Hard Ground (12 page)

Guts Young

Six-foot seven Sergeant Jeffey Bryan was supposed to meet Jingo Sedge to check a deer camp south of Eckerman filled with Detroit and Toledo swells, but his curiosity finally got the best of him. For several years a garish blue Astrovan had been parked next to the East Branch of the Sage River on M-28. It was there again. He'd never seen the hunter. The van was plastered with Alaska stickers and right-wing slogans like
christen, then arm: start them off right
. Bryan smiled and shook his head. Right, indeed.

The hunter's trail led south into heavy tag alders. Bryan put on his hippers, grabbed his ruck and ticket book, and began tracking. Once into the tag jungle, the trail was clearly beaten down. He guessed the man came in from different points, always converging on this place. A mile south, the trail veered to the riverbank, where the tannin-stained water shallowed to a gravel bar and led southeast through heavy swamp with a couple of old, deeply rutted bear runs and very little sign of deer.

A mile beyond the crossing, Bryan crossed another branch of the river, or a feeder creek, he wasn't sure which, and the trail swung south through more tags toward rising ground.

Bryan stopped to have a sip of water from a bottle he carried and used his binoculars to scan the gradual slope ahead. Two or three hundred yards ahead the ground was a greensward sloping upward to a thick conifer wood line. He scanned the line, saw something clumped at the bottom of a tree, caught a glint higher up, and kept looking until his lenses hit upon on a hunter thirty feet up a tree, scoping
him
.

Sonovabitch!

The hunter was head-to-toe in camouflage. Until this moment Jeffey Bryan had been admiring the man's field craft and obvious desire to hunt alone. If he hadn't stopped and looked ahead, he might have walked into the greensward as vulnerable as a duck on a dock. Instead, he now hiked west and circled, moving at a trot through the heaviest cover he could find. The hunter had no hunter orange and was damn near invisible up so high. He hated to be scoped or have weapons pointed at him, and he took it personally. Even his nephews, whom he adored, were not allowed to point their toy pistols at him.

Next question: Had he really been seen? No way to know. Sergeant Bryan moved to the tag alders again and surged south-southwest, arcing his way to the west to intercept the hunter's ridge line, and come up behind him through heavy cover in the tree line. Every tree blind had at least one total blind spot. This one was no different.

It took a while to get up into the maple and oak stand, and here and there he saw old apple and cherry trees, guessing this was a onetime homestead gone wild. Such places were all around the Upper Peninsula.

Locating and approaching the hunter's tree, he saw a small tent inside the tree line. There was also a camo tarp over a gear pile at the base of the tree. Climbing steps had been screwed into the tree trunk. They were camo, chipped, and looked old. Probably using this same blind for years.

No smoke. Silence. Bryan sniffed and listened. The hunter was disciplined, quiet, serious about business. Most who came north would hike no more than a hundred yards from their vehicles, or they'd get dropped at their blind by four-wheelers and fetched for lunch and dinner.

“Hey up there in the blind,” Sergeant Bryan yelled. “DNR.”

No response.

“I'm at the bottom of your tree, dipstick. I can see your tent and your cache. Get your butt down here
now
. This is Sergeant Bryan, DNR.”

The figure came down slowly and deliberately, descending confidently, rifle slung over the back.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” the sergeant said. “Unsling your rifle and hand it to me.”

The hunter wore a camo face mask, nodded, unslung, and passed the rifle to the officer, who checked it. Remington 2700 caliber bolt action, with a 6X scope. Empty, clean, well cared for. “You got orange?” he asked.

“Don't need it on the stand,” the hunter said.

That voice? What the hell is this? “Take off your mask and hat.”

A girl, twelve at most. “How old are you?”

“Thirteen this week,” she said.

“You have your hunter ed card and an adult with you?”

“I had hunter safety. Officer Sedge taught the class.”

“She tell you that you have to hunt with an adult until you're sixteen?”

“She told us.”

“Yet here you are alone. What's the deal?”

“I'm hunting is all. What's the big deal? I know what I'm doing.”

Jeffey Bryan sensed pluck in the girl, some inner steel, and he liked it. Guts young was good.

