“Where are Hank and Joe Ben?” Lee asked, and she feels the wrist move slightly.
“Damned if I know. I figured they’d be here waiting. But, now . . . what I reckon is, the pack there sounds like it tried once, then headed off again.” He frowned, scratching the tip of his nose. “Yeah . . . I reckon Molly took the pack right off to that bear—uh-oh, hear that? fox is turnin’—and soon as Uncle saw what he’d got into he says, ‘Let’s go, boys. Leave that fool Molly to get et by bear if she so wants. Let’s us go hunt some fox.’ Yeah—an’ that was that first big noise, at the bear tree when the pack was there. So what I figure is Hank and Joe headed off—
listen
—to get to the treein’, but when the pack left, Molly couldn’t hold the bear by herself . . . so when Hank an’ Joe got there . . .”
He trailed off, mumbling to himself, nodding, opening his mouth to continue, then pausing to listen, eyes half closed and glinting green in the dark as he lip-read the hunt to himself. The fire spat and sizzled, opening pitch-pockets in the wood. The dogs’ baying scrambled after shadows. And Viv sees those shadows flutter, black-plumed and black-beaked, just at the corners of her eyes. And hears their excited whisperings. And now feels the hand rotate tortuously until the tips of the fingers touch her throat. And does not move.
“What’s happening now?” Lee asked with casual interest.
“Oh? Well, the fox—I reckon it’s got to be a fox, the way they’re moving around—he’s cuttin’ back an’ forth, trying to back trail so’s they won’t pin him between the river an’ the mouth of the slough. If he gets hemmed that way he’ll have to tree or swim, an’ there ain’t any good holes or hollers down that direction an’
lord
does he hate to swim. If it was a coon he’d of cut ’cross the slough a long time ago, but fox don’t want his bushy wet. An’, over yonder, Molly . . . hm . . . she’s moved back around the end of the slough and is cuttin’ up to the high rocks. Hm. That ain’t so good. But, listen . . .”
And she concentrates even harder on the sounds, already hearing far more than the old man. She hears the slough, the whistle and bell buoys, the last of the hillside flowers dying in the breeze—the drip of bleeding heart, the rattle of firecracker weed, the hiss of adder’s tongue. Far off a fever of lightning takes a flash picture of Mary’s Peak. She waits but hears no thunder. A curious breeze dashes out of the dark firs to rummage for a moment through the fire, then snatches her hair away from Lee’s hand. A few strands blow into her mouth and she rolls them thoughtfully between her front teeth. Her wet boots begin to steam and she draws them back from the fire. She wraps her arms about her knees. The cold fingers against her neck move, growing hotter.
“Ah . . . what’ll happen if he, if the fox, swims?” Lee asked his father.
“He swims the slough ’stead the river he’ll be okay, but a lot of times they don’t. Lot of times they head right ’cross the river; and that ain’t so good for the dogs or fox neither one.”
“Can’t they make it?” Viv asks.
“Oh sure, honey. It ain’t that far across. But somehow they get out in that water . . . and it’s dark . . . and ’stead of going on across they swim with the current, swim and swim and never get to the other side, just keep right on agoin’. Listen . . . he’s tryin’ to make a run, cuttin’ back to the north. That means they got him away from the slough and headed toward the river. They’ll get him, ifn he don’t swim.”
The barking of the pack had reached a pitch that seemed way out of proportion to the size of the animal they were chasing—when compared to that relentless tolling of the lone dog after the much larger game.
“Keep right on agoin’ to where?” Lee asked.
“To the ocean,” Henry answered, “to the sea. Dang! Listen at the way them boogers are makin’ over that pore little fox. Dirteaters!”
