The Wanderers

by Tim Pears

  Rufus said that he would start but Leo should watch him so they could take turns. Holding a stiff brush, he climbed over the edge and onto the ladder, and down a few rungs. Leaning against it, he began to scrub the brick walls, which were covered in some kind of dark moss or other matter.

  The old hermit worked the brush with remarkable vigour. Soon, though, he slowed down, and after a while longer he climbed out and Leo took his place. Periodically they threw a bucket of water at the wall to wash off the loosened dirt. The work was slow and tedious, but they made gradual progress, shifting the ladder so as to be able to reach right around the wall before descending further.

  When they reached as far as they could without stepping into the water below they withdrew the heavy ladders and set to removing the water. Rufus reckoned the well to be about a third full. He showed the boy his recommended technique. Holding the rope tight, he dropped the bucket upside down. The idea, he said, was to knock the air out of the bucket, so that it would sink, and turn, and fill with water.

  Leo copied the old hermit’s method, then quietly adopted his own style, lowering the bucket to the surface then flicking his wrist to turn the bucket into the water. They emptied the buckets by throwing the contents behind them. That part of the yard became a wet mess.

  At some point late in the morning a girl appeared with food and drink. Rufus thanked her and asked her to leave the provisions on the bench nearby, saying they could not stop for they were working against time. Against the inflow of water from whatever underground spring fed the well.

  The removal of the water revealed a thick sediment of silt or muddy sludge. This Leo was sent down on a rope to shovel into a bucket that Rufus pulled up. Each bucket was heavy. Leo was at the mercy of the rope and of Rufus’s strength and concentration and grip upon the rope. He hoped that they would hold.

  Up at the surface the old man emptied each bucketful in a pile on the ground. ‘They can chuck this on their gardens,’ he yelled down, his voice echoing in the brick chamber. ‘Beautiful soil, I reckon.’

  By the time he had shovelled up as much of the silt as he could, leaving little on bare rock, Leo’s muscles moaned with complaint. He called up to announce that this bucket was the last one and watched it rise. He wondered whether the ladder or at least a rope would be sent down again. What if Rufus suffered some palpitation of the heart or was otherwise spirited away, leaving Leo abandoned at the bottom of the shaft? Water would trickle in and eventually he would drown. They would find him floating. He had too lurid an imagination. The ladder came down.

  At the top, Leo stretched his arms and shoulders, grimacing. Rufus laughed and said, ‘Who’s the one what was liftin them buckets full a mud?’

  They sat and ate the cheese and beef sandwiches the girl had brought for them, and a bottle of tepid tea.

  ‘This is how you pay the rent on your small portion of a backwoods no one had a use for?’ Leo said. ‘I reckon your landlord’s drove a hard bargain.’

  In the afternoon they scrubbed the walls below what had been the waterline when they started, then extracted a few buckets of scummy water. They withdrew the ladders for the last time. Leo asked if Rufus customarily did this all on his own.

  ‘Normally they gives me two lads to do as much as you done, boy,’ the old man told him. ‘Sometimes three.’

  Finally Rufus drew Leo’s attention to the bucket that was used by the residents. It was full of water. Rufus asked him to look closer and he saw that there were two or three shapes in it like short thick worms. ‘Leeches,’ Rufus told him. ‘To keep the water clean.’ They lowered the bucket until it stood upon the damp rock, and tied the end of the rope to a hook on the outer wall above ground.

  ‘The spring water’ll feed in and come up over the top a the bucket in due course,’ Rufus said. They carried the implements they’d been given back to the farmyard and left them leaning against a wall. Then Leo returned to collect the plates and bottle the girl had brought them. These they took to the back door of the farmhouse. The same girl answered the old man’s knock. She thanked him. He told her the sandwiches were much appreciated, and turned to Leo, who nodded in agreement. The girl told Rufus that Mister Devereaux was in his garden and should like to see him.

  The garden was a lawn, surrounded by flower beds. As Leo and the old man entered it, they disturbed some black birds, which flew up from the grass. A man of middle age was sitting upon a bench. He rose and beckoned them. He was tall and had white hair, though his face was not that of an elderly man. They sat, Rufus in the middle of the bench, Leo beside him.

