Pilgrims Read online

  stopped him.

  “You coming or not?” she asked.

  “You couldn’t pay me enough to ride that spotted-ass cock-

  sucker.”

  “Get up here.”

  “He won’t take two bareback.”

  “He’ll take two. Get up here.”

  “Steady boy,” I said, and got myself up on him, behind

  Martha Knox. He danced sideways before I was settled, but this

  time she let him dance and then she kicked him and he was in a

  loose trot already while I was reaching around her waist with

  both arms, reaching for handfuls of mane. She let him trot and

  then he slowed and walked. She let him walk where he wanted

  to, and he circled the lantern twice and lazy. He sniffed at a

  mare, who moved fast from him. He walked to a tree and stood

  under it, still.

  “Hell of a ride,” I said.

  She kicked him, not a nudging kick this time, but a serious

  one, and he took off from the kick and in two more kicks was

  running wide open. We were too drunk for it, and it was too

  dark for it, and there were too many things in that meadow for

  a horse to trip over, but we were running wide open. His bell

  and hooves were loud, and they were a surprise to the other

  horses, who scattered behind us. I heard a few of them follow

  us, belled and fast.

  Martha Knox had reins, but she wasn’t using them, and my

  hat was gone, and so was hers, blown off. Handy might have

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  p i l g r i m s

  stumbled or he might have kicked funny the way horses who

  love to run sometimes kick, or we might have been settled

  wrong, but we fell. With my arms still around her, we went over

  together, so who could say who fell first, or whose fault? That

  meadow was the best place for horses on long trips, but by this

  hunt it was spent. The next spring it would be different, with

  new grass wet from runoff, but that night it was packed dirt

  and frozen, and we hit it hard. We took the same fall, both of us.

  We took the fall in our hips and our shoulders. I knew I wasn’t

  hurt and guessed she wasn’t, but before I could ask, she was

  laughing.

  “Oh, man,” she said. “Goddamn.”

  I pulled my arm out from under her and rolled off my hip

  onto my back, and she rolled onto her back, too. We were far

  from any lantern, but the moon was big and lit. I turned my

  head to see Martha Knox’s face by my face. Her hat was gone,

  and she was rubbing her arm, but she wasn’t looking anywhere

  but right up at the sky, the kind of sky we don’t see too much of,

  because of trees or bad weather, or because we sleep or stare at

  fires instead.

  Handy came back — first his bell, then his huge face over our

  faces, hot and close. He smelled at us like we were plants or

  maybe something he would want.

  “You’re a good horse, Handy,” Martha Knox said, not with

  the voice we always use for horses, but with her normal voice,

  and she meant it. I didn’t think she wanted me to kiss her,

  although it was true that I wanted to kiss her then. She looked

  great. On that frozen dead ground, she looked as good and

  important as new grass or berries.

  “You’re a good horse,” she told Handy again, and she

  sounded very sure of that. He smelled her again, carefully.

  I looked up, too, at the sky, and the stars were no stars I hadn’t

  seen before, but they seemed closer and unfamiliar. I watched

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  Pilgrims

  long enough to see one of them drop above us, long and low.

  That’s common to see in a good sky out here. This one star,

  though, left a slow thin arc, like a cigarette still burning flung

  over our heads. If Martha Knox saw this, it was only as she was

  reaching up already with one hand for her horse’s reins, and it

  wasn’t something she mentioned.

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  17

  Elk Talk

  ✦

  ✦

  ✦

  Benny had been living with Ed and Jean for over a year.

  His mother was Jean’s sister, and she was still in a hospital

  bed in Cheyenne, comatose, because she had driven her

  car into a snowplow on her way home from an art class one

  night. Jean had offered to take in her eight-year-old nephew as

  soon as she’d been told about the accident, and the whole family

  had agreed that such an arrangement would be best for Benny.

  When people asked Jean where Benny’s father was, she said

  simply, “He’s not available at this time,” as if he were a business-

  man unable to come to the telephone.

  Ed and Jean had a daughter of their own, married and living

  in Ohio, and when they moved from town into the mountain

  cabin, they were not expecting to share it someday with a child.

  Yet Benny was there now, and every morning Jean drove five

  miles down the dirt road so that he could meet his school bus.

  Every afternoon she met him at the same place. It was more

  difficult in the winter, on account of the heavy, inevitable snow,

  but they’d managed.

  Ed worked for the Fish and Game Department, and had

  a large green truck with the state emblem on its doors. He

  was semiretired, and in recent months had developed some-

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  p i l g r i m s

  thing of a belly, round and firm as a pregnant teenager’s. When

  he was home, he cut and stacked firewood or worked on the

  cabin. They were always insulating it more, always discover-

  ing and fixing flaws to make themselves more resistant to win-

  ter. Jean canned and froze vegetables from her garden in July

  and August, and when she went for walks she picked up small

  dry sticks along the path to bring home and save for kin-

  dling. The cabin was only a small place, with a short back porch

  facing the woods. Jean had converted the living room into a

  bedroom for Benny, and he slept on the couch under a down

  quilt.

