There were no houses this side of the first major road, and that was a good three-hour walk in these conditions, at the very least, assuming he didn’t get lost. Then he would be picked up, someone would be driving the St. John Road on a Saturday night, and then there was another twelve miles to Fort Kent, so at least five hours until they came this way, more likely after midnight by the time they had all their men and cars and plans, and he with them, of course, to regain his dignity. That was fine. I leaned the rifle on the porch and went inside.
50
FIRST I MADE TEA AND GOT THE FIRE BURNING HIGH, packed with logs, then did something I could not remember having been done in all the time I had grown up in that cabin: I took the New England chair from its place in front of the woodstove and carried it out to the clearing, set it down in the middle between the porch and the flowerbed, facing the space in the trees where the sky held most of the stars. When I walked back into the cabin I saw the giant space where it had been and the man who sat in it, and all the reading that had passed months and years in it, the stories that turned the pages on that chair.
In the spare bedroom I lifted the cover from the gramophone and placed a record, turning the volume till I knew I’d hear it outside and setting the arm to repeat; all that was left to do was select a book. I walked the shelves to S for Shakespeare, midway between the cold books at the back and the warm ones on the other side of the horseshoe of bookshelves that ended at the kitchen counter. With my coat and gloves with the fingers showing I took it outside to the chair and sipped the tea as the song floated overhead.
Wouldn’t be long now, not that long to wait. I leaned back in the chair and watched the stars and guessed from the disposition of cloud that it was snowing in a corner of the woods, yet I hoped that my patch of sky would stay open for another hour. The record played from deep in its scratches the lute and a tender voice from long ago and far away. I closed my eyes and let it drift over me, kept the cup against my fingers for the heat:
I thought I might as well read for a while, the part of The Winter’s Tale that she held up to me near the end, the part I thought she must have meant, though she was not the type to read much of anything aloud:
I drew the gabardine around me to wrap out the chill, and at that second the page brightened and I knew, looked up, there, sharp and icy in the night, now above the trees and out of the ringing cloud, the white rock spun its stringed music, unheard, above the white lamp of ground and into the black rooms of the air.
Won’t be long now.
Soon the cold was upon me, the merciless and nameless cold, and I needed the blanket I’d draped on the porch railing. Walking it back to the chair reminded me of my grandfather, when he lived under that same cloth as now kept me warm and had earlier saved my life: he spent the day long under it by the fire, and when I asked him once what he was thinking, he put his hand on my shoulder and said he was thinking of my mother, as she had died only six few years before, and that he had been fond of her, that I would have liked her, and not to worry about the bits of me that didn’t make sense because I never knew her. She was in me, and that was all.
After an hour or so of that tune I was ready for the next. The fire was turning to a mush of red-hot ember as I passed quietly to the bedroom and placed another record on the turntable, songs by John Dowland, a lute player from Shakespeare’s time: I saw the first three titles circle on the labeclass="underline" Flow Not so Fast Ye Fountains, Come from My Window, Flow Now my Teares.
On the way out I poured hot water for coffee to keep myself awake and carried it on top of a pillow so I could lean back and see the sky without straining. Before I got too comfortable, I went into the barn and spread all the seed, the cracked corn and pellets for the birds, all of it across the floor and into the yard, and wedged the door open so they could get in and out. From the window I heard more scratches and wondered how the sound of the record could reach this far, then saw the bundle of wings unfurl in the light of the moon and the claws scratch the glass, and the small bird flung itself once more at the sky it couldn’t reach. You think the moon is the sun, you do, I smiled, and you should be asleep, and I walked to it with my coat spread wide. It scattered itself into the folds, caught as I closed them. Goodness knows how long you’ve been trying. I carried the soft punch of its feathers into the yard and opened wide, and it flew up and was gone.
Not long now.
I was restless as a man waiting for a performance, an empty hand stretched out too far for another hand, an ear lost between notes. There was only one thing for it, the pipe would calm me, that and another sherry. I stoked the fire first, then poured a glass and lit the pipe, puffing my way out to the clearing.
The wind came and slit me along the skin. This time I knew it for a snow wind, the way the trees rattled like fine silver, the sound of a trembling arctic sea across the tops of the forest. That same wind must have bounced off the trees and brushed the moon too, because when I looked up I saw it bulged slightly on the left side, like water in the thinnest reach of the wave when it spreads and then seeps, a bright salt stain on the sand.
My father’s astronomy book was correct to the hour in predicting the event to come, what he pointed out to me over thirty years ago one day when he told me to keep a look out for it. I said I would. Now here it was, the covering, the moon and sun and the earth arranged into a song, knowing nothing of the magic they made in the night. I let the book fall to my lap and sat back, my eyes steady on the shadow, the ground to which my chair and I were pinned, in which Hobbes lay curled, turning to cloth under us and spreading a giant cloak across the void. More wind blew like cutlery, a long, slow tinkling over Maine, what I would see if I rose up on wings over the forest, north to Quebec and east to Newfoundland, the bright foil of rivers, woods shook with frigid streams, wilderness run through with eagles, hawks, owls, bears, caribou, hungry herds gliding over the stones, the expanse of mountains and ice, roaming from night into day into night past wet towns nursed in valleys, the wide St. Lawrence salmon spearing ocean miles and river currents with a compass set for the narrow pond of their birth.
I passed an hour going from the clearing to the kitchen and back, more sherry, more music, more wood. And all the while the shadow passed across the moon until the reflected light dimmed to the color of paper, and then stone gray, and then burnt wood. And then there was no more in and out, and I was sitting in the big chair in the yard, arched for viewing through the trees with the pillow at my neck, the pipe in one hand, the book on my lap, the coffee in the other. Look at the hole in the sky, I thought, that was no giant glittering star in the night leading no men to their king. I waited, watching the faint stars find their places as the sun went behind the earth with all its light and switched off the moon.
When I felt the rushing through the woods behind me scurrying along the trails, I thought the whole world was sweeping itself clean in the vacuum, a piece of airless lightless space drenched down through the atmosphere. But it was just the snow wind again, this time reaching as far as the yard, and the first drops fell from the sky, from where I do not know, I saw no cloud. I was warm enough with the blanket and the coat, the gloves, and I wanted nothing on my head.