Craig Johnson - Hell Is Empty

I felt my head; it wasn’t as tender and also wasn’t bleeding anymore-the pond water must have washed the cut. “You did?”

He studied me, even going so far as to tilt his head to get a good look at the side of mine, the bear jawbones, beads, and elk teeth gently clacking together in counterpoint to the tinkling bell cones. “I was very clear. You should have stayed on the ice where you would’ve been safe.” He lifted the bottle to his lips and took another tremendous draught, then lowered it but didn’t offer to give it back. “Maybe you hit your head harder than we thought.”

“Maybe so.” I shivered again. “Gimme the bottle.”

“Not until you have really warmed up.”

“I have really warmed up.” We stood there, staring at each other, and I clutched the sleeping bag a little closer.

“Turn around and cook your front; that’s the part that needs it.”

I did as he said and moved in a little closer to the flames at the branch end of the log. He glanced around at the wreckage. “Hell of a fire he set.”

I nodded at the giant. “You saw him light it?”

“I did. He made a bomb out of one of those backpack stoves.”

I studied him and noticed that not even the moccasins he wore carried any black on them. “How did you avoid it?”

“I told you. I took the trail to our far left. You sat down on the ice of the lake and wouldn’t move.” I turned my head a little in the folds of the sleeping bag, and he extended a hand that blossomed fingers like a gigantic sunflower. “You don’t remember.”

“No.”

“That isn’t good.” He made the statement flatly and without judgment, which made it sting that much more.

I reached up and felt my ear again, then held the palm of my hand against it in an attempt to warm it back to normal. “No.” I sniffed the air, and the smell of wood fire came off his moosehide war shirt, a scent stronger than the fire in front of us.

Virgil White Buffalo looked down at me and placed an allencompassing hand on my shoulder; I was sure it was more for my benefit than his. “Maybe you’ve gone as far as you can go, Lawman. Maybe you should wait here for the others, and I’ll go ahead.”

I looked back at the fire. “No.”

“There’s no dishonor in this. You’ve done everything that you could; everything that could reasonably be expected-of any living man.”

“No.”

He took a deep breath, and the flames wavered in his direction. “Then perhaps you should tell me why going after this man is so important to you.”

I paused. “It’s my job.”

He watched me. “No, I think it’s something more than that.”

He removed his hand from my shoulder and waited, and it was that continental-drift pace, Indian wait, an otherworldly motionlessness that only the best hunters have. I turned my head all the way and looked at him, and even in the wind it was as if the feathers and the bear fur that surrounded him didn’t stir a single hair. I was afraid that my faculties had gone again.

“Virgil?” I was relieved to hear my own voice.

“Yes.”

When he spoke, the spell was broken and everything about him came to life again. I stretched my hands out to the flames and tried to concentrate on what had to be done. “Nothing.”

He nodded as if he knew what I was going to ask, and his head dropped. With happy surprise, he stared at the paperback lying beside my boots. “You’re not reading anymore?”

I nudged the book with my toe and was a little concerned that I couldn’t feel much of my foot. “It’s kind of ruined.”

He stooped and picked it up by the binding-it opened to a random page. He flipped the bloated book over and read from the English side of one of the curled pages.

“They all wore robes with hoods hung low, that hid their eyes, tailored-in cut-to match those worn by monks who thrive in Benedictine Cluny.

So gilded outwardly, they dazed the eye.

Within, these robes were all of lead-so heavy…”

He lowered the pulpy mass and looked at it from the cavernous depths of the grizzly cape. “Leaden cloaks; he is on to something there.”

I reached over and plucked my steaming pants from the limb.

“Life is like that.” He flipped through a few more limp pages. “You collect things as you go-the things you think are important-and soon they weigh you down until you realize that these things you cared so much about mean nothing at all. Our natures are our natures.” He grunted. “And they are all we are left with.”

I dropped the sleeping bag-my underwear was reasonably dry-and struggled to get the damn pants on. Without the gloves, my hands were stiff and cold. “You think?”

The bass rumbled in his chest, but his eyes stayed on the paperback. “I think.” He raised his head, but this time his black eyes stayed with the fire. “All the horrors in this book are the horrors of the mind, and they are the only ones that can truly harm us.” He reached behind him and culled the bottle of bourbon from the rocks, then turned and poured the remainder of the liquor onto the log near the flames where the fire, now blue in tint, leapt forward and strung its way down the charred bark. “I think that’s enough old damnation for now.” He gestured with the book in his other hand. “Do you mind if I keep it?”

I hastily retrieved my gloves as he tossed the bottle onto the other side of the log. “You’re not supposed to litter; don’t you remember the commercials with the crying Indian?” He ignored me till I gestured toward the Inferno. “I thought this kind of literature didn’t suit your tastes?”

He shrugged. “One can be too picky-books are hard to come by this high.” He stuffed the blown-out, spine-split paperback inside his shirt. “Almost as hard as shelves.”

I tried not to laugh. “I bet.” I took the fleece from its drying rack and put it on, picked up my jacket and stuffed my arms into the sleeves, and deposited my assortment of phones. The jacket had thawed and was even warm, but I flapped my arms around in an attempt to gain a little mobility anyway, then reached down and fumbled with the zipper.

When I looked up again, Virgil was still watching me. Patiently, he stepped forward and zipped the jacket, and I felt like I was being dressed for school.

His voice echoed as it resounded through me, and once again his words were the last thing I could hear. “Leaden cloaks.”

The forest is never silent, no matter the season; there are always sounds, and the trick is simply slowing yourself to the point where you can hear them. My situation was different, though. I can’t explain it, but it was almost as if I was laboring under a selective deafness; I couldn’t hear the wind or the sound of my own footfalls, but I could hear voices-at least I had been able to hear Joe’s, Henry’s, and now Virgil’s.

“My grandfather told me the story of how, before I was born, his mother, my great-grandmother, died. Our village was on the Little Big Horn. He said that one day when he was very young the sun was very hot and the lodge skins were propped open so that any breeze might pass through, but even these winds were hot.”

I tried to concentrate on his words and glean the warmth from them as I stumbled forward through the deepening snow.

“A large party of my people was moving camp into the mountains, and my great-grandfather told my great-grandmother to water his horse while they were gone. My great-grandmother forgot this until the afternoon when she went to the horse that had been staked out near the lodge, but when she approached, he was startled and pulled the stake from the ground and ran away toward the pony-band.”

I stumbled but caught my footing and continued on after the giant.

“My great-grandmother ran after the horse, but she tripped and fell. When she got up, there was a man there with the horse’s lead, and he handed it to her. She took the rope, but when she did, she saw that it was not one man, but two. She thanked them and then watered my great-grandfather’s horse and returned to the lodge.”