The Night Wanderer (25 page)

Still furiously angry, Tiffany leapt up and charged Pierre, who once more wasn't there, having somehow disappeared. And once again, Tiffany got the worst of the encounter, landing face first in the lake. She was now entirely wet.

“You do love that lake, don't you?”

Beaten, soaking, and emotionally exhausted, Tiffany lacked the energy even to crawl out of the water. Sensing her defeat, Pierre waded in and lifted the young girl out with surprising strength. By this point, Tiffany had no more fight in her, the cold of the lake had made it evaporate.

But as her friend/foe put her down on the shore, through chattering teeth and shivering bones, Tiffany found the strength to express herself. “
Will you just leave me the hell alone!
”

“Must you shout? I'm standing right here.” Off in the distance, they heard a fish jump, landing with a loud splash. “As you can tell, I managed to survive your assassination attempt. But I am impressed. It shows potential character.”

“What is wrong with you? Are you deaf or something?” Her teeth continued to chatter as she talked. “
Piss off.
”

“Actually, my hearing is better than yours. But I was not yet finished talking to you. So I followed.” Once more, she thought she caught a reddish glow in Pierre's eyes. Maybe those
were
his eyes she saw earlier in the darkness, though she couldn't figure out how anybody's eyes could glow like that.

But the thought was momentary as Tiffany wrapped her arms around her trembling body. She was fixated on the tall, thin man standing in front of her—a man that had become her own personal tormentor.

“How . . . how did you know I was coming here?”

“I tracked you.”

“In the dark?” Even her father, a master hunter, couldn't track like that in the dark. “How did a man from Europe learn to track in the dark?”

“I've learned to do a lot of things in the dark. You're shivering . . .” Pierre took off his coat and attempted to put it around Tiffany, but she pushed it away, still angry at him for making her look and act so stupid. He tried again. “Don't be silly.”

Amid the emotional turmoil, Tiffany realized her feet were numb, and her teeth were giving off the sounds of a woodpecker. So, she decided to accept the coat, albeit grudgingly.

“Won't you be cold, though?”

He wrapped the coat around Tiffany. “The cold doesn't affect me.” Then he guided her back to the large rock.

Sitting down at its base, she tucked her wet legs underneath her. “Thanks,” she said reluctantly.

“I saw you looking out at the water. You had the appearance of somebody trying to find a way out . . .”

Through the chill, Tiffany felt her anger coming back. “You were watching me?”

“Yes.” Tiffany found it hard to react negatively to such blatant honesty. “Oh.”

“Admittedly, I've only recently met you, but do you consider your life so horrible to even be contemplating such an action?”

Tiffany took a deep breath before she responded. “You don't know anything about my life. So quit trying to figure things out. And why is it all so important to you anyway? Just because you've been living in our basement for a few days doesn't mean you're part of the family, for Christ's sake.”

“You have a lot of anger for someone so young. I guess you're not afraid of death then.”

Defiantly, Tiffany looked Pierre straight in his eyes. “No. I'm afraid of life.”

He smiled sadly. “I think you should be more afraid of death. You'll find it lasts a lot longer.”

Tiffany was in no mood for morbid humor, and she let Pierre know it. “What do you know about dying?”

“That . . . would take a while.” Instead, he jumped up on the rock and squatted down. He appraised her for a second before skillfully sliding down its side till he was eye to eye with her, maybe two feet away. “In my time on this Earth, I've seen too many people die over the years to not know death well. Friends, strangers, great people, unknown people . . . you should never glamorize death because it won't glamorize you. You'll become just a statistic with a tombstone.”

Tiffany turned away from him. “Don't be so melodramatic. You're only a few years older than me. Unless you were involved in some big African massacre, I seriously doubt you've seen so much death.” She paused for a second.

“I've seen enough.”

There had once been a great war. Actually, Pierre had lived through many great and vicious wars, but this one in particular, as a sample of human carnage, shocked even him. One dark night, swiftly crossing a battlefield as only he could do, he came across hundreds of dead bodies. They were scattered haphazardly as far as his powerful eyes could see. They were all damaged in different ways, small bullet holes perforating the corpses, or entire arms, legs, and heads missing, as if torn off by a monster.

Even though he had seen more death and pain than a thousand doctors, he was stunned at the sheer volume. What little humanity was left
in him cried out. Such waste. Such evil. Such stupidity. However, one soldier was still alive. He was missing his leg below the knee and wouldn't last much longer. Pierre could see the blood slowly trickling out the open wound and soaking the already saturated ground. The soldier couldn't have been much older than nineteen. He cried out to Pierre, in French. Appalled at the devastation, but still curious, Pierre knelt down beside the soldier.

Barely able to speak, the boy was asking for a priest. He knew he was going to die but wanted absolution—the last rites. He asked the man, who was dressed in black, if he was a priest. Not knowing what to say, Pierre merely nodded. Then the boy confessed his sins and the man marvelled at the pettiness of what mortals called sins. Afterward, spiritually satisfied, the boy complained of his pain and how he wished it would go away.

So Pierre took the boy's pain away. What was one more death in a field of death?

