by Van Reid
These deliberations drove the better part of his night panic away, though the hymn continued silently on his lips.
Slowly, Peter was insinuating himself forward upon the trail, south and east in the direction his mother had sent him. He would stop and ask after Obed Winslow at Patricktown, and he would be back in time to bury his father, no harm done. Curiosity drew him. He was seventeen and able to take care of himself. There were young women at Sheepscott Great Pond who would listen to him over and again, if he had a story to tell–traveling by night through the woods on his own, visiting strangers in the next settlement. He would have news, other people’s stories. The thought of all those people, unknown to him, living their lives, sleeping now in their beds with their different faces and their separate dreams, drew him like curiosity.
He was striding along now at his previous pace, when heavy wings whooshed overhead–an owl, perhaps. “From things that go bump in the night, good Lord protect me,” he said; it was a child’s prayer, but he stated it with conviction, if not very loudly. He knew that pixies and demons could be confused from their motives if a person turned his coat inside out or wore his hat upside down, and he was about to take one of these precautions when he remembered that he was wearing his father’s coat and his father’s hat. Pas not even buried or prayed over yet, Peter thought. His father’s spirit was probably abroad, perhaps with him now. He would have guessed before this that the notion of a ghost, even his father’s, in the middle of the night in the dark of the woods would have scared him ferociously, but he felt unexpectedly calmed and even comforted that some portion of his father–who had been a brave man–might walk with him.
Peter’s eyes had adjusted to the dark, so that he was conscious of ranks of black and umber and able to separate things from their shadows, and to tell near trees from the wall of trees beyond; but even his young eyes were starved for light as the moon westered. Odd flashes of green and red puffed at the periphery of his vision. Startled, he looked away from these images, knowing they would only disappear if he stared after them. He walked for an hour and he walked for two, and the light all but left him and the world became a void clothed in the bark of trees, so he slowed and slowed his progress after tripping once and running his face into a branch, and he searched out the islands of starlight between the trees like a sailor watching for bits of land in an endless sea.
But the light continued to wane and finally died. He had reached a section of ancient wood where the groves overhung the path and thickly leafed oaks and elm and maple hovered their crowns like clouds between Peter and the sky. The sound of the wind in these giants was high and loud and the peep of night creatures and the call of nighthawks and nightjars more constant than in any other part of the forest. Peter’s uncertainty crept over him once again. What was he doing, and what would happen to him out here where someone might stumble over his body but never guess his fate?
He thought he would grope around for a tree trunk and sit down against it till light came. His eyes constructed spots of darkness and near darkness in the wall of black about him; then, as if a lamp had been turned up far away, the last of the falling moon found a hole in the forest and drove a single ray of pearly light down a level stretch of path before him. He was halfway down this columned hall when the dim glow began to lessen to a secret. He stood. The moonlight shifted across the path before him, moving like mortal life from left to right. Then he caught the hint of another, strange light on his left again, and heard the slightest beat, like a fat drop of rain.
There was a sudden huff behind him that choked any response or reflex, and he stood with muscles stiffened and eyes wide as another patch of moonlight shifted past his gaze. It might have been the trees themselves moving, dark as pines and graceful as birch, antlers for branches, black eyes and hooves for knots and roots. It was a great herd of deer, and he was conscious of them all around him and spread out in vast ranks, as God might be conscious of them without looking; the occasional flash of a white tail or the spot on a fawn’s coat had looked like the moonlight moving. He heard them, their hooves scraping the path or turning a twig. The noise of them rose out of the wind like a voice leaving its fellows in unison to harmonize and be heard of itself.
He had not imagined such a tribe of deer; they must be many herds, following a common call to move with the season. Peter hardly dared breathe, and he turned slowly to face the oncoming deer, mouth and eyes wide, fearing his scent would touch off a sudden panic and rush. He might be dead in a minute, cut to ribbons by sharp hoofs and pointed antlers.
