Wilderness of Spring Part 12

Why should G.o.d listen?...

The question was still not the right one.

Reuben crawled out into cold sunless light. He searched the east. The sun was present, a hazed white blur just visible in the overcast. New snowflakes were already drifting, far apart, without a wind.

Why G.o.d?...

That was not merely the sun but something of the mind, old, vaguely evil, dying, dissolving not quite as a dream dissolves but with the illogic and inconsequence of a dream.

Reuben said aloud: "Why?..."

_The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether._

The snow would thicken, covering all things. It increased as he watched, the white ball fading, blotted out at last in the gray and white morning. The cold was not severe. No wind was blowing.

Reuben said: "I do not believe it."

He crept back into the shelter to hold his brother in his arms.

Late in the morning Ben woke in a remission of the fever, knowing Reuben was not far away. To the complex interesting lines above him--evidently a roof--he said experimentally: "I must have been sick."

"Lie quiet!" The power of Reuben's hand on his chest startled him, the sodden ache of his own muscles dismayed him. "We can't go on today, Ben.

It's snowing heavy. I mean to light a fire--with all the snow they'll never see the smoke, if they come this way at all."

"They?--oh." Ben doubtfully remembered. It would not do for Reuben to guess how puzzled he was; craftily he asked: "How far you think we came from Hatfield?"

"Hatfield?"

"How stupid I am!" The unintended words drawled out of his mouth and floated away. "Meant Deerfield. My leg...." Reuben (who knew everything) helped him shove down his breeches, then allowed him to sit up and look at the splinter-wound, a yellowish scabby island in a puddle of pink. He wished to study it, but Reuben was already pulling up the musty repellent garment and urging him back on the pile of sweet-smelling leaves. "Suppose that's what made me sick?"

"Maybe."

"Suppose I ought to be bled?"

"I daren't, Ben. I don't know how a physician does it. I might cut wrong and not be able to stop the flow."

"I'll do well enough."

"Yes, but you must eat, or you'll weaken."

Ben considered this. He was hungry, yes, but wasn't some difficulty connected with the idea of eating? Meanwhile someone, apparently himself, was burdened with a bladder about to burst. "Must go outside."

"Watch out!" Reuben somewhere sounded frightened or angry. "You'll fetch down the roof if you try to stand."

That was sensible, Ben observed--of course he would, and then they'd have all the trouble of building it over. He located Reuben kneeling in a whiteness outside, ready to help him in spite of his stupidity, and crawled to him. Improbably, the boy transformed himself into a pillar under Ben's right arm, a curve of warm iron around Ben's middle--only Reuben who knew everything could have thought of that.

Out here in the blind white morning, Ben was distressed by inability to interpret what he saw. The swirling pallor might conceal a thousand significant shapes. He simply must not urinate on what might easily turn out to be Grandmother Cory's doorstep. He asked with care: "Here?"

"Anywhere. Hurry! You must get back under cover."

"That's right," said Ben humbly, suffering a panic dread that his bladder would never let go; it did, with relief like an end of pain. But still the gray and white was all a whirling bewilderment. He knew the sentinel monsters to be trees; nothing or everything might be stirring just beyond reach of his vision in these enormous distances. "Where is the way where light dwelleth?"

"What?"

"Which way is Roxbury?"

"That's east," said Reuben, and jerked his head. "Don't think about it now. Come back under cover. d.a.m.nation, Ben, help me a little! You know I can't lift you if you fall."

Ben walked with extreme care, and then crawled, back on the pile of leaves. Darkness approached and slid away. Reuben was shaking his shoulder, urging him to eat something. "What? What is it?"

"Some of the ham I stole--don't you remember?"

"Yes. But.... How much have we?"

"A plenty. See--all this. And the turkey too--I'll cook that when I have a fire going."

"Oh yes, the turkey.... Ru----"

"I ate all I wanted while you were sleeping."

He would lie of course, Ben thought. But with a face changeable as sunlight on a wind-rippled pond, Reuben had never been a good liar. Ben lifted a heavy arm to turn that face into the wan daylight. "You--did?"

"I swear to you, Ben, we have enough for several days, and I ate all I needed an hour ago."

Ben struggled over the mouthfuls. The meat lay heavy in him, threatening nausea; that pa.s.sed. He accepted a final wave of darkness--not true darkness, simply a voluntary closing of the eyes. Certainly not unconsciousness, because he could feel Reuben wrapping some cloth around his legs. He wondered what it was, the curiosity not powerful enough to raise his ponderous eyelids. Later he heard Reuben speak--close to his ear maybe; surely not far away, or the words could not have reached him with that sweetness and clarity: "_Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy G.o.d my G.o.d: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if ought but death part thee and me._"

The wolves came that night, not with howling but in silence.

