by Doyle, Brian
49
ON THE OTHER HAND, says Mr. Douglas to Dave as they are chopping firewood for Miss Moss, let’s not get carried away with the whole noble animal thing. There’s an incredible amount of murder and mayhem among the animals of the world of every species. No being can avoid eating other beings for sustenance. That’s just how it is. It could be that we all eventually evolve into eating air and water and light and so progress past the eating each other segment of the history of the world, but I am not sure that it is coming anytime soon. Animals eat animals eat insects eat vegetative beings or prospective vegetative beings or seeds. That’s just the way it is. Now there are some biologists and such who will say, well, there’s no murder in the animal world other than with human beings, but that’s silly talk if you ever met a weasel with blood rage in his eyes. And there are plenty of animals who will plan and carry out assassination. There’s a lot more going on out there than we are aware of. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are gangs of chickadees or whatever running huckleberry extortion rackets. You never know. Whatever you are sure of, don’t be. That’s probably the best way to approach natural history in general.
Yes, sir.
Don’t call me sir, Dave. That’s unnerving. I am not yet forty. When I am forty, we can go with the honorific. It’ll fit better.
Yes, sir.
Dave …
Yes, Mr. Douglas.
You could call me by my first name, Dave. Guys who chop wood together don’t use titles. Plus I am calling you by your first name, right?
Miss Moss says no one calls you by your first name except people who don’t know who you really are.
Miss Moss is a woman of remarkable perspicuity, but even she is not always right. Trust me.
Yes, sir.
Dave …
Mr. Douglas. Sir.
* * *
Two days before school ended in June, Dave was on his way from his last class to track practice when someone says Dave? And he turns, and there is a girl named Cadence who sits second row second seat in geometry. She is a big girl, and some kids call her fat, but Dave doesn’t (a) see where size matters, particularly with girls; you either like them or you don’t, you either find them attractive or you don’t, you either want somehow to know more about them or you don’t, it was all impossible to explain, and in his view it has a lot less to do with how tall or round or slight or busty or how their hair looks, or what clothes they wear, than with something about the way they carry themselves, their electric self, their relaxed lack of disguise, something like that; and (b) he had more than once stared at her in class thinking she was actually lovely but she was the sort of lovely that guys like Dave didn’t think of asking out because (a) asking any girl out is terrifying, and you are safer not to ask anyone out—that way, you will never hear a girl say let’s be friends, which is code for I don’t ever want to kiss you, and (b) lovely high school girls are always already going out with college guys, which is why no one at school ever sees lovely girls with guys from school, and (c) even speaking in a friendly fashion to a lovely girl is to essentially ask to be beat up by the grim college boyfriend, who is probably a wrestler or a martial arts instructor, and of course he has a car and money, which, as Moon says, are the two first necessary tools in the girlfriend operation manual, not that he had ever read the manual.
But here is Cadence, who is lovely, actually talking to Dave, who is only Dave, her face eighteen inches from his face, her green eyes right in front of him like headlights, her voice direct and unadorned with no fake music in it, and there is no looming college boyfriend in sight that he can see, either, although he surreptitiously looks around, just in case.
She is saying that maybe they could go for a run together sometimes. She is saying that she tried out for the lacrosse team this past spring and didn’t make it because she wasn’t in good enough shape, although she has decent stick-handling skills. She is saying that she is going to really get after it this summer in the area of getting into great shape, and she knows she needs to run a lot, so maybe they could run together and he could teach her about pace and rhythm and the proper technique and things like that. She is saying she has already made some changes in her diet and that side of the getting-in-shape equation is taken care of, but she really wants to do the running part right, and she knows he is third on the team already as a freshman, and that’s just so impressive, and she has always thought he was a stand-up guy from what she can tell in class, and she knows this is a little forward, but what does he think? About the running-together idea? Maybe just once to see how it goes?
Dave?
I would, I would like that, he says, and he can feel a flush rising right up his neck and colonizing his face from the bottom up so by the time he says the word that, the heat is rising up his forehead like someone is pouring a gallon of embarrassment into his brainpan.
