Bay of Souls (3 page)

He regretted coming out. Somehow he could not make the day turn out to be the one he had imagined and looked forward to. The decision about whether to shoot led straight back to the life he had left in town. To other questions: who he was, what he wanted. He sat with the safety off, tense, vigilant, unhappy, waiting for the deer. He considered the wind, although there was hardly any.

The empty time passed quickly, as such time, strangely, often did. It was late in the darkening afternoon when he heard a voice. As soon as he heard it, he applied the safety on his shotgun.

The voice was a man's. At first Michael thought the man was singing. But as the voice grew closer, he realized that the slight musical quality there reflected pain. He came completely out of the long day's trance and prepared to get down and help. Then, the vocalist still approaching, he caught the anger, the quality in the voice that dominated all others, the rage of someone utterly beside himself. Presently the words came—obscenities, strung together without a breath, alternately bellowed and shrieked as though they were coming from someone walking with difficulty. It still seemed possible to Michael that someone was hurt.

He scanned the woods in front of him, then adjusted his position to take in the ground just over his shoulder. At that point, he saw the fool.

A man about fifty came out of the pine cover forty yards away, slightly up the slope. If Michael's stand had not been placed so high, he realized, the man might easily have seen him. But the man's attention was altogether focused on the buck he had brought down, a fine ten-pointer with a wide rack.

"Oh shit," he cried piteously, "oh goddam fucking shit cocksucker."

He was struggling with the odd wheelbarrow across which he had slung his prize deer. It was a thing full of seams and joins and springs. Though it appeared altogether large enough to contain the kill, it could not, and its inutility was the source of his sobs and curses and rage and despair. And as the unfortunate man shoved and hauled, pushed and pulled his burden, covering the ground by inches, the extent of his rage became apparent. To Michael, observing from the tree, it was terrifying.

And justified. Because against every snow-covered rock and log the wheels of the weird contraption locked. Its useless container spilled forth the corpse of the deer and its antlers caught on the brush. Each time, the hunter manhandled it back aboard, whereupon it fell out again the other way, and the crazy wheelbarrow tipped on its side, and the handle slid from his grasp and he screeched in impotent but blood-chilling fury. Some men were poets when they swore. But the hunter below was not a poet; he was humorless and venomous and mean.

On and on, tripping on boulders, slipping on the ice and falling on his ass, endlessly locked in a death grip with his victim as though he had single-handedly strangled the poor thing.

"Oh shit, oh goddam shit the fuck cocksucker."

And when he stopped to stand to one side and kick the contraption—and followed that by kicking the deer—Michael, hardly daring to stir lest he be seen, buried his face in his sleeve against the trunk to repress the laughter welling up in him.

But now the fool, following the deer trail in his one-man
danse macabre,
was coming under the sparse bare branches of Michael's very tree. Michael could see his eyes and they were terrible and his red face and the freezing spittle on his graying beard. The man was covered with blood. He was humiliated and armed. Michael prayed that he would not look up.

He held his breath and watched fascinated as the man and the deer and the wheelbarrow passed beneath him in fits and starts and howlings. If the hunter below was possessed of the violent paranoid's tortured intuition, of the faintest sense of being spied out in his ghastly mortification—if he tilted back his head far enough to wail at the sky—he would see the witness to his folly. High above him lurked a Day-Glo-painted watcher in a tree, his masked, delighted face warped in a fiendish grin. If he sees me, Michael thought suddenly, he will kill me. Michael slipped his shotgun's safety off and put his gloved finger at the trigger.

Iced by fear, Michael's hilarity was transformed into a rage of his own. Oh priceless, he thought. Bozo sits up late drinking Old Bohemian in his trailer. In between commercials for schools that will teach him to drive an eighteen-wheeler and make big money, or be a forest ranger and give people orders and live in the open air instead of cleaning shovels down at the guano mill, he sees an ad for this idiotic conveyance to haul killed deer out of the forest. No more jacklighting them off the interstate ramp or chainsawing roadkill, hell no, he'll go into the forest like a macho male man with his nifty collapsible wheelbarrow. Folds up into twenty-five tiny parts so you can stick it in your back pocket like a roll-up measuring tape or wear it on your belt. It was shocking, he thought, the satisfaction you took in contemplating another man's disgrace. Another man's atoned for your own.

