Elements

Harvey’s cough got worse. The fever had him bad. The sun cleared the eastern pines and the day became white and almost warm, and there was nothing to do but wait at the fire and wait. The cough came in a rhythm. Prefaced by wheezing, then the deep fluid sound in his lungs, then the cough, then more wheezing as Harvey leaned forward and strained into the cough as though pushing against a locked door. His hands were wet and cold and his forehead was wet and hot, sweat dribbled into his beard. There was nothing to do but wait. Neither of them spoke. Perry kept water boiling, dipping a rag into the water and wringing it and spreading it over Harvey’s nose and mouth, regularly changing the rag to keep it steaming. The morning went slow. Perry was restless. Stretching ahead in open invitation, the road enticed him and he was eager to move. He found it hard to pity his brother. He thought about finding food, and finding shelter, and finding the end of the road. The sun was brilliant white. There was no wind. With the hot rag on his face, Harvey had the look of a strange old man, abandoned in a corner of a sickroom and caught up in some grand and final suffering. He was perfectly still as in a kind of summer repose. He only moved when the coughing grabbed him and shook him and jolted him upright. Otherwise he was calm and quiet, his eyes almost smiling in secret wisdom. The bad eye sometimes seemed unfocused and other times appeared to have clear hold of a great faraway vision.

“We can’t sit all day,” Perry finally said. He waited another half hour, letting the fire die naturally. Then he said again:

“We can’t wait.”

He rolled up the sleeping bags.

One of the ski poles was missing and he spent a long time searching for it, groping on hands and knees through the snow. When he found it Harvey was asleep. The lid of his dead eye was half-open and the eye itself was focused and bright and awake.

“We’re going,” Perry said.

“You don’t remember me getting that rifle?” said Harvey. “I can’t … That, I can’t understand. Thought sure you remembered it. You were laughing at me. You saw how scared I was. The old man … he never saw it. You saw it. You remember? And I … don’t you remember? I went upstairs and put the rifle under my bed. I was scared to take the bullets out. Don’t know why. You remember now? That damn rifle. You came up and saw me lying on the bed. You started laughing. You asked to see my new rifle. You don’t remember?” He grinned and began to laugh and the laugh choked, broke and sobbed, and he was coughing, and Perry got him to his feet and leaned him over and clapped his back, then got him into his skis. “I don’t … I asked what was so funny and you just laughed and asked to see my new rifle. You don’t remember that? I’m sick. You don’t remember? You had all those shiny bullets lined up in a row on the floor. Then father came in and told you you hadn’t finished the dishes, and he gave you a swat and sent you down to finish them, then he sat down and showed me how to oil the rifle and how to keep it on safe, and I sat there scared, and he never knew it. You don’t remember that? It was just at Christmas. Just the day after Christmas. I don’t remember what you got. You … You ought to remember that. I thought sure you remembered it. Ever after that, I thought you remembered it whenever you looked at me. You …” He coughed and wheezed, and Perry pulled up the zipper on Harvey’s parka, put the ski poles into his hands. “It was the same. Jesus, I’m sick. I’m hot. Can I take.… No. I can’t. Even after I was sure you remembered. Every time something happened, I was sure you remembered that. You don’t remember? You don’t? I don’t believe you. That Christmas. Not that Christmas, but the Christmas when I went off to boot camp and you drove me into town, and you were so quiet and I was so quiet, and I know you were remembering it, thinking I’d go off and get killed … I know you were remembering it and thinking I’d get killed … I’m sick … And, I know, you were sad. You tried not to be, you pretended and I pretended, but I know you were thinking I’d get myself killed. I was scared. The bloody things we always remember. You don’t? You always stood up to the old man. He liked it and I could never stand up and say what I thought. Jesus. Do you know how sick I am? I’m going to die, you know. You’re pretending I’m not. I’m pretending, too. We’re pretending, aren’t we? I’m sick. I’ve got it and it’s got me good. Jesus. I’m hot. You remember all the times I got sick? You never got sick. The old man left you alone and he liked it when you said you weren’t going to listen to him preach anymore. You just told him. You told him and he never said a word. I remember you telling him. He asked if you were sick, and you said nope. You never did get sick, did you? I can’t understand why it was always me that got sick. But you said nope, you weren’t sick, and you just said you decided not to go listen to him preach anymore. And that was that. I remember. You looked down to eat, calm as could be. You remember? Jesus. And he smiled. Did you see him smile and wink at you? Then he winked at me. I felt … I’m hot. I’m taking this coat off. Don’t move so fast, I can’t … I felt like bloody rotten crap, that’s what. Hold up. I’m sick. Do you remember all that stuff? I been thinking about it. Wait up and I’ll tell you more.”

The trail was a road, and the road was flat, and the country was all pines and sky and snow and sunlight. Perry remembered. He’d planned it. Frightened, a way to strike back, settle the score against both of them. I decided, that’s why. No, I’m not sick. I decided, that’s all. I’m not going to hear you preach anymore. The version of the same story, remembered a hundred different ways: himself, Harvey, the old man in the cold of Sunday mornings, coming into his room, thinking he was asleep, reading in the chair by his bed, reading, his slipper dangling from a hooked toe. He felt himself grinning. He touched his face with a mitten. He had a beard. Grace would make him shave it off. Addie would tease about it. He wished he had a mirror. He would take a good long look at it and admire it, then maybe, if Grace was nice and Addie didn’t tease, then maybe he’d go ahead and shave it off. Maybe he’d keep it. Maybe he’d move to Minneapolis and find a new job. Maybe he’d move to Chicago. He’d never been to Chicago. He’d been to Ames and Iowa City and Kansas City. Maybe he’d move to Kansas City. The trail was a road, tar beneath the snow, and he followed it and listened to Harvey skiing behind him, still trying to talk. He would have to find them food. He was still grinning. He could feel it under his beard, that great wide grin. I’m just not going, that’s all. I decided, that’s why. No, I’m not sick. I decided, that’s all. I’m not going to hear you preach anymore. I’m not listening anymore to your preaching. He grinned and thought about finding them food. Grace would hate the beard. She’d puff up and pout, tell him to take a long bath and shave it off and come to supper, all is well. Maybe he’d shave it for her. Maybe not. Maybe he’d leave it on. He could tell everyone in the drugstore about the adventures, he had a lot to tell, and they’d all listen and admire his new beard. He was lightheaded and cleareyed. He’d keep the beard and not buy new glasses. You aren’t sick? the old man had said. His face had been ruddy, his hair curly and speckled black and white, and he’d left the table silently, and Perry remembered feeling sad and wanting to take the old man’s head in his arms and curl around it and warm it and him and them all. No, I’m not sick. I’ve decided, that’s all. Perry skied and grinned, thinking backward and forward, thinking he would have to find them something to eat.

The road twisted once, and Perry slowed and followed the curve, and on both sides of the road the forest was pushed back to form a pine glen. Beside the road, in the shadowed center of the glen, there was a shed.

There was a shed. Its roof sagged. The slats were gray, and the whole sad structure trembled as he tried the door. The latch held tight. Perry stepped out of his skis, grabbed the handle with both hands, pulled, and the latch gave way.

He unbuckled Harvey’s skis.

“You don’t remember that blasted rifle?” said Harvey clearly.

Perry took him inside.

