Martin Marten (9781466843691) (27 page)

And of course there are many mountains on and
in
the mountain, says Mr. Douglas, sitting by the fire. It’s not like there’s
one
mountain. Wy’east is a vast amalgam of ideas of mountains, and stories of mountains, and lies about mountains, and misperceptions and illusions about mountains. People always want the mountain to
mean
something, to be some kind of holy destination or refuge for revelation, but it’s just a temporary upthrust, and soon enough it will be mud in the valley, and what was the valley will be twelve thousand feet high, probably with shopping carts on the peak, frozen into the glaciers, if there still are glaciers then. That’s the way of the world. What’s up will be down and et cetera. Think of the mountain as a wave that will soon enough crash to earth and be subsumed; it’s just a real
slow
wave, by our lights, being made of stone. Like the hearts of certain people I know who are making soup in the kitchen as we speak.

He said this with a smile, but Dave saw that the smile had a jolt of pain in it; but before he could say anything, Miss Moss swept out of the kitchen and around the counter, and before Mr. Douglas’s smile got all the way to startle, she was extending her hand to him and saying, Richard, come with me, and he was up in a flash, and they were out the door hand in hand so quickly that her voice saying,
Dave, you are in charge for a couple hours, thanks
, had to wander back through the doorway to find Dave’s ear. A moment later he stepped out on the porch to see if they were arguing or what, and there was neither sign nor hint of their presence, and just then, a cavalcade of white vans filled with students pulled up, ravenous and singing, and he ran back to the kitchen.

*   *   *

For a few moments, Miss Moss and Mr. Douglas walked hand in hand through the woods where the path was wide enough, but then when it narrowed, Miss Moss led the way calmly sure of the way, and Mr. Douglas followed closely, curious as to destination. As far as he could tell they were walking toward the river but he forbore to ask and she declined to tell. No words were offered or exchanged whatsoever on either part, and the only discussion extant was between a kingfisher, aggrieved, and a heron, dismissive. There was a hint of a suggestion of fertilization by one tree to another, but Miss Moss and Mr. Douglas passed by too quickly to catch gentle inquiry or ready reply. At the river Miss Moss did not pause but stepped into the tumbling thigh-deep icy water without removing her shoes or socks or pausing in any way to acknowledge or ameliorate the frigidity of the water, which not so long before had been snow. Upon reaching the middle of the river, she turned and gestured firmly and inarguably to Mr. Douglas, and he too strode forward into the river without the slightest hesitation, although he was wearing his best woods boots—the ones he worked on relentlessly and almost daily with mink oil to achieve not only complete and inviolate waterproofing but also a rare and astonishing suppleness for which he had often suggested to Miss Moss there ought to damn well be a word invented like
supplicity
or
pliabliss
.

As he arrived in the middle of the river, praying quietly that he would not unaware unbeknownst step into a deeper hole, thus allowing the river to reach his reproductive parts and cause him to quail and utter high-pitched noises of dismay, she took him by the hand and led him to a massive boulder, upon which they climbed together and on achievement of pinnacle stood facing each other, and she stepped forward and cupped her hands around his face and kissed him long and soft and tender and said, I love you, Richard David Douglas. I want to wake up in the morning and find you in the bed again like a large hairy miracle. I want to talk to you every night over dinner. I want to make love to you and argue with you and maybe have children. I want to be with you as long as we can before something or anything or death bears us away. I trust you, and I love you, and I don’t want to lose you, because we don’t have good words for how to be together. I am, here and now, on this rock in this river, asking you to be with me as deeply and truly and honestly and gently as you can possibly be, if you want to do that. I hate the word
marry
, but I love the idea hiding behind it. I hate the words
marriage
and
wedding
and
commitment
and
joint tax return
, but I want the thing under those words, and I want that thing with you, Richard David Douglas, and with no one else. So I won’t say
marry
, but I ask you here and now if you want that thing too. With me.

