Well, the question was dismaying. Of course we’d been led; why did everyone keep bringing this up? We’d had leading by the bushel! The breakdown and snowstorm had been leading, I could’ve told Waltzer; along with Mr. Lurvy, and August and Birdie, and a bunch of state troopers—in fact, I thought sourly, even the putrid fed had been part of the old rod and staff employed by the Lord to goose us along.
Yet there sat Waltzer awaiting my reply, a man who bridled at the idea of God getting credit for so much as a meal on a plate.
“What kind of leading do you mean, Mr. Waltzer?”
He looked at me with eyes from a dead photograph. “What kind did you receive, young Reuben?”
I understood then that he would believe me if I told him the truth. Strangely enough it was a scarier prospect than his disbelief. What would you have said? Would you have spoken up undaunted, like one of Foxe’s martyrs?
“I guess we had great luck,” I said—and immediately there came a loathsome squeal from behind the bedsheets, and a weighty tumbling, the sheets themselves jerking horribly about; then out sped some wild leathery being, screeching in torment, banging off walls! Waltzer roared, like the devil must at Christian cowardice! I remembered that other poor ratfink, the Apostle Peter—how he denied the Lord and heard that rooster bellowing—this squealing fiend was my rooster! Indeed it now came straight for me—I jerked my legs up to avoid it, feeling warmth just where you don’t want to in times of panic—it zipped under the table and leapt up into the lap of Jape Waltzer, where it became a small dark pig atremble with terror.
“Ha,” Waltzer said, holding the pig firmly. “Ha. Take a breath, little one. Ha-ha—calm, calm yourself, such nerves!” You could see him trying not to laugh, trying not to startle the animal. I was trembling some myself, but it was just a young pig that must’ve been behind the sheets where Sara lived. It had dark skin with milky pink saddlestripes and tufts of hair on its ears like a lynx, and it kept sniffing through its snotty nose while Waltzer soothed it. “Sweet pig. Good Emil. Yes, yes, a good-natured pig. Brave pig,” he said pleasantly. “A little bad dream? Something with big teeth and sharp claws? Yes, yes.” Without changing his tone he added, “Daughter?”
Out came Sara. Why in the world had she stayed in there—with a pig!—instead of joining us for supper?
“Please explain this disruption,” Waltzer said. His voice was patient in a way that made me afraid. He was running his hands down the limbs of the pig, who had calmed so much as to appear dazed.
“He was sleeping out of his box, sir,” Sara replied. “I must’ve stepped on his tail. I’m very sorry.”
Anyone could hear her voice was worn to the contours of apology. I looked at her meeting Waltzer’s gaze and it was easy to imagine her moments ago, in her dim little room, spying the vulnerable tail. I peeked down at her shoes. Boys’ boots.
“It wasn’t my tail you damaged,” Waltzer said, conversationally.
“You’re right, sir,” Sara replied, addressing this next to the animal. “I’m very sorry, Emil. It wasn’t intentional,” she added, at some risk to herself, it seemed.
Waltzer hung on to her eye a moment longer, then turned to me. I heard Sara step back and shut the curtains. Dreading to do so I looked at Waltzer, but his eyes were alive and forgiving.
“Reuben, what are your plans?” he asked.
“My plans?”
“Yes sir. What is it you want to do?”
“Tonight, Mr. Waltzer?”
He smiled, scratching Emil gently round the ears. “In your life,” he said.
But I was so tired. I tried to think of a reply large enough for Jape Waltzer. Nothing came. My lungs had gotten shallower all through the night; and moreover I’d gone and wet my pants after all, thanks to the pig, for my lap was soaking.
“I guess breathe,” I said.
No doubt he could’ve taken this for impertinence, but he didn’t. He spoke to the pig. “His aspiration is respiration, Emil. He might do well to strive harder—what, Emil, are you hungry? Here is a sausage, mmm, yes. Good pig, my little cannibal.”
Davy spoke up at last. “Jape, Reuben has some lung trouble—that’s what he means.” He looked at me kindly. “It’s just once in a while. Most of the time I can’t even keep up with him.”
Of course it was the sort of thing said to appease the inveterate sickly; I still would’ve appreciated it, except it rekindled Waltzer’s interest in me. He let the pig down off his lap. “Is that right. I’ve heard of this condition. Tell me, is it hard right now? To breathe?”
It sure was.
“Here. Do this.” He sat up straight and drew in the deepest breath he could, opening his eyes wide to encourage me likewise.
I straightened and inhaled. It sounded like a dozen slow leaks from an inner tube.