Through the afternoon, under the long patient drive of snow, Reuben had gone out after more dead wood whenever Ben seemed quiet in his sleep. He had struggled with Ben's tinderbox to the edge of despair, and won a flame at last, the fire then leaping bravely and settling to steadiness under the endless slanting white, the smoke pushed away from the opening of the lean-to by a faint breeze out of the west. When he had gathered all the firewood he could find without going beyond reach of Ben's voice, Reuben used the stolen kitchen knife to hack off a green ash sapling and trim it to a six-foot spear. He was wearing Ben's knife now at his belt, but was unwilling to employ it in such labor--besides, the tedious task of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g and whittling disposed of much time when there was nothing else to do and he knew it might be dangerous to think. All afternoon he heard only the crackle of his fire, the sustained mild hiss of the snow, and the small sounds of Ben's troubled slumber. His mind heard the wolves, knowing they would come.

The hunter-builder had chosen this location cleverly. Thick brambles and a looping confusion of wild grape covered the high bank above the lean-to; a beast could squirm through it, no doubt, but probably would not try, and surely would not jump down from it so long as someone tended a fire below. This fair security in the rear left only a half-circle of territory that needed watching. At the western end of that little arc, where the lean-to itself shut off his view if he sat by the opening, Reuben laid ready a stack of dead wood mixed with evergreen branches. It would be a moment's work to carry a brand to that pile, sending it up in a fine blaze to guard the blind spot. The wolves would not like that.

This was his last act of preparation before evening came on. He knew of evening as a gradual failing of the light, a growth of shadows in the continual drift of snowflakes, a shift from gray to black. At one time it had been afternoon; then afternoon resembling evening. Then night.

Reuben became ears and eyes.

He could never hear their feet when they came, but all night he must listen for any change in Ben's breathing or any call from him, such a sound as might be smothered by fire noises or the small narcotic monotone of the snow. He sought to imitate Ben's way of looking everywhere, never allowing his gaze to become frozen in a stare. If something seemed to move out yonder, as happened many times deceivingly after darkness beyond the fire had grown complete, he must flick a glance at it, look away, return, and so a.s.sure himself that it was nothing, maybe a leap of fire-shadow, a harmless swaying of a branch of the giant spruce that stood twenty yards away.

He knew the truth of it, and with relief because it ended the sour agony of antic.i.p.ation, when twin emeralds to the left of the spruce blinked on and off and shone again nearer. Two other pairs of jewels flashed into life, one to the right, the third directly below the tower of the tree.

"I know you," he called. "I know you for what you are."

He stood up to look beyond the lean-to. A fourth pair of hunting lights had been approaching the blind spot, and halted at sight of him. Reuben drew forth a burning stick. He walked slowly, with care for the flame, and touched it to the dead wood and pine needles. The lights in the snow did not retire; they watched, curious and cold. In the sudden radiance they acquired a gray body, taut, startled at the new flame but not yet in retreat and visible to Reuben in sharp detail. A b.i.t.c.h wolf carrying young, her belly not much distended but seeming so because of the gauntness of her ribs and a wiry thinness of long flanks.

Only four; probably no others. They ranged in small groups like families, Jesse Plum used to say. The tales of large wolf packs, Jesse insisted, were travelers' fancies. A few of the young sometimes remained with the old ones until full-grown, then drifted away to start families of their own. "Be you ever confronted by 'em," said Jesse once, "they'll be few, boys, and no great peril unless they can get behind you in the dark. True, they can kill you and eat you, but they do doubt it, they understand cold steel and they be full of fear, the way all creatures fear man, and so do I." Well, in the complex story that grew from that opening, Jesse had been a.s.sailed by ten wolves who were not wolves; after he climbed seventy feet to the top of a beech, the great dog wolf leader had scrambled up after him, snapping at his heels but unable to reach them so long as Jesse remembered to make certain signs in the air.

All that had been perfectly understood as a fireside fantasy, designed to send the children off to the black garret in a good mood. Here, Reuben told himself, he faced only four common wolves, angry with the long winter hunger but afraid of the fire. The gummy spruce branch in his hand still sputtered hotly. He flung it at the somber eyes. The b.i.t.c.h wolf casually dodged the brand. He saw the gray evil of her glide away to join the three others in deeper obscurity.