Wilderness

by Lance Weller

  But nothing felt broken, and Makers grunted and stepped to the hole to piss into the stinking dark. He heard it spattering not quite far enough down for his comfort and turned his face from the warm reek rising upward with the day. Other peoples’ smells, telling of strange foods and strange ways. Presently, his eyes began to burn, and he halfheartedly tried the door, but it was still locked. He briefly poked about for a sack of quicklime amongst the greasy rags and old paint cans, but there was nothing and so he settled down in one corner with both palms covering the lower half of his face.

  He’d been awake for the better part of an hour when he heard the stamp, jangle, and creak of horse and wagon in the yard outside. He could tell by the gait that it was his own wagon, and the creak reminded him that once he was home he’d need to grease the axles before the cold came down from the mountains. When a key rattled the padlock and the door opened, Makers was standing athwart the jamb. He took a great, deep breath of fresh air and let it out again. Below him, Sheriff Henry Lee Jensen squinted up at him, then leaned to the side to spit a long brown chain of juice out from under his yellowy mustache. The sheriff put his bootheel up on the step to block Makers’s way and hitched his thumbs to his back pockets. Tilting his head farther back, he looked Makers up and down appraisingly. “You can be damn sure the only reason I’m letting you out already is I got to use the shitter,” he said good-naturedly.

  “And you can bet that after a night locked in with your stink I’m a deeply remorseful man,” answered Makers. He raised his chained hands.

  Jensen looked at the hands hanging fisted and huge in the air between them. The sheriff squinted again, unlocked the irons, and stepped out of Makers’s way. “I guess I ought to tell you to shut your goddamned African mouth,” he told him. “But I ain’t got it in me to lock you up again if you react poorly.”

  He’d brought Makers’s wagon with him, and Emerson stood quietly in the traces, his breath pluming against the morning chill. Makers walked over and let his hand trail along the horse’s neck and shoulder and stood beside its head so he could breathe in the animal’s exhalations. A good smell from another, cleaner world. He took in the earthy scent as though it alone could refresh him, then leaned to look into the wagon bed, scanning the boxes and sacks there. After a moment, he lifted out his coat.

  “Your gear’s all there, don’t worry,” said the sheriff. “I know you’re laying in for winter and I don’t particularly want you back to town any faster’n need be so, just like you, I kept it all locked up last night.”

  Makers nodded and pulled on the coat. “You could have at least given me this,” he said, fixing his shirt beneath and tugging down the sleeves. “It’s almost November. It’s not warm.”

  Jensen shrugged. “I could’ve done a lot of things,” he said. “I could’ve been the sort of fella, the sort of lawman, that’d string a nigger up for beating on a white man.” He leaned and spat again, then plucked a pebble from the mud at his feet and absently rolled it between his palms. “Hell,” he went on. “I could’ve been the sort of man who’d cut the balls off a nigger just for looking at a white woman, let alone marryin’ one.” He shrugged again. “There’s any number of men like that around here.”

  “Watch it now,” warned Makers. “How you speak to me.”

  Jensen pursed his lips, then nodded. “All right,” he said. “All right. You’re right, I am sorry. But even though this ain’t Georgia or wherever the hell you come from, you don’t watch your ass and your mouth, Glenn, you’ll find out quick there ain’t a whole lot of … What’s the word? … philosophical differences between here and there.”

  Makers considered the sheriff a long moment before swinging himself up into the wagon. Wrapping a fist around the brake post, he asked, “Are you threatening me? Or asking me to thank you for locking me in the shithouse all night?”

  Jensen spat and wiped his damp, brown-speckled lip with the back of his hand. “Neither,” he said, shaking his head. He hitched his thumbs to his back pockets once more and stood with his lean face tilted skyward as though to judge from the fog the character of the day to come. He looked back at Makers from under the round brim of his hat. “No, sir,” he said. “But I am saying you have congress with, you give ear to, ignorant folk, and you got to expect them to act ignorantly. To say ignorant things. And, mister, there ain’t a shortage of ignorance no matter where you go. Smart, well-read fella like you ought to know that.”

