The Animals: A Novel (39 page)

He had come into a dark place and he lay within it for a long time without even being conscious of whether his eyes were open or closed. His teeth had ceased their chattering now and were locked tight together, his limbs curled against themselves as if they could somehow be willed back into living. Then a few small details began to fade in from the black: stones, rock shadows, a pile of broken branches and leaves like flotsam from an incoming wave. Whether such materials had been collected by man or animal or by nature itself, he could not tell.

He was in a recess, a small space not quite a cave, formed by the apex of overhanging cliffs and huge blocks of talus. He dragged himself to the pile, his hands shaking so badly that the leaves he pulled from the debris were crushed in his grip. Still, he managed to amass a small pile of them in the center of the area and reached in his pocket for the lighter and could not at first recall what else was held there, could not imagine what it was until he had extracted it with his shaking and unmovable hands:
Wildlife of the Intermountain West
, still contained in its clear plastic bag. He pulled it free and began tearing the pages out, one after another, plants and animals into a crushed pile: raccoon and shrew and bat and black bear, weasel and skunk and fox and coyote. He found his lighter and beat it, upside down, against his leg, and then turned the thumbwheel against its tiny flint again and again, his entire body shaking in its seizure of freezing. When the flint would not spark he turned to the stone wall behind him and ran the wheel repeatedly against its surface, back and forth, back and forth, thirty, forty times, until finally he could see the bright star of the spark and then held down the lever to release the gas, continuing to roll the wheel against the stone. At last a slow, miraculous flame appeared, sputtering and choking against the damp and the cold. He held it to those torn pages and they blackened and twisted and finally began to burn, curling into bright flames.

He could not feel the heat even when he let the flames flow across the bottom of his palm but he knew it must be there and so he leaned over and pulled some of the loose and dry tree branches from the back of the tiny cave and found a few small twigs there and chips of wood and bark and he placed them carefully over the burning pages and leaves.

The fire was small and for a long while seemed on the verge of failing, but after a time a bright orange glow appeared and he pulled more branches over to it and placed them above those embers and waited for them to come into flame. His actions were automatic, and at times, staring at those flames, he did not even remember why he was building a fire or what he was doing out there in that cold world. He remembered a long collection of paired yellow eyes staring at him from the darkness but beyond that only a haze of strange and echoing voices and people he did not even remember or care about anymore. And if he had followed someone out into this wasteland he could not recall to what purpose he had pursued or had been pursued.

He piled all the wood he had over the fire and after a time the front of the tiny cave was filled with orange light and he lay with the granite wall against his back and his beard grew soft and slushy and at last began to dry. The false warmth that had entered his body fled from him now and the quaking reentered him completely, his skeleton seeming to gather its own intelligence and struggling to break from his flesh. It rattled inside that skin sack to the rhythm of his freezing.

After a time he lay on his side, the glowing coals inches from his face, and he felt there, in that single location, the first true warmth return to him and then realized that the burning pain he felt was the sensation of his skin coming back to life. He closed his eyes, breathed the warm and smoke-filled air, so slowly, into his body. For a long time he thought his clawed hand was curled around the black velvet box that held the engagement ring he had purchased for Grace, and as he lay there he thought of what might have been, sitting at the dining room table with Jude hopping up and down with excitement as Bill produced the ring and she opened it and Grace’s smile lit up the room around them like a flame, but when he managed at last to uncurl those fingers, he saw that they held nothing but cold vacant air.

THE FIRE
roared and he lay half awake, propped once more against the rock wall at the back of the alcove. He had remembered now that Rick was out there somewhere and that he could probably see the orange glow even through the falling snow and so he remained as alert as his body would allow. A semblance of warmth had returned to him even though his clothing was soaked through. His boots were frozen solid and he could not have taken them off even if he had wanted to. Instead they lay as dead weight at the edge of the coals, steaming slowly.

He had opened the canvas case and filled a dart with fluid from the only vial that remained in the zippered pocket and now he loaded the dart into the gun and sat with it held across his lap.

The night was still black and the snowfall had not lessened. When Rick’s voice came, it was as if from a dream and he thought that he must have fallen asleep, if only for a moment. But then it came again and he lifted his head from his chest and peered out into the darkness. The world beyond the firelight seemed another universe entire. As if there was nothing out there but an endless void.

But then the voice again, closer this time and calling that name he hoped he could forget but knew now that he never would: Nat, the voice said. Nat.

He started to speak, stopped, tried to sit up, stopped that too. Fuck you, he said at last. His voice sounded weak and far away and when Rick called his name again he took a deep breath and shouted the words: Fuck you!

There was silence for a long time. Then Rick’s voice came again, slowly, quietly, like a tiny bird out there in the snow. Like something already lost. Everything beyond the orange crackle of the fire, an empty hole. I’m freezing out here, he called, his voice stuttering with cold.

I don’t care.

Nat, goddammit.

Fuck you.

I’m coming in.

I have a gun.

Nat, please.

You poisoned them, he said. You killed them. He was shaking, his grizzled face cradled in his hands. Just leave me alone. Leave me alone.

You left me there.

I didn’t want to.

You should have helped me, man. You were my best friend. Why didn’t you help me? His voice cracked over the words.

Nat said nothing in response but the tears came fully now and he sobbed into that firelight. His body shaking and wet in the snowmelt. Tears transpiring into invisible clouds that fled into the darkness beyond.

