"Take Phillip here: a tragic case, a despicable man, but what a cook."
Ross motioned for wine, and the girls came.
"Tonight we have a prize!"
On cue the girls came back from the cold pantry marching into the great long kitchen like graduates, three of them carrying a roll of paper that looked like rifles wrapped for transport across lines of state; they angled awkwardly; the cook waved them impatiently; Old Ross clapped his hands to the rhythm of their struggle. It was a heavy surprise.
Finally to the Frenchman's mis-en-place the girls dumped the package.
"Bring one here, Phillip."
The cook rolled his eyes, and from the paper hefted into the light a great dead fish, three feet long; by the strain the Frenchman showed it had to weigh the same as one of those girls.
Witten placed his cigarette on the floor, "It's a trout." He said.
Old Ross with the piggish smirk of his drunkeness said, "Caught yesterday."
The cook slapped the brown trout down on the table, an impressive declaration of it's weight, that noise -- a triple exclamation point.
Witten reached, and touched the cool dry scales, "Where was it caught ?"
"I can take you to the place," Ross said, "The only place where they can be found; a different place. For tomorrow?"
"It's a beautiful fish." Witten said.
"Just a baby." Ross said.
"Lake Geneva." Witten said.
And again, with serene finality, "Lake Geneva. Tomorrow. Before dawn."
Old Ross's smile went away, he sunk into his heft, "An early start. Snap, snap, Phillip." The cook took the fish back, and chopped off the head with a hatchet.
They ate soon after; they drank wine late on from Phillip retiring, the girls at the perimeter of the room waiting on Old Ross to order up more wine or bread, which he did often, as he recalled to his guest the expeditions evidenced by the game so carefully displayed throughout the house: the Canadian bears; the lions; Africa in '22, Tasmania in '27. Of his exploits he told for himself; Old Ross was quite sure, (how, he could not explain), that this Mr. Witten already knew of these things; all the dirty work at war, the hunts, the truth from the lies; it was a viny haze, of course, that made Witten look so familiar, like a soldier, maybe huntsman, or guide, out of deep past.
It is a particular kind of drunk to wind down with talk on the poets. But here was Ross to Witten, "I presume you read Latin and Greek, and not in translation??
"I do."
"Give me an Englishman. In English."
"Then Master William's your agent?" Said Witten.
"No, no. That one? No soul. An ignorant, a void, Shakespeare. Gets himself in ruts, makes up words; decapitations and rapes -- the worst of all writers."
"I thought the bloodshed would appeal to you." Witten said.
Ross waited for Witten to avert those old eyes, but Ross lost the contest.
"Tomorrow." Witten said.
"Yes, tomorrow."
"It will be the lake, David."
"Indeed."
Witten stood, took his jacket from the seat-back, and bowed with his goodnight. As he walked out he said, "I would have had you a man for the Scottish play, Ross; your kin after all consorting with witches and demons -- animals eating upon other animals."
And he was gone. The girls helped Old Ross to his chair. He was asleep before they could push him into his rooms.
When the girls woke each other two hours before dawn, Old Ross was not in the house. They went to chores. They set breakfast out. Lunch. Phillip served them cold dinner. It was silent in the kitchen. It was the old man's wake; they all thought it. But all that day Ross lived: he passed on to the outskirts of his lands, with Witten driving the farm's truck, and not the Plymouth, onto wild paths as far as that vehicle could scramble, until late in the next night they disembarked.
Old Ross wrote the directions to continue on foot from where Witten stopped the truck at the crust of a stony hill, but Witten told the old man he would continue on with him, and surprised Ross by lifting him from the truck, and carrying him up the hill. Witten's physical strength was terrifying; he held Ross with one arm while the other produced a small leather cup.
"Take this cup. Every thirty steps you must drop a stone from it. Do this as I've said."
Ross took the cup without comment, but his thought was obvious: He does not plan to carry me back.