Finally, cursing and howling, the hunter bore his burden on. When he was gone, Michael realized he had been tracking the man down the barrel of his shotgun, every stumbling inch of the way. He shivered. It had got colder, no question. A wind had come up, whistling through the branches, rattling the icy leaves that still clung to them. When he looked at his watch, it was nearly four and time for the rendezvous. He tossed his pack, climbed from his tree and set out for the base of the granite rock where he had left the others.

Alvin Mahoney was already waiting, hunkering down out of the wind. He stood up when Michael approached.

"See anything?"

"No deer. I did have something to watch, though."

Norman Cevic came trudging up from the direction of the creek, his red-banded felt hat low over his eyes.

"So, I didn't hear any firing, fellas. Nothing to report?"

With all the suppressed energy of his long solitary day, Michael spun out the story of the sorry, angry man and his wonderful device.

"Didn't you hear the guy?" he asked his friends.

Norman said he had heard nothing but crows and wind in the trees.

"Poor bastard," Alvin said.

"You're lucky," Norman said. "Lucky he didn't look up and shoot you. A local. Probably needs the meat."

Michael wiped his lenses with a Kleenex. "You're breaking my heart."

"Revenge on the underclass," Norman said. "Nothing like it."

"Oh, come on," said Michael. "Don't be so fucking high-minded."

"We all enjoy it," Norman said. Then he said, "You know, more game wardens get killed in the line of duty than any other law-enforcement officer?"

For a while they talked about populism and guns and militiamen. They had fallen silent in the dimming light when Alvin put a delaying hand on Michael's arm. Everyone stopped where they stood. There were deer, four of them, an eight-point buck and three females. One of the females looked little older than a yearling. The deer were drinking from the icy river, upstream, upwind. The three men began to ease closer to the stream, where a bend would provide them a clear line of fire. The deer were something more than thirty-five yards away. Michael tried shuffling through the snow, which was topped with a thin frozen layer, just thick enough ice to sound underfoot. He stepped on a frozen stick. It cracked. One of the does looked up and in their direction, then returned to her drinking. Finally, they came to a point beyond the tree line and looked at one another.

The target of choice would be the big buck. If they were after meat, the does, even the youngest, were legal game. The buck was splashing his way to the edge of deep water. In a moment all four of the deer tensed in place, ears up. A doe bent her foreleg, ready to spring. There was no more time. Everyone raised his weapon. Michael, without a scope, found himself sighting the shoulder of the buck. It was a beautiful animal. Magical in the fading light. Things change, he thought. Everything changes. His finger was on the trigger. When the other men fired, he did not. He had no clear idea why. Maybe the experience of having a man in his sights that day.

The buck raised his head and took a step forward. His forelegs buckled, and he shifted his hindquarters so that somehow his hind legs might take up the weight being surrendered by his weakening body. Michael watched the creature's dying. It was always hard to watch their legs give way. You could feel it in your own. The pain and vertigo.

"If he falls in that stream," Norman said, "he'll float halfway to Sioux City."

But the animal staggered briefly toward the bank and toppled sidewise into the shallows. The does vanished without a sound.

"Did you take a shot?" Norman asked Michael. Michael shook his head.

Examining the kill, they found two shotgun wounds close to the animal's heart.

"Guess we both got him," Norman said.

"He's yours," said Alvin Mahoney. "You shot first."

Norman laughed. "No, man. We'll have the butcher divide him. Three ways."

Michael helped drag the dead deer by its antlers out of the water.

"Anybody want to mount that rack?" Norman asked. "I don't think my wife would live with it," Michael told him.

"I wouldn't care to myself," Norman said. "Anyway, it's not trophy size."

They were only a short distance from the canoe, but it was dark by the time they had hauled the deer aboard. Paddling upriver, they came to the place where Michael had dropped his flashlight overboard. The beam was still soldiering on, illuminating the bottom of the stream.

