Sacrament Read online

  “I won’t,” Will said, offering his hand to Guthrie. The man looked down at it in puzzlement for a moment, as though he’d forgotten this simple ritual. Then he took it.

  “You should think about what I told you,” he said. “About poisoning the bears. You’d be doing them a favor.”

  “I’d be doing Jacob’s work for him,” Will replied. “That’s not what I was put on the planet to do.”

  “We’re all doing his work just being alive,” Guthrie replied.

  “Adding to the trash heap.”

  “Well at least I won’t be adding to the population,” Will said, and started from the threshold toward his Jeep.

  “You and Sister Ruth both,” Guthrie hollered after him.

  There was a sudden eruption of fresh barking from his dog, a shrillness in its din that Will knew all too well. He’d heard camp dogs raise’s similar row at the approach of lions. There was warning in it, and Will took heed. Scanning the darkness to the left and right of him he was at the Jeep in a half dozen quickened heartbeats.

  On the step behind him, Guthrie was yelling something—whether he was summoning his guest back inside or urging him to pick up his pace Will couldn’t make out; the dog was too loud.

  Will blocked out the sound of both voices, man and animal, and concentrated on making his fingers perform the simple function of slipping the key into the lock. They played the fool. He fumbled, and the key slipped out of his hand. He went down on his haunches, the dog’s barking shriller by the moment, to pluck it out of the snow. Something moved at the limit of his vision. He looked around, his fingers digging blindly for the key. He could see only the rocks, but that was little comfort. The animal could be in hiding now and on him in five seconds. He’d seen them attack, and they were fast when they needed to be, moving like locomotives to take their quarry. He knew the drill if a bear elected to charge him: drop to his knees, arms over his head, face to ground. Present as small a target as possible, and on no account make eye contact with the animal. Don’t speak. Don’t move. The less alive you were, the better chance you had of living. There was probably a lesson in that somewhere, though it was a bitter one. Live like a stone and death might pass you by.

  His fingers had found the dropped key. He stood up, chancing a backward glance as he did so. Guthrie was still in the doorway; his dog, her hackles raised, was now silent at his side. Will hadn’t heard Guthrie hush her; she’d simply given up on this damn fool man who wouldn’t come out of the snow when he was told.

  On the third try, the key went into the lock. Will hauled open the door. As he did so he heard the bear’s roar for the first time. And there it was, barreling out between the rocks. There was no doubting its intention. It had him in its sights. He flung himself into the driver’s seat, horribly aware of how vulnerable his legs were, and reached back to slam the door behind him.

  The roar came again, very close. He locked the door, put the key into the ignition, and turned it. The headlights came on instantly, flooding the icy ground as far as the rocks, which looked as flat as stage scenery in their glare. Of the bear there was no sign. He glanced back toward Guthrie’s shack. Man and dog had retreated behind the locked door. Will put the Jeep in gear and started to swing it around. As he did so he heard the roar again, followed by a thump. The bear had charged the vehicle in its frustration, and was rising up on its hind legs to strike it a second time. Will caught only a glimpse of its shaggy white bulk from the corner of his eye. It was a huge animal, no doubt of that: nine hundred pounds and counting. If it damaged the Jeep badly enough to halt his escape, he’d be in trouble. The bear wanted him, and it had the means to get him if he didn’t outpace it. Claws and teeth enough to pry the vehicle open like a can of human meat.

  He put his foot on the accelerator, and swung the vehicle around to head it back down the street. As he did so the bear changed tactics and direction, dropping back onto all fours to overtake the Jeep, then cutting in front of it.

  For an instant the animal was there in the sear of the headlights, its wedge-snouted head pointing directly at the vehicle. It was not one of the pitiful clan Guthrie had described, their ferality dimmed by their addiction to human refuse. It was a piece of the wilderness still, defying the blaze and speed of the vehicle in whose path it had put itself. In the instant before it was struck, it was gone, disappearing with such speed that its departure seemed almost miraculous, as though it had been a vision conjured by the cold, then snatched away.

