Before We Sleep

by Jeffrey Lent

  The kitchen was warm after the modest heat of the shed. Steamed from boiling water. His father was nowhere in sight. The house was quiet but for steps down the stairs. He leaned against the range and waited, for what, he did not know. For what, he could not know.

  His mother came into the room, clutching to her breast a bundle of soft blanket. Which she held out to him and he took the bundle into his arms and his mother said, “Isn’t she the most amazing thing in the entire world.” And turned and went out of the room and back up the stairs. Or, he later assumed, that was what she did.

  The bundle was, within the blanket, solid and warm and the size of a cottontail rabbit but only a small pinched red-and-purple face was revealed to him. And as he stood looking down at the face and realized what he was holding, the eyes flickered and popped open and he gazed upon the girl as she gazed up at him, their eyes meeting, locking. Her eyes blue and endless.

  And he was flooded. Not only was he the first person she saw in this world, but she entered him at that moment. All ways. Without speaking, for words were outside his heart, he made promises to her. She was indeed amazing, a miracle for a man void of miracles and she was not so much his as he was hers. Newborn and yet solidly herself, her eyes, and he did not know if newborns could see or what they saw—it did not matter—her eyes upon him as if entrusting and she was. He would guide and protect her, carry her when he could, carry her when she needed him to. Carry her always if together or apart. For but then she would never be apart from him. He lifted her close to his face and held his breath and felt her own small breaths upon his face, warm and sweet.

  He did not think of the war. He did not think of the blonde Brigitte. He did not think of anyone, for she was not a stand-in for anyone or anything—in those moments she was fully and solely herself and the weight of this understanding was there in the weight of her, more considerable than her actual weight. She seemed to him grave and contemplative and this also felt right, as if there was no other way for a new soul to take purchase in the world, to take measure and find some other soul tending, attentive and given utterly to her care and safety and all things she might ever want or need. How could it be otherwise?

  A whisper, meant only for her, ever: “Katherine Anne Snow. Hullo there, you. Katey. Hullo Katey, girl. Don’t fret. I’ve got you now.” And she was not fretting, her face ancient and newly made, her eyes almost unblinking upon him. His also, upon her. His heart wild and immensely calm. As the job of his life now lay clear before him, within his hands.

  She was moving now within the blanket-swaddle and her face pinched and her bow of a mouth opened but no cry came out as he leaned and loosened the swaddle enough so one small fat arm, tiny fingers clenching, came out and he shifted her along his left forearm and extended his right index finger down to her seeking hand and she wrapped her fingers around his single one.

  Her eyes still upon his. He walked the kitchen with her, slow at first, then still slow but certain as her calm remained. He was carrying her. He’d carry her however far she’d let him. And then some incalculable distance well beyond that on into eternity, was how it felt. Was how it was.

  Sometime later his mother came into the room and said, “You can see Ruthie now. She was torn up pretty badly but Doc has her stitched up and she’s resting but awake. Here, let me hold the baby.”

  And even more later the story would be told of how he’d handed Katey over and then seconds later taking her back into his arms and leaving his mother so abruptly and dismayed at the sudden snatch but at the moment it seemed too long to be parted from her, and so he carried Katey up the stairs and into the bedroom, now cleaned and freshened which he also didn’t understand at the time, Ruth under heavy covers of layered quilts, propped upon pillows and Doctor Durgan tilted back in a rush-seated chair against the wall, his eyelids drooped but awake. Oliver stood against the side of the bed, the girl cocooned in his arms as he looked down upon his exhausted wife and he said, “It’s good, Ruthie.”

  She made a tired smile and pushed the covers down and reached toward him. “Let me have her.”

  “No,” he said. “I’ve got her.”

  She studied him a short time, then reached and unbuttoned the top of her nightgown, her breasts hard, nipples protuberant. She said, “But she needs to nurse, Oliver. And I need her to.”

  “Oh,” he said. He turned sideways and settled on the edge of the bed and only then passed Katey over to her mother.

  Only once they were gone did he realize how many doubts he’d carried. The girl lifted them away.

