Brian's Return Read online

  One step, another, slowly into the thick green. A yard, another yard, ten yards—he didn’t have to worry about getting lost because he kept the lake on his left, visible now and then through the leaves.

  He saw a rabbit almost at once, and could have hit it easily enough, but that would have ended the hunt and he was moving now, into the woods, slowly, like a knife being pulled through water, the forest closing back in on him, his eyes seeing every movement, his ears hearing every rustle.

  This, he thought, is what I have become. A hunter. The need to hurry disappeared, the need to kill was not as important as the need to see all there was to see, and he worked the afternoon away until evening, perhaps two hours before dark. He had seen seven or eight rabbits, any one of which he could have had, and heard several grouse and seen four more deer, two of which he could have hit easily, but he had waited and now, as he turned back, a grouse jumped up in front of him, its wings thundering, and flew to a limb on a birch about twenty-five feet away.

  Now it was time. He raised the bow, drew the arrow back, looked down the wooden shaft and saw, felt, where the arrow would hit, and released, all in one clean, fluid motion.

  The arrow went where he was looking, took the grouse almost in the exact center of the body, drove it back off the limb, and it fell, flopping for a moment, in the grass beneath the tree.

  ‘‘Thank you,’’ Brian whispered as it died. ‘‘For the food, thank you.’’

  He picked the bird up, pulled the arrow out and wiped it on the grass, then tied the grouse to his belt with a short piece of nylon cord and started back. He was done hunting now but kept the bow ready, the arrow on the string.

  It was nearing dusk. The sun was well below the line of trees, though it was still light, and he had much to do—set up the tent, make a fire, cook dinner and write in the journal—and he picked up the pace and was near where he’d left the canoe, still in thick trees, when he smelled the smoke.

  He stopped. It was pine smoke. He couldn’t see it, or hear anything, but there was a definite odor of smoke. It went away, then returned when he moved.

  How could there be fire? There was no storm, no lightning—which Brian had read caused most forest fires—and besides, with the recent rain it wasn’t likely there would be a forest fire.

  Still, it was there. Again. He moved forward a few steps, stopped, and started to step again when he heard a clink of metal on stone.

  Somebody was there. Ahead. At the camp.

  Brian crouched and moved again, one step at a time, carefully, quietly, until he was at the edge of the forest. He moved a limb aside and peered out.

  A man sat crouching with his back to Brian. There was another canoe pulled up by Brian’s, an old fiberglass standard twelve-footer with many hard miles on it, judging by its look. The man had pulled up more wood and had a fire going and a pot of water boiling. Brian could see the steam. There was no weapon showing, no other gear. Just the canoe, tipped upside down, and the man and the fire. The man had long gray hair streaked with black, no hat but a headband, and had his hair tied into a ponytail.

  All that, Brian saw without moving, without speaking.

  ‘‘You might as well come in by the fire,’’ the man said without looking. ‘‘I ain’t that much to look at and I’ve got potatoes boiling with an onion. We can add that grouse you’ve got and have some stew.’’

  Brian jumped. The voice was old, gravelly, but it carried so that it seemed to come from everywhere. He realized he still had the bow raised, not aimed exactly, but ready, and he lowered it and stepped out of the thick brush and walked to the fire and laid his bow and still-nocked arrow down by his canoe. He had a million questions—who was this man? where did he come from? why was he here?—but he kept his mouth still and the answers came. The man came from the woods, he came in a canoe while Brian was hunting, he was there as Brian was there—because he was there—and his name didn’t matter, just as Brian’s name didn’t matter, and so he didn’t ask.

  But one thing puzzled Brian and this he did ask. ‘‘How did you know I had a grouse?’’

  ‘‘Smelled it. Your arrow hit the stomach and carried some of it through. Nothing smells like grouse guts.’’

  ‘‘Ahh . . .’’ The wind was blowing right to carry the smell around the lake back to the campsite. Still, the man must have a very sensitive nose.

