The Americans Are Coming Page 5
“What odds if ya smell anything?” asked Shad. “I doubt if a human could smell a panther, anyway, unless he had his nose right up against ’im.”
“Mom told me that the devil’s s’pose to smell like shit.”
“How’s she know that?”
“Don’t know. That’s what she told me.”
“That’s foolish,” said Shadrack, but he sniffed the air anyway.
Dryfly noticed that the sun had left the treetops and the twilight had replaced it. The anticipation of the approaching night and the inevitable darkness of the forest was not what Dryfly considered to be a good time.
“I think we should go home, Shad. I have to cross the footbridge tonight. It’s tricky in the dark.”
“You kin have the flashlight.”
Dryfly sighed.
Shadrack and Dryfly found a big pine tree and after eyeing it to make sure there were no cougars in its midst, they sat close together with their backs against its trunk. They could not be attacked from behind.
Time ticked on and darkness fell.
There in the night, every sound – the snapping of a twig, the hooting of an owl, a breeze whispering in the boughs above them – quickened their imaginative young hearts. Every shadow, every form, seemed a potential threat, and sometimes what they knew was only a tree or shrub seemed to actually move. Dryfly checked out his surroundings with the flashlight about every ten seconds. Shadrack didn’t complain.
“What’s that?”
“Where?”
“There!”
“I don’t see anything.”
“There. I heard a thump.”
“Where?”
“Listen!”
Dryfly couldn’t hear anything, except his heart beating, but he wasn’t sure. There might have been something. He might have missed something . . . he wasn’t sure. “I think we should go home,” he whispered.
“Why?”
“It’s gettin’ awful late.”
“Shh!”
“Mom’ll kill me.”
“Wait a few more minutes.”
Another deep sigh escaped from Dryfly.
A bird sang, its song piercing the silence, crisp and clear. Dryfly could not identify it – he hadn’t heard it before. “Indians,” he thought.
Palidin had read a book about cowboys and Indians in which the Indians had used the songs of birds as a form of communication. Dryfly remembered Palidin’s reference to the tale.
“I hope they’re dead Indians,” he thought.
The bird sang again and somehow sounded mournful and forsaken. “No,” thought Dryfly, “I hope they are alive.”
A Gander-bound plane rumbled far up amidst the stars, its flicker somehow reassuring as it crossed the Dipper.
A mosquito hummed by his ear. The bird sang once more.
“What bird is that?” whispered Dryfly.
“What bird?”
“That one.”
“Don’t hear it.”
A few minutes passed and Shad decided he’d had enough. “Let’s go,” he whispered. The words “let’s go” came like poetry to Dryfly’s ears.
They followed the flashlight beam out on the trail, their feet thumping the ground and swishing the bushes as they hurried along.
Dryfly counted to himself, “One less step, two less, three, four, five, six . . .”
When a rabbit has lost the chase and finds himself cornered by a hungry fox, a strange phenomenon occurs. The rabbit gives up, goes into a trance-like state, a fear-induced state of paralysis, and sometimes even dies, robbing the fox of the thrill of the kill.
When Shadrack and Dryfly heard the honk from no more than a hundred yards off to their right, they stopped in a trance just short of death. The flashlight dropped from Dryfly’s hand to the ground and went out at his feet. Darkness reigned supreme.
Thump, thump, thump, went a heartbeat.
Dryfly wasn’t sure if it was his own heart or Shadrack’s. Shadrack wasn’t sure either.
BEEP-BARMP-BARMP! went the noise in the forest. The brief silence that followed was disrupted by a fart. Both boys knew that it had been Dryfly’s release. For a moment it was impossible to say if, or if not, they were smelling the devil.
Shadrack gripped the .303 so tight that he might have been attempting to leave finger dents in the wood.
“What do we do now?” asked Dryfly in a tiny voice that seemed not to be his own.
Shadrack didn’t know. He couldn’t think. To run seemed to be the logical move, but in his confusion he prayed instead, silently. “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray to God my soul to keep . . .”
Thump, thump, thump, went a heartbeat Dryfly identified as his own. “Hail Mary, full of grace, blessed art thou amongst women . . .”
BARMP! BARMP-BARMP, BEEP-BEEP! went the noise that sounded like a sick car horn, an elephant, perhaps the scream of an eastern cougar, or all three.