It was a timberman’s shanty. There were no windows. It smelled no different from the rest of the forest. Wood, a drifting sense of silence and cold. He helped Harvey sit down, then he braced the door open and inspected the shed, moving quietly from corner to corner. There was a stove. There were four chairs, four bunks, a pine table, a trunk, a pile of yellow newspapers, shelves holding tins of coffee and flour and tea and salt and cornmeal, a Bible, more shelves holding a coffee pot and two iron kettles and a rusted ladle and a blue-smoked jar of matches, a red and black flannel jacket hanging from a wall, a spider web over the door. He circled the shanty again and found an axe and four saw blades and a screwdriver. The shed was dark and clean. Leisurely, he opened the jar of flour and saw it had molded and turned green. The crawled with small insects. The cornmeal had a strange smell but he put it on the table, then he helped Harvey into a bunk, then he rested, sitting with his back against the cold stove, watching the walls, realizing that under his breath he was still counting.

He rested there until noticing that the rising moon was framed in the open door.

Then he went outside. He gathered wood and built a small fire in the stove. He found a candle, lit it and placed it on the table.

Harvey slept soundly, sometimes mumbling and turning, sometimes just breathing with the heavy fluid sound. Perry covered him with a sleeping bag.

Sheltered, he stood by the stove, arms folded across his chest. He thought about Grace, then about Pliney’s Pond, then for a long long time about Grace.

The water boiled to a froth. The bubbles steamed from the kettle, broke open, scattered, then bubbled up again.

He dipped a rag in the boiling water, wrang it out, and draped it over the coffeepot, holding it firm with one hand.

He scooped coffee grounds on to the cloth.

Then with his free hand he ladled boiling water into the coffee.

The grounds blossomed and broke open and water bubbled up against his hand and burned it, but he held it steady and watched the brown-stained water trickle through the cloth and into the pot.

Still holding the cloth, he put his nose down and smelled the exploding coffee.

He rinsed out two mugs and filled them with drink.

He opened the jar of cornmeal and sprinkled some into each cup, then he woke Harvey and fed the brew to him, clucking gently and smiling and watching Harvey’s throat bob.

“There,” he murmured, “there, there now.”

When Harvey was fed, Perry took his own cup outside and drank standing up, leaning lazily against the shed and looking up the road, seeing that it was close to dawn.

He had a hard time finishing the drink. Two sips filled him.

At first the brew had no taste at all, merely a kind of nutritious warmth, but as he forced himself to drink more of it the taste became intriguing. He had tasted or smelled it before. It was not a coffee taste, nor a corn taste. He couldn’t place it. But it was warm and it filled him.

Inside, he brewed two more cups. He used the last of the cornmeal. He woke Harvey and fed him.

Then he chose one of the old newspapers and sat at the table.

He drank the hot coffee and read the old news and felt the morning sun rise. The old news was about a 1928 St. Paul fire. It was about a new water tower being built. It was about people being born who were now dead.

So he sat at the table, drank the brew, read the paper and felt the sun rising. Everything, including the old news, seemed quite fresh.

In the morning he took Harvey’s knife and went out to find food.

It was a powdered fine morning and he had hot coffee in his belly.

Following instinct or whim, he set out without second thoughts into the forest behind the shed. He wasn’t sure what he was hunting, but he was hunting, and he was certain that when he saw it he would know it and kill it on the spot.

It was a new feeling. He was walking now rather than going by ski, lifting his knees high and using new muscles.

He held the knife before him, blade down, remembering the deer he’d greeted, hoping to meet it again so as to kill and eat it. He would greet it with another wave, then he would kill it with Harvey’s knife.

He walked straight into the forest.

The snow came to his knees and sometimes higher. The top snow was fresh and light, but below it became hard and packed. He tried to walk with stealth.

He considered the kind of thing he would kill.

There were deer. Deer would be good. He’d been stupid not to eat the frozen carcass. There were deer, but a deer would be hard to kill with the knife, harder yet to catch to kill.

And there were a few wolves. He had never seen a wolf, not even a dead one, but he had heard his father and Harvey talking about the day they saw a whole pack of them trapped in the deep snow behind Pliney’s Pond. If he came on a wolf, he decided, he would try to kill it. A pack of wolves he would leave alone. He was feeling brave.

There were no animals and the only noise was his own breathing. He thought some more about wolves and begun to hope he would not meet one. In a contest between himself and a wolf, the wolf would be better at killing and probably the hungrier. But he was feeling brave, holding the knife before him with the blade inclined towards the ground and pointed slightly forward, walking with high steps, stopping now and then to see what could be seen. He hoped he would not meet a wolf. He could not think of many other animals—squirrels, birds. There were bear and moose and elk, but he’d never seen one alive and could not imagine trying to kill one.

The feeling of hunger was back. The coffee and cornmeal brew had revived it.

The knife felt solid. It had a long straight blade and a wooden handle that fit neatly in his hand. It looked built for a purpose. It was heavy and solid. It belonged to Harvey and Perry imagined that before that it had belonged to the old man. It did not matter.

He walked until he was far enough from the road to be in animal country. Then he began searching for a place to kill from.

He was not sure how it was done. The woods were friendly and still. He imagined himself in hiding, waiting, perhaps setting some sort of lure and then killing whatever came to feed. He wished he’d saved some of the cornmeal.

He walked until he was tired.

He found a clump of small and closely grown pines, pushed them aside and went into hiding. The branches closed around him.

At first he was able to stand and practise hunter’s silence. Holding the knife at his waist, he peered through the needles and watched the forest before him. The snow crested in a small clearing. Everything was bright and friendly and composed, and it was hard to imagine trying to kill in the friendly looking clearing.

He practiced quiet, turning the knife in his hands, holding it slightly cocked, trying to think of it as an extension of his wrist, testing the feel and weight.

He was tired. Hunching his shoulders, he backed into one of the trees, letting the tiny needles run over his shoulders and spray out in front of him, and he rested against the pine’s trunk, nestled in a bough. Hidden and braced, he concentrated on the act of hunting. He remembered his father explaining to Harvey that the chief element of hunting was neither surprise nor stealth nor good fortune, but instead the capacity to cast oneself completely and without motive in the role of the hunter. It was typical, the circular and almost mystical logic: you are a hunter if you are a hunter. He burrowed deep into the pine tree and concentrated, but soon he grew tired again, and he moved away from the tree and knelt in the snow to rest.

Crouching down, he began to think about the hailed deer. He tried to imagine it coming into the small snow clearing before him, imagined it stopping with its neck arched and eyes wide and straight, the huge ears perked, then slowly turning to feed on the bark of one of the spruce, then its eyes fastening on his own eyes, watching one another, the deer feeding and watching him, and he imagined creeping close to the deer, imagined waving to the beast in another friendly greeting, hailing, beckoning, meeting as strangers on the street and knowing they’d met once before, imagined the other hand behind his back with the knife, creeping on the deer closer and closer until finally … He was cold. He was cold and hungry. He had not been hungry for a long while—not in the same way, not with the sensation of hunger—and he wondered whether a hunter became a better hunter when he was hungry, and while he was wondering the hunger grew worse. The hunger was a kind of stream that ran from the base of his brain down to his belly, reversed course and ran back again. He thought about it, deciding it would have been better not to have eaten the cornmeal and coffee.

A hunter was a hunter. He concentrated again, squinting his eyes in concentration, concentrating on the sound a hunter would make while hunting.

