Leave Her to Heaven Read Free

dam-tender?’ Harland asked, remembering the wheezing old man who had been here when they passed this way before.
    â€˜He died,’ Leick said. ‘Died all alone here last fall. There was an early freeze that caught him so’s he couldn’t get up the lake. They didn’t find him till the ice was thick enough to travel. He’d been dead a week anyway, by then.’

    They ate toasted corn bread and bacon and drank hot sweet tea. ‘Where was everybody in the village this. morning?’ Harland inquired, remembering the solitude which had been drawn like a wall around them there; but Leick did not know. Harland watched the departing boat half fearfully, dreading to see it turn and retrace its course toward them; but before they were done with eating it was far away, and presently it passed behind a jut of the shore and disappeared. He filled his lungs with a deep inhalation.
    â€˜He’s gone,’ he said, in a great relief.
    Leick nodded cheerfully. ‘Yup. I’ll clean up, and we’ll be on our way.’
    â€“ V –
    The first stage of their journey was tedious, for the stream that would so soon become a broad river, marching through its deep valleys to the sea, was here no more than a shallow rill. They surveyed the prospect together, and Leick said:
    â€˜No use to try to float the canoe right here. We’ll carry to the mouth of the brook.’ He added: ‘You take it easy till you get your strength back. I can handle it all right alone.’
    â€˜I’ll see how it goes,’ Harland decided; and when Leick had swung the canoe, paddles and pole lashed to the thwarts, across his shoulders and set out along the half-mile carry, Harland burdened himself with Leick’s small pack and his own duffel bag and picked up the wooden bucket which held the cooking dishes and took the carry trail.
    The way at first ascended at a steep zigzag, climbing for a few rods to top the rocky point which was, on this side, the anchor of the dam. Before he was halfway up this short climb, Harland was gasping for breath. He set his teeth and pushed on to the top, but by the time he reached it his heart was pounding in his throat, his lungs ached, and he was sweating hard. He stopped to rest, mopping his forehead, feeling a strong distaste for himself. This was not the clean, honest sweat of a body lean and hard, but
the oily exudation from soft layers of pale yellow fat which overlaid all that was left, after months of sedentary life, of what had been his muscles. Once he had been proud of his fit condition, with skiing in the winter, and in the summer at Back of the Moon long afternoons of strong tramping through the forests when his morning’s work was done. But now he was a soft, pulpy, white thing like one of those grubs which live out their lives in dark, humid soil; like one of those fat, eyeless, flabby fish which dwell in subterranean waters and never feel the sun. Even his hands were trembling with fatigue from this short climb.
    â€˜I’m like a man who has been sick,’ he thought, looking at these shaking hands; and for a moment a profound and hopeless depression overwhelmed him. He sat down, his shoulders sagging. Was it worth while to go on, to try to fight down the past, to submit to all the pangs the future held? Were it not wiser and easier and even braver to make somehow, here, now, a quick and peaceful end? The world, if he lived, would always be ready with its side glances and its whisperings, wherever and whenever he should face the eyes and the tongues of men again. Here in the solitude was peace. Could he not stay here, let his body come here to its last corruption and set his tormented spirit free? Death would be so easy and so sweet.
    He sat in half-surrendering self-scorn until he heard at some distance in the stillness of the forest the sound of Leick returning; and he was ashamed that Leick should find him here, and yet ashamed too to pretend