She took off at a speed rarely needed and flew across the asphalt, her hoofs trampling weeds that barely thrived. Her calf remained still, as if to allow the moose to expend all her energy on their escape, and in no time she reached the area of initial capture. She brought her pace to a walk and saw all the dangers from the night before: the water she could not drink and the well-disguised contraption that threw the snake-thing over her head, which now looked to have colluded as dual enemies. She stood at a safe distance, saw all her mistakes, and absorbed this new knowledge. When she came upon the fronds she almost slept on—and would have done so had she not been thirsty—the western side of the Hump rose in front of her. In her still-weakened state, the moose considered the difficult climb and the easier descent that would bring her to a secluded place where, in just a few days, she would birth her calf.
Now, a new sound intruded—first from far away, then increasing in volume. A loud, staggered wail. She saw a large metal container with flashing colored stars speeding, speeding, speeding, heading toward the place of death where she’d injured the small human with red fur. Without hesitation, the moose scrambled up the Hump, crested the barren ridge, and descended toward a town in central Maine the humans called Oslo.
THE WORDS
CLAUDE ROY RETRACED HIS STEPS, LOPING back down a few dozen yards on the dirt path to discover his son on his hands and knees. A steady rain the night before had caused mush. That, and late-May snow melt, left much of the soil generally sloppy, which then made for unsure footing for the skinny twelve-year-old. Claude slid to a halt and toed Pierre’s forehead. The boy offered his face—a galaxy of freckles strewn across his cheeks, a mop of bright-red hair currently in need of a barber—and gave up a guileless smile that not a soul in Oslo could resist.
This was the third such disruption Pierre had caused since they’d begun this Saturday-morning hike. As that specific number—three—crossed his mind, Claude realized with halfhearted shame that he’d been keeping count. It would’ve been simple enough if they’d navigated the trail side by side, so he might help Pierre recover when he lost his footing, or simply hold the boy’s hand, for God’s sake. Actually, an unhurried stroll would have made even more sense, because Claude was six foot four and Pierre hadn’t yet reached five feet, the physics of stride inequity clearly at play. But Claude, an impatient man by nature, couldn’t seem to toggle himself to Pierre’s gait. He’d set and maintained a good lead the minute they breached the woods. This then dangled the obvious question: why hike together at all? Claude had to admit his pace bordered on sadistic.
Pierre scrambled to his feet, swatting moist dirt off his pants as best he could. His Keystone 22 rifle had been tossed to the side of the path and lay precariously close to a puddle. Increasing the potential for even more damage, a persistent breeze had blown leaves and debris across the weapon. Bile shot up Claude’s throat. Before they’d left the house, he’d warned Pierre to make certain that dirt, water, or any crap whatsoever didn’t muck up the mechanism. Protecting a firearm at all costs was a hunter’s mantra, he’d added at the end of his lecture. But Claude managed to swallow his irritation and made an about-face, leaving Pierre to wipe down the rifle on his own. In less than a minute the boy caught up and, walking behind him, curled his fingers around Claude’s belt. Claude felt Pierre’s knuckles rub against his lower back. The contact was welcome and seemed to erase the last five minutes.
“A squirrel!” Pierre screamed his fondness for pointing out the mundane.
“Rapture,” Claude whispered, loud enough to elicit a giggle from Pierre, whom he knew also appreciated hyperbole.
As if having negotiated a tentative truce, they trudged further into the woods, aiming for a familiar rock on which they’d sit and take their lunch. The quiet between them gave Claude time to mull over the specific disappointments he felt with regard to his son.
Weak. It came too easily, not tempered by any mitigation through deliberation, and the truth of it made Claude wince. This, he knew, was a term no father should bandy about in his head, not to mention roll over his tongue, and surely not about his preadolescent child. But he worried for Pierre, because never in his life had Claude seen a man emerge with his masculinity intact when operating from an intrinsic state of weakness. Bluster, even faked arrogance, provided no effective mask. If all this was true, Claude surmised, his boy just might be doomed.
