She sat still, watching me as I moved about the room, saying nothing until our tea was before us and I had sat down again. Then she said, "Mayor, 1 need a leave of absence. A short one."
She stirred her cup, squeezed the bag. and dumped it in the ashtray half full of my pipe ashes. "Of course," I said. "But shouldn't you be asking the superintendent about this?" I was puzzled. It wasn't my chore to handle the teachers, thank goodness. I was the town's unpaid mayor, and there were professionals, paid ones, to handle day-to-day affairs.
"I will," she replied. She looked at me, her brown eyes unblinking. I remember thinking that for all her mannishness she would be worth shielding from all grief. Perhaps it was the eyes. Maybe it was just Sarah. "But you can help," she said- "You know people, and…"
"But what do you need help with?"
She shrugged and look the paper from her bag. She unfolded it and handed it to me. "Look at this," she said. "It's French-Canadian, a rhyme, collected back in the thirties by the WPA people. I found it in the university library, buried in the folklore files."
The paper was covered with a pencilled scrawl, a copy of a poem that must have been set down by someone who wished to capture the flavor of a speech pattern;
Ze Wendigo,
Zat crazy beast, 'E never eats,
But loves t'go.
In darkest night, 'E runs and screams
And stirs ze dreams
Of second sight.
But when you go
To join ze run, 'E stays unknown,
Ze Wendigo.
I packed and lit my pipe, studying the rhyme, before I spoke. "Interesting," I said. I sent a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling- "But what does it have to do with a leave of absence?"
Her fingers tensed around her teacup. She had come to me, but she seemed unwilling to reveal her problem- Could it be so rare or odd or shameful? Suppose it was, I told myself, and then I guessed me answer.
"You want to go wendigo hunting." I laughed.
Her lips tightened, and I was immediately sorry for the laughter. That was just the reaction she had feared. Of course.
No one wants to be thought a nut, a crackpot, even if their ideas are a bit off the beaten track. "But go on," I said, trying to save the situation. "Maybe I can help. At least, I'm game to try."
She relaxed as if that was all she had wanted. I caught a faint whiff of perfume or cologne. And she began to talk. She told me of the wendigo class, of her own interest in the strange, of her sense of fairness that led her to the library, of her conviction that all the legends must reflect some grain of truth, of her wish to seek that truth. She had come to me for suggestions on where to seek, a guess at the chances of success, perhaps even a partner in the strange quest.
Why me? Well, I do have a reputation for imagination.
Last year's ad program for my oil business certainly stirred folks up enough. And men there were the gimmicks I had come up with to get more tourists into the area. And men, too, there had been a few incidents now and again to connect me with the strange. Really, 1 should have been more surprised if Lydia had not come to me.
But what could I do? I wouldn't know a wendigo if I saw one- Or heard one, rather. She was silent while I relit my pipe and thought. She didn't fidget much, only turning her empty cup back and forth between her hands. Finally, 1 said,
"There's at least one fellow in this town who could help. If you'll come to the town hall tomorrow after school, I'll ask him to meet us there."
She nodded and sighed. Her breath whistled as if she had been holding it. So I would help, after all. Her voice was softer when she spoke. "Do you really mink we can…?"
"How can we know?" 1 grimaced, sympathetically, I hoped.
"We've no idea what it looks like or where to look. But we can try."
The fellow I wanted to talk to was Howie Wyman. Grizzled, always overalled and booted, he had been doing odd jobs as long as anyone cared to recall. He knew all the stories, too, though he didn't talk much. He seemed to prefer the woods and streams to human company, even his wife, but he was in town at the time. painting a house over on Water Street.
I sent a secretary to ask him to come by a little after three. I was still alone when he showed up, a motley collection of paint spatters, whiskers, and faded cloth completely alien to any civilized conception of a government office. My secretary showed him in, though, as if he were clad in a threepiece suit and fresh from the barber, which tells you something about our town. It's informal. Partly because it's small and partly because its people waste little energy on nonessemial appearances. They dress up mostly for church and they try to keep their drinking private.
I said, "Thank you. Bonny," and waved Howie to a seat.
He took it, looked for my wastebasket, and got rid of his wad of chewing tobacco. "You wanted me. Mayor."
"Ayuh," I said. "Lydia Seltzer dragged me in on a project of hers. I thought you might be able to tell us something helpful."
"Like what?" He looked doubtful. He knew Lydia was the science teacher, and he knew nothing about science. I doubted he'd ever gotten past the sixth grade. I was starting to tell him about the problem when Lydia walked in. Bonny holding the door until 1 waved at her. Her wool was pink today, and her face was flushed with eagerness. The combination wasn't attractive, but I didn't imagine it was anything but temporary. 1 hoped she wouldn't be disappointed.
I introduced Howie to Lydia. "This is the fellow I was talking about. I was just going to tell him the problem."
She took the other chair. "Shall I go on, then?" When I nodded, she produced that paper again and then handed it to Howie. While he read, she said what she wanted, flatly and directly. The nervousness 1 had seen last night was gone.
When she finished, Howie set the paper on the corner of my desk and said simply, "Pork Hill." I raised my eyebrows, and he went on. "My dad was up there once. Ayuh, huntin' deer in the dark of the moon. He heard that screamDidn't see nothin', though."
"Where's Pork Hill?"
"North by west, 'bout ten miles."
And that was all he had for us.
We now had a place to look, and the next dark of the moon was just two weeks away, in case that mattered. Lydia could hardly wait. She insited on borrowing a tent, sleeping bags, a Coleman stove, all the gear anyone could want for a night camping on a lonely hilltop. She got most of it from two members of the school board. She got their sons, too. Keith Hutchison and Ronny Jackson were two of her best students, and she thought they deserved a field trip, a little hands-on research. They thought so too, especially since it meant a Friday away from school- I didn't argue, since I was sure we could meet no danger from a superstition.
I wish I had been right. Keith was a lanky boy, tall, a forward on the school basketball team. Ronny was shorter, sturdier, a soccer player. Both had family, friends, girlfriends, good prospects. Keith, in fact, already had a scholarship for college. They had a tot to lose, but they were eager. Danger was just a myth, and they wouldn't miss this trip for worlds.
They didn't, of course. I didn't believe in any danger myself, so I didn't try to talk them out of it, and Lydia made it sound like a lark. All the way up there, the four of us and the gear crowded into my old station wagon, she waved her camera and ran on about the splash a picture of a real, live wendigo would make.
We loaded the car on Thursday night and left town shortly after noon on Friday. When we met in the town hall lot, 1 was surprised to see Lydia in dungarees and a red-checked wool shirt. It was so unlike her that, even though the rest of us were dressed similarly, she seemed to stand out. But the clothes were suitable for the trip, and I soon stopped noticing them.
It took us half an hour to reach the foot of Pork Hill, and another two hours to hump the gear to the top. The hill wasn't big, no more than eight hundred feet high, but it was steep and wooded and there was no path. The going was slow until we reached the top, where the trees disappeared. Pork Hill was one of those rocky knobs scattered over the state of Maine, its top scraped clean by glaciers and still inhabited only by lichen, moss, blueben-y bushes, and a few stunted birches.