  * * *

  Two months later on a flawless May afternoon he carried her high up Beacon Hill to the hayfields beyond the old plane-spotting tower and sat in the new-sprung grass dotted with dandelions like a starfield, and then lying back in the grass with the girl curled upon his chest and shoulder, the warm bake of the sun an almost forgotten pleasure. And lying there he told the girl things he knew. Later, he could not recall what he said but at the moment he spoke to her for half an hour or longer without pause and he did not tell her all he knew, for there were some things she might never need to know, but he told her enough, far more than he’d told anyone else. But, importantly, he told her of the world around them, the world that he knew and that sustained him. He told her of the people she came from, and what that meant to her. Finally, the one thing certain he retained, was he told her of the beauties of life, in the multitudes of that beauty. And telling her these things, he knew his words were entering her and lodging there, somewhere in her formative brain, her mind, her soul. That perhaps he was doing nothing more than putting words to what she already understood. She was silent throughout this account and when he finally rose up to carry her back down the hill she nested against his shoulder and cheek and bobbed along as if she too was calmed and settled, what worries might surround her laid to rest. So he walked downhill this most lovely of afternoons with an ebullient heart, as if indeed there was goodness in the world. For he had just witnessed it, been party to it. And even within hours when he forgot all he’d said, he understood he’d been in a state of grace. And that buoyed him as well. It seemed right and well that his actual words were forgotten. Or not forgotten so much as residing beyond memory—two very different conditions.

  Ruth resumed teaching when Katey was seventeen months old—she’d been off two full years, that of her pregnancy and then the next and told Oliver flatly that she couldn’t afford to risk losing that job forever and it was unclear to him exactly how she meant those words but he didn’t argue with her. They owned the house and he still worked a few nights a week taking inventory, stocking shelves and writing up orders for the mercantile and the fiddle money wasn’t great but he passed time in relative contentment and also knew Ruth did not, that she needed her work for reasons well beyond money. They’d reached a harmony within themselves and with each other, or, truly, found the harmony that had long been there, learning it now as adults and thus growing into it, as if it held an existing shape they must discern and fill. If they were seen as unconventional they didn’t consider themselves so; they knew everyone and everyone knew them and no one they knew could be considered conventional; it was, in fact, the inconsistencies and eccentricities that delivered character and personality to their neighbors and community members. The gossips were known and thus marked, and all people know themselves distinct. Ruth had pedigree and intellect and the sharp kindness of a good teacher. Oliver held to himself and repaired fiddles and quietly understood that his parents were the principal merchants, wealthy people by the standards of the place. If some saw him as odd it was only so much more truth in his deliberate pace. And the little girl riding bobbing on his shoulders made people smile.

  They only ever once had another conversation about Brian Potter. At Katey’s first Christmas they received a second card from him, addressed to both and with a handwritten message of cheer and best wishes for the coming year.

  “Did you send him one from us?”

 
; “I did not.”

  “Does he know about her?”

  “He has no reason to.”

  The cards came for several years and Oliver glanced at them and tossed them aside and then one year realized they’d had no card and couldn’t remember how long ago the last had come and he didn’t ask Ruth. He didn’t care.

  In her fifth November he drove one afternoon of watery light up into the hills beyond the Williamstown Gulf, the trees bare-limbed but for the curled coppery beech leaves that would hold through the winter, the balsams and hemlock needles a dark, oily green, the sun pale behind thin clouds, low in the west. The truck heater threw the faint tang of old mouse droppings and the radio was turned low to country-and-western songs. Katey was bundled in a corduroy jacket, jeans tucked into rubber boots against the frozen rutted mud, her honey-brown hair pulled back in a high ponytail. Dirty pink mittens dangled from their strings from her jacket cuffs. She was singing very low along with the radio, not the words of the songs but her own words, too faint for him to make out. He was used to this, much as she was used to being bundled into the truck for excursions. She was not a child to pester asking about their destination but content simply to ride, having done so since earliest memory. They passed some other few trucks and cars, with men in wool pants and coats, hunting rifles, now and then with a buck in the bed or lashed over a fender. The sound of gunfire cutting across the stark land. He watched her as he drove, as he often did, his eyes almost furtive with love. This afternoon watching more cautiously, wondering as he seldom bothered to how she would respond at their journey’s end.

