Martin Marten (9781466843691) (16 page)

*   *   *

This being Martin’s first experience of serious new snow, he was enjoying himself immensely. He flew through the canopy after squirrels, the chase sending sheets and plummets of snow to the forest floor. He studied the wonderfully evident tracks of rabbits, their origins and destinations written on the ground nearly as clearly as their scent in the air.

Chasing a grouse through the trees, he drew near to the high school and froze silently as a sudden line of runners passed below him on a trail; but then he saw that one of the runners near the front of the line was the human animal from the beech tree, and from some deep impulse he left off grouse hunting and followed the boy for a while—not as fast and freely as he did when the boy ran alone, but discreetly and from a farther distance, so none of the boys saw hide nor hair of him but only vaguely noticed a flurry of falling snow here and there off to the side.

When the runners turned to head back to the school, though, he faded back into the woods, and here again we have to thrash after words for what was going through his mind—or really through his entire electric muscle of a body—for the marten often thinks and feels and acts all at once. He was interested in the boy for reasons he did not know. He felt some subtle connection, some inchoate wish to know that animal and its ways. He did not wish to befriend it, eat it, or defy it, which were generally his range of possibilities; he felt some
curiosity
, some mysterious urge to know that particular story is the closest we can get to it. Yet he was already immensely cautious, young as he was; this wariness had stood him in good stead, and would do so many times again in his life, and was a crucial and constant part of his consciousness. So it was that he instinctively knew that being seen too much or too clearly was dangerous, and so he faded back into the forest, drifting generally toward the river. He was not hungry enough to work for squirrels or to pick up the grouse’s trail, but the Zigzag was always a rich vein of possibilities, and it may be that he was idly pondering crawfish or how to catch a water ouzel when he noticed a small red jacket below him, slowly slogging through the deepening snow along a creek.

33

SURE, MARIA WAS LOST.
Sure she was. Wouldn’t you be? By her calculations she had gone up Snag Creek four hundred giant steps, which should be four hundred yards, but there was no Zigzag River where it was supposed to be, and now the snow was slurring from the sky like people were dumping it off the sides of immense trucks with enormous shovels. Twice she had slipped and fallen, once almost into the creek, and her sneakers were wet through and growing colder by the minute. She had stopped twice to check her map and to eat a candy bar. Now she stopped again to calm down and to think slowly, like her dad said you should do when you are rattled. When you are rattled, make the rattle stop, and then you can think clearly again, he said.

Okay, Dad, she said aloud.

Go slow, she said in his voice. Prioritize.

Dad, there’s no river, and there should be, right here.

Can you hear it?

No. I hear water, but that’s the creek.

Can you get a better view? Higher?

Good idea.

She climbed up on a huge fir trunk fallen across the creek.

I don’t see it, Dad.

Can you keep going up the creek?

My feet are awfully cold.

You scared?

Yes. I am really scared. My feet are awfully cold.

But when she tried to say something wry and warm and fatherly in his voice, nothing came out of her mouth, and she started to cry.

*   *   *

Mr. Douglas and Miss Moss were in Miss Moss’s store playing chess by the fireplace. The snow was so heavy that traffic up the mountain had ceased for the moment, and the store was quiet, and the snow fell so thickly outside the windows that there was a silvery light everywhere except by the fire. Mr. Douglas had carved the chess set. The queens looked rather like Miss Moss, but all the other pieces were animals: the pawns were chipmunks, the rooks were ravens, the knights were owls, the bishops were falcons, and the king was some sort of new animal equidistant between wolverine and bear.

A bearverine, Mr. Douglas had explained when he first presented the set to Miss Moss as a birthday present. There may be such creatures in the woods. Who’s to say? Not me. Who knows what’s out there? Not me. I know a little but not a lot. Your move.

Miss Moss dearly loved to play chess, but what with the press of duties at the store and her weariness after duty at the store, she did not play as much as she would like. Mr. Douglas dearly loved to play chess and he played anyone anywhere anytime. His favorite games were against Mrs. Robinson, who was a deft and masterful player and who as a girl had been county champion.

