Cry of the Panther

by Jeff Gulvin

Connla stopped his balancing act and dropped off the log. His shoulders sat low and his chin seemed to rest near his chest. He stood a moment then shuffled over.

  ‘You understand maps, son?’ The sheriff made space alongside him. The other men moved back. Imogen was aware of the wheeze and hiss of somebody’s breathing.

  ‘Some.’

  ‘We’re here.’ The sheriff jabbed at the map with his finger. ‘You see? Grover campsite. The only one this far upriver. Anything higher is frozen. See?’ He pointed to the mountains in the distance, their summits hung with snow like slowly melting ice cream.

  Connla nodded.

  ‘This is the trail.’ The sheriff spoke slowly, tracing the line on the map. ‘In back of the trees here.’ He tapped again. ‘This is the clearing where your daddy found the jacket. This the same clearing he left you?’

  Connla shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’d have to see it.’

  The sheriff looked across him at his mother. ‘That OK with you, ma’am, if he comes along?’

  She nodded.

  ‘About a half-mile in, that about right, boy?’ The sheriff spoke to Connla again.

  ‘I guess.’

  ‘Best put a jacket on. It’ll be cold in there when you’re outta the sun.’

  Imogen sat on Connla’s log and watched them head into the forest. Connla walked beside the sheriff, and a big man with a square back walked behind them. Connla looked small, disconsolate, lost. Imogen inched along the log until she sat in the exact spot where he had been sitting. Behind her one of the Search and Rescue women was talking to their mothers. Imogen wondered how it was that women always seemed to get left behind. Her mother lit a cigarette and the smoke drifted, smelling foul against the freshness of the air.

  Imogen suddenly got up from Connla’s log and followed the party into the forest. She didn’t know how far ahead of her the men were, but she couldn’t hear them. She could see the mess they had made of the path, a whole bunch of tracks in the dust, whereas this morning there had been nothing. She looked at the ground behind where she had walked and couldn’t make out any of her own prints. It must be because the men were so big and heavy, she thought. They had the right boots on, too; she was only wearing tennis shoes.

  She picked her way through the trees and listened to the sounds above her head. She could make out individual birdsong, though she couldn’t put a name to the singers. At least they were singing again now, which did something for the blocked air that seemed to have lodged in her chest, taut, like a fur ball. She swallowed and swallowed, but just could not shift it. She didn’t know how far she walked, but the path climbed and the tree line fell back, giving more space and light between the trunks. The ground was covered with broken leaves, fern and bracken, and rock bulged grey against the sand-coloured dust of the trail. There were boulders, great hunks of broken rock in the trees, as if they had split from the mountains, rolled for fifty yards and then stopped. Imogen could see the sharp-sided cliff that climbed in a series of jagged ridges to the south. The boulders formed a clearing and Connla was sitting alone on a flat sheet of stone. He looked up as she came out of the trees. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  She shrugged. ‘What’re you doing?’

  ‘You heard the sheriff. I came in with them.’

  ‘Where they at now?’

  He pointed towards where the cliff bucked at the sky, and Imogen frowned. ‘How come you’re set there then?’

  ‘They didn’t want me to go no further. Sheriff told me to go on back.’

  ‘How come you didn’t?’

  ‘Didn’t feel like it.’ He scratched at the dirt with the toe of his boot.

  ‘Is this where Ewan took off?’

  He nodded.

  Imogen looked beyond him to the circle of rock where dust-blown trails led off in a variety of directions. Far in the distance she heard the roar of Salmon River. She looked again at Connla.

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You sure?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘That this is where he took off.’

  He looked at her, his head slanted to one side. ‘’Course I’m sure. You figure I’d tell the sheriff if I weren’t?’

  Imogen shrugged. Something was wrong, but she didn’t know what it was. She walked in a circle, trailing a flattened palm over the larger slabs of stone. She was aware of the texture against the sweat in her hand, and of the variety of different colours.

  Connla sat where he was and watched her from hooded eyes; head down, trying to make it look as though he wasn’t interested. Imogen stopped, palm flat against one particular rock, and cocked her head to one side. She frowned, then looked again at Connla.

