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Show 176 be the beneficiary. He reexperienced the blood. Now djfofed, now congealed by the insistent wind, it tightened on his thigh. He stopped. There was a break in the trees, and Hunt could stare off into a grey and general distance, toward the valley. How spare! How spare this place, this sky, this month, now seemed. And how much sparer the trail! How much sparer, Hunt's heart: How it refused to leap or carome as it had been doing. Today, there was no sudden burst into tears like May; now he felt . . . removed, toughened. Some color, some memory, some live and sudden thing in Spring had made the crying happen, but today . . no spilling, no excess, no wasting. How often, heedlessly, he had subjected others. Well, it was almost gone now. He was leaner. Harder. He was learning. He was giving up. Suddenly, to Hunt's left and up a tufted slope, smaller life moved. A creature's shiver caught Hunt's attention and Hunt turned and saw a small, sleek but somehow-broken-looking animal holding a protected place. Weasel, Hunt thought. Then: otter . . . mink. What the sad animal was -- Hunt, two hours later identified -- was a marten, a pine marten. And it trembled, barely up the slope from him: two feet long, tawny brown, but damaged or starved. Spiritless. As if it would slough its existence off. Hunt regarded it. The marten regarded Hunt. Hunt remembered, winters ago, the wounded and bleeding deer in New Hampshire, in the snow, when he had gone out in search of the near-ghost of Leah. And he remembered Victoria Speer, fragile and maimed, the touching vision of some Adoration he had painted in Las Vegas. The marten's eyes seemed to weep; they floated, jellied. The animal made no movement; only its fur shook. |