And why hadn’t they scented him? He turned his shoulder as one tall buck walked by, almost brushing the young man’s face. It was an uncanny, lengthy wait; he had no idea how long it took, only that scores of animals moved past on either side of him, crossing the road and shifting from deep wood to deep wood. He could smell them, the musk in the air was overpowering, unnerving, and he found himself thinking of those young women, those he would tell his stories to, in ways that made him blush in the dark, and no sooner had he blushed, when it seemed one of the creatures found his presence in the air and let out a curious and half-disgusted cough. Something firm collided with Peter’s chin and nearly spun him about. There was another snort and the noise of graceful legs dancing backwards and sideways upon the path and on the surrounding floor of battered twigs and leaves.
Peter took two steps toward the oncoming herd and ran into the trunk of a tree; it seemed hardly large enough to protect him–only a medium-sized sort of oak–but he pressed himself against it. He sensed that the entire herd had stopped in its careful tracks, paused and tested the forest air with ears and nose. He waited, listening to the sniffing and stillness. Then the herd moved forward again, hardly bothered by the tremor of his presence. It was his father’s coat that had saved him, he was sure, or perhaps his father himself, standing near.
After some time the sound of the herd passed away, fleeing west toward hillier country. Before the last of them was gone he could almost see their dark shapes moving among the trees, and he could sight their tails’ white undersides flash as they made the short leap from the path to the embracing woods. He watched with his back to the tree he’d been hugging, wondering if there were the hint of dawnglow in the air. But the moon was gone and the darkness was severe. However, he did not have to wait long for the sky to rise out of blackness, and he had the impression that the single star or planet he could see through the canopy of leaves had intensified its light and turned the surrounding atmosphere to a muted gray.
After the pitch and complete dark, this small shift toward day seemed like noon to the young man; trees stood out opposite him like men stepping forward from a crowd. Peter picked himself up and continued on his way, picking up also the hymn he had been singing in a quiet reassuring whisper to himself.
He had not walked above half an hour before the light briefly waned before blooming into the predawn. He came to the place where the path turned west and met the Sheepscott River in its upwater youth, south of Great Pond. There was a ford where the river and men had conspired together to place large rocks in a neat row, and beyond there was as much cleared land south along the river as he had ever seen in one place.
It was still night in the west; behind the hill across the river the sky was black and strewn with stars, but the scattered rocks upon the slope, a single glacial cast-off, and the hundreds of stumps rose from shadow in the increasing gray light as if they had been hiding. Peter opened the sack his mother had given him and took a hard biscuit. He ate it at the edge of the river before taking a drink there, then he hopped from rock to rock to the other side with the river rushing about him.
At the top of the hill the road began to follow the Sheepscott River south and he walked another half an hour while the night retreated and dawn neared. Birds were noisy along the water’s edge and in the bushes and small trees that had grown up in the damp pockets of ground.
Finally he came to a broad slope above the road and a gr
ove of birch in the midst of which stood a single powerful oak; the trees were bare and he broke off a sapling from the edge of the copse and, using its limbs as a broom, drove up a low mound of leaves against the trunk of the oak. He was weary and the wind off the river was cool, so he was encouraged to make quick use of his work. Like a low creature, he burrowed into the russet mound and, with his sack beneath his head, he was soon rewarded with the reflected warmth of his own body and breath; the ground, which he could feel through several layers of dry leaves, seemed welcoming, and he imagined that it beat with its own clement pulse. The river murmured below him. The breeze opened the diurnal events of the surrounding field and the forest across the water, but it only rattled the rough counterpane of his bed and entered his dreams by way of his ears. He was blind and deaf to the balance of the dawn.
4
How Peter Loon Conjured Himself from a Felled Buck, and How He Met Two Woodsmen and a Parson
AN INSISTENT BUTTONHOLE OF LIGHT ROUSED PETER. HIS BED WAS still warm but his young limbs felt antique with stillness and hard ground; an oak root nudged his ribs. He opened his eyes and considered the tiny ray; he attempted to place the position of the sun by it, and concluded that he had not slept more than an hour or so. He was deciding whether to close his eyes again or to rise, press on, and look for Patricktown, when there came the sound of a footstep and something occluded that single spot of thin light.
