Sacrament Read Free Page A

dimmed by their addiction to
human refuse. It was a piece of the wilderness still; defying the blaze and speed of the vehicle in whose path it
had put itself. In the instant before it was struck, it was gone, disappearing with such speed that its departure
seemed almost miraculous; as though it had been a vision conjured by the cold, then snatched away.
    As he drove back to the house, he felt for the first time the poverty of his craft. He had taken tens of thousands
of photographs in his professional lifetime, in some of the wildest regions of the planet: the Tomes de Paine, the
plateaus of Tibet, the Gunung Leuser in Indonesia. There he had photographed species that were in their last
desperate days, rogues and man-eaters. But he had never come close to capturing what he had seen in the jeep's
headlamps minutes before: the power and the glory of the bear, risking death to defy him. Perhaps it was
beyond his talents to do so; in which case it was probably beyond anybody's talents. He was, by general
consensus, the best of the best. But the wild was better. Just as it was his genius to wait upon his subject until it
revealed itself, so it was the genius of the wild to make that revelation less than complete. The rogues and man-
eaters were dying out, one by one, but the mystery continued, undisclosed. And would continue, Will suspected,
until the end of the rogues and mysteries and the men who were fools for them both.
     

CHAPTER III
     
    Cornelius Botham sat at the table with a hand-rolled cigarette lolling from beneath his blond feather moustache,
his third beer of the morning set at his elbow, and surveyed the disemboweled Pentax laid out before him.
    'What's wrong with it?' Will wanted to know.
    'It's broken,' Cornelius dead-panned. 'I say we hack a hole in the ice, wrap it in a pair of Adrianna's knickers and
bury it for future generations to discover.'
    'You can't fix it?'
    'Yes, I can fix it,' Cornelius said. 'That is why I'm here. I can fix everything. But I would prefer to hack a hole in
the ice, wrap it in a pair of Adrianna's knickers-'
    'It's given good service, that camera.'
    'So have we all. But sooner or later, if we're lucky, we'll be wrapped in a pair of Adrianna's knickers-'
    Will was at the stove, making himself a ragged omelette. 'You're obsessing.'
    'I am not.'
    Will slid his breakfast onto a plate, tossed two slices of stale bread on top of it, and came to sit at the table
opposite Cornelius.
    'You know what's wrong with this town?' Cornelius asked.
    'Give me an A, B or C.'
    This was a popular guessing game amongst the trio, the trick being to dream up alternatives more believable
than the truth.
    'No problem,' Cornelius said. He sipped a mouthful of beer and then said: 'Okay. A, right? There aren't any
good-looking women in two hundred miles, besides Adrianna, and that'd be like fucking my sister. Okay? So,
B. You can't get any decent acid. And C
    'It's B.'
    'Wait, I haven't finished.'
    'You don't have to.'
    'Fuck, man. I got a great C.'
    'It's the acid,' Will said. He leaned towards Cornelius. 'Right?'
    'Yeah.' He peered at Will's plate. 'What the hell's that?'
    'Omelette.'
    'What did you make it with? Penguin eggs?'
    Will laughed, and was still laughing when Adrianna came in out of the cold. 'Hey, we got more bears at the
dump,' she said, her Southern drawl perfectly mismatched with every other detail of her appearance and
manner, from her badly trimmed bangs to her heavy-booted stomp. 'At least four of 'em. Two adolescents, a
female and a huge male.' She looked first at Will, then at Cornelius, then back at Will. 'A little enthusiasm,
please?'
    'Just give me a few minutes,' Will said, 'I need a couple of cups of coffee first.'
    'You've got to see this male. I mean-' she was struggling for the words - this is the biggest damn bear I ever
saw.'
    'Maybe the one I saw last night,' Will said. 'Actually we saw each other. Outside Guthrie's place.'
    Adrianna unzipped her parka and