Читать книгу Close to the Edge Down By the River - R.L. Sterup - Страница 7

The men took to the fields the next day intent on cornering and killing the cougar, the hunting company discouraged not in the least by the previous day’s failure, for they were patient men, and proud, and diligent and industrious, and had nothing better to do anyway.

Cousin Jeb led a covey of hunters across the dew-drenched farmyard through a grove of stunted pines across the pasture south of the neighbor’s place, thence up a slight incline to the eighty-acre patch of freshly sewn oats he knew the deer loved to plunder.

Too damn many deer. There’s your trouble.

They crested a ridge south of the bend of the river nearest the old railroad trestle, rifles in hand, sweating and swearing and scouring fruitlessly, which is just about when the sound of gunfire could be heard directly to the east and south.

The head of each man jack swiveled as if sharing a string.

Not a muscle moved.

A second shot, unmistakably,

“Come from right over there,” Jeb said, pointing.

“Musta cornered it, or somethin’,” another of the company said.

“Let’s go have a looksee.”

The motion carried.

Moving somewhat more quickly than before the heavily armed men found their way across the road, then through the dense scrub bordering the river to the several men crouched in an attitude of examining the distinctive paw marks decorating a sandy bar.

Big cat tracks, no mistake. Chester had found or rather stumbled across them. He fired one shot into the air, then another, by way of summoning the company. It sufficed. Soon enough all dozen or dozen-and-a-half men still numbered among the searchers were haunched on the side of the sandy bar, expertly examining the tracks. Never mind that not one among the company had ever seen a big cat track before in their respective lives. One look and they just knew. As if predator paw marks are ingrained in genetic memory, or something.

They followed the tracks through the scrub and brush of the sandy river bank, on hands and knees when necessary, the men fanning out at roughly six-pace intervals so as not to lose the winding thread. Where the river’s swirling currents had impregnated the sandy soil with ample water the cat’s four feet left a relatively clear set of paw prints for the hunters to follow. Where the soil lay still and dry the prints declined to a mere whisper.

Nor did the meandering creature offer up a linear line for easy tracking, as it turns out. More like a bobbing, weaving, randomly jittery movement that was not movement so much as a wave washing its many fingered -- or in this case toed -- way. Almost as if the cat took more than one path in its stalking of whatsoever deer or weasel or mere boy it stalked. An eerie proposition at which the hunters might collectively have scoffed had they not known what they knew of cats and their mysterious Satan-endowed inscrutability.

Arch at that hour grimaced abed in the farmhouse from which the company earlier had disembarked. The Agency Man seated at the side of his bed, of course. Still sporting the midnight-blue suit and black tie and concealing shades. Arch for his part clad in the t-shirt and boxers that passed for comfortable jammies.

“All in a day’s work,” the Agency Man said while idly filing his nails. “You yokel types slay me, I must say. All flim, flam and fandango.”

He chortled slightly at the alliterative witticism.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Arch inquired with some slight irritation.

“A paradigmatic preconception,” the Agency Man interjected lightly. “Did you know the Babylonian ziggurat had seven stories, while both the menorah and the tree of life have seven branches? Seven deadly sins, seven wonders of the world, seven year itch. Funny how connections get made in the old brain box. Obama and Osama. Fliver McGee and Tug McGraw. Ho Chi Minh and Jimmy Hoffa. Speaking of souls missing and presumed ….”

“You aren’t making any sense,” Arch interrupted somewhat grimly.

“Oh, but I am,” the Agency Man, whose name was Hanratty, replied coolly. He stood and strode to the window where he surveyed the surrounding fields somewhat pensively. “I notice you aren’t tramping the moors today. Got a hitch in your gitalong?”

“I am legitimately injured,” Arch replied starchly.

“Uh-huh,” Hanratty replied, bending over a folding chair while kicking his leg in an impromptu display of his own relative suppleness. “Who among us hasn’t sustained the odd tweak? Too bad you’re not bathed in impregnability, or something. I gotta say, though, I’m getting a little worried about you.”

“You don’t say,” Arch replied drily.

