Every Last Cuckoo (9 page)

Charles took Sarah's hand and drew her back from the edge of the cliff. They backtracked a bit and sat down on a flat rock, which Charles cleared of snow with his forearm.

“Have you ever seen that before?” Sarah murmured.

Charles shook his head. “Cat a couple times, running, but no prey. You hardly ever see a bobcat; they're too reclusive.”

“Did it kill that deer? It looks too small to bring down a deer.”

“Not if it leaps down and gets a good fast shot at the neck,” he said matter-of-factly.

“Too bad we interrupted his feast,” Sarah said, disguising her squeamishness for nature's dripping teeth and claws.

“He'll be back,” Charles said, reaching into his backpack. “He might even circle around while we're eating, if we keep our voices down.”

Charles took a thermos of hot tea from the backpack. He served Sarah, and they sat companionably, their legs straight out, propped by the backs of their snowshoes. After a while, he
rose and stole expectantly to the edge of the cliff. “Nope,” he said softly. “Still not there.” He sat down again. “I was surprised to find bobcat sign at this elevation. It's pretty high for them. Means there aren't any lynx nearby, because they'd claim the high ground.”

They both fell silent as they finished their tea. Sarah was content until she saw that Charles looked more preoccupied than peaceful.

“Anything wrong? You're pretty quiet.”

He shrugged, and Sarah threw him a look.

“Oh, yeah,” he said, smiling over at her. “
A shrug is not an answer.
How many times did you have to say that to David when he was a teenager?”

“Is that who's on your mind?”

“Since you ask—and since you already know—yes. I've been thinking about him a lot since Thanksgiving.”

“Me, too,” Sarah told him.

Charles looked over at her from his perch on their rock and held her eyes. He looked away and seemed to gather himself. “It's David as a father that floors me!” he said suddenly, his eyes reddening at the edges. “I've just never seen him the way he is with Hannah. I'll never forget his face when he took that child from me, all wrapped in my coat. God, Sarah, he looked like
me
. I knew every thought in his head, I could read his eyes right down into his gut.” Charles turned to her. “I haven't felt so close to him since he was ten. I haven't
known
him since he was ten. Thirty years. What have I missed?”

Sarah put her arms around Charles and felt his whole body tighten up. She pulled back and looked at her husband. His eyes
were still young, even amid the pleats of skin that held them fast. They gazed back at her, those old young eyes.

Then Charles kissed her on the mouth, first lightly, as had become his habit, then with growing intensity. It was the first searing, searching kiss they'd shared in years, a kiss much older than the slow sex life they now enjoyed. Sarah responded exactly as she had when she was young; she felt her lower abdomen contract, felt, even lower, a blossoming heat and soft twinge that once had signaled the copious flow of sexual moisture. Later she would remember that kiss, and her body's instant warmth, and she would consider it the most important gift of that holiday season.

T
HE QUIETUDE OF
N
EW
Year's Day 2000 was interrupted only by phone calls from children and grandchildren. Stephie, as always, was the last to call, waiting until those on eastern time would already have phoned.

Of the three children Sarah and Charles had raised in north central Vermont, Stephie, a year younger than Charlotte and five years older than David, was the truest Yankee. By nature independent, frugal, and resourceful, she was possessed of tart wit, a soft heart, and a love of woods and wildlife. As a child she had spent whole days in the countryside, always with a large dog or two at her side, always returning scratched, sunburned, itchy, and enthralled, with twigs in her hair and anything from bird wings to orphaned fox kits in her hands. Once, she had struggled home with a rack of moose antlers. Sarah, though anxious, had made herself trust that Stephie knew her boundaries and observed the safety lessons Charles had taught her.