Where was that? Mr. Douglas had asked when that little tidbit slipped out one day.

O, long ago and far away, she said, smiling, and Mr. Robinson laughed aloud in the kitchen, and Mr. Douglas had thought—not for the first time, either—that someday, if he was very lucky, he too would be able to speak in complex secret affectionate amused code with someone in such a way that people who heard you would not know what you meant but would understand full well that you were speaking a dual language of your own made of sweat and laughter and tears and work and time and arguments and lust and labor and respect and annoyance and witness and some sort of reverence that has nothing whatsoever to do with religion and everything to do with love.

Check, said Miss Moss. Her owl was threatening his bearverine, and the only way out was to lose his falcon. He reached for it but then paused; more than once while playing Miss Moss he had moved too quickly to address one problem and then been snagged by the second and subtler trap.

Outside, very faintly, they heard a car mumbling uphill against the snow, going very slowly; so slowly that Mr. Douglas realized how deep the snow was.

I’d better get out there with old Edwin, he said to Miss Moss. There’ll be people in the ditches for sure. Can’t believe it’s snowing like this in September.

Your move, said Miss Moss.

Want to call a halt? Pause it where it is?

Your move.

I am registering a protest against undue and overweening pressure.

Move.

I feel cornered and harassed.

Move.

He looked up from the board to see if he could see her eye, but she was intent on the board. He stared down for a moment and moved his falcon. She immediately moved a chipmunk.

Mate.

A fascinating word, that, said Mr. Douglas, staring for a moment and then reaching down and gently placing his bearverine on its side. Do you know where it comes from, in this usage? Ultimately from the Persian, in which the meaning is something like
ambushed
or
surprised
, as in war, where you are suddenly invaded or overcome by a force beyond your ken. How apt and suitable, how very accurate. For me, anyway. I acknowledge being invaded or overcome. I admit it with humility. You win. I’d better go. If I know Edwin, he will be annoyed that we are not out there already. He knows when more than six inches of snow fall, we are on ditch duty. You’d be surprised how accurately horses can measure snowfall. I don’t know how he does it.

Be safe, said Miss Moss, not looking up from the board. Be careful. Please? Come by for coffee later. I’ll keep the store open until you come back. Be careful. Please?

*   *   *

Martin followed the red jacket, curious. This was no animal he recognized, and his angle of vision and the density of snow were such that he didn’t realize it was a human animal until it sat down suddenly and made high plaintive noises. Was this some sort of territorial statement, or was it calling its companions? He couldn’t tell—you never really were sure about anything with human animals, other than the fact that you could never be sure about what they were doing or would do—but he found that he had the same subtle interest in this one as he did with the one who ran through the woods every day. Had he been versed in a dozen languages, he still would struggle to define the feeling he had for the running one in particular—some hint of deeper interest, some kind of subtle assurance that it was not overly dangerous and would not cause him harm; and to a lesser degree he felt this same odd inexplicable feeling of relative safety and interest about the one in the red jacket by the creek. So when she finally stood up again from her huddle in the snow and continued to shuffle up the creek, he followed at a safe distance, high in the canopy, as the snow grew thicker and the daylight thinner.

