The Lion Returns Page 4

  Paul Klaplanahoo had gone to work on an uncle's fishing trawler, so Curtis traded in his 115-pound Disston on a new, 65-pound McCullough, figuring to single-hand it. Lars Severtson was skeptical. "I doubt even you can do it by yourself," he said. "You're strong enough the bucking will go okay, but some of those firs are six, seven feet through. With those handlebars, cutting the slant on the undercut will be a bear and a half."

  Curtis said if he had to, he'd cut the slant with the ax.

  Single-handing proved beastly hard, wearing a heavy, waterproofed canvas jacket and pants against the rain and the devil's-club. And while his spiked boots, for the most part, kept him from slipping on fallen trees, they didn't help a lot on steep slopes. The first couple of days he seriously considered taking a day or two off, and finding a partner after all. But that would complicate life, and besides, single-handing was a challenge he'd come to enjoy. By Christmas the work was going smoothly, and he felt stronger than ever before in his life. The rain, the cold, the slippery footing, the incredibly heavy work—none of it bothered him. Between the job and his little family, he was enjoying life immensely.

  He was 45 years old.

  * * *

  The rains had been frequent, sometimes persistent, and occasionally heavy. On February 17, a major storm blew in. The rain poured, and the wind made woods-work dangerous. At noon, Lars pulled everyone out of the woods who hadn't come out on their own. Macurdy loaded his gear in the back of his pickup and started home. Where the road crossed draws, the creeks were bankful, and in one place an overtaxed culvert threatened to wash out.

  When he got home, the Chevy was gone, with Mary and the baby. Why they might go to town on that particular day, he couldn't imagine, short of injury or illness. Tight with apprehension, he stowed his gear in the shed, then got back in the pickup and started after them.

  Three miles down the road, he found the Chevy. Another culvert had begun to wash out. The car had hit it, gone out of control, and smashed into a tree. Mary was dead, her chest crushed by the steering column. Little Hilmi was gone, her basket thrown out an open door.

  Macurdy howled, grasped the tree with his big hands and beat his head on its trunk. Abruptly he stopped, and began thrashing around in the brush and devil's-club, looking for Hilmi. Not there. In the creek then. He broke into a trot, bulling through the brush along the stream bank, watching for the basket. Within a hundred yards he found it, bobbing upside-down, lodged against the limbs of a fir that had fallen across the stream. He plunged into the turbid rushing water, normally not knee-deep, now above his waist. Dropping to his knees in it, he groped among submerged branches, searching by feel.

  After several minutes, blue with cold, he clambered dripping from the water, bellied over the fallen fir, and charged stumbling downstream again. He was too distraught to draw warmth from the Web of the World; it didn't occur to him.

  An hour later, other loggers, who'd found his pickup and the wrecked car, found Macurdy. Like some huge beaver, he was groping beneath another blowdown, submerged. They saw him when he came up for air. He did not resist when they dragged him from the icy water.

  They took him to town with them. He sat dumbly, shivering violently despite the heater blowing on him, whether from shock or cold they didn't know.

  * * *

  Wiiri and Ruth Saari took him in that night. They were as close to kin as he had in Nehtaka. They did almost all the talking, they and Pastor Ilvessalo from the Finnish church, whom they'd called in. Their guest sat slumped in a wingbacked chair, wearing flannel pajamas and a bathrobe belonging to their large son, off on a football scholarship at Oregon State. The wind whooshed around the house corners and porch posts, and the rain pelting the windows sounded almost as harsh as sleet. Macurdy's responses were mostly monosyllables. At length the pastor put his raincoat on to leave. Only then did Macurdy speak at any length. "Thank you, Pastor," he said. "Thank you, Wiiri. And Rudi. You've helped. You've all helped." Then he relapsed.

  After the pastor left, Wiiri helped Macurdy to the guest room. "Sleep," he said from the door. "You won't feel good in the morning, but at least you'll feel alive."