“Got the gun, Shad?” asked Dryfly, his voice still very tiny in the great dark forest.
“Right here!” said Shadrack. “Want it?”
“You know how to use it?”
“Just pull the trigger, I think.”
BARMP, TWEEP, BLEEP!
“You scared?”
“What’d you say?”
“You scared?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
BARMP-BARMP HONK! BEEP-BEEP, BARMP-BARMP! As their eyes adjusted to the darkness, they were able to make out the trail before them – a navy line in a black-forested field, a mere reflection of the azure. Dew drops imprisoned the azure.
“The noise is coming from down by the brook,” whispered Shadrack.
“Fire the gun! You might scare it off, if it’s a cougar.” Dryfly whispered back, spying for the first time since he dropped it, the flashlight. He knelt and picked it up. He pushed the button. The bulb was blown.
“Won’t it work?” asked Shad, musing over Dryfly’s suggestion to shoot the gun.
“The bulb’s blowed,” said Dryfly.
“Do you think a shot would do it?”
BARMP-BARMP! BEEP-BEEP! BARMP! continued the noise in the forest.
“It can’t hurt!” said Dryfly.
Shad pointed the rifle at the sky. “I hope it’s a cougar! I hope it’s a cougar, I hope it’s a cougar . . .” he chanted to himself. “I hope it runs away when I shoot, runs when I shoot, runs when I shoot . . .” He could have been memorizing a poem. “Oh God, make it run. I’ll be good and go to church and everything,” he prayed.
BARMP-BARMP-BARMP! BAR-AR-AR-ARMP!
POW! went the rifle. Silence and the smell of gunsmoke.
*
Lindon Tucker never installed electricity in his house, but he had a battery radio. Lindon Tucker lived with his mother and an old tomcat called Cat. When Lindon called Cat in at night, he called, “Kitty, kitty, kitty.”
“Kitty, kitty, kitty,” called Lindon.
“Meow,” went Cat and zipped through the kitchen door into the dimly lit room, meowed as it scanned the dark corners for mice, then jumped onto the cot behind the kitchen range.
Lindon closed the door and went back to his rocking chair.
Everyone in Brennen Siding figured that Lindon kept his lamps turned low to save on kerosene. He may have kept the volume of his battery radio equally as low to save on batteries. Lindon Tucker wasted nothing. When he shopped at Bernie Hanley’s store, Lindon saved every inch of twine from the parcels; he also saved the brown paper. He saved the aluminum foil from the inside of tobacco packages and the remains of used wooden matches.
Lindon Tucker picked his teeth with the remains of used wooden matches.
Lindon Tucker’s mother sat with her ear not more than six inches from the radio speaker.
From the CKMR station in Newcastle, Brother Duffy was busily condemning sinners. CKMR, the community voice of the Miramichi.
Hayshaker’s Hoedown at 7:00 p.m. News, sports and weather followed by the marine weather forecast with its Brown’
s, LeHavres and Fundy Coasts, came on at 7:30. The exotic names mentioned in the marine forecast, the sound effects – ships’ bells and fog horns – were soothing, like poetry, to Lindon. At 8:30 some heathen Catholic thing came on, which Lindon always turned off. He’d turn the radio back on at 9:00, set the dial at 550 and listen to the Saturday Night Jamboree on CFNB.
“The jamboree was better than usual tonight,” thought Lindon. “Freddy McKenna, Freddy McKenna, that blind lad, Freddy McKenna was on it tonight. They claim he plays his giddar turned up on his lap.”
At 10:00 p.m., Lindon had to oblige his mother and shift the dial back to CKMR for a Bible-thumping half hour of Oral Roberts.
Lindon didn’t mind the preaching. At least it kept his mother from complaining for a half hour.
Clara, Lindon’s mother, was eighty years old and hadn’t been sick for forty years. The gift of health didn’t keep her from complaining, however. Lindon was subjected to her complaining day in and day out, her voice whining and whimpering even when she was talking about it being a nice day.
“Bless us and save us,” she whined. “Yes, yes, Lord. Dear Jesus!”
When Oral Roberts said “Hallelujah!” for the last time and went off the air, Clara leaned back in her chair and squinted her eyes to see Lindon. Her eyesight was good, but the lamp was turned down to a mere glow.
