmer of her eyes. He kissed her, uncertain if he dwelt in dream and not wanting to move for fear of waking. Her hands on his chest, his ribs, his belly. Her tongue trailed down his neck. His hardness. Her hands on it and she took control and eased the night shift she wore over head and the spill of her breasts taking his breath away and then the soft wet of her all round him, within him.

  They drifted with it. He lost all touch with earth and existed in a primal sphere and she bit his shoulder and thrust at him with her hips and he kissed her neck and her nipples and they
rolled into the straw beside the bed. She laughed in his ear. She turned over and knelt on all fours in front of him and he felt wild with the churn of desire and he put his hands on her hips and sank into her and let his body loom over her and she leaned forward and put her head on her forearms. He put his head back, closed his eyes, and thrust slowly and he could hear her moan. There was no space that they did not fill. He knew he would never relinquish this feeling until the light of a lamp edged the shadow away and they heard the older man gasp and say, “What the hell?” and the spell was broken.

  21

  THEY SAT IN THE HARD LIGHT OF THE KITCHEN. None of them could speak. Bunky sat with his unlit pipe in his mouth, glowering. His eyes were shining. He kept thumping the table with the side of his fist and the two of them could only look at it, both of them snared in the beat of it. He slammed it down a final time and stood, leaning on the table and shaking. She moved toward him and he glared and she stopped, one hand extended toward him, and she withdrew it slowly and let it fall to her side. Bunky stepped around the table and stood over him in his chair. His fist was clenched hard, red and splotched with white from the grip. It shook in the air and Eldon looked at it and lowered his head, waiting for the crush of it against his skull. But the older man cursed once and stepped away into the corner. The two of them looked at each other, faces fallen and empty of words.

  “This is how you repay me?” Bunky asked. “The both of you?”

  He turned from the wall. His face was etched deep with pain and anger and the wildness of despair.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. Pointlessly. “I’m sorry.”

  Bunky shook his head. “Ya can’t be sorry for this. Not this. Neither of ya.”

  “It wasn’t his fault,” she said.

  He stared at her. He tried to laugh but it came out as a dry huff and he stalked to the door and turned and looked at them again. His leg quivered. “I loved you,” he said. “I give ya the whole deal. Trusted ya. Love ya best I could.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Do ya? Do ya? If ya did how come this then? How come!”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You?” Bunky said, pointing a finger at him.

  “It just happened,” he said. “Weren’t no plan.”

  “No plan. Well, maybe ya got a plan now then. What’re ya gonna do now?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “We never talked on it.”

  “Fuck and run? Is that it?” Bunky said. “That why you took the walk tonight? Figure out how ya were gonna get outta here?”

  “No,” he said. “Try’n figure out where to go my own self.”

  “Why, if this was what ya were gonna do anyhow?”

  “Thought she loved you. Didn’t wanna get in the waya that.”

  Bunky laughed then, hard and bitter. “Sure didn’t look ya had me much in mind up in the barn there.”

  “I did. Well, not there. Not then.”

  “No. I wouldn’t suspect ya did. Ya love her?”

  He looked at the floor under the table. “Yes,” he said. He raised his face and looked at her where she stood leaning against the counter with her arms folded across her chest. She was staring at the floor too but lifted her head at the sudden quiet and met his eyes. “Yes,” he said again.

  “And you?” Bunky asked.

  Her face was soft and limned with the light. “Yes,” she said.

  It broke him. Bunky fell against the jamb. He put a hand to his face and when he opened his eyes they were sorrowful. He heaved a breath into him and walked back to the table and sat and put his head in his arms as he began to weep openly now. They could only watch. When it subsided he raised his head and wiped at his face with a sleeve. “Ya come like hope to me,” he said. “All of a sudden and strong and I come to believe in it. Believe in you.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “Thought this place might turn out to be a home. Wanted that with all my might. I love ya too. Even if you don’t hold it for me.”

  “I know.” She said it to herself.

  “Know a lot, don’t ya?” There was bitterness in his voice.

  “Sometimes, things come along of their own accord,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do to prepare for it. Nothing we can do when it drops into our world unannounced. None of us meant to hurt you. None of us knew this was coming,” she said.

  “I’m s’posed to draw comfort from that?”

  “No. I’m just saying how it was.”

  “What do you want to do then? He ain’t what ya might call a real goin’ concern.”

  “I know that too,” she said. “But I also know I gotta live this through.”

  He looked across the table. “Whatta you say?” he asked.

  “I want her,” he said. “Don’t got it figgered how I’m gonna work it but I know I want her.”