  * * *

  Macurdy lay for some while in a sort of stupor. After a time, it seemed to him that Mary was there in the room. Mary and someone else, whom he could sense but not see. "Hello, darling," Mary said. "Do you know who's with me?"

  He stared, unable to respond.

  "It's Hilmi, dear. Our daughter. We're fine. We're both fine. And you will be. You'll be fine too. We love you very much."

  Through brimming eyes he watched her fade, then sobbed himself quietly to sleep.

  * * *

  The funeral was on February 21, in the Finnish church. A double funeral. Little Hilmi's body had been found floating in the Nehtaka River, a remarkable distance downstream from where she'd died. Her casket was kept closed.

  By that time Macurdy was functional, but seemed an automaton. A number of Severtson's loggers attended. Most were as uncomfortable in church as they were in suits. They'd have loved to carry him off to a tavern with them, get him drunk and hear him laugh. But it was, of course, out of the question.

  He was more alert than he seemed. When Margaret Preuss came in with her new boyfriend, he wondered how long this one would last.

  Wiiri gave the eulogy, breaking once despite his Finnish stoicism.

  After the service, the attendees filed past, most murmuring condolences, the loggers shaking Macurdy's strong hand with their own. But afterward, the only one he remembered clearly was Margaret. She said nothing, but her eyes, her smile, bespoke satisfaction. Victory.

  She had no idea how close she was to having her throat crushed in his hands. But he had places to go, and though he didn't consciously know it, things to do.

  PART TWO

  The Lion Returns

  Kurqôsz stared down from his seven-foot-eight-inch height. His eyes seemed greener, his bristly hair more red, his skin more ivory than Macurdy remembered. His easy laugh was amiable and chilling.

  "What then, you ask? Why, we will conquer, as our distant ancestors did in Hithmearc. And do what we please. First of all it will please us to punish the ylver for escaping us. Then we will domesticate the other peoples who dwell there, culling the intransigent. Cattle are invariably more profitable than their wild progenitors."

  Crown Prince Kurqôsz in a dream

  by Curtis Macurdy while at Wolf Springs

  8 Good-byes and Farewells

  In a black mood, Macurdy sold the house in town to Wiiri, from whom he'd bought it. He was leaving Nehtaka County, he said, leaving at once. Wiiri bought the pickup, too, and the saw. As a small-town entrepreneur, he bought and sold a lot of different things.

  Mary's Aunt Hilmi offered to broker the sale of the quarter section and its buildings for him. She had wealthy connections in Portland. He said he didn't want to wait, and didn't want anything further to do with the place. So she bought it herself, for what seemed to him a lot of money. She warned him she expected to make money on it. He told her good enough, and welcome to it.

  Having converted almost everything he owned into cash, he deposited it in the Nehtaka Bank, in a savings account. The banker suggested more lucrative investments, but he refused them. He then willed it all to his parents, their heirs and assigns, with Frank as executor.

  Wiiri had suggested he keep the pickup for transportation, but Macurdy said the railroads and Greyhound would provide all the transportation he needed. When Wiiri asked where he was going, he said to visit his parents. From there, he added, he expected to leave the States, and go to the country his first wife had come from.

  He did not, of course, specify the country.

  * * *

  On the 2,400-mile train ride to Indiana, he had abundant uninterrupted time. To think, if he cared to. Some of it he spent watching the mountains slide by, and the Great Plains. Saw pronghorn and coyotes, cattle gathered around toadstool-shaped haystacks, and great expanses of snow. Som
e of it was spent brooding on the past, and on what might have been. And much he spent reading—a Max Brand novel and Blue Book—escapist adventures.

  But he spent none of it planning his future. He already knew what he'd do for his parents. As for himself, he had only intentions of a general sort. He didn't know what conditions he'd find.

  One thing though he'd surely do: learn whether Varia was still married. She probably was, and her ylvin lord was a hell of a good man, any way he looked at it.

