Gary Paulsen: Brian's Return

‘‘I don’t think you would understand. Nobody who hasn’t been there can really know. .’’

Caleb nodded and was silent. Then he spoke softly. ‘‘Tell me one thing then.’’

‘‘What do you mean?’’

‘‘Tell me one thing, one part of it that I can see in my mind and understand. You can do that, can’t you?’’

Brian shrugged. ‘‘I guess so. Which part do you want to know about?’’

‘‘You pick it.’’

Brian thought for nearly a full minute. Moose attacks, wild wind, good kills, near misses, food — lord, food when he was starving — and the fierce joy that came when a hunt worked. All of it was there, every little and big thing that had happened to him in a summer and a winter, and in the end, he decided to tell Caleb about a sunset.

There had been many sunsets and they were all beautiful; every one had had different light, different sounds, and he remembered them all the way somebody who watches a wonderful movie can remember every bit of the movie.

The one he described for Caleb was in the winter. It had been a still, unbelievably cold day when trees exploded and the sky was so brilliantly clear that when he looked into the blue it didn’t seem to have a limit, didn’t seem to end. It was late afternoon and he had eaten hot food inside his shelter and gone outside to get wood in for the night. The sun was below the tree line but there was still light and the sky was rapidly turning a deep cobalt blue and Brian could see a single bright star — or was it a planet? Venus, perhaps, near where the sun had disappeared.

Suddenly — and it was so quick he almost missed it — a spear of golden light shot from the sun and seemed to pierce the star. Like an arrow of gold light, one brilliant shaft there and gone, and while he watched, transfixed, another shaft came and then another. Three times. Three light-arrows from the sun shot through the star.

It made him believe, made him know, that there was something bigger than he was, something bigger than everybody, bigger than all. He thought it must mean something, had to mean something, but he could not think what. Three arrows of light. Three-Arrow. Maybe a name, maybe a direction. Later, after he came back and was trying to understand all that had happened, he read that early Inuits in the North saw the northern lights and believed them to be the souls of dead children dancing. Brian knew it was really the ionosphere ionizing but he still wanted it to be the souls of dead children playing, wanted it to mean more, and it was the same with this sunset.

It was so beautiful it took his breath and he stood, his arms full of wood, staring at the sky until the sun, the star and the light were gone, wanting it all to mean more.

He tried to tell Caleb everything about the sunset every color, every shade, the small sounds of the ice crack-singing on the lake, the hiss of the cold sky, the rustle of powder snow settling.

Told it all and when he was done he looked across the desk and saw that Caleb was crying.

‘‘Did I say something wrong?’’

Caleb wiped his cheeks with the back of his hand. ‘‘No. I was just. . moved. . by how it must have looked. It sounds so incredibly beautiful. .’’

‘‘It is. It’s. . It’s everything. Just everything.’’

‘‘And you miss it.’’

There it was, out in the open. The thought had been in Brian’s mind ever since the police had brought him home, and before that without his knowing it. Small at first, then bigger and bigger. And Caleb had seen it.

‘‘Yes. More than anything. I miss. . being there. I feel I should go back. .’’

‘‘Is it running away or running to?’’

Brian frowned, thinking. ‘‘It’s neither. It’s what I am now — for better or worse. It’s more that I just can’t be with people anymore.’’

‘‘You hate people?’’

‘‘No — not like that. I don’t hate them. I have friends and love some people. My mother and father. And I’ve tried to do things with people and go to school and be. . normal. But I can’t — it just doesn’t work. I have been, I have seen too much. They talk about things that don’t interest me and when I talk about what I think about, what I see, they just glaze over.’’

‘‘Like the sunset. .’’

Brian nodded, then remembered again that Caleb couldn’t see. But he’d ‘‘seen’’ more of Brian than anybody else. ‘‘That and other things, many other things. .’’

‘‘Can you tell me some of the other things?’’

‘‘Like the sunset?’’

Caleb nodded. ‘‘If you wish. Whatever you want to tell me.’’

Again Brian paused, thinking.

‘‘If it’s too private. .’’

‘‘No. It’s not that. It’s more that what I’ve seen is different from how people think things really are. Television makes them see things that aren’t real, that don’t exist. If I tell you how it really is you won’t believe it.’’

‘‘Try me.’’

Brian sighed. ‘‘All right. Mice have houses and make towns under the snow in the winter.’’

‘‘Make towns?’’

‘‘See? You don’t believe it, do you?’’

Caleb shook his head. ‘‘I meant that I wanted to know more. Please tell me about it.’’

And so Brian did. He had been moving around a clearing one day on snowshoes, hunting. It was cold but not the crippling cold that came sometimes and he had an arrow on the bowstring of his war bow just in case, when he looked out in the clearing and saw a fox make a high, bounding jump and bury its head in the snow, its tail sticking up like a bottle brush.

The fox came up with snow all over its face, looked around — Brian froze and the fox didn’t see him— then looked down at the snow again. It cocked its head, listening, then made another leap, fully four feet in the air, and dove headfirst into the snow again.

This time it came up with a mouse wriggling in its front teeth. The fox bit down once, killed it, swallowed it and then listened again, bounced in the air again and came up with another.

The fox did it eight more times and got three more mice before trotting out of the clearing and away. Brian watched the whole thing, wondered briefly about eating mice and thought better of it. Not that he was squeamish but he had a deer by this time and plenty of meat and besides, it would take probably thirty or forty mice to make a meal and cleaning them — gutting each mouse and skinning it — would take a lot of work and time.

Still, he was curious. He hadn’t thought much about mice but now that he did he supposed they would be hibernating. But the ones that came up in the fox’s mouth were wriggling. Clearly they hadn’t been sleeping.

Brian moved into the clearing and stared at the snow, listening as the fox had done, but he couldn’t hear anything. He took off his snowshoes and used one of them as a shovel, carefully scooping away the snow until he was down to grass, and it was here he found the truth.

The grass had been tall when winter came. When the snow fell on it the grass bent over on itself and made a thick, thatch-like roof the snow couldn’t penetrate. It was beneath this roof that the mice lived.

Brian cleared more of the snow and found small, round tunnels leading from one snug grass room to another, little homes under the snow. In itself the grass would not have been that warm but the snow— two feet of powder over the top — made a wonderful insulator and the rooms were dry and cozy looking. When Brian lay on his stomach and looked down one of the tunnels he saw that light penetrated the snow, and as he watched, a field mouse came around a corner and saw Brian. It froze and turned and ran back. During the ten minutes he watched five more mice came down the tunnel and ran back when they saw it was open.