  Brian moved down to the edge of the lake and cleaned the grouse. He tore the skin off with the feathers and washed the carcass in the water. He looked back up the bank out of the corner of his eye as he worked, studying his visitor. He was an older man—Brian guessed at least fifty—with a lined face darkened by smoke and weather. Perhaps he was from a native people. His face showed that he’d been in the woods a very long time. He had on worn moccasins, faded work pants and a work shirt buttoned up to the collar and buttoned at the cuffs. Everything, like his canoe, was old but in good repair. The shirt had been patched several times, the patches sewn neatly by hand with small stitches. His hands looked as if they were made of old polished wood.

  ‘‘They call me Billy,’’ the man said, still looking down at the fire.

  ‘‘I’m Brian.’’ He brought the grouse back to the fire and used his knife to cut it into pieces and dropped them into the stew pot, an old aluminum pot that could hold at least three gallons. The potatoes were just starting to boil.

  Brian lowered his packs and sleeping bag. He found a little salt and started to put it in the stew and stopped. ‘‘Salt all right?’’

  ‘‘Some.’’

  He put a bit in—less than he would have liked— then took one of his own pots, the large one, and put tea and drinking water on to boil.

  They did not talk. When the stew was done they each fished some out into their cups—Billy had his own tin cup, old and not insulated, though the heat didn’t seem to bother his mouth—and they ate until it was all gone, including the broth. Brian buried the grouse bones off in the woods and they sat back and drank tea and watched the fire.

  It was dark now, the moon not up yet, and they were silent for a long time. Brian was lost in thought, surprised to find he was thinking idly of his mother and Caleb. Here he was, sitting by a fire with this strange man, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to be thinking about his mother. He wondered what she was doing.

  ‘‘You hunt the old way,’’ Billy said. It wasn’t a question but a statement.

  ‘‘Pardon?’’

  ‘‘With a bow. You hunt the old way. You don’t use a gun.’’

  Brian shook his head. ‘‘I don’t like them. They make too much shock, no, too much . . . noise.’’

  ‘‘They’re wrong for the animal.’’ Billy talked with his hands as well as his voice, the palms waving and the fingers pointing, dancing with the words as he spoke in almost music. ‘‘Too fast. Damn guns kill too quick, don’t give them time to think about their place, time to face east. They don’t get into the next world right when they get blown up. Arrows kill slower, give them time to be ready. I don’t use a gun. Bad medicine.’’

  ‘‘I saw a deer today, walking here. It stood and looked at me, then away, then back. I could have shot it . . .’’ Brian didn’t know why he said this, only that it seemed the right thing to do.

  ‘‘Did it look the way you are going when it looked away?’’

  Brian thought about it. ‘‘Yes. North, up the portage.’’

  Billy nodded. ‘‘It was your medicine deer, telling you the right way to go.’’

  ‘‘Medicine deer?’’

  Billy pointed at the sky. ‘‘From there. I have a medicine crow that points for me. You have a deer to help you. Always listen to the deer.’’

  ‘‘So . . . it’s not right to hunt them then?’’

  ‘‘They will tell you when it is right. Listen and they will show you, like today.’’

  Brian nodded and they were silent again for a long time. Brian thought about the grouse and the rabbits he had almost shot. But
they hadn’t seemed the same. The deer stood out. He realized he was tired. His leg had stiffened a bit—though much less than this morning when he’d started—but he’d paddled against the wind much of the day, then portaged, then hunted. He felt a bit stiff and his belly was full and the fire was warm.

  ‘‘Time to make sleep,’’ Billy said.

  He moved to his canoe and crawled under it. From one of the thwarts he pulled an old blanket, wrapped himself in it and was asleep before Brian could finish setting up his tent. Brian unzipped the opening, pulled his bag in and was sound asleep before his head was all the way down.

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  Dear Caleb: I found today that you don’t always have to do a thing as long as you’re ready to do it.

  Brian awakened gradually. The stiffness in his body from paddling hard all day was gone, replaced with an easy looseness that made him feel almost light.