And so Stephie never did catch fear from Sarah. Her school science projects won awards at the state science fair, and her senior project, on methods of tracking bird migration, had garnered honorable mention at the national level. When she went on to Middlebury, she met Jake Campo in a first-year biology class and was immediately as sure about him as everything else in her young life. Right after graduation, twenty-four years ago, she and Jake had spent their honeymoon trekking in northern Minnesota. There, the passion between them had spilled over to embrace the lakes and woods, so much like home but far from childhood. They had traded their Ph.D. plans for two openings at a small Minnesota high school, where Jake still taught math, Stephie biology. They had raised two sons, now men, in their years away. Sarah missed Stephie as much as ever.

Now Stephie was telling her about the group of juniors she had recently taken on a winter field trip. Her enthusiasm for the outdoors turned a surprising number of her students into avid birders or animal trackers. Sarah thought of Lottie and her pink-haired, tattooed, pierced, and studded friends, unable to imagine them traipsing through wetlands to observe otter sign or moose wallows.

Sarah, in turn, told Stephie about the bobcat and the half-eaten deer she and Charles had seen. “How can you be so at home with all the predators and prey?” she asked. “You and your father—it never bothers him either; he just accepts it.”

Stephie, amused, said, “What's the alternative, Mom? Everything lives on the death of something else. Including us.”

Sarah had known this all her life, and recent articles recounting the remarkably bloody course of the twentieth century had
forcefully reminded her of it. But something in Stephie's casual remark drew her up short. She looked out at the long meadow and watched a blue jay fly overhead, carrying some small creature in its beak. It soared into the evergreens beyond until it vanished like the bobcat that had moved so rapidly out of sight. Like the fisher, into the trees.

 

IT TAKES CHARLOTTE, Lottie, and Sarah forty minutes to reach the hospital, a new facility with a high-tech trauma center, east of Montpelier near Barre. When they arrive, Sarah says brusquely, “Let me out, then you go park.” Charlotte pulls over. Sarah gets out of the car without help, and Lottie leaps out after her. Sarah walks up to the reception area, asks where she can find Charles Lucas, and stalks off in the direction of her informant's pointed finger, Lottie behind her. She is suddenly angry, and glad for that. It keeps her fears at bay.

Charles is in intensive care, but they expect to move him in the morning. The nurse in the unit explains, “It's just because of his age. We don't know too much about older people and hypothermia. And we don't know how long he was down, out there.”

“He's strong,” Sarah snaps, annoyed that her voice is shaking. “He's been active his whole life. He's a doctor, too. Dr. Lucas. You take good care of him.”

A tall young physician overhears; he walks over to them. “I know Dr. Lucas,” he says, taking Sarah's hand. “I'm Jason Quesnel. I think you know my parents.”

Sarah does. Her eyes well up at Jason's kindness, but she blinks the tears away. “How is he? Can I see him?”

“He has a badly sprained knee—not broken—and a cut on the back of his head. We stitched that up. The worst of it was the hypothermia, but he's warmed up now. He should be just fine.”

Charlotte runs up breathlessly. Lottie stands by, scanning each face. Later she will tell Sarah, “I wanted to scream. This
pressure
kept rising up into my throat. Then I remembered how I screamed when Hannah almost drowned, and I swore to myself I'd be quiet.”

Jason Quesnel puts his hand on Sarah's arm. “You can see him, just for a minute. No one else, please. He should be stronger tomorrow, but he needs rest.”

He shows Sarah to Charles's room while Charlotte and Lottie take seats in the waiting area. “I'll be back soon. You go on in. Just remember, he's better than he looks. He's been through an ordeal, but he's in good shape for his age.”

Sarah wishes everyone would shut up about Charles's age. People live to a hundred all the time. She pushes the door open and tiptoes in and stands at the end of Charles's bed. A little color has returned to his cheeks, but she can see the gray beneath. Oh, God, he looks old. How can he? He never sits still long enough for time to catch him.

She pulls up a chair and sits beside the bed, taking Charles's left hand in both of hers. She wants to crawl between the sheets with him. She tries to believe she will once again feel his long body beside her in bed. For now, she puts her forehead down on his pillow, briefly resting it there, wordlessly praying. Then she reaches up and touches his cheek. “Charles,” she whispers. His eyes fly open, disoriented, and Sarah clutches his hand. “Oh, Charles, it's Sarah! I'm right here.”

