With his hands in his pockets, one hand touched rabbit fur. It froze a second, and then he remembered he had carried the knife wrapped in fur the whole afternoon.
I’m too tired. Stalking will take muscle.
Dude would stay close to town. Mama and them on the north side, if they’ve started home.
Has to be the girl.
M.C. had an idea. He rushed inside the house before he knew for sure what he would do with the idea he had. In the kitchen, he looked around, searching for something. Seeing the stove, he remembered he hadn’t prepared anything for supper.
Only leftovers. Mama can do that.
He held his hand over the stove and could barely feel heat rising. So he threw in sticks of kindling and a few pieces of coal. He grabbed a box of matches and pocketed them.
Next to the icebox, he saw the bucket and mop with which he was supposed to clean the kitchen after every meal. M.C. felt the mop.
“Wet!” he said. But then, something dawned on him.
Hurry up, he told himself.
He carried the mop to his mother and father’s bedroom. The room was semidark. There was a light with a pink shade clamped to the headboard of the bed. Above it on the wall was a calendar with a brown baby smiling.
He could see well enough without a light. The old and worn catalog was on the floor behind the door. Pages were missing from it. He tore out more pages, as many as he could in the few seconds he would allow himself. When he had a bunch, he rolled them up, moving quickly into the kitchen. Next, he pulled long strands from the mop and tied the rolled papers to the mop handle.
He raced back outside. Undoing his belt, he buckled the mop against his body so that the handle with the papers on one side balanced the mop head on the other. He struggled up his pole; by the time he reached the top, his arms ached from the unnatural climb. He positioned himself on the bicycle seat and searched for the glint of light in the hills.
Silence all around. Have I lost it?
Searching the low hills, he saw that they had turned dusky. It was evening-time and the hills were letting light slip from their folds. A good time to see something bright. Sure enough, he caught a glinting and a narrow flash out of the corner of his eye.
M.C. jerked his head around to see. He smiled, taking matches from his shirt pocket. Pulling the mop from his belt, he lit the catalog pages tied to the handle. At the moment the rolled pages caught and flamed, he held the mop like a torch above his head. M.C. leaned forward. His pole trembled and flowed out in its long, easy arc.
In the trees at the top of the hill across from Sarah’s, there came a glinting that stopped abruptly before it could flash.
M.C. laughed softly. You see something! Is it the pole or just my flame?
And before he thought, he burst out yelling at the top of his lungs: “Hey-hey, pretty! Hey!” shouting in a regular rhythm that echoed, bursting over the hills in a minor key that was bloodcurdling.
In a moment he stopped. He looked around, embarrassed. He ducked his head, as if to hide himself, swaying, until his flame burned itself out. After a time he flung the smoldering mop to the ground and searched the hills again.
Silent darkness gathered from the river, through Harenton as streetlights came on, and into the trees stretching to Sarah’s. The glinting light had disappeared with the sun.
Just a reflection, M.C. said to himself. But what kind? What’s she got with that glint to it?
Minutes passed and he saw nothing. He waited until darkness gathered around the house below him and then around his pole, as it slipped black and liquid over Sarah’s Mountain.
From the ground, M.C.’s pole might show a dull gleam. But at the top of it, he knew he would be invisible, the same as night. He was safe from anything living.
How far do spirits rise? he wondered, scaring himself.
“M.C.”
As though from out of his mind, a voice made him freeze.
“M.C., it’s just only me.” The voice, now at the foot of his pole, outside the circle of junk.
“Who—Ben?”
“Yea. How you doing?”
“Man! You liked to scare me to death. When’d you come?”
“See you climb up with that mop and burn it, yelling your head off.”
“Did you see there’s something glinting?”
“Is that what it was?” Ben said. “Too many trees down here. But I hear you call ‘pretty.’ It’s the girl?”
“Think so,” M.C. said. “Why’d you hide? We could have played.”
“I thought first somebody be still in the house.”