  As Will drove back to the house, he felt for the first time the poverty of his craft. He had taken tens of thousands of photographs in his professional lifetime, in some of the wildest regions of the planet: the Torres de Paine, the plateaus of Tibet, the Gunung Leuser in Indonesia. There he had photographed species that were in their last desperate days, rogues and maneaters. But he had never come close to capturing what he had seen in the Jeep’s headlights minutes before: the power and the glory of the bear, risking death to defy him. Perhaps it was beyond his talents to do so; in which case it was probably beyond anybody’s talents. He was, by general consensus, the best of the best. But the wild was better. Just as it was his genius to wait upon his subject until it revealed itself, so it was the genius of the wild to make that revelation less than complete. The rogues and maneaters were dying out, one by one, but the mystery continued, undisclosed. And would continue, Will suspected, until the end of rogues and mysteries and the men who were fools for them both.

  III

  Cornelius Botham sat at the table with a hand-rolled cigarette lolling from beneath his blond feather mustache, his third beer of the morning set at his elbow, and surveyed the disemboweled Pentax laid out before him.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Will wanted to know.

  “It’s broken,” Cornelius deadpanned. “I say we hack a hole in the ice, wrap it in a pair of Adrianna’s underpants, and bury it for future generations to discover”

  “You can’t fix it?”

  “Yes, I can fix it,” Cornelius said. “That is why I’m here. I can fix everything. But I would prefer to hack a hole in the ice, wrap it in a pair of Adrianna’s underpants—”

  “It’s given good service, that camera.”

  “So have we all. But sooner or later, if we’re lucky, we’ll be wrapped in a pair of Adrianna’s underpants—” Will was at the stove, making himself a ragged omelet.

  “You’re obsessing.”

  “I am not.”

  Will slid his breakfast onto a plate, tossed two slices of stale bread on top of it, and came to sit at the table opposite Cornelius.

  “You know what’s wrong with this town?” Cornelius asked.

  “Give me an A, B, or C.”

  This was a popular guessing game among the trio, the trick being to dream up alternatives more believable than the truth.

  “No problem,” Cornelius said. He sipped mouthful of beer and then said: “Okay. A, right? There aren’t any good-looking women in two hundred miles, besides Adrianna, and that’d be like fucking my sister. Okay? So, B. You can’t get any decent acid. And C—”

  “It’s B.”

  “Wait, I haven’t finished.”

  “You don’t have to.”

  “Fuck, man. I got a great C.”

  “It’s the acid,” Will said. He leaned toward Cornelius.

  “Right?”

  “Yeah.” He peered at Will’s plate. “What the hell’s that?”

  “Omelet.”

  “What did you make it with? Penguin eggs?” Will laughed, and was still laughing when Adrianna came in out of the cold. “Hey, we got more bears at the dump,” she said, her Southern drawl perfectly mismatched with every other detail of her appearance and manner, from her badly trimmed bangs to her heavy-booted stomp. “At least four of ’em. Two adolescents, a female, and a huge male.” She looked first at Will, then at Cornelius, then back at Will. “A little enthusiasm, please?”

  “Just give me a few minutes,” Will said, “I need a couple of c
ups of coffee first.”

  “You’ve got to see this male. I mean,” she was struggling for the words, “this is the biggest damn bear I ever saw.”

  “Maybe the one I saw last night,” Will said. “Actually we saw each other. Outside Guthrie’s place.” Adrianna unzipped her parka and sat down on the beat-up sofa, flinging aside a pillow and: blanket to do so. “He kept you talking for quite a while,” she said. “What was the old fuck like?”

  “No more crazy than anybody’d be, living in a shack in the middle of nowhere.”

  “On his own?”

  “He had a dog. Lucy.”

  “Hey,” Cornelius cooed. “Does that sound like a man with a supply or what?” He grinned, his eyes popping. “Only a guy with a habit would name his dog Lucy.”

  “Christ!” Adrianna shouted. “I am so thoroughly sick of hearing you talk about getting high.”

  Cornelius shrugged. “Whatever,” he said.

  “We came here to do a job of work.”

  “And we’ve done it,” Cornelius said. “Every damn undignified, pitiful thing a polar bear can do we’ve got on film. Bears playing around the broken sewage pipes. Bears trying fucky-fucky in the middle of the dump.”