Witten carried the old man for many miles, slowly, listening to Ross's directions, making his path in the dark as the tree and bush closed around them; he never labored under the weight. Ross was obedient in dropping the stones -- curios polished dabs of rock. Then finally, abruptly, they came out of the trees on a high ridge, before even Ross expected, and stretching before them was the low elbow inlet, a glimmer, a ghost, the dark water.
"There." Ross said. "Beyond that island the lake opens up, and my boat is there. Bring me. There is a cabin, sir. We can stay there."
"The hill will do us fine." Witten said, as he lowered Ross to the grass.
It was a warm clean night the kind one could lay in a field and sleep on dry grass. Ross heard no insects. Witten sat with him.
"Why try to get me on the water at night?"
Ross was quiet.
"You don't remember me." Witten said.
Ross looked over, "I think I should.", and the old man again searched that flipbook of years and peoples, hunting camps and military outposts, for the answer to the face in the murk so close to him.
Witten said, "Lewiston. Drumnadrochit. When you were a boy."
To himself Ross said, "I remember."
"You were the boy who first saw the thing in the Loch."
"And you believed me."
"Because you told the truth." Witten said.
"I asked you to take me with you."
"You were a boy."
"That was seventy years ago." Ross said, "And you haven't aged."
"I have. I certainly have."
"Did you find her?"
"She was a beautiful creature. The animal was not killed for sport like your trophies: just as one day judgment will come on the Russian, Demidov; each of them that gets down here is a bandit at the perimeter of our village. Someone must carry the sword. You asked me just now to go down to your boat; you would have me go out on that water where what you hide would be as that same metaphor, and cut me down for the transgression. No matter your thinking is backward, I know you would go on the boat, and die with me, to protect the lake. Maybe it was a mistake leaving you in Scotland.
Old Ross wept. He could not annunciate for who, for what, but he did. Witten laid back on the grass. Old Ross knew he could not kill this thing beside him, so he sat and thought until the sun rose behind them, making all that was a murmur in the night anxious noise.
Witten awoke. Tied his shoes. And walked down to the lake. Walked along the beach, gathered stones. Skipped some.
From the ridge Ross heard him whistling. The skipping stones became arcing heaves. Then he seemed satisfied, and Witten turned his back on the lake, and looked up to the Buddha that was Ross squatting on the ridge.
Then there: the tell-sign double ripple scything the surface water. Old Ross stuttered. It might have been a warning had it come out. But nothing came. Let the bastard figure it out himself.
A murky tan came to the water, extending like the building of railroad track, it grew in the direction of Witten and the beach.
Ross was still.
The head breached. An anvil thrice as wide as the neck that lifted it. Ross waited for the moment he had seen before, and secretly delighted in; when Demidov had seen the creature, his people along, the one cavorting with a female on the beach as entertainment for the rest got a nasty surprise for his grunting; but the snake hung there like a gargantuan marionette swaying, never dipping, never snapping.
Great eyesight was the gift of youth that stayed with Ross, and he noticed a peculiarity: Witten, his back to the creature, looking at the sand, was whispering. Then Witten faced the creature, as calmly as if the thing had softly called his name. The snake sunk down into the water until only tiny black eyes and crown showed.
Old Ross blinked. He rubbed sweat out from under his chin. The creature snatched Witten and took him under the water. Ross slumped, hypnotized by this finale. Once the water stilled it stayed that way.
Ross touched his legs. Sensation even now. Nostalgia of days when he could climb and walk and make his way wild back to the farm; even the bad days, the trench days, were good now; days running parallel to a thing, and sighting down it's demise. He would die out here. But the man in the suit was dead. His thing in the water was safe. So be it. Not even Demidov could find his way back here. No man would come here until the world changed.
Ross laid back on the grass, closed his eyes, and let the sun burn him into afternoon. Dying time. What trip should he dream to finalize it?
