You must be cold, boy. C’mere. I pull at his Whoville quilt to fold it over him. He is heavy, unmoving. Getting stiffer, the morning’s harder.
C’mon, bud, this’ll be better. Til I start a fire. C’mon.
He ignores me. I tug at the quilt and lay it over him brush his ear.
My hand stops. His ear is frozen. I run my hand around to his muzzle, rub his eyes.
Jasper, you alright? Rub and rub. Rub and tug his ruff.
Hey, hey.
Pull on the scruff of his neck. Hey, wake up.
I push up to sitting and roll over, chest on his back, and cover him.
Hey, it’s okay. Sleep for a while.
Sleep.
I pull him, stiff and curled, closer to me and lay the quilt over him and lie back. I breathe. I should have noticed. What a hard time he was having on the walk. The tears that weren’t there yesterday flood. Break the dam and flood.
Now what am I going to do? Start a fire in a few minutes.
Jasper. Little brother. My heart.
I’ll start a fire. Put sticks over moss and start. I’ll cook the last two fish. I’ll eat one. I’ll.
For the day I don’t move. I keep adding wood to the fire. I leave him in his quilt wrapped and cozy just his nose sticking out. It is the sight of him there I don’t want to leave.
He is the only one now. The only sight. Which. Tomorrow I’ll. I don’t know.
BOOK TWO
I
I don’t. Don’t do anything all day. Don’t start the fire. Don’t cook the fish. Leave them on the stringer hanging from a bough. Attractant to bear and cougar. Don’t care. Get up to pee, drink a little water from the creek running colder from the icy night. Lower in its bed, the fallen tree propped on rocks upstream higher off the water. So. Retreat. Heart like the stream contracted too.
Go back to the sleeping bag and lie down next to him. Doze. Shove my leg over so I can feel his weight. Different now, wooden, but it is him. Drink in the afternoon. The day cool. The sun full on the creek, on the two of us, maybe three four hours then gone. Can smell the fish now. So.
Keep the tarp rolled back and wait for night. What was that song?
Sometime in the night, sometime when the Twins are over the canyon, I think about the sled and the rifle inside it. What to do with it. I feel the weight of Jasper on my knee where I have wedged it beneath him and I think: He would not approve, no. He would say: what? He wouldn’t say a thing. He never left his post ever, he would give me strength that way. We never leave our posts do we? This is just who we are.
Sometime under Gemini I fall asleep.
It is the third day. At daybreak I shift, feel him in the quilt and have a moment. A moment where I have forgotten and then a moment where I remember and still expect him to stir. Fully expect him to resurrect. Because he could. We have defied everything haven’t we? Why not this?
And then I sob. Sob and sob. And rouse myself and carry him in the quilt curled, carry him just under the trees and begin to dig. With a stick, with a flat rock, with my fingers.
Most of the morning until it is deep enough to discourage a bear. Fitting. This was one of our favorite camps in the world. Year after year. If his spirit could look out. To the changing creek, season to season. I lay him in wrapped in the quilt and I say
Goodbye, bud. You are Jasper. My heart. We are never apart, not here, not there.
Then I scrape back in the dirt.
I spend the rest of the day gathering stones. Cobbles, eggs, heavy rocks. Smoothed and rounded by the stream. I build a mound as high as my chest. In the top I don’t know what to put. I take off my old wool sweater. As much his smell as mine. I lay it over the top and pile on more rocks. To dissolve there like a prayer flag his smell and mine washing in the seasons. As if I could cover him.
Then I load up the sled and walk upstream.
Twenty times today I stopped and turned as if to call. Hey keep up. Twenty times I rolled my shoulders back into the hill. Put my head down, feet to the track.
Stopped once, turned my face full into the sun, eyes closed, let the light sear my tears. Tipped my head back further, a coyote in full throat.
The creek on my right crashing over a ledge. The sun overwhelming eyelids, pouring down like heavy water.
If there is nothing else there is this: to be inundated, consumed.
It is not that there is nothing left. There is everything left that was before, minus a dog. Minus a wife. Minus the noise, the clamor of.
We think by talking and talking we can hold something off. Well. I couldn’t, could I? You couldn’t. You went along because you thought that was your job. Was I a fool? Were we both? To love is to take one side of the argument and hold it fast unto death. To land on one side with both feet. Or all four, huh, bud?
We fools going up the trail, two fools, now one.
There is a pain you can’t think your way out of. You can’t talk it away. If there were someone to talk to. You can walk. One foot the other foot. Breathe in breathe out. Drink from the stream. Piss. Eat the venison strips. Leave his venison in the trail for the coyotes the jays. And. You can’t metabolize the loss. It is in the cells of your face, your chest, behind the eyes, in the twists of your gut. Muscle sinew bone. It is all of you.
When you walk you propel it forward. When you let go the sled and sit on a fallen log and. You imagine him curling beside you in the one patch of sun maybe lying over your feet. Not feeling so well. Then it sits with you, the