  It was the end of October, and Ed was gone for the weekend,

  giving a speech about poaching at some convention in Jackson.

  Jean was driving to pick up Benny at the bus stop when a

  station wagon approached her, speeding, pulling behind it a

  large camper. She swerved quickly, barely avoiding an accident,

  wincing as the side of her car scraped the underbrush to her

  right. Safely past, she glanced in the rearview mirror and tried

  to make out the receding tail end of the camper through the

  thick dust just lifted.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d met a car on that

  road. Ed and Jean had the only house for miles, and traffic

  consisted of the occasional truckload of hunters, or perhaps a

  teenage couple looking for a secluded parking spot. There was

  no reason for a station wagon with a camper to come out here.

  She imagined that it was a vacationing family, lost on their way

  to Yellowstone, miserable children in the back and a father

  driving, refusing to stop for directions. At such a speed, he

  would kill them all.

&
nbsp; Benny’s bus was early that day, and when Jean reached the

  highway, he was waiting for her, holding his lunch box close

  to his chest, standing scarcely taller than the mailbox beside

  him.

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  Elk Talk

  “I changed my mind,” he said when he got into the car. “I

  want to be a karate man.”

  “But we already have your costume ready, Benny.”

  “It’s not a real costume. It’s just my Little League uniform,

  that’s all.”

  “Ben. You wanted to wear it. That’s what you told me you

  wanted to be for Halloween.”

  “I want to be a karate man,” he repeated. He didn’t whine,

  but spoke slowly and loudly, the way he always did, as if every-

  one in his life was hard of hearing or a beginning student of the

  English language.

  “Well, I’m sorry. You can’t be one,” Jean said. “It’s too late to

  make a new costume now.”

  Benny looked out the window and crossed his arms. After a

  few minutes, he said, “I sure wish I could be a karate man.”

  “Help me out, Ben? Don’t make things so hard, okay?”

  He didn’t answer, but sighed resignedly, like somebody’s

  mother. Jean drove in silence, more slowly than usual, keeping

  the speeding station wagon in mind at each curve. About half-

  way home, she asked, “Did you have art class today, Benny?”

  He shook his head.

  “No? Did you have gym class, then?”

  “No,” Benny said. “We had music.”

  “Music? Did you learn any new songs?”

  He shrugged.

  “Why don’t you sing me what you learned today?”

  Benny said nothing, and Jean repeated, “Why don’t you

  sing me what you learned today? I’d like to hear your new

  songs.”

  After another silence, Benny pulled a blue-gray wad of chew-

  ing gum from his mouth and stuck it on the handle of his

  lunch box. Then, gazing solidly at the windshield, he recited in

  a low monotone, “There was a farmer had a dog and Bingo was

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  p i l g r i m s

  his name oh. b-i-n-g-o,” he spelled, carefully enunciating each

  letter. “b-i-n-g-o. b-i-n-g-o. And Bingo,” Benny said, “was

  his name. Oh.”

  He peeled the gum off his lunch box and returned it to its

  place in his mouth.

  That night after dinner, Jean helped Benny into his Little

  League uniform and cut strips of reflecting tape to lay over the

  numbers on the back of his jersey.

  “Do you have to do that?” he asked.

  “I want cars to see you as well as you see them,” she said.

  He accepted this without further protest. Having won an

  earlier dispute about the wearing of a hat and gloves, he let her

  have this one. Jean found the old Polaroid camera in her desk

  drawer and brought it into the living room.

  “We’ll take a picture to show Uncle Ed when he gets home,”

  she said. “You look so nice. He’ll want to see.”

  She found him in the tiny square of the viewfinder, and

  backed up until he was completely framed.

  “Smile,” she said. “Here we go.”

  He did not blink, not even during the flash, but stood in

  place and smiled at the last moment, as a favor to her. They both

  watched as the camera slowly pushed out the cloudy, damp

  photograph.

  “Hold this by the edges carefully,” Jean instructed, handing it

  to Benny, “and see what turns up.”

  There was a knock at the door. Jean stood up quickly, startled.

  She glanced at Benny, who was holding the developing picture

  between his thumb and forefinger, looking at her in anxious

  surprise.

  “Stay there,” she told him, and walked to the window at the

  back of the cabin. It was dark already, and she had to press her

  face close against the cold glass to see the vague figures on the

  22 ✦

  Elk Talk

  porch. There was another knock, and a high voice, muffled

  through the thick oak, called, “Trick or treat!”