  Makers put his feet up on the jockeybox and gathered the reins. Emerson stamped impatiently and put his ears up. Makers sat regarding his boots. “Those Chinese make it out all right?” he finally asked.

  Jensen frowned and pulled a face. “Left town two days ago. Same day your sorry ass came in.”

  Makers nodded. “Farley was saying something. I thought maybe he’d cause trouble for them.”

  The sheriff grinned lopsidedly and shook his head. “After what you done to him? I ain’t heard yet that he’s even woke up. And without him, them other boys is just trifling.” Jensen’s grin faded, and he looked seriously at Makers. “I didn’t know you run into them Chinese.”

  Makers shrugged. He picked a splinter off the brake post with his free hand. “I told them stop by the house before they tried the Pass. Hoping maybe Ellen can talk some sense into them. If she can, you’ll see them back here in a day or two. Then you’d better watch Farley.”

  Jensen nodded. “Snowing up there already?”

  “Not at our place, but judging from the view from the porch, I’d say it’s come down into the tree line. And we’ve already had one hard frost.”

  The sheriff bobbed his head. “They’d best not try it till spring, then.” He sighed. “That’ll make my winter busy.”

  Makers pushed his tongue into the side of his cheek thoughtfully. After a moment of contemplation, he shifted about and said, “Well, maybe we can put them up. Depending on how well geared up they are, it might mean another trip back down here for me, though.”

  “Well, whatever you think best,” Jensen said, then grinned wistfully. “My God, was that not a beautiful child?”

  “Sure,” said Makers. “She was a pretty little thing.” He smiled broadly at the sheriff and said, “Listen to you. Who’d have thought it?”

  “Fuck you,” said Jensen good-naturedly.

  “How is Farley?” Makers finally asked. “I guess I didn’t kill him.”

  The sheriff grinned and waved a hand through the air. “Shit,” he snorted. “You must have some deep goddamned faith in my peacekeeping abilities if you think I could stop you getting strung up and worse if you’d killed that fool.” He snorted again, hawked up a great gob of phlegm, and sent it spinning off into the brush. “Naw,” he went on. “Farley ain’t killed. Like I say, I ain’t sure he’s come awake yet, but he’s only a little torn up. Maybe a mite worse’n you. Still and all, I’m glad you’re not wintering over down here. Give him a chance to cool off and forget about it.”

  “A man like that doesn’t forget anything,” said Makers. He shifted on the seat and released the brake. Thumbing the bill of his hat, Makers clucked his tongue and Emerson started forward, but the sheriff stepped up and took hold of the halter.

  “I need to know, Glenn,” he said. “What started it? For my records.”

  Makers raised an eyebrow. “You keep records? I didn’t even know they’d taught you to read.”

  “All right, I’ll go on and say it then: Fuck you, you African bastard. There. You want to try and knock me down now?”

  Makers shook his head and grinned. “Naw,” he said. “I’ll leave it go this time.”

  “Then maybe I ought to say it again. Make myself feel better about letting you out so soon.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Glenn.” The sheriff looked at him. “What’d that fool say to set you off like that? Something about them Chinese?”

  Makers shook his head and looked down at him. He filled his cheeks with air and blew, then looked up the road whe
re it ran dark and muddy between green trees toward the blue Olympics brushed with early snow. She was waiting for him, and he was late. He was always late, and she always suffered for it. Behind him, beyond the screen of forest, Makers heard the town coming to life—heard the soft sounds of mothers calling children from their sleep, of chickens clucking over morning feed, of hooves stamping muddy paths amidst the tangled green, and then, distantly, the shrill blare of the mill whistle out on the harbor. “He called her a mud shark, Hank,” he finally said.

  The sheriff pursed his lips. “That it?”

  Makers looked at him again, hard this time, with no trace of a smile. “It’s the same as those others called her.”

