Johnson was too simple to notice how this new motive had displaced the old haunting one.
“I would like to know what happened to my father.”
“He was a good way beyond this.”
“Yes.”
Wright saw the father in the thick-shouldered, shaggy-haired figure of the son. He respected Johnson’s motive, but he was instinctively shy of investigating such a curiosity any more. To Wright the emotions must be protected by convention. The rippling shadows of the trees and the strips of light between them passed under the boat like a silent moving cloth.
The first shot was Wright’s. It sounded like a dropped plank and its echoes went hard against the trees and leapt back. The birds rose black in thousands against the sky. Swiftly Johnson paddled to the fallen bird before it sank. Time passed and Johnson got his shot. An excitement possessed them both. The trees had given place to a scattered scrub which grew thicker in the distance. The rays of the sun lengthened in it. They chose a good landmark, tied up the boat and went ashore. The mosquitoes and flies clouded round their hats.
They had landed at the entrance of a densely overgrown creek and were walking along the thick bush of the bank above it. They saw the droppings of four-footed animals. They trod down a procession of great ants. The land smelled dry and pungent and clean to the nostrils. The grasses were browned by the sun.
A mile up the creek the banks were lower and the water had dried out of it leaving only a bed of caked mud pocked with holes of dirty water. This water was often alive with movement whirling round and bubbling like a simmering stew. Wright cut a stick and sharpened it, saying there would be fish in these potholes left behind by the drying water of the creek, and they went down into the mud. The movement of the water was made by the whirling of innumerable small electric eels but beneath them were fish. Johnson watched Wright stabbing the pool with his spear. “Mustn’t,” thought Wright. “Mustn’t stir up trouble.” There was no sun in the bed of the creek. Johnson still carried his gun but Wright’s lay on the bank. They were too engrossed, concentrated on the luck of each dip into the black water, to speak or to notice any other sounds and the failing of the sun.
Presently a scattering of birds and scampering of feet in the bushes twenty yards away where the creek-bed gave a sharp bend and went out of sight, made Johnson turn. An extraordinary movement of alarm was in the creek. Johnson moved to the firmer high bank alert for what was happening there. He thought the noise might be caused by wild pigs. He whispered quietly to Wright and went four or five yards nearer to the bend and was standing waist-deep in the bush. And now the confusion and rustling alarm, the flying up of birds spread down the opposite bank of the creek towards them. Wright stood shin-deep in the mud, looked up when Johnson called. He turned round to step out of the mud instinctively going for his gun. As his back was turned, the tall grasses on the bank opposite to him were broken down and the paws and head and shoulders of a jaguar appeared. It pulled up noiselessly at the bank’s edge. In the grass its head was soft and marked with the greyish golden dustiness of an enormous moth; as suddenly and softly as the whirr of a moth the animal had appeared. It stood still, amazed, one paw on the top of the bank and one raised cat-fashion in wonder, arrested in its intent of running down the bank to its drinking place. Its eyes were like pits of gleaming honey. They had not seen Johnson.
“Tiger!” shouted Johnson. “Keep still! Don’t shoot!” “Get to hell out of this,” he yelled at the creature. With light guns like theirs the only hope was to startle the beast away. The jaguar had been considering in these seconds the figure of Wright heaving himself by a bush-stump out of the creek-bed. The air popped out of the pits of his heel-marks. He looked like a scrambling animal, though he was unaware of his danger until Johnson called. The shout from Johnson startled the creature. It gave a swift turn of the head, crouching as if to leap upon the new voice, and then in panic swept round in the breaking grasses to rush swiftly away. Johnson’s gun was raised by instinct though his shot was too light for such an animal. He knew it was fatal to fire and wound. But now he could hear the beast breaking the bushes in flight he jumped into the mud and scrambled up the opposite bank to get a sight of it. Wright now aware of his escape shouted, “Don’t shoot!” in his turn. Excitedly he was picking up his gun and turning to warn Johnson as he did so. Johnson stopped. His gun was pushed over the bank and he himself was half-lying on it, struggling to get up. In his hurry the gun went off and Wright shouted. Johnson lay still for a second in consternation at his accidental shot and then he realised that it was not his gun that had fired. He turned round and slithered comically down the bank, the dust pouring on to his head and shoulders, the thorns cutting his hands. He leaned staring against the bank at the end of his slide. There he saw Wright lying face downwards over his gun. Johnson blinked his eyes, wondering why Wright was lying down. “Why is he lying down to sleep? Is he tired?” Then he saw the nails of Wright’s right boot and the toe twisted under a loop of root. Then the blood from his chest spreading under the arm of his khaki tunic.