Yes, he said, as clearly and crisply as if no one had ever said that word before, and it emerged fresh and amazed from his mouth like a new child being born. Yup. Yep. Sí. Oui. Hai.

Richard?

Haan. Ndiyo. Baleh. Naam.

Dickie, are you okay?

Ayo. Da. Evet. I am trying to say yes in every language there is to cover all possible bases and eventualities. I am going to say yes so many times and in so many ways there will never be a question henceforth about it. Bai. Kyllä. Avunu.

Avunu?

That’s from India, I think. Or Japan? No, Japanese is hai!

Richard, how do you know all this?

I have been studying to say yes for two years. In case the chance ever came up I wanted to be ready.

You are the strangest person I ever met.

Merci. Danke. Grazie. Arigatō
.

I love you more than I can say. More than I understand.

Yes.

We’ll have to work out a lot of things.

Yes.

I am a puzzle and a conundrum and a thunderstorm.

Avunu. Hai! That is
so
true. That is so …

But you are no picnic, either. You are a wilderness. You have a head like a rock.

Ginny, he says, dropping all his masks so suddenly so thoroughly it’s a wonder they didn’t bounce off the boulder and plop into the river, Ginny, I want to see and hear you deeper than anyone else ever does, ever. I want to watch you grow and ache and deal with stuff and laugh and cry and nurse your sons and get old and lose your temper and laugh so hard you pee. Avunu, yes, I do. I say yes. Hai! Let’s go for it. Let’s just promise to try like hell and work out the details and problems as we go. You want to try like hell, too, Virginia Mary Moss?

Yes, she says, and she starts to cry. Hai!

Hai! says Mr. Douglas. My feet are freezing. Let’s go sit by the fire and kiss for the rest of the day. Dave can take care of the store. Nice kid. Hai!

54

ON ANY ONE DAY ON WY’EAST,
one million living beings lose their lives. They die, are killed, are shredded, fade out, are gulped, expire, decease, pass from this plane, cease to function, demise, commence decomposition, transition to the next stage, initiate cellular breakdown. This is the way it is. Some live a day, and some live a thousand years. Some are smaller than this comma, and some are taller than you can measure with your eye. Some are serene and eat sunlight and rain and do not slay their neighbors and do not battle for supremacy and sex and speak a patient green language. Others are vigorous and furious and muscular and speak the languages of blood and bone. This is the way it is. They are all brothers and sisters in time and light and water and weather. They change, they morph, they evolve, they go extinct, they sink back into the earth from which we all came and shall return. This is the way it is. It may be that every death is mourned, though most go unremarked, and every day’s million deaths causes a million other hearts to sag. Who is to say that is not the way it is?

And here is one death today: the fox who ate Martin’s brother, the fox who waited in the darkness with only her eyes flickering, the fox with the canter recognizable by trappers, the so-called Rhododendron Fox, the fox called ghost and dream and fiction by men who heard the stories but never saw her once—that fox is hunting at dusk and picks up the scent of marten. A marten is a meal, and the trail smells like two marten, which would be a meal sufficient and then some for her new kits also. She follows the two marten. As far as she can tell from the scent trails, one marten is a female in estrus, and the other a male with prospects. She suspects that the female in estrus is scouting for dens and burrows in which to eventually give birth. She ponders the implications of this for a moment; marten kits are delicious bits of meat and much easier to catch than adult marten, who tend to fight savagely when attacked. Yet marten kits are not born until late winter or early spring, and the fox is hungry right now, and her new kits are hungry right now, so she follows the two adult marten into the deepening dusk.