The furtive nature of the sound touched a nerve and he was reminded of the deer in the forest. It was daylight, of course, outside his bed of leaves, but blind and dark where he lay and several notions ran through him–memories, really, of old stories–the man in the moon walking the night forests, strange creatures that moved among the trees when men dreamed, woodland shapes he had long forgotten or long discounted from tales told to frighten him to sleep.
But he knew it was daylight out, and the sound of a dove also encouraged him; he was about to let out his long held breath, when there was a second footstep and the ray of light returned. There came a whir and a hard slap, a heavy piglike grunt and the report of a musket.
The weight of something large and dying crashed against his bed of leaves and he might have thought the oak itself had fallen, for something sharp and woody raked his forehead and scalp and there were no other noises save for the thrashing of limbs (of one sort or another) upon the ground.
Shouting equal parts fear and anger, he pushed himself away and stood against the tree. Leaves clung to his father’s coat. His head was bleeding and he was missing his hat. Before him, a great buck lay still, and Peter had the wild notion that it was the very stag that had sensed him in the forest the night before. On the road below stood two men, a morning mist about their knees, one with his smoking musket still half raised, and both expressing astonishment across a distance of fifty yards. Peter could hardly imagine the sight he must present, rising up from the ground behind or, presumably, from the fallen stag itself, with blood on his head and leaves clinging to his old-fashioned clothes, but even an unloaded weapon, pointed in his direction, gave rise to a sense of threat and he raised a hand and shouted, “Ho, there! I’m Peter Loon from Sheepscott Great Pond!” though the sudden call only startled the two men further.
Amazingly, the hunters appeared ready to give up their kill. They conferred with one another by uncertain looks and short quiet sentences. Something of their perception of the scene reached Peter Loon and he added to his greeting, “I was asleep in these leaves!”
As if this were more than they wanted to know, the two men grabbed the tackle at their feet, turned away, and began to hike at a swift rate, south, down the road. Peter watched them, and he was open-mouthed and bewildered. They stopped before they were out of sight, however, and considered him again. He could see them conferring with one another.
The man who had fired was loading his musket again, and Peter thought it a good time to find his hat and sack and press on. They were already walking toward him, up the slope, albeit methodically, with soft steps as if other things might be wakened from the immediate earth. They were woodsmen, their kits and axes in a heap by the road. The sun behind them was lifting the dew into steam and their every footfall raised breathlike puffs of mist from the ground.
Suddenly dizzy, Peter slumped against the oak and pressed a hand against the gash on his head. When he raised his head, the men were within ten feet of him and the dead buck. It had been an astonishing sight, for the animal was as large a deer as any of them had seen, and Peter had sprung from nowhere. His face was ashen where it wasn’t dark and wet with blood.
“Did the ball crease you?” asked one of the men, suspiciously. He was gray and his teeth were mostly gone.
“No, thank you,” said Peter. “It was the buck.”
The men frowned, clearly laboring to interpret Peter’s statement. The older man held his left arm before him and spit over it, which action was considered among the older folk to be as good a ward against faerie and witch people as could be got at short notice. Peter considered telling the man about turning one’s coat inside out, but thought the fellow might not take his word for it just then.
The other younger man was a tall, broad-shouldered, round-faced fellow with straw-colored hair sprouting from beneath his hat. “What was the buck?” he asked. They were a little less nervous, having heard Peter speak like a real person, but they were eyeing him carefully, as well as the ground about, and their means of quick retreat.
“I was bedded up in those leaves,” said Peter, and as evidence of this he reached for his hat, a corner of which he could see in the pile.
“You were asleep there?” said the first man. “On the other side of this buck?”