I went to prison for twelve fucking years, the voice said. I could’ve turned you in. I could’ve done that.

You should have.

I didn’t.

I don’t care.

You’re my best friend, Nat, the voice said. I’m going to fucking die out here. I’m freezing.

Silence.

I’m fucking freezing to death.

Again. Silence.

Nat, goddammit. I’m sorry. OK? I’m fucking sorry.

He thought of Bill then, his dead brother, smiling at him as he held that broken-winged bird in his hands. And then he thought of the broken-
backed deer he had shot soon after his uncle died, and when he spoke again, his voice was loud and clear: All right, he said. All right. Come in.

You’re not gonna shoot me?

No, he said.

He waited then, the dart gun remaining in his lap. He could see almost nothing beyond the fire, only a blur of snow that ended in absolute darkness, and out of that darkness Rick materialized like a ghost, a wet snowman shaking with cold, his face a pale mask. If he still had the pistol, it could not be seen. Instead, there was only the figure of the man, tattered and freezing, his eyes sunken in his head.

Bill lifted the dart gun to his shoulder and fired.

Rick said a single word, No, and raised his hand. The dart hit him mid-thigh, the red feathers like a strange flower that had sprouted there. Rick looked down and tried to pull it away but his hands did not seem to work and the dart wobbled and finally fell loose.

What the fuck was that? Rick stuttered.

Just a warning, he said.

Fuck you, Rick said, but he kept moving forward, his steps stumbling. What the fuck was that, man? A fucking dart? His words seemed to slur through his frozen face.

That’s exactly what it was.

What the fuck? Rick said. He staggered forward and then
crumbled—half sitting, half falling—to the snow by the fire. His teeth were chattering so loud that they sounded like a child’s wind-up toy. You said you weren’t gonna shoot me.

I’m not anymore, he said. He set the dart gun beside him in the snow.

Fuck, Rick said.

Stop talking.

Snowflakes continued to fall beyond the light of the fire. He watched them come. His name was in the air, although he did not think Rick had said anything at all. It moved as if vaporized, as if it had become the snowflakes that fell above the flames, breaking back into water, then vapor, then disappearing entirely as if they had been pressed by heat alone to return to the ether from which they had come.

I’m so tired, Rick said.

Yeah?

Aren’t you?

No.

What was in that dart?

Ketamine.

What did you do, man? Rick said. What the fuck did you do?

I’m taking care of my people.

And now Rick laughed, a long weird braying that seemed, midway through its run, to slow down, to shift lower, as if the world was spinning apart.

You need to know something, Bill said. My uncle took that safe to a guy he knew in Spokane the day after I got here. He figured out the combination.

Rick did not answer for a long time, only staring at him. Then he said, slowly, I fucking knew it. His voice slurred out like a drunkard. His eyes slipped closed and then opened again. How much?

About three grand is all.

Where is it?

The guy who cracked it took a cut and I paid off Johnny Aguirre and there just wasn’t much left after that. Couple hundred.

You still should’ve sent it to my mom.

I wanted to.

So why didn’t you?

He exhaled. Then he said, When I paid off Johnny, that guy Mike asked me if I wanted to make another bet for old time’s sake.

Rick just looked at him, eyes sunken, face still coated in snow.

I thought about your mom all the time. I got a little money when my uncle died but by then she was already gone.

You should have just told me, Rick said, his voice a mess of slurring syllables.

Bill looked at him for a moment, at his glassy, unfocused eyes. I made something for myself here, he said. And you were gonna fuck it up. I just wanted you to go away. I thought you’d just give up and go home if I gave you the safe.

Ha, Rick said, deadpan. Bad bet.

Turned out that way.

Rick was silent, staring now into the flames, and when he spoke again his voice was like a long single word mashed to pieces: Man, he said, you’ve always been the survivor. Even when we were kids.

Bill sat forward now. That’s not true at all, he said. His voice sounded loud in the little cave. You were. Not me. You.

Oh yeah? Well, look at us now, my friend. Look at us now. His voice trailed off and after a moment his body slumped to the side in the firelight.

Bill sat for a long time, staring at the thin, soggy shape before him, at the steam rising from the wet coat and pants. His hands were trembling, although they were no longer cold. Rick lay at his feet, eyes closed. Bill thought he was unconscious but when he leaned in and grabbed his coat collar and pulled, Rick’s eyes rolled open. What are you doing? he whispered. Then the eyes closed again, slowly, like the eyes of a doll.

Bill stood and staggered backward out of the tiny cave, back into the blowing storm, Rick’s body a low heavy weight that he dragged behind him like a sled dog pulling his load, and when he was done, when he had come out beyond the glow of the fire and into the dark curl of the snow, he stopped and released his grip and stumbled back to the cave again.

When he reached its warmth, he sat and closed his eyes and prayed sleep would come to claim him. After a time even the fire disappeared. The darkness complete. He could feel his body floating in that black emptiness. Desert all around. His mother. And the brother he had lost. Other things too. The blue Datsun. The trailer he had grown up in, its metal siding sheeting off to wobble in the empty air. Impossible shapes in the snow. And Grace. And Jude. And himself. And Majer. He could feel the animals as they unscrolled themselves in that single loop of endless time and he wondered if there had been any meaning or purpose in it at all but then he knew that such questions held no meaning or purpose. And Rick. Of course. And Rick.

The forest was only wind.