A nine year old boy. Three days from sneaking out from the home, his mother's sister's, to see It, or the strange Americans who had come and spoke to him in the kitchen his aunt's, as to what he thought he had seen out in the black water of the Loch.
He went back. He thought boy's thoughts how it would not end this way, with he, the boy, sulking home in the cold morning to the obedience of a beating; to orphanhood, that curse. This was all that would ever matter to this boy, the moon shining on the ascent of that other creature; had not Americans come for him?
A lifetime later, one long hunt, the boy who became the man Ross, his farms successed, his home a museum to the miles he had walked in wild lands, followed the Indians up into the forest to the high lake for the first time, and there, tricked by the Indians, met the second such creature of his life, lost the boat, and his legs. Thus branded, thus grounded from the old blood jaunts, hobbled as if slave to the monster, Ross showed obedience, as beatings taught him, to the thing that done it. And all he had thought of in the moments when the snake broke him was : What if those Americans had taken me on? Sun fevered, his mind drew shapes as roads to and fro: my life began with a creature, and for a dream I gave that creature to Witten. A foolish boy becomes just a fool; one who stomped into the world, and made himself the killer he thought those Americans must be, until the second creature revenged him his ignorance. And all these years late, finally retribution: Witten to the creature for the first creature given to Witten -- And Why not? Why not die right now? This instant!
A dozen young men stood over Ross. Thompson guns. White shirts. Handsome faces. Americans.
"David Ross? We're gonna move you, sir."
"Why?"
"Time to go home, sir."
"Then I'm not dead?"
"No, sir."
"No. Of course not. Angels don't carry Tommy."
The soldiers lifted him. Later he felt them place him in the back of some vehicle. He thumped down through the woods. When the flap opened he saw crops.
He remembered they carried him into the house, through the empty parlor, and into the kitchen where more men were seated, eating Phillip's supper, drinking up the house's wine, and smoking so much tobacco that a fog of it divided the room horizontally.
They set Ross at his table. Phillip came with a plate of cabbage, and cup of beer. Ross questioned none of it, but ate his cabbage, and drank his cup. The house girls waved at him from far away. Something about that bothered him.
Ross chewed cabbage. He looked through the smoke and bodies, and saw Witten sitting in the corner with three young soldiers around him, they taking his instruction. Then Witten left, escaping through the back pantry tunnels.
A young man brought Ross more beer. He drank it.
Later the polite boy came again, and asked Ross's permission to take him in his chair to the porch. Other boys disappeared through doorways to chase the house's girls.
Witten was on the porch. Smoke rings. The boy put Ross in his usual place as if they has always been here.
"Is she gone then?" Ross asked.
Witten flicked the cigarette to the yard. He said, "The choice is, relinquish control of the house and lands to my men, live out your days here, or refuse.
"How did you do it?" Ross asked.
Witten went by that, "Cooperation. Feel thankful giving this place to me. Better than what you gave in your life."
"I was a soldier."
"And the women?"
"To Hell with you."
"The Englishman, David. Remember his decapitations, his rapes. My men stay on here, and when you die it's theirs -- the farm, the forest, and the lake."
"The creature. What of it? What is it?"
"It will live as long as I can allow."
"Will you tell me what she is? Why? The whys."
"I'm not dickering with you."
"How did you escape?"
"It let me go."
"No." Ross said.
"Yes."
"You killed her."
"No, Ross, you killed her. You killed many hers. That down there is a beast, not a her."
Witten stood up. He lit a last cigarette.
"You are a ghost." Ross whispered.
Witten said, "The thing broke you because that thing was your judge. You know that. But do not think the creature judges me. Good night."
Witten walked off the porch. One of his boys started the Plymouth.
He turned back a final time, "I let you live, David Ross. You and the thing in the lake. I know, that once, you were a boy.
He went to his car. The car went.
The girls came for Ross. Without his asking they pushed him in. They smiled at the new boys.
END
1 comments:
Great story.
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