OCR Text |
Show 178 to the canyon bottom, to the trail head and his car. "Okay," he repeated to the marten: "Okay . . . okay, I'm going to put you in the back seat - okay? wrapped up in this. Then I'll drive you home." A question flickered in Hunt as to what he was really doing. The marten had remarkable eyes. Sick and aequious, yes, but they were reading every breath and gesture that composed Hunt. Hunt was being studied in the most instinctive ways. He was being judged. Not a shift, not an impulse was being overlooked. Something had happened to the marten, there was no doubt. Something had badly stunned, badly bruised, badly poisoned or weakened this life - some unnatural shock, from the inside or the out - but she was not yielding vision or judgement. Hunt was being watched. He set her in the back seat, arranged the sweater, a protective nest. Then he pressed the back door shut so cautiously, so gently, that it barely clicked. Hunt walked around the car. He opened his door, using silence, -- and slid in. Hunt set his key into the ignition. He had the image of his engine rumbling to life, the marten becoming a crazed, trustless creature, leaping, clawing at anything that would give way to escape. Hunt imagined the hooks of the marten's claws in his flesh; he imagined teeth. He touched the ignition key, paused. The snow had given up beyond his windows. "Okay: I'm going to start the car up," Hunt advised, and he turned the key and pressed the gas pedal, his large Caprice starting. The marten sank into her bones. Hunt released what he hadn't really been aware he'd stored as breath. Perhaps he was practicing giving beathing up too. And what did having the marten in his back seat, being pointed for home have to do with the new surrendering of impulses? |