  ‘How come they went the wrong way?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The sheriff and all those men. How come they went the wrong way?’

  Connla stared at her. ‘They didn’t.’

  ‘They sure did.’ Imogen looked at the boulder, her hand still resting on it, and then across the clearing to a jagged slab that tilted awkwardly across the path. Anyone walking by would have to lean to avoid it. She stood very still, unsure of herself, then she crossed the clearing and paused at the leaning slab. It was very black, shiny almost, the surface looked damp but it wasn’t. Connla sat where he was, watching her. Ewan had passed by this stone. Maybe he leaned a hand on it, she didn’t know for sure, but she knew he had passed by.

  ‘Ewan went this way.’

  ‘He did not.’

  She looked again at the stone, silent, smooth to the touch, cold; then, with a brief glance at Connla, she headed off down the trail. In her ears the sound of the river grew louder.

  She walked slowly. The trees were thin again and the path climbed at a slight gradient, then split in two, one trail leading upward, running next to the cliffs, the other dipping in a wider curve which disappeared into the darkness of tree trunks. She slowed, hesitating, the trees seemed to gaze down on her, questioning. The wind moved in the lower branches. She stopped and, looking back, saw Connla twenty yards behind her.

  ‘What you doing?’ he called. ‘Ewan never come this way.’

  She ignored him now, knowing he was wrong, but not knowing how she knew.

  ‘Come on back. You’ll get yourself lost. Then what’ll your momma say.’

  Imogen gazed at him for a moment and he smiled. His whole face lit up when he smiled.

  She shook her head. ‘I won’t get lost.’

  His face fell; then he looked away, kicking at the dust with his toe. Imogen felt something, a sensation, a feeling, some kind of emotion she didn’t understand. She stared at the stones on her left, then moved, as if drawn to them all at once. She stopped again, the fork in the path right at her feet now. She stared up and left, then down and right, bunching her small face and wrinkling her eyes at the corners.

  ‘What you doing?’

  She jumped. Connla stood at her shoulder. She hadn’t heard him come up. He moved like a cat, silent, walking on the balls of his feet.

  ‘What you doing?’ he asked her again.

  ‘Ssssh.’ She was looking ahead.

  ‘What you doing?’

  ‘Listening.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Something.’

  He touched her lightly on the shoulder. ‘Come on back. They’ll be getting worried. You ain’t but a kid. I shouldn’t really be out here, never mind you.’

  She didn’t hear him. She was staring at the paths again. Which way? Right into the trees or left alongside the rock face, pitted and scarred with flinty indentations, copper coloured, and brown, blacker and darker as it rose and the sun reflected off it. She followed the left fork. Connla stared after her, then glanced over his shoulder. The search party was right across on the south side of the clearing. He looked ahead again and Imogen was already thirty yards up the trail.

  Imogen walked more purposefully now. The river was getting louder; she could hear the familiar roar
that had filled their ears for the past three days while they dipped their poles for steelhead. High with the snow melt, the Salmon tore at its boundaries, cutting away clay and earth and little bits of stone from the banks. She could feel the breeze now. She was higher; the growing tightness in her calves told her she was much higher. Looking over her shoulder, suddenly needing comfort, she saw Connla following a short distance behind. Still the air stopped up in her throat, and the further she walked along the path the more the sensation grew. Trepidation, the beginnings of fear. It plucked at her body as something physical. Again she looked back. Connla seemed to be dragging, as if only following because he was worried about her. She could sense his reluctance, see it in the way he shuffled, the way he kept looking over his shoulder.

  The stone on her left seemed to draw her. Her brother had passed this way; she knew it. She could sense him, in the air, the rock, the trail. She walked on, one hand on the wall to her left. The river grew louder. The path was narrow now, the trees falling away to her right. The sun dipped behind a cloud and the shadows faded into a thin grey light. She walked with stone walls to the left and right, as the path became a roofless tunnel where a section of mountain had broken away to form a slim, unnatural gully. She looked back again. Connla was still following her.

