check up on me. But they must be doing something else, cause they don't come. I can hear them, all right. They must be busy, right?'
'Sure.' I stood. 'Listen, I'm gonna get some other wood, if that's all right?'
'Fine. You go right ahead and get it, Daniel. That's fine by me. I got some birch out back.'
'Great,' I said.
Outside, I stood in front of the woodpile, holding Charlie's axe in my hands. I listened to the silence beyond the sounds of my breath. The muscles around my neck felt tight. I let the quiet sink into me, studied the grey trees beyond the clearing. Without leaves the trees all seemed to be standing alone, each one cut off from the others. The snow beneath them was like empty space, as if the roots and earth had been wiped away, leaving nothing behind.
My feet began to tingle. My toes had been frozen so many times there wasn't much feeling left in them anyway. All I had to do, I knew, was to get moving, but I just kept standing there, and the cold started working its way up my legs the way it does — picking out little areas, making them feel sort of wet, exposed. Then the feeling goes and there's just an empty patch. My knees went, then my thighs.
Behind me the backdoor opened. 'Hey, Daniel?' The spell, or whatever it was, broke. I turned around. Charlie was standing just inside the door, clouds of vapour around his legs.
'Just thinking,' I said to him, smiling.
'Thought you froze right up!' Charlie said, laughing. 'Hurry up back inside. I got hot chocolate brewing.'
'Right,' I said, turning back to the woodpile. I began pulling out birch logs. To split them all I had to do was let the axe fall of its own weight — the logs seemed to almost jump apart. But the moving around brought the feeling back to my legs.
I piled wood on the back porch, then brought an armload inside. Charlie was in the kitchen, standing by the stove.
'They must be pretty busy, right?' he asked, stirring Fry's cocoa into a pot of simmering milk.
'Who?'
'The guys who clear the roads, like I was saying before. There's lots of side roads that probably need work, ones they couldn't get around to earlier, right? Can you believe this cold snap? All night long I can hear trees cracking. Exploding, you know? It's an eerie sound, all right. Can't say I like it. Do you like it, Daniel? I've been getting up at dawn and I make some coffee and sit in the rocker so I can look out over the lake.
'That's how I first saw the buck, looking out over the lake. He comes from the far side, every morning. Stumbling through the deep snow. Uses a different trail every time. Can you figure that?'
Charlie poured us cups of hot chocolate. We returned to the den. I set my cup down on the mantle and went to bring in the birch. The echo of the axe splitting the wood kept going through my head, making me think of what Charlie had been saying about exploding trees.
I stoked the fire, then sat down again. 'That doc in the city,' I said, 'he's still phoning you every week?'
Charlie rubbed his face, then licked his lips. 'I unplugged the phone. He kept saying the same old thing, over and over again.' He leaned towards me and gestured for me to get closer. 'Tell me, do you think my tongue's turning blue?' He poked out his tongue.
I looked at it, then sat back. 'Hard to tell,' I said. 'Don't think so.'
'I think so,' Charlie said.
The heat coming from the birch logs made me push my chair back. I thought about the nights I'd spent alone, wrapped in my Woods arctic sleeping bag, watching my breath lay a sheet of ice on the nylon ceiling above me. I'd be filled with the silence, so filled and warm, with my thoughts going slow as they like to do. Then crack! A tree would explode. I'd jump, stare into the darkness, my heart pounding. Black spruce. It's the black spruce that explodes.
'I hope the ploughs come back,' Charlie said. 'We're running low on hay.' He frowned suddenly. 'Oh,' he said, 'I forgot.' He climbed to his feet. 'Come on, Daniel, let's look out over the lake.'
I followed him to the large frosted window. We stood side by side and stared outward. I could see the buck's trails, shadowed blue. They stopped at a scuffed-up area just below the porch deck, maybe thirty feet away. The scuffed-up area was spattered with frozen blood, and off to one side lay the frosted carcass of the buck, half-eaten.
