The Outlander (23 page)

“Yeah. Water,” he said.

“Does it smell fresh to you?”

“I dunno.”

“It's coming in on that seam.”

There was a short pause, then the same man's voice came quiet,
“You think he's still alive?”

“Drop it, Ronnie.”

“You think it's possible?”

“No, I don't. And you step one foot in that mine and mention
his name, you'll be sweeping up your teeth. I swear to Christ, Ronnie,
you're worse luck than a woman.”

“Hold on. You don't have to . . .”

“I coulda dropped a hundred feet before I hit something.” The
two sat in silence for a moment.

“Next time,” Jim said, “open your trap and say
something.”

THE REVEREND AND
the widow gazed upon the object before
them on the table. A massive bloodied porcupine lay supine, its brown teeth bared and
its forefeet curled as if begging. The Reverend reached out his thumb and forefinger and
waggled a stiffening leg. The animal's odour was lavish.

Arthur cowered behind them, looking from human to animal. “Can we
eat it?” he asked.

“
Eat
it?” the Reverend said. “In
theory.”

“I could make a stew,” Mary grinned, “maybe even a
pie.”

“Good grief.”

“I've never heard of it . . . eating a porcupine,”
Arthur reflected.

“A soup might work,” she mused, “or maybe smoke the meat
and lay it up?”

Despite himself, the Reverend had begun backing away from the table,
averting his face from the spectacle.

“This is the best way to skin it, Bonny,” she said, pointing
along the corpse's soft belly. “Start here . . . then cut along the legs
like that.” The variegated quills on its back were almost a foot long, and they
collapsed dryly together as the animal was rolled. Smaller barbs grew at its sides; even
among the soft belly hairs were suspiciously stiff-looking fibres. The Reverend was
breathing through his mouth.

“Well,” she said finally, “are you going to skin it or
not?”

“Me!?” he protested.

“Oh, Bonny,” she said fondly and went off to find the
whetstone and a knife.

A WEEK LATER
, Arthur was waiting for the train. He sat
outside McEchern's store clutching a mug of steaming coffee, much subdued, his
eyes fixed deep into the forest where the trees seemed to fade into an infinite number
of vertical lines. Whatever his affliction — and the Reverend would not
conjecture, though everyone else did — its engine had choked and died. He was now
able to eat, sit still, even smile. But he looked no less otherworldly. Here was the
same long, pale cheek, the same staring eyes. His smile was ghastly. Arthur was an
illustration of the transforming habit of madness; his
face had
become a mask, the patina of dread laid over it so often that it stayed.

His horse was not so badly used as it had at first appeared. Fright and
dehydration had been the worst of its afflictions. After a day its legs ceased shaking;
after two, its appetite returned. It was a surprisingly robust horse, and unwisely fond
of its owner, wandering with bobbing head toward Arthur when he came down to the store.
Even from a distance, Arthur's gait was bizarre — a wooden toy man dancing
on his string.

That morning, he had arrived dressed in his ratted uniform, holding a
little package of food made for him by Mary. She had even put her hand on his arm, in a
motherly way, though they were much the same age, and patted his scrawny bicep.

“You'll eat this soon, won't you, Arthur?”
she'd said. “Not wait till it goes off?”

“I will,” he said. The Reverend was behind her, and the two of
them fretted like worried parents around a schoolboy.

A clutch of miners had been standing around considering the horse. They
now turned their attention to Arthur. One man took up the ruined police helmet, its
crown staved in, the metal torn away as if some massive can opener had been at work on
it.

“You have an accident?”

“No. I did it myself,” Arthur said into his steaming cup. The
men assessed the lunatic with renewed interest, some suspiciously, some with affection
— a good story is always collectible.

“Why'd you do that?” another man said. But the lunatic
had no story for them. His hand came up slowly and gestured
limply
in circles about his head, like a man shooing flies away from his ears.

McEchern appeared at the flapdoor of his store, a cute smile on his lips.
“Tell 'em about the wind,” he said, “like you told me.”
And immediately, Arthur did, launching into the recitation the way a child tells a joke,
breathless and in a rush.