“They’re all in town,” M.C. said.
“Well, I wasn’t sure,” Ben said. “M.C., you coming down?”
“Not yet.”
“You have a rabbit in one trap.”
“Yea?”
“Think so,” Ben said. “Least, it’s something trying to break loose.”
“Has to be a rabbit,” M.C. said. “No time for it now. I’ll get it in the morning.” He could almost taste the wild meat they’d have for tomorrow’s supper.
“I can get it for you in the morning,” Ben said. “Have it all skinned and ready by the time you come.”
“Leave it,” M.C. said. “Like to skin it myself.” He pictured the act of slitting the back fur; with both hands, tearing it down and pulling the skin over hind legs. He had a vague kind of premonition. “If I haven’t come by sundown, you can skin it,” he said.
Moment upon moment passed between them in silence, when out of the hills near the cirque and lake where the children played shone a powerful beam of light. Aimed directly at Sarah’s Mountain, no part of it was a glint or even a flash.
In all the darkness, it looked like the distant headbeam of a train. But it was not powerful enough to cover the whole distance. M.C. could see it without himself being seen.
“What in the world is that?” Ben said.
“You see it from down there?” M.C. said.
“Sure, looking like a searchlight.”
M.C. slid down the pole fast, forgetting what friction could do to his hands.
“Ouch,” he said. There was a searing pain in his right palm, but he didn’t slow down.
“Oooh, burned my hand!” Climbing over the junk, he ran to the edge of Sarah’s. He licked his palm to cool the burn. Ben came up like night moving to stand beside him.
“That first glinting came from across on the hill,” M.C. said. “But this light is halfway between the hill and the lake.”
“It’s what was glinting?” Ben asked.
“The glinting was a reflection. This is a light of some kind,” M.C. said. “It saw me burning the mop. It took a turn back and went over there. Where . . . it thought to hide the pack and whatever else, and it got . . . she got herself a light!”
M.C. smiled to himself. The light beam was moving now, up the side of the hill and then, veering, came down in his direction.
“She got curious,” Ben said.
“And she came on back, trying to figure out what she saw,” M.C. said.
“What kind of girl is going to walk around at night?”
“One that’s not afraid of nothing,” M.C. said lightly.
“Or one that won’t know she’s got something to be afraid of,” Ben said.
He and M.C. spoke easily, quietly, watching the light. The beam was moving down toward the bottom of the hill across from Sarah’s. There it hung suspended, a single jewel in darkness.
“You stay here,” M.C. said.
“I’m going with you—please?” Ben said.
“No!”
“Yes!” Ben’s voice, quiet, but pleading now.
M.C. sighed. “But you stay out of it, you hear? Stay behind and clear out of sight. Not a sound.”
“Okay,” Ben said, holding back his excitement.
Swiftly, soundlessly, M.C. ran through the undergrowth on the path down the side of Sarah’s.
“M.C., is it a hunt?”
�
�I said not a sound!”
But he pictured a hunt, maybe the last good hunt he’d have before they had to leave the mountain.
Feeling the dark but picturing daylight, M.C. remembered a hunt in the sun when Ben had been behind him on an animal trail. It was possum they hunted then. They had seen possum moving along and followed, creeping on their knees. Possum was so easy to hunt. It heard them coming and climbed a low branch. There it lay still, playacting death. Not even its eye moved; like a dead piece of coal it was. The skill for M.C. was flinging the rock with all of his force and hitting the mark. He had done it. He knocked out the eye, leaving a bloody hole. Still the possum would not move. They came swiftly and crushed its head.
Then take the knife, M.C. thought. Bleed it at the throat with a deep twist.
Possum was as simple as it could be, once you found it. But finding its trail might take a whole day.
Moving to his left now, M.C. reached the gully where it began at the foot of the plateau. He raced through it and over its lip into the trees bordering. He stopped, with Ben coming up to stand close behind him. They spoke not a word, but they saw the light slowly moving, edging down through the trees at the foot of the hill above the gully.
