Cry of the Panther

by Jeff Gulvin

  Connla sighed. ‘I was friends with him because he was Ewan Munro. Every kid in school wanted to be Ewan Munro’s buddy, and I was really too young to be in that grade at all. I only made it because of when my birthday fell. I was the youngest guy in the grade and buddies with the most popular kid in the whole damn school. Man, I walked tall over that.’ He looked at the empty fireplace. ‘Maybe you’re right, though. Maybe I did want him gone. I have wondered.’ He stared at her then. ‘I don’t know. I’ve thought about it so much my brain’s been scrambled.’

  Imogen held his gaze for a long time. ‘Tell me the truth,’ she said. ‘Did you push him over?’

  ‘I’ve already told you the truth. He fell. He tried to steal that carving and he fell.’ He made a face then. ‘Why should I push him? He was leaving the US anyway. You both were. You were coming back to Scotland. What possible reason could I have for pushing him over a cliff?’

  They sat in silence after that, then Imogen lit another cigarette and paced to the empty fireplace. ‘There’s something I want to tell you,’ she said. ‘Something you need to know.’ She paused and eased the smoke from her lungs. ‘When you two left me that morning, I woke up and followed you. I only went a little way into the woods because I was scared to be there on my own. I’d got about fifty yards down the trail when …’ Her throat seized up and she couldn’t get the words out. She had never spoken, never practised, never articulated this to anyone before.

  ‘What?’ Connla asked gently.

  She shook her head, sucked harshly on the cigarette and exhaled hard. ‘I went into the woods. You’d gone. I was looking at a ground squirrel and then … then I saw him. I saw him in my head: Ewan up to his neck in water.’

  She was quiet for a few moments, gathering her emotions. ‘D’you know what that means, Connla? Have you any idea what that means? Of course you don’t. How could you? I didn’t know until I looked it up, God knows how many years later.’ She broke off, a trace of spittle on her lip. ‘We talked about mythology, remember? Well, there are all sorts of books about mythology; Celtic mythology. I got one out of the library and it described on the page exactly what I’d seen in my head. It’s called Celtic second sight. If you see a vision of somebody up to their neck in water, it means they’re going to drown. They’re still alive when you see it, but they are going to drown.’

  Connla stared at her, his tongue so thick it stuck to the roof of his mouth.

  ‘Yes, Connla,’ she said. ‘When I saw what I did, Ewan was still alive.’

  He was very still, the realization sweeping over him in a wave: his actions, and their consequences, were what Imogen had lived with for the past thirty years. He felt broken inside. He wanted to go. He wanted to sit there. He wanted to hold her very tightly, standing as she was now, hugging herself at the window.

  But then another thought struck him. ‘Imogen, how did you find me?’ he said quietly. ‘The helicopter must’ve passed a dozen times without spotting me. How did you know where I was?’

  She didn’t answer him immediately, then she spoke without looking round. ‘The same way I found Ewan. I could feel where you’d been in the rock.’

  She turned then. ‘When the police told me you weren’t who you claimed to be, when I first found out it was you, I hated you for lying to me. I mean, really hated you. You played me for such a fool. You betrayed me, Connla. Betrayed my trust. You took pretty much everything from me when I was very vulnerable. I wanted to forget all about you and get you out of my head, so I went up to the stable to work. I cleared out all the muck and laid fresh bedding and then suddenly I saw you in my head, just like I’d seen Ewan, only you were pressed against a cliff.’ She broke off, her shoulders suddenly trembling. ‘That was the moment I knew you were still out there. I knew you were alive, but I also knew you’d fall. Think about it, Connla. It happened to me again. I saw you. I knew you would fall, and if you did you would die.’

  He stared at her then, eyes bunched at the corners. ‘And you still came to find me?’

  ‘I had to. What else could I do? The authorities had called the official search off. D’you know how hard that was? Wandering around out there with Andy McKewan laughing up his sleeve at me, and knowing that, even if I did find you, you’d be dead already.’

  ‘But you still came regardless.’ Connla lifted one eyebrow. ‘Why?’

  ‘Believe me, I’ve asked myself the same question.’