“North wind is safe. It keeps everything in place. West wind is no
problem either. But a south wind is bad. You fall apart in a south wind if you
don't keep moving. You don't dare stay still. And this is proved by science.
In countries that have lepers, there's always a south wind. It makes you slow and
sick and, sooner or later, everything falls apart.”

“It's scientific,” McEchern said, standing behind
him.

“You don't say,” murmured a bearded face, while others
grinned. The widow stood sadly by Arthur and watched as he took in the mirth he had
caused. When it wasn't frightening, she observed, madness was funny.

A long, mournful wail could be heard far away along the valley: a train
coming up the pass. Arthur put down his cup and gathered his things, took the reins of
his horse, and said his goodbyes, his manners formal and remote. Then he and the horse
turned and together walked away.

THEY RODE WHEN
they could, and when the trees became too
thick the tracker made them dismount and walk on in a line, man, horse, man, horse,
leading the animals by the reins through impassable areas. Dry branches caught at their
sleeves, knees, and stirrups, and the animals staggered and slid on exposed roots.
Eventually, the tracker stopped with a
stamp of his foot and a
frustrated bellow: “This is bullshit!” His horse jerked its head in
surprise.

The tracker turned to his clients with a scrunched face and sputtered,
“Just . . . just wait here. I'll find where she came out.” He hiked up
his trousers and went off at a bow-legged trot, stepping around tree trunks, his dark
oilskin congealing into the forest.

A second later, his voice came echoing, “Don't make a fire,
boys. It's too thick in here. You'll barbecue us.”

The two men stood uncertainly, reins in hand, alone in the huge silence. A
few tiny birds blew past them and settled on trees, hopping in spirals up the trunks,
stabbing at insects. Then one by one they blew away again.

“She came through here?” said one, disbelieving.

The other shrugged.

“Does he know what he's doing?”

His brother thought a minute, then said, “Yes.”

Half a day later they were on their way in a different direction. The old
man had explained that it was one of only two possible ways she could have gone. He had
simply guessed. And almost right away, he picked up her trail again.

At dusk he called to them and pointed into the trees, and together they
walked their horses toward a dark, lumpen thing that hung among the branches. It was an
English saddle — bizarre relic, now rain-soaked and speckled with fallen leaves.
The tracker dismounted and approached the object, hefted it and brushed the debris from
it, smelled the underside for mould and checked under the flaps. He brought it back to
his horse.

“Mind if I keep this?” he said amiably, already strapping it
behind his own saddle.

“For God's sake, man. Is she here?”

“She was.”

The old man continued to pack the awkward object properly, and the
brothers waited, for he had a habit of lecturing on the finicky ways of pack horses and
the rituals of constructing a fair and balanced burden. In fact, it was the only subject
on which he ever strung together more than a few words, and he could be as dull as a
schoolmarm on it.

“That's a fine saddle,” he said, stroking the tooling
along its edges. The brothers glanced at each other, helpless.

Finally, he set to work reading the signs the widow had left. He wandered
cautiously through the fiddleheads and found what he was looking for. The evidence of a
little fire, grease deposits in its charred centre. Even the brothers could see it. A
few formerly green twigs she had used in some way to cook meat. The underbrush beaten
down and many footprints . . . some of them leading uphill. In fact, that path had been
used several times, perhaps ferrying goods to some drier, better spot uphill. The old
man ruminated over one deep boot impression, and slowly his expression became sourly
skeptical — as if the ground was telling him something preposterous, like a child
making up a silly story.

“All right. Leave the horses,” he said heading uphill.
“Come with me.”

Ten minutes later they all stood at the perimeter of the
Ridgerunner's vacated camp, considerably camouflaged by him. He had scuffed away
evidence, tossed it into the trees, covered as much of the pockmarked ground as possible
with loose branches and needles. But all three men could see the beaten-down ground,
footprints everywhere, the exact imprint of a tent in dead grass — obviously a
tent from the
shape of it, and not a tepee. The old man nodded his
head. “Your girl's got herself a boyfriend.”