It was M.C.’s plan to get behind the light. Working his way soundlessly forward, he swung to his right. He crossed behind the light now in the trees in front of him. Suddenly the light flicked off.
He stood still, his body slightly bowed, in order to fall quickly into a crouch if she suddenly turned around and shone the light. His arms hung loosely at his sides.
I’ll wait for the beam.
He did wait. Darkness was complete around him. Ben was near, close to his back.
M.C. had no idea whether the girl was still in front of him, near the edge of the gully.
She in back of us? Turn on that light one more time. Has she heard me coming?
He couldn’t stand the waiting. Half against his will, he started forward into the trees. Ben sucked in his breath, a slithering sound, as if to warn M.C. to stand and wait. But M.C. couldn’t. She, whoever she was, had come this far.
How you know it’s her?
He had lured her, like a deer caught by a delicious scent.
Has to be her, he thought. And he had to go meet her.
Is it a hunt?
M.C. touched branches, prickly pine boughs, with the fingers of one hand. Blinded by darkness, he walked slowly enough to remove his foot from a dry twig before it could snap. His right hand nested in the fur in his pocket. He felt the keen knife blade, warmed in its fur jacket by his own body heat.
Suddenly he stopped, sensing that darkness was itself a hunter and had turned on him.
Blindly, he looked up until his face pointed skyward. There were stars giving off a soft winking blue and cold white. He lowered his head, and at every stage he could still see the stars. Sarah’s Mountain would have blotted out the stars at that angle of his head.
I’m facing the hill across from Sarah’s!
But the clue had been in the climbing movement of his feet.
M.C. reached behind him for Ben. He found his forearm and held onto it. He turned them both 180 degrees, carefully, until they were facing the mountain.
Letting go of Ben, he started forward again. His skin came alive with the chill of premonition. He was going the right way now. His feet were level; his hearing caught the slightest sound. Always when he hunted sure, his senses seemed newborn.
M.C. stepped onto the barren lip of the gully without a sound; and yet he knew it at once by its hard surface.
Wouldn’t have crossed, he thought. Leave herself in a trap—hear her every move. She’d wait on the other side. Can’t know I’m here to catch her, can she? She won’t know about sound and traps—or would she? She won’t know anything for sure . . . if she needs a light.
Resignedly, he stood in the open at the gully edge, the trees and Ben behind him.
I forget. Some of them know how to lure you, too.
She not any kind of deer.
A faint clicking sound and M.C. was blinded by white light from the midst of the gully.
He threw up his arm as a shield. And in a crouch, he leaped for the light. It flicked off while he was in motion. M.C. landed on his feet but pitched forward, hitting the ground on his shoulder and hip. He slid crazily on sharp rocks. Pain made him turn over onto his back.
Light shone down on him.
Something began to jingle and rattle, the sound going around him in a slow, eerie rhythm.
She wore bracelets. They jingle, M.C. had time to think.
One hand was in his pocket on his knife for protection. He reached for the light with the other hand. The light flicked off again. But he was rolling over, still reaching, and caught her, part hard shoe and part ankle. The shoe kicked out and connected with his forehead. In a shock or pain, the blow knocked him flat on his back.
His head hurt so, he could have cried. He moaned once and then moaned again. He was thinking fast, the second moan was playacting. He lay still with his head turned slightly away from where he thought the light would be.
The light shone again, coming from behind him. He waited and continued moaning softly. He listened through the painful ache across his forehead. She moved in closer to him. He closed his eyes.
“You had to start it,” she said. “Up there on the mountain, with your fire and your shouting.” Her voice was anxious and whining.
She came up on his left to stand over him. He lay calm, resting, so that his eyelids would not flutter. He made his breath grow ragged and shallow.
“What is it?” she said.
She kneeled. M.C. heard the light scrape as she placed it on the ground by his shoulder. He wondered if Ben could see them. Sure, he could. The light was still on, shining full on M.C.’s face.
