Chapter SIXTEEN
Dear Caleb: I met a man today and he helped me find my medicine.
The deer was on his mind when he came to where he’d left the canoe. He looked out at the lake ahead of him. The wind had picked up a bit, still on his nose, and he would be lucky to make the other end by dark.
For a moment, standing there looking at the water, he actually thought, I’m behind schedule, and then remembered he had no schedule. He was there to learn, to seek, to find, to know. It could happen here or over there or by going backward. There was no time requirement.
He thought of the deer again and the thought made him think of meat other than fish. He was suddenly hungry and he decided to make camp at the portage and hunt for a grouse or a rabbit to make a rice stew—something heavier than fish.
He tied the canoe off to a tree high above the lake, pulled his packs up in the air, found firewood enough for the night, and though it was no longer cloudy he stacked a pile of wood beneath the canoe to stay dry so he could start a fire if it did rain.
Then he hunted.
He put the quiver on his back again, took the broadhead off the bow and put it back in the quiver, and because he was taking small game he pulled out a field point—they were sharp but had curved shoulders to cause shock and a faster death than the cutting edge of a broadhead—and laid the arrow on the bow.
He slipped into the woods. He was wearing tennis shoes and wished he had moccasins but they would have to serve. The green grass kept his feet quiet enough.
One step, another, slowly into the thick green. A yard, another yard, ten yards—he didn’t have to worry about getting lost because he kept the lake on his left, visible now and then through the leaves.
He saw a rabbit almost at once, and could have hit it easily enough, but that would have ended the hunt and he was moving now, into the woods, slowly, like a knife being pulled through water, the forest closing back in on him, his eyes seeing every movement, his ears hearing every rustle.
This, he thought, is what I have become. A hunter. The need to hurry disappeared, the need to kill was not as important as the need to see all there was to see, and he worked the afternoon away until evening, perhaps two hours before dark. He had seen seven or eight rabbits, any one of which he could have had, and heard several grouse and seen four more deer, two of which he could have hit easily, but he had waited and now, as he turned back, a grouse jumped up in front of him, its wings thundering, and flew to a limb on a birch about twenty-five feet away.
Now it was time. He raised the bow, drew the arrow back, looked down the wooden shaft and saw, felt, where the arrow would hit, and released, all in one clean, fluid motion.
The arrow went where he was looking, took the grouse almost in the exact center of the body, drove it back off the limb, and it fell, flopping for a moment, in the grass beneath the tree.
‘‘Thank you,’’ Brian whispered as it died. ‘‘For the food, thank you.’’
He picked the bird up, pulled the arrow out and wiped it on the grass, then tied the grouse to his belt with a short piece of nylon cord and started back. He was done hunting now but kept the bow ready, the arrow on the string.
It was nearing dusk. The sun was well below the line of trees, though it was still light, and he had much to do—set up the tent, make a fire, cook dinner and write in the journal—and he picked up the pace and was near where he’d left the canoe, still in thick trees, when he smelled the smoke.
He stopped. It was pine smoke. He couldn’t see it, or hear anything, but there was a definite odor of smoke. It went away, then returned when he moved.
How could there be fire? There was no storm, no lightning—which Brian had read caused most forest fires—and besides, with the recent rain it wasn’t likely there would be a forest fire.
Still, it was there. Again. He moved forward a few steps, stopped, and started to step again when he heard a clink of metal on stone.
Somebody was there. Ahead. At the camp.
Brian crouched and moved again, one step at a time, carefully, quietly, until he was at the edge of the forest. He moved a limb aside and peered out.
A man sat crouching with his back to Brian. There was another canoe pulled up by Brian’s, an old fiberglass standard twelve-footer with many hard miles on it, judging by its look. The man had pulled up more wood and had a fire going and a pot of water boiling. Brian could see the steam. There was no weapon showing, no other gear. Just the canoe, tipped upside down, and the man and the fire. The man had long gray hair streaked with black, no hat but a headband, and had his hair tied into a ponytail.
All that, Brian saw without moving, without speaking.
‘‘You might as well come in by the fire,’’ the man said without looking. ‘‘I ain’t that much to look at and I’ve got potatoes boiling with an onion. We can add that grouse you’ve got and have some stew.’’
