The Weirdo (7 page)

"Well, yuh are sure messed up, boy."

"I know," Chip said, patiently.

"You gonna study bars, eh?"

Chip nodded. "That's right, Mr. Slade. I'll help a graduate student from NC State. He's doing a two-year survey to try and count the bears back here. He's a biologist."

"Whatziz name?" The milky blue eyes narrowed.

"Thomas Telford."

"I ain't never had much use for students o' any kind."

"Well, he's more than a student. You'll meet him, I'm sure."

Squinting, suspicious, Slade asked slyly, "Yuh two got anythin' to do with liftin' the huntin' ban?"

"Dunnegan told me the count will help Fish and Wildlife make a decision."

"Them meddling jackasses," Slade snarled, wiping the corner of his mouth, milky blue eyes catching fire, fists knotting.

The ban wasn't why Chip had come to Skycoat. "What do you remember about bears? What single thing sticks out in your memory, Mr. Slade?"

Chip talked to Slade for more than an hour, getting a feel for the Powhatan blacks—what part of the swamp they usually stayed in, where the food was, things he could relay to Telford.

When he got up to leave Skycoat, Slade asked again about the bear count and what it had to do with lifting the ban. Chip repeated himself and hurried away, wondering if he'd made a mistake talking to the old trapper.

***

HALF an hour later, Slade was in Grace Crosby's, the only filling station in Skycoat.

"There's a young fella from Raleigh gonna count
the bars so the governmint can keep us outta the swamp some more. Name is Telford. Him an' a boy with a messed-up face..."

Skycoat wasn't much. Sloan's, the general store; Crosby's; and the farm equipment repair shop. They wouldn't have existed at all if two country roads didn't cross there. Sloan's had been there since Model T's chugged along, before the roads were paved. Crosby's and the tractor garage had come later.

Slade always made a point of hanging around Sloan's or Grace's from five to six or so to get his day's talking in. That's when the area people usually showed up for one reason or another. Slade preferred Crosby's and sat by the doorway now, cane in hand.

Grace suffered Skycoat's biggest gossip. She usually had greasy hands and wore a smudged blue polka-dot bandanna on her bushy brown hair.

By nightfall, the news had spread. Area hunters began to hear about Tom Telford, a bear counter from Raleigh, young college "fella."

***

LATE MAY: Sam stopped her mother's Bronco in front of the small farm on Tucker Road, another of those lonely, unpaved two-lane country lanes that crisscrossed Albemarle County. Hesitating about what she planned to do, she sat for a moment looking at the
meager frame house. Weeds had conquered the yard, and the dingy, peeling one-story place, window blinds at half-mast, badly needed a face-lift. Only the presence of a dusty old Dodge in the driveway indicated someone was probably home.

Almost hidden by the weeds was a sign, Julia Howell—Seamstress, with a phone number.

Sam took a deep breath, climbed out, and walked up to the porch. She said to herself, "She will think I'm crazy," but she pushed the bell button nonetheless.

A moment later, the door opened, and Sam said, "Mrs. Howell?"

"Yes," the woman answered, likely expecting a customer.

She was pale and gray-haired and wiry, but not frail. Her horn-rimmed glasses were shoved up on her forehead as if she'd been interrupted from work. She wore faded jeans, a pink cotton blouse, and fluffy blue bedroom slippers.

"I'm Samantha Sanders. You may remember my name...."

Mrs. Howell frowned.

"I'm the one who found Mr. Howell...."

The frown widened. "You're the little girl...."

"Not so little anymore," Sam said. Six years had passed.

"No, not so little..." The frown disappeared.

"May I talk to you for a few minutes?"

"Come in," Mrs. Howell said, opening the rusty screen door.

Sam went inside, Mrs. Howell saying, "I converted our front room to a workroom."

Sam could see a cutting table, a sewing machine, a clothes rack for hanging dresses and coats, and a three-way, full-length fitting mirror. But there was a couch to one side.

"Sit down, please."

Sam went to the couch, and Mrs. Howell took the swivel stool that was in front of the sewing machine. "I probably should have called you years ago to thank you for finding Alvin, but I was pretty upset with all that was going on," she said, tapping a cigarette out of a pack.