  “Aw shit, Glenn,” said Jensen. “You know Farley had nothing to do with any of that. He’s a bully, sure, but he ain’t goin’ to do that to a woman.”

  Makers pulled down on the brim of his hat so his eyes were shaded against a day that was still without sun. Said: “It doesn’t matter. I won’t hear it, Hank. I can’t.”

  The sheriff stroked his mustache. He looked up at Makers. “How is Ellen these days, Glenn?”

  Glenn Makers thought of her waiting for him. The bright shine of fear deep in her eyes. He finally shrugged and shook his head. “She won’t ever be the same,” he said. “She’s hurt too deep.” He took a deep breath and looked at the foggy sky. “Now let go my horse,” he said and clucked his tongue and the horse and wagon and driver started up the muddy road between the green trees.

  “Hey, Sheriff,” Makers called just before he rounded the bend.

  “What?”

  “Start eating better, would you? Your shithouse is monstrous.”

  Jensen favored him with a casually crude gesture, and Makers laughed and waved and presently was gone down the narrow, tree-bound road leading home. Where she was waiting. Where she’d been waiting two days longer than he’d intended.

  Two nights after leaving the coast, Abel Truman crouched sore and cold in the dark forest amidst the dead branches of a fallen spruce some fifty yards from their fire. The raw, splintered stumps and snapped trunks of a wide tract of blowdown left in the wake of last year’s big storm lay without design through the dark wood. The downed trees were already jacketed with moss and studded with little seedlings as the wilderness worked to claim them back. Willis and the Haida squatted like apes on either side of their fire, forearms resting on the points of their knees, their fingers splayed toward the flames as though they’d grasp and hold what meager heat they shed. Their breath steamed, and for all his age, Abel’s eyes were good and he could see the play of light and shadow on the Haida’s long face. Occasionally they passed a word or two along with a bottle, but Abel could not make out their conversation for the distance. And every so often he’d hear the dog’s low growl, though he could not see it for the shadows beyond the fire. Abel fixed its place back in the trees, in the dark of the nightblown forest. He wondered if it had smelled him yet, then decided it had not.

  There was but half a moon now, and the night was clear, starry and blue. A bright silver cold lay upon the land. The flames leapt in their fire like the ghosts of flames and the pair were nothing but silhouettes in the dark. Bands of shadow cut slantwise down their faces, and witch hair moss hung in great hanks from the lower branches so they resembled trolls squatting in a grotto. Abel had been watching them since dusk, and it was getting on late now for an old man to be up and about in the woods in winter. He fisted his hand before his lips and blew warmth into his cold fingers. Every now and again a great nausea would surge through him, hot, salty waves breaking against the back of his throat, and he had to fight to keep from coughing. When he hung his pale hand in the dark before him, it trembled and he could not stop it. Abel sniffed softly and rubbed his prickly, hairless chin. Taking a breath, he softly blew and figured it was November.

  After the Indians had left him on the beach, Abel kicked over the remains of the fire, ate the salmon steaks, buried the bones, and set out into the forest. He walked on soil, and he walked on a red carpet of fallen needles. But for the play of wind in the creaking trees, all was silent. At one point, Abel heard a furious barking, very faint and far away, but when he stopped to listen, all he heard was squirrel chatter from the branches. Here and there along the trail, every mile or so, stood little stone cairns erected to keep travelers on the path and help them mark their distance. By late afternoon, Abel had counted seven such markers and come upon their previous night’s camping place.

  The little clearing was just off the trail, and Abel paced it carefully, then crouched beside the dregs of their fire. Little hunks of wood lay crosswise and smoking in a ring of soot-blacked stones. The ashes beneath were warm. Gray and papery, they took flight and spiraled about like merry dust motes when Abel put his hand into them to search out a kernel of living coal. All within was dead, and when he put his fingers to his face he could smell burnt blood and melted fat and presently found the wet bones of a hare in the underbrush.