  The rock climbed high above her head, blocking out the light, and the dust was damp underfoot. She could smell the river and almost feel the spray. Then the path widened and broke off to the right, cutting a new trail that wound back on itself, then dropped down the hill to the ragged edge of the trees. Imogen stopped again. Ahead of her was a clearing, perhaps a hundred feet long and fifty feet wide, ending in nothing—a bluff, a cliff edge, a ledge, she couldn’t tell what. But she could see the expanse of the Sawtooth Wilderness stretching into the distance. The sky was carved into separate patches of blue by the height of the mountains. Now she had another choice: take the path down into the trees, or cross the clearing. She stood for what felt like a long time and then took a slow step forwards. Her heart was thumping, the river a tumult in her ears. She could see licks of spray leaping where the clearing ended. She didn’t look back, but she knew Connla was behind her.

  As she walked the fear grew and her legs felt heavier and heavier, as if they were gradually filling with lead. Her feet dragged in the dust and it was all she could do to place one in front of the other. The cliff climbed on one side of the clearing, and as the edge drew closer, pinion and juniper sprouted in scrubby, low-lying bushes. From somewhere inside her head she thought she heard voices shouting, but it might have been the river.

  Ten feet from the edge she stopped. The fear gripped her like a cold fist. Breathing was hard and the tightness in her chest had become a physical pain. She wanted to turn her head, to look back and see if Connla was close. All at once she needed Connla to be close. But she couldn’t look back; her eyes were fixed on the height of a fir tree climbing a mountain far in the distance. She was very close to the edge now. She had to get to that edge; she knew she did, but she couldn’t take a step.

  She sat down heavily. The ground was cold and damp, and she could sense the chill creeping through the meagre protection of her jeans. She couldn’t get up, but she had to look over the edge. Rocking forward, she got to her knees, then leaned on her outstretched hands. Lying on her belly, she worked her way towards the edge like a snake, unable to get up, too afraid to try. Closer and closer, elbows in the dirt, hands curled into fists. Eight feet, five feet, four; she could almost see the far banks of the river. She stopped and sucked in a breath. She wanted to see, but her eyes seemed to close. She inched her way forward, eyes shut tight until she felt the rush of cold air on her face. She lay like that, prostrate, resting on her elbows with her fists against her cheeks and her forearms in the dirt. She didn’t open her eyes, instead she imagined the river, tearing this way and that, white foam, huge waves, holes in the water where the currents clashed to drag you under. She felt somebody beside her and, opening her eyes, she saw Connla, his face white as stripped bone, his eyes like glass marbles in his head. He, too, was lying flat, but staring straight down. From somewhere behind them she heard voices shouting, real voices this time. She saw the sudden convulsion in Connla’s throat, then looked down herself. She screamed.

  Twenty feet below, her brother stared up at her. He was being thrashed about by the current, one of his legs trapped under a fallen tree branch which kept him from being swept downstream or dragged fully under. The leg was broken at the knee and it flapped back and forth like a hinge. His eyes were open, but his face was white and he stared without blinking.

  Imogen sat hugging herself under the lee of the cliff while they fixed ropes. Connla sat a little away from her, his father by his side, talking quietly to him. Connla’s face was ashen, but there were no tears. Imogen’s father stood at the edge of the cliff like a broken puppet. He was buckled at the knee and his shoulders were hunched, hands in his trouser pockets. He watched as the rescue team went to recover his dead son. The sheriff was on the walkie-talkie back to the camp. Imogen’s father looked round. ‘Don’t say anything to my wife,’ he said quietly. ‘I want to tell her myself.’

  The sheriff nodded. Imogen’s father bit his lip and his gaze met his daughter’s. They looked at one another, and she thought he was going to come over to dry her tears and comfort her. But he didn’t. He assumed the same ragged position and stared back over the cliff. Imogen looked at Connla, but couldn’t catch his eye. He was far away, in some dim and distant place that only he knew about. The sun was out again, shining on his hair and casting his face in shadow so that he looked not of this world. Only his father looked real.