  ‘I heard you have an apprentice, Rufus,’ the man said. ‘I suppose this means that my wood will have its tenant for another generation, does it?’

  The old hermit said that he could not answer for the boy, but neither man invited Leo to do so for himself so he remained silent. Instead the farmer asked Rufus if birds could smell.

  Rufus pondered the question for a while but clearly could not answer, for he merely repeated it. ‘Can birds smell?’

  ‘They do not have noses that I can see, only beaks, so I cannot believe that they are able to. But sit quietly and watch.’

  The two men and the boy sat on the bench looking out upon the garden. They remained like this for some time. Leo studied the flowers. There seemed to him to be many herbs mixed up amongst them. Rosemary. Sage. Upon the lawn first one then another of the crows they had disturbed returned. These birds walked very slowly across the grass. Periodically each paused and inserted its beak into the ground.

  ‘You see?’ the farmer said. ‘You see, Rufus? They are surely eating insects’ eggs or larvae. How do they know they are there unless they’re sniffing them out?’

  The hermit nodded. ‘I never heard a such a thing. It don’t make no sense to me. I should say they be listenin.’

  ‘Listening?’

  ‘Aye. They hears the beetles feedin on stems and roots a grass, and then they peck em out. Either them or their larvae as you say.’

  Mister Devereaux scratched his head. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I never thought of that.’

  8

  They walked back in silence. Then Rufus said, ‘Why is us here, Leo?’

  The boy was unsure what the old man meant. Why were they taking this route back to the camp? Or why was it the two of them were here, together, at this moment? Or why were they here, in this landscape, this county, this kingdom?

  ‘I do not know,’ he said. ‘Why is we here, Rufus?’

  The old man stopped. He turned to Leo and shrugged his shoulders. He looked at him with those startled blue eyes and the boy wondered what they had seen. ‘I know not either,’ Rufus said. ‘Unless it be to look down deep into the heart a things.’

  ‘What things?’ Leo asked.

  ‘It don’t matter,’ Rufus said. ‘There at the heart of anything you’ll find it.’

  ‘Find what?’

  When he saw the boy’s serious expression the old man grinned. ‘Whatever you choose to call it,’ he said. ‘Any man can call it what he likes.’

  The old man turned and resumed his journey. Just as Leo caught him up he stopped again. This time he laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. Leo felt his old friend’s weight, that Rufus was using him for balance. ‘Just bear this in mind,’ he said. ‘The deeper you goes, the further you be from the surface. That’s the danger.’ They stood like this for some time, as if Rufus judged the boy needed to ponder the matter. Then he lifted his hand from Leo’s shoulder, and they walked on.

  9

  They sat at the fire. Leo cooked stew but Rufus said he was not hungry, despite the work they had done. He drank blackberry wine. It probably made him sicker, he said, it was terrible bad stuff, but it helped, too. ‘I don’t know what I got,’ he said, ‘but it’s a killer. I seen it happen to others. Grow sick and weak and thin, lose all their muscle and fat, what’s the use a that?’

  ‘We’ll get you to a hospital,’ Leo suggested.

  ‘You know where the
re’s a hospital hereabouts?’ Rufus asked.

  ‘Mister Devereaux will know. He will help us.’

  Rufus shook his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I do not want no hospital.’

  The donkey stood close by. It seemed to Leo that like his lost white colt, the beast derived some ruminative pleasure from watching the flames, just as men do. With this notion Rufus agreed.

  ‘I went to Africa with the mules,’ he said. He gazed at the fire. After a while he spoke again. ‘We trained them mules so that if our ship couldn’t get to port they could swim ashore. The best pack animal there be.’

  Leo said he knew nothing of mules, and wondered whether they possessed a temperament and intelligence similar to horses.

  Rufus said that he could not see why not, since they were a cross between a mare and a donkey, with big ears like a donkey and a mare’s tail. So one might expect them to have much in common with the breeds of their parentage.