"You mind?" Mrs. Howell asked.

Sam shook her head, having rehearsed what she was going to say. Tobacco odor wasn't of consequence. "Mrs. Howell, I still have dreams about that afternoon. I had a bad one last night."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I know Alvin wouldn't want you to suffer."

"I see him in these dreams. One night about two months ago he said, 'Help me! Help me!' Last night he said, 'I know who killed me....' I think he's trying to send a message."

"Oh, child, I'm so sorry. I wish an adult had found him." Her pale face was knotted with concern.

"So do I," Sam said, letting out a long breath. "Mrs. Howell, do you have any idea who might have done it and why?"

The older woman slowly shook her head. "Deputy Truesdale asked me that twenty times if he asked me once. I have no idea. Though he was inclined to argue with people, I don't think Alvin had too many enemies."

At the time of his death, Sam had read that he'd been a truck farmer but had given it up quite a while before. He worked at the Albemarle Lumber Mill and raised gamecocks.

"I've always thought it had something to do with fighting the roosters," the widow said. "The men gambled, you know. They bet on or against his cocks. Sometimes big money, though Alvin never won much. I kept asking him to quit, but he was hooked. I truly felt for those poor birds and never went near a fight. I sold 'em all within a week after he died."

"You think he owed some gambler a lot of money?"

Mrs. Howell sighed. "I don't know. He knew I hated what he was doing so he usually kept a closed mouth...." She blew out a plume of smoke.

Sam looked around the room. There was no photo of Alvin Howell to be seen. As she recalled, they didn't have children.

"Have you gone to a doctor about these dreams?"

Sam nodded. "A few months after it happened. She said time would take care of it. It hasn't...."

"I do wish I could help," Mrs. Howell said, dismay evident.

Sam had figured it would be a useless mission to visit Mrs. Howell but had been willing to try anything. She rose now, saying, "Thank you for talking to me."

"You're welcome," Mrs. Howell said and escorted Sam to the door.

***

EARLY JUNE: Chip found himself bumping over Trail Eight in a white Toyota four-wheel-drive, all-terrain vehicle. "First thing we have to do is find tracks on the road or along the sides. Or see scat. That's plain poop," said Telford. He had his window rolled down and leaned out of the cab. "The good berry season will soon start. That's caviar and strawberry shortcake to a hungry bear. Like deer, they feed in early morning and late evening."

About ten minutes later, he stopped the camper-topped truck. "Mr. Big Bruin has been here, I'm sure." He eased back in reverse gear, then shut down the engine.

Chip followed him out.

"Tracks!" Telford pointed, then knelt down.

In the soft sand were paw prints at least three inches deep, five distinct toes and imprints of the soles in each.

"Bears are plantigrade, Chip, just like we are. Walk on their soles. Look closely, you'll see the tips of the claws. He can't retract them."

"Why do you say it's a he?"

"Look how deep the impression is. He'll go over three hundred pounds. Sows are half that big."

Telford stood up. He studied the prints, then raised his head to look off ahead and right. "I'd bet he crossed that footbridge up there and went back toward those loblollies." He nodded that way.

The tall yellow pines, topped at about a hundred and fifty feet by rounded domes, stuck up on the west horizon a quarter mile away. Crossing the footbridge, they followed the dust traces.

"Look where they've chewed the bridge. This has to be a common route for them."

May through July were mating months, and the males staked out territories. Soon Telford pointed at one tall loblolly. The flat red ridges of bark, separated by deep furrows, had been chewed and rubbed on. Dried white sap streaked the lower trunk.

"He's left some hair as advertisement."

"Well, where is he?" Chip asked, scanning in a circle.

"He's not about to tell us. Let's go back to the truck."

Since seven o'clock, when they'd rendezvoused across the lake, Chip had been happier than he could ever remember. Here he was, for
once
doing something useful and unusual. But he was also worried that he might fail, not having worked very often during the past three years. For four months after the last skin graft he didn't even leave the house except at night. His grandfather had arranged a job programming computers for a Columbus insurance agency, working at home. This job with Telford was perfect; it was fun, and he didn't have to appear in public—show his face. He could stay safely hidden in the bogs and marshes.