“See, the thing is, the universe is about seventy-five percent hydrogen, while you yourself are about sixty-three percent hydrogen, except -- and here’s the kicker -- about ninety-six percent of everything is dark, in the sense of undetectable. Meaning most of everything is nothing. You catch my drift?”

Kicking high to visually augment the lecture, Hanratty cast Arch an apparently sincere concerned glance.

A concerned, apparently, sincere glance.

Arch groaned.

“I don’t see how that pertains ….” he began.

“Then again, it’s amazing the extent to which the mind can talk itself into things,” Hanratty mused, still high-kicking like a ballerina warming up for Swan Lake, or something. “Imagination as author of its own reality. Weaving narrative from phenomenon after the fact.”

The Agent smirked slightly while taking again his seat in the folding chair.

“I’m doing the best I can,” Arch replied, a tad defensively. “I just seem to be having some trouble remembering. Almost as if my memories have been eras--….”

“The lion roars seeking whom it shall devour,” Hanratty interrupted rather brusquely. “Not sure what you have to whine about, honestly. If stripped of memory the mind would be free to perceive each dawn as the first day of creation -- no narrative, no subtext, no script. Just me and you and a dog named boo.”

He chortled at his own obscure mid-70’s musical allusion.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” Arch replied steadily, emotions carefully caged. Hanratty slid from his chair back to the narrow window where he looked out at the breaking day in a wistful sort of way.

“Yeah, you’re probably right,” he replied. “The old reverse psychology trick. Sorry, thought I’d give it a shot. It’s not like the frequency is going anywhere. We can wait. All the time in the world, really. Assuming the world ends in seventeen days.”

He turned to face Arch.

“If the lion feeds on the disobedient, and if unfailingly obedience is the order of the day, then won’t the lion go hungry, hmmm? In the meantime we’ll just see how she plays out, eh. Flip the coin. Roll the dice. How’s that sound?”

Arch nodded slightly.

The guy could be a real meathead, at times.

Arch idly remembered again the circumstances under which he came not to remember what once he had known, or thought he knew, or fleetingly had glimpsed, perhaps, a frequency, a code, an access-granting configuration. As if reading his mind, Hanratty did too. He drew close to the side of the bed again, his hooded features mere inches from Arch’s supine puss.

“Once upon a time, right?” Hanratty said with something like wistfulness. “We go way back, my friend. That’s the thing about time, of course, it flies. Einstein didn’t discover gravity, he re-imagined it. Then again, all your transfiguring figures are that way. Ezekiel, Amos, Jeremiah. Timothy, Peter, Daniel. Marilyn Manson, Manfred Mann, Mickey Mantle, Mr. Magoo, Michael Myers, Michael Martin Murphy, Mary Magdalene, Moses…..”

“Ya, I get it, what’s your point?” Arch interrupted. From experience he knew the loop could and would continue endlessly unless interrupted.

Hanratty shook his head as if to emerge from a slight daze.

“Geez, you got quite the collection of M’s socked away there. Anyway, the point is, captives of narrative, each and every one. And, by the way, it’s perfectly okay to be paranoid if everyone is out to get you.”

Hanratty roared at his own joke, standing and slapping -- yes literally slapping -- his knees.

Arch smiled slightly.

Another Agent strolled into the room carrying a cup of coffee which he handed to Hanratty before taking a seat on another folding chair near the lone window. Hanratty grunted and nodded at his colleague before turning back to Arch.

“Shift change. Well, it’s been a real slice, as usual. I’ll be back, as someone once said. It’s not entirely wrong, by the way, to analogize time travel and memory, because, after all, that’s what recollection is, a returning of oneself to the past. Which is what you should be doing, and pronto.”

He swilled down the cup of joe while sliding easily from the room.

“The Dodgers beat the Cubs again, FYI,” Hanratty called over his shoulder while exiting stage left. “In case you’re interested. I picked it up on a Des Moines radio station last night. Hint hint.”

With a flourish he left the room, leaving Arch to attend to his aching ankle while the newly posted midnight-blue-suited man did crosswords, seated on a folding chair in the comfortable sunbeam flowing from or through the lone window.

Not unlike a cat, Arch couldn’t help thinking.