She feels that she should move from that touch—tend the coffee or something—but doesn’t move. Henry listened to the pack’s trailing with a displeased frown; this wasn’t the way he liked to hear dogs work. They were making too big of some poor little runt of a fox. He leaned forward and spat his wad of tobacco into the coals as though it had turned suddenly bitter. He watched it sizzle and swell. “Sometimes,” he mused, staring at the coals, “the salmon trollers pick up animals miles out to sea; deer, dogs, cats, lots of fox—just swimmin’ around all by theirselves, miles and miles from shore.” He picked up a stick and poked at the coals, deep in thought, seeming to have momentarily dismissed the hunt. “Once—oh, maybe thirty years ago, a good thirty years—I was workin’ half-days on a crab boat. Get up about three an’ go out an’ help this old fart of a Swede haul up his crab pots.” He held his hand out in the firelight. “Them scars there on my little finger? Them’s crab bites, where the sonsabitches pinched me. Don’t ever tell
me
crabs can’t pinch. Anyhow, we was always running across animals swimmin’ around out there. Foxes mainly, but some deer too. Generally the Swede would say leave ’em be, leave ’em be; ‘No time to fool round, no time to fool round b’golly.’ But this once we seen a great big buck deer, a real beauty, eight-nine points. And he says let’s get that feller. So we get a line on him and haul him in. The Swede figures the buck’s worth foolin’ round b’golly because we can
eat
him, I suppose, so we get a line around his head and lug him on board. An’ he just laid there. He was pretty nearly gone. Breathin’ hard, rollin’ his eyes scared to death the way deer do. But I don’t know—not
just
scared. I mean it weren’t like he was just scared of damn near drowning; or of bein’ caught on a boat with people neither. Not that kind of just scared, as near as I could make out, but
pure
scared.”
He jabbed at the fire, sending another fountain of sparks into the dark. Viv and Lee watched, waiting for him to go on. Feeling those sparks in her breast.
“Well, he looked so done in we didn’t bother to tie him down. He was just layin’ there sort of stunned an’ so shot he didn’t look like he could bat an eye. He laid there, didn’t make a move till we got close to the beach on our way in; then, man alive, he was up and for a second there it was just hoofs and horns in
all
directions, then over the side. I thought at first the booger had just been
sullin
’ till he got near enough to swim to shore. But that wasn’t it. He turned
right around
, right into a incom’ tide, and headed
right straight back out
, lookin’ scared as ever. It kinda got me, you know? I’d always heard tell that deer and such went into the surf to kill the ticks and lice with salt water, then got swept out, but after seein’ that buck I decided different, I decided there was more to it than bugs.”
“More what?” Lee asked earnestly. “Why? Do you think—”
“Hell, boy I don’t know
why.
” He tossed the stick into the flames. “You got the education, I’m nothin’ but a dumbass logger. I just know that I decided it didn’t stand to reason a deer or bear—or say a fox, who’s supposed to be a pretty smart customer—would drown hisself just to get shut of a few fleas. That’s a purty stiff cure.” He stood up and walked a few paces from the fire, brushing the front of his pants. “Uh-oh, listen there . . . they cut him off. They got the sucker now if he don’t swim.”
“What do you think, Viv?”
The slight pressing of fingers against her throat resumes. “Think about what?” She continues to stare thoughtfully into the fire, acting as though she is still drawn into the mood the old man has created.
“About this lemming instinct in certain animals. Why would a fox want to try to drown himself?”
“I didn’t say they wanted to drown theirselfs,” Henry remarked without turning around. He spoke in the direction of the barking dogs. “If it was just drownin’ they was after they coulda done that in any pee hole or puddle. But they wasn’t just drowning; they was swimming.”
“Swimming to certain death,” Lee reminded him.
“Might be. But that ain’t drownin’.”
“What else could it be? Even a human being has the intelligence to know that when he sets out deliberately swimming away—from the shore—that it is his obvious inten—” He stopped in midword. Viv feels the hand go bloodless and numb against her neck; startled, she turns to look at his face. There is no expression at all. For a moment he is gone from his face, as though he had fallen somewhere inward, away from her and the old man and the fire, into a remote pool of himself (However, as the evening turned out, everything worked for the best, and I gleaned from the experience a nice bagful of beneficial data which proved quite useful to me in experiences to come . . .) until Henry interrupted him.
“It is his obvious what?”
“What? His obvious intention to not
return
. . . to the shore.” (. . . the first bit of data concerned myself . . .) “So he, whatever he is, fox, deer, or despondent wino,
must
be intent on drowning himself.”
“Might be, but look here: It’s okay for the wino, but what’s a old fox got to be so despondent about that he decides to cash it in?”
“The same thing! the same thing! (. . . and the witless depth into which I had allowed myself to be lulled since leaving the East . . .) “Don’t you think a poor dumb beast has the ability to recognize the same cruel world as the drunk? Don’t you think that fox down there has just as many demons to escape as the wino? I mean
listen
to that fox’s demons. . . .”