  He unzipped the bag and stepped out of the tent and was surprised to see that Billy was gone. Canoe, old cooking pot, all of it gone and he hadn’t heard a thing. Brian moved away from the campsite and relieved himself and came back and saw something tied to the thwart of his canoe. He went closer. It was a short piece of a whitetail deer tail—tan and white hair on a bit of leather—with a crow feather tied next to it and both on a rawhide loop.

  It was medicine, he thought. Billy had left it for him. He slipped the loop over his head. His medicine, a deer, and Billy’s, the crow feather, hung around his neck. He had two ways to see things now, two ways to know . . .

  He would think on Billy later, think on him and how he had come to be, and he would wonder where Billy was going, just as he thought Billy might wonder where Brian was going. But for now it was enough that they had had stew and sat by the fire, and Brian felt himself looking out as he packed the canoe, looking out of himself ahead at the horizon, the sky; not thinking of himself or what he was about but just seeing the world as he moved through it, and that came from Billy, watching Billy’s hands as he spoke, listening to the music of his words.

  There was no wind and he paddled hard that day. By the map he judged he’d come more than thirty miles, leaving only perhaps sixty-odd miles to Williams Lake.

  He caught fish for dinner again that night—this time the bare hook didn’t work and he had to get some worms from a rotten log—and had rice and fish. The grouse stew the night before had been delicious but the potatoes seemed heavy in his gut. The rice tasted good.

  He set up camp with practiced skill and that night when it rained—not hard or long but enough to make everything wet and new looking—the water ran off the tent and into the ditch and flowed away down to the lake and he slept dry and comfortable. He awakened and listened to the rain on the tent for a time, then went back to sleep and did not awaken again until the sun was on the tent in the morning.

  That day he paddled on three short lakes with small creeks between them. At the end of the last lake the creek leading to the next one was so shallow it would not take the canoe with Brian’s weight in it so he stepped out barefoot and began to pull the canoe along with just his gear in it, and he was wading along the creek in the late afternoon, when he ran into the bear.

  He had seen bear before, had been attacked or at least rolled around by one, and knew that usually they didn’t bother people, wanted only to be left alone.

  It was a young bear, not terribly big, perhaps two hundred and twenty pounds, and it was alongside the creek when Brian came around a turn, pulling the canoe. It had been rolling logs over along the side of the creek, looking for grubs.

  ‘‘Woof !’’ It made a sound exactly like a dog’s bark would be written. A clean woof, and stood up.

  It was a ticklish moment. Brian knew that bear rarely attacked. But he also knew it wasn’t particularly good when they stood up and didn’t run away, and this bear was standing not ten feet from him.

  Brian had left his bow on top of the pack with an arrow nocked to the string but it was a field point, not a broadhead, and a field point would do almost no damage to a bear, probably just make it angry. By the time he got a broadhead out of the quiver and got a shot the bear would be on him.

  He looked down and to the side to avoid eye contact (which sometimes angered them) and—still holding the rope to the canoe so that it angled roughly between them—he slowly backed away.

  The bear dropped to all fours and lunged toward him.

  Brian jumped off to the left.

  The bear stopped, watched, then lunged to its right, Brian’s left, heading off Brian’s movement in that direction.

  Brian moved back to his right, trying to get back across the stream.

  The bear lunged out into the water, this time to its left, forcing Brian back the other way.

  It’s pushing me, Brian thought. It’s making me go back on the bank. It wants me.

  The bear feinted again to the right, pushing Brian back, left, then right, the area getting smaller all the time; Brian kept moving back, pulling the canoe, keeping the canoe between them, zigging and zagging, always back, across the shallow stream and close to the bank on the far side.

  The bear was teasing him, playing with him, maybe the way a cat plays with a mouse, back and forth, cutting him off, tightening down on him. Brian felt it rise in him then; he had been afraid, the way the bear was working him, like prey, and that changed to full-blown anger.

  ‘‘No!’’