Johnson crossed over to him and knelt beside him.
“Wright, what’s happened?”
There was no movement and no reply. Carefully he turned Wright over and as he turned a murmur came from Wright’s open mouth and the eyes quivered. His face was bloodless, red only in the faint fine veins on the cheek bones.
Johnson had no knowledge of what ought to be done for a man in Wright’s case. His mind was a chaos. He undid the coat and saw now the burned hole in it and the tear in the blood-soaked cotton shirt. The charge had evidently entered the lung and Wright’s faint breath was stertorous. Flies, the brown motuca, came in dozens at the smell of blood. They settled thickly on Wright’s still face if Johnson for a moment ceased to drive them off. There was no drinkable water in the creek, only a black ooze, and neither carried any brandy. Johnson took off his coat and his shirt and the biting flies blackened on his bare skin, humming and whining, blowing into his face like a stinging, humming grit, as he tore his shirt to get long strips for bandages. He sickened as he wiped the wound and contrived to bind the strips round Wright’s chest, putting a pad on the wound to staunch the thick drip of the blood. Wright’s eyes opened in the middle of this and his lips moved, twisting with pain. “What happened?” Johnson said.
Wright could not answer.
To carry Wright on to the bank and leave him lying there to be tormented by the flies and by thirst and in the darkness a prey to any animal, while he got help? It would take two hours and he might be dead. The pulse was not strong. To carry him down to the river? That was a mile, a rough mile. The camp was a good three miles away, yet perhaps it was nearer across the bush. Hoping that in the quietness of the evening the sounds of shooting might attract attention, he went up the bank and fired ten shots in quick succession. He had only three left. But when the quietness had settled down again after the shots, the futility of the signal left him in despair. He was frightened by the silence. He shouted, knowing too that that was futile. He remembered his father had died in this country.
Wright moaned below the bank.
All that anxiety to know how: to reconstruct what had happened in those already hazed seconds when the jaguar had appeared and then fled, fought in Johnson’s mind with this picture of his father’s death and the agony of not knowing what to do. He went down the bank. Wright’s eyes were still open. His lips tried to speak. His breath when it came roared like gas in a burner.
“I’m going to get you up to the top. Can you move?” There was no answer but a closing of the eyes.
The evening sky was becoming green and darker, the bush soundless and black. It seemed to Johnson he must get Wright down to the river where there was water and the boat. But when he put his arms under Wright, he could not move him. Three times he tried and the sweat poured down his face and chest. He was maddened by the flies. Then a brutality came into him and, cursing, he put his arms round the drunk, will-less body and lugged
it up. Stumbling, falling, sprawling on top of Wright, straining until he felt his heart and stomach would burst, he got him half-way up the bank. There was a clear way here and he wedged Wright’s feet against a bush. Wright’s arms moved in agony. Johnson sat there gasping, swallowing his sweat, looking down like a hunted animal upon the wounded man, with pity and ferocity. There enters with the handling of the sick a kind of hatred, a rising of life to repel the assault of evil.
“The poor bloody fellow. The poor bloody fellow,” gasped Johnson.
Then once more he struggled till he got Wright over his shoulder and tottered with him to the top. The blood came on to Johnson’s skin.