To Tiffany, Pierre seemed lost in thought. Then he spoke, though she couldn't tell if he was talking to her or something in his imagination. “But that was long ago, when I was so very young.”

“What was? And how old are you anyway? You don't look that old.” Maybe he was pulling her leg after all.

Pierre looked at her for a second, almost seeing a face he hadn't seen in longer than she could possibly believe. “Looks can be deceiving. Take your own interpretation of your life. You have a roof over your head. You are provided with three meals a day. You have friends. Though you do not seem to believe me, two very concerned individuals are looking for you. You are not abused and you live here on this land, where your people have always lived.” His tone changed, became almost mocking. “I guess most people would not understand how horrible that must be for you. You think you're miserable and have nothing to live for, but it is something many would dream of.”

With an angry snort, Tiffany jumped up. “Thanks for the use of the jacket, but I am out of here.” Pierre caught the coat as she tossed it to him.

“Where are you going?”

“I don't know. I'll find some place.” In the darkness, she almost tripped over a car tire rut in the gravel beach. Maybe she'd pop in on one of her relatives, grab a couch and some food. Or go up to the top of the drumlin and pretend she could fly. It would leave a messy corpse, but by then she wouldn't care.

“Wait.” Pierre's voice echoed across the forest. Tiffany stopped and turned around. “Let me show you something first.”

Suspicious, Tiffany kept her eyes on him. “What?”

“I can't tell you. It will be meaningless unless I show you. Besides, if you're planning to kill yourself, what's another hour. Death isn't going anywhere. It will always be there waiting. Part of the fun of life is making him, or her, wait. Just give me another ten minutes of your time, then you can walk away and I promise I will never bother you again.” With that, he knelt down and started to sift through the dirt and gravel at his feet.

Still keeping an eye on him, but curious, Tiffany approached.

“When I was young, much like you I was restless, wanted to see and do more than normally a boy in my environment was able. So I decided to seize the initiative and see the world, so to speak. I threw my fate to the winds. A lot of things happened when I did that, some fabulous, others tragic. After much time, it all eventually led me here. To Otter Lake. To your house. To right here.”

Again with the old talk. “You must have been pretty young.” Maybe he was a runaway, on his own since he was fourteen or something like that.

“Very, very young.” All the while, he continued to search through all the little bits of rock, cigarette butts, bottle caps, and discarded pieces of plastic that littered the ground.

“What are you doing? What are you looking for?”

“This!” Triumphantly, he held up a small chunk of rock and examined it closely. But it was too dark for Tiffany to make out exactly what it was.

Curious, she took the rock chip from Pierre's hand and held it up in the moonlight. Silhouetted, Tiffany could tell instantly. “It's an arrowhead. So this is where you found them.”

Nodding, Pierre found a second one. “Here's another.”

“This is what you wanted to show me? More arrowheads?”

Pierre closed his fist around the second one, like it was a vital piece of his history. “Tiffany, my dear, you look but you do not see. To some, this might be a simple hunk of rock. To you and me, it's more than that, it's an arrowhead. It's a heritage. A history. What were they used for? Do you know that?”

She could feel the sharp flint texture of the arrowhead between her fingers. “Yeah, hunting . . . and sometimes fighting, I think.”

“Yes. Now, other than the fact there are arrowheads here, what is so special about this place?”

Looking around, Tiffany was confused. It was a rocky beach like a dozen others she'd seen in the area. “This is where people load and unload their boats. It looks like any beach to me. What am I looking for?”

Pierre shook his head. “You just can't see it. You have to feel it.”

Tiffany looked more confused. What was Pierre getting at that was so important? “It's kinda pretty. Bad swimming though. Too many weeds. What else . . . ?”

Pierre walked behind her, in an effort to open up the possibilities. “Think for a moment. There's a lake over there, and over there on that side is a small ridge. And over here is the drumlin to its back. The only way here is the way we came. What does that tell you? Think like your ancestors . . . There's a reason these arrowheads are here.”

Tiffany's head swung back and forth between the direction of the ridge and the lake. And then back to Pierre. “Um . . . I don't know. You can tell who's coming and who's going, I guess. Kind of hard to sneak up on you?”

“Exactly. Very defendable. The lake provides you miles of clear sight, and the ridge protects your back. Now what would make a place like this desirable?”

It was late at night, Tiffany was still hungry, cold, miserable, and definitely was not expecting a pop quiz by the lake. But something about this line of discussion intrigued her. She knew there was a point to this, that it was important, and Pierre was leading her someplace. So she played along. She started to put all the pieces together in her mind. Like baking a cake, all the ingredients were there, she was just waiting for the timer to go off and tell her it was ready. Then it came to her.

“The village. This is where that old village used to be, the one the old people used to talk about.” Excited, Tiffany began to visualize where the village might be situated and how it might look. She forgot her discomfort and let her curiosity take over. “But how can you be sure? I mean, a couple of arrowheads and a ridge?”

Once more, Pierre picked up a handful of earth and let it slide through his hands. “The village was here a long, long time ago. Long before your grandmother was born. But trust me, there was indeed a village here once. Do what I'm doing and tell me what you feel.”