Chapter 51

After the men left for work she piled the dishes in the big sink to soak, filled a Thermos with coffee, singled out one of the dogs to accompany her, and hiked up to the shack to listen to the birds. The dog would sniff about the shack for a few minutes while she spread a big moss-covered stump with a piece of plastic bag she kept in the shack so she would not have to sit on the damp moss; then he would wet on the same wetting post and lie down to sleep on the same pile of burlap that the dog before him had used. Then nothing else would be stirring—or so it would seem. But gradually her ears would pick out tiny rustlings in the vines nearby, where the grosbeaks were waking. A mourning dove would call unseen from the thicket below—a round, clear, bouncing note, as though a soft ball had been dropped on the lowest key of a xylophone: “Tuuu . . . tuu tu tu.” Another dove would answer a distance away. They would call again, closer to each other each time; then they would emerge together from the mist, of the mist, gray, graceful, and be off together wing to wing like reflections of each other in a looking-glass sky. The red-winged blackbirds would wake all at once, like soldiers to Reveille. They would shake themselves from the bam grove and swing in a glistening pack to settle in the nearby bunchberry vines, where they waited for the mist to lift from the cattails, singing incessantly or drawing the black feathers of their wings and tails slowly through their bills. With the bright scarlet amulets on each shoulder of their black uniforms they always made her sure that they were preparing for a review by the king. Then the blue grouse would drum away its kin, and the dowitcher would voice its piercing alarm at seeing the sun. The band-tailed pigeons would call seductively from branch to branch, all with voices like Marlene Dietrich’s. The flickers and sapsuckers would begin knocking the trunks of hemlocks for breakfast. ...And after all the other birds were up and about their affairs—even after the jay, who would burst each morning from the mist, screeching in a blue rage at these damned early birds who never let a fellow finish his rest—the crows would make their stately entrance. From the tops of the firs they would swoop, laughing with a sort of pitiless amusement at the lesser birds, and circle away in a slow, disorganized flock bound for the mudflats, sometimes leaving her feeling strangely disturbed. Perhaps because they reminded her of the magpies from around her Colorado home—carrion-eaters, lining the rabbit-killing highways, living off death—but she thought there must be more to it than just that. Magpies were, all in all, rather silly birds. The crows, for all their raucous laughter, never seemed silly. When the last of the crows had gone she would drink the coffee and return the plastic sack to the shed and start back, whistling for the dog. On the way back she would go by the orchard and kick the old cow awake, then go on to the house to clean up after breakfast. By the time she finished dishes the cow was lowing at the barn door to be milked. When she milked again in the evening she often saw through the barn window the crows returning from their daily contest with the pigs; sometimes one or two were conspicuously maimed, or even missing. She didn’t know about the pigs, how they were taking the contest, but, win or lose, the crows always laughed—the hard, old jaded laughter that came of looking at the world with a black and practiced eye. From the less skillful the laugh might have hinted of despair, or silliness, like the magpies’, but the crows were masters of the wry outlook, and Viv never heard them but what she followed their expert lead and laughed along—they knew the secret of black, that it could not be made blacker, and if neither could it be made lighter, it could still be made funnier. “What are you sniggerin’ about?” Hank wanted to know when she carried in the straining cloth from the milkhouse to wash it on the back porch. “Oh, I’ve got some secrets,” she answered, amused by his curiosity, “some secrets of my own.” “Out yonder in the barn? So. You been meetin’ some man on the sly up in the hayloft, is that it?” She hummed mysteriously as she wrung the cloth out and hung it over a peg. “What man? You keep me imprisoned across this moat all day, forlorn, alone—” “Uh-huh! So it’s one of them animals out there? Which one, the tomcat? I’ll wring the rascal’s neck. Tell me which one them varmints been duffin’ my wife. I got to know....” She smiled and started for the kitchen door. “You’ll just have to wait another two months to see, I guess.” He caught the tail of her sweat shirt and pulled her backward to him until her rear pressed against his pants. He encircled her waist and slid his hand down the top of her jeans over the tight swell of her stomach. “I guess he’ll be okay whatever,” he said against the back of her head, “just so long’s he ain’t black; old Henry’ll drown all of us if he’s black, tomcat and all.” She arched her neck against him, thinking that it was nice to be young and pregnant and in love. She guessed she was very lucky. She had almost everything she wanted. She hummed and snuggled against him. And he nuzzled her hair. Then he pushed her away to arm’s length and turned her so he could study her through squinted eyes. “I wonder—what it would be like, black?” “The baby?” “No, no.” He laughed. “Your hair.” And through the darkening porch screen she