That’s great, she says. That’s just great. You tell me where to be when, and I will be ready. Remember you’re a real runner and I am not, so have mercy on me, okay?
You bet, says Dave. This’ll be fun.
Tomorrow?
You bet. Tomorrow’s great.
You’ll text me? Where to be when?
You bet.
Okay, Coach.
You bet, says Dave, thinking, you bet? You bet is the best you can say? Idiot.
This is so generous of you, says Cadence. I was afraid to even ask.
You bet, says Dave, and Cadence says thanks and sort of vanishes from his vision scope, and he feels like a robot, and if he could actually kick himself, he would do so—right in the posterior parts, as his mother says—except just then he hears the coach’s three sharp whistles, which means time for stretching, and he returns to planet earth and runs to practice, thinking, you bet? you bet? what an idiot. But hey, a run with Cadence, with Cadence! And then he realizes, of course, duh, stupid, he didn’t get her number! Idiot, fool, bonehead! But Cadence! Cadence asked me for a run!
50
BUT A RUN IS NOT A DATE, says Moon in his kitchen. It’s important to remember that. You want another sandwich? A date is something with food. If you are not eating together, it’s not a date. Food is sexy. If there’s no food, it’s not really a date. It’s an encounter, or a getting acquainted. You can go to the movies or walk through the woods or ride in horse sleighs or whatever they used to do in the old days with chaperones or whatever, but if your mouths don’t have food in them, it’s just a business meeting. Trust me. Turkey or ham?
And you would be an expert on dating … why, exactly?
I pay attention, says Moon. I know the code. I watch carefully. I am getting prepared.
For what? You’re asking someone out?
Well, not right now. But eventually, sure.
When?
I was thinking in about two years. Spring semester, junior year. May.
Two years?
That gives me time to get everything in order, vet the candidates, get the campaign organization up and running. Grassroots organization is the key, I think.
Are you insane?
No, no. Sensible.
You’re beyond insane.
Dave, why leave it all to chance? Why not approach the whole thing in a sensible fashion rather than just careen from girl to girl like a pinball?
You’re … I don’t know the word that means insane cubed.
Look, Dave, I have watched my parents. They met in a bar. Total accident. In fact, Dad was with a date, and Mom was with her date, and you can imagine how messed up their opening moves with each other were after that kind of beginning. They never thought about what kind of person they wanted to be with or anything. No preparation at all, and now they each live different lives and have troubles, although lately I have to say they sure seem to like each other more.
But every couple starts by accident, says Dave. You can’t plan it unless you have an arranged marriage or whatever.
Mostly this whole romance thing is a bust, or a way to sell chocolat
e and clothes and dinners in restaurants, says Moon. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was invented by corporations. All I am saying is that all the trouble could be reduced by a little coherent management of the initial process. It could all be a bit more sensibly organized. You could break the problem down into component parts and approach them one by one. For example, why wait until I develop a crush on someone in school? Why not choose candidates now and consider pros and cons carefully? Why does the whole process have to be like a car crash?
Dave wants to fall down laughing at the sheer inane Moonness of this speech, but something inside him is intrigued and he says, because it is a car crash, and you can’t pretend it isn’t. It’s not a math problem. You like people a certain way or you don’t. It’s not like a software program, Moon.
There are arranged marriages, though, says Moon, and supposedly mostly they work. Here’s your sandwich.
I bet they work, says Dave, munching away, because their cultures expects them to, and also I bet there are a lot of those that don’t work, but the people in them don’t tell anyone, including themselves, and also I bet a lot of the ones that work do so because the people in them are startled to discover that the spouse they were assigned is actually a gentle cool person. Maybe surprise is the reason arranged marriages work. Maybe being surprised continually is the key to the whole thing.
In which case I am right, says Moon. If we got assigned a partner, that would be a better system than the car-crash system. You’d have to be surprised if you got assigned a partner, and you had to figure them out without the whole car-crash part. Maybe there should be a national database and a Department of Assigned Spousal Units. Talk about your Homeland Security, man.