  Jean opened the door and saw two adults and a small child,

  all in brown snowsuits, all with long branches masking-taped

  to their stocking caps. The woman stepped forward and ex-

  tended her hand. “We’re the Donaldsons,” she said. “We’re your

  neighbors.”

  “We’re elks,” the child added, touching the two branches on

  her hat. “These are our horns.”

  “They’re antlers, sweetie,” her mother corrected. “Bison and

  goats have horns. Elk have antlers.”

  Jean looked from the girl to her mother to the man beside

  them, who was calmly taking off his gloves.

  “You’re losing heat with the door open,” he said, in a voice

  that was not deep so much as low and even. “You should prob-

  ably let us in.”

  “Oh,” Jean said, and she stepped aside so that they could pass.

  Then she shut the door behind her and leaned her back flat

  against it, touching it with her palms.

  “Well, what’s this?” the woman asked, kneeling next to

  Benny and picking up the photograph he’d dropped. “Is this a

  picture of you?”

  “I’m sorry,” Jean interrupted. “I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t

  know who you are.” The family in her cabin turned as one and

  looked at her.

  “We’re the Donaldsons,” the woman said, frowning slightly,

  as if Jean’s statement confused her. “We’re your neighbors.”

  “We haven’t got any neighbors,” Jean said. “Not all the way

  out here.”

  “We just moved here today.” The man spoke again in the odd

  low voice. The little girl was standing beside him, holding on to

  his leg, and he rested his hand on the top of her head, between

  her antlers.

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  p i l g r i m s

  “Moved where?” Jean asked.

  “We bought an acre of land a half-mile from here.” His tone

  suggested that he found her rude for pursuing the issue. “We’re

  staying in our camper.”

  “Your camper?” Jean repeated. “I saw you today, didn’t I? On

  the road?”

  “Yes,” the man said.

  “You were driving awfully fast, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “We were in a hurry to get here before dark,” his wife added.

  “You really have to be careful on these roads,” Jean said. “It

  was very dangerous of you to drive that way.”

  There was no response; the three of them looked at Jean with

  politely empty faces, as if waiting for her to say something else,

  something perhaps more appropriate.

  “I wasn’t aware that there was land for sale at the end of

  our road,” Jean said, and she was met with the same uniform

  expressions. Even Benny was watching her with a look of mild

  curiosity.

  “We were not expecting to have neighbors,” Jean continued.

  “Not all the way out here.” Again, silence. There was nothing

  overtly unfriendly in their collective gaze, but it felt foreign to

  her, and she found i
t unsettling.

  The little girl, who could not have been four years old, turned

  to Benny and asked, “What are you, anyway?”

  He looked up quickly at Jean for an answer, and then back at

  the girl. Her mother smiled. “I think she wants to know what

  your costume is, dear.”

  “I’m a baseball player,” Benny said.

  “We’re elks,” the girl told him. “These are our antlers.” She

  pronounced it antlows.

  The woman turned her smile on Jean. Her teeth were wide

  and even, set close to her gums, like the teeth of those old

  24 ✦

  Elk Talk

  Eskimo women who spend their lives chewing on leather. “My

  name is Audrey,” she said. “This is my husband, Lance, but

  he’d prefer it if you called him L.D. He doesn’t like his real

  name. He thinks it sounds like a medical procedure. This is our

  daughter, Sophia. We threw these costumes together at the last

  minute, but she’s very excited about them. She insisted that we

  trick-or-treat when she saw your cabin this afternoon.”

  “We were just on our way out,” Jean said. “I’m taking Benny

  to his school’s Halloween party.”

  “Isn’t that fun?” Audrey beamed. “Are the little ones allowed

  to go?”

  “No,” Jean answered quickly, although she had no idea what

  the rules actually were.

  “This will be our only stop tonight, then,” Audrey said.

  “Though we may go for a walk later, to talk to the elk.”

  “Have you heard them?” L.D. asked.

  “Excuse me?” Jean frowned.

  “I say, have you heard the elk?”

  “We hear elk all the time. I guess I’m not really sure what

  you’re talking about.”

  L.D. and Audrey exchanged a brief look of shared triumph.

  “L.D. is a musician,” Audrey explained. “We vacationed here

  in Wyoming last summer, and he was very taken with the elk

  bugle. It’s a wonderful noise, really.”

  Jean knew it well. Almost every night in the autumn, elk

  bugled across the woods to each other. It was impossible to tell

  how close they came to the cabin, but the sound was forceful

  and compelling: a long, almost primate screech, followed by a

  series of deep grunts. It was something she had known since

  childhood. She’d seen horses stop in the middle of a trail at the

  sound and stand there, heads pulled up high, breathing sharply

  out of their nostrils, ears tensed, listening, preparing to run.

  “L.D. made several recordings. He found it very inspiring