The forest was snowy and brilliant and still. He moved back into the branches and breathed softly. He wanted to kill something. He had the desire to do it. He had the desire to kill an animal and then eat what he had killed. He had neither desire separately. He did not want merely to kill, nor to eat merely to eat. He had a great and world-wide appetite, realizing it as he felt it, knowing as he crouched in the pine trees that he had the appetite and that his father knew it all along, darkhaired and stealing quietly into the brush behind Pliney’s Pond, preaching about the way it should and would be done, and how it would taste afterwards, once killed and cooked, and how Perry would at last huddle with the old man and eat with him and hold him and warm him beside the waxing fire, hold the old man and tell him, tell him … Hold him and warm him and not speak, knowing without language the way the old man knew everything without language and spoke without language. He had the great appetite. The knife was cold. Through his mittens he could feel it. There was frost on the blade. He wiped it on his parka.

“Slowly, slowly,” he said aloud, moving once again out of the pines, finding a new position from which to make a kill. The woods were brilliant white and still. He shifted the knife to his left hand. Crouching to a squat, he peered into the woods from under the bough of a new tree. He was poised and ready to use the knife, but nothing came. Thinking about killing and eating, he thought about being hungry, then he felt the hunger even stronger and it made him forget his concentration, making him instead afraid. He held the knife with both hands and squeezed it until the hunger was gone. “This is a bad spot,” he said then, suddenly, deciding as he spoke that it was a bad spot to kill from, and he moved out of the clump of pines and into the clearing.

He waded to an exposed fallen tree. He sat on it and told himself to think of a plan. The important thing, he decided, was first to find an animal to kill. Once the animal was found he could begin figuring ways to kill it. He put the knife in his pocket. Then he got up and waded deeper into the forest, again focusing his thoughts on the act of hunting, casting himself as a hunter and thinking only that he would find an animal and then kill it with the blue-bladed knife and then eat it.

“Easy, easy,” he said aloud.

The forest sloped upwards, turning much thicker. He was careful to keep close to the trees, now and then stopping to listen and look, watching the snow for tracks.

He wished he had a better weapon. Harvey’s rifle would have been better, he thought, the rifle he could not remember but now wished he had. The knife was heavy in his pocket. With a rifle he would have a chance. But he couldn’t remember it and he did not have it and there was nothing in the sterile forest to shoot with it.

He walked up the incline and stopped at the top of a bluff.

He turned and looked back.

Smoke from the shanty stove was climbing over the trees and coming towards him.

He thought of Harvey sleeping. He would be sleeping while the fire burned and made the smoke, sleeping on the bottom bunk near the stove, covered with the sleeping bag, still warm and full from the hot brew. Old Harvey, he grinned. “Slow and easy,” he grinned, moving along the bluff and looking west. He felt silly. He took out the knife and held it again.

Coming to the edge of the bluff, he looked down and saw the road below.

He held the knife and felt foolish.

Turning quickly, he maneuvered back along the bluff and followed his tracks downwards through the thick part of the forest, down to the flat country. He was blushing. He felt a fool and he hurried to get back to the shed. Embarrassed and blushing, he hurried along his tracks, almost running. “Jesus, Jesus,” he moaned, and he was grinning and blushing as though caught by the old man acting the part. Playacting and practising. He hurried back through his tracks in the snow.

He came to the fallen tree, then to the clump of pines where he’d crouched in silent hunt, fondling the blue-bladed knife. He felt silly and stupid and embarrassed, and he hurried to get back to the road. The knife was still in his hands. He was holding it by the handle, both hands squeezing. The blade was pointed upwards. He pocketed it and continued towards the road.

Gradually he slowed down.

He came upon a gorge, followed his hunting tracks down the slope and up again.

He was breathing slow, still feeling silly, when he saw straight ahead of him the head and quick movement of a brown animal.

He stopped even as his next step was starting, poising like a motion-picture reel gone dead. He stopped with his knees flexed, his back heel partly lifted. He saw it and then was not sure he saw it at all. If it hadn’t moved he would have never seen it.

But he saw it, and he stood still. For a long while the animal did not move and Perry did not move. The animal was buried deep in the snow, and Perry watched it, thinking it might have been the branch of dead pine, anything but what it was.

He took a breath, deciding to move as he moved, and he stepped forward, finishing the step he’d started and watching the clump of brown fur. He had no plan but to get close enough to kill it. The image of a rabbit was in his head but he knew it was not a rabbit. He took another step and slowly took out the knife and held it at his side.

He was able to take a dozen more steps before the animal moved. When it moved, Perry saw the eyes. They were the rat’s eyes, only it was not a rat but a woodchuck, and its eyes were glittering and the snout was close to the ground. It was deep in the snow, nestled in one of Perry’s hunting steps, the body buried and only the head and eyes and tail showing.

He had done it before. The woodchuck did not move, only the eyes which followed him in. The eyes were deep black. He knew what to do. He held the knife.

He did not want to kill it with the knife. Backing away and still watching the animal, he retreated to the gorge and picked up a thick bough nearly twice his own height and walked back to the animal. He pocketed the knife and grasped the bough in both hands and lifted it and smashed down, hitting the animal’s hindquarters with a lush thump, again raising the bough and striking, hitting the animal’s thick back, watching as he again raised the long bough and again struck down. The animal squirmed and its mouth opened and showed him its fangs, but Perry cracked the bough down and the mouth came shut. Perry stopped and watched the animal. There was no blood. He moved closer, bending over the body. It did not move but he doubted it was dead. The eyes were open. He stood back and raised the bough high and brought it down on the animal’s skull and then there was blood. The animal came part way out of the snow with its mouth wide open and fangs chomping, the eyes glittering in a way Perry had never seen before, except for the junkyard rat, but he had closed his eyes as he missed killing the rat, and this time his eyes were open and he raised the bough and crashed it down solidly, hitting the animal square on the head, feeling the impact through his arms to his spine.

He waited awhile. Then he prodded the corpse with the bough to be sure.

Then he took up the dead woodchuck by the tail. It was dead and heavy. It surprised him. It was thick and heavy and entirely dead.

He laid it out on the snow and rested. When he was ready, he covered the blood with some snow and took the animal by the tail and walked to the shed.

Harvey was still sleeping.

Perry added wood to the fire, then laid the animal on the floor, then used the knife to slit it down the middle. He tried not to think about what he was doing.

Mechanically, he cleaned out the guts and scooped them up and carried them outside. Then he went to work on the hide, slipping the knife under the fur and pressing down and pulling with his other hand, stripping the hide upwards as though pulling off a nightshirt, the animal going naked and the eyes wide open and glaring. The flesh underneath was red. There was not much of it. When he had the skin over the animal’s front haunches, he closed his eyes and sawed off the head. Harvey woke up and asked what the awful smell was. Perry told him he’d killed the woodchuck, his eyes still tightly shut, grasping the knife with both hands as he sawed off the head. When it was done, he scooped the hide and head on to a newspaper, wrapped it up and buried it in the snow.

“A woodchuck?” Harvey said.

“I killed it.”

“A woodchuck?”

“Yes. What’s wrong?”

Harvey laughed.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re going to eat it?”

Perry shrugged. He cleaned the knife on newspaper and cut the meat into quarters. The animal’s blood had already seeped into the floorboards. The meat was warm. There was not much of it.

“You’re going to eat it?”

“I guess I am.” Perry looked up and grinned.

