In the Wilderness - Kim Barnes [40]
I remember him describing the female’s high-pitched yowling as he let her struggle against the teeth embedded to bone, knowing her howls would bring the male, and then he would have them both. Terry made plans for the money two good pelts would bring: the truck needed tires, or he might buy Sarah a new coat. He’d buy more traps to make more money, to keep doing what he loved—walking the woods, conversing with the owl and hawk, pounding the stakes down through the metal rings.
I knew this was his trade, his job: he was a trapper, a careful tracker, a good shot, one of the best around. Things like this happened, and we all knew it was best to stay tough, to not let the agonized screams of an animal get in the way of practical sense. He shot the male first—an easy target as it turned to him, ears flattened, teeth bared, protecting its mate—and then he killed the female. After the bodies were skinned, the pelts scraped and Boraxed, Luke built a fire in the back yard, hung a large black kettle above it and dropped the still-meaty heads of the cats into the boiling water. We stood close to the cauldron for warmth, watching the eyes bubble up, gelatinous as poached eggs at first and then hollow. We stomped our feet and drank hot chocolate as the night lengthened and the moon rose. I watched the skulls roil, clicking against each other, a sound I still remember when fall nights come and the acrid smoke of field-burning fills the air.
What ancient ritual were we observing? What drew us together around that fire and kept us there, fueling the coals with more wood long after the skulls had sloughed off their flesh and shone white as shell beneath the moon? Was it some racial memory that drove us to celebrate the hunt? The hides, cured and sold, would serve to sustain our tribe. The skulls themselves would become icons: bleached and polished, each anchored a corner of the preachers desk, where he studied his Scripture for the next week’s sermon.
I leaned one evening into the arm of the Langs’ sofa, lulled by music and fire. Luke sat on the floor across from me, forcing square after square of wadding through the barrel of his rifle until the cotton emerged clean, gleaming with oil.
The parsonage was so warm I felt bundled, protected from the wind whipping the pines and swirling the year’s first snow into sugared drifts, rattling the windows in their crumbling panes. In the kitchen, my mother, Sister Lang and Sarah diced carrots and potatoes while last year’s venison browned in a big cast-iron frying pan.
I could hear my father and Terry laughing on the porch. The one vice my father had never been able to give up was his cigarettes, and when he stepped outside to smoke, one or the other of the men often went with him, taking, I think, a kind of vicarious pleasure in this small weakness. Brother Lang sat in his chair with his Bible, underlining passages for next Sunday’s sermon. Closest to the stove sat Matthew, chair leaned back against the wall, softly singing and strumming his guitar. I knew the words to the song he sang, but there was something comforting in his single voice. I drifted in and out of near-sleep, thinking of Matthew and Mary, his girlfriend from downriver. It must be for her he sang, I thought, even though the words were for God.
Mary was darkly beautiful, with long, straight hair parted down the middle and pushed behind her ears. When she visited our church, she and Matthew sat in the back pew and held hands in a quiet and modest way. They planned to marry the following year, with their parents’ blessings. They would be sixteen.
I wanted to be to Luke what Mary was to Matthew. Their love seemed rooted in something pure. I knew they never groped in the dark stairway. Mary would not have allowed it, would not have invited such a possibility. She had a wonderful full smile, but she kept her head bowed a great deal of the time. Her legs were always firmly