The upper slopes of the mountains are still lit. Where fires have killed the forests the sunlight itself has an ashen hue. The light slides farther up the faces of the mountains, disappears, the dusk thickens. The coyotes are closer. They are keeping pace with her on either side. After a while they are silent, and the only sounds are her own soft footfalls and the tiny shrieks of nighthawks. But from time to time she catches some hint of movement, some wink of the twilight a hundred yards away between yellow broom blossoms. She is very tired, but she picks up her pace.
She starts to see a few silhouettes of chimneys above the brush not far from the trail on either side, like the snapped-off trunks of dead trees. She passes a tall building on the east side of the trail. There is a flicker of light in a lower window. She looks back. There is nothing following her, no person, no animals, only the gathering darkness. Soon she stops and listens. She squats, twists, trying to see farther into the brush on either side. She gasps. Fifty yards away she sees the face of a coyote. It does not move, it just stares back, for it is merely an arrangement of branches and shadow. She walks again, faster.
She sees the bridge a mile ahead. In light reflected from the river it seems brighter than it should be. There is a glow to it. She begins to run, not fast, pacing herself. She waits a minute, a minute-and-a-half, then looks over her shoulder. She sees a single coyote dodge off the trail.
Now she makes out the domicile, a dark, uninviting mass, suddenly close. She hears the barking of a lot of dogs. She dares to run faster. When she looks back again she sees the pack of coyotes, five or six animals, trotting away from her, back along the trail the way she has come. She slows to a walk but continues to check behind her and into the brush as far as she can see. Her breathing becomes normal again.
The path bends onto the old highway, and the going is rough for a ways. At the foot of the bridge she leaves the road at an old exit ramp, down which she continues until she reaches a place where the railing has been removed. There she turns down a path, past the fallen slab walls of some vast structure, across a space of trampled dirt, toward the tilted building, in which now can be made out a tiny glow in a few of the windows. The dogs come pouring around the corner of the building and surround her, roaring and snarling and showing their teeth. She stands, waits, careful not to look directly at any of them.
When a man comes around the corner of the domicile the dogs stop barking but continue to growl. They stop growling and stand watching him when he starts singing in a voice that has its own doglike quality “In your Easter bonnet…” — he sees the woman, comes toward her — “…with all the frills upon it.” His path is not direct but involves several long curves. When he is close she sees that he holds a bottle, and that he has matted white hair. He sings again. “You’ll be the grandest lady in the….”
She smells his hooch breath. She says “Is this Frost’s Farm?”
“What, that son of a bitch! He don’t know shit. Hey, I bet you don’t even know what a bonnet is. What is it? See! Nobody knows shit but me.” He puts a hand on her arm, pushes her aside and continues on his way. She watches him go toward the bridge. Her jaw trembles as she tries not to cry. The dogs are more or less quiet, but wary. The man becomes indistinct in the dusk. The distant voice sings “The photographers will snap us….”
Another man comes around the corner of the building. He is tall and young and broad-shouldered and holds a drawn sword in his hand. He says to the dogs “Settle down!”
She says “Is this Frost’s Farm?”
The man looks at her bag. “What’s in there?”
“Potatoes.”
“You brung potatoes to Frost’s Farm?” He laughs briefly, then slides the sword under his twine belt. “I’m Airport. Are you hungry?”
“Yes.”
The apartment is very dim, lit only by a small fire. Airport fills a bowl and sets it and a spoon on the table. She sits on a chair made of two-by-fours but before she can begin eating, a tall young woman emerges from another room. The young woman nods to the newcomer. Then she goes to a hammock that is strung in front of the fireplace and sits facing the fire. She places her face in her hands and begins crying.
The woman rises from the table and goes into the room the young woman has come out of. It is even darker than the first room. A tallow candle stuck to a flat stone gives off more smoke than light. A boy of about eight is lying on his back on a narrow mattress near the door. He is shirtless but wears sweatpants. His eyes are open, but he does not look at her as she enters.
A man is kneeling beside the mattress, stroking the boy’s head. He looks up. He has glasses and his hair and beard are white and curly. It is hard to see the man’s eyes in the dimness. She leans down, holds her hand above the boy’s head. The man moves his own hand away. She lays hers on the boy’s forehead. She says “His fever is very high. We’ve got to bring it down.”
The man says “I’m afraid. I’m so afraid.”
“We’ve got to cool him off. Have you got cold water?”
Behind her in the doorway she hears the voice of the young woman. “I’ll bring it. And I’ll bring some rags.”
The woman says “Have you got any willow bark?”
The man shakes his head.
“Have you got a willow tree?”
He studies her for a few seconds. He clears his throat. “One left. By the river.”
“Cut three switches. We’ve got to boil the bark for him to drink.”
There is a different voice behind her, Airport in the doorway now. “I know where it is. I’ll get them. Three?”
“Three. Don’t take bark from the trunk. It’s bad for the tree.” She looks at the old man, says to him “He’ll be fine. You should stop worrying now. Are you his grandfather?”
“Yes.”
“I’m Grace.”
40
Wing sat on Daniel Charlie’s workbench, sharpening the edges of an arrowhead. He held the metal point by its wide base and pushed a file along one edge. Between each rasping stroke the rain could be heard falling on the flat roof of the workshop.
Daniel Charlie stood before his vise, in which was clamped a cattail cane. At the top of the cane a stroke of glue gleamed slightly in the dim light of the shop. Very carefully he set a shaped triangle of brown chicken feather against the glue. A mound of identical feather shapes lay on the bench beside a pile of a few dozen finished arrows with both feathers and arrowheads. A similar pile had feathers but no tips. Daniel Charlie slacked off the vise, turned the cane, tightened the vise, pinched another piece of feather with his thick fingers.
Frost sat on a low pile of concrete blocks with his back to the other two, so that the car door resting on his lap would not be in anybody’s way. He made a final cut with tin snips, and an arrowhead fell free. He set the snips down, picked up the metal triangle and, without looking, handed it over his shoulder to Wing. He flexed both hands. The knuckles and the backs of the fingers were crisscrossed with cuts.
Daniel Charlie said flatly “What we need is two pairs of tin snips.”
Neither Wing nor Frost replied or even indicated that they had heard.
Wing slid the shaft of his sharpened arrowhead part way into the end of a cane, tapped the point against the bench to drive it the rest of the way in, laid the arrow on the bench with the other completed ones, and started sharpening the point he had just received from Frost.
Daniel Charlie said “I’ll snip for a while. Frost, you can come and glue.”
Frost stood, laid the snips on the seat of blocks, and turned to the others.
Wing said “Jesus, Frost, your hands look like hamburger.”
Daniel Charlie said “When’s the last time you saw hamburger, Wing?”