The Weirdo (11 page)

The man in the red-and-black mackinaw looked up, dropped the brush, and grabbed his rifle. He fired a quick shot toward Telford and Chip, who dropped to their knees. Then he began running up-trail, dogs going with him.

The deer slug went over their heads.

Breathless, Chip asked, "You want to chase him?"

Telford sat at the trail edge. His face was drained, tense. "No, but I got a good look at him. I think I'd know him if I saw him again."

After a while they walked up to where Number 11-88 lay lifeless by the Mattanock. Chip swallowed back grief, feeling tears well up for the second time in six weeks. "You think she has cubs inside?"

"She might," Telford said. He kept looking down at the soaked and bloody black, slowly shaking his head.

Finally, with a deep, sad sigh, he said, "Let's go get the truck. We'll take her to the warden's."

 

A HALF hour later, the dead bear unloaded in the parking lot of the warden's bungalow, Telford and Chip were answering questions. "He looked like he was about fifty, a big man, broad-shouldered," Telford said.

"What was he wearing?"

"A red-and-black mackinaw and a floppy hat."

"What kind of hat?"

"One of those brown canvas or cotton kinds, with a brim all the way around. Army type."

The young warden was busily writing down the details. "You think you'd recognize him if you saw him again?"

"I'm sure I would," Telford said.

"What about you, son?" the warden asked Chip.

"I was behind Tom the whole time, but I got up before he'd disappeared all the way. I saw his mackinaw coat and that floppy hat."

The warden then reached over into a file cabinet behind him and pulled out an envelope, extracting photos. "Here are twenty-two convictions we've made the last ten years. Take a look."

Telford and Chip looked at the photos but none looked like the man they'd seen.

Out in the parking lot, Chip said to Telford, "You
told me once that the Indians always apologized after killing a bear."

Telford muttered, "Yep."

Chip looked up into the sky. "I apologize to Ethel on behalf of all humans."

***

I remember my first gloomy, cold, wet December in the Powhatan. The roly-poly bears, with up to three inches of solid fat on their backs, food to be drawn off during their sleeping period, were either denned or preparing to do so.

The males, young and old, were still awake, topping off their bellies with last-minute meals they could strip off the trees or gallberry bushes.

Earlier the females had busily gathered leaves and other debris to line their winter houses. Some had raked in red bay and fetterbush; others had gathered green-briar and switch cane, loblolly pine needles, and various twigs. Bungs plugged up—they'd already taken to their ground or tree cavities; some awaited birth a few weeks hence.

Aside from the songs of the wrens, the winter swamp was mostly silent. Now and then a red-tailed hawk would let out a piercing scream as it winged over the trees and tangles. It was the time of recharging the ditches, sloughs, and Lake Nansemond, water flowing quietly
in from the western creeks and rivers or surging up from beneath.

Powhatan Swamp
English I
Charles Clewt
Ohio State University

***

TELFORD and Chip talked in low tones as they went about monitoring the denned females in whatever places of hiding they'd sought out. Telford wanted to mark where they'd located their dens and how they'd constructed them—one bear had put hers in the rotting stump of a bald cypress, sitting out in two feet of water. The beeping led straight to her nest.

"Why is this important?" Chip asked, puzzled at all the efforts to record the exact den conditions.

"So that no idiot will say, 'Hey, let's get rid of that rotten old stump.' All these hollow trees or stumps are home to some animal or bird."

Telford went to Raleigh to spend Christmas with Sara, his girlfriend, and Chip kept monitoring dens, careful not to disturb the sleepers.

One January morning, after a night of sleet, ice sparkled on the floor of the swamp and glistened on the trees in the early sun. The Powhatan lit up and shimmered.

Chip set out to find Henry, wondering how he was
faring, and worked his frequency once he crossed the lake, going to an area on Trail Seven where Number 1-88 seemed to hang out.

Just before noon, when the melting ice started to pop and crackle all over the swamp, Chip found Henry under a fallen tree trunk, sleeping soundly, his fur coat laced with rime.

Chip watched him, feeling a personal attachment now close to affection. Not until his hands and feet began to ache from the cold did he return home.