“That your van out by the highway?”

“My pop's.”

“Where is he?”

“With Jesus,” the girl said. “My ma, too. She went when I was seven. Just pop and me since then; now it's just me.”

“You live around here?”

“Near Hulbert Lake.”

“Thirteen and driving illegally,” Sergeant Bryan said, towering over the child. “Has the DMV issued new regs I don't know about?”

“It's too damn far to walk,” the girl said forcefully. “Me and Pop always hunted here. Pop taught me to drive.”

“Did you scope me?” he asked.

“If I had, you wunta found me up this tree,” she said candidly.

“Do you
have
orange?”

“My pop didn't believe in it.”

The sergeant took off his ruck and pulled out a hunter orange wool chook, which he handed to her. “Put it on,” he said. “What's your name?”

“Turley, Anastasia Turley.”

Bryan called Sedge on the 800. “You remember a hunter safety student named Turley?”

“Anna Turley? You bet. Great kid; why?”

“No reason, thanks.”

“Turley,” the sergeant said, facing the child. “Go back up there and hunt, but keep that damn orange chook on. When you drive home, get the hell off M-28 fast as you can after you cross the Hendrie River. Use the truck the rest of this season, but after that you're grounded till you get your license. Who are you living with?”

“My aunt, Lattis Earle. She don't hunt.”

“Does she drive?”

“When she has to. She's real old and cranky.”

“Like I said, finish your season. I'll make sure the cops leave you be. You hike back here every day?”

“No sir, I'm in till the season's over, just the way Pop and I did it. I got plenty of grub.”

“You're thirteen? What about school?”

“What
about
it?”

“You make good grades?”

“Home school. I'm in all advanced high school courses and a college-level English course.”

“Who oversees your home schooling?”

“Was Pop, now me. Computers make it easy.”

“You ever tempted to cheat?”

She puffed up indignantly. “People of honor don't cheat.”

“Except when it comes to hunting,” he said.

“Your definition, not mine,” she came back and hung her head.

“Why'd you stay up in the tree?”

“High ground, sir; never surrender the high ground.”

“Your father teach you that?”

“Yessir.”

Sergeant Jeffey Bryan stuck a business card in her hand and extended a huge paw. “Pleasure to meet you, Miss Anastasia Turley. I hope you get you a dandy buck.”

“Thanks for the hat,” she said. “Do I get a ticket?”

“Nope.”

“Could you get in trouble for this?” she asked.

“We both could,” he said, “but not if you don't screw up.”

“I won't,” she said. “I promise, sir.”

Two weeks later Jeffey Bryan got a telephone call. “Sergeant, this is Anna Turley. I got my buck, a ten-point, and I've got meat for you. My aunt says you should come to dinner so she can meet you.”

They made a date. Jeffey closed his phone and smiled. Some gambles were worth taking, especially out in the way back.

Man in the Woods; Man on the Road

Loren Degu was headed south on M-77 to join a dozen other officers for the annual group patrol and goat rodeo on Big Mass Lake, an event conservation officers called the Redneck Mardi Gras. It was a gathering of beer guzzlers and dopers with mullet cuts and multiple body tattoos, multiple body piercings, hats facing south, untied boots and shoes, the uniform of shiftless twenty-somethings who would all converge on a sandbar in the middle of the lake, hook their boats into a large flotilla raft, and commence an en masse alcoholic rock-dive into the kingdom of stupid.

It was not a patrol Degu looked forward to. Sure, it produced some astonishingly stupid behaviors, events, and great stories year in and year out, but he'd rather stay in his own county where he had his own reliably unreliable troublemakers. The truth was that stupid people disturbed and annoyed him more than he could adequately express in words, and to see so many mouth breathers gathered together was the stuff of nightmares.

But duty was duty, and he was headed south, having come across bad roads from Deer Park. Normally, he had his eighteen-foot aluminum boat, but his sergeant had wrecked it a month ago. North of Green Haven on M-77 a jaybird in a rusty red Volvo wagon jetted around him, swerved wildly, and nearly went off the road, nicking the gravel shoulder, throwing up a rooster tail of dirt and crap, and unceremoniously dropping a beer can on the road.