Harvey laughed and coughed. “Do you … do you know a woodchuck is a fucking big rat, that’s all? Did you know that? Just a rodent.”

Perry grinned. “No. I didn’t know that. You better be still. How’s the fever?”

“Better. I think it’s better. How the devil did you do it?”

“I went hunting,” Perry said.

“What?”

“I went hunting and killed a woodchuck.”

“You went hunting for woodchucks?”

“For anything.”

Harvey rolled up and laughed until the cough started, and then he coughed and the bunk creaked. Perry gave him water to drink.

“Well, how did you do it? How did you … kill it?”

“It was just there. I was on the way back and there it was in the snow. Guess it was tired or something. It was pretty deep in the snow and it couldn’t move, I guess. I just clubbed it.”

Harvey laughed into another fit of coughing. “You killed a bloody woodchuck! Some gourmet hunter. Personally, personally I hate woodchuck. Don’t touch the stuff.”

“I guess you’ll eat some though.”

“Thought woodchucks hibernated or something.”

“Not this one.”

Perry got the fire high, then let it draw down to a tight flame, then he put the meat on. He made coffee and watched the meat fry. He was content. He wanted a cigarette and some music. He whistled one of his favorite pop tunes, watching the meat fry, feeling good. Mostly luck, he thought. Purely lucky to find it. Then he thought awhile longer and decided it was part luck and part something else. He wasn’t sure what. Something else. He’d gone out to hunt. He’d gone out and had some luck and the meat was frying. When the animal was brown, he pulled the pan out and washed off their tin plates. He was content and whistling, and the room smelled of roast chicken. He woke Harvey and helped him to the table and they ate the meat and drank the coffee and afterwards Harvey went to sleep while Perry cleaned the dishes and had more coffee and sat the rest of the day in the dusty sunlight. He was exhilarated, proud, content and warm. He sat and watched the sunlight fade through the open door.

Later as he lay in the bunk above Harvey, he tasted the meat for the first time. It was a strong and wild aftertaste, making him hungry all over again, and he lay in the dark remembering the woodchuck, wondering how much wood … how much wood would a woodchuck chuck … how much would the woodchuck chuck if the woodchuck could chuck wood, or how much wood would the woodchuck chuck if the woodchuck could chuck wood, then saying it aloud as a kind of game, over and over, tumbling the rhyme out fast and without a stutter. “How much?”

He was up with dawn, boiling water and making coffee and seeing after Harvey. He spent the day inside, going out only once to gather wood and urinate and fill the two kettles with snow. That evening he heated water and washed himself. He stood naked before the stove. Sloshing water over his face, he scrubbed hard. He washed his beard and hair and then the rest of him, taking a lot of time and enjoying it. He did not like the white look of his skin, but all the old fat was gone and he was proud of himself, pleased at the idea of being positively skinny for the first time he could remember. He washed his legs and feet, then brought the kettle up and let his genitals float free in the warm water. Then he let the fire dry him.

He rinsed out a cloth and mopped Harvey’s face. The fever was steady. Perry unbuttoned his brother’s shirt and got it off. It had a wet foul smell.

He clucked, washing his neck and chest. “This feel a little better now?”

“Hello.”

“Hi. You feeling any better?”

“I guess so.”

“That’s it. Sit up and I’ll wash down your back.”

Harvey got up on his elbows and rolled over. “Why aren’t we dead, brother?”

“There. There, how’s that feel now?”

“Why aren’t we dead?”

“I don’t know, Harv. I really don’t know.”

Harvey coughed and laughed. “We’re heroes! We’re heroes, that’s why!”

“There. You’ll be all right now.”

“What time is it?”

“Night. You’ve been sleeping and sleeping. You’ll be better now.”

“I’m sick. I guess I’m pretty sick.”

“Well, we’ll get you washed up and you’ll feel better. You want to sit by the fire awhile?”

Harvey nodded. Perry gave him a hand, got him into a chair and covered him with a sleeping bag. “How’s that now? Isn’t that better?” He pulled off Harvey’s socks and threw them into a corner. “You really stink, you know that? Phew. Here, now put your feet in this water. Kind of hot so be careful.”

Sitting by the fire with Harvey, he had the bloated feeling of contentment again. The shanty seemed familiar, a personal shelter that he’d found and made his own. Except for Harvey’s fluid breathing the only sound was the fire.

After a time, he helped Harvey back into his bunk, then spent the rest of the evening in a chair, his feet propped on the stove, resting, reading some of the old newspapers. It seemed much like home and he fell asleep in the chair. Then he dreamed. He dreamed first about Addie. It was a vague, strange dream without motion or sound. She was drowning. Far out in the lake, she was drowning and grinning at him while he stood ashore unable to move. Later he dreamed about a blackbird. The bird’s wings were spread and splatting the air, attacking with a jagged beak, screeching and attacking, and again he was unable to move.

Then he dreamed of a wailing sound, a wailing screeching sucking sound.

He woke up. The fire was dead and the wailing sound continued. It came to him slowly. It drifted from the dream and into the dark shed and surrounded him, then he was fully awake and listening. He was weak. The shed was dark and the sucking sound persisted. “Harvey?” As if in answer, the sound stopped, leaving a tinny echo. “Harvey?” Then there was silence, a long silence in which he tried to get up. It came again: the wailing and sucking, deep in one of the dreams, gasping sounds, then suddenly he was awake, recognizing it as the sound of drowning.

He sat up. The shed was dark. It was full of the wailing sound, the sound of drowning from his dream.

He yelled Harvey’s name and the room seemed to tumble around him. Yelling, he moved out of the chair, stumbled and scratched himself—a nail or hook or splinter. He yelled Harvey’s name again. He thrust out his hands, groped towards the bunk, feeling his way. Everything was black. The drowning, sucking wailing sound swelled up and the room floundered. “Harvey!” he bellowed. His hands touched the stove. He grabbed the hot iron and held on until it burned him. “Harvey!” he yelled, and the sucking drowning sound came like a flood, and he pushed away from the stove, disorientated, plunging towards the source of the sound. “Harvey, for God’s sake!” He reached out, suddenly realized his eyes were closed, squeezed shut. The sucking sound went even higher. He shivered. He found the bunk. The sucking sound was everywhere, close and far and deafening. He had his arms on Harvey’s shoulders, pulled him up, shook him, and the wailing sound crescendoed.

Still blind, he dug Harvey out of the bag, hauled him off the bunk and laid him on the floor. “Harvey!” he was still yelling, his face down low. Harvey was partly entangled in the bag. Perry ripped it open and reached in. He leaned close and searched his brother’s face. Everything was black and tumbling and the wailing drowning sound was a reverse wind that pulled everything far away. Harvey’s chest sloped in like a valley. “Harvey!” He tried to think. The thinking stopped. He grabbed Harvey’s arms, yanked him towards the stove. “For Jesus sake!” he was yelling, yanking his brother across the floor, pulling him like a rope and getting him to the stove. “Jesus, think,” he was hollering, trying to think. He stopped, dropped Harvey dead on the floor. He found the stove. Still hearing himself bellow, he opened the stove door, reached in with his hands and wrists and arms to stir the ashes for light. Then abruptly he stopped. He dropped to the floor. He learned over his brother like a lover and put his ear to Harvey’s mouth and listened.

“Harvey?” he said, not yelling, a question.

He tried to compose himself. His brain was tumbling. “Harvey?” he said again, still leaning close and listening.