  ‘I wasn’t dead, though, was I. I did fall but you found me in time.’ Connla moved alongside her then, desperately aware of her womanhood—her scent and the weight of her hair falling over her shoulders. ‘Does that make it any easier?’ he said gently. ‘The past, I mean. Nothing being repeated. You must have feared that, even if you did hate me.’

  Imogen made a face. ‘Give me another thirty years and I might be able to tell you.’

  She was sitting on a high-backed chair in the kitchen, sipping a glass of wine and staring into space. Connla leaned against the table and folded his arms. His heart was pounding. For ten minutes neither of them had said anything, and he was hoping, praying, that perhaps things would be OK. That she could somehow forgive him. He couldn’t take his eyes off her: her face, hair, the imprint of her lips on the rim of the glass. Even after everything, the reality was that he had found her, and to lose her now after all of this did not bear thinking about.

  But the room was suddenly cold and the wind broke against the walls of the house. Connla’s mouth was dry. ‘I loved you, too, Imogen.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What you said to me up at the stable. I fell in love with you, too.’

  ‘No, you didn’t. You were just trying to appease your guilt.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Yes, Connla. Yes.’ She set the wineglass down. ‘That’s exactly what you were doing.’

  ‘So what happened between us,’ he said, gesturing to the window, ‘out there in the hills, you think that was all just make-believe, do you?’

  She looked at him coldly then. ‘I don’t know. Maybe you were just getting laid.’

  ‘Of course I wasn’t getting laid.’ Connla shook his head. ‘Goddammit, Imogen, you know I wasn’t.’

  ‘Connla, I don’t really know anything about what I think. I’m not sure I want to think at all. It’s been thirty years. Maybe I just want to forget about it again. Maybe I just want my life back.’ She broke off and looked between her feet at the floor. ‘I think you’d better go now.’

  ‘Imogen—’

  She held up a palm. ‘No. Please, Connla. Just leave me alone.’ She stood up. ‘I’m going upstairs now. We’ve talked ourselves out. There’s nothing left to say.’ She pointed to the dresser. ‘There’s the phone. If you ring the hotel, they’ll fix you up with a cab.’

  Twenty-Seven

  IMOGEN DID NOT WATCH him go. She sat on her bed upstairs, listening to the thud of his crutches as he hobbled to the waiting taxi. She listened until the silence returned once again, the silence of her life after turmoil. And there was no sound whatsoever; no wind to press the window, the loch quiet against the shore and the house as still as her brother’s grave. She remained where she was for what seemed like a long time, then she went downstairs and unlocked the door to her studio. The unfinished canvas still stood on the easel, dominated by the rock, and within it the outline of her brother. The past became the present and the future and the past again in a moment. She closed her eyes and bit down on her lip.

  Outside, the wind seemed to have risen once more and the loch was alive with waves, like chips of flint in the darkness. Imogen’s hair flew about her face and she hooked it behind her ears, as Connla had done before her, and peered into the gloom. Far in the distance she could see the headlights of the taxi as it wound its way towards the main road.

  She lay in the bath, aware of herself and yet unaware, as if someone else was thinking her thoughts to make sure she didn’t have to face them.

  It was gone, finished, over. She hadn’t e
ven said goodbye, just let him shuffle outside and close the door behind him. Now he would be back at the hotel, and tomorrow he would be on the bus, and then on the plane and home to America. She sat up and stared at herself in the mirror. She could see the haunted look in her eyes.

  Billy was polishing glasses and McKewan and his crew were in the bar; their conversation stilled into silence as Connla hobbled in on his crutches. He stood for a moment, regretting going in, and McKewan looked at him sourly. ‘You’re up and about then?’

  ‘Yes. Thank you for what you did, coming out to find me. You saved my life.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right. We did.’ McKewan turned his back on him, picked up his pint and swallowed what was left in the glass. He nodded to his crew and they trooped across the road to McLaran’s.

  Connla looked at Billy.

  ‘Pint, is it?’ Billy asked.

  ‘No, thanks, Billy. I’ll just go up to my room.’