could hear the crows settling into the tops of the trees. As her time came closer she stopped climbing the hill, though the doctor told her the walk was probably doing her good. She didn’t know why she stopped; she thought for a while it was because she was so interested in noticing all the movements inside her, but she decided later that this wasn’t the reason or she would have started going again when the movements stopped and she knew the thing inside her was dead. When she received the examination some months later and was told that the operation was healed and she could resume her normal activities she went again to the shack. But it was drizzling rain and the only birds in sight were a flock of geese migrating down from Puget Sound, laughing a laugh she didn’t understand, so she returned to her reading. She had gone only a few times since then, and it had been years since she’d used the particular path they were walking now, yet it was still surprisingly sharp in her mind. In fact, she would have liked to lead the way so she might have set a slower pace. Nothing would do for Henry but full speed ahead to show them he was still as fast as any man, plaster leg or no. Not that she couldn’t keep up—it wasn’t for that reason she wished he would go more slowly—but Lee was having a time of it in the unfamiliar dark. She could hear him struggling somewhere behind her as he fought the brush and berries on both sides of him. She thought of stopping to take his hand but decided against it, as she had decided against asking the old man to let her lead the way. The three of them became gradually more and more separated. As Henry pushed ahead and Lee fell farther behind she was left more by herself in the dark. After a few minutes she began to make out familiar shapes along the path and amused herself by identifying them. There was the patch of hazel bushes that grew along the orchard fence, there the dogwood, and the old lonely beech standing black and baffled against the purple sky, like an old bent-backed tramp a long way from home, waiting for Saint Vincent de Paul to bring him a suit of second-hand leaves. Close along the path she felt fern touch her ankles with wet fingers and sometimes heard the dry rattle of blue-vetch seeds in their little curled pods. From the bottomland, where trees resounded with the gleeful barking of the dogs, came a thick reek of jack-in-the-pulpit—skunk cabbage, Hank called it—and the sour-syrup smell of overripe blackberries. And over all these other plants, like a higher order of plant life, stood the fir—filling the sky with towering peaks, softly brushing its tart bright green fragrance onto the dark winds. As the space between herself and the two men widened, Viv felt herself relaxing; until then she had not been aware of the tightness pinching her shoulders together and confining her lungs. She released her elbows and breathed deep, holding her arms slightly away from her body. From one of the hazels a wren called—“Tiu! Tiu!”—and Viv lifted her arms higher, imagining them to be wings. She tried pretending she was flying, but couldn’t make it real the way it had been when she was a child; if it weren’t for the boots! They weigh a hundred pounds apiece. If it weren’t for the boots I could fly! Hank always strapped her into boots before they went hunting; to him the woods was a battleground where you armed yourself with tin hat, leather gloves, and spiked boots, against an army of thorns. Then tromped through the forest. Viv would have preferred to fly through it; not high over it, like a hawk, but skimming through it inches above the ground, from rock to bush to tree, like the wren in the hazel. And for flying you needed wings, not spikes; tennis shoes, not hundred-pound clodhoppers. A stifled cry from the path some yards back stopped her. She found Lee where he had strayed from the path into the fern. His hand trembled as she led him back. “I stumbled when something flew against me,” he explained in a whisper, more to himself than to Viv. “I think a moth...” A shudder stopped him. The very word, so softly whispered in the dark, fluttered against Viv’s own cheek. “I know,” she whispered back, “Sphinx moths this time of year. They scare me to death in the night.” Her hand guided him along the path. “It’s on account of they’re white,” she went on. “That’s what gives me the willies. I know they’re white, you see? But they feel dark.” “Yes, that’s it,” Lee whispered too. “Exactly.” “Hank kids me about it, but they just scare the daylights out of me sometimes. Br-r-r. And you know what else?” she went on softly. “Have you ever looked at one close up? On their backs they got a picture—I’m not kidding a bit—of a skull.” This time they both shuddered, like children who have managed to conjure up a fright. The path started to rise and ahead of them they could hear the old man panting and cursing as he fought for footing with the rubber knob on the bottom of his cast. “Shall we give him some help?” Lee asked. “Huh-uh. Not much further. He’ll make it by himself.” “You certain? We couldn’t help him? He sounds like he’s having something of a time—” “Huh-uh. You saw him with Hank and the coat. Let him make it by himself. It’s why he came along.” “What is why he came along?” “That, to do a thing he set out to do. Without help. The way you wanted to take the boat across alone.” Lee was impressed. “Madam,” he said, panting. “I can’t speak for—the middle-aged group—but I must say you are