You are nuts to the ninth power, says Dave. Another sandwich?
One more. Then let’s go shoot hoop.
* * *
Martin approached her cautiously. He had seen and scented female marten other than his mother and his sister, of course, many times, but he had never been this close, and something about her was wholly different—alluring, frightening, tense.
He circled her carefully; she snarled and bared her teeth when he came too close, but she did not attack him or flee; she seemed cautiously interested, as well. A sparrow hawk hovered over them for an instant and then vanished; two small blue butterflies wandered past, twining their flight patterns; and a cricket chose that inopportune moment to launch right past Martin’s nose—his final leap, for Martin snapped his jaws faster than the eye could register, and the cricket was a thing of the past.
Martin stepped closer, and again the female snarled, but Martin’s fascination for once overrode his caution, and he came even closer. But this time, she attacked in a rush, and he leapt back, almost losing his balance for an instant in the currant bushes. For an instant he lost his temper and was about to attack in turn, but again that strange combination of interest and allure and tension arose in him, and he began to pace and circle her again. At one point she turned to leave and he cut her off so fast she was stunned, and she a marten, one of the fastest animals on earth. For a few moments, there in the currant bushes, high on the mountain among juniper and hemlock, not far from a ravine where icy slate-gray glacier melt thrashed and roiled among sand and boulders, the two animals stared at each other, absolutely absorbed in attentiveness in and with and through every sense—their noses questing for every hint and suggestion, their eyes registering every flick of fur and flow of muscle, their ears catching every tone and subtone, even their tongues forever registering the taste of those first few moments with each other. All the rest of her life, she would associate him with currants and juniper, and he would think of her whenever he crunched a cricket or tasted the sharp high tang of timberline.
51
EMMA JACKSON BEATON STANDS by the laundry services door and says I have something to tell you. Two things, actually. I know this sounds weird, but just stay with it. The first thing is that there is no Billy Beaton. I am not Mrs. Billy Beaton. I am not Mrs. Anybody. I am just Emma Jackson. I made him up and I bought myself a wedding ring because I didn’t want anyone to ask me out anymore. All I had ever been was someone’s girlfriend and I could never get clear of boyfriends long enough to figure out why I wasn’t happy with any of them for very long. So many of them were really nice guys but I wasn’t excited much and soon they would be unhappy also, because they could feel that, and we would break up, and another guy would ask me out immediately, and I could never come up for air, and I felt terrible about all these unhappy boyfriends. I felt awful about making everyone unhappy all the time. I got the tattoo on my neck for that reason too, to sort of scare people off, but it didn’t work, and people kept asking me out. I didn’t feel attractive, and I could never believe that they thought I was, so I always suspected they just wanted to get me in bed, and that made me feel worse, so I finally got a ring and invented Billy Beaton, and the ring was like a magic wand I could wave to create some space. That’s when I came here to work in the lodge too. I wanted to get as far away from everything as I could. I wanted to be a new person. Being Emma Jackson was never much fun, but being Emma Jackson Beaton was always fun. People stopped asking me out because they saw my ring. All I had to do to stop making boyfriends unhappy was wave my ring and say the name Billy Beaton. All I had to do was go away once in a while to be with Mr. Billy Beaton. All I had to do was go somewhere sunny. Even I believed in Billy Beaton after a while. He was fun to tell stories about and the more stories I told about him the more he was a real guy. He protected me. I really came to like him. He was never mean or unkind, and he was never disappointed by me, not once. I never made him sad or didn’t like him as much as he liked me, and he was always there to protect me when I needed him. All I had to do was say his name and there he was, sort of. But not anymore, not now. Telling you about Billy Beaton means I just killed him. I feel terrible about that. Poor Billy Beaton. But I had to tell you. I couldn’t not tell you. You have been so kind and gentle, and I am so glad Maria is okay, and I love your family, and you’re the reason why your family is so gentle and funny. I want to be like you somehow. I don’t know how to do that, because the other thing I have to say now that I have told you about Billy Beaton is that I really, really want to be more than friends with the morning waitress. I want that more than anything I ever wanted with any boyfriend, even Billy Beaton, the best boyfriend I ever had. This is really scary for me, to feel that and to talk about it, but I can say it to you because you are kind and gentle. So those are the two things I had to say. I suppose you could say that I have been telling one lie for a long time about Billy, and I have been telling another lie to myself about how I feel about her, and I am sorry for telling lies. I didn’t know what else to do. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I’m …
