Craig Davidson - Cataract City

The flashlight beam shifted, providing a momentary glimpse of Drinkwater’s eyes. Bloodshot, jittery. Those eyes painted a picture of a man barely holding on to his life and sanity.

“My butane torch ran out,” he said, “and the dark … the dark is hungry .”

Duncan pulled a burning stick from the fire. I watched, not saying anything, as he handed it through the deadfall. Drinkwater’s face registered pathetic gratefulness. He lit a small fire. Soon there arose the smell of cooking meat.

“Want any?” Drinkwater asked.

“No,” we said in unison, thinking about the skunk.

We listened as Drinkwater tore into leathery meat. Almost immediately afterwards came the sound of agonized heaving, followed by the stink of bile.

“Can’t keep it down,” Drinkwater said. “Full of worms. First the meat, now me.”

All three of us sat in silence for a while, laying our grievances aside for tonight.

Finally Drinkwater said, “I have a story. A traditional tale my father used to tell.”

“Knock yourself out,” Dunk said.

“Once there were two brothers. Wolf, the elder, and Horse, the younger. Wolf was married to an evil woman. A real bitch! She lusted for Horse and wanted to see the younger brother ruined. She made seductive advances towards Horse, who always told her to bugger off out of love for his brother.

“One day Wolf came home and found his wife’s clothing ripped and her hair in a tangle. The salmon-jawed witch told him Horse tried to have his way with her. Wolf was livid and sickened to hear it. But Wolf was also a snake — he resolved to kill his brother by stealth.” Drinkwater paused. “You two ever fight over a woman?”

Duncan hesitated before saying, “No.”

“Huh. You sure?”

“Why do you care?”

“No reason. Anyway, every summer the waterfowl would moult. They left feathers on the surface of the lake Wolf lived beside. The two brothers got into a buffalo-hide boat and paddled to an island in the middle of the lake to collect feathers to fashion fletching for their arrows. That summer, while Horse gathered feathers, Wolf paddled away, leaving his brother to die alone on the island.

“The lake was deep, prone to sudden storms. Flight from the island was impossible. Deeply hurt, Horse looked into the water and began to cry. He prayed to the nature spirits for help. He called on the Moon and Planets to vindicate him. Along came a friendly Beaver. Beaver said, ‘Why the long face?’ Hah! ” Drinkwater slapped his knee. “Get it? When Horse told Beaver his sad tale, Beaver was outraged. He invited Horse to live in his dam. They lived happily together through the winter and spring.

“In the summer Wolf returned, expecting to find his brother’s bones. While Wolf was looking around, Horse crept down the shore, stole his boat and paddled off. Wolf grovelled, ‘Come back, bro! A misunderstanding!’ But Horse smelled his brother’s bullshit a mile away. When Wolf’s wife saw the boat returning with Horse in it she fled into the forest, never to be seen again. The end.”

Duncan said, “Kind of anticlimactic, Lem.”

“A traditional Native tale,” Drinkwater said stiffly. “We don’t give a fuck about your Hollywood endings.”

After a while I said, “You know we’re going to take you in, Drinkwater. You may have killed a man.”

“Just one? Can’t you let me off with a warning?”

“It’s all over, Lem.”

Drinkwater’s laughter held a wavering edge of spite. “Okay, mistuh officer. Whateva you say, mistuh officer.”

Duncan said, “Good night, Lem.”

Drinkwater spoke no more. We tended our fires, sleeping a little but none very well.

I rose with the drowsy half-light of dawn. The sun hummed against the horizon while the moon hung in its western altar like the last melancholy guest at a dinner party, too lonely to leave.

Varied parts of my body cracked, popped or crunched as I shuffled past the fire’s embers. My skin was rubbed raw around my waist, which had shrunk significantly over the past two days. The ultimate diet plan , I thought grimly.

Drinkwater lay on the other side of the deadfall, curled in fetal position. The heel was broken off one of his cowboy boots, his coat was torn and bloodstained, his hair crowned his head in a messy bird’s nest. I caught a smell, rank and rotten, and figured it was him — though who knew? Could have been me. All three of us were filthy and sick.

I walked a little way into the bush and unzipped. The morning was warm, even springlike. I squinted across the clearing as I unburdened my bladder, a small pleasure. The purple stole out of the sky as noiselessly as it had set in the night before. As my urine splashed the snow I scanned to my right and saw a deer standing fifteen yards away.

A doe. Her head was cocked at an inquisitive angle, her expression one of two that deer always wore: blithe or shit-scared. She seemed supremely unconcerned — why shouldn’t she be, facing this human shipwreck in a tattered parka? Yet I felt the weight of my pistol in its holster and realized: I was dangerous.

Its eyes were the colour of a wet branch, its ears pricked up to the breeze stirring through the trees. Suddenly, the doe’s ears pinned back. Her hind end went down and she sprang across the clearing with gangling pogo-stick strides.

The wolf passed by so close that I smelled the adrenal stink of it and saw the dark tufts of fur on its pistoning shoulders. It was the biggest one, the male. It dropped into a running stance that reminded me for a moment of Dolly. But the wolf ran with predatory zeal, covering the snow in reckless lunges that lacked a greyhound’s grace.

There were flashes of movement in the trees on either side of the clearing. The other two wolves had appeared soundlessly, as hunters do. They were closing in from both sides: a classic scissoring move, a tactic as old as predator and prey.

The deer sprang forward, head darting from side to side, sensing the threat but not seeing it yet. The big male closed in, hackles bristling in the deer’s blind side, ropes of saliva whipping back from his open jaws.

I drew my pistol. I’d fire into the air, scatter the hunting party. Thwarting the natural laws of nature? Sure, but I couldn’t bear to witness it. I raised the pistol and—

The sound came from behind me: a whistling gasp, like the final breath of a dying dog. I slanted my chin over my shoulder, not wanting to take my eyes off the deer. Drinkwater was on top of Duncan, knees pinned to his hips. I caught the blade in Drinkwater’s hand: the same bone-handled knife he always carried. Duncan’s arms were up, forearms crossed in front of his face: that intuitive defensive posture a person takes just before a car hits them.

The knife slashed. Blood leapt into the still morning air. I lowered the pistol and fired. The bullet whined off the rocky outcropping. Drinkwater rolled off Duncan and fled into the brush before I could squeeze off another round. My gaze flashed briefly to the deer. The big male had his jaws locked round her shoulder, bearing her down under his weight.

I rushed to Duncan, who’d rolled onto his knees. Blood spilled between his tightly clenched fingers, shockingly red.

“Must’ve crawled through the deadfall,” he said. “Suddenly he was on me.”

He pulled his hand away from the wound. The slash went up his forearm, connecting his elbow to his wrist. It was near-surgical — layers of severed flesh, each with their own distinct banding like age rings in a tree.

“God damn that man,” Duncan said. “God damn him.” He stood. Blood flowed down his hand, split into four streams and dripped off each finger. “I’m going to kill him,” he said simply.