The stars had not yet appeared and this night the moon was late in rising. The one pleasure of running through the rough and broken mile to the river’s edge was the freedom from the flies. Bats were flying out of the bushes and the moths were tossing over the thorns. Johnson ran. He was exhausted when he got to the shore and lay breathless for a moment. Then he pulled in the boat and sluiced his hot body and his head with water from the bailing can. He filled it with water and wedging his hat over it to stop the water from spilling, he went back. He could not run now because of the water. But now in the dark the country was so changed that it was hard to find his way. He began to think he had gone too far and wandered back. He shouted. He turned again and at last the moans of Wright brought him to the place.
“I must get you moved before it is dark. I’ll move you soon. Can you hear me? We’ll soon be moving.”
The water had revived Wright. He looked into Johnson’s face and nodded.
What shall I tell them if he dies? What shall I say to his wife and to Lucy? It is my fault, coming up this river. No, it might have happened anyway. It was an accident. What was he doing? I didn’t see. I was halfway up when I heard a shot. On what river? That was not the river you were going by. Why were you on the wrong river? My father died in this country. He went by this place. He might have died in this very place. No one knows where he died. The Indians come here. There are fires of Indians tonight and no bloody moon. If it could have happened on a moonlight night. If I had been up further, this would not have happened, he wouldn’t have found me today. This is Lucy. This is the ruin Lucy has brought on me. No, it was an accident.…
“Can you put an arm round my shoulder? I say, can you put an arm round?” He hasn’t strength in his arm. Shall we stay here? Shall I light a fire and the others are bound to come if we do not go back. How is it? He can’t say anything.
There’s a stupidity in the pitiable helplessness of the wounded. Wright moaned.
It is better if he moans. The flies have done. I wonder where the tiger is.
He went down to the creek, into the strange place which was nearly dark now, empty and without sound, where less than an hour before they had been poking in the mud-holes. A fish Wright had speared lay by the guns. The scene was not to be believed. Johnson found himself picking up the dead fish and bringing it back with the guns. He and Wright had seen it flap under the stick but had not even glanced to see it die.
Johnson hated the sight of the two idle guns now and they encumbered him; but he grimly made up his mind that if it killed him and it killed Wright he must carry Wright down to the river. If they waited, Wright, for all he knew, might die. He remade the bandages. The bleeding, he thought, had slackened. As he was putting on his coat Wright spoke and Johnson dropped to his knees to hear.
“Come here …” the voice faded.
“I am here. It’s Harry. You’re all right. I’m here. I’m going to get you down to the river.”
(The wrong river.)
“Lucy …” said Wright.
“It’s me, Harry. Not Lucy,” said Johnson.
God, he’s dying. He’s dying and he’s talking about Lucy, telling me he knows about Lucy. Would you deceive a man who is dying? Johnson knelt, with his face close to Wright’s. The eyes were closed as if he were asleep and he stopped speaking.
I must get him back, dead or alive. I must carry him. Somehow he propped up Wright’s body and, kneeling, got it on his shoulder, grasping him by the legs. He was strong now. He staggered up and stumbled forward in the thickening darkness under the first stars. He stumbled over roots, he tore his clothes on bushes, fanatically he followed the familiar bush of the creek bank. His shoulders were aching, his tongue out of his open mouth sucked in his sweat. Twice he rested and groped in the bush for sight or sound of the creek.
The stars were brilliant and clear. They shone with miraculous clarity, mapped clearly in their constellations. They placed a definite order before the eyes and one walked in the most marked and munificent light. But this order was in contrast to the confusion of the bush. Each tree where it touched the sky was like a bunch of black spears—each bush, each mass of grasses had this marked black head, clear and dramatic. And a voice seemed to come out of it, saying, “This is the way. You remember this bush, and then the five trees together and the scrub you skirted. You counted the bends and the rises.” Each one stood distinct and black and certain. Johnson hesitated. Crouching under the groaning man, he turned round. Behind him, as before him, was the same array of definite shapes, a multitude of motionless caped figures. He swung round, but it was the same on either side of him. The definite things near by, the stars like tears in the branches, cold and brilliant, the heavens immaculate and lucid in their complexity. He listened for the sound of the river. There was no sound. The sweat went cold in his body. He lowered Wright gently to the ground and, turning with superstition at every pace to keep him in sight, stepped into the gap in the scrub where the creek was. He put his hat down on the gap and walked through.
