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embarrassment.
"Could only be described," Loren said aloud to the frosty night, "as
intense embarrassment." The mule jogged, Loren swayed drunkenly. "_Intense.
Embarrassment_."
How could he see Sten again? If they met, wouldn't there be between them
an embarrassment that would make any communication impossible? Seeing him
again, having him before his eyes again, had been Loren's obsession for
months; but now that he had been invited to it, for real, he could only
imagine that he would be full of shame and hurt and embarrassment. Better to
let the enormous engine of his love, disengaged from its object, grind and
spin on uselessly within him till it finally ran out of fuel or fell to
pieces, to silence.
Yet Sten had sent for him, He groaned aloud at the stars. Far down
within him he seemed to see -- whiskey, only whiskey, he told himself -- a
possibility he had long discounted, a possibility for happiness after pain.
The next morning, to cleanse himself of shame and hope and the sour
humors of the whiskey, he plunged naked up to his neck in the icy river,
shouting, trying to shout out all the impurity he felt within; he splashed his
face, rubbed his neck, waded onto the shore, and stood shivering fiercely. By
an act of will he ceased shivering. There wasn't any weakness, any impatience,
any badness in him that he couldn't, by a similar act of will, overcome.
Quieter then, he dressed, slipped the canoe, and started upriver. The
river was low and slow; leaves floated on it, fell continuously on it, clogged
its tributaries. Dense clouds were pillowed at the horizon, and overhead a
high, fast wind, so high it couldn't be felt below, marked the October blue
with chalk marks of cloud, Summer was long over here. Last night's frost had
been hard,
During that week, his geese were restless, rising up in a body, circling
for a time, realighting excited and nervous. It was as though his peaceful
village had been swept by a bizarre religious mania, Old quarrels were
forgotten. Nest sites were left unguarded. They were aligning themselves,
making a flying force, The time had come for their migration. On Monday -- the
day that he would have gone into town -- he awoke before dawn, and had barely
time to dress before he saw that this would be the day of their leaving.
Loren had identified the commodore and his lieutenants (they were called
that in his notes, though they would not be in his final paper) and noted
their strategy meetings and route conferences. Now in the dawn the hair stood
on Loren's neck: was it because, over the months, he had become almost one of
them that he knew with such certainty that this was the day -- had it been
communicated to him as it had been to each of them, did his certainty add to
the growing mass of their certainty, inciting them to fly?
All that morning he photographed and noted, ill almost with excitement,
as they knitted their impulses together. Again and again small groups pounded
into the air, circled, alighted, reascended. About noon the commodore and some
of the ranking members of his staff, male and female, arose, honking, and
sailed off purposefully, making a tentative, ragged V: maneuvers. They didn't
return; with his glasses, Loren scanned from the crook of a tall tree, and saw
them waiting in a water-meadow somewhat northeast. The rest still honked and
argued, getting up nerve. Then the commodore and his staff flew back, sailing
low and compellingly over the flock, going due south; and in a body the others
were drawn after them, rising in a multiple fan of black and brown wings,
attaching themselves.
For as long as he could, Loren followed them with the glasses, watched
their V form neatly against the hard blue sky marked with wind. They were
wind. They were gone.
Alone again, Loren sat in the crook of the tree. Their wings' thunder
and their cries had left a new void of silence. Winter seemed suddenly
palpable, as though it walked the land, breathing coldly. He remembered
winter.
After Sten and Mika had gone out of sight, he had spent that day
searching for Hawk on snowshoes, with lure and net and pole; walked himself to
exhaustion through the woods, purposelessly, having no idea where Hawk might
go and seeing no trace of him, If he had found a dead bird, if he had seen
blood on the snow, he would have gone on, not eating, not sleeping; but he saw
nothing. Night was full when he came back to the empty house, almost unable to
stand; the pain, though, had been driven almost wholly to his legs and feet,
where he could bear it, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]