“Hey, are you all right?” she said. Gently, she shook M.C. by the shoulder. But he played possum dead.
“Oh, what have I done!” Her whining voice was above him. She was close to his face. Then her fingers, cool, like soft points of delicate pressure, were outlining the bump that had swelled on his forehead.
Carefully, M.C. began to move his left arm. She must have thought he was coming awake, for she gave a sharp cry of relief. Without touching her, he was able to slip his arm all the way across her back at the waist.
Swiftly, he grabbed her above the left elbow, pinning her arm to her side. She fell hard on his chest. His fingers had her arm in a vise, and something else—a handle.
At once he felt the imprint of a heavy, unsheathed blade between them.
But his mind didn’t dwell on it, not even in surprise. He jerked the knife away toward her back, forcing her to move off a little, so he could slide the belt around to which it was attached. He pressed her arm down on the knife now at her side. If she struggled, she’d risk being sliced.
Both his arms were around her tightly.
He discovered he had taken his own knife from his pocket and was clutching it at her back. Feeling her soft, yet solid weight against him, he stared straight into her stricken eyes.
“Hi,” he said. Impulsively, he kissed her lightly on the lips, the way he might have kissed a child good-by. At once he knew he shouldn’t have. She hadn’t felt like a child.
Her eyes filled with terror. She kicked at him, her hard shoes bruising his shin bones.
“Hey,” he said, now grinning with the triumph of catching her. Yet his mind remained sharp, wary, a hunter’s mind.
She’s got a free hand. Scared enough to—
The thought came to him, clean and deadly.
He saw blinding light suspended in darkness above his eyes. His turn to feel terror, and he let her arm loose.
No time to reach the light before she flung it viciously at his head. But the light hung there for a brief instant, in which he was aware of his hunter’s hand holding the knife at her back.
He used it, expertly. He could make a bleeding animal slash with it. But he stop
ped himself in time. She was no deer. Instead he thrust delicately through her shirt and made a clean check mark into her skin. A cut, but not deep. Just enough to draw blood and hurt.
In that one instant given him, all was sequential, ordered. She stiffened, uttering a sickening whine of fear, and reaching behind to clutch her wound, she dropped the light. M.C. jerked his head away to protect it, and knocked her off him.
The light hit him hard on the shoulder. It was a bruising blow, but it was better than having her fling it to brain him.
M.C. was on his knees, reaching for the light beside him. Out of the darkness, she kicked it away. Next, she had it and was running away.
“Didn’t want to hurt you, I had to!” he yelled.
He saw the light swing over the lip of the gully. It caught Ben standing with his arms out from his sides. Rabbit flushed and blinded. The light was beamed back into the gully as though propelled and floated past M.C.
He heard her voice high and hard, with no whine in it: “You bother me ever again and I’ll cut your heart out.”
“I was only playing!” he called out. “You hear? You, girl? But you would’ve killed me!”
He watched the light fade away in the trees, westward. Knowledge of how easy it was to hurt somebody, or be hurt, sobered him.
I used my head, he thought. But if I hadn’t of grabbed her—I was just playing. I was.
He heard sound coming near.
“Ben?” he said.
“They’re coming.”
“Who is? Hey, Ben?” But there was no answer.
He heard voices and recognized them. They were at the gully edge.
“Daddy,” M.C. said.
A pause before his father said, “Who would have killed you? I heard you yell it. Who?”
M.C. couldn’t see any one of them. He got to his feet, brushing his pants. His head ached where the girl had kicked him. He wouldn’t touch it for fear it was cracked.
“Scared somebody,” he managed to say.
“What were you doing off of that mountain, anyway?” Jones asked. He came into the gully with the others following.
“Mama?” M.C. said.
“Right here,” Banina said. Just her voice made M.C. glad they were all together.
“I say, what were you doing down here?” Jones asked him.
M.C. Higgins, the Great Page 8