Charles grunts and tries to focus on her face. He makes an incoherent, interrogative sound, keeping his eyes on her.

“You fell in the woods, my love. You're in the hospital, but you'll be home soon.”

His eyes close heavily, and he disappears behind them. His
breathing is labored but steady. Sarah strokes his arm over and over, and her hand shakes every time she raises it from his skin. She inhales deeply, smelling clean sheets, soap, a heavy confusion of medicines and disinfectants, and, just barely, Charles's own scent, earthy and warm. Hot tears slide from her eyes. She stares and stares at her husband, seeing in his face all the men he has been in nearly fifty years. All those young and old, wise and foolish men, those good men.

“Sleep,” she whispers to him at last, knowing her time is up. She starts to rise but his eyes open once more and lock onto her face. “Charles? What is it?”

He tries to clear his throat, making small coughing sounds. A broad smile flashes and fades. Or is it a rictus of pain? Is he gasping or laughing? He lifts his hand and gestures for her to lean closer. He clutches her wrist. His mouth works. Sarah bends toward him. His voice is strained, rough, barely audible. How can he sound so weak and yet hold her so tightly?

Finally Charles says, amid the sounds that might be laughter or might be outbursts of pain, “Sarah, oh, you wouldn't believe what I . . .” He half smiles at her, or winces, and holds his free hand out, palm up, as if giving her something. His hand drops, he falls into sleep again and lets go of her wrist. She sits there, Charles's heart beating beneath her palm, until Jason Quesnel returns. It is barely seven o'clock. Sarah feels as if days have passed since she found Charles down.

Tom and Luke are in the waiting room, huddled with Lottie and Charlotte. Vivi and Peter stand up, and Sarah walks mutely into Vivi's arms, laying her head on her friend's shoulder. Vivi holds her for a long time, cradling the back of her neck. Peter tries with his short arms to wrap both women fully and contain their fear and
fragile relief. His eyes are red.

Jason Quesnel expects no change in Charles overnight, so Sarah's family and friends take her home. They make soup and stay with her until she is quietly rejuvenated and confident of Charles's recovery. Charlotte wants to spend the night. Vivi does also, but Sarah says, “No. Really. I'm fine on my own. You heard what Jason said. Charles will be out of intensive care in the morning. Probably be home in a day or two, restless as an old bear.”

I
N ALMOST ALL OF
January there was no new snow. The ground was still covered, but heavy winds blew the trees bare early in the month. Day after day, the skies were intensely blue, deceptively inviting. Temperatures dropped far below zero and stayed there for three weeks. The longed-for thaw just would not come. Sarah thought she had never known a span of winter so implacable, so bitter in its grip.

One morning when she went out to the barn for kindling, she found a frozen, scrawny cat near the woodpile, no doubt a feral tom. The poor thing looked old, a feline Methuselah. Its coat was lusterless and patchy, striped dully in black and gray. She had no idea what to do with this pitiful carcass. Perhaps Charles would toss it down into the woods, where carrion eaters would find it after the thaw.

Sarah thought she understood something new about cold, the reason adults in their prime insisted that winters had been colder and snow deeper when they were children. It was because, in their full strength, they felt the harsh winters least
acutely. The very young and the very old measured by a different thermometer.

Even the strong could be stupid, though. Sarah read in the paper about Josie Koval, the pregnant daughter of an acquaintance, who had gone to visit friends in Wolcott. Driving home after midnight, she had been stranded by a broken driveshaft. Counting unwisely on her ten-year-old Ford and its heater, she had dressed inadequately against the cold. She wore thin, ankle-high boots and a short woolen coat. She had gloves but no hat, just the loose hood on her jacket. Beneath the jacket she wore knit cotton pants, stretched to their limit over her almost eight-month belly, with a man's loose sweater and turtleneck on top.