***

AS IT had done for what the scientists said was eleven thousand years, the Powhatan went from sleepy, quiet winter to bursting spring, then to humid summer. Tom Telford and Chip Clewt began snaring and collaring the bears again once they emerged in March and April. They listened to the beeps, plotted them, and continued to count them. Now it was nearing autumn again.

By early October, they'd even recaptured, recollared, and retagged Henry, whose collar had come off sometime in July. He was now Number 56-89—as hardy as ever, as comical as ever, as lovable as ever.

"Just keep doing what we've been doing," said Telford late one afternoon. Light was fading; shadows were long.

He was about to leave for Raleigh and NC State to
work on his dissertation, that high-sounding word that meant summarizing original research, hopefully leading to someday being called "Doctor Thomas Telford." He'd had his master's degree in biology for three years.

Chip nodded.

They were out on Trail Eight, northwest of the lake, having monitored four bears in the morning and early afternoon.

"Take the bearings and make the usual notes, then we'll do the computer work when I get back."

That would likely be in mid-January. Chip was pleased that Tom trusted him to continue the monitoring and plotting, though he wasn't particularly surprised. He'd learned much in the many months they'd been together. From setting the snares to mixing the tranquilizing drugs, Chip could do whatever Telford did, though the capturing remained a two-man job.

By now, Telford was almost another father to Chip, though quite different from the quiet one who lived and painted in the spillway house. Tom talked easily, and a lot. Each new day with him was still an adventure.

"I'll call you every week to see what's going on."

Except for the radio receiver they were using, Tom had dropped off all the equipment at the spillway house the day before, worried that it might be stolen from the rental trailer while he was gone.

"I guess that about covers everything," he said,
shaking Chip's hand, giving him a hug. "Have a happy Thanksgiving and a merry Christmas. That goes for your dad, too."

The elder Clewt was in New York.

Chip wished Tom the same, then said, "Tom, can I tell you something?"

Telford laughed. "You always do. What now?"

"You're someone special." There, he'd said it.

The laugh faded, and Telford wrapped his arms around Chip again, saying, "So are you." Standing back, he added another laugh, softer. "But let's not ruin a good thing."

Chip laughed, too, and took charge of the receiver. "See you in January."

Then the white all-terrain Toyota bumped southward along Trail Eight, which flanked the sluggish waters of Dinwiddie Slough.

***

A MILE and a half from East 159, where Trail Eight took a sharp bend to the west around overhangs of heavy brush, Telford almost collided with an old brown pickup truck parked at the edge of the slough. A ladder rack was perched over the chassis. The pickup blocked the trail, and Telford had to slam on his brakes to keep from rear ending it.

At the same instant, his heart slammed. Bending over the opened tailgate, just as surprised, was a big man in a red-and-black mackinaw wearing a floppy brown canvas hat. He was in the midst of loading a black bear into the truck.

There was little doubt that the bear was dead—little doubt that this was the same poacher he'd seen on Trail Six when Number 11-88 had been shot. Less than ten feet away, Telford clearly recognized the hulking, blocky-faced bear-killer. His whisker-stubbled features were coarse, his eyes small.

Telford tried frantically to go into reverse, but the Toyota stalled. In a few seconds the man in the red-and-black mackinaw, moving with incredible speed for someone so big, stood by the open window. His rifle aimed at Telford's head, he said, "Now, college boy, jus' ease on outta there with your hands up...."

***

AT THE lake, Chip climbed into the boat. He found it hard to believe that a year and a half had gone by since Thomas Telford came up the Feeder Ditch to announce he was going to study bears in the Powhatan. The outboard soon sputtered and caught, and Chip headed for the spillway house.

G
OING TOWARD HOME
in the Bronco, Sam told Delilah about the noisy, sleepless night in the swamp, the terrifying swamp-walker, dogs chasing her up on the roof of the spillwayman's house. Also about Chip Clewt.

"He's been helping with that bear study. He seems very nice."

"The crippled boy with the scarred face? I've heard about him."

