Russell Banks - Cloudsplitter

He handed the open knife back to me, turned, and left the cave for the world outside, while I dropped precipitously down a well of darkness, his words echoing in my ears as I tumbled and pitched and turned — descending into myself once again: no-man.

In time, my torch flickered and finally went out and fell over, hissing like a snake against the ice it had fallen on. I stood alone in the darkness and cold of the cave like that for a very long while, before I stirred and groped along the granite wall and found my way back out. By the time I stumbled back into our camp below, Lyman had wrapped himself in his blanket and was asleep at the further end of our lean-to, or appeared to be. I drew my blanket around me and curled up opposite him. But I did not sleep. Like a dead man, I lay with my eyes wide open, unblinking, staring at the night sky, with no words and no human voice in my ears but the words and voice of Lyman’s terrible truth.

For the two days that followed, we worked in near silence, speaking to one another politely but only when necessary, as we chopped trees and roots and pried, rolled, and lugged stones off the path that led through the mountains to the Tahawus mining camp. What was there now to say? It had already all been said — and Lyman’s final words to me in the ice-cave had permanently closed off any further conversational intimacies between us. I had not told him what by me still wanted telling, but he had made it clear that whatever I might say, it needed no hearing from him, and I could only accept that judgement.

Hard labor it was, then, made harder by the silent distance that stretched between us, and at night we fell back into our respective nests and dropped quickly into sleep. Days, it rained periodically and then cleared, and raggedy blue skies appeared overhead for a while, and then it rained again. For the most part, Lyman and I worked separately and as far from one another as possible. The nights were cool, and a steady wind blew out of the southwest up along the narrow defile, twitching the high pines and spruce trees into their raspy, long song.

We were now well beyond the crest of the pass, and as we worked our way further along it, the burble of south-flowing rills and brooks soon became the crash and thrum of a large stream — the Opalescent, which emptied into Lake Colden below and then became the headwaters of the mighty Hudson. At night, we heard the gruff cough of a bear, the distant howl of wolves, the dour call of the owl, and at dawn the song of the whip-poor-will and the wood thrush, and the raucous cries of ravens on the heights. But our human voices rarely joined the forest chorus, rarely intruded on our private thoughts or broke our self-imposed solitudes.

On the morning of the third day following our visit to the ice-cave, we came out of the long, forested gorge onto the northern shore of Lake Colden, which stretched before us black and glittering in the sun. From the marshy shore on our right where the Opalescent emptied into the lake, a pair of loons rose like scratches on the sky and crossed overhead, disappearing into the spruce forest. A broad grove of drowned trees spread along the further shore, standing like the gaunt pikes of a medieval army. For a while, we worked our way along the western shore of the oval lake, keeping to the high, dry ground amongst beeches and hickory trees, blazing the trees to mark the trail, and moving at a pretty good clip, for the ground was relatively smooth now and there was not much heavy cover — ferns, briars, and hackberry thatch, mostly, due to its having been scorched a few years back by fire.

By midday, we were nearly past the lake and were about to re-enter the deep forest that for a mile or so of short ridges and gullies led gradually downhill to the mining camp; we expected to finish our job and reach the camp by dark. It had become our habit to stop at noon to rest and eat dried venison and apples and corn bread, gone stale by now, and Lyman, who had been working a few rods ahead of me, leaned his axe and crowbar against a birch tree and headed on a line towards a narrow, flat rock that extended a ways into the lake. I put my tools and pack down and followed, not for companionship anymore, but because his pack held our small stock of food.

Although it was a seasonably cool day, the sun shone down brightly, and the sky was cloudless and stark blue, a taut blanket that stretched from horizon to horizon. In a moment, I had caught up to Lyman, who was pushing his way through a chest-high thicket of willows. We were in a low, wet place and could see but the tip of the rock just beyond the willows, and only now and then. I cut to his right, following what appeared to be an easier path to the rock, and when I came out of the thicket, Lyman was on my left and a few feet behind me. He was still struggling to get through the willows. But when I turned and extended my hand to help him, he had ceased moving altogether. On his sweating face was sheer terror — as if he had seen Satan or God.

I turned slowly around, moving just my head, and saw what terrified him, and it terrified me as well — a long, tawny-gray mountain lion backed up to the edge of the rock, with nothing but the glittering lake behind it and dark water on both sides and we two puny humans in front. The lion had been surprised by our sudden, upwind approach, and now it no doubt believed itself trapped by the water and by us. The animal was no more than ten feet from me, its great tail switching like a snake. Its shoulders were hunched low and its hindquarters lower, coiled to spring. Its small, feline head was nearly all mouth, as if it had been split in half by a hatchet, with black lips and tongue and enormous fangs.

I had never seen a mountain lion alive this close, although with Watson I had tracked and shot two the previous year up on Mclntyre.

I was as fascinated and thrilled by its fierce beauty as frightened of it. I had no weapon, other than the pocketknife I had pathetically proffered to Lyman back in the ice-cave. But I knew that Lyman had his pistol in his rucksack. I stood squarely between him and the lion and had a much better shot at it than he. And I was the better marksman anyhow, and was even to some degree famous for it, while Lyman was equally famous for his inaccuracy.

I showed him my open hand, and with extreme delicacy and without taking his eyes off the beast, he drew the pistol out and extended it to me. Moving slowly and keeping my eyes fixed on the huge cat’s yellow eyes, I took the butt of the gun into my right hand, squared my body, and laid the barrel across my left forearm, which due to the old injury was as steady as a window sill and accounted in no small degree for my good marksmanship. Lifting my forearm, I aimed at the lion’s pale brow, at the top of the inverted V mid-point between its eyes. I thought I could smell the lion. I remember, as I drew back the hammer with my thumb, inhaling deeply — rotten apples — when, without warning, at the last possible second for it to flee, the lion sprang from the rock. It crossed through the air some eight or ten feet to our left and towards the shore, its forepaws reaching the gravelly bank with ease, its hind paws barely touching the water, and was gone into the brush. It crashed away in the distance for a few seconds more, and then silence. Not even birdsong.

Slowly, I exhaled and at once began to tremble. My legs went all watery. I was glad, truly glad, and relieved that it had escaped. Seen this close, the animal was too beautiful to wish dead. I was not altogether sure I could have killed it with the pistol anyhow, for I would have had but one shot, and the lion, a large male, appeared to weigh close to two hundred pounds and, wounded, would have been even more dangerous than when merely startled and inadvertently trapped on its peninsula. Still trembling, I stepped up onto the rock and sat down on the spot of bright sunshine where the lion had been taking its solitary leisure a few moments before and handed the pistol up to Lyman, who had followed me.