Martin Marten (9781466843691) (36 page)

*   *   *

Dave’s dad is talking to Moon’s dad. Beer is involved. Here’s the greatest metaphor story
ever
, he says. One time I went to the funeral of a man who used to be a logger, and it was a great roaring funeral—he was Irish, and they have the roaringest funerals—and people got to drinking and dancing and courting, and a baby was conceived
on the coffin of the guy who died
. Hey? Is there a greater metaphorical story than that? Hey?

What’s the metaphor?

I haven’t the faintest idea, said Dave’s dad.
What
a story, though, hey? I love that story.

I heard a story like that where a couple is getting married and the woman goes into labor
on the altar
, says Moon’s dad. Now
there’s
a metaphor for something or other. The way I heard the story, she said
I do
and then screamed with the first jolt of labor pain.

That’s a great story. Can I borrow that story? That’s a keeper of a story.

Is Miss Moss in labor? asks Maria, suddenly at his elbow.

I don’t think so, said Maria’s dad. She looks … serene.
Serene
is not a word I would use for a woman in labor. Your mother was anything but serene. I would use a word like
shrieking
if I were using one word for a woman in labor.

I hope she’s pregnant, says Moon’s dad. We have not had a new baby in the Zag for a while. Although I have been traveling and may have missed a few. Jack?

I think we should take up a petition and see if they can have triplets, said Maria’s dad. Or at least twins. We are down two in population since the Robinsons. I wish they were here. He was the nicest guy ever, and she was nicer. They would be sitting right there under that tree holding hands if they were here. You never saw two people hold hands more than they held hands. They would sit quietly together on folding chairs at any and all events and hold hands. Let’s put two chairs together under the cedar just in case they are here somehow and want to sit down. You don’t want two people of that age to have to stand if they can sit, you know what I mean? And we’ll get a little wine for them, and some berries. I’ll be right back.

68

WERE THERE PRESENTS?
Absolutely. Gobs and mobs and piles and towers, all of them cheerfully defiant of the bridal decree that there were to be
no presents whatsoever
, since there was no Wedding as regulated by any ostensible civic or religious authority. The presents were delicately stacked and balanced all over the chairs and the mantelpiece and the floor by the fireplace in the store so that when Miss Moss and Mr. Douglas walked into the store the next morning, they stepped into the mossy darkness and sensed some burly unfamiliar jumble where usually there were only the two lean old chairs by the fire, and Mr. Douglas flipped on the light, and they were startled and amazed for a second, and then Mr. Douglas laughed, realizing that Dave had engineered this surprise because Dave had the only other key to the store, but Miss Moss started to cry for reasons that remain murky. She went into the kitchen to warm the griddle and start the soup as Mr. Douglas picked his way through the gifts to start the fire, but when he heard a gasp from the kitchen, he ran to see if she was okay, and she showed him the gift certificate in the soup pot—a week in a cabin on the Oregon coast, all expenses for travel and meals and steelhead fishing trip paid. The place on the gift certificate where the donor’s name was usually recorded was blank, but later, when Mr. Douglas asked Edwin if he knew anything about the gift or the donors, Edwin made a point of looking away and closely following the manic swoop of a kingfisher, and Mr. Douglas got the message and laughed and said okay, fine, I will just tell Ginny that it was you. Thanks. I have never been to the coast, isn’t that ridiculous? Two hours away from the biggest ocean in the world, and I never once set foot in salt water. I don’t believe that Ginny has, either. Have you? Don’t answer that. Of all the horses in the world who would of course have a story to tell about being in the surf, you would be foremost. Of course you have been in the ocean. Foolish of me to even ask. I wouldn’t be surprised if you have been on a ship. You have, haven’t you? Is there anything you have not done in this life? Don’t answer that.

Also, when Miss Moss went to the key rack to find the backup key for the deep freeze, she found the keys to Mr. and Mrs. Robinson’s repaired Falcon hanging there, with a note from Cosmas saying,
from Mr. and Mrs. R. to the Happy Couple
, and she had to go sit on the front steps and stare for a while at the proud animals carved long ago into the old wooden railing posts.