His customers looked at him with dawning awareness, for even they could
make out the obvious signs.

“It's a pretty good cleanup. I'd say a woodsman, white,
most probably. They ate together, the girl and him, always over there. They slept
together, is my guess. It gets kinda cold.” He stood, nodding, a moment. For the
tale was telling itself, in pine needles and dead grass. The couple had lingered here
for some time in cohabitation. And until they had stumbled upon each other, manifestly,
they had been total strangers. A smile crept over the old man's face.

“Can't say as I was expecting this,” he said.

THUNDER ROLLED ALONG
the mountain ranges toward morning.
The widow lay awake, her eyes closed and a woollen hat on her head against the frost. It
itched and felt suddenly hot, so she clawed it off and lay sweating. Her leg ached
badly, though it had been good for days. She reached down to finger the scar like a
dimple, a thumbprint in her calf. She pressed hard, but the muscle hurt no more or less
than before. A rumble came from the west, cruising the clouds and heading east. She
rolled over and tossed the covers off her leg. It cooled her and so she slept, dreaming
of a city full of canals. It was a dull dream and she felt she had dreamt it before.
Things were brought to her on the canal and she stood on a dock and watched flotsam
drift on the surface. Eventually, she peed into the canal. The widow woke up suddenly,
her bladder painfully full.

She slipped silently from the covers and pulled the bedpan from under her
little bed. She squatted naked over the bowl and tried to make as little noise as
possible. The air was warmer than it had been. She closed her eyes in pure thankfulness.
On past nights, her breath had blown snowflake patterns on the window glass, and when
she was absolutely forced to crawl out and pee, her urine had steamed as she
hunkered over the bowl with her teeth chattering. In the mornings,
when she took the pan to the trees and flung it out, a solid block of ice flew end over
end and landed with a thud on the ground. But today the air was almost pleasantly warm.
In the faint morning light that came through the curtain, she remained squatting and
slid the bowl away and wiped herself with a little rag kept for that purpose. She heard
the Reverend breathing, the catch in his lungs. And then she heard a padding sound, like
someone drumming fingers on a table. In the semi-darkness she saw a small red squirrel
watching her. It advanced a few steps, braced on all fours like a miniature, tawny bear.
Its eyes were black and strange and emotionless.

“Bonny,” she whispered. At the sound of her voice the squirrel
dashed in an arc to her left.

“
Bonny!
” she cried, clambering back to the safety of
her bed.

“What? What is it?” She could hear his voice go from groggy to
alarmed.

“There's a squirrel!”

She heard the sound of his mattress as he shifted under his covers, and
then the dry scritching of his knuckles rubbing on his bristled jaws. He sighed.

“Go back to sleep, Mary.”

“It's staring at me.”

“No, she's just confused. Go back to sleep.”

The widow crawled back under the covers and lay glaring at the rodent.
Indeed it did seem confused. It stood awkwardly, like a toy, then ran without warning
from corner to corner, then sat upright with its black eyes unmoving, as if
thinking.

“How do you know it's confused?”

“Her nest was in the chimney, so I moved it. She's been
looking for it for hours.”

The widow lay back reluctantly, still watchful, listening to the light
patter of the squirrel's feet.

“What if she doesn't find it?”

“She'll find it.”

The squirrel spraddle-walked along the floorboards with its head down,
sniffing, then leaped onto the wall and hung there, tail whipping.

“How do you know it's a she?”

“Oh, go back to sleep!”

FOR THE NEXT
three nights, Mary was unable to sleep. She
sat undressed in her queenly bed and endured the night. The irony of insomnia, she
reflected finally, is that sleep does indeed visit briefly, but it surely will be
interrupted — this time by chittering raccoons trying to enter the house. At least
the squirrel was gone. The widow put her face close to the window and craned to see
below to where the hunched bodies circled and waddled, calling irritably to one another.
Silver backs. She searched the sky for signs of daylight, but there were none.