They secured the buck to the hood of the Jeep and set out for the state highway. This time they did not stop at the Hunter's Supper Club but drove all the way to Ehrlich's to get the deer tagged. When they had finished the forms for Fish and Game, they went into the restaurant and sat down to dinner. Mahoney was the designated driver and abstained from drink. He would, Michael thought, make up for it at home. He and Norman had Scotch, but it was not nearly as good as the Willoughby's. Then they ordered a pitcher of beer.

The menu featured wurst, schnitzel, potato pancakes, noodles and dumplings. There were deer heads and antlers with brass plaques on the dark wood walls and scrolled mottos in gothic script. A polka was on the jukebox and the place was filled with hunters. At Ehrlich's many of the hunters had family members along. There were women and children, even babies. Happy couples danced. The entire place rejoiced in an atmosphere of good-hearted revelry.

"Boy, is this place ever different from the Hunter's," Michael said. "It's not just the food."

"Know why?" Norman asked.

"Different people," said Michael.

"Different folks," Norman said. "This is Prevost County. They're Germans here. They're peace-loving. Orderly. You gotta love 'em."

"Do you?"

"Sure. Whereas the Hunter's is in the fucking swamp. Harrison County. Irish, Scotch-Irish, French Canadian. They're poor and surly. They're over at the Hunter's getting nasty drunk and selling one another wolf tickets. While here,
hier ist fröhlich.
"

He spread his arms and with a cold, false smile enacted a parody of gemütlichkeit.

"Maybe we belong over there," Alvin Mahoney said.

Michael and Norman looked at each other and laughed.

Norman raised his beer glass. "Here's looking at you, Alvin," he said.

Alvin laughed. He was nervous, drinkless. It might be safer driving, Michael thought, to let him have a belt.

Michael was aware of Norman watching him. "You didn't shoot today," Norman said.

Michael shrugged.

As they were waiting for the check, Norman said, "I have to ask you something. Over at St. Emmerich's, what are they teaching my friend Paulie about abortion? Me, I don't think there's much wrong with the world that doesn't come from there being too many people."

Michael poured out the last of the beer.

"I'm sorry," Norman said. "You're the only person I know to ask."

For the second time Michael was annoyed with Norman. Of course, sociology was the man's job. And he had never been subtle or discreet. He had been to Vietnam. He owned the big questions.

"They don't talk about it," Michael said. "Not at that level." He put a paper napkin to a tiny puddle of foam on the table before him. "They talked about hunting the other day." What he said was not exactly true. Paul was being taught that life began at conception. The rest, of course, would follow. But Michael was not in the mood to defend the theses of St. Emmerich's Christian instruction. Embarrassed, he flushed and hid behind his beer. He felt besieged. As though they were trying to take something away from him. Something he was not even sure he possessed.

Because I believe, he thought. They know I believe. If I believe. But faith is not what you believe, he thought. Faith was something else.

A blond waitress with a pretty, wholesome smile came over to them but she did not have the check.

"Is one of you guys Michael Ahearn?" she asked.

"Me," Michael said.

"Sir, you got a phone call. Want to take it in the kitchen?"

He followed her across the room, resounding with polkas, laughter, the rattle of plates and foaming schooners. In the kitchen three generations of women, the oldest in her late sixties, the youngest a little older than his son, worked purposefully. The warm room smelled of vinegary marinades. His wife was on the phone.

"Michael," she said. Her voice was distant and, he thought, chill. It made him think of the woods. Or of the light shining at the bottom of the freezing stream. "Paul is not accounted for. He was at the gym and then I thought he was going to Jimmy Collings's. But he's not there. And his school books are here. And Olaf is missing." She paused. "It's snowing here."

He remembered the deer at the edge of the stream. Its life ebbing, legs giving way.

"I suppose I called for moral support," she said. "I'm afraid."

"Hang in," he told her.

He walked unseeing back through the noisy room. Alvin and Norman were paying the check. Michael went into his wallet, took out two twenties and threw them on the table.

"That's too much," Norman said.