A light froth boiled to Harvey’s lips. His eyes were open. The bad eye glistened; the iris had dissolved in the fluid of the white tissue.

“Harvey?”

The good eye was rolled away and completely gone.

“Harvey, Harvey,” he chanted.

The sucking sound was gone, and the wind was gone.

“Harvey! Jesus sake, Harvey.”

He touched his brother’s chest. It was sunken and shaped like a bowl. It was hard and stiff. He touched Harvey’s throat and it was like steel pipe.

“Harvey! You bull. Jesus sake, Harvey.”

He stopped, peered into his brother’s dead eye.

Then he bellowed again, shuddering and losing sense. He hauled Harvey upright, dragged him by the arms, got him to his feet and held him in a great bear hug. Then he squeezed. He closed his eyes and squeezed, locking his wrists together and squeezing and squeezing and turning dizzy and pressing his brother in a great bear hug, holding him upright and squeezing. He squeezed himself dizzy.

Distantly, disgusted, he heard himself moan. Then he lost strength and Harvey slipped from his arms and fell heavily. “Jesus sake,” he moaned. “Jesus sake, Harvey.” Such a fool, he was thinking, such a foolish fool. Everything was too dark and quiet. “Harvey, Harvey,” he was moaning, grasping his brother’s shoulders and partly lifting him, then losing strength again like a leaking tire, feeling Harvey slip away, “Harvey, Jesus sake,” hearing the sound as Harvey hit the floor. He was dizzy. He crouched down: “Dear God,” he was saying or thinking, “help me now, help me now.”

He found the mouth and reached in, frightened at what he would touch.

He pulled Harvey’s tongue up and out. Contracting, sliding away like a morning dream, the tongue was wet and slippery and elusive, going away, a piece of wet flesh, but he grabbed it hard and pulled and held it out.

Bacon, he was thinking, almost grinning. Bull’s bacon. He pinched the nostrils and put his mouth to Harvey’s mouth and blew and listened to the wail, a two-note tune that went

He blew and listened to the wail, a two-note tune that went high and higher. He was dizzy. He blew and listened. Huff and puff, he was thinking, you Bull, you poor poor poor bull, breathe Bull. He was sick. He wanted to vomit and sleep, but he covered Harvey’s mouth and blew deep. He did not care. It did not matter. He blew and listened, blew and listened, rising and falling in a dizzy sick rhythm. Harvey’s chest seemed to quiver, and he blew again.

The breast rose up, and he blew again, and Harvey’s chest snapped like a bone breaking.

Perry stopped, rested, waited for the chest to sink again, then he descended and blew hard. He was sick.

“Harvey?” he murmured.

He waited as the breast ballooned up and quivered and slowly sank.

“Harvey. Harvey?” He waited again and the chest did not move, and he leaned down and blew again, forcing respiration and suddenly feeling strong and gaining something from the exchange. Such a bull, he thought, poor thing. Too bad. Harvey’s chest twitched and snapped again. A bubbling sound came from Harvey’s lungs, a breathing sound, erratic and dumb and startling as misfiring machinery. “Harvey?” he whispered, listening as the sound smoothed and the breathing became languid as through a drunken sleep.

“Harvey?”

Perry lay with an arm around his brother. His face was buried in Harvey’s flannel shirt. He was warm. He had urges to sleep and to vomit, the sleepiness making him sick and the sickness pressing him down towards sleep. He snuggled around Harvey’s warm body. He lay still. The wind was outside. He lay still and listened and cuddled around his brother and listened to the outside wind and Harvey’s breathing and his own breathing, a respiring postlude in three high pitches like a lullaby. He was warm and sick and sleepy. “Harvey, Harvey,” he murmured.

He might have slept. He lay still a long while. But at last he got up and rebuilt the fire and boiled water. Smoothing his brother’s hair, clucking, he washed the red face and beard, got him into the bunk, laid a warm cloth on his brow.

With the last of the coffee grounds, he brewed coffee and held Harvey’s head and helped him drink. “Harvey, Harvey,” he murmured. “Love you, Harvey. I do. You know?” He wiped brown spittle from his brother’s mouth. “You bull, I do love you, you know. There, there.”

Later he drank his own coffee and went outdoors and looked at the sky.

The wind was gentle. Not such a bad night.

He would have to leave soon.

He would have to make Harvey comfortable and then set off on his own, and he thought about it, feeling neither guilt nor pride.

He looked at the sky and knew it as a fact. They would die separately or together, or one would die and the other would live, or they would both survive. The possibilities seemed infinite. In the morning he would leave.

He went inside and put a fresh cloth on Harvey’s brow. Then he spread his sleeping bag on the floor and spent the night in nervous brilliant sleep, hearing his own blood rush with dreams and half-awakenings, and in the morning he remembered only the sound of drowning.

He bathed Harvey’s face and chest. Then, avoiding talk, he went outside and gathered a large store of wood. He had no idea how long he would be gone, though it seemed likely he would be gone forever, and he spent the entire white morning bringing in the wood, stacking it behind the stove. He felt Harvey’s gaze but he kept working. He heaped snow into the two kettles, boiled it down to water, then poured the water into jars and pots. Harvey lay quietly in the bunk with a cloth on his brow. There was nothing they could say. Harvey’s face was blood red and raw, and the dead eye was glazed as though it had already given up, and behind Harvey’s beard there was no expression, just the glazed and lazy eye that followed him as he stoked up the fire, grabbed the bunk and moved it wholesale nearer the fire.

“You’re going,” Harvey finally said.

“Have to.”

Harvey nodded, either settling it or accepting it, then closing his eyes.

“Otherwise …”

“I know,” Harvey said. “Bum deal. Sorry.”

Perry ignored the acid building behind his eyes. He turned and sat on the floor and waxed his skis. When he was ready, he took the skis outside and stacked them against the shanty. His eyes were stinging.

He went inside and shook Harvey gently. “All right,” he said in his cheerful stinging voice. “Harvey, are you awake? Listen. While I’m gone you’re going to have to do some things. Are you listening?” He waited for Harvey to nod. “All right then. Listen up. First, I want you to keep that fire going. You know? No matter what, you’ve got to keep that fire going. Okay? There’s plenty of wood there and all you’ve got to do is put some on now and then. All right? Okay. Listen. I’ve got to go. After last night, you know what’s going to happen if I don’t go. Sooner or later, right? Okay. Now I want you to promise to keep that fire going and to always keep the water heating. You hear me? Okay then. When you think you’re having trouble, when you can’t breathe or start coughing bad, you just get to that hot water, and start breathing the steam. It’ll cut through all that crap. Just keep the fire going, keep the water hot. There’s plenty of water here. All right?” He gently shook Harvey. “You got me? The fire and the water, those two things.”

“I guess you’re going.”

Perry nodded. “You got it. Don’t worry. I’m going to go until I find some people or the highway or something, so don’t worry. Now listen. The other thing is this. You’ve got to stay awake more. You know? All the time, you’ve got to think about staying awake. The cough comes worst while you’re sleeping. You know? Okay. And you can’t keep the fire going if you’re asleep. All right then. Try to read, walk around if you can manage. If you keep awake and keep the fire going and keep the water hot, then you’re all right, we’re both all right. You’re not going to give it up. You hear? Just do those things.”

Harvey smiled and Perry smiled.

“I guess. I guess maybe you think I’m pretty stupid,” Harvey said.