“My toe’s botherin’ me, Lindon. You think a person could git cancer in a toe? Some claim ya kin, some claim ya can’t. You kin git gangrene in yer toe. Old Billy Todder died of gangrene in the toe. I’ve heard of people dying of cancer of the bowels and the stomach, but I don’t know about the toe. I don’t know about gangrene of the stomach either. Do you think a corn could turn to cancer, Lindon?”
“Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Cancer, yeah,” said Lindon, reaching for the dial.
Lindon stopped turning the dial when he heard the rich and mellow voice of Doc Williams talking about a picture Bible. “Just write ‘Picture Bible,’ WWVA, Wheeling, West Virginia,” Doc was saying. “And now I’d like to do y’all a song I very much enjoy and I hope y’all at home will enjoy too.”
The guitar was strummed. It sounded deep and rich. Doc Williams was the best guitar player in the world –
Hannah! Hannah!
Hannah won’t you open the door.
Hannah, Hannah, Hannah,
Won’t you change you manna’
This is old Doc Williams,
Don’t you love me no more?
– and Lindon thought that Doc Williams was the best singer in the world, too . . . with the exception of, maybe, Lee Moore.
When Doc Williams ended his show by picking “Wildwood Flower” and had gone the way of Brother Duffy and Oral Roberts, Lindon stood, yawned and headed for the door. He needed to have a leak before going to bed.
“Where ya goin’?” asked Clara.
“To see a man about a horse,” said Lindon.
The night was moonless, the deep blue sky spangled with a million stars, the Milky Way straight up. The air was warm and scented with lilacs and grass. The songs of a million night creatures (peepers, Lindon called them) betrayed the presence of a swamp. The air buzzed and hummed with midges, black-flies and mosquitoes. A bird sang . . . like a robin . . . but not a robin; a swamp robin, perhaps.
Off in the east, back on Todder Brook, came the now familiar screams of what Lindon figured was the devil.
Then suddenly a rifle shot sounded from the same direction and the devil fell silent.
“Hmm, a shot in the dark,” muttered Lindon.
Somebody standing behind him might have thought that Lindon was directing his comment at his penis.
four
Nutbeam lived in a tiny camp in the forest back on Todder Brook. He’d built the camp five years ago on somebody’s land – he didn’t know that it was the lumber section of the old abandoned Graig Allen farm – and none of the locals, as of yet, had located him. A couple of hunters came close a couple of times, but that was all.
Although Nutbeam could not read or write, he was not uneducated. He knew all there was to know about living in the woods. He was an expert trapper, hunter, fisherman and axeman. He knew every shrub, weed, wildflower, fern, berry, cherry, mushroom and nut; which ones were edible and which ones were not. He was an expert in a canoe and on a pair of snowshoes. He had gathered his knowledge from experience, mostly in the last five years.
Nutbeam was six feet six inches tall and had a thirty-two-inch waist. With a nose four inches long, big negroid lips and ears the size of dessert plates, Nutbeam was, indeed, homelier than Shirley Ramsey.
Although Nutbeam was independent, he was completely without confidence.
His appearance was the reason for it – his appearance and the fact that nobody normal could face him without laughing. His appearance was also the reason he had never gone to school, never liked people and had left his home in Smyrna Mills, Maine, to journey into Canada’s Dungarvon country.
Although Nutbeam didn’t like people, he wasn’t necessarily uninterested in them. He liked to look at people, but he didn’t want people to look at him. Nutbeam kept his distance from people, ran into the woods when he saw someone coming, hid behind his hood, or collar, when it was absolutely necessary to pass near someone.
Nutbeam sat in front of his camp, eyeing the treetops adorned by the setting sun. He watched a mosquito feasting off the back of his hand.
“Gorge yourself and then you die,” said he to the mosquito.
“That’s about all there is to life,” he thought. “A man ain’t no different than a mosquiter. Yer born, ya eat and drink, ya dump it out again and then you die. If you’re born ugly, or not too smart, ya might as well have your dump right away, die and get it over with.”
“You, little mosquiter, are prob’ly pretty for a mosquiter,” said Nutbeam and commenced to hold his breath. In a few seconds the capillary the mosquito was tapping tightened around its tiny proboscus, trapping it so that Nutbeam could reach out at his leisure, slap, pick off, or set it free. The mosquito’s fate depended on Nutbeam’s decision. Nutbeam’s decision came with a sigh. He took a breath (the sigh), the mosquito filled his tank and flew off. It’ll die soon enough Nutbeam thought and scratched the itch.
