The Exchange

For C.M.

His fingers loosened around the pistol as he slipped it into the holster on his hip and his eyes scanned the tableau of destruction around him. To his left, an empty space where the one called Jenkins had been before, his cards on the table still face down; beside him, an empty space where the one called Fitz had been blown backwards, the toes of his boots grazing the edge of the table; beside him, his brother, whose head was down with his arms in L-shapes on either side of his ears. The cards and bottles and chips around the table had been thrown off or sat in shallow pools of spilled blood. The acrid smell of gunsmoke stung his throat, mixing with the ubiquitous taste of heavy copper; were he not a trapper, all of this might have made him feel a little queasy. 

But he didn’t feel anything. It was like his brain hadn’t registered what had happened. A gurgling sound brought him back and he went around the table. The one called Fitz was still breathing in harsh, sharp gasps and barely had enough time to look before the bullet entered his skull. 

This helped him think, spur him back to the necessity of the moment, the prospect of survival. It’s hard to explain where a man goes when these things happen; some might even say that he wasn’t in control, that his brain defaulted to something atavistic or primal. Whatever it was, he moved quickly. He went out to the horses and took his saddle bag off, bringing it back inside. He went around the room emptying pockets, taking lighters and cigarettes and coins and timepieces and dumping everything into the bag. He took the pistols last, spun them to see two bullets left in one, and four in the other. He didn’t even check his brother because he knew his was sitting at the bottom of a river. A heavy weight of urgency pressed into his mind: if those shots sounded across the lake… 

But he couldn’t leave him. It just wasn’t an option. Staying and reasoning with Bill Langdon didn’t seem wise, either, and he wasn’t sure he could talk his way out of it. He brought the saddle bag outside and got his horse ready, then went back inside and picked his brother up. He was only skin and bones at the best of times, but death had given him solidity and his knees buckled as he moved forward. He took a breath and flung his brother onto the horse that he’d ridden thousands of times, watching as he slumped forward in the saddle as the horses whinnied. He shushed them and dug through his brother’s saddle bag, taking out any essentials. Finally, he got some rope and ponied the horses. He turned around and his brother was still slumped forward with his head down like he was sleeping. He could still smell the blood. He spit on the dirt in front of him and saddled up.

He took off at a trot, the small outpost still quiet, hoping that people were feeling like minding their businesses. In the near distance, from the outer dark, he saw a figure ambling along the road in night clothes holding a rifle. He got close enough to see his horse and stopped: 

“Say, I heard something a while back now. Sounded like gunfire.” 

He approached carefully and the man saw the lead horse and the one behind it with its inanimate rider. 

“Is he alright?” the man asked and took a step closer, the rifle coming up slightly. 

Before he could get much closer, the man was hit with a bullet to the face that brought him to the ground. The trapper jumped from the horse to get the rifle and slung it across his shoulder and climbed back on. He tightened his bags and exchanged his empty pistol for one that had belonged to either Fitz or Jenkins. He clicked his heels and was off quickly, silently, urgently into the awaiting darkness.

*

He rode hard into the night with the swirling blueback all around him as the horses ran nearly in lockstep. He rode until he could see the sun rise in the east, a warm glow hanging in the distance.

 He stopped and dismounted, untying the horses. He took the saddle bag from his horse, checked his essentials and set it by his feet. He only had to pull lightly on his brother for him to fall into his arms; he wrapped some rope around his chest and knotted it, doing the same to his brother. He took a deer pelt from his horse and set it near his feet. He first said goodbye to his brother’s horse, nuzzling it and feeling like perhaps a part of his brother might live on through this animal, noble as it was. Then, giving his horse’s ear a stroke, he said goodbye, feeling a tear through his heart; he’d been with Lucy for nearly ten years now and she was as sturdy as they come. In her eyes, he could have sworn he saw a glint of understanding. He reached down for the saddle bag and pelt, looped them through and around the rifle and made his way off the road, the now heavier rifle across his shoulders, the rope with heavy cargo dragging sibilantly, going down a gentle hill and towards the river he knew was a few hundred metres away. 

