Wild Heart (8 page)

Or maybe she just wanted to keep him to herself. Later, when it was time to go, she left with a promise to invite Cam to the house soon, for a long day of tennis and swimming. But she left the date indefinite.

Chapter 5

22 June 1893

Personal Notes

Ontario Man claims his name is Michael MacNeil. Specific information hard to obtain; gives one or two answers to every ten questions. Doesn 't know his age. Claims he survived on a diet of mice, squirrels, fish, bugs, berries, nuts, sometimes caribou if one of his wolf friends was lucky. Food always raw. He hunted for food and furs, built fires for warmth but not to cook meat. Who taught him to make afire? "The three dark-skinned ones." Indian stragglers, presumably, maybe Cree or Ojibwa. Then, "The old woman died in the summer," and after that he was alone, because the two men abandoned him. How old was he when that happened? Not sure; older than Sam, he thinks, but not much.

His sense of time is erratic and unreliable. Claims he lived in a cave with wolves. Even if it's true, he can't say how long this went on, other than "until the first time we were starving, then some of us went down, closer to the water. " South, I suppose, maybe to Lake Huron.

Very briefly, he speaks of a time he spent with a white trapper whose name he never knew. No details, and his reluctance to talk about it leads to suspicion that he was abused. Says he "escaped," and kept clear of white people after that.

Rest of his years in the wild are a mystery. He either won't speak of them or lacks verbal skills to do so. Suspect a combination, with emphasis on former. Won't explain his book, which seems to have near-magical qualities for him. Attempts to discover what his life was like before "the boat in the water" also futile. Claims he doesn 't remember.

Observation: Speaks slowly and haltingly, with limited vocabulary
—
all this to be expected
—
but interesting thing is-, he seems to have an accent. Slight but definite. Not Indian; not French Canadian. Can't identify it.

All very extraordinary. I am at a loss; West ditto. What shall we do with him? Not what we thought he would be. Terrible waste if he turns out to be nothing but a man.

Michael slept like a wolf.

Not for hours, like a man, as if he were dead, but only for minutes at a time, curled up on the floor on his blankets. He would wake, rise, sniff the air to make sure he was safe. Then turn in a circle one or two times, lie down again, curl up, and sleep for a few more minutes. He preferred to sleep in the day, because hunting was better in the dark; but since he had come into the man's world he had been made to sleep at night.

But sometimes, out of habit, he fell into his little naps in the late afternoon. What woke him from this particular nap was a noise, a swish of grass. And then a soft scraping, a shoe on stone. He got up from his blankets and went to the open window, where the scent of Sydney came to him long before he saw her through the trees. The white of her dress, just that, the first thing he saw, made his heart start to pound.

She could float when she walked, glide, not bump up and down like other people. She was like a bird flying slow over water, so smooth and graceful. She had something in her hand, but not the open-and-close thing with the long handle; the sun was low, so she didn't need that thing for shade. She waved when she saw him in the window. He waved back. And then she came to him, off the path and right through the grass, right up to his window.

He was a little higher than her; she had to look up to see his face. Her hat, which smelled like dried grass, fell back, so she took it off.

"You have hair like a fox," he said. "Red and yellow together." Then he shut his eyes and pressed his fist against his forehead. That was wrong. He was supposed to say something else first,
Hi,
or
How are you.
Then they could talk.

But she just laughed, that low sound coming out of her mouth like music. "Thank you. I'll take that as a compliment. Your hair . . ." She looked at him hard, with one finger on her lips. "Your hair looks like a crow's wing. After the crow flew too close to the gardener's hedge cutters."

He touched his head, ruffled his hair, baffled. But it must be a "compliment," because her eyes looked bright and she was smiling. "Thank you," he said.

"You're welcome." She laughed again. "I was in Chicago yesterday, visiting a friend, and I got you these."

He reached for what she was holding up. Two things. One was paper, white, like a book with no writing, and the other was many pencils with a string tied around them.

"Sam said you like to draw."

He looked at her. "You are giving this to me?"

"Yes."

"It's a gift?"

"Yes."

He looked at the gift. The ends of the papers were cut straight and perfect, and the pencils were all colors, all sharp as teeth. He tried to make his face quiet, but he was too happy. He smiled with his teeth showing and said, "Thank you." Still, he was worried.
Gifts, even from close friends, should be acknowledged within a few days (no more than three) with a written note of appreciation.

"You're welcome."

Stillness between them. He hated the bar on the window. It made him feel ashamed.

"What did you do today?" she said.

He said, “I talked."

"To my father?"

"Yes." That's all he had done, talked, but he felt tired afterward, as if he'd been running all day. "What did you do?"

They both smiled. She thought like him sometimes, and right now he knew she was thinking it was funny to say these things to each other—
What did you do today?—as,
if they were two real people. Two
regular
people—that was the word. But they both knew he wasn't a regular person.

"I played golf at the club," she said. "With Philip."

She had played a game with her brother someplace. Good, that was good. He wished he could have played it with them.

"Well, I guess I'd better go," she said. She walked backward, putting her hat back on her fox hair.

"Good-bye. Thank you for this gift."

He thought she would say, "You're welcome," but she said, "Don't mention it. I hope you like it."

"Yes, I like it," he said quickly, before she could leave, and she laughed again and said, "Good," and then she was gone.

He might have gotten gifts before, but he could only remember one, his book. He took it out of his pocket now and put it on the table, next to Sydney's gift. He felt rich.

His book didn't work anymore, it was ruined by water and time and his fingers turning the pages. That didn't matter, because he knew the words by heart.