“You’re improving.”

“Sure. I hear you.”

“You’re going to do what I tell you.”

“Cross my heart. I’m not all that stupid.”

“I know it.”

“This is the best way,” Harvey said. He smiled again.

“Just keep that fire going. Keep the water hot. Don’t let it all boil away, just keep it hot.”

“You’re a good fellow. You are. You don’t remember that rifle, do you? That’s strange but it’s good. I always thought you remembered it but you don’t.”

“I don’t.”

Perry put his mittens on the stove to warm. He pottered about, wondering what to do. He rigged a string to the door so Harvey could open or close from his bunk.

“Okay. Okay now?”

“It wasn’t supposed to snow,” Harvey said loudly.

“I know. I know it.”

“It wasn’t supposed to. Those things just happen sometimes in winter.”

“Okay. Take it easy. I believe you.”

“It wasn’t planned to snow.”

“Just rest.”

Perry got the fire high and put fresh water on. He put on his parka, and shook Harvey’s hand, and they hugged and separated, and they laughed. Harvey’s beard was full and soft as baby fuzz. “Remember everything. Stay awake.” He closed the door. He carried his skis to the road and snapped them on. He pushed off and skied fast up the road, turning out of the sun, slowing down when the shed was far behind him.

The road was flat. There were birds in the sky and in the trees along the road, sparrows and blackbirds mostly.

He skied stiffly, adjusting again to the feel of the skis and poles and motions.

The day was as flat as the road. It was a day so like all the other days that for a time Perry believed it was one of the others—Harvey behind him, the certain feeling of there being more than one person in the forest, the feeling he could stop and turn and talk if the urge came.

His arms gave out fast. It worried him. He let gravity carry him. Somehow, his knees would not flex properly. Each bump in the road jarred to the base of the brain, but he held on and let the road and gravity and skis carry him down.

He let the road carry him down and tried counting the days. More than a week for sure. Ten, eleven. More than that. Fifteen, at least. More than that. Twenty seemed closer. Three weeks. He couldn’t be sure.

The road pulled him down and gradually he fell into the proper balance and motions, bending for the turns, using the ski edges to slow the steep descent, leaning forward and crouching to absorb the bumps.

Sometimes the road leveled off but it never climbed. He moved fast. Around midday the sun came out and the snow got mushy. The trees were full of blackbirds and sparrows.

He skied and did not worry about the map or sun. He had a road and that was enough to think about, and the road kept descending. Towards the middle of the afternoon the road dipped and rounded a bluff and he was able to look off far over the forest. The road twisted along the face of the bluff, turning fast down, and he leaned hard left and felt the skis bite, and for a moment he was parallel to the road, hanging free, then he straightened and the skis touched again and he was descending. The road was down and down. He thought about Harvey, imagining him in the shanty alone. It was not a good thing to think about. He concentrated on the skiing. The road dropped before him into a funnel of trees. White pines grew to the edge of the road, arching over it in a great canopy, and he skied down, raising his arms as though flying. He leaned far forward. The road swept him down, into the pine funnel, a dizzy circus chute. The speed snapped at his ears. Then the road dropped from under him. He could see the speed. Something seemed to fling him downward, and for a moment he was terrified, then his skis touched down and the road snatched the left pole from him, tugging it up, and it was gone, glittering for an instant over his shoulder, then it was gone far behind him and the road swept downward. He heard the lost pole splatter in the snow behind him, a tinkling sound, and the road swerved, still falling, and he leaned hard to his right, and let the right pole drag for support.

The road dipped and straightened and still descended. Below was a vast gorge of pine. He held on, dragging the right pole for balance, and in an instant he was in the gorge and still flying downward and downward. The road at last dipped and ascended, and he took the small hill without effort, carried up by simple momentum. He stopped there. He removed the skis and fell back in the snow. He spread his arms and closed his eyes. The sun was tropical.

He was on his back. Basking. Some warm salted ocean.

He slept for a time. It might have been a long time. It was long enough so that when he awoke the sunlight had turned hard gray.

He was tired. He sat up and looked back the way he’d come, down the small hill, into the pine depression, then up the steep hill towards the place he had lost the pole. He was tired. Pushing up and brushing away the caked snow, he buckled on his skis, stood still a moment, then removed them. He was angry at himself. Angry for losing the pole, angry for almost killing himself, breaking a leg, ending it for himself and for Harvey. He considered going back for the lost pole, but the fatigue was too much, and at last he walked into the woods and after a long search found a branch the right size. Breaking off its twigs, he tested it and decided it would work as a substitute. The branch was much heavier than his pole, but it was the right length and it seemed strong enough.

For at least an hour he skied steadily and carefully, forcing himself to ski and not think. Then he had to stop. Bending over the branch, he began to vomit, his stomach contracting in empty shivers, and he was sick. He was hearing bells. Music of a distant sort. He swayed with the dusk wind, caught himself with the branch, then he heard it again, thinking it was a chime inside him, in his head or belly or memories, and again he shuddered and retched, and again he heard the faraway music of bells. “Sleep,” he said, “now I lay me, now I lay me.”

He was in a glen. The forest rose steeply on each side, and the road burrowed ahead into the edge of dusk. The sky was dull and crowded with clouds. He leaned on the branch until the sickness passed. He decided he would not stop again. He would not think about another night in the forest. He pushed down the road, head down, passing through the glen and into an open meadow and then back into the trees.

The sound of the winter bells. At times the chime seemed to sound just up the road, at times behind him, at times deep in his skull. He was sick. His nose dripped with thin syrupy snot without substance, dribbling into his lips so that he could taste it, then into his beard. He was alone and he felt the full loneliness of the wintertime. Steadily, the road climbed. Perry sensed it was climbing for a reason, and he followed it up, shuffling the skis and pushing with his branch and pole. The sound of winter bells surrounded him. The branch tore a gash in his mitten. He was sweating. His nose dripped with the sweet tasting winter snot, and he reached the road’s summit where the bells were again ringing and he came down, followed the road as it twisted left and flattened and began climbing again.

It was night. The sweat froze under his parka. He skied with his eyes down, watching the few yards stretching immediately ahead.

He heard the bells.

Then he heard a dog. It was a big dog, he could tell from the bark. It was excited, too. He pushed harder. The barking was somewhere ahead of him, not far away, perhaps at the top of the hill or just below, not far. A little to the right.

It was a big dog, all right. A town dog.

He made the hill. He stopped and listened, wiping his nose. The barking was gone but the sound of bells seemed even louder. He glided down the hill and followed the road in a long slow arc, and on the far end of the curve, just as the road straightened, he came upon a yellow litter bin and picnic table. The table was brown pine, turned upside down. It was civilization. He could smell it now. Smell its complexities. It sobered him. He stopped, rested against the litter bin, and tried to clear his head to think it all out. It had been a dog, all right. He was sure of it. And the bells were still chiming, not so loud now but still there, somewhere to the right and in the woods. When he was rested, he started off again, trying to ski smoothly so as not to wear himself out. The road climbed and hit another apex and began falling. It was a long, gentle slope. When he came to the end of it, the night was complete, nothing but woods and dark and the strip of white road, and he listened, but the bells were gone and the dog, if it was ever there at all, was silent. There were no stars and no moonlight. “Wish I may, wish I might,” he murmured.

It was very cold. He hadn’t felt it before.