"He isn't really crippled. He walks with a limp, but he carried me like I was a cotton ball."

"You meet his father?"

"No, he's in New York."

"New York?" Dell said it as if New York were in Australia. "What's he doing in New York?"

"Exhibiting his paintings."

"I've heard he paints."

As they turned left on Chapanoke Road, crossing the canal bridge, heading directly toward the farm, Sam said, casually, "Chip has been in touch with the National Wildlife Conservancy to extend the ban on hunting and fishing." She didn't need to say "in the swamp."

Dell laughed in disbelief. "How old you say he was?"

"Seventeen. But I think he's a very smart seventeen, Mama. He's been in touch with them-for months."

Dell braked to a sudden stop. "He's got
those
people started?"

Dust floated in the air behind the vehicle.

Sam nodded. "Said he has."

Delilah surveyed her daughter, then turned her head toward the golden burnished fields, studying them. After a moment, she looked back at Sam. "Someone'll stop that boy. Might even be your papa, Samantha. Why, every hunter for two hundred miles is chompin' at the bit to get back in there next fall. We heard someone was pushin' for an extension but didn't know it was the Clewts. Ol' Jack Slade spread the word last year."

"Maybe it's a good thing," Sam said. Might stir up some excitement in the yawning county.

"Maybe for the game, but not for the humans. All hell broke loose around here when they put it off-limits, if you'll remember."

Sam had been twelve then, but she did vaguely remember all the commotion. Meetings, phone calls. A lot of anger.

"If your papa hadn't been in the service, he would have led it. Fish and Wildlife set a thousand-dollar fine for anyone caught with a gun or rod back there. Now they've upped it to two thousand. Besides, you lose your license for five years."

Who needed shooters, anyway? "Chip said the bear population has grown by more than a hundred since the ban."

"I don't doubt that, but there'll come a time when there are too many." Dell kept looking at the fields.

"Maybe if they extended it just two years," Sam proposed. The hunters could wait.

Dell looked over again. "The men are already talkin' 'bout deer and bear season next fall, an' if you want to see purple smoke come out of your papa's ears, just tell him it won't be open. He'll hear 'bout Chip Clewt soon enough, but don't let it be you he hears it from. Jus' tell him how nice that boy was, how helpful, an' let it go at that. All right, Samantha?"

Maybe that was best after all, Sam thought.

"That's good advice, believe me. He doesn't talk to you 'bout huntin' because he knows you're not interested. But he does to me, abed at night. He heard that State Game might run a lottery to issue a hundred permits to go after Powhatan blacks next fall. Three-week
trial hunt, one bear limit to each hunter. He'll be in that lottery an' may get lucky."

Sam looked off toward home, where the bo'sun was waiting. For four years he'd been going elsewhere for quail and deer with the Powhatan chock-full of game, sitting right under his thin nostrils. He hadn't shot a bear since 1984, she knew. There was a family album photo of him squatting proudly, grinning widely beside his kill, rifle in his hand.

Dell added, "And I don't think he'll exactly appreciate a seventeen-year-old boy stickin' his outta-state nose in."

Sam acknowledged that to herself. Chief Warrant Boatswain Stuart Sanders could be a handful once he got going. That much was well known in both the U.S. Coast Guard and the old house on Chapanoke Road. Though he'd never once harmed her physically or even threatened it, she'd always been aware of his flashing temper. She truly loved him, but he often intimidated her.

They sat there a while longer, then Dell started the Bronco again. "An' knowin' what is comin' up, I'd stay far away from the Clewts if I was you," she added, shifting gears.

"I have to return his slippers."

"Call him an' say you'll drop 'em off at Dunnegan's."

Sam didn't commit herself.

In less than a minute, the Bronco was in the front yard, Sam's papa sitting out on the porch, waiting for them. He got up and walked over, looking in at Sam as he opened the door. He was smiling. "You are sure mussed up."

No denying that, Sam thought as he pushed his bony face to her cheek and kissed her. "One thing you got to learn, daughter, is never risk your neck for a dog. They got to take the risks. They're made for it."

"Buck didn't know what he was doing. He'd probably never seen a bear."