  “Okay, okay,” Adrianna said, “we did good.” She turned to Will. “I still want you to see my bear,” she said.

  “Your bear now, is it?” Cornelius said.

  She ignored him. “Just one last shoot,” she implored Will.

  “You won’t be disappointed.”

  “Jeez,” Cornelius remarked, putting his legs up on the table.

  “Leave the man alone. He doesn’t want to see the fucking bear. Haven’t you got the message?”

  “Keep out of this,” Adrianna snapped.

  “You’re so fucking pushy,” Cornelius replied. “It’s just a bear.”

  Adrianna was up from the couch and over to Cornelius in two strides. “I told you: keep out of this,” she said, and shoved Cornelius’s shoulder just hard enough to tip him over. Down he went, clearing half of the doomed Pentax from the table with his boot heel as he went.

  “Come on,” Will said, setting down his omelet in case there was an escalation in hostilities. If there was, it wouldn’t be the first time. Nine days out of every ten Cornelius and Adrianna worked side by side like brother and sister. And on the tenth they fought like brother and sister. Today, however, Cornelius wasn’t in the mood for insults or fisticuffs. He got to his feet, brushing his hippie-length hair back out of his eyes, and stumbled to the door, picking up his anorak on his way. “See you later,” he said to Will. “I’m going to go look at the water.”

  “Sorry about that,” Adrianna said when he’d gone. “It was my fault. I’ll make peace when he gets back.”

  “Whatever.”

  Adrianna went to the stove and poured herself a cup of coffee. “So what did Guthrie have to say?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “Why did you even go see him?”

  Will shrugged. “Just . . . some stuff from my childhood . . .” he said.

  “Big secret?”

  Will offered her a slow smile. “Huge.”

  “So you’re not going to tell me?”

  “It’s nothing to do with us being here. Well, it is and it isn’t.

  I knew Guthrie lived on the bay, so I kind of killed two birds . . .” the words grew soft, “with one stone.”

  “Are you going to photograph him?” she said, crossing to the window. The Tegelstrom children, who lived across the street, were out playing in the snow, their laughter loud. She peered out at them.

  “No,” Will said. “I already invaded his privacy.”

  “Like I’m invading yours?”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “That’s right though, isn’t it?” she said gently. “I never get to hear what life was like for little Willy Rabjohns.”

  “That’s because—”

  “You don’t want to tell me.” She was warming to her thesis now. “You know . . . this is how you used to be with Patrick”

  “Unfair.”

  “You used to drive him crazy. He’d call me up sometimes and vent these streams of abuse—”

  “He is a melodramatic queen,” Will said, fondly.

  “He said you were cryptic. You are. He said you were secretive. You’re that too.”

  “Isn’t that the same thing?”

  “Don’t get intellectual. It pisses me off.”

  “Have you spoken to him recently?”

  “Now you’re changing the subject.”

  “I am not. You were talking about Patrick and now I’m talking about Patrick”

  “I was talking about you.”

  “I’m bored with me. Have you talked to Patrick recently?”

  “Sure.”

  “And how is he?”

  “Up and down. He tried to sell the apartment but he couldn’t get the price he wanted so he’s staying put. He says it depresses him, living in the middle of the Castro. So many widowers, he says. But I think it’s better he’s there. Especially if he gets sicker. He’s got a strong support group of friends.”

  “Is whatsisname still around? The kid with the dyed eyelashes?”

  “You know his name, Will,” Adrianna said, turning and narrowing her eyes.

  “Carlos,” Will said.

  “Rafael.”

  “Close enough.”

  “Yes, he’s still around. And he doesn’t dye his eyelashes. He’s got beautiful eyes. In fact he’s a wonderful kid. I surely wasn’t as giving or as loving as he is at nineteen. And I’m damn sure you weren’t.”

  “I don’t remember nineteen,” Will said. “Or twenty, come to that. I have a very vague recollection of twenty-one—” He laughed. “But you get to a place when you’re so high you’re not high anymore.”

  “And that was twenty-one?”

