Wilderness (37 page)
Authors: Lance Weller
Ellen held the rifle on it. She squinted down the barrel in the way
Glenn had taught her and stood that way, watching the wolf without moving, for a long time. It turned and paced, and as it did she saw again the dull gleam of metal about its throat. And when she lowered the rifle, it barked once and ran off, disappearing into the trees and the falling snow.
When she walked to the place it had been, she heard it bark again and looked to see it waiting for her farther down the slope. Ellen looked around. She wore a scarf tucked into her coat, and she took this off and tied it around her head and face for the warmth of it, then nodded. “All right,” she said. “Show me.”
She followed it the rest of the morning, through the trees and down the slope, and the walking was hard in the deepening snow. The air grew colder the farther down she went, and she could hear the wolf ahead of her, panting and crunching through the snow. Every now and again came great cracking sounds as branches, over-heavy with snow, came crashing down. Other than the wolf, there was no wildlife round about—only the soft tick of falling snow, the branches cracking like gunshots, and the ancient trees creaking ceaselessly like the speech of old men remembering other places, other times. There was no wind now, and the snow fell straight to earth, a hazy, pale scrim that made of the cold forest a phantom wonderland terrible in its beauty.
She was thinking of Glenn as she stumbled along, worrying for him, imagining the line of their life together, and seeing them in their age—quiet, a bit sad, but strong in their love. When a clump of snow slid from the branches and struck her shoulder, Ellen stopped. She could no longer hear the wolf, and when she looked, she saw its tracks veering away from the course it had followed all day to cut back up the slope between the trees and gone. As she stood wondering what to do, she heard the child sobbing from the trees ahead.
Ellen skinned the gloves from her hands. Taking a deep breath, she started slowly forward. She’d not gone fifty paces before finding
Abel Truman where he lay propped against the thick trunk of an old spruce.
He looked up at her, his face a frozen map that showed her the byways of his cares. Abel’s coat was wrapped around a bundle held fast in the crippled crook of his left arm, and the cold had been at him, darkening with frostbite the tips of his ears and his fingers and his nose, and his lips were a shade of blue.
She threw the rifle down and knelt beside the old man. For all his manifold hurts, his eyes were bright, and when he opened his mouth his voice was hard to bear. “Lizzy,” he whispered. “My ’Lizbet.” Abel raised his hand to touch the side of Ellen’s face where the scarf covered it, and she took his hand in her own, then hissed to feel the cold in it. “Oh, I missed you.” He smiled a terrible smile. “God damn girl,” he panted. “But I missed you so.”
Ellen said his name and shook her head and the bundle he held made a sound. Abel swallowed and looked to it, then back to her. “It’s our Jane,” he said, blinking. “I went out … went out and brung her back.”
With shaking hands, Ellen worked open his frozen coat and saw the child and saw how it was with her in the dark cold. “Oh, my God,” she breathed, touching the girl’s face to feel the heat at her cheek.
Abel made a sound, blinked fast as though coming awake, turning back from some place he was bound. “Ellen,” he breathed. “Good … Her folks was killed up above … You go on, take her.” And when she leaned to lift the child, she had to work to free her from Abel’s crippled grip.
He leaned forward and pressed a little charm, a white cross carved of bone or something like bone, into Ellen’s hand. He worked his lips about. “For the girl,” he whispered, his tongue licking out over his lips. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them once more to look at her, she could tell he was far away and moving farther.
“You see?” he whispered. “You see, Hypatia? I told you I’d bring you along.”
Abel closed his eyes. He was running. The grass was green with spring and fragrant, knee-high and cushioning his steps. And there was sun and a warm wind blew. Men called to him from the trees just atop the rise. He ran. He ran to them.
In the end, it took Ellen the rest of that day and all the next to get back down the mountain with the both of them. She made a crude travois from branches and strips torn from her scarf and laid Abel upon it. She held the child tightly, still wrapped in the old man’s coat, for she cried out whenever Ellen tried to take her from it. The frame kept coming apart, so their progress was slow and wearying, and when they finally reached Makers’ Acres, Glenn, looking thin and sickly, was waiting on the porch. They held each other a long moment, and then he helped her as best he could to get them all inside, where there was a fire and warmth.
They lay Abel and the girl together in the back room, covered them with blankets, stoked the fire, and left open the door so the heat would circulate. They stripped them from their frozen clothes and covered them again naked with blankets. When she saw what had become of the old man, Ellen turned away, and Glenn bid her leave the room while he tended them.
She stood near the hearth to watch the fire. Snow fell against the roof and the wind blew past the chimney, and for a moment, she fancied she heard the wolf howling from the hills above. Ellen went about the room touching dust from shelves that bore no dust upon them. The old, sweet smell of apples lingered.
Her frozen clothes were thawing, turning wet, and she began to feel cold. A dark stain of blood marked the hearthstones, and she ran her tongue over her broken teeth, then stared out the window, where the night was clearing. Glittering points of stars appeared, and she
reckoned at least some should be falling. But none did. Instead, the moon came out to hammer the fallen snow silver and blue.
At some point Glenn came and sat down across from her. He looked wearier than she had ever seen him, and his unwounded hand trembled on the table when he laid it down. Ellen watched it there a moment before settling her own into it. It was warm and it was strong and when she looked at him the questions in her eyes were easy for him to read.
“She won’t get her eyes back, I don’t think.” He shrugged and shook his head at the pity of it. “I think she can still see a little, or maybe just sometimes, but I’d be surprised if it lasts.” He shrugged again. “If we’re lucky, she’ll keep most of her fingers … a few of her toes.”
“He said her parents were dead. Killed.”
Glenn pursed his lips. “Well,” he said. “There’ll be time enough for sorting all that out.”
Ellen nodded. She traced the flour-whitened wood grain as though she’d conjure a primer from the tabletop. Setting her lips together over her broken teeth, she looked out the window to the stars where they glittered as only stars can on snowy nights in the dark of the wilderness. “Abel?” she asked.
“Dead,” said Glenn.
Lance Weller has published short fiction in several literary journals. He won
Glimmer Train
’s Short Story Award for New Writers and was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. This is his first novel. He lives in Gig Harbor, Washington, with his wife and several dogs.
Copyright © 2012 by Lance Weller
This electronic edition published in September 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address Bloomsbury USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Published by Bloomsbury USA, New York
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Weller, Lance.
Wilderness / Lance Weller.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-60819-937-2
I. Title.
PS3623.E4668W55 2012
813′.6—dc23
2011048741
eISBN 978-1-62040-061-6
First U.S. edition 2012