  His voice almost made Brian jump. The bear stopped dead, startled, and stood up again.

  ‘‘Not with me . . .’’ Brian took the half beat to reach into the canoe and grab his bow, another half second to get a broadhead out of the quiver, nock it to the string, raise the bow and stand.

  They weren’t twenty feet apart and now there was eye contact. The bear was close to the same height as Brian and there was no fear in its eyes and there was no fear in Brian’s. Just two sets of eyes looking at each other across the top of a razor-sharp MA-3 broadhead.

  ‘‘Go away.’’ Brian said it quietly but as he spoke he looked down from the bear’s eyes to the center of the bear’s chest, looked where the heart was beating, looked, and the point of the arrow dropped to where his eyes were looking and he drew the bow halfway back, then full, tucked the arrow under his chin and said again, softly, ‘‘Go away now.’’

  There was nothing else for Brian then but the arrow and the bowstring trembling slightly in his fingers and the broadhead that he would send into the bear’s heart and the bear standing there, looking at him—no birds singing, no ripple of water past the canoe, no other thing in the world but one man and one bear in a moment perhaps older than time, a bear, a man and quiet death. Had the bear moved toward him again, or snarled, or lunged—any wrong start or any wrong motion—Brian would have released the arrow.

  Instead the bear hovered for a time—it seemed forever—and then came to a decision, let air gently from its nose in a long sigh, lowered slowly to all fours, turned and ambled away down the creek bed the way Brian had come, shuffling along through the shallow water without looking back.

  Brian tracked it with the arrow and when it was obvious the bear was going to keep going he let the string go slowly forward—his arms were shaking from holding it back so long—and took a breath.

  ‘‘Good,’’ he said quietly, almost whispering. ‘‘It’s good . . . my medicine is strong.’’

  And he was half surprised to find that he was thinking the way Billy had spoken, almost in a song, and that as he had thought he had moved his right hand—the left still holding the bow with the arrow nocked—with his words, waving the medicine down from the sky and waving the bear away.

  Good medicine.

  Chapter EIGHTEEN

  Dear Caleb: I am where I belong and I belong where I am.

  If there had still been something of his old life left in him—and there may have been just a faint part of it—it left with the bear, left when he looked over the broadhead at the bear’s heart and knew that he was not afra
id because he was as good as the bear, as quick, as ready to do what he had to do. Because he knew he could kill the bear, knew he would kill the bear, he didn’t have to kill. He was even with the bear.

  Even with the woods.

  Even with his life.

  He did not put the tent up that night but made a fire and had plain rice with salt—he didn’t even take fish—and then propped the end of his canoe upside down a couple of feet up on a limb, spread his bag beneath it and went to sleep. The mosquitos came for a short time; then the night cooled so that they left and he slept soundly.

  The next morning he made tea, packed the canoe and worked ten hours on long lakes with two one-mile portages, making—according to the map—just under thirty miles, with thirty or so miles still to go to Williams Lake and the Smallhorns.

  That evening he took fish to mix with his rice, again using a bare hook, and read some Shakespeare before it was dark—still Romeo and Juliet—having to reread it six or seven times, standing on the lakeshore speaking aloud out over the water before he thought he understood it.

  Just before he finished he found himself speaking to an audience. Two otters came along the shore hunting and stopped to listen to him, floating on their backs in the water with their heads raised attentively as he read them a verse, then reread it:

  O, mickle is the powerful grace that lies

  In plants, herbs, stones, and their true qualities.

  For naught so vile that on earth doth live

  But to the earth some special good doth give . . .

  When he was finished they rolled over and dove and he did not see them again.

  ‘‘You could have clapped,’’ he called after them. ‘‘Or at least told me what mickle means . . .’’

  But they were gone.

  Again he slept without the tent, under the canoe. That night it rained softly a bit but the canoe shed the water and he stayed dry and sometime toward morning he heard a noise, a rustling, and it awakened him and when he went back to sleep he dreamed of Billy.