  She was still young enough, a year away from starting school, that he hadn’t yet begun to watch her and think of himself in the moment. Of herself in the moment. She was simply there, along with him as she had been all of her life.

  There wasn’t so much of a driveway as simply the road widening off to one side, a couple of old cars, neither running, before the low one-story house, the swaybacked barn off to one side. The side of the barn hung with traps of all sizes. A pair of big hounds, some part redbone some black-and-tan showing in both of them, stood at the end of chains and roared at his truck. A pack of beagles swarmed out of the barn and also stood, their baying surprisingly deep for such small dogs.

  “I think those dogs are more bark than bite,” he said. “But why don’t you let me get out first.”

  “All right.” She was looking at the dogs.

  As he came down out of the truck the door to the house swung inward and a man stepped out and stuck a pair of fingers in his mouth and whistled and the pack of dogs went silent. The big hounds sat on their haunches, the chains still stretched tight, watching.

  “Hey, Cap, it’s Oliver Snow, here,” he called.

  Cappy Levesque wore stained wool pants that at least one owner ago had been part of a suit, a pair of flannel shirts buttoned one over the other, colors muted with wear and woodsmoke. His gray-and-black hair was worn long and pulled back behind his ears, touching the collars of his shirts. He peered, setting one hand scout-like above his eyes to shade from the weak sunlight.

  “I can see,” he said. “Your little girl, she up in the cab there?”

  “Yup.”

  “Bring her in, bring her in. What you want, you?”

  Oliver walked forward and shook hands, nodding, then as he turned back to the truck and lifted Katey onto his hip, he said, “I’ll tell you, Cappy. I was looking for a pair of snowshoes and I came to think of you.”

  “Aw, I don’t make em no more. Them folks up at Tubbs, they got their big steamers and use precut evert’ing. I got work enough come the winter.” He leaned toward Katey and smiled bright white dentures at her and said, “And you, missy? How you be this pretty afternoon?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.” She was wide-eyed and her hand clenched tight to Oliver’s coat.

  Cappy said, “Your papa, there. Tell him to come on in the house and we figure out this snowshoe business, okay?” Then he leaned to Oliver and winked and said, “I got me a litter of beagle pups, tickle her pink. Come on.”

  As they went through the door, Cappy said, “Your snowshoes busted or what? I could make new bindings, that what you need. But why don’t you just get em from Tubbs? You get the wholesale anyhow, don’t you?”

  The kitchen was warm from an old flattopped logging camp stove and smelled of smoke, wood and tobacco, and man, and a braid-stream of other odors, the tang of urine underneath all, from the scents and lures the man cooked up himself to use on his traplines. A pot of stew gently simmered on the back of the stove and Oliver guessed once it was cool enough to keep the fire, the pot likely never emptied but was replenished with meat and root vegetables throughout the winter.

  He set Katey down and she stood there, now gripping his pantleg. From a nest of blankets beside the stove came a low growl and then puppies came bursting across the floor. She went down on her knees and the puppies scrambled over her legs and lap, her hands floating among them as she leaned down and they lifted to lick her face and then one nipped and she jerked up and the nipper tried to scramble up the front of her coat. She reached and plucked the puppy up and turned it sideways in her hands and held it against her cheek.

  Levesque said, “There. She’s set now.”

  Oliver pointed his chin at her and said, “I was thinking about a small pair of snowshoes. Tubbs, the smallest they make is the bearpaw and I remember as a boy wearing those and struggling through the snow and most all I got was cold and miserable. I quit em for years. I was hoping to start her off better.”

  “You want a good crust of snow. But hold on, let me see. There’s somet’ing to the barn, they ain’t rotted or mouse-chewed.” Beside the door was a row of pegs hung with wool jackets and sweaters, a mackintosh, a pair of hip boots and various caps and hats. He took down a blue tuque with white snowflakes around the rim, pulled it on and went out into the day.

  “Daddy?”