very—sensitive to the needs of crippled old men and frightened little boys.” “Why is it you always think of yourself as a liability or a little boy?” “I don’t. I was a liability when I first came. I don’t feel so any more. But I’m still a little boy. Just like you’re still a little girl.” The hounds bayed in the distance. “I haven’t been a little girl in a long time,” Viv said simply and Lee wished he’d kept his humor to himself. At the top of the knoll a small fire crackled brightly in front of a three-walled log cabin. The knapsack with its delicious smell of tuna-fish and deviled-egg sandwiches dangled from the peg where Hank had hung it, and a large raccoon standing on its hind legs was reaching for that pack with both black hands as its shadow swayed lazily against the cabin’s back wall. When Henry came into the firelight the animal trilled a plaintive note inquiring the nature of this intruder’s business. It dropped to all fours. “Ain’t you the one,” Henry said. The raccoon stood looking at him, appearing perturbed at the interruption. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to be down in the slough-bottom givin’ them dogs a run, not up here thievin’ our grub—don’t you know that?” The raccoon knew of no such appointment. It rubbed its hands in the dirt, feigning interest in a nonexistent bug. “Haw. Look here, kids; he just gonna give us the cold shoulder. He just gonna let us know what he thinks, us bustin’ in on his business.” The animal rubbed a moment longer, then, seeing these three nuisances were not going to take the hint, puffed out its hair and humped its back and made a little mock charge at Henry. Henry laughed and kicked dust in its face. The raccoon uttered a series of huffing snorts. “Made you mad, huh? What’s the trouble? Won’t we go away and leave you to your thievin’?” Henry laughed again and kicked another puff of dust. Which proved too much for a nobleman of the raccoon rank. In a stiff-legged bound it caught the old man and wrapped all four legs around his cast as though prepared to crush it in the grip; Henry yelled and beat at the animal with his hat. The raccoon tried the plaster two or three times with its teeth, then gave up and ran off into the darkness, huffing and trilling righteously. “By God.” Henry leaned down to inspect the scratches on his cast. “Will you look at this. I bet that nigger has a thing or two to tell his buddies about the way a man is put together.” He gave a stiff nod. “Well, Lee boy, I guess we better build up the fire some.” “To ward off further attack?” Lee asked. “Damn right. He’s so mad he’s liable to be back with all kinds of pests. We’re in grave danger.” Viv took his hand. “Seems like there’s always some animal or other trying to get at your leg, doesn’t it Papa?” “All right now. A lot of you snotnoses are looking for trouble, ain’t you? Just see if you can do something for your keep around here.” She found water in a ten-gallon milk can and started coffee while Henry and Lee dragged two gunny sacks of rubber duck decoys from the cabin and placed them near the fire. After she situated the pot in the coals she found her plastic sack and spread it on the ground. She sat down and leaned against the sack Lee was sitting on. During these chores none of them had spoken; now Henry loaded his lip up with snuff, scratched himself, and leaned forward to concentrate on the hounds, clearing his throat like a sports announcer before the game. “All right, you hear that?” The firelight carved from the darkness a red cedar relief of his face that appeared at times convex and at times concave. He ran his hand nervously through his long white hair as he talked. “I don’t mean them other suckers off yonder, but that way...listen...that ol’ Molly dog talkin’? You hear that?” Viv wriggled deeper into the sack’s springy cushioning, situating herself for the discourse she knew to be coming. And when she stops moving she realizes that the back of a hand has moved to rest lightly against the nape of her neck beneath her hair. “. . . .Oh-oh, listen...she don’t say fox, she don’t say coon ...I don’t know about them other dirteaters but you can just mark it down in your little black book that Molly ain’t talkin’ like that about fox or coon; or deer neither, she never run deer. Ah . . . ah! Gawddamn.” Suddenly overcome with delight, Henry whacked his cast with the hard palm of his hand— “what she says is bear!”—and provoked a celebration of sparks from the fire with his cane. “Gawddamn ...a bear!” He leaned forward, green eyes intent on the darkness beyond the fire. Below them, down river to the west, the other dogs were yelping in a pack; from the other direction, toward the mountain range, came a clear and measured baying, each bay distinct by itself, starting low, then breaking into a note high and keen and true as though blown from a silver horn. “An’ she’s alone, Molly is. Them other dogs must be with old Uncle. Them other dogs generally follow Molly before they follow Uncle, but not when it’s got to do ’th bear. An’ Uncle, he don’t want no more to do ’th bear, he got et up last year and lost an’ eye over a bear, an’ he says far as he’s concerned Molly can have that bear all by her lonesome!” He laughed and whacked the cast again. “But listen there, boy, off down the slough—” He dug Lee in the side with his cane. “That bunch off down there, you hear the way they’re yipin’ and gripin’? All that fuss? Who they kiddin’? Yee hee. Oh, they know, they know.