  The older man shook his head sadly. “Can’t be no booze-hound. Not now. Not with her. Can ya keep sober?”

  “I can try.”

  “Better do more’n that. You hurt her with drinkin’ I’ll come find ya.”

  “We’ll take care of each other,” she said. “We can both work.”

  He shook his head again. “Like that’s all of it.”

  “I know what the state of it is,” she said. She stood taller now and there was a resolute set to her. Her shoulders squared and she looked directly at him. “I love him. I feel like there’s a big part of him I recognize and know even if he doesn’t. That’s enough for me.”

  “It better be,” Bunky said. “I don’t see a whole lot more comin’.”

  “You said I was a good man.”

  The older man stared hard at him. “Gonna take some convincing now. Where’ll ya go?”

  “Follow the work,” he said. “I know how to do that.”

  “I don’t want her walkin’ or takin’ no bus.”

  “What’re ya sayin’?”

  “I’m sayin’ if yer hell bent on goin’ I can’t say nothin’ or do nothin’ to stop neither of ya. That’s just the set of things. But I don’t want her walkin’ nowhere. I’da never done that. So I’m givin’ her the stake truck.” He reached into his pocket and laid the keys on the table. “Got me the old pickup anyhow. She’s reliable. Loyal even, ya might say.”

  He looked at her when he said this and she broke a little too. “Thank you,” she said quietly.

  “All’s I ask is that ya leave now. Don’t dilly-dally. It plum hurts me terrible to have to look at ya both. Can’t be wakin’ up to see ya leave. Go now.” He slid the keys across the table and stood. “Now it’s my turn to walk. Don’t be here when I’m done.”

  Bunky turned toward the door and took a step, but she moved to block his way and they stood and looked at each other. His face quivered. His shoulders began to shake and when she reached out to him he broke wide open and bawled into her shoulder. She cried too and hugged him hard. They stood like that for long moments then he peeled himself out of her embrace and strode to the door, wiping at his face. He turned at the doorway. “You take care of her,” he said, pointing a finger. “I ever learn she’s been disrespected, I’m coming to find you.”

  “I hear that.”

  “Ya stole my love,” he said. “Ya broke my damn heart. But I can learn to live with that. Got to, least ways. But you be a man about this. Or else.”

  Then he turned and strode out the door and they stood in the silence he left behind, staring at the black space of the doorway until she moved finally and went to gather her things. He walked to the barn and gathered his own few belongings. When he got back to the house she was standing beside the truck, looking out into the dark of the fields. There was a thick roll of bills in her hand. “He left this on the seat,” she said.

  “Don’t know that I can take it,” he said.

  “It’s a lot of money.”

  “Don’t figure it covers any of what we done.”

  “It’s a good stake. We can get set up with this.”

  �
�Blood money,” he said.

  She nodded. “It’s his way of still wanting to take care of me. He can’t let me go without knowing I’m okay.”

  “Are ya okay?”

  She stared out into the darkness of the field. Then she turned and put a hand on his arm and looked at him. “I want to be able to explain this to him one day. Right now I can’t even explain it to myself. But that’s all right.”

  He had nothing to say to that. He laid his bag of belongings behind the seat of the truck. When he looked at her there were tears on her face. He wiped one away with the curl of a knuckle, and she smiled and got behind the wheel while he strode to the other side and got in beside her. They drove away into the black canyon of the night.

  22

  “WHERE DID YOU GO?” the kid asked.

  “Followed the work like I said.” His voice was hollow, empty. He could barely hear him.

  “Did ya drink?”

  “Not for the longest time. I made a promise.”

  “You could hold to that?”

  “Had to,” he said. There was a long silence and the kid could hear the snap of the wood as it died down to embers. “She was a wonder, Frank. You gotta know that.”

  He coughed then, a long, racking cough that made his shoulders shake, and the kid looked at him but all he could feel was a wave of rage in him. He stood up and strode over to a pine tree and broke off a couple of the lower branches. He whacked at the ground with them and snapped one with his boot and tossed it deeper into the trees. He walked back to the fire and hunkered down and poked at it with the end of the one remaining branch. Then he broke it over his knee and tossed the lengths into the fire without speaking or looking across at his father. They both watched while the wood took and flamed upward. “I shoulda known all that way before now. I shoulda been able to have an idea about her instead of a head full of nothin’,” the kid said. “I had a fuckin’ right.”

  “I know it,” his father said. “Been times I tried to speak of her but the words would never come. I never had the sand to open up to it. I was scared that if I did I’d fall right back into the hurt of it and keep right on fallin’ way beyond any bottom I ever landed in and not know how to find my way back up again.”