  * * *

  He spent several days on the farm with his parents. They lived now in the house where Will had lived, and Varia. Frank Jr., his wife and children, lived in the larger house. Curtis told them of losing his wife and daughter, and that he was going to the country where Varia was. "Who knows?" he said. "Maybe she lost her husband. Maybe we can get back together." It was an explanation, something to ease them, and who could say it wouldn't happen.

  Frank Sr. and Edith weren't surprised at his youth. After they'd seen Curtis in '42, Charley had told them the family secret, about its occasional men who didn't age. Now Frank and Edith, in turn, told Frank Jr. and his wife. Curtis transferred his account in the Nehtaka Bank to one in Salem, Indiana. He made Frank Sr. a signator, and told him to manage it however he saw fit, for their parents' benefit. The money spooked Frank—he wanted nothing to do with it. But when Curtis countered that his only alternatives were lawyers and bankers, Frank reluctantly agreed.

  He also had a new will drawn up—the old one retailored to Indiana law. He then told Frank he didn't expect ever to be back.

  It was easy to leave Indiana again. The only things he took with him were the knife given him by the Ozian shaman, Arbel, along with several silver teklota and a couple of gold imperials. He'd left them in a dresser drawer when he'd gone to Oregon in '33, and it seemed to him he should have them when he returned to Yuulith.

  * * *

  It was a Saturday when Macurdy got off the train in Columbia, Missouri. Charles Hauser was there to meet him. They gripped hands, then to Macurdy's surprise, Hauser threw his arms around him and hugged him.

  "God but it's good to see you, Macurdy!" he said. He stood back with his hands on the larger man's arms, grinning at him. "You don't know how good! And you're hard! Hugging you is like hugging an oak!" He stepped back half a step. "And young-looking! It's those ylvin genes, sure as heck. It was never real to me before that you wouldn't age, but you look as if you'd skipped those seventeen years."

  Curtis shook his head. "They weren't skipped."

  Hauser waited for him to elaborate, and when he didn't, spoke to fill the vacuum. "I didn't realize, till you phoned, how much I needed someone to talk with about the years in Yuulith. It was like an itch with no one to help scratch. An itch I'd gotten used to, but I still feel it from time to time."

  Hauser had long since given up on ever hearing from Macurdy. They'd said good-bye on a showery spring day in 1933, at the Greyhound depot in St. Louis. Macurdy had Hauser's family's address, and had promised to write when he got settled, but never had. Then, three days past, Hauser had gotten a phone call. Macurdy had found him through Hauser's brother, on the farm in Adair County.

  "Have you eaten lunch?" Hauser asked.

  "No, I haven't."

  "Good. I know a place." He laughed. "Chinese. The food's not great, but the help doesn't understand much English, so we can talk freely. There are things you need to know before you meet my wife. Our stories need to gibe."

  They sat over lunch for an hour and a half, getting refills on the tea. Macurdy said little, mostly monosyllables. It was Hauser who talked, his story beginning with their return from Yuulith. Before he could go back to the university and complete his graduate work, he'd realized, he'd have to account for the years he'd been gone. He and Professor Talbott. And if he'd told the real truth, the university would have dismissed him promptly as insane.

  So before returning home to Adair County, he'd lived for several weeks in a flophouse in St. Louis. His days and evenings he'd spent in the downtown library, doing research for a fictional explanation that might be believed. The result was a story almost as bizarre as the truth, but far more acceptable.

  The '30s were a period when stories by Melville, Stevenson, London, Conrad, Maugham—and films based on them—had made the little known reaches of Oceania seem both real and romantic to millions. Hauser laughed. "Before the war put it in a different light, and changed all that.

  "I had more than ten years to account for, in a way that explained Talbott's absence, and why I hadn't notified anyone. What I came up with explained other disappearances around Injun Knob, as well.