Peter nodded.
“We didn’t know you were there,” said the older man, which he may have considered necessary to state, if self-evident under the circumstances. His head made a nodding motion, indicating either the place where Peter had lain, or some expectation of Peter’s agreement on the subject.
Peter felt giddy and couldn’t understand why they didn’t come forward to help him with his wounds; but they only stood by and watched him warily. When he sat down against the tree with a small groan, they did take a step or two in his direction, and the older man carefully prodded the great buck’s side.
“Felled him like a hammer,” said the bigger fellow, when the creature showed no sign of life. He knelt beside the deer, then glanced up at Peter, as if the young man might demonstrate signs of anger or propriety concerning the animal. They had not yet gotten used to the idea that he hadn’t simply sprung from the buck as it drew its last breath.
“What’s in the sack?” asked the gray-haired man.
Peter was puzzled by the question. He was more concerned with what was left in his head. He looked at his hand, thinking that he may have stanched the blood. “Biscuits and apples,” he said finally.
From his expression, the older man might have doubted it. He was looking at the sack, clearly wondering if it held the answer to Peter’s sudden appearance, as if Peter was a witch with potions and spells in his bag. The old man raised the muzzle of his gun in Peter’s direction without conscious motive. The younger woodsman caught sight of the movement and looked with wide blue eyes from Peter’s face to the musket and back again.
They were then all three startled by a new voice that said, “‘He was a mighty hunter before the Lord: wherefore it is said, Even as Nimrod the mighty hunter before the Lord.’” rider had come over the slope, his approach hidden by the width of the oak and the degree of their distraction; but now he ambled his mount to a point some ten or fifteen paces above them, and as he reined up, he leaned over the animal’s withers.
The gray-haired man raised his musket like a bar before him, and the other woodsman stood with his own weapon pointing groundward, but poised with his thumb against the cock.
The rider was long and gaunt, with a large nose and a humorous twist to his mouth. He wore no hat and his queue was bound in a ribb
on with no attempt at tidiness. The horse was of English stock, as brown as the buck, tall, broad-backed, and massively hooved. The tails of the man’s blue wool great-coat spilled past the animal’s flanks.
“Genesis ten, nine,” said the gray-haired woodsman, who might have had enough of the old religion to spar verses. Nimrod was a mysterious figure to men of the woods, alluded to but once in scripture and often linked in legend with strange figures that wandered the forests; the old man was not less troubled for the mention of him.
The rider seemed to know this, for he grinned at the old man, then dropped easily from the back of the horse and lifted the hoop of a leather bottle from the pommel of his saddle.
“There are more folk about than I would have credited,” said the younger woodsman.
“I wouldn’t have credited this fellow,” agreed the rider, indicating Peter with a nod and almost a laugh. “I was watching the two of you from over in those woods.” He pointed south to a line of trees. “As clean a shot as ever I witnessed. But when this fellow sprang up from his bed–!” He found a handkerchief in a pocket and pulled the wooden stopper from the bottle as he walked around the trunk of the oak.
The woodsmen stepped back, though they were not in his way. “You saw him, then?” asked the gray-haired man. “You saw him come out of that pile?”
“Like Adam out of the Earth!” stated the rider. “Did you think he climbed out of the hole you put in that buck?” He doused the linen with water and applied it to Peter’s forehead.
“I wasn’t too sure,” returned the old man, which–from the look on his face–was more straightforward an expression than he had intended.
Peter had been listening to this small conversation as from another room, but the gaunt fellow’s touch drew him out of his daze; he flinched a little as the tall man washed the blood from his head. “You weren’t any more surprised than I,” said Peter. He realized that he had been gazing at the warm coat of the deer, and the hole at the base of the animal’s neck, dark with blood. He looked up at the man who had fired the killing shot. Beyond the woodsman, beyond the road and the river, he could see the glistening tops of the trees and a broken column of smoke-rising from someone’s house, no doubt–in the distance.