Waltzer leaned in. “No, no. Make the attempt. Make up your mind and breathe.” And he gave me another example of a man’s functioning lungs, a suck of immense force and duration. You almost expected him to explode.
I made another attempt. You have to understand this was old ground to me. More than one teacher back in Roofing had been convinced I was short of breath simply because I hadn’t learned to do it properly. Or because I didn’t want it enough. How many asthmatics have been told, in exasperated tones, Just breathe?
Waltzer shook his head in wonder. “How do you even live, boy?”
“It’s usually better,” I said. In fact, all this attention to my respiratory apparatus had made it self-conscious; it was shutting down valves all over the place. I said, “May I please be excused, Mr. Waltzer?”
He said, in evident disbelief, “Are you strangling on me now, Reuben? Has the monster got you by the throat?”
I’ll say this: I kept quiet at first. But these attacks have an exponential nature, doubling and quadrupling their hold; they push every advantage and are fearsome enough without some skeptic calling you a fake.
“Rube,” Davy said, seeing my look, “you better lie down—”
“Here, Reuben, this is nonsense,” Waltzer said, about to try to help me again. “Stop embarrassing yourself. Now when I count three—”
“Shut up!” I gasped. “Shut up and let me be!” It was all the air I had. I paid for some more and added, “Mr. Waltzer.” I can’t forget how the air in the cabin turned all spotty then, nor the scramble I heard, nor the broken-bat sound which was my head striking the floor, though I didn’t feel that until quite a bit later.
Of all the dreams you ever had, which do you least hope to have again? For me it was the man with the skin bag—the little devilish fellow who slugged my gut, harvested my breath and bore it away on his shoulder. The moment of highest peril in that dream came when he crouched down peering at my face. His eyes were windows through which I glimpsed an awful country. I don’t like telling about it. The point here is that for a long while I walked in a gray place where I felt again that little man’s presence. Across a landscape of killed grass and random boulders I moved, looking for something I needed. In the dream I didn’t even know it was my breath. I thought of it as a thing packed tight in a seamed bag. I knew who had it and knew I hadn’t the strength to take it from him, yet there I was in his country. A sunless place—the cold from the ground came up through my shoes. The boulders lay everywhere and cast no shadows, and they were the same color as the dead grass and as the sky. I smelled decay on the wind. Had Swede contrived to be along she could’ve described it better. I’ll say I had the sense of walking through an old battlefield upon which the wrong side had prevailed. It was the little man’s country. I felt him approaching and lay down with my back against a boulder and shut my eyes to wait. He soon found me. It was colder every second and the smell of decay strengthened and mixed with sulfur as I heard his nimble steps. Even shuteyed I knew what he would do. Now he’d crouch—and I heard the creak of his boots as he did so. Now he’d lean down and look in my eyes—my lashes felt his breath.
“Reuben,” he whispered. “Look at me.”
What choice did I have? I opened my eyes.
Jape Waltzer’s face searched mine as I hope never to be searched again.
I couldn’t say a thing. I was confused—wondering about the skin bag. It seemed to me Waltzer must have it and that he wanted something more besides. I wilted back from him but he leaned ever forward. I saw we were outside the cabin and that I lay against it in my coat and that Waltzer was crouched in the snow against a night of misty stars.
“Ah, you’re breathing now,” he said. He smiled to reassure me, but in his eyes I saw the same dead country through which I’d just come. “Davy’s getting Fry. He’ll take you back—if you can ride.”
I nodded, dreading to speak aloud lest Waltzer change his mind.
He pressed closer to me. “You know not to tell of this place,” he said.
I said, “Yes, Mr. Waltzer.”
Then Fry cantered up out of the night. His hooves made lit whitecaps of snow and he laid back his head as though angry at bridle and bit, for Davy had interrupted his sleep.
“Come back and see us, Reuben. I’ll teach you how to breathe,” Waltzer said quietly.
Davy lifted a leg over Fry’s withers and slipped off frontwise. He gathered me up and carried me to the horse and heaved me aboard, then rocked himself up behind. I honestly had no breath. Fearing another faint I leaned back into my brother as though his were the mighty Everlasting Arms sung about, and he reached around to mind the reins and keep me upright. Fry arched his neck and chewed his bit at carrying us, but Davy ignored all complaints and we trotted up out of Waltzer’s valley. Minutes gone from there, Davy asked was I feeling better. I was. In fact across parts of that homeward trip I actually slept, but it was the good kind—free of bouldered grayscapes, I mean, and robbers who had you on their ground.