  "A number of banks had been robbed in the mid-South, in the years after the First World War. My story was that several bank robbers had holed up on an old farm near Neeley's Corners, and Talbott and I ran into them by accident. They didn't know how much we knew, so they tied us up. What they were doing, actually, was financing a gun-running operation for would-be rebels in Peru, the APRA."

  Hauser had shifted into a delivery sounding like personal history instead of fiction. "From there they took us with them as captives and flunkies, on an auxiliary schooner headed for Peru. We went through the Panama Canal bound hand and foot in a storage locker. Once in the Pacific, the schooner's crew murdered the bank robbers and headed west for the Orient. Apparently the captain knew about the money, and decided he had better uses for it than to finance rebellion.

  "And they took Talbott and me along, still as flunkies. We knew only that we were headed west. Neither of us spoke Spanish, but both of us heard the name Manila repeatedly. After a few weeks, we ran into a bad storm. The schooner lost her masts, the diesel broke down, and she was half-filled with water. Our captors abandoned her in the lifeboat, leaving us behind.

  "That night the storm died down, and we were still afloat. The next day we got lucky—another small sailing ship picked us up. We had no idea what language they spoke to each other. To us they spoke pidgin, but no more than they needed for giving orders. We were still flunkies."

  Hauser grunted musingly, as if remembering those times. "Eventually we got to some godforsaken islands, their home. And Talbott's grave. I don't know what he died of. He seemed to just wear out. I was still pretty much a slave, not treated badly, but worked hard.

  "Most of the people were fishermen and subsistence farmers, but some of their men were in interisland trade, hauling goods on their homemade sailing ships. And some I suspect were pirates. I still don't know where I was. The Malay Archipelago probably, or the Moluccas. Like the crew, the people spoke pidgin to me. Later I was taken as crew on another sailing vessel, and ended up on still another island, where I was put to work husking coconuts."

  He made it sound as if it had really happened. "From there," Hauser continued, "I worked my way on different boats, figuring that sooner or later I'd get somewhere civilized. Eventually I wound up at Batangas, in the Philippines. It felt literally like a dream, seeing stores, carremetos, even motor vehicles—and actually being answered in English! You can't imagine what it was like. Except, of course, you can."

  He grinned at Macurdy. "We can account for you as an orphaned kid I took under my wing, on a tramp steamer from Manila. You were eight years old."

  Concocting the story had been the easy part, he went on. Learning enough to make it real and convincing had taken most of his time. Finally he'd left St. Louis, and hitchhiked to his family's farm, where he'd spent the summer working for his older brother. In September he went back to the university. After rehabbing and updating his science, he'd been hired as a teaching assistant, and completed his master's studies. Then he'd been hired as an instructor, and later promoted to assistant professor.

  "It's been a good life, Macurdy," he finished. Serious now. "The bad times—the years of slavery in Oz—don't seem as bad in retrospect. 'Time heals' can be more than a cliché' He paused, then added: "If you let it."

  He looked at his watch. "It's time to take you home with
me. Grace will wonder if something's happened to us. Later we'll go somewhere and talk some more. And I'll nag you till you open up to me."

  * * *

  Hauser's home was a pleasant bungalow near the campus. His amiable, middle-aged wife made Macurdy welcome, and did not ask intrusive questions. They sat around and talked idly about current affairs—political, international, the approaching baseball season...

  After supper, Hauser excused himself and Macurdy, and they "went for a long walk." The evening was mild for early March, but coats were welcome. Briefly they walked around the campus, talking idly again, Hauser nudging Curtis verbally, trying still unsuccessfully to draw him out. Then they went to Hauser's office in the Physics Building, hung up their coats and sat down.

  "So," Hauser said bluntly. "What brought you here? Obviously it wasn't any compulsion to tell me what you've been doing. You haven't said 'peep' about your life."

  Curtis sat silently for another long moment. "I'm heading for Injun Knob," he said at last. "I'm going back to Yuulith."