Henry looked down at his son, puzzled. “That don’t mean he’s gotta drown himself, though. He could turn an’ fight ’em.”
“
All
of them? Isn’t that just as certain as drowning? And more painful?”
“Might be,” Henry answered slowly, deciding that, in as he couldn’t figure the boy’s goofy ways anyhow, he might as leave be amused by them. “Yes, might be. Like I said, you got the education. You’re the
sharpie
, they tell me. But then
too
—” and with a nimble movement goosed Lee in the ribs with the cane—“that’s what they allus told me about the
fox! Yee
haw . . .” He folded back to his seat on the sack, bawling his pleasure with Lee’s violent reaction to the cane. “
Yee
haw haw haw! See him come outa his sull with a little prod there, Viv honey? See him hump up? Oh me: ‘That’s what they tell me about the
fox.
’
Yee
haw haw haw haw!”
. . . Alone, under a needlepoint sky held up by the massive pillars of pine and fir, the dog Molly splashed through a narrow wash beginning to ice at the edge with a lacy frill. She scrabbled up the bank and thrust her muzzle into the fern and bushmonkey leaves, dashing frantically to and fro after the lost scent; MOUSE MOUSE DEER COON? MOUSE then bay-OOR BAYOOHR . . . ! In his room Lee wonders how to include all the history that Peters will need to make any sense of the situation.
So very much . . . And I would apologize for my delay in writing were I not convinced you would enjoy, much more than an apology, my quaint explanation for this letter and the events that led up to it. First, there was a great fox hunt during which I attempted to establish contact with my brother’s wife (you will understand why later, if you aren’t already guessing) and this chore left me somewhat unnerved. . . .
And Viv, unnerved somewhat herself as she sits against her sack of decoys with Lee’s hand coming once more to life, wonders how to stop the secret caressing without the old man’s noticing, wonders if she wants to stop it—
“Say by golly, y’know?” Henry rolled his shoulders and watched the braiding flames between the slits of his eyelids. “This brings to mind, talkin’ about fox hunts, a time some years back when Hank was about ten or eleven or thereabouts an’ Ben an’ me took him with us over to Lane County on a hunt that turned into a real doozer. Y’see, there was this ol’ boy over there we knowed that claimed he had one
outstandin’
sharpie of a fox that he hadn’t been able to poison or trap or shoot, an’ he would pay us five dollars cash to get shut of the devil so’s his pore
poultry
could get some rest nights . . .”
—now she feels the hand slide further around beneath her hair to cup her throat, fingers thin and soft beneath the new shell of calluses, and Lee leans forward so his whispering is near her cheek:
“That first day I met you, you remember? you had been crying—” “Shhh!” “—and I still hear you cry at night sometimes . . .”
Oh! he can feel that little vein there—
“Now then, y’see, as I recollect it, little Hank, he’d raised from a pup this young bluetick bitch—oh, about six or eight months old, a nice little dog—an’ Hank just thought the world of her. He’d took her huntin’ on his own a time ’r two, but never out with the whole pack to show what she could really do. An’ he thought this outstandin’ fox was just the ticket . . .”
—he must be able to feel how it throbs; why doesn’t he stop?
“Shh, Lee; Henry will notice. Besides, I hear you cry at night sometimes, too.”
Now the sparks race up to the dark! Like little fiery nightbirds
—“You do? maybe I should explain . . .”—
up and up and up and then gone, like little nightbirds—
“But the things is, at just the time this ol’ boy wanted us to come hunt down his fox, this bluetick bitch of Hank’s she was right in the middle of heat an’ havin’ to be kept in the barn so’s every mutt in the country wouldn’t be after her. Hank, he still wanted to bring her along, sayin’ that as soon’s the hunt got goin’ none the other dogs would pay any attention to her condition. But Ben, he says, ‘Dammit, boy, don’t try to tell your Uncle Ben about what a animal will frigging pay attention to and what he won’t: those dogs would leave a whole
treeful
of foxes to mount that bitch of yours . . . I mean I
know
about these sorta things. . . .’ an’ Hank, he says that we didn’t have to worry about
his
dog gettin’ mounted, that she could outrun anything on four legs he didn’t care
what
kind of attention it were payin’ her . . .”