'Wolves? Jesus, nobody's seen a wolf in this park for years.'
Charlie asked, 'Did you see the Northern Lights last night?'
'I'm usually asleep by seven,' I said.
'From horizon to horizon, I've never seen them so big. They made a sound like, like wind on sand, falling all around. All around. It's so beautiful, Daniel. There's no real way to describe it, is there?'
'Not really. You're right in that.' But I knew that sound, the voice behind the silence, the voice that pushed the silence into me. And I knew what that voice said, the single word over and over again. Alone, alone, alone.
'Only,' Charlie continued, 'only, there'd be this falling from the sky, right? And all these streams of colour. And deep in the forest, deep in the forest, Daniel. The trees kept on shattering. As if, for just last night, for just those few hours when I was standing out there, the world was made of glass. The thinnest glass. And the trees reaching upward. I don't know.' Charlie turned to me, a terrible frown on his lined face. 'Maybe the trees were made of glass, too. But all gnarled and bubbled and black. Trying to join the sky, but too rough.' He turned back to the window. 'Too rough. Just no way they could make it. They were reaching up, to where the colours played. Reaching. Then snapping. Like gunshots. I tell you, in certain lights you can see it — the blue on my tongue. Then the glass in the sky shattered, and there was this falling. Endless falling.'
I nodded. 'Like the world was made of glass.' His words had left a pain inside me, a deep, spreading pain. 'Too rough,' I said, 'wanting to play with the colours, all the colours. But too rough.' The voice whispered its word in my head, and it hurt me.
'That buck,' Charlie said, 'he was so strong, so healthy. All his life. You could see that. He — I built this cabin with my own hands, Daniel, did you know that? He was strong, healthy. He'd been through hard times lately, but he was all right. Four wolves. I watched it all happen. That buck, running across the lake, full bore. I was sitting in this rocker, this one right here. They took him not twenty yards from here — you can see where he first went down. I'd been thinking about getting my bear rifle, but it was already too late. That's the way it looked anyway. But the buck,' he shook his head, 'that buck, he just got up and kept coming. You can see it — he dragged those wolves ten, fifteen yards. Dragged all of them.'
'Son of a bitch,' I said.
'He'd been so strong, all his life. He dragged them all right, but in the end it didn't matter. It didn't count for nothing. I just sat here, all this morning, watching them wolves eating. Funny, they kept walking around and around him, not knowing what to do, really. What to do with it all.'
I stared at the carcass, at the gnawed ribs and purple ice-flecked meat. 'They'll be back for more,' I said. 'They earned it.'
'I'm thinking, Daniel, the same things over and over again. Funny how that happens, eh? I'm thinking about my rifle, and that taste filling my mouth. Metal. He'd been so strong, cut down just like that. And I'm thinking about this window, this one right in front of us, Daniel. Two panes each a quarter inch thick. How everything happened in absolute silence. And the only sound I knew, I know, is something I feel more than hear. It's probably psychological, eh, Daniel? But there's this tingling, like glass chimes, and there's this humming — both coming from my chest. It's fading, I think, Daniel.'
I shook my head, again and again, but he wasn't paying any attention to me. I didn't even know what I was saying no to, but in my head a voice kept asking, 'Why?' Why? And Charlie, he kept answering me, he kept saying 'Because, Daniel. Only because. Just because.'
'The strangest winter,' Charlie said. 'No way to explain it, any of it. My tongue turning bluer and bluer, getting stained deeper and deeper every time, the doc telling me it's psychological — what the hell is that supposed to mean?'
We stood there for a long time, staring at the carcass. I wanted to cry, I wanted to shut my ears, stop the silence outside, never again let it in. But the tracks were cut too deep inside me. I'm not an old man. I don't think I'm very smart as far as young people go. I was never good at things they're good at. I'm not brave, and I'm sorry for that. I really am. I left Charlie that afternoon. I ran from him, across the lake, using one of the buck's trails. I