The previous evening, during an ongoing fracas he and his wife had waged virtually every night since Pierre’s accident at the March a month prior, Claude tripped hard on that word. Weak. Celine went feral, like a filly being broken with a harsh rein. Her mouth formed a rictus so ugly it scared Claude, and he couldn’t imagine what was headed his way—howling for sure, maybe even violence. Celine had exhibited mercurial moods of late, which Claude knew was due to the stress of Pierre’s injury. But to his surprise, and then relief, she’d backed off abruptly. Tucking a tear-stained pillow under her head, she explained to Claude as if he were the child, that “weak” was not a kind, or even accurate, characterization of her son. Claude, of course, noted the possessive pronoun used to emphasize her belief that he was incapable of understanding their child. As an alternative, she lobbed “sensitive” from across the room. But Claude didn’t like that word, either. In fact, it was much worse. It chafed at him as feminine, which was murky territory he was loath to go anywhere near, particularly with regard to his only progeny. Because what would that then mean about Claude himself, the lamb not being so far from the goat, or some such adage? So, they continued to fling synonyms at each other and finally, long past midnight, managed to compromise on “quirky,” which was a compliment, to Celine’s mind, and nebulous enough for Claude to acquiesce to, at least at that late hour. With that wrinkle pressed out Celine was snoring within minutes, leaving Claude, slumped in a chair by the window, to watch the sun rise.
After about a quarter mile Claude felt Pierre’s hand slip from his belt, but the boy kept up this time, panting with the effort. This pleased Claude, though listening to him slap his bare arms nonstop because of mosquitos annoyed him with equal measure. He’d advised Pierre to wear a long-sleeved shirt for just this reason, but to no avail. Pierre had listened to the weather report the night before and with predicted warming temperatures, he’d insisted on wearing a T-shirt under his orange hunting vest. Claude kept an “I told you so” admonishment to himself, and Pierre suddenly sped ahead, rounded a corner, and was soon out of sight.
Now Claude basked in what he imagined only the thick woods of Maine could give him. Not so much the cliché of being alone with nature. Rather, the idea that if he ended up alone, he might be okay with that. And somehow, the protection of a thick canopy of birch trees dappling sun across his face gave Claude the camouflage needed to muse about what he assumed all men of middle age must consider from time to time. A secret and frightening contingency plan: that single life would be easier than toughing out the complexities of those he professed to love most in the world. Which then led him to recall, again, how seriously difficult and headstrong Celine had behaved the night before. Not to mention all the words she’d thrown at him in the privacy of their bedroom. Weak. Sensitive. Special. Emotional. Perceptive. Soft. Delicate? No. All unacceptable. Then, the fatal personality modifier: quirky. She’d been able to jam that one down his throat due, in part, to his exhaustion from having just worked a double shift at the March. Also, the fact that Celine understood all too well that Claude was never at his best at three a.m. But now, feeling more clearheaded from the pot of coffee he’d mainlined before he and Pierre had set off, Claude wasn’t so sure about that word. In fact, the more he thought about it, quirky actually irked him quite a lot. Because Pierre’s most disturbing quirk to date ate Claude alive.
Books. They’d abducted his son with stealth and breathtaking speed from the day he’d started kindergarten. Claude and Celine hadn’t come from families of readers by any measure, so this was not some quaint tradition handed down through generati
on or gene pool. And despite Catholic backgrounds, Celine, and Claude to a greater degree, didn’t believe in a higher power. So the mighty hand of God was not at work here. But as Pierre’s passion for reading grew to what Claude deemed unnatural, he couldn’t help but entertain the notion that this might be the work of some devil who’d invaded his son. For all of Oslo, Pierre was an entertaining sideshow. For Claude, an embarrassment.
The boy was cued up at the library till the end of days, or so repeated the head librarian whenever she’d bump into Claude at the hardware store, a frequent haunt for them both. He noticed she’d bought a lot of PVC piping and suspected she was trying to plumb her own house, which of course was illegal. At the point when he couldn’t tolerate one more soliloquy on Pierre’s to-be-read list (projected to the highest shelf, stocked with, poetically, drain cleaner), he’d rerouted the conversation to toilets and building codes. That shut her down nicely. In the end, the librarian’s shoddy plumbing would remain their little secret, and Pierre’s book fetish, mercifully, became a closed subject. But that was a mere private squabble at the hardware store, and easily buried. What Claude couldn’t control was Pierre’s habit of devouring his books publicly, sometimes while walking. On any given day the boy could be observed walking up and down the aisles at Shaw’s supermarket—from dry goods to frozen foods to the dairy aisle—with his nose between the pages. He never looked up. Not once. His ability to sidestep cereal, fish sticks, lamp-posts, vehicles, people, whatever, unnerved Claude no end. Pure delight for Celine.