*   *   *

And the dancing and drinking and eating. O sweet Jesus, the sausages and grilled trout and last corn roasted in its husk in the fire. The fire redolent with juniper and cherry and sage someone carried up the trail just for the brief pleasure of the scent of the smoke. Mr. Douglas dancing with Maria. Fiddle and pennywhistle and a clarinet. Miss Moss peers into the sifting dusk to see who is playing that lovely whirling clarinet, and to her surprise it is Dave’s cross-country coach with his eyes closed and his knees bent. On the whistle is the morning waitress, trying not to laugh at how egregiously poorly she is playing the thing, and on the fiddle is one of Moon’s basketball teammates, a pale boy with pimples all up the west side of his face. The first stars peering out of the sky going blue to black. How very many scatters of stars are named for animals, thinks Miss Moss. Eagle, swan, crab, bull, bear, fish, lion, goat, scorpion, horse. We see animals everywhere. We are animals. Or we used to be animals, and mostly now we forget how to be animals, which is why we look for them everywhere.

Speaking of which, she says to Edwin, are you enjoying yourself?

Very much so, thinks Edwin, although the prospect of picking our way down the trail again in the dark is not something I relish.

Mr. Douglas is suddenly there beside Edwin, smiling.

May I cut in?

It would be a pleasure, says Miss Moss.

I understand congratulations are in order, Miss.

This makes her laugh aloud. I suppose so, she says, although it seems to me I have probably simply volunteered for a much deeper wilderness.

It seems to me he is a very lucky man, says Mr. Douglas. I would guess that he too is a little rattled but thrilled at the possibilities for … depth.

Just kiss her, for heaven’s sake, thinks Edwin. You two are always talking when you should be kissing and fencing when you should be wrestling. How human animals ever manage to reproduce is a mystery to me sometimes. So much chatter and jabber.

I’ll convey your regards to, says Miss Moss, but she does not finish her sentence, because Mr. Douglas
is
kissing her with all his might in the flickering firelight, with Edwin behind them like a warm brown wall, and Miss Moss is kissing him deep and wild and thrilled, the kind of kiss where you just pour yourself into it without any thought or agenda or target or message, just complete furious trust and affection and joy, there’s so much of that in you for this one soul in the world that you cannot speak except with your lips and your tongue and your arms and being pressed together like hands in prayer, and for a few seconds, almost a minute, you are lost and found. And you break apart, startled and electrified, and only then do you dimly hear everyone applauding, their faces flitting from light to dark to light as the fire fluctuates; and you bow, laughing, and somehow, that is the crescendo, the apex, the conclusion, the beginning of the end of your best day ever.

*   *   *

Can something be sad and happy at the same time? An event? A moment? Sure, thinks Dave, sitting on a log by the fire with Cadence and Moon. He likes Cadence and she likes him, but she does not love him and he does not love her, but they
like
each other in some other heartfelt, entertaining way. Why does it have to be love or not? Isn’t like a form of love? Isn’t like actually the crucial ingredient of love? It’s easy to
fall
in love but not as easy to
stay
in love, and the only way to stay in love is to like, isn’t that so? Because if you just depend on love, then when things change or people change, will you love the new person she is rather than just the person she used to be, the one you fell in love with?

You’re losing me here, says Moon, and Dave almost falls off the log.

What?

You said before that this is a happy event, but it’s also sort of sad. Why?

Because they’re not actually married? says Cadence.

No, no, says Dave. That actually seems cool. It’s their decision, and Miss Moss is real firm about how no other authority gets to tell them how they are related or committed or defined or whatever, and Dickie doesn’t care what their status is called; he just wants to be with her. No, it’s not that.

What then?

I don’t know. Don’t you guys feel it? An event like this is so great because it brings everything into focus; it’s like a prism that bends all the light in one way. But after today, it’ll be everything back to usual. Back to regular time, you know? Today is like an island where time doesn’t apply. Today doesn’t even end until we say so. But today also changes things. What if she sells the store and they move to Utah or something?

She’d never sell the store, says Moon. Where would the Lutheran dawn hikers eat? They’d starve, and that would be the end of the faith in America.

I know, says Dave. I just feel … weird. We hardly ever
are
a town, I guess, and it feels great to
be
one for a while, and then tomorrow, it’s back to regular life where everyone lives apart, and here comes the snow, and soon we’ll be in college or working or whatever, and I
like
living upstairs in our house with Maria, and soon I’ll have to go away, and I don’t
want
to. I love smelling bacon downstairs and running in the woods and talking to you guys and my dad making dumb jokes and then laughing for twenty minutes to himself. I
like
stepping in bear scat once a year. It’s sad that it all changes so fast. Will we even
be
friends in a few years? Will we?

