Chapter FIFTEEN
Dear Caleb: It gets more and more beautiful. I think most of the city is leaving me.
He was not sure what, if anything, awakened him. Probably the fact that he had slept so hard during the day. Whatever the reason, in the dead middle of the night his eyes suddenly snapped open and he sat up, listening with his mouth open, breathing in shallow pulls to not make noise.
Nothing.
He leaned forward and unzipped the tent and looked out. Still nothing, at least nothing to hear. But the sight that met his eyes made him hold his breath.
The sky was clear, filled with stars, and the moon was half full and laid a silver streak across the lake—a white road that came across the water and called to him with such intensity that he closed the tent and moved to the canoe, turned it over and slid it out onto the water.
The night was cool enough that the mosquitos stayed down. He stroked once with the paddle and the canoe slid out and away from the bank into the silver reflection of the moon out on the water.
Another pull, another slide across the still water, moving through liquid silver. A loon called. It seemed to come from somewhere to the left but the sound moved around until it filled the lake, mixed somehow with the moonlight and became almost visible. It hung there, the sound he could see in the moonlight, for half a minute; then the loon called again, or another answered it, and suddenly—close, on the far edge of the lake, only a hundred yards away—a wolf howled.
Long, sweet, and sad and happy and frightening and joyful all at once, a keening howl that started high and dropped low and ended almost hoarse.
The hair went up on the back of Brian’s neck and he took a deep breath and answered the howl, trying to match the tones of it, starting high the same way and bringing it down as low as he could until it trailed off.
Then he waited. Ten seconds, twenty, a full minute and the wolf called again. Different this time. Low all the time, almost a moan.
And Brian answered.
Three more times they went back and forth and finally Brian waited until the wolf started its call and Brian matched it, harmonized with it, and they sang together that way, four more songs, a duet, boy and wolf in the moonlight, singing to beauty until at last the wolf grew tired of it and quieted. Brian called twice more but when he didn’t get an answer he stopped.
The moon was dropping below the horizon at any rate and he paddled back to the campsite, pulled the canoe up, tied it off and went back in to bed.
He did not sleep at first but lay thinking of the wolf and the moonlight and the loon and when he closed his eyes and sleep started to come he thought he could see the wolf, or perhaps see as the wolf moving through the night, part of the night, the smells and sounds of the woods moving through the wolf like vapor, stopping to listen, moving on in a silent slide through the moonlight and forest, Brian and the wolf mixed, Brian-wolf, wolf-Brian.
Then sleep.
He awakened completely refreshed, having slept again past dawn. It was a clear morning and the side of the tent was warm from the sun and he rolled out and stretched and walked to the canoe to flip it over and slide it into the water when he saw the prints.
Two wolves had come into camp. One good-size, the other slightly smaller, and from the look of the tracks around the tent in the drainage ditch, around the canoe in the soft earth and beneath the packs they had investigated everything. They had also peed on the canoe and the tent—not a great deal, but enough so he’d know they had, a calling card—and then moved on.
Brian smiled. Either they were greeting him or, more likely, telling him he was a lousy singer. He finished packing the canoe and just before leaving went up and covered the two places where they’d left sign with his own. Hello to you too, he peed. Then he got into the canoe and slid off.
He had not gone a mile when he was back beneath the canopy, in the green world, and wondered how far it was to the next lake. On the map that lake was long—almost eight miles before he would come to his first portage, about a half mile to the next lake, which was at least six miles long. He thought perhaps he would do the two of them today, which would bring the distance to Williams Lake down to about sixty-five miles.
The canopy only lasted three or four miles and he came out onto the eight-mile lake. There was a slight breeze coming up, directly into his face, so he put on the life jacket and set to the paddle, heading right up the middle of the lake.
The work felt good, solid somehow. The pain in his leg was nearly gone and he was just noodling along, paddling the canoe across small lakes and down the green corridors, not really working, and it felt good to stretch his arms and bite deep with the paddle and take the wind.
He kept up a steady effort and seemed to be moving well—an illusion caused by the visual effect of the wind blowing small waves in the opposite direction that he was going—but it took him four hours to make the eight miles.
‘‘I guess the wind must be stronger than it looks,’’ he said, gliding into the calm area at the end of the lake where the portage started. ‘‘Half a day gone . . .’’
He pulled the canoe up on the bank and considered the situation. He had to carry everything half a mile and he couldn’t do it all at once.
He tied the tent inside the canoe near the center, and under the cross-thwarts he tied the paddles, centering their weight, and the bow and the quiver of arrows. There was a yoke for portaging built into the canoe, shaped to fit around the neck and rest on the shoulders.
He put one backpack up in a tree on a bearproof rope, and the other one he slipped onto his back.
Then he moved to the canoe, flipped it belly-up and moved beneath it and took the weight of the yoke on his shoulders.
At first it felt as if his legs would sink into the ground.
But the canoe balanced well and when he started off he gained a momentum that kept him going. It only took him twenty minutes to walk the portage. There wasn’t a trail—the grass had grown up and covered any tracks—but there was a long clearing and in the dim past somebody had taken an ax and cut marks in the trees to show the direction.
Probably, Brian thought, Native Americans when they trapped through here. The ax marks were very old, healed over and often nearly covered with bark, so some were just a dimple.
Still, it meant people had been here before and it made Brian wonder about them. Fifty years ago, he thought, or maybe more—seventy-five. The trees were huge pines, the marks well off the ground. Whoever had made them was probably gone now, dead, nothing left but his mark.
He left the canoe at the next lake, tied the pack up in a tree—though he hadn’t seen any signs of bear— and, carrying the bow with an arrow ready and the quiver on his back, he went back for the other pack.
It took him only ten minutes to get back. He let the pack down, took the quiver off his back and put the pack back on, and with the quiver in one hand and the bow with a broadhead nocked to the string in the other he started for the canoe.
He hadn’t taken three steps when he saw the deer. It was a buck, horns in velvet, and it stopped, a young animal with a small rack.
Good meat, Brian thought—really good meat. The thought came automatically and he lowered the quiver to the ground softly, raised the bow and paused. The deer wasn’t thirty feet away and seemed entirely unafraid, standing there. While Brian watched, it actually turned its head away and looked to where a bird had chattered on a limb.
It would have been an easy shot. A clean shot. You’re mine, Brian thought, and his throat seemed to choke with it, the excitement. Mine. The arrow was in the bow, he raised the bow, drew the arrow, sighted it so he was looking over the broadhead straight at the deer’s heart, and then he paused again. He eased the string up and lowered the bow.
Maybe in the fall. He could not keep the meat in the hot weather. He would get three or four meals and the rest would spoil. The skin wouldn’t make leather and most of the meat would be wasted.
He had fish, all the fish he wanted, all he would need. He could take a rabbit or a grouse for different meat, but not the deer, not now. It would be a waste.
‘‘Thank you,’’ he said aloud, to the deer, to whatever hunting spirit was watching over him, had given him this chance at meat. ‘‘Thank you . . .’’
The sound of his voice startled the buck but still it stood for another beat, two, three, then it turned and trotted off down the portage trail for thirty or forty yards before springing lightly off to the side.
‘‘Thank you,’’ Brian whispered, watching it leave.