34

DAVE AND HIS DAD
are home in the cabin, worried about Maria. She should be home. Mr. Douglas is riding Edwin slowly through the snow along the edge of the highway, wondering if the car he and Miss Moss heard slowly laboring up the mountain could possibly against all sense and reason in such a storm have been Mr. and Mrs. Robinson’s old Falcon. Dave’s mom is still in Emma Jackson Beaton’s car about half a mile from the milepost where Emma will drop her off so she can slog through the snow to the cabin and begin to worry about Maria. She should be home. Miss Moss has battened down the hatches and shoveled the front steps of the porch and hauled in more firewood and hauled four cots from the attic and stacked them by the fireplace just in case. Moon is in the vast kitchen of his house staring out at the vast snowfields that used to be the vast lawns around the house. Louis the elk, having had much experience of sudden storms, has led his extended family to a thick grove of cedars where the interleaved and interwoven branches above catch most of the snow, leaving a relatively protected, relatively open area beneath where the elk huddle together, their collective steam sighing up into the canopy. And there are so many other beings we should go visit here to see if they are okay, to see what they are doing, to hear what they are thinking—what they worry about, the shape of their hearts and dreams. Mr. Shapiro the elementary school teacher, for example—there he is shoveling a path to his cabin from the highway turnoff. As he flips a load of snow over his shoulder he gets a searing stab of pain in his back, a flame so sudden and terrifying that a fearful sweat breaks out on his brow, steaming his spectacles. And there’s the tall thin sophomore runner with the long hair making ramen noodles for his two little brothers in their mossy trailer deep in the woods. And there’s the Unabled Lady at her piano trying to write the exact music that snow makes when it falls on cedar duff. And there’s Moon’s basketball coach on the phone, canceling the loose scrimmage he and the coach from Joel Palmer High were planning as a surprise for their boys tomorrow. And there is the gray fox who ate Martin’s older brother, snapping the neck of a grouse who had been hiding in a rhododendron thicket. And there is the old tough loner hermit bobcat who lives over to Hood River; for some reason known only to him, he has climbed to the top of a stone outcrop in his kingdom and is gazing out upon his lands and possessions, the snow gathering on his fur. And there is Cosmas, wearing not one but two bright-orange jumpsuits in deference to the cold, standing with his bicycle at the top of a hill where the power line cut through the trees has left a steep corridor down which he is about to ride his bike for reasons known only to him. And there are Mr. and Mrs. Robinson in their car, the engine silent, the snow falling more thickly by the moment. Mr. Robinson appears to be asleep. Mrs. Robinson appears to be awake, but she is not moving at all one bit. She is leaning on Mr. Robinson’s shoulder. His jacket covers all of her and the right half of himself. Her eyes are open but they appear to be fixed on what would be the horizon if you could see anything like a horizon through the snow that has blanketed the windshield and the windows and the rear window too. The passenger window on her side is open about five inches, and the snow has sifted in and covered her right shoulder and neck and face and eyelash and the right shoulder of Mr. Robinson’s jacket and Mr. Robinson’s right hand, which is the most gentle shade of blue imaginable—something like white having an idea about blue. The car is gently tipped to one side, but not so much that either passenger has sagged noticeably, although a jar of creamy peanut butter has escaped the grocery bag in the back seat and fallen to the floor behind Mr. Robinson.

*   *   *

Emma Jackson Beaton left her car running at the milepost and hiked into view of the cabin with Dave’s mom, although Dave’s mom kept saying the whole way,
you don’t have to do this
and
I will be fine
and
what if a plow comes along and crushes your car
, this last remark making Emma laugh out loud.

When was the last time the county ever plowed up here? she said. What would be the point? As soon as you plow, another two feet of snow falls, and you are right back where you started. Plus it snows in
summer
. Technically today is summer, you know. I could see snow falling tomorrow, on the first day of fall; that would be apt. But summer? There are times when I wonder why anyone actually lives up here. Are we nuts or what? Just half an hour down the mountain, four inches of snow is a
catastrophe,
and all the way down in the city, if six
snowflakes
fall, the governor declares an emergency for a week, and everyone goes to church. I can see
visiting
up here if you are a snow freak or you worship alpine flowers or whatever, but actually
living
here all year round, are we nuts or what? Hey, there’s Dave.

Dave?

Mom, Maria’s not home.

What?

She wasn’t on the bus. Dad checked. She was at school all day, but she didn’t get on the bus. Two of the kids in her class said she decided to walk home. They said her pack looked bigger. Like it was stuffed with stuff. Dad and I were waiting for you. Dad will go down the river, and I will go along the road. She’s real smart, Mom. Don’t worry. She’s smart. She won’t panic. Don’t worry.