Sydney's gift was new. The paper was too white to touch at first; he just stared at it, liking it that it almost hurt his eyes. He put his nose on the top page and inhaled the smell of wood. He untied the string around the pencils, and before he could catch them they all scattered, rolling across the table. He picked up the red one. It was thin, like a twig, and harder to hold than Sam's crayons. He put the sharp tip on the white paper, but then his hand stopped and wouldn't move.

He didn't want to spoil the gift. Wanted to look at it awhile longer. Maybe tomorrow he would draw a picture, but not yet. The white paper, the sharp points on the rainbow colors of the pencils—everything was still too perfect.

When he heard the key in the lock, he grabbed his book and moved away from the table. Dinnertime already? He had forgotten to be hungry. Over the odor of cooked meat another smell floated, familiar to him now. O'Fallon's smell, after he'd been drinking out of the brown bottle. The hair on the back of Michael's neck prickled.

O'Fallon wasn't walking right. The tray made a
crash
when he set it down on the table. "This what she gave you? I saw 'er at the window, saw 'er slip you something." Stiff-legged, Michael went closer. "What'd you slip
her,
eh? Tell you what
I'd
like to slip 'er, right under them lily white skirts." He laughed loud. "Pencils, huh?" When he picked one up, Michael bared his teeth in a warning.

"Don't you be growling at me, boyo." He swung around, planting his feet. Did he want to fight? Michael wanted to. "I'll make you good and sorry, you try to play with me. Blinkin' ape. Lookit this." There was a glass of water on the tray. O'Fallon picked it up and poured all the water out onto the white pages of Sydney's gift.

"Back off!"

Michael kept coming, snarling with rage, curling his fingers into claws. O'Fallon put his hand behind his back and pulled the black stick out of nowhere.

Michael hunched his shoulders and began to circle, the fierce warning growl still bubbling up in his throat. His blood sang the old song he had almost forgotten, and he could smell the fear in the sweat of his enemy.

"Back off, I said. Back up or I'll bash your brains in. Maybe I'll do it anyway."

He waited until O'Fallon lifted the stick over his head. Then he charged.

His weight took them both down, so easy, and he was on top, the winner, fingers twisted in his enemy's hair, snapping and snarling into his face. He saw the stick coming too late.

Blinding pain—it smashed against his cheek, snapping his head sideways. He couldn't see, but he lunged anyway, and his hands curved around the stick. He jerked it away and threw it across the floor.

Now,
he gloated, drooling and snapping his teeth.
Now you're beaten.
O'Fallon quivered under him, rolling the whites of his eyes, lips pale from fear. He made a squealing sound, like a mouse when you catch it in your hand. Michael lifted his head and howled.

Slowly, cautiously, he crawled off the beaten man and moved away, still on his khees. He touched the blood on his face and looked at it on his hand, smelled it. His head was hammering with pain and the excitement of victory.

"Fucking animal." O'Fallon had something shiny and pointed in his hand, something black and deadly. Michael recognized it the second before it shot fire.

* * * * *

"Michael and I played magic tricks today," Sam informed the family and Charles at the dinner table. "We did the scarf trick and the marble trick. He cheats at the card trick, though. He always pulls the right one out of the deck before I do."

"How does he manage that?" asked Sydney.

"He cheats!"

"How?"

"He can smell it! He says he can tell by the smell which one I touched last."

Aunt Estelle clucked her tongue in disgust.

"Tomorrow I'm going to teach him how to play Flinch. I don't see how he can cheat at that."

"I doubt he'll be able to learn it," Charles put in, using the kindly, pedantic tone he always took with Sam. "I should think it would be a bit too complicated for him."

"No, it won't."

"Samuel," Aunt Estelle reproved.

"It
won't.
Michael can learn
anything.
You just have to tell him one time, and he knows."

"Really." Charles smiled tolerantly.

Philip glared at Charles, whom he disliked, but said nothing. He was in the doghouse again. He hadn't come home at all last night, and this time Aunt Estelle was recommending a two-week prison sentence: no leaving the house at all, and no contact with the outside world, even by telephone. Papa was taking the matter under advisement. Which meant nothing would happen until Aunt Estelle got tired of waiting, forced the issue, and won.

Papa was quiet tonight, too, Sydney noticed. That was rare. Usually he and Charles monopolized dinner table conversation with talk of the Ontario Man's progress, or lack of it. They looked confounded, she thought; a little defeated. She wanted very much to know what their plans were for Michael, if and when they decided they could no longer use him as a study subject. But now wasn't the time to ask, and she doubted if they knew the answer yet anyway.

She wondered something else. Would Charles pack up and go home if the Ontario Man experiments came to an end? And if he did, would she care? She glanced down the length of the table at her aunt. Charles sat at her left hand, deferring to her, constantly trying to win her goodwill. He didn't have a notion that it was hopeless, and Sydney didn't have the heart to tell him. Aunt Estelle was tolerating him because he was her brother's professional associate. Period. She knew he spent time alone with Sydney; she probably even knew he was courting her. Of course she disapproved, but she had never said anything about it. She didn't take it seriously. Charles West could be no conceivable threat; as a bona fide suitor, he was simply unimaginable. If she had had any inkling that he'd proposed marriage, she would faint dead away. And if she knew Sydney was actually
considering
his proposal . .. heavens, there was no telling what she would do.

But the question was, how would Sydney feel if Charles moved out of the house? She thought of Cam-ille's theory that she just wanted a husband, any husband, and Charles was there for the taking. Was that true? And what kind of marriage would it be if the presence or absence of the husband mattered so little to the wife? She couldn't imagine—

Aunt Estelle interrupted her thoughts to say sharply, "What was that?"