He stood on the bank of the river and looked back up to the road; Lucy and his brother’s horse were standing there watching him. “Goddamnit,” he said with a sigh. He leaned down, picked up a smooth rock and whipped it at them - it missed and they didn’t move. He cursed under his breath and got another rock, this time putting his weight behind it and watched as it pinged off Lucy’s flank and she snorted, causing the other one to rear back as they both ran away.

He turned toward the river that he had forded more times than he could count with his brother, albeit in different circumstances. He waded in and felt the paralysing chill of the water as it numbed him. With his survival around his shoulders and the weight behind him floating stubbornly, he could hardly generate any force and the current was going at a fair clip so he had to grit his teeth and go a step at a time. He was halfway across and the water was up to his chest when the rope went taut. He swore again and turned back but couldn’t see what the snag was, so he stood and thought, the cold water flowing around him, weight and pressure pulling him forward and backwards and downriver. He leaned over to his right shoulder and let the saddle bag slide down his arm and when he had a good grip, turned and threw it like a shot put. It sailed through the air and landed on the bank of the river - the fur and rifle were easier, and followed. He turned and went back - the rope had been caught around a barely submerged rock in the shape of an anvil and his brother floated beside it, his head bumping against it with the steadiness of the current. He swam over and unhooked the rope, then continued to walk until he was across. He sat on the bank and pulled the rope until his brother’s body lurched out of the water. 

*

Traversing the bush was hard but not impossible. There were natural pathways between the trees, and though he had to clear a path or manoeuvre his brother occasionally, he covered a fair bit of ground. By mid day, under a scorching summer sun, he was nearly doubled over with exhaustion when he gratefully came upon a brook. He unhooked the rope and fell face first into the water, inhaling it and feeling it travel through him. When he was satiated, he sat back and planned his next move: a small clearing around the pond, a shelf of rocks beside, good tree cover - it seemed the right place to make camp. He knew he wouldn’t make it much further that afternoon, so he went to the saddlebag and dug out a small trap. He shouldered the rifle and went off into the bush to set the trap, then continued to hunt for firewood. 

He had nearly filled his arms when he heard a twig snap somewhere to his left. Softly, he placed the wood on the ground and crept up to a nearby tree. An adult doe was grazing obliviously, its dark nose twitching. His mind filled with the thought of food and the prospect of money for the fur and meat. He levelled the rifle, squared his shoulders and pointed his elbow, exhaled in the way his father had taught him and his brother, squinted his left eye, pulled the trigger and squeezed - at the last second, perhaps alerted from rusty metalwork of the old gun, the doe sprinted off into the dense beyond. 

He swore again and started to walk back to the clearing, picking up the wood on the way. When he got back, he checked the trap and found a rabbit twitching, its neck broken. He chuckled, thought how God works in mysterious ways and got out his knife. 

*

The fire crackled hungrily as he bit into a chunk of blackened rabbit meat, feeling the juice run down his chin. He devoured the rest of it and went back to the creek to wash his face and take more water. He sat beside the fire and listened to the night and the fire and wind. His brother lay still, illuminated by the flames. 

“You ‘ijit,’ he said. “It ain’t enough that you lost yer damn gun but you gotta go runnin’ yer mouth to boot.” The final moments rush over him now and he sees his brother crack a smile and take a sip, look over at the one called Fitz and ask him if he was cheating. Things escalated after that. 

“Well,” he said and the forest’s thrumming orchestra of hoots and squeaks and rustles underscored him, “What am I ‘sposed to do now?” 

He looked to his brother as if waiting for a response. 

“We always was a two-man operation. You know I ain’t no good at haggling with them bigshots from the company. Or the Injuns.” He spit and shook his head, wrapped himself in the fur and fell asleep as the flames started to die down and the embers began to glow. 

He was dreaming of a canoe ride with his brother and father. They are children and their father is their father how they remember him best, with his beard and tanned skin and sturdy fingertips and it is the early morning, an early morning sun just risen and the gentle splash of the water as the paddles go in and out and they don’t speak. The water is placid; each paddle stroke leaves ripples behind their boat, each ripple forms another one until the water becomes still in their wake. Across the lake, a loon calls. It is clear and shrill and echoes. In response, its mate - the remnants of the sound seem to harmonise. 