  He climbed the stairs with difficulty and sat down on his bed in the darkness. He hadn’t switched on the light, but the room was illuminated by the glow of a street lamp. Beyond it, Lochalsh stretched in laced black to the sea. Connla could hear the waves among the boulders which littered what passed for the beach. He had heard them on the stanchions under the bridge as he crossed it one last time in the taxi. The driver seemed to know who he was and conversation during the seven-mile ride had been non-existent. From downstairs he could hear Billy stacking glasses, then there was silence as he closed the bar and disappeared out to his bungalow.

  Connla knew he wouldn’t sleep and, easing himself up on one crutch, he leaned on the window sill and lit a cigarette. The smoke dulled the pane of glass before his eyes, blocking his vision and forcing his thoughts back on himself. He knew he had been a fool; more than that, a coward, and look at what it had cost—not just him, but Imogen. She was right: she had probably been doing just fine with her life before he’d arrived to ruin it all for her. He thought about home, the United States and his cabin in the Black Hills. Would that he could just go there and hide and lick his wounds like a stricken cougar until he was fit and strong again. But the Fall beckoned, and with it two semesters in Washington. After this he wasn’t sure he could face them. Crushing out his cigarette, he stripped off his clothes and went to bed.

  He left on the bus in the morning. It would take him to Perth, then he’d have to take another bus to Edinburgh and a train to London and the airport. The driver pulled over for a coffee break beyond Spean Bridge and Connla sat in the silence of the mountain road and watched as the sky pressed black clouds against the horizon. The hills dulled to the darkest green and wind ruffled the grass by the roadside. Summer was waning. Autumn was coming and the world would turn gold and brown, then white on the highest hills. The bus seemed to sit for a long time and the clouds got lower and lower. By the time the driver headed down to Dalwhinnie it was raining.

  Imogen had sat in the cab of her Land-Rover and watched the bus take the bend on the road by Eilean Donan castle. Waking early, she had driven up to her horse’s field like a woman possessed by a demon. Keira watched her for a little while, then took off to the highest point on the hill to chase sheep. Imogen worked until she was sweating and her hair fell in damp locks across her eyes. Only then did she realize she was crying. She had driven home and passed the bus on the bridge before the turn for Gaelloch. She’d slowed, made her turn and then swung in a loop and crawled back to the main road. She didn’t see him get on, but the bus pulled away from the hotel and she followed it as far as the corner. There, she turned into Eilean Donan car park, where she sat with the engine off, watching till it disappeared into the foothills.

  Nobody met Connla at Dulles Airport. There was nobody, except possibly Holly, given his semi-crippled condition, but he hadn’t told her he was coming. He stood for a while, leaning on his sticks, and thought about what to do. He bought a cup of coffee and sat drinking it, looking out of the terminal window at the heat softening the pavement and thinking of the complete mess he had made of everything. He was fit enough to still do the two semesters teaching, but was appalled by the thought of it. He finished the coffee, knowing he was only putting off the inevitable, and made his way outside. He took the Flyer to Falls Church and then a metro train to Foggy Bottom and the Holiday Inn he always stayed in when he was in DC. He climbed the escalator to the street and hobbled the rest of the way, not wishing to be stuck in the back of a cab. The city was still hot and sticky with the residue of summer.

  He got to the hotel and stopped, laying his bag down on the sidewalk, and looked at the glass-fronted entrance. A bellboy watched him, smiling, then he came over and offered to take Connla’s bags.

  ‘Just dump them inside for me, will you? I’ll be right there,’ Connla said, and slipped a dollar bill into the man’s hand. He took his cigarettes from his pocket and leaned on one crutch to smoke. The bellboy came outside again and watched him for a moment. Connla crushed out the cigarette and hobbled inside. The receptionist looked up and smiled. ‘D’you want one bed or two in the room, Dr McAdam?’

  Connla blew out his cheeks. ‘There is only me,’ he said.

  The girl tapped at her keyboard, then looked up again. ‘OK. I’ve put you in room three ten. That’s on the third floor. I just need to take an imprint of your credit card.’

