48

If the hunt continued it was silent and invisible. This made us more fearful. Were satellites searching for the infrared hue of spilled blood? Were listening devices aimed into the woods, keyed to the sound of a heartbeat, a drop of moisture falling to the forest floor?

I grew to believe that they had some new computer, each tree mapped out, each sapling with its own bar code. The old scripture about every hair being numbered, every sparrow’s fall known, was a source of despair, not of hope.

Each daybreak we secreted ourselves a little farther into the woods.

“Maybe they changed their minds. They don’t really want to catch us,” Rebecca said one night as we followed a deer path.

“That’s not the impression I have,” I said. Old speech patterns sound reassuring. I could not help sounding like someone sitting at a polished teak table, signing a document with a fountain pen.

“They’re following procedure, that’s all,” she said. “Maybe they don’t really care. They’re just going through the motions.”

“It’s possible.”

She stopped and gave me a searching look. “That’s what you told me about cops and banks. You said it was all the same—just a matter of procedure. Don’t you remember?”

We left the trees, and crossed a clearing. “Of course I remember. It all seems too far away,” I heard myself say. Rebecca took my hand, recognizing the disturbance in my voice.

Ahead was a group of trees grander than any others we had seen. Two of them were hollow, lightning-charred, but still very much alive. The sight of these trees awed us, and it made us feel conspicuous, self-conscious. We had reached a bare crest in the mountains, much of the distant summit naked magnesium, inhospitable to grass. This stand of mammoth redwoods was a final colony, and beyond was the beginning of a more sun-punished land, rocky, oaks in the folds of canyons.

Everything will be fine as long as we don’t think.

A bird twittered in a low shrub, a junco disturbed in its sleep. Rebecca made an answering trill. The bird squeaked, a query. She answered it, reassuringly.

“That’s very good,” I said. “If nothing else we’ll be able to play Vegas.”

“I think you were going to be a judge some day, on the Supreme Court.”

“Some day my name was going to be in lights.”

“We can stay like this, Richard. For as long as we want.”

Few other trees neighbored these giants. They were not rust-dark like the younger, second-growth trees, but stone-gray. “We can live on the blood of chipmunks,” I said, hoping the conversation would turn into verbal badminton, a game I could win. “And slugs. Is that what you’re saying?”

But she persisted, “You know we don’t have to hurt anyone. You know it, Richard. We have everything we need here.”

I didn’t want to say anything more.

“Don’t you feel it, too?” she asked. “We belong right here.”

A different variety of fern luxuriated under these tall trees, a larger, metallic fern, with serrated edges. “You miss your parents,” I said.

“And the piano. Very much. And everything else. Ordinary things. I miss being a person.”

I had trouble saying it, but I managed. “So do I.” I was quick to add, “But maybe you’re right.”

It had been a long time since any people had made it this far into the woods. There was the deer path through the underbrush, the earth indented with the fine prongs of hoofprints.

“What is it you’re not telling me?” she asked.

One night when I woke I could not remember my mother’s face. The names of the people I had known were wooden beads, worn, colorless. Matilda, Connie. What did they sound like, these people, when they laughed, when they said good-bye? What sort of man had I been, one of those people who say good morning, or simply hello. Or had I been the type of person who never spoke at all, always in a hurry? Had I defended killers? Had I been an expert at maritime law, or perhaps sports law, when a football player can ask for a new contract? What sort of lawyer had I been?

This had been developing hour by hour. I had wanted to keep it secret. I had been out of touch with humanity too long. I could not remember. I had no judgment. My mind was dying.

It was early the next evening.

A deer crashed through the ferns, falling. We hurried to its side. The deer backed away and reared up, trembling. He could not command his forelegs. His eyes were wild, his breath hard, red mucus bubbling at his nose.

She embraced the creature, calming it with a whisper.

There was a hole in the deer’s side. It was oddly bloodless, and I could smell the sulphur, the lead. The deer fell into a slumber, one leg kicking, its eyes unfocused.

Rebecca already knew what to do.

She sliced one of her fingers with a single bite, and let the blood flow onto the shivering tongue of the young buck. “Someone shot this deer with a pistol,” she said, anger in her voice.

She shifted the deer so the blood streamed freely into his mouth. I had never heard her sound like this. “Who hunts with a handgun?” she said.

“It was a stupid thing to do,” I said, suddenly afraid.

“Cruel,” she said, her voice trembling. “It’s vicious.”

“This deer is going to be perfectly fine,” I said. I didn’t want to add what I thought, that the nine-millimeter had passed through both lungs.

She said, “Because of my blood.”

I didn’t like the way she sounded. “Things like this happen—”

“I can’t let them get away with this,”

I was afraid of what she was about to do. “They didn’t mean any harm.”

She gave me a look. I had never seen her like this. “They’ll never do this again,” she said.

I wanted to tell her to wait. I wanted to tell her that revenge was tempting but unwise. I wanted to urge her to forget. I wanted eloquence, but all I had was silence.

She was gone.

The buck woke, kicking, lifting his head. He scrambled to his knees. And when he looked up at me I felt the keen, wordless life at the center of him.

The deer jerked to his forefeet, and then at last stood on his four hooves. He stood like a marble deer, a statue, graceful, nose to the wind. He shook his head like a dog, his tail a quick blur.

He took a step. He trotted, and vanished.

As I hurried through a scrim of young redwoods I knew what Rebecca was about to do.