  He discoursed upon the subject of genetics. ‘See, boy, a hinny is a cross between a stallion and a she-ass. It will have a horse’s small ears and a donkey’s short tail. The forequarters of a cross resemble those of its father, the hind quarters those of its mother.’

  Rufus said that mules possess remarkable powers of endurance, can withstand long periods of thirst, cope with dramatic changes of climate, and are not fastidious as regards food but will scoff whatever is available.

  ‘Their hide is tough,’ he said. ‘Which helps protect it from galling.’

  Leo asked what it was like in the army. In the war.

  Rufus said that mules are generally cheerful and clever beasts. They appreciate proper handling. If treated badly they will rebel. They have a fearsome kick, as everyone knows. But if treated well, they are easy to groom and keep in condition.

  ‘Did you see much fighting?’ Leo asked.

  Rufus sat a while in silence. ‘There were some,’ he said, ‘who reckon mules is no good on account of their tendency to stampede under fire. But our company trained the habit out of em and they only let us down when it was real bad.’

  Rufus stared at the flames with his wide open eyes, trembling a little as if the warm evening were cold, the flames cool, then shook himself loose from whatever reverie possessed him.

  ‘How did you train the mules not to give you away?’ Leo asked. ‘If you was creepin close to the enemy and one a they animals suddenly neighed?’

  ‘No,’ Rufus said. ‘That would a been no good. They can make a hell of a racket once they get started. No, they had to be devoiced, a course they did. The animals was brought in, one by one. There’d be four of us, with a short rope each, which we tied to the hooves. On the shout a three we turned em over. They was so surprised they made no fuss.’

  Leo remembered his father single-handedly casting the mean hunter for Herb Shattock, in the master’s stables.

  ‘Then the veterinary surgeon come with a chloroform rag,’ Rufus said, ‘put it over the mule’s mouth. One of us soldiers had to sit on the mule’s head, but we had to take that job in turns or the chloroform would knock us out too. As soon as it went to sleep the surgeon cut into the mule’s throat and took out the voice box.’

  Leo asked what a voice box looked like.

  ‘Like a tiny piece a jelly,’ Rufus told him. ‘The vet put on a dressin. We undid our ropes and waited for the water man. When he come with his buckets, he threw water over the animal and it looked up, all glass-eyed, and struggled to its feet. It tried to make a noise but no sound come out. The whole thing took no more an ten minutes.’

  After some while considering this account, Leo asked the question that troubled him. ‘Was horses cut the same way?’

  The old man nodded. ‘Horses, ponies, mules, the lot.’

  10

  It was morning. Rufus was still abed. Leo groomed the donkey. The old man said she was not used to such treatment and might not appreciate it, but she seemed to.

  The boy did not hear the intruder but Rufus did. He came out from beneath the weeping beech. With a finger to his lips he motioned Leo to keep quiet, and with eyes downcast Rufus tilted his head the better to listen in a particular direction. Then Leo too heard the footsteps approaching. Rufus nodded, suggesting that he recognised them. He looked at Leo, still nodding, as if he assumed that Leo did likewise, or was confirming some conjecture he had made earlier.

  Mister Devereaux walked into the clearing. He carried a long leather case.

  ‘Good morning, Rufus,’ he said. ‘And you, boy.’

  ‘How goes it?’ the hermit asked him. He sat upon their bench. ‘Will you join us?’

  ‘I should like to, Rufus, but I can’t today. Perhaps when you bring the gun back I shall have more leisure at my disposal.’

  ‘You have a job for me?’

  Mister Devereaux gave the case to Rufus, who laid it across his thighs.

  ‘I do. There’s a fallow buck on his own. Lives in that wood on the far side of the pond. At night he comes and helps himself to Sarah’s roses.’

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ Rufus told him.

  ‘I realise it’s entirely the wrong time of year, but keep as much venison as you can smoke. There’s a dozen bullets in there. It’s my W. J. Jeffery. The four-oh-four.’

  Rufus nodded. ‘Should do,’ he said.

  ‘Good hunting,’ said Mister Devereaux, and took his leave.