*   *   *

Sometimes we forget that we were all teenagers once, and we forget that teenagers are enormously sensitive, and for all their masks and disguises and japes and adopted personas and fear of being uncool and fear of being found out as only themselves, they are as sharply alert to the right time not to speak as any older seasoned bruised listener; and this was one of those times. So they sat there, the two boys and the girl, in the flicker of the fire, and not one of them spoke for a very long time.

The fire burned down as the stars lit up.

Here are Miss Moss and Mr. Douglas and Edwin at the far edge of the firelight, Miss Moss and Mr. Douglas with their heads together and Edwin behind them like a part of the forest himself; he is looking at them with some sort of spice in his eye—affection, surely, but isn’t there something very like amusement? Yes?

The Unabled Lady wrapped in a shawl, laughing as Moon’s coach and teammates prepare to lift chair and Lady and all and carry her down the trail to where Moon’s mom and dad rented a van to carry her home. Emma Jackson and Maria dancing one last dance, each swirling in place at the very edge of the meadow, and for an instant Maria vanishes into the oceanic dark under the trees but then pops out again laughing. Cosmas and Dave’s dad and Dave’s coach folding tables and chairs and carrying what little extra food there is to a spot under the trees to leave for the other Citizens & Residents, as Cosmas says. Dave’s mom and the morning waitress in their autumn jackets waiting for the convoy to start down the trail. Mr. Shapiro and the dog and the finch leaning against trees at the edge of the clearing watching all this with mixed and complicated emotions. Nighthawks flit past and one small owl. The fire burns lower. Dave and Cadence and Moon stand and stretch, and Dave offers Cadence his jacket, and she declines courteously but smiles as she says no thanks, and Mr. Douglas says gently, I guess we’d better put out the fire, gentlemen. Miss Moss boards Edwin and everyone else starts down the trail slowly, carefully shuffling a bit, each and every one thankful for the rope banister set up by Dave’s teammates for just this hour and purpose. Penultimate is Cosmas, who kneels to be absolutely sure of the fire’s doused embers, and while he is on his knees he speaks very quietly to Mr. and Mrs. Robinson, and then he rises and says, Richard?

Mr. Douglas says right behind you, but as Cosmas vanishes into the dark, Mr. Douglas stands there and takes it all in—the broad circle of the sky stammering with stars; the dim soaring vault of the trees; the faint last scent of the bonfire; the fragrant bruised grass; the sharp faint call and whir of nighthawks. This was our chapel, he thinks. I’ll always remember this. We’ll always come here. Maybe when things are confusing, this will be the best place to be. It’ll be all snow soon. We could build an igloo and visit in the winter. I’m scared. I’m thrilled. This is crazy. She’s my kind of crazy, though. I don’t believe it happened. It
did
happen, though, didn’t it? It
did
. Didn’t it? It certainly by god did, and he smiles and turns and vanishes into the trees, and there is the night meadow as it has been for a thousand years, as round and open as a mouth in song.

69

MARTIN SAW ALL THIS.
Sure he did. He saw the whole thing from noon to moon. He saw the first arrivals in the meadow and the unpacking and the laying out of food and the building of the fire. He watched with interest. He saw the mice and voles scurrying out of the way of the feet of people and a horse. He saw the ouzel in the creek move disgruntled downhill to a lower pool. He explored the canopy along the trail and watched Edwin and Miss Moss have a meeting of the minds, and then she climbed onto the horse, and he carried her up to the meadow. He saw Dave climbing up, and he watched the boy he knew, holding hands with the girl who had been lost in the snow and took refuge in the hollow tree that the bobcat was going to poke into. That was long ago when Martin was young. Now he is seventeen months old and very nearly fully grown, and he has a companion, a mate, a partner who is with child. Two kits will be born in late April next year, two weeks after Martin is two years old. One will be female and the other male. The female will become a legend, but that is the story for another book. The male will very nearly drown but be saved from drowning by an amazing coincidence, but that is also the story for another book. We are still in
this
book, even though we are very nearly at the end of it.