He let his mind clear. He wiped his nose and a blind dizziness settled in his stomach. “Star light, star bright,” he said, “have the sight I might tonight.” He held his mittens under an armpit. He blew into his hands and waited and listened for the bells.

An hour of darkness passed. The road was smooth and flat. Skiing steadily, not stretching himself and not stopping, he grew warm and the sickness eased off and left a taste in his mouth that no longer frightened him. It was a quiet cold winter night. He thought of Christmas, then of particular Christmases. Then he thought of summer, summer in general, summer with sun and mosquitoes and short cool nights. Then he thought of Christmas again.

The smell of civilization was gone. Without his glasses, he might have passed a town without noticing, a town or a house, something, the bells and the big dog. He considered turning back, calculating the time he would spend retracing the road towards the sound of the barking dog. Without deciding on one course or the other, he skied straight on, thinking about the dog, picturing it in warm greeting, thinking next about the bells, then thinking about a flurry of things.

In the night he heard an airplane.

He sat up. He hadn’t been asleep. He’d found another picnic area and sat down for rest, and sometime during the night he’d drifted back and looked at the sky. He’d been thinking. His mind was out in the woods, roaming by itself in and out of the trees, rambling about, trying corners here and shadows there, lazily exploring.

Then he heard the plane.

It made perfect sense. Without having to look for it, he saw it. It was high and far away. He saw the red and green wing lights. He did not have to move. He watched it come, aimed right at him. He saw the dark hole of the cockpit. The cabin lights. He thought he saw faces and hats. He imagined cocktails being served. And toasted almonds and smiles. As the plane passed overhead, he stood and waved, and the trees seemed to waver with the jet’s wind.

He was part of a thaw. The morning glowed and water came dripping from a tall evergreen.

For a while the country rolled as it always had. Then it straightened. Perry heard a high voice calling. The road wound through pines and into a stand of birch, through the birch and into more pine, and then into a clearing where a young child was pulling a sled.

Although her back was to him and she was trudging away, Perry knew the child was female. He was skiing in the slim tracks of her sled. All morning he’d followed the tracks, knowing it was a child and even knowing it was a young girl. She called out again, a high commanding voice, but she did not appear to notice him and he had to hurry to catch her.

Then the child must have heard him coming, for she stopped and turned and watched him without surprise but with clear disappointment, as though she’d been expecting someone else. She wore a stocking cap and snowsuit and blue mittens. When he got close, she turned again and began walking with no effort to conceal her indifference. Perry fell in alongside her. They went together, the child first, then Perry, then the sled. They followed the road through a grove of sugar maples and then through small pines, over an iron bridge, past another picnic area with the upside-down table and yellow litter bin, and neither of them spoke. Now and then the child called out in a high fierce voice that showed both command and desperation, a single syllable that he did not try to understand, and he simply followed her. She asked no questions and he asked none. Except for her slow trudging pace, it made no difference to him that he’d found a child at the end of the road.

“I ain’t lost,” she said at last, shaking her head and refusing to look at him. A while later, crossing the bridge, she stopped and examined the snow, and Perry obediently stopped and waited until she was through with whatever she had to do. When they started off again she demanded his name.

“Paul,” he said and said no more, though there were many things he wanted to say. The child knew precisely where she was and what she was doing.

“You comin’ to see my ma? Pa ain’t home, you know. He ain’t home till tonight, Ma said. Then Ma said he can start lookin’, too. What’s that thing on your back for?”

“A rucksack. A pack to carry things in.”

“What’s in it then?”

“Nothing,” he said.

She nodded as if the answer were known before spoken.

The child kept on steadily, stopping only to call out the deafening syllable, waiting for whatever was supposed to follow, then continuing down the road with Perry and her sled.

“I bet my ma’s lookin’, too,” she said when they passed through the picnic area. “She said she wasn’t gonna look but I bet anything she’s lookin’ same as me. She said she wasn’t gonna look no more, ’cause it was my fault and I’d have to look and not her anymore, ’cause I did it and not her. But I’ll bet she’s lookin’. Pa ain’t lookin’ ’cause he ain’t here, but Ma said he’d help look when he got back, and he’s comin’ back tonight or tomorrow.”

She stopped again and screamed: “Muggs!” She listened then. “Shit!” she said.

“I been lookin’ and I’ll find him,” she said in a hard high voice, jerking the sled and starting off again. “And I bet Ma’s lookin’, too, even if she said it was my fault and I got to look an’ not her. Since yesterday. You bet I had him tied up good. Ma said it’s my fault but it ain’t ’cause you should’ve seen how I had him tied up, right to the tree an’ I went out an’ he wasn’t there, just the rope. Was Pa’s fault, not my fault. It was Pa’s rope and it was this rotten rope, that’s what, an’ I told Ma and she said Pa’d have to look then if it was his fault. I had him tied up good. Ma said Pa’d go lookin’ when he gets home tonight or tomorrow, and I’ll bet Pa finds him fast. Ma says he’s prob’bly got hisself caught in a trap, so I got my sled out and everything in case, but I don’t think he’d get hisself caught in no trap, ’cause he’s smart and knows all the traps anyhow.”

She stopped again and Perry stopped. “Muggs!” she screamed. He shivered and felt sick and waited for her, “Muggs!” she screamed fiercely. Then she continued walking.

“Anyhow,” she said, “he ain’t the first dog ever run away. Pa says it don’t matter what kinda dog it is, they all run away, an’ Ma says he wouldn’a run away this time if I’d got him tied right, an’ I says to her I did tie him tight, an’I did all right. The rope broke, an’ Ma says I should’ve used some other rope, an’ I says it was the only rope I had an’ Pa gave it to me, anyhow, an’ she says she’s got other stuff to do except look for a dog, an’ I says, well, I’ll do it, an’ just in case he’s in some trap I got my sled out. You ever seen a lost dog? You try to catch him an’ he just don’t want to be caught at all, like he thinks he’s not even lost an’ doesn’t know it.”

“Muggs!” she screamed. “Goddamn dog!”

In a while, Perry sat the girl on her sled. He slipped the rope around his chest and skied down the road, which slowly curved left and crossed another road, this one plowed clean, and, the girl told him to turn on to the new road, and he turned and pulled the sled down into the ditch, and in a half hour they came to a white house with a stone chimney and an old Ford station wagon standing bumper-deep in snow.

“I guess you just have to stay or else go on,” said the woman who looked too young to be a mother. “Arild’ll be back either tonight or tomorrow dependin’ on the weather. The car don’t start, like I said, and Arild’s got the pickup in town so I’m stuck and that means pretty much you’re stuck, too. I told him, well, I said to him we oughta get the station wagon started ’cause sometime I’d be needing it, an’ sure enough, now I need it and I ain’t got it. I feel awful bad, ’cause I know you’re wanting to get out of here, but that damn station wagon ain’t had a good thing for it all winter. Don’t know what I’d do if somethin’ happened and we had to get into town or somethin’—somebody gets sick or somethin’—and I don’t know what I’d do, like now. And then that damn dog. I been goin’ crazy tryin’ to keep up with that dog of hers, and Arild he ain’t been any help at all. Now you got maybe five miles into town, or six I guess, in there somewhere, an’ you come this far so I guess you ain’t gonna have any trouble the rest of the way, just rest up some first, I guess. What you oughta have is a bath.”

The young brown-haired woman put on her coat and went to the car and got a map and showed Perry where he was.