Brian jumped. The voice was old, gravelly, but it carried so that it seemed to come from everywhere. He realized he still had the bow raised, not aimed exactly, but ready, and he lowered it and stepped out of the thick brush and walked to the fire and laid his bow and still-nocked arrow down by his canoe. He had a million questions—who was this man? where did he come from? why was he here?—but he kept his mouth still and the answers came. The man came from the woods, he came in a canoe while Brian was hunting, he was there as Brian was there—because he was there—and his name didn’t matter, just as Brian’s name didn’t matter, and so he didn’t ask.
But one thing puzzled Brian and this he did ask. ‘‘How did you know I had a grouse?’’
‘‘Smelled it. Your arrow hit the stomach and carried some of it through. Nothing smells like grouse guts.’’
‘‘Ahh . . .’’ The wind was blowing right to carry the smell around the lake back to the campsite. Still, the man must have a very sensitive nose.
Brian moved down to the edge of the lake and cleaned the grouse. He tore the skin off with the feathers and washed the carcass in the water. He looked back up the bank out of the corner of his eye as he worked, studying his visitor. He was an older man—Brian guessed at least fifty—with a lined face darkened by smoke and weather. Perhaps he was from a native people. His face showed that he’d been in the woods a very long time. He had on worn moccasins, faded work pants and a work shirt buttoned up to the collar and buttoned at the cuffs. Everything, like his canoe, was old but in good repair. The shirt had been patched several times, the patches sewn neatly by hand with small stitches. His hands looked as if they were made of old polished wood.
‘‘They call me Billy,’’ the man said, still looking down at the fire.
‘‘I’m Brian.’’ He brought the grouse back to the fire and used his knife to cut it into pieces and dropped them into the stew pot, an old aluminum pot that could hold at least three gallons. The potatoes were just starting to boil.
Brian lowered his packs and sleeping bag. He found a little salt and started to put it in the stew and stopped. ‘‘Salt all right?’’
‘‘Some.’’
He put a bit in—less than he would have liked— then took one of his own pots, the large one, and put tea and drinking water on to boil.
They did not talk. When the stew was done they each fished some out into their cups—Billy had his own tin cup, old and not insulated, though the heat didn’t seem to bother his mouth—and they ate until it was all gone, including the broth. Brian buried the grouse bones off in the woods and they sat back and drank tea and watched the fire.
It was dark now, the moon not up yet, and they were silent for a long time. Brian was lost in thought, surprised to find he was thinking idly of his mother and Caleb. Here he was, sitting by a fire with this strange man, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world to be thinking about his mother. He wondered what she was doing.
‘‘You hunt the old way,’’ Billy said. It wasn’t a question but a statement.
‘‘Pardon?’’
‘‘With a bow. You hunt the old way. You don’t use a gun.’’
Brian shook his head. ‘‘I don’t like them. They make too much shock, no, too much . . . noise.’’
‘‘They’re wrong for the animal.’’ Billy talked with his hands as well as his voice, the palms waving and the fingers pointing, dancing with the words as he spoke in almost music. ‘‘Too fast. Damn guns kill too quick, don’t give them time to think about their place, time to face east. They don’t get into the next world right when they get blown up. Arrows kill slower, give them time to be ready. I don’t use a gun. Bad medicine.’’
‘‘I saw a deer today, walking here. It stood and looked at me, then away, then back. I could have shot it . . .’’ Brian didn’t know why he said this, only that it seemed the right thing to do.
‘‘Did it look the way you are going when it looked away?’’
Brian thought about it. ‘‘Yes. North, up the portage.’’
Billy nodded. ‘‘It was your medicine deer, telling you the right way to go.’’
‘‘Medicine deer?’’
Billy pointed at the sky. ‘‘From there. I have a medicine crow that points for me. You have a deer to help you. Always listen to the deer.’’
‘‘So . . . it’s not right to hunt them then?’’
‘‘They will tell you when it is right. Listen and they will show you, like today.’’
Brian nodded and they were silent again for a long time. Brian thought about the grouse and the rabbits he had almost shot. But they hadn’t seemed the same. The deer stood out. He realized he was tired. His leg had stiffened a bit—though much less than this morning when he’d started—but he’d paddled against the wind much of the day, then portaged, then hunted. He felt a bit stiff and his belly was full and the fire was warm.
‘‘Time to make sleep,’’ Billy said.
He moved to his canoe and crawled under it. From one of the thwarts he pulled an old blanket, wrapped himself in it and was asleep before Brian could finish setting up his tent. Brian unzipped the opening, pulled his bag in and was sound asleep before his head was all the way down.