Читать книгу Driftless - David Rhodes - Страница 13

GRIEF

THE CRYING BEGAN WITH RISING, SONOROUS HOWLS. THEN A shrill, hysterical whine joined a succession of rapid yelping barks. Primeval moans intoned the interminable sorrow ofabanbarks. Primeval moans intoned the interminable sorrow of abandonment, mocked by a wild, warbling laugh. Taken all together, they sounded to Jacob Helm like demons at a drunken feast.

But of course there were no such things as demons, and in the next instant he wondered if eight or ten people had decided for some reason to come to his remote home on the edge of the woods in the middle of the night to scream at the top of their lungs. He moved quickly away from the kitchen table, where, unable to sleep, he had been rebuilding an old carburetor, and stood beside the open window. But the frightful sound was not quite like people screaming, either, at least not normal-sized people. Little people perhaps. Very small people might be capable of . . . and then he knew what they were: coyotes.

He’d never heard them this close before.

Their voices continued. Coyotes—he was sure of it now. He’d read about them after moving into the area five years ago. Canis latrans, creatures of the forest and fields, often heard but rarely seen, also called prairie wolves though not as large as wolves. Nocturnal predators, they ate mostly mice and insects, supplemented by road-kill. They were not generally aggressive but were opportunistic. They lived in groups for mutual protection, mating and raising pups, though they mostly hunted individually or in pairs. Membership was for life. Packs rarely accepted new members.

“I hear you,” he said through the screened window. “Go away.”

When the howling finally stopped, Jacob glanced at the clock. He returned to the table, wrapped the carburetor in newsprint, closed his eyes, and attempted to think about sleeping. He needed at least a couple hours of unconsciousness. His body ached with the frustrated desire for rest, but his mind’s thirst for wakefulness remained unquenched.

Then he heard them again, further away—on the ridge above him—this time even more shrill and desperate.

And out of the center of these sounds came something much wilder. A new cry cut through the night air in a single shaft of terror. And if the earlier sounds could be said to resemble the screaming of little people, this more primitive voice could only be compared to the screaming of people who were big. Something was out there, and it did not primarily eat mice. Its voice not only invoked spirits from a nether world, it provoked them. Jacob had never heard anything like it. He found his flashlight and went outside.

Assisted by light from a clear sky, he climbed up the wooded hillside, through the underbrush. The distant yapping, snarling, and shrieking of coyotes diminished to a solitary barking voice. He did not hear the other voice again.

The air seemed unusually warm, laden with the humid leftover smells of late summer. By the time he reached the open field there were no sounds at all: utter silence ruled save for the vegetative rustle of wind in tall grass. Panning his flashlight from side to side, he waded in. His pant legs rubbing against the headed- out tops of grasses made irregular loud swishing sounds. After some time he walked down into a narrow swale, and next to a pool of water lay the half-eaten carcass of a white-tailed deer and the mud prints of a cougar or some other large cat. Nearby were four dead coyotes. Mottled reddish-gray, the furry, bloody bodies seemed roughly the size of spaniels. Scattered in several directions were three more, ten or fifteen feet away, torn to pieces. One was still breathing. It raised its head and without blinking stared into the flashlight.

Jacob continued searching and then returned to sit next to the dying animal, not near enough to alarm it, but close enough to make a connection. He turned off the flashlight and listened to the creature’s labored breathing.

Later, following a rustling movement, a half-grown coyote emerged from the long grass and entered the swale, its eyes reflecting greenish light from the sky and its body shaking visibly. It regarded Jacob with little interest, perhaps having already taken his measure, approached the dying animal, and sat next to it. Five or ten minutes later the labored breathing stopped. The young coyote stood up, sniffed the lifeless form, looked at Jacob, and gazed briefly into the western sky, as though unsure what to do next. Then it climbed out of the swale and disappeared into the grass.

Jacob remained sitting on the ground. Why had he been called to witness this if he could do nothing to prevent it? On some fundamental level it made no sense. What purpose had been served? No doubt the coyotes had come upon the cougar eating the deer carcass and, unfamiliar with the strange beast, were overly confident in their numbers. Even so, how could one kill seven? Wouldn’t their mistake have been obvious in the first moment? Why didn’t they simply run in all directions after discovering the evil they had unlocked? Wouldn’t their individual survival instincts outweigh pack allegiance? What perversion of nature had unfolded here? How was it possible for one to kill so many? What future awaited the lone pup, and would he live only to wish he hadn’t?

Jacob lay on his back. The stars looked back at him from ten million years ago, their light just now arriving. He wondered if there were other places in the universe where the rules of the living did not require feeding on each other—where wonder could be discovered without horror and learning the truth did not entail losing one’s faith.

Unwilling to go back home and face the ordeal of trying to sleep, Jacob continued in the direction the young coyote had taken, west.

He often walked at night and was familiar with the woods, streams, and valleys for miles around, including the heavily forested area inside the reserve. He knew which families owned dogs, where coon hunters hunted, the narrow ravine with a corn mash still boiling in late summer, and where the local militia—forty or fifty armed men—held meetings at night.

At the end of the field he followed a narrow path along the chain-link fence surrounding the Heartland Federal Reserve, stopped at the rope bridge he had strung across the river, listened to the moving water, and eventually reached the gravel road.

Morning light grew in the sky.

On either side of the road were the DO NOT SPRAY signs he had put up two years ago. He had won that particular battle, but after he convinced the township to stop spraying herbicides they bought a radial arm shredder. The chewing device ripped through plants with ear-splitting efficiency, leaving saplings and bushes severed between two and four feet above ground, their decimated tops splayed out like beaten stakes. It was a war of factions. The road crew wanted safe, wide roads and managed ditches; Jacob was making more signs.

Some distance later he came to his driveway—two parallel tire-wide tracks trailing off through the grass and weeds and into the trees. He looked in his empty mailbox and straightened the bent flag. Geese flew overhead.

He followed the driveway half a mile to his ramshackle log home. It was the last remaining building in a former logging camp, and he had added onto it one room, porch, door, garage, loft, and solarium at a time. It now stood as a tribute to afterthought. Solar panels were mounted on the south- facing roof, and, beneath them, were storage tanks for rainwater. A composting outhouse sat partially hidden in honeysuckle and snow pine with a satellite receiver on top, providing access to the Internet. A dozen small round windows salvaged from boats were set into the front of the cabin, giving it a hivelike appearance.

Inside, Jacob showered and shaved and dressed in coveralls for work. He moved the carburetor and newspapers to the far side of the table, ate two tomatoes, and drank a glass of orange juice for breakfast.

Before leaving the house, he glanced at the framed picture of his wife taken two years before her death. She looked lovely, though because of too much sunlight the photograph was beginning to fade.