*   *   *

A gray fox can climb trees and run along branches and leap from branch to branch, much as a marten does. The gray fox occasionally dens in trees, as marten do. A gray fox is lightning fast in bursts, as a marten is. The gray fox hunts night and day, altering patterns depending on season and available crops, much as marten do. But a gray fox is longer and taller and heavier than a marten—a large marten might weigh three pounds, where a large gray fox might weigh twenty pounds—and thus the gray fox, given the chance, catches and eats the marten, despite the marten’s liquid speed and incredibly quick reflexes. The percentages are not with the marten, you might say. The marten may elude the chase; the fox may miss his or her strike; the marten may lead the pursuing fox into a situation more dangerous to the fox, like a hunter or a hound or a highway; but in general, a fox intent on catching and eating a marten or two has an excellent chance of doing so and history on its side.

But not this time.

*   *   *

As dusk gave way infinitesimally to dark, the two marten made their way first through a vast clear-cut and then briefly along a logging road and then down a sharp slope and through what a human observer might call a small foul city of incredible garbage—the detritus of an entire civilization, splayed and dumped and tossed and moldering in a little dell into which everything thrown down the slope from the road ended up smashed together in a pile fully twenty feet high adamant with stench and stink. There were hundreds of old tires in every size from child’s wagon to bulldozer. There were hundreds of smashed jars and bottles that had once contained beer, whiskey, mayonnaise, rum, jelly, jam, oil, petroleum jelly, cream, gin, soda, and pretty much any other substance you can imagine. There was an entire mobile home in pieces. There were bits and parts of cars and trucks and bicycles. There were televisions dating back more than seventy years. There were parts of cows and pigs and dogs and cats and birds and goats and llamas. There were guns and knives and half an assault rifle. There were diapers and records and compact discs and cassette tapes and false fingernails and two bathtubs. There were computers and computer printers and cords and coils and hammers and spatulas and bullet casings and mattresses and do we need to go on? Why would beings throw garbage into the homes of other beings so that the animals who lived there must leave, and the plants who live there are choked to death by weight and darkness and chemicals, and the whole foul mess will be there for a thousand years like a lurid sin until the blessed day when a shiver in the earth from Wy’east grinding its teeth drops the whole awful mound into a sudden crevice, never to be seen again?

*   *   *

The female marten had seemed intent on a certain target or idea as she and Martin came down through the clear-cut and through the garbage pit, and soon it was evident to Martin what it was she sought—a tremendous fir tree standing nearly in the middle of a creek, approachable only by deft footwork along a ridge of boulders leading to it like a road of rocky teeth. Halfway up the ancient tree was a spacious hollow in which Martin thought he could smell the faintest scent of bees. But whatever residents the hole had housed were long gone, and Martin understood that his companion was choosing this as her home—the den in which she would give birth to their kits. For a while, she allowed him to explore the space and investigate the infinitesimal scents of other former tenants; he thought he could smell red squirrels and perhaps also an owl, although that scent was so very faint that it might be only the record of a one-time visit, perhaps to eat the squirrels.

Suddenly, according to some mysterious decision in her part, she drove him out, and he backed hurriedly out of the hollow and down the tree to the boulders. A minute later, she joined him, and they leapt back toward the forest. Both were hungry, and Martin was sure he had seen not one but two birds’ nests near the garbage pit. They had also passed near a huckleberry thicket, and no marten in summer passes up huckleberries, given the chance.

One nest was empty, though, and the other contained nothing but broken eggshells, so Martin led his companion toward the berry bushes; but just as they crossed a small clearing crowded with ferns, the fox struck.

*   *   *

The ambush is an ancient and effective technique, because it entails surprise, which means unpreparedness, which usually means death or injury leading unto death. In almost all cases of violent combat, across all species, he or she who sustains the initial injury loses the battle, being drained of energy and force, not to mention essential liquids. Yet evolution or time or a fitfully merciful creator or some unimaginable referee interested in competitive balance and the persistence of infinitesimal chance also arms all beings with a quiver of intuition or extrasensory perception or awareness beyond the range of understanding—we do not have good words for this, but it is indeed true, as you well know, because you have experienced it, and have been startled and intrigued by it too: a premonition of impending trouble, the sure knowledge that someone is looking at you though you cannot see the stare, the certainty that there is someone behind you though no sign or signal was given.