The following day, I still couldn’t shake the odd feeling I’d had when I left Beck. I wondered if some of the talent I’d had as a boy had stayed with me, and I could still read the thoughts and fortunes of men. It was possible that my concern upon leaving him had been meaningful and he was in danger. I was too worried to let it be. I headed back to the woods, in such a hurry I didn’t bother to bring Mitts along. I had a panicked feeling, as if I’d no understanding of the world or of being alive. I was fairly certain I’d wasted a good portion of my life. Only now did I realize what the hermit was telling me, that love was never a regret. I felt the need to thank him for speaking to me so frankly.
I’d let love take me like a river, and carry me forth, and I wouldn’t fight it any longer.
Beck wasn’t at any of his usual fishing spots. I shouted out for him, but heard nothing in response. When I went up into the woods I saw only charred wood in his fire pit. The air was scented with a sulfuric stink. There was a tin plate on the ground and a wash of silence in the clearing, except for the low calling of doves. Then I knew I was right, and that we had indeed said our last good-bye. I knew that men told you the truth for one of two reasons: when they wished to be rid of what they couldn’t bear to carry, or when they wished to include you in what they knew so their stories wouldn’t be lost. I would always know that his wife was so kindhearted she’d taken the chickens into their home during spells of bad weather. I would know that he was filled with emotion, as if he were still a young man in love.
I found him in the ferns, facedown, splattered with mud. He was wearing his long underwear. Nothing more. His feet were bare. Someone must have surprised him, possibly when he was sleeping, for I’d never seen him without his boots. There was blood on the ground, and in his hair, where a shovel or a club had split his skull open. When I turned him over, he was stiff, and I could tell he’d been gone for a while. Perhaps he had been murdered soon after I last saw him. I’d thought the trail I’d found was leading away, disappearing into the weeds. But it appeared I’d been wrong. It had led to him instead. The rider may have been waiting for me to pass him by so he might find his way to the hermit’s shack under cover of the night.
I leaned down to close his eyes, already rheumy and paling. That was when I saw that his mouth had been sewn closed with blue thread. I wondered what Beck had seen or known that had brought him such a horrible fate. Someone did not want him to tell all he knew.
I had no choice but to do as he said he’d done. I removed the thread with a knife I found among his pots and pans, telling myself it was only fishing line I was unhooking. But I wept as I did so. Then and there I decided I’d give up fishing. The sport and hungers of men seemed wretched and insincere compared to the run of life in the river. I’d do no harm to any of its inhabitants from now on.
I buried Beck in a high meadow, where the land was not as marshy and there was a long, sweeping view of the river. I used an old shovel with a half-broken handle, and had only my one good hand, so the going was difficult. I didn’t care. I was streaked with dirt when I was done and sweating through my clothes. My bad hand cramped, and my left shoulder was sore. I knew he wouldn’t have wanted a coffin, he’d have wanted me to bury him in the earth, and I did so. That is the way of my people; we bury our own dead as a final and lasting gift. I said the prayers I’d been taught as a boy and tore my shirt, for this was the only way I knew how to mourn. Standing there, I felt I had lost something more than a man. It seemed a part of our city had been buried with him. The part I loved best.
Beck had told me to destroy his house when he was no longer in our world. He said that the Manhattan he knew would be gone when he was, and perhaps he was right in that. The villages that lined the highlands of upper Manhattan had already begun to drift into each other as the city moved northward. Soon there would be sidewalks in the last patches of the woods, and buildings to house families, and skyscrapers and highways. No one would know that deer had made their home here once, and that coyotes were spied in the dark, or that there had been wolves that had ventured down the river on those rare occasions when it froze solid in the most brutal winter months.
The wolf-dog was chained to the porch, frantic. I assumed he had seen the murder of his master, and because he was shackled he could do nothing to defend Beck. I thought he might attack me, but, when I set him off his chain, he merely darted into the woods. Good, I thought, for that was what the old man had wanted, for the beast to be set free.
I then burned the shack to the ground, as Beck had asked. I had the rain barrel readied to ensure the flames wouldn’t get out of control. My bad hand was aching even more, and my heart was aching as well, but I set to my work with a vengeance. Beck’s house was a flimsy edifice, and it went up easily. I’d seen enough of fire, and I hoped this one would be the last I ever saw. Afterward, I poured water on the remaining embers in case a flame or two should survive.