Whatever my intention, it was as yet a haze, but I warmed up the truck, poured hot tea into a thermos, and with a book of verse, a list slipped inside it, along with the rifle and the telescopic sight, I headed along a set of tracks on the road east that would eventually bring me to her town if I kept driving, and soon was, churning my way easily through the thin white linen of a countryside featureless except where birds poked out pools of water. I was unsure of my plans for the day, why I was driving with a rifle and to what end, and felt much less sure when I saw a man standing solitary in the middle of nowhere, a man who appeared to raise his arm is if ordering back a tide.
31
HE STOOD ON THE ROAD ABOUT A MILE AHEAD, A DOT in the glazed powder. I watched him through the glass and slowed, but it was still only a matter of seconds before I reached him and whatever he had to say to me.
This is no flat country, except in one place where the paved road to Fort Kent evens out over a couple of miles, and in the normal course of events if you are out on a journey and happen to see someone walking you have time to prepare a conversation if you have a mind for one, or a salute if it is to be a passing without words. Any questions are proper and thoughtful and answered in kind.
Yes, closer now, and there he was for definite. He appeared to face in my direction as he saw my truck approach. I lowered the window with my left hand as I slowed, wondering what sort of conversation was to be had today, but I did not really have time to come to terms with what he might be doing out here in the middle of nowhere. My decision to take a drive was sudden, and even a random talk might demonstrate that, why I was driving, where I was going. Now in the last fifty yards the windshield wipers pushed aside the spray of washer fluid and he stood clearer, a man in a police jacket, his free hand on a waist holster, a revolver. I saw the other hand rise again and unfurl to an arm: this fellow wanted me to stop.
32
HE STEPPED ASIDE AFTER I PULLED UP AND THE BRAKES squealed in the thin air, appeared to be someone ill at ease in himself or annoyed in generaclass="underline" even his skin looked like a large raincoat thrown hastily across him. The evidence suggested he did not like doing this, being here, and his voice rang on the sharp side of friendly:
You haven’t seen anything up there, have you?
I fingered the key, and as the engine died the silence crowded around my first words to him:
Seen what then?
I wrapped my forearms around the steering wheel and leaned down to the window at the same time as he leaned in. His face was a cloud of breath.
Shots, suspicious activity, he said. A few miles around you up there. Anything?
I said, Plenty of hunters wandering about, so you get the shots coming across the woods.
He nodded when I said that, as if he had expected an answer such as I gave.
But nothing else, I said, apart from the winter coming in general. It’s mostly quiet.
His hand still rested on the holster, though he made a show of draping the fingers over his belt in a relaxed manner. I did not know specifically what he was looking for because I had no television and no way of knowing what they knew and if any of what they knew had pointed them here.
Is that right, he said. He was chewing something, gum most likely, and his eyes covered the truck cabin like a sheet blowing this way and that on a line. I waited for him to finish. He had probably spent twenty minutes and more standing before I appeared on the horizon and he wanted to make some conversation out of it, seeing as the next driver might still be a town away. Nevertheless I decided that my best words at this point should be stuffed with plenty of nothing else to say between them.
Can you contact us if you hear anything out of the ordinary? We’ve had reports.
I will.
He looked up and saw me watching him.
And you have a book, he said.
I looked down to the sonnets on my lap, the list of Shakespeare words folded inside.
In case I have a few minutes in the café between errands, I said.
What’s it about, he said.
It’s a book of sonnets. Poetry that is.
He pursed his mouth. What’s your favorite poem then?
At that second the wind blew in a burst of snow, a few flakes, and dusted the seat with them. His question was thoughtful and not one that could be answered lightly, even if the circumstances, as they did now, required it, since people who ask questions for a living or out of habit take offense when those questions are left unanswered.
I like them all, it depends.
On what?
On what the day brings.
I decided it was time to go or for him to ask me to get out of the truck. I turned the key and the engine ran. He glanced at the seat again and coughed.
It occurred to me that he might ask to search the car and would find the Enfield and sight I’d hidden behind the seat. An impulse had me place them there instead of on the seat as usual, lucky for me.
He stepped back and put both hands on his gun belt.
So if I asked you to get out of the vehicle and stand there, he pointed down beside his boots, you wouldn’t be able to recite me a couple of lines and call it your favorite poem.
I did not like his sudden tone with me.
I said, For most days I would be able, but not as a rule for all days, speaking louder above the engine hum. In any case I was not good at quoting anything beyond a few short words, not having the capacity for such feats of mind.
He separated his feet to shoulder width and shrugged. If this were a planned stop and they’d been waiting for me I was a sitting duck and would not survive a gun draw. He’d fire on me at close range as I was grappling for the rifle behind me, an awkward death. I placed my foot on the pedal and handled the gear stick into first.
We have ourselves a man of letters, he said and smiled, looked to his side, the direction I was going in.
Thank you for your cooperation.
I was being sent away. That was fortunate for me. I drove off with a wave and watched him all the way along the straight past of the road till he was a man shrunk once more to a small mark shrouded in engine smoke on the side mirror. Then I wondered why I hadn’t seen a police car, not even parked off the road where there wouldn’t even be space for one, and since under no circumstances had he walked out here, they must have dropped him off. But that made no sense either.
After the first bend I pulled over and took the rifle from the back and laid it out on the seat. I considered the situation as the truck chugged and flakes blew across the hood. If they were closing in then I must act. I could turn around and shoot him from almost anywhere, but if he had been dropped off there to do a checkpoint such a shooting would invite that much more attention as the search for him began. In any case he had certainly not killed my dog of late and so I had no quarrel with him. Still I decided to think about it some more seeing as he had moved into this part of the world: I took the rife out of the cloth and walked to the side of the truck out of sight of a passing car and farther to the bend. But now the man was not standing where I left him. That was fairly quick of him. I waited a few minutes just in case he was relieving himself, went for the book and opened it where I had a leaf inserted, a poem about love and such matters, and sat by the wheel with the rifle perched.
The wind swept up the snow a field away and rolled past a moose standing still. A large high bird curved and straightened out in the bluster, eyes steady on some creature no doubt: their eyesight burned the impurities from ordinary vision and presented them with the smallest movement, the tiniest flicker, even the intent of a snow rabbit or small owl to cover an open stretch across the white, its last run.