But Dave’s mom has risen and opened her coat and wrapped each side of her big coat around Emma Jackson too so that she and Emma are both standing inside the coat, and Emma Jackson leans her face down on Dave’s mom’s shoulder into the thick soft wool that smells like woodsmoke and coffee and burnt toast and laundry soap, and Dave’s mom brings up her left hand and very gently puts her hand on the bottom of Emma Jackson’s neck, and they stand there for a really long time not saying anything at all. It might be that Emma Jackson is crying or weeping or sobbing into the coat, but the coat is so amazingly thick that it absorbs any and all sound like the sound had never been born. Whatever kind of wool that coat is made from is the kind of wool where sound goes to die, and that’s a fact.
* * *
There was a boar raccoon over toward Dollar Lake who liked to tear one leg off frogs and toads and then leave the frogs and toads to live or die. He would catch them and tear one leg off and then poke at them to watch them wriggle in pain and then leave them there in the mud, not even eating them. Sometimes he would catch a frog and tear off one leg and impale the frog on one thorn like a shrike does but then impale the torn-off leg on the next thorn, so that the frog would be wriggling on one thorn while staring at
his or her leg on the next thorn. Sometimes he would catch several toads and tear their legs off and leave the legs all in a row on a rock while the rest of the toads lived or died. He never ate any of the frogs or toads he caught and dismembered, and he did this for two years until one night when he came down to the lake looking for frogs and toads and something happened. He waded into the shallows to wash his hands. There was a full moon. The raccoon noted the brilliant path the moon cut across the water. The lake was as still and quiet as he could ever remember. He walked another step into the lake, feeling for crawdads, when dozens of frogs erupted from the lake and fell upon him like small, wet, green sticks. He snarled and flung them off and grabbed one and tore it in half, but dozens more erupted from the lake and covered him completely and then dozens and dozens more, too many to count. He fought savagely, but dozens and now hundreds of frogs leapt from the lake and fell upon him and crammed themselves into his mouth between his gnashing teeth—so many that he could not get purchase with his teeth, and he began to gag. Now dozens of toads leapt from the banks of the lake and fell upon the raccoon also, and if you were standing on the shore of the lake you couldn’t see even a hair of the raccoon, because he was so covered with dense frogs and toads. More and more toads and frogs leapt from the lake and the bank, and their soggy weight forced the raccoon out farther and down into the lake. He fought desperately, ripping and shredding at the brown and green blanket of frogs and toads with his paws, but their weight was too much, and he could not breathe with the frogs cramming themselves down his throat. Their weight forced his head under the lake, and more dozens and hundreds of frogs now came up from below and hauled him down. The surviving toads struggled back to the surface and back to the shore, but the hundreds and hundreds of frogs, so many that if you were underwater and were watching this, you would see nothing but an amazing seething knot of frogs, stayed with the raccoon as he sank. There was a last struggle and writhing and then he died. For another few seconds, the ball of frogs fell slowly and silently and then it gently hit the lake bed just at the edge of a deeper pool. At the impact on the lake bed most of the frogs released and rose toward the surface. A few escaped the raccoon’s open mouth as his body began to roll slowly into the deeper pool. As the last surviving frog of the ones who had crammed themselves headlong into the raccoon’s mouth launched up and away from the body, an immense pike emerged endlessly from the dark and took the raccoon and turned with it back into the depths of the pool.