Claude double-timed and caught up with Pierre. After dropping their gear on a dry patch of ground, they sat on the family rock, nicely warmed by a noon sun. The Spam, tomato, and mayo sandwiches Celine had prepared the night before were consumed in a matter of minutes. Claude took a swig of coffee from a thermos and felt the fresh rush of caffeine. As he lay back on the rock and closed his eyes, he heard a few birds pecking about nearby. The steady breeze cut into the sun’s heat. And it all felt fine for the moment. Because by surrendering to the daily work of critters and the way of nature, Claude also managed to curb taking additional mental inventory of Pierre, which had saturated his thoughts since the day had begun. With this mental reprieve he felt his chest ease, as if he’d been holding his breath since dawn.
Claude opened his eyes and saw that Pierre had also stretched out, close enough to smell his sweet-and-sour sweat. From this vantage point, he could see the pug nose Pierre had inherited from Celine, and his own father’s slightly pigeon-toed feet. Claude wondered what he had given Pierre and then realized he wished, more than anything, that his son would eventually grow an impressive physique, just like his. Claude was tall and lean, sporting at least a four-pack—a formidable sight from any distance. Once in a while Celine told him his face was nicely proportioned, which he assumed was a compliment. And his brown-black hair hadn’t gone grey in the least. The side part in Pierre’s hair was near, and Claude reached over to brush away some dandruff from his peach scalp. He meant it as a benign gesture, but Pierre shoved Claude’s hand away and quickly ejected from the rock to busy himself with gathering up the trash, of which there was very little. Purell appeared and Pierre squirted it liberally on his palms, rubbing longer than was needed. His son was stalling.
“Get out the bullets, just like we went over at home,” Claude instructed, still staring at the sky from his reclined position.
“Right. But I forgot my earplugs, Dad,” Pierre said, his voice uneasy.
“I’ve got an extra pair here somewhere.” Claude sat up, dug into the various pockets of his vest jacket and proffered a couple of loose plugs.
“Gross! Not a pair you’ve used. I’d rather go deaf.”
Bingo. Fussy. That was the word. A thoroughly suitable substitute for quirky, which Celine couldn’t possibly argue with because of empirical evidence. His mood lifted a notch and he cast the plugs in Pierre’s direction. They bounced off the boy’s chest and whirligigged to the ground. A wounded look spread across Pierre’s face, as if the plugs themselves were an insult. Claude shuddered from the futile charade of the entire morning. He wasn’t acing parenting and had little juice left by week’s end after working sixty hours’ worth of numbing labor at the March, so who could blame him? But at that moment he ached for the chance to truly influence his boy—to school him about guns and why they weren’t as bad as everyone in the country believed. To convince him to love this fifteen hundred acres that had been handed down through four generations of French-Canadian relations. These notions were as real to Claude as words in a book were to his son.
He grabbed Pierre by the arm and dragged him to a nearby flattened knoll on their property. Looking west and past the Hump, he saw tips of the White Mountains in New Hampshire poking through low clouds. A merlin falcon soared overhead, floating without so much as a single flap. Claude pointed to the sky, and together they tracked the diving raptor, its shrill call resounding as it disappeared, presumably to a nest with young. He was about to mention that the falcon had few predators, but Pierre was busy scribbling something on a tiny pad of paper with a pencil not much bigger, biting his lower lip with concentration.
“That again?” Claude asked, unable to hide his irritation.
“Just some notes,” Pierre said, turning his back to Claude.
“What about? The rules of hunting? Put that stuff away. Merde.”
“Dad! You said you’d leave me alone about my papers. And I know what that word means,” Pierre said, aiming his voice at the sky as if wanting the whole world to witness his father’s transgressions.
“I guess I did,” Claude conceded. “But writing notes isn’t going to help your memory.”
“How do you know?”
“Well, has there been any improvement?”