Nutbeam’s first year on Todder Brook had been a difficult one. He nearly froze to death. Without the few rabbits he managed to snare, he would have starved. On several occasions he came very close to seeking help from the Brennen Siding dwellers.
“I’m sure glad I didn’t have to do that,” he thought. “I’m all right now. I don’t need nobody now.”
He remembered that he had frozen his massive ears so many times and to such an extent that they flopped over and stayed that way. The experience turned out to be a beneficial one, however.
“Ya kin hear better with big floppy ears,” mumbled Nutbeam.
Nutbeam could hear a bird singing for a country mile. Nutbeam could hear a deer walking a hundred yards away. He could hear the mosquitoes humming outside his camp at night.
Nutbeam had no difficulty hearing Lindon Tucker’s radio and frequently stood outside Lindon Tucker’s house on Saturday nights, listening to Kid Baker singing.
Nutbeam recalled the night Lindon had taken an early break to see a man about a horse. Nutbeam had been standing in the shadows of a shed listening to Lee Moore sing “The Cat Came Back.”
“Lindon didn’t see me there in the dark, but he pissed all over me boot,” thought Nutbeam.
As he learned and practised the art of survival, life grew continually easier. He began taking the train into Newcastle once a month (at the risk of being seen) to trade his furs. At first, he traded for traps and snares; later, he traded for food and ammunition, fishing tackle, aspirins and candy. Later still, he traded for boots and the wonderful parka with the big hood that protected his ears and hid his face whenever he looked down. Last winter, Nutbeam lived very comfortably trading mostly for vegetables, Forest and Stream tobacco and money.
Nutbeam had been trying to play the trumpet for nearly three months and still couldn’t blow a recognizable melody. At first, he couldn’t even get a noise out of it, but now, after three months practice, he was making more noise than he realized. He was making enough noise to send chills down the backs of everyone in Brennen Siding.
Nutbeam always waited until nightfall to practise his trumpet playing. Somehow, playing in the dark seemed easier. He didn’t know why. Perhaps it was his fear of being caught. He didn’t know why, but he knew he would die of embarrassment if anyone ever saw him playing an instrument. Nutbeam was very shy.
“I’m nearly a mile into the woods. Surely nobody kin hear me playing this far away. I might hear it, but I’ve got these big floppy ears. Nobody in Brennen Siding got big floppy ears.” After three months, Nutbeam was convinced that nobody could hear the trumpet. Nutbeam underestimated the ears of Brennen Siding.
When he felt it dark enough, Nutbeam went into his camp and fetched his trumpet.
“Tonight, I’ll practise that Earl Mitton tune,” he thought. “What’s it called? ‘Mouth of the Tobique’?”
When fishermen waded down Todder Brook, they could not see Nutbeam’s tiny camp embedded in the forested hillside twenty yards away, nor could the camp be seen from the bushy old truck road, a hundred yards to the south. If you were to stand thirty feet from the camp, looking directly up at it, you might not see it, unless you knew it was there. Nutbeam had built three quarters of the structure under ground, with the slant of the roof parallel with the hill. He built it down and into the hill like a mine shaft, so that he had to actually tunnel out a path to the door. All that could be seen from the front was a small door and two grey logs. Once a deer had actually walked on the roof. The tiny seven-by-ten-foot square camp contained a table, two chairs, a cot to sleep on, a barrel stove and three tiny kegs. In one keg he kept salty salmon; in another, he kept salty gaspereaux and in the third, flour. There was a shelf on the eastern wall, on which sat a can of tea, a can of Forest and Stream tobacco, a can of baking powder, two pipes and a can of molasses. On another wall hung two rifles and a wrinkled, frameless picture of the Virgin Mary. On a nail beside the picture hung Nutbeam’s rosary beads. On a wall beside the stove were some more shelves occupied by pots, tin plates, cups, a frying pan, a box of matches, knives, forks, spoons and a tin can full of odds and ends – a pencil, a small magnifying glass, a ball of string, some fish hooks, one of a set of dice which Nutbeam called a “douse,” a spool of thread, buttons and a red squirrel’s tail. Clothing hung haphazardly on all four walls.