  Imogen looked between her knees, suddenly sobbing again. Still her father did not come to her. She got up, wanting to go to him, to take one of the hands from his pockets and hold it, make him hold hers. She took a step towards him when something in a pinion bush caught her eye. She moved closer and squinted. At first glance it looked like a little wooden doll and carefully she picked it up. It was a doll, of sorts—an Indian, dancing with its arms above its head and a feather raised in one hand. It looked like there had been two, but one was broken off at the stem. Quickly she stuffed it inside her coat then, looking up again, she saw the stretcher holding Ewan being hoisted over the edge of the cliff and laid gently on the ground. Her father dropped to one knee, reached out with stiff fingers and touched the lifeless face of his son.

  One

  1998

  IMOGEN WAS WOKEN AT five o’clock by the sound of the cockerel crowing. That was when the sun, cresting the mountain, flooded the hen house. She had built it herself, and although it was serviceable and dry, it would hardly constitute a threat to either of the local carpenters. She yawned and stretched, then remembered what she’d planned to do later and a murmur of anticipation beckoned. She sat up, dragging crooked fingers through the tangles of her hair and stared at the shadows cast across the surface of the loch. There were two windows in the bedroom, one in either pitch of the roof, and neither of them had curtains. She hadn’t bothered with them as one window faced the height of Sgurr an Airgid and the other Loch Gael, and anyway, her nearest neighbours lived fifty yards up the road.

  She stood naked for a moment, considering the light. Her small easel was already erected just to the left of the window, which overlooked the loch. The window sill was wide and deep and cluttered with bits of crystal, dominated by two halves of amethyst expertly sliced through the middle. The easel had been there a week now. Every morning the light was different, and she had to try to catch as much of it as she could before the sun got too high. She was working in oils and she squeezed fresh colour onto the palette. The sun was just high enough, casting the waters of the loch black in the foreground. This was what she needed, what she’d hoped for. Good old Charlie Abbott, waking her up like that. The hens had been a nightmare until she had driven over to Skye to buy him. They had nested just about where they pleased and she’d found eggs in the most un
likely of places. Now he shepherded and cajoled them around the yard and they laid their eggs in the nesting boxes.

  She sat on the stool by the easel, still naked, the warmth of the sun from the south-facing window across her back. The light was perfect, and taking a number-twelve brush, she mixed colour and worked on the water in the foreground. Paint smeared the brush stem, blue and black on her fingers. She wiped them on her naked thighs. Brush strokes are the voice of the painter. Words from the past—her tutor at college, bending to study the composition she was attempting to breathe some life into. Edinburgh, when she was eighteen. She paused, mid-stroke. Nineteen years ago now, and it felt like only yesterday. Mr Montgomerie—an old man with bony, high-knuckled hands, resting against his thighs to steady himself. Your style is your style, Imogen. Don’t change it just because you change your subject matter. Your style says who you are.

  She sat back, resting a forearm across her raised leg. A boat moved on the mirror-like surface of Loch Gael, Morrisey crossing from one side to the other. He had a smallholding, rented from the estate, on the northern shore. He kept his tractor parked in a lean-to and rowed across the loch from his cottage every morning and every night. It saved him driving round the edge. She watched him pulling on the oars, no more than a speck in the prow. She didn’t want him in the picture and, as she waited for him to pass, the light altered and she laid down her brush. She laughed and stood up again; this was going to be a long-term composition, no doubt about that.

  She showered, brushed her hair into a single long plait and flicked it over her shoulder, still wet. If it dried that way then it was manageable for longer. Downstairs she put the kettle on, then stepped into the warmth of the morning and looked up at the sky. It was deep blue, like the sea is blue from an aircraft, with no cloud over the mountains. Shading her eyes she looked the length of the valley: nothing on the horizon to suggest anything other than a perfect day.

  Charlie Abbott squawked as she unfastened the latch on the hen house. There were very few foxes round here, most of them had been shot or poisoned by the gamekeepers, but that meant that rabbits overran the place. The only thing that had troubled her chickens was the odd feral cat, and they were few and far between. Six hens and Charlie Abbott, she scattered corn and they squeezed out of the narrow doorway into the yard. It wasn’t very big—not enough land on which to keep her horse—but it was big enough for the chickens to scrabble about in the dirt.