“No,” Pierre admitted after several seconds, his shoulders slumping in defeat.
“Son, relax. Anyway, you don’t need to remember anything about today. So what’s the point of writing anything down?”
Pierre shoved the pencil and paper into a shirt pocket. He then pulled out his cell phone and took several shots in all directions. Click, click, click, click. With a look of satisfaction that he’d managed to finish what he started despite his father’s objections, Pierre then gingerly withdrew two bullets and handed them to Claude.
“Gimme your rifle,” Claude said, rolling the bullets around in his palm. Pierre grabbed the firearm from the ground and handed it over like it might explode on its own terms. Claude quickly loaded the rifle, engaged the safety, then handed it back. Pierre, clearly nervous as to what was expected of him, ended up holding the weapon in exactly the wrong direction: straight at Claude’s chest.
“Jesus! Get that thing down. What are you trying to do, kill me?”
“Sorry. It’s too pointy. And creepy,” Pierre said, drawing the rifle away from his father’s heart.
“Everything new is creepy at first,” Claude said.
“Is that true?” Pierre eyed Claude with suspicion.
“Absolutely.”
Pierre gave his father a frightened look for what the future might hold—more factoids of nature to unravel and then endure. Then he began to quiver as he tried to hold back any sound of crying. Claude almost admired him for the effort. He pulled Pierre close and thumbed the tears that had managed to escape. Cupping the boy’s chin with his hand, Claude met Pierre’s eyes with a smile.
“Come on. Get yourself together. I know things have been rough. But lookit there.” Claude pointed east to the farthest horizon. “What do you see?”
“Mrs. Kimbrough’s land?” Pierre croaked.
“Christ almighty. Use your imagination for once, will ya? What’s in the far distance?” Claude didn’t wait for an answer. “The Atlantic Ocean.”
“I don’t see any water, Dad.”
“It’s not a literal question,” Claude spat. Though he was momentarily pleased that he himself had landed upon something allegorical—or was it a metaphor? Whatever.
&nb
sp; But Pierre was spot-on. They were looking at Kimbroughs’ land, alright. Ill-gotten, by Claude’s measure. Kimbrough had hijacked the thousand-plus adjacent acres at an estate auction. The previous owners had died suddenly, and pesky lawyers from another part of Maine altogether handled the sale without alerting anyone in Oslo, precluding what would have normally transpired: the townspeople in general, and Claude Roy specifically, would’ve had an opportunity to pull financing together. Though it wasn’t exactly their fault, Jim and Sandra Kimbrough had, in essence, swindled Claude out of his right as a born-and-bred Mainer to increase his land holdings. No matter that over the last twenty years the two families had looked out for each other through countless difficult winters, because that’s just what people in Maine did. And no matter that Kimbrough had been a decent, and if he was truly honest, bordering on great neighbor. Toss all that aside, he’d never forgiven them and he sure as hell didn’t trust them. They were from away. Always would be.
“Dad, when you say literal, do you mean literature? Like my books?” Pierre finally countered, with no small amount of confusion in his voice.
“Forget it,” Claude said with resignation. The boy shrugged, clearly happy to reach détente, which left Claude to submerge deeper into a bad itch of late: Sandra Kimbrough.
The day that woman clawed her way into their lives was the day Claude reckoned he’d lost his boy. Not a week after Pierre’s accident, Sandra Kimbrough convinced Celine to allow her to teach Pierre the violin. Got her to swallow some guff about how learning an instrument would be good for him, maybe help him with his memory loss. She set Pierre up with a violin so fast, Claude hadn’t the time to put a stop to her uppity notions. But damned if Pierre didn’t take to the instrument. And it seemed he had a great ear, whatever that meant. Claude, on the other hand, was tone deaf—an affliction widely broadcast by Sandra as soon as she’d diagnosed it. Regardless, Claude feared what was next. Macramé? Potting? Sock darning? Pierre would probably be brilliant at that stuff too. But the boy clearly revered Sandra, and Celine had found a new ally and possible best friend. And according to everyone in Oslo, Saint Sandra Kimbrough was just so, so, so nice. To Claude’s mind, she was a snoopy, crafty little something or other.
Oslo, Maine Page 2