There, in a moment of unexplainable liminality, something brings him back, back to the world that is dark and his brother and father are dead, and so fragile is the boundary between these two realms that he must only think about it and -

He opens his eyes to the night sky, a diaphanous veil over a celestial canvas. In a split second, he sensed and heard them. He sensed them through that unquantifiable sense humans have that something wrong is happening near them; he heard the teeth gnashing and gouging and ripping skin, but he heard no screams.

He sat up and saw six metallic eyes shining back at him; in the darkness, the blood on their snouts was black. He could hear them pant, their hunger a frenzy. He pointed the pistol and fired, heard a yelp and saw four metallic eyes and two of them moved towards him and he barely had time to bring his forearm up to protect himself. The teeth sank into him and he brought the pistol down to what was connected to the teeth but the teeth didn’t release so he brought it down again and again and even once more and finally, the teeth relented and he buried a bullet in the soaking mess of fur by his feet. 

The other two eyes disappeared, only to reappear behind the shelf of rocks in the clearing. Then, a howl. Like the call of the loon, it was high and shrill, but the difference was in timbre of it; there was something beautifully sinister about the sound, a violence that was built on survival, not emotion or anger or greed, but a ferocity of spirit, of this animal that was forged from timber and stone and fire and bone and ice. 

The howl was returned. 

He fumbled for the saddle bag and pulled out the other pistol. It was remarkable how fast the rest came. They filed down from the rock shelf and the one on top watched. They came low, their sinewy haunches rolling from side to side, grey fur barely visible in the opacity surrounding them. He now counted six eyes as they spread around him. Low growls started that seemed to emanate from inside the earth, from inside of his chest. The one on the far left pounced and he fired; it dropped. The other two paused and then continued to circle, their eyes reflecting moonlight and starlight. This time, they both attacked at the same time and he only managed to clip one, so they were both on him, snapping and tearing at his face to get to his neck but he rolled and elbowed and kicked and tried to get a clear shot but everything was pain. Blood. He got a hold of one of them as it made a lunge for his neck, got the pistol to its skull and squeezed. The last one, in a frenzy brought on by so much death, lunged at him and latched onto his shoulder, taking a lump of muscle and tissue and holding it in its mouth. 

He stared at it for a second, the pistol slowly rising, seemingly of its own volition, this piece of metal that had been used to kill his brother. 

The wolf lunged and he shot it between the eyes. 

It was quiet and he looked onto the shelf, holding the empty weapon and feeling a fear that was certainty for the first time in his life. He saw the two eyes that had been there the entire time and maybe would be there for the rest of time. They were an unwavering silver and he blinked and they were gone. 

Surrounded by corpses, he screamed in anguish, in pain, in delirium. He wanted to tell the wolf to come back, to finish the job but what came out wasn’t a language but some guttural utterance. From the wreckage, he found his knife and thought about turning it on himself. Instead, he dug it into the last wolf he had dispatched and started to cut. It didn’t take him long to have the fur, and he covered himself in it, the hot, sticky blood and leftover viscera sticking to him. 

He dug through the offal and found the heart; in his mind, it still beat. He held it in his hands. 

*

It could have been days, months or years later when he arrived at the trading post; to him, time had ceased to exist. 

The first person who saw him was a man tending to a wagon. He was older and walked with a bit of a limp, so it took him a few minutes to get close enough to see. When he did see, he would finally have that story that he could tell to anybody who would listen for the rest of his life, and then someone else would tell the story to someone else, and like all stories, would achieve an immortality that human beings can only dream of. 

He didn’t walk; he crawled, a thick cape of bloody silver fur around his neck. Behind him, attached by a rope that was covered in black and brown, a bloodied corpse in shredded, filthy clothing. The man stopped and looked at the corpse that seemed to be dragging a corpse: one of his arms was cut near to the bone; he had chunks of flesh missing from his face and his shoulder; he had on one boot. 

In one hand he held a pistol that had its barrel filled with dirt. In the other, a dark red mass. When the man stopped crawling, he rolled onto his back and his hand opened up. The old man stepped closer and recoiled at the smell: in his hand was half of a heart. 

The man on the ground looked up to the sun and closed his eyes. Somehow, there was a smile on his blood-stained face.