  He found where they’d made their toilet and he found where they’d roped the dog to a spruce. Its tracks circled the tree, the moss torn and the bark raw and the underbrush ’round about savaged. The old man took a deep breath and went on up the trail.

  At some point during the long day, he realized he could no longer smell the ocean. The scent of salt, of wet sand and rotting bull kelp, was gone, replaced by freshening breezes through branches and the faint odor of earthy rot as things dead and things recently dead decomposed upon the soft, mossy floor. A flash of unbidden memory brought the loose dirt and dry leaves of Saunders’ Field to mind, and on his tongue came the charry residue of old battles past. He wanted none of it. The way David died, and armless Ned. Abel sniffed and spat, then leaned over with his good hand on his knee to catch his breath. After a while, he straightened and went on.

  Abel camped that night just off the trail near a rushing stream of water pale with glacial milk. He slept sitting up, his back against a smooth boulder, and he lit no fire. For a time before sleep, he watched the sky where it lay dark and star-crusted, with but a few airy wisps of cloud to the east where the mountains blackly stood. He tried to sleep but could not, for he missed the dog’s company and so lay there awake, remembering the night it appeared.

  The dog had come out of the forest on a cold night four years ago. The month of the new year, with the weather raw and wild. Freezing rain and a darkly frigid wind, yet there were breaks in the clouds that showed the icy stars above as Abel crouched in the wet sand beside his cooking fire. A rime of frost scaled the stones, and his hands ached with cold as he gutted a middling-sized sockeye for his supper. He did not hear it approach but was suddenly aware of its presence. One moment there was the empty brown trail that ran between the rocks past the driftwood to the shadowy trees, and the next the dog was there upon that trail. Panting, its eyes red in the firelight. The flickering light shimmered yellow on its redblonde fur.

  Abel set the fish down. He stood slowly, wide-eyed and suddenly atremble. His mouth hung open. His hands, slick and red, hung limply at his sides, themselves like two skinned fish. He didn’t know the last time he’d seen a dog. He didn’t move. He barely breathed.

  For its part, the dog stood just without the forest, at the very edge of the apron of firelight. Its breath smoked around its muzzle, and it lifted a quivering nose to gather Abel’s scent. The dog then sniffed the ground as though to be sure of the rocks and the sand and the fallen pine needles sugared with tiny points of ice. When it finally moved, Abel saw it limped, and there was a large, round wound on one thigh, all red and scabbed over.

  The dog approached by fits and starts, pausing now and again to sniff a rock, some piece of ground, and studiously ignoring Abel as though he was beneath its rightful attention. And Abel stood, his breath so shallow you could hardly call it breath at all. The dog came to him through the honey-colored firelight like a dream of a dog, like an answered prayer he could not remember praying, and finally it settled painfully bes
ide the fire.

  Abel wiped his palm down the thigh of his trousers, then walked around the flames. Slowly, slowly, he crouched and put his right hand out, and the dog lifted its head as though beyond fatigue and sniffed cautiously at his fingers, its lip curling a little over the fish smell. Abel reached and touched the dog on its wide brow, where the fur was damp but still very soft. “Dog,” he whispered, trying the word out. The dog looked at him, and Abel closed his own eyes, then opened them again.

  As it warmed itself beside the fire, the dog began to steam. Abel stroked its cheek with the backs of his fingers and ran his palm along the underside of its jaw to softly scratch the point of its chin. He pressed his palm against its chest to feel the steady beating of the heart behind the bone. “My Lord,” Abel said softly.

  The dog watched him and was silent. It closed its eyes and sighed. Abel settled beside it in the sand. The fire crackled suddenly on a wet log and shot loud sparks against the dark. Frightened, the dog tried to rear up but fell back for its bad leg, with its eyes wild and its nose running. Fur stood in a bristling ridge between its shoulders and down its back. Abel spoke to hush it and surprised himself with his own voice. He coaxed the dog calm, telling it what a good dog it was, and when it had settled again, he bent to examine its hurts.