  Connla fished in his wallet and, as he did so, he looked at the clock on the wall behind her. The emptiness gnawed like hunger in his gut and he hesitated. The girl had her hand out for his card. ‘Dr McAdam?’

  Connla made a face. ‘You know what, I’m sorry. Can you cancel that and call me a cab instead?’

  Very late that evening, Paha Ska, the buffalo-skin painter from Keystone, dropped him off at his cabin in the Black Hills and hefted his bags from the back of the truck. Connla had been lucky: the old Indian had been collecting his wife from the airport in Rapid City after visiting her sister in Arizona. He had to drive right by Connla’s cabin to get back to his shop.

  ‘You gonna be OK, bro?’ the old man asked him.

  ‘Yeah. Thanks, pardner.’ Connla shook his hand.

  ‘Call in for coffee next time you’re passing the shop.’

  ‘I’ll do that. Thanks.’ Connla struggled up the three steps and dropped his bag on the floor. The cabin was in darkness, the drapes still pulled, and it smelled of age and old leather. He didn’t bother to open any of the windows, although the evening was hot. Leaving his bags where they were, he crashed out on the bed and slept through till morning.

  He woke to the emptiness, that vacuum in his stomach that takes away hunger; the same hollow sensation he had felt since leaving Imogen’s house. She was in the middle of his head when he woke, right between his eyes, almost like a physical pain—her face, body, scent—as if that were her space and she would occupy it for all time. He lay there in the silence, not daring to think about what might have been. Soulmates: he remembered the discussion they had had in that café in Kyle while rain ran opaque on the window. Found and lost in one terrible moment.

  He didn’t want to get up, but he forced himself and took a shower. His left leg was still in plaster, so he left it dangling outside the tub and washed himself down, then he scraped the beard off his face with a wet razor. When he was done, he shuffled round the huge single room, opening the drapes and windows. Then he opened both the front and back doors, creating a freshening breeze right throughout the house. He glanced at his mail, saw nothing but bills and shovelled them into one unopened pile. His eyes wandered to the walls and his newspaper clippings from Britain. The black beast of Elgin stared out of the pictures at him.

  He made a pot of coffee and sat down with the photographs he had developed in Scotland. They took him back to that day by Lochalsh, before anything had gone wrong and he and Imogen had been close. He loved her. He had known it then and he knew it now. He should have been up front right away. If he had he wouldn’t be sitting here like this. He wasn’t one for moping or feeling sorry for himself;
life had already thrown far too much at him for that. Normally he could ‘cowboy up’ pretty good, but this … this hurt with a vengeance.

  Getting up from the crude wooden table that served both as desk and something to eat off, he made his way to the yard door and pressed back the screen. There was sunshine on his face now; warm mountain sunshine. Once more he was reminded of the precious time they had spent together sitting on a rock while she painted him. His breathing grew sharper as he saw her in his mind’s eye, naked against the moonlight; and in the morning, when she’d bathed, and the water and sunlight had combined to raise gooseflesh on her skin.

  A movement among the tree stumps at the top of the yard caught his eye and he saw Mellencamp looking at him. She had her summer coat, her muzzle flat and broad, the white fur round her mouth set off by the black of her nostrils.

  ‘Hey, girl.’ Connla shuffled off the stoop and crossed the dirt towards her. She watched him, looking at his two additional legs with a quizzical expression, and when he was about ten yards away she flattened her ears and gave a low growl of warning. Connla paused, frowned and then his face broke into a smile. He could see two spotted bundles of fur playing together beside her. Very slowly, he shuffled himself round and slid down a tree till he sat in the dirt with his back resting against the trunk, facing away from them. The cubs looked up at him, their fawn-coloured coats covered with black spots and paws that were way too big for their bodies. They glanced at their mother, moved over to nuzzle against her breast for a moment, then their curiosity got the better of them and they advanced on him. Connla watched for Mellencamp’s reaction, but she seemed passive enough, ears pricked forward now, watchful but silent. He made no movement, didn’t even lift his hands as first one cub, then the other, came over, sniffed at him and poked him with their paws. The male climbed onto his leg and slipped and slithered against the plaster.