  The old man sharpened two knives. One was much the older of the two and had been sharpened countless times before. Its blade was half the depth it remained at the hilt. Its wooden handle, though rubbed and scarred, Leo reckoned not to be its first. The other knife was younger. Rufus sharpened them one after the other on a whetstone, testing the blade on sticks until he was satisfied.

  Then he took the rifle from the case and studied it. He told Leo that it was not much more than ten years old and had been made for Mister Devereaux by the famous gunmaker. He asked Leo if he was much of a deer hunter. Leo told him of his brother Sid, who for his own amusement liked to creep up on a roe deer, to see how close he could get without it knowing he was there. If he got close enough, when he frightened the deer it would bark in alarm before running away. Rufus asked if he could do likewise. The boy confessed that he himself lacked this capability.

  Rufus said that he had clearly acquired the wrong brother. He could also do with a dog or two at such times. As a boy he had hunted otters. His father’s otterhounds were rough-coated animals, of Welsh extraction. Their cry or howl came out of their chests. It was the most beautiful, in his opinion, of all hounds’ cries. As he spoke he handled the rifle to feel the heft and balance of it, and stroked the walnut stock, murmuring with satisfaction.

  A hundred feet or more away from where Rufus took up position stood a tree whose trunk separated into two not far from the ground. Rufus lay on the ground and aimed with his shallow V rear sight just below the V in the tree. After each shot he hauled himself to his feet and walked all the way over to study where the bullet had entered, then made minute adjustments to the sights. After the fourth shot he said that would do and they set off, Leo leading the donkey.

  They sat upon the warm ground in the middle of the wood beyond the pond, each leaning against the trunk of the same tree. Rufus said that they should wait, that patience was a better course of action in a case like this than running around in search of one solitary fallow deer. This buck would come to them.

  And so they waited. Leo was alert. Any sound might be their prey and he looked about him. But no deer came and in time his attention wandered. Insects buzzed in the summer sun. Birds warbled from the canopy of leaves above him. Breezes shifted the leaves and the sunlight rippled as it filtered through them. He watched the changing patterns in the undergrowth around him as he would the flames of a fire. He recalled waiting for Lottie on the morning of their fateful picnic, and wondered whether when he returned she would remember him. Of course she would. How much altered could he be?

  The boy sat with the old hermit and waited for th
is deer to show itself. Perhaps it was all a ruse, cooked up by Rufus and the farmer. There was no errant buck. They wished to teach him some lesson. He closed his eyes and slept and saw a bird. ‘but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings as eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.’ He saw the bird but the bird was himself. Half boy, half bird. Then he saw another, a heron, which rose from a rock beside a pool and flew away in the slow, regal manner of its species.

  The sound of the shot woke him. A boom, resounding among the trees. Leo scrambled to his feet and over to Rufus, who knelt on one knee. The rifle rested in the V of a stick he must have cut for the purpose, whose other end he’d inserted in the soil.

  ‘Help me up, boy,’ he said. The old man staggered. Leo held him upright. ‘It’s only my stiff knee,’ Rufus said. ‘I can’t hardly unlock it when I been kneelin any length a time, see?’

  They walked over to where the deer lay. ‘Shot him through the shoulder,’ Rufus said. ‘At the base a the neck there.’ He showed Leo the exit wound, a small hole barely larger than the bullet itself, above the right shoulder. He asked whether the boy had ever dressed a deer. Leo said that he had not.

  Rufus kneeled and slit the dead deer’s throat. He explained that the carcass must be bled. Dark red blood spilled liberally onto the ground and soaked into the dry soil. Next, he said, they should remove the glands inside the buck’s rear legs, which secrete a powerful-smelling musk during the rut and if left will contaminate the meat. Rufus removed these using the same knife that he had used to bleed the animal. When he had done so he tossed the tiny glands into the undergrowth and inserted the blade of the knife into the ground. Then he asked Leo to fetch the donkey. When the boy returned Rufus was standing up, some yards from the dead buck. He asked Leo to uncork one of the water bottles they’d brought in the pannier and to pour water over his hands. Leo now saw that Rufus’s hands were covered in mud. He washed them, rinsing off the mud he’d used to absorb any scent he might have picked up from the glands.