  “It was a very fine year for acid tabs.”

  “Do you regret it?”

  “Je ne regrette rien,” Will slurred, sloe-eyed. “No, that’s a lie. I wasted a lot of time in bars being picked up by men I didn’t like. And who probably wouldn’t have liked me if they’d taken the time to ask”

  “What wasn’t to like?”

  “I was too needy. I wanted to be loved. No, I deserved to be loved. That’s what I thought, I deserved to be loved. And I wasn’t. So I drank. It hurt less when I drank.” He mused for a moment, staring into middle distance. “You’re right about Rafael. He’s better for Patrick than I ever was.”

  “Pat likes having a partner who’s there all the time,” Adrianna said. “But he still calls you the love of his life.” Will squirmed. “I hate that.”

  “Well you’re stuck with it,” Adrianna replied. “Be grateful. Most people never have that in their lives.”

  “Speaking of love and adoration, how’s Glenn?”

  “Glenn doesn’t count. He’s in it for the kids. I’ve got wide hips and big tits and he thinks I’ll be fertile.”

  “So when do you start?”

  “I’m not going to do it. The planet’s fucked enough without me turning out more hungry mouths.”

  “You really feel like that?”

  “No, but I think it,” Adrianna said. “I feel very broody, especially when I’m with him. So I keep away when there’s a chance, you know, I might give in.”

  “He must love that.”

  “It drives him crazy. He’ll leave me eventually. He’ll find some Earth Mother who just wants to make babies.”

  “Couldn’t you adopt? Make you both happy?”

  “We talked about it, but Glenn’s determined to continue the family line. He says it’s his animal instincts.”

  “Ah, the natural man.”

  “This from a guy who plays in a string quartet for a living.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Let him go. Get myself a man who doesn’t care if he’s the last of his line, and still wants to fuck like a tiger on Saturday night.”r />
  “You know what?”

  “I should have been queer. I know. We would have made a lovely couple. Now, are you going to move your butt? This damn bear’s not going to wait forever.”

  IV

  i

  As the afternoon light began to fail, the wind veered and came out of the northeast across Hudson Bay, rattling the door and windows of Guthrie’s shack like something lonely and invisible, wanting comfort at the table. The old man sat in his old leather armchair and savored the gale’s din like a connoisseur. He had long ago given up on the charms of the human voice. It was more often than not a courier of lies and confusions, or so he had come to believe; if he never heard another syllable uttered in his life he would not think himself the poorer. All he needed by way of communication was the sound he was listening to now. The winds mourn and whine was wiser than any psalm, prayer, or profession of love he’d ever heard.

  But tonight the sound failed to soothe him as it usually did.

  He knew why. The responsibility lay with the visitor who’d come knocking on his door the night before. He’d disturbed Guthrie’s equilibrium, raising the phantoms of faces he’d tried so hard to put from his mind. Jacob Steep, with his soot-and-gold eyes and black beard and pale poet’s hands; and Rosa, glorious Rosa, who had the gold of Steep’s eyes in her hair and the black of his beard in her gaze, but who was as fleshy and passionate as he was sweatless and unmoved. Guthrie had known them for such a short time, and many years ago, but he had them in his mind’s eye so clearly he might have met them that morning.

  He had Rabjohns there too: with his green milk eyes, too gentle by half, and his hair in unruly abundance, curling at his nape, and the wide ease of his face, nicked with scars on cheek and brow. He hadn’t been scarred half enough, Guthrie; there was still some measure of hope in him. Why else had he come asking questions, except in the belief that they could be answered? He’d learn, if he lived long enough. There were no answers. None that made sense anyhow.

  The wind gusted hard against the window, and loosened one of the boards Guthrie had taped over a cracked pane. He raised himself out of the pit of his chair and, picking up the roll of tape he’d used to secure the board, crossed to the window to fix it. Before he stuck it back in place, blocking out the world, he stared through the grimy glass. The day was close to departure, the thickening waters of the bay the color of slate, the rocks black. He kept staring, distracted from his task not by the sight but by the memories that came to him still, unbidden, unwanted, but impossible to put from his head.