There was no creek. There were twenty yards of low grass and rock with stones shining in the starlight and then a bank of scrub. This must be the creek. Carefully observing every step, he went to the bank, which was a foot or two higher than the land around him. There was no creek. He saw nothing, no line of bushes which he and Wright had appeared to follow hours earlier. He felt he had been lifted up and taken into country he had never seen before. From where he stood he could see his hat in the gap and he returned to it rapidly, dreading that it would vanish or change before he reached it. He got there. His hand was trembling as he took it and now he made for Wright. The world had opened loneliness upon him. In every direction it seemed certain that the river lay. The dark bush did not lose the distinctness, the simplicity of its shapes. He looked down upon the pale face of Wright.
“God, I’m a bloody fool,” Johnson said. “How have I done this?” He stood stiff, ripples of coldness passing through his body, unable to decide anything. Once he thought he heard the sound of the river but it was a movement of night breeze sloughing in the distant trees and passing over them like some lost human breathing. He fought with all his slow will the impulse to dash here or there following this certainty and the other.
“Wait. Wait,” he said.
He knelt down beside Wright and talked to him.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll soon be there. I’ll get you down somehow. Just taking a breather.”
Wright’s breathing seemed easier. The pulse was unchanged. The ground, Harry felt, was sodden with dew.
But this trick of calming and distracting himself and then of looking up with an open mind, to see the scene afresh and find conviction in a flash, did not succeed. There was a momentary illusion of vision, then it disolved.
He thought, “Shall I pray?”
If there were someone outside or above, with simple ease this person could point out the path to the river. It would be very simple. He thought, “Our Father which art in Heaven”; no, what’s the use of panicking! I’m not going to wander round in circles. Light a fire. They’ll see that. It can’t be very long before they start searching.
He said, “This is not admitting defeat,” and “Wright will not die.” There is always some other small thing and after that another small thing which can be done before a man dies
.
Harry had no watch. He stood trying to calculate the time. He set about lighting a fire, gathering the dry sticks. He took out his matches and his pipe and put it in his mouth. Then he could not, for some reason, smoke while Wright was lying there helpless. He lit the fire and as its light made a glowing room from which the sparks danced, his spirits rose. He did not like the thought of the black, distinct caped figures of the trees behind that unnatural and fluid wall of light. He worked hard collecting and piling on the sticks. The flame went up in a waving spire. He worked ceaselessly, taking no notice of Wright. “It was an accident. It was an accident.” Branch after branch he brought and made a stack within reach of the fire. His whole life went into making the pile. The fire blazed high, yellow and dancing. Like an animal leaping, some yellow cat, the flame licked up in the dark, sending out claws at the darkness. He looked up and he and Wright seemed to be in a huge glowing temple, higher than the highest trees, wide and palatial. A fire that could be seen for miles. He shouted and listened. There was no answer, yet there had seemed to be a thousand faint answers, the movements of leaves or the scuttlings of night animals. He sat down beside Wright, exhausted, his throat dry; he realised now how his head ached and that he was sick with hunger.
But Johnson could not sit by the fire and wait. “In a moment,” he said, “I will go and look for the river. If I make the fire high it will guide me. I can’t be lost. I can get water for him.”
Wright was murmuring again for water.
“Poor devil. I’ll bring it you. Just getting a breather.” The heat of the fire was strong and flat against his skin. He stared, exhausted, thinking out his plans.
And suddenly it was curiously easy, as if in the darkness a hand behind him guided him through the scrub. And it was near. Nearer than he would have imagined. They were camped, he discovered, within fifty yards—no, it seemed only twenty—from the river. The creek bank and its long clump were just as he remembered. He went down the bank of the river and so great was his joy that he did not even look for signs of the rescuers, but himself put down his hat—now the only thing he had for water—beside him and drank deeply from the river. It was cold and glorious water, so cold that it made his hot lips and his dry mouth sparkle with delight and his body shuddered.
The Pritchett Century Page 29