“Now, you see here? You got a choice. You can go into either Lutsen or back up towards Carl Larson’s place, except Larson’s don’t have no phone neither, but they got a car. Or I guess you can go into Tofte, too. It don’t make no difference. They’re all about the same distance, I guess, except maybe Tofte is a mile closer. Up to you, though. What you ought to do is get in there and take a good bath, that’s what I’d say. I ain’t one to say, though, ’cause I got the same problem tryin’ to get Arild into the tub after work. He always says it can wait till after he gets something to eat and I tell him it’ll taste a sight better if he smells it instead of himself, but it don’t matter none to me. Now you can walk if you want over to Larson’s place, it don’t take long and I go in the summers an’ it takes me, oh, half an hour, forty minutes, but that’s in summer. Or sometimes I just get on the school bus an’ ride it into Lutsen and then do my shopping an’ either take the school bus back in the afternoon or catch a ride. When Arild’s here he’ll take me an’ drop me off, but that way I gotta hurry ’cause he’s forever in a hurry. I don’t know. I reckon you’re about ready for this supper, though. It’ll wait till then. Arild’ll maybe be back tonight an’ he can just drive you in and that’ll save you some work, all right, but if you’re in a hurry then I guess you can just go, and if he comes I’ll just tell him to go out an’ get you and drive you the rest of the way, but it don’t make no difference one way or ’nother. That damn dog’ll drive you bananas, though. He was here then gone, just like that. Altogether, I spent half the winter lookin’ for him and the other half feedin’ him and the other half tellin’ Carla to tie him up good, an’ what’s the use? Can’t keep no dog like that tied up, but if he ain’t tied up you see what happens, just gets hisself lost. You chase him, chasing that bell, an’ you think you got him good an’ he’s gone again, just like that. You can just count yourself lucky not to be out there still chasin’ that scoundrel of a dog. Carla! You just sit down till Mr. Perry gets through eatin’. And yesterday I told her she wasn’t goin’ to get me out lookin’ for that scoundrel dog, not no more. Anyhow, it’s gettin’ to be night an’ if I was you I’d just count myself lucky enough and stay here till Arild gets in, or wait till morning and then you can go if you got to, but you’re awful sick lookin’ to me, and I know how that is, believe you me, I know what it feels like, I had it this winter, too.”

The little girl climbed back on the table and the woman shushed her away and stacked Perry’s dishes in the sink. The food held him fast to his chair.

“I told Arild, too, a hundred times, I said to him we oughta get the phone company to get a line out here. You know what? They won’t do it. It’s nothing to do with money for us if we got to call somebody and we can’t do it. You don’t look so good, Mr. Perry. Carla! You either stop that or get into bed, you got your choice. You all right, Mr. Perry? You better get into the tub or lie down, one or the other. You all right?”

She held her wrist, standing well away from him. She was very young and slender. And she was always moving, touching things to be sure they were there, patting her brown hair, pulling her sweater over her hips, holding her wrists, first one then the other. “You really sure you’re all right?” she was saying from a fog by the sink. “You best rest awhile. You ask me, you got no sense going back out there tonight. If I was you, Mr. Perry, I’d just get myself a hot bath and start good’n fresh tomorrow, that’s what. And you’re looking awful white and scratchy. You always wear that there beard of yours?”

“Do they have a doctor in town?”

“Which town? Lutsen or Tofte?”

“Either one. Where’s the closest doctor?”

“Tofte, I reckon. I ain’t never been. Except to have Carla and then that was in Silver Bay. Don’t know his name, though, ’cause I haven’t ever been to him, but he’s there.”

“It’s not for me. Look—” Perry started to get up but the food had seemed to clot in his belly like cement. “Look, my brother’s still out there in the woods and he’s pretty sick.”

“Can’t be a sight sicker than you.”

“Worse. I’ve, we’ve got to get somebody out there for him.”

“You’re looking awful sick,” she said from far away. “Carla! How many times … There, now that’s better. Get some hot water going for Mr. Perry. Right now, Carla, and none of that back talk, we’ll get your dog for you. Mr. Perry? Get up now, you’ll be a lot better. Carla! Carla, you hear me in there? Get Mr. Perry’s shoes … There, you better now? You just get in the tub now. You’re just a might sick … Carla! You clean up that mess and stop your bawlin’ for that damn dog. Mr. Perry said he’d seen him, heard him back up the road a piece, clean up that mess there, there’s some rags under the sink … There, you feel better now, Mr. Perry? We got some hot water in the tub. No, don’t worry about that mess. Mr. Perry? Hey now! Carla, get over here.………… Now get them socks an’ put them in the sink an’ run some hot water over them, you hear? Mr. Perry? There, now you’re looking a sight better, I should say. Awful sick there for a while, I should say so. Oughta told me you was feeling so bad. What you oughta been doin’ is lying down, you know that? There, it’s better now. Carla! You get some hot water back in the tub, it’s gotten all cold. There. You reckon you can take a good bath now? I should say. You hustle on in there now and take a good bath and we’ll see what’s what.”

Lying in the tub, he had the sensation of perfect detachment. Once he opened his eyes and saw the water was stale green. It was an old-fashioned enamel tub, so small he lay with his knees bent, his head resting against the tiled wall. The smell of the water embarrassed him. He pulled the plug, drained the tub and rinsed the scum out, then filled it again with fresh hot water and lay back. Vaguely, he heard the young woman and child talking in the next room. Then he slept. He awoke with the door banging. The water was room temperature. He got out, dried himself and put on a robe she’d left for him.

“Had me plenty scared for a minute,” she said. “Swear to God, you was in there I don’t know how long.”

“I fell asleep.”

“Well, I should hope so. I got some hot cocoa and whip cream out here.” She beckoned him by turning and going to the kitchen area. The dishes were washed and stacked. His socks were soaking in an enamel basin on the floor. Somewhere in the small house there was the smell of burning kerosene. The little girl was sleeping on the floor in a corner of the living room area, wrapped up in a thick quilt.

“Anyhow, I guess you need a warm bed tonight,” the young woman was saying, “so I got clean sheets on it, and me and Carla will be sleepin’ over there, I guess we can take the floor for one night, an’ you just take the bed. Can’t really call it a bedroom, but Arild’s got a curtain up round it and you get a little privacy that way. Carla always sleeps with Arild and me, anyway. We only been here now about four months, no, five months, and so he says that when we get settled in and he saves up some money, then we’ll have a carpenter put up a wall over there and make it a real bedroom like we was going to do in the first place. And … There’s your cocoa. You just squirt your own whip cream on. I always let Carla do it herself, ’cause she gets a kick out of seeing it come out of the can. Anyhow, you can just sleep in the bed tonight an’ me’n Carla will take the floor.”

“What day is this?”

“I reckon it’s Friday. Arild, you know Arild, he works down in Silver Bay like I was telling you, and he comes home Friday nights or Saturday mornings, most time Saturday morning, so.…”

“No,” Perry said slowly, “I mean what day of the month is it?”

The young woman stared at him. She could have been in high school. He knew the cool assured look. “It’s the twenty-ninth of January, I guess.”

He nodded. He drank the cocoa then followed her to the curtained-off bed. He lay back without covering himself. He closed his eyes and heard her closing the curtains, heard her move off towards the kitchen. He did not immediately fall asleep. Later he heard a child crying, and a woman’s calm young voice.