  He turned. “Yes, bean?”

  She was struggling to stand, a beagle puppy the color of deerhide with one black ear, the black patch crossing over the crown of its head and down its nose, clutched in her hands. He reached for her elbow and she came up as she said, “I want him, Daddy. I want him so bad.”

  He thought Oh, a hound. He’ll break your heart. But said, “I didn’t hear Mr. Levesque say anything about their being for sale. How do you know it’s a him?”

  “He peed on my jacket.”

  “Well, that’s not a very promising start, is it now? What would Mom say?”

  “She’d say he’s just a puppy and was excited.”

  “Would she now?”

  She was looking at him, blinking slowly. Very serious. “I think so.”

  “It’s about winter. That’s not a good time to get a pup. The snow and all.”

  “But he’s here now!”

  Levesque came back through the door. He was carrying a pair of very old small snowshoes, the shape of teardrops, with fine delicate lacing. “Who’s here? Me?” He looked at Katey and said, “Oh, I see. You found the right one?”

  “Daddy said they might not be for sale.”

  “You wait a minute, you,” Levesque said. He held out the snowshoes to Oliver, who took one in each hand and turned them over, looking at them.

  Levesque said, “You get your deer?”

  “No,” Oliver said. “I went a couple times as a boy and it didn’t take. You get yours?”

  “Oh yuh, I got mine all right.” And shot his eyes away the briefest of moments. Cappy Levesque ate deer meat year-round. As did a number of dairy farmers and others up in the hills. Contrary to rumor, the meat in his winter stew never came from the fur-bearers he trapped, although he swore by young woodchucks fat with spring grass. He looked back to Oliver and said, “Those pretty things, they do the job, you think?”

  “They’re lovely. But so old, they must be worth a fortune.”

  Levesque shook his head. “They only worth being used. They come down to me. Now I
pass em along. But that babiche, that’s moose. You don’t be putting no shellac or nothing like that on it, you hear?”

  Oliver ran his fingers over the delicate lacing. “It’s so dry, though.”

  “Yup. But sound. You got bear grease?”

  Oliver almost laughed. “No,” he managed. “I don’t have bear grease.”

  “I didn’t think so.” He pulled a Prince Albert tobacco tin from his back pocket and palmed it over. “There’s enough here, get you through a couple winters.”

  Oliver tucked both snowshoes under one arm and reached for the tin. As he took it, Levesque held his eye and said, “But you run out, good clean lard works fine. Just fine.” And he grinned.

  “That’s good to know,” Oliver said, and grinned also.

  Throughout this Katey had stood with the puppy cradled between her chest and left arm, her right hand running over the tawny fine teacup of dog-skull, waiting.

  Levesque swiveled to her now and said, “Your papa. He’s right. Them pups ain’t for sale.”

  “Oh.” She didn’t move.

  “They dam? Mama-dog? She my best rabbit dog. They sire, he my second-best. The rest of that pack out there, barking at you? They all worthless. I’d drown em if I didn’t have such a soft heart, that’s how bad they be. So these, these pups here, they gone get me back in the rabbit-fur business. That’s how it is. So, no, they ain’t for sale. But I’m thinking …” His voice trailed and he scuffled one hand over his face as if chasing a thought.

  “What?” she said, unable to help herself.

  “Well,” he said. “That little bugger you got there? He all the time be pestering me. Biting at my ankles, my pant cuffs. Trying to climb up me when I’m setting in the chair. That a problem, see?”

  Her face was screwed with puzzlement.

  “Yup. That’s not good sign. You hounds, you want em to be thinking about other things than you. You ain’t looking for a pal in you hound. You want the hound to be thinking Rabbit! all they time. It’s true. You, all you be good for is to feed em, that’s all they think of you. And when you come out with the little .22 rifle, they know that mean Rabbit! You see? That one you got there? He worthless, is what I think. He gonna want to sleep on the bed, follow you to school, that sort of thing. You be setting down he go to sleep on you foot. Oh, no. Now, he might, you go in the field, the woods with him, he might holler and chase off after the cottontail. He might. But you know what else he gone be doing?”