Short Folk #25: Ancestor

Animals, or they could be the souls of my ancestors, scurry across the road just out of reach of the high beams. Oh how I punish my station wagon in these corners. In the full dark, that was the near dark when I stopped fishing and hastily strapped the kayak on top of the car. Now it twists and shimmies under my too fast, too loose setup.


There was a moment at the lake, after the fish stopped rising, after the last sightseers left me alone, when a strange bird made a tiny call in the dark pines and all my widowers’ loneliness coalesced into fear. I was tired and alone. I had been alone for so long. The forest and the darkness combined against me. They laid on me like a stone on the chest.


I was a child again, and my father had just sent me out after dinner to pick up the mail at the end of our long drive. The going out was fine, but once I had it in my hands and the night at my back I was overwhelmed by an imagined malevolence. I ran like I’d never run towards the houselights, all the while expecting the darkness to form like a basket and carry me away into oblivion. When I was finally inside, panting, the door slammed behind me, I realized that I had crushed the mail in my fists.

Now I feel like the night is trying to come in through the windows. And the kayak is bobbing as if gripped from above by an enormous hand. 12 miles to go til home on this thin alpine road. I hear the fan of the heater and I see the fleeting shapes of more small animals, the souls of my forefathers. Sometimes I just see their eyes lit up in the edges of the headlights. Like me, they are frightened. Why has everyone left me so alone?


I round a corner with hurtling speed and a bull moose materializes in the high beams. He is too close and too huge for us to do anything but look at each other. Time compresses. His eyes are cloudy and I see no surprise in them. I see weariness and hurt and understanding. The heavy fear completely leaves, and there is nothing now but me and the animal. “Whose soul are you?” I ask in the moment of impact. “Your soul”, he answers. And then we touch.