“What’s that birdsong?” he asked her. “Sounds like a fellow whistling who forgot the tune.”
5 - Baby Wakes
The whistling carried like a scream across the fields—it passed across the land like a wave of wind through long grasses, from the base of fresh-planted crop, through gaps in the roofs of barns, and finally, into the crook of some tree roots at the very base of the Selkirk Mountains—where it paused.
That crook had been home to all sorts of creatures—some squirrels, one time a fox and, as evidenced by the sneers of half-collapsed holes, an entire brood of rabbits. Centipedes too. They had all come and gone, though. All but the centipedes.
Right now, the baby lived there.
If it were in the habit of naming things, the baby would not have picked “baby” for itself. It was, in fact, feeling pretty grown-up, inasmuch as its limited experience would allow. Not long ago, it had separated itself from the parent and its servile brood. In so doing, it finished dealing with a good many of its contemporary siblings, who were all of them nearly as tough and determined as it was. The cuts were healing, and the teeth and nails it had lost in that struggle were coming back in.
Pretty soon, it figured it would be walking upright again, marking its territory—making its own brood. It was getting a coalescing sense of just how grand it could become as it curled there in the crook, munching on bugs and watching the world turn. The last thing the baby wanted to hear right now was that whistling. It wanted no part of the things that whistling told it to do.
It wanted no part of it; but neither could it refuse the call.
So it rolled itself over, gathered its legs underneath it, and crawled outside. The ground was wet. It stank. There was no shelter, there was no clue here as to how one might find the bugs and grubs to which it had grown accustomed. Like all babies, this one was fundamentally selfish, and placed a high value on comfort and a full belly.
But the baby didn’t have much say in the matter. The instruction spoke to something fundamental in it, below and beyond even its own unkind nature. And so: as the whistling scream had told it to do, the baby drew air in through its orifices, opened its tiny mouth, and repeated, as best it could, the message that had carried itself this far.
Help, it whistled.
Come, it screamed.
And finally:
Pass it on.
6 - The Feeger Girls
There was singing on the shore to send the Devil when the call came upon the Feegers of Trout Lake.
It was the three Feeger girls, Missy and Lily and Patricia doing the singing. They stood in a circle, up to their bare ankles in the freezing water of the mountain lake, naked flesh creeping in the cold, heads turned high in the joy of their praising song. One time it had had words, but in the care of the girls those words had melted off and it was all melody and harmony and some splashing when Patricia, the eldest, set to stomping to bring their rhythm back in time.
Day was finished—the sun long disappeared behind the bare peak of the Far Mountain, while before it the water glowed in the light of a splintered moon. All was still but for the ripples that Patricia’s foot sent to Trout Lake’s heart and all was quiet but for the sweet voices of the Feeger girls singing their song, when the call came wafting up the hill. Patricia let the song go on for what her grandmother might’ve called a couple of verses before she lifted her foot and pointed the toe so water drizzled from it, straight as a line of piss.
Her sisters took the cue; Missy gasped and looked from one side to the other; Lily, three seasons older, shut her eyes and listened, sniffed. And Patricia held her stork pose, one foot drying in the night air, and paid heed to the call.
“Help,” she said.
“Come,” whispered Lily beside her.
By the time Missy shouted “Pass it on!” Patricia was already splashing again. She splashed four more times until the water was deep enough that she could bend forward, put her arms out in front of her, and ducking her head into the icy water for just a moment, flutter her feet behind her.
Patricia moved out bravely and purposefully; she would not let her sisters see anything but confidence. Yet inside, Patricia was filled up with a sharp, delicious fear. She had done this swim before, but never by herself—always bringing Offering. She supposed that was what she was doing now, bringing praise that had come across the land, but as their mother had told them many times: the Old Man hungers for our Love. Praise is fine—but it is not the same as Love and if you do not bring it to Him, why, He may just take it and then some.
Was she bringing her Love now? She would say so to anyone who might ask—yet to herself, here in the cold lake? Truly?
But as she swam, she knew one thing: she could not do anything but what she was doing now. She carried with her as much Love as there was. There were not many Feegers here to love the Old Man—not since the sickness had come upon them all a year ago. How many had they covered in stones, when they’d fallen down all poxy and coughing?
How many were gone? Patricia was not much for counting past fingers and toes. It would be easier to count the ones left—for there were not many of those—scarcely enough to portion out their Love to the Old Man, whose hunger for it was swelling like waters behind a beaver dam.
Some nights, it was all they could do to make it up the ridge and sing the Old Man to sleep.
And now—was she prepared to look upon him? With Love?
Hesitation grew in her mind, fear expanded in her middle, the further she went; but when she finally paused, it was not to turn back. It was because she had arrived. The Father was near. She shivered at what felt like a branch brush against her ankle, another thing caress her hip.
Patricia lifted her head from the water, let her feet fall below her, and gulped the lake air. The moonlight was dim, and not much good even to her night-accustomed eyes. She could make out the sky, its canopy of stars—and she could tell the line where the sky met the mountaintops. She could feel the water moving about her, the Old Man’s will working on it.
She drew a shaking breath, and closed her eyes and pursed her lips. She did not so much recite the call as she allowed it to pass through her.
And as she did, the fear slaked away. For in her halting whistles, the simple message she conveyed, was a kind of peace. It felt like forgiveness. She was in the Old Man’s hands, telling Him a message from His own child, the prodigal—a message that He was happy or at least anxious to hear. She looked at the sky, at the dark mountain, and even as the line between the two grew jagged, spires like tree trunks emerging from the lake around her and blocking off the stars, as more branches, more vines seemed to wrap her middle, she thought only of Love.
When the water fell away from her sides and she felt herself lifting over the lake, her naked flesh shivering beneath the ancient gaze in the now-encompassing shadow, she thought: There is no need to take that Love.
I give it. And there is plenty.
7 - The Hippocratic Oath
“Tell me about Mister Juke,” were not the very first words Andrew Waggoner spoke after the morphine haze passed. Those were French, almost certainly profane, and in their particulars a complete mystery to the nurses who tended the doctor as he returned to himself. But if “Tell me about Mister Juke” were not his first words, they were the first ones suitable for polite company; the first ones that got any kind of answer.
Andrew was dozing in the mid-morning when the door opened and Dr. Nils Bergstrom stepped through, alone. Dr. Bergstrom was an exceedingly thin man, and recently so. When Andrew had arrived in the autumn, Bergstrom carried his weight around his belly, and his blond-frosting-to-white mutton-chop sideburns drew attention to thick jowls. He’d undergone some sort of a regime over the winter—although what, Andrew couldn’t say, for he always seemed to be eating—and now the sideburns hung like drapes. He stole close to Andrew’s bedside and bent down toward his face.