Was this guy
blind
? Degu stopped, picked up the can, accelerated to catch up, got behind the Volvo, and turned on his blue emergency lights.

The vehicle continued to sail south toward Seney. Amazed that the man seemed not to have seen him, Degu pulled alongside the other vehicle again. The pigtailed driver looked over, grinned, and waved. He appeared to have a giant spliff stuck to his lower lip, his insipid grin suggesting a cocktail of beer and cannabis. Degu motioned for the man to pull over, but all the driver did was to salute, smile, and continue driving south.

Reaching Lavender's Corner, Degu used his siren to try to wake up the man, but as they approached a long bend in the road, the driver kept going.

Degu knew it was pretty much a straight shot from here to Seney, lots of space. The man chucked another beer can, and Degu hung close behind him, lights going until they crossed the bridge over the East Branch of the Fox River. Time to act, Degu told himself.

The conservation officer again pulled alongside the Volvo and signaled for the driver to pull over.

The man rolled down his window and tossed a plastic bag, which Degu was certain would contain his drug stash. The officer hit the marker button on his Automatic Vehicle Locator to mark the drop-spot, then called the Schoolcraft County dispatcher. “Two, One Eleven is southbound on M-77 in pursuit of a red Volvo, one occupant, fleeing stop.”

“You want backup?” the dispatcher asked over the radio.

“Affirmative. I'm still north of the big curve, and I'm going to PIT him here.” The Precision Immobilization Technique was Degu's safest bet to knock the fleeing vehicle off the road and end the flight.

Degu lined up his front right bumper with the target's left rear wheel and cut hard into him, causing the Volvo to spin into the ditch as Degu braked, stopped, threw open his door, charged the red car, jerked the driver out, rolled him roughly onto his face, and cuffed him.

A troop in a blue goose arrived as Degu was getting the man to his feet. “He tossed a bag about a half mile back,” Degu told the state policeman. “Should be right on the road.”

“Drugs?”

“My guess. Beer in the car. He was all over the road.”

The troop left to retrieve the evidence.

This was the area where Schoolcraft, Alger, and Luce Counties all sort of touched each other, and Degu had to think about where he wanted to take the prisoner and decided on Munising. By the time he got the man lodged and did paperwork, he could beg off the group patrol on the lake.

A second troop arrived on the scene and asked, “Call a hook for you?”

“Please.”

Degu administered a preliminary sobriety test, and the man agreed to take a Breathalyzer, noting, “Ain't had but a six-pack, dude.”

The man blew 1.3, his pupils were dilated, and Degu counted a dozen empty cans on the floor of the Volvo's passenger side. There was a new twelve-pack in a Styrofoam cooler on the seat. “Smoke a little?” Degu asked.

“Don't ever'body?” the Volvo driver answered.

“You're under arrest. You're over the blood alcohol content limit.”

The man shrugged.

When the Volvo was on the way to Seney on a flatbed wrecker to be impounded, Degu loaded his prisoner into the truck and started west for Munising.

“
Dude
,” the prisoner said, “you done run me offen motherfuckin' road. You, like, scared the shit outen me.”

“You wouldn't pull over.”

The man rolled his eyes. “Like, I had to get south, dude.”

“For what?”

“Replenish my stash. I smoked the last coming down here. Dude, you were, like, totally pissed when you pulled me outen my wheels.”

“You could have killed yourself, me, or others,” Degu said.

The man rolled his eyes. “Road beers, man. Was only some road beers. No big deal, sayin'? Road beers ain't, like, illegal; road beers is, like, patriotic, you know, help fight the rechestion and such shit. I'm spending my cash, dude, just how our president Big George want us to do.”

Stupid people, stupid, stupid, stupid, Degu thought. On the other hand, now he was free of the goat rodeo where this guy's clones would show in spades. Not a bad trade. “You should have pulled over when I blue-lighted you,” Conservation Officer Degu said.

The man looked at him, obviously groping for words. “Dude, I
knew
you was the man in the woods. How was I to know you also the man on the motherfucking road, too?”

Degu squeezed his steering wheel until his knuckles turned white, but he said nothing and kept his eyes on the road.