Please, God, don't let me screw up,
he said to himself.
Please, God....

The weather was beautiful over the coastal plain, sky cornflower blue, sun lancing down through the trees, warm, light wind ruffling the trail grass as they moved toward the footbridge over the rush-lined ditch.

Chip, limping along on a gimpy left leg, pushed himself to keep up with the long-legged man. He was pleased that Telford was making no allowance for knee damage. There was nothing he hated worse than those looks or gestures or words of sympathy. He could cope just fine, even run a little in an awkward way. Cope just fine.

Returning to the chewed-up loblolly, equipment in their backpacks, they unloaded, then Telford began to set up the snare.

"You can use a snare or a culvert trap, a steel barrel with a door on one end that drops down after the bear goes in to eat the bait. I prefer this spring-activated snare. Better than lugging the culverts around. Okay, find me some small logs and sticks. Branches a couple of feet in length, sticks about pencil size—a few inches long."

Plenty were on the ground in the yellow pine grove.

By the time Chip had rounded up a small pile of wood, Telford had laid out the three-sixteenth steel cable, commonly used in aircraft controls.

"Strip the dead stuff off those branches," Telford instructed. "We'll arrange them in a V-fashion out from the trunk and then put the bait at the point where the V closes...."

They'd backpacked in several pounds of stale cinnamon buns.

"Pretty simple, eh?" said Telford, as he straightened up from looping the cable around the loblolly. "Now, let's do the V. Start it about two feet from the trunk."

"Won't that cable hurt the bear?" Chip asked.

Telford shook his head. "Old-fashioned leg-hold traps did hurt. Some states have banned 'em. This'll just hold him in place by a forepaw."

Soon, the five-foot V was formed, and then the working end of the snare was laid down. "Like humans, they don't like to walk on small sticks in their bare feet, so we'll place 'stepping sticks' around the
loop to limit the area and make him put his paws down where we want him to, right on the trigger."

Chip carried the sticks over and watched as Telford arranged them.

"Okay, trigger next. Well hide it under pine needles, test it. If it works okay, we'll set the bait, then come back tomorrow morning to see if we've caught ourselves a live Carolina black."

They finished the snare in another twenty minutes, carefully laying down the pine-needle pathway to the two pounds of cinnamon buns.

"Do you always put them near a tree?"

"Yep. And the tree must be big enough. You have to anchor the cable."

Going back to the truck, Telford said, "We'll probably set more right in trails than anywhere else. They use the same ones again and again. You dig under the prints, place the snare, then cover it with leaves or pine needles...."

During the morning, Chip told him about visiting Jack Slade.

Telford shrugged. "Tell a hunter he can't hunt in his own backyard and you've got a problem."

They placed four more snares about a mile apart, two of them on trails covered with prints, before winding up in late afternoon.

"We'll check all of them early tomorrow to see what we've caught," Telford said.

"They always get trapped at night?"

"Anytime. But we'll check them constantly in this warm weather so they won't spend much time in captivity. The idea is to catch them, do all the necessary things, then turn them loose. Two hours or less if possible."

Soon Chip was crossing the lake toward home.

***

ALVIN HOWELL was a worn-out subject in the Sanders house. Sam's papa said two years ago that he never wanted to hear the name again, and even Sam's usually sympathetic mother said it was high time to bury Mr. Howell forever.

But Mrs. Howell's mention of Alvin raising fighting roosters and gambling on them sent Sam to Dunnegan's on her bike. She considered Dunnegan her best adult friend.

There was always a rich coffee smell in his store, most people around the Powhatan drinking fresh-ground regular. Decaf was considered dishwater. Dunnegan had all the usual 7-Eleven, AM-PM, and Jiffy Market wares, plus fishhooks and sinkers and lures, shotgun shells, duck calls, and decoys. Worm beds were out in back, night crawlers being a big item.

Dunnegan had a first name, Desmond, which he didn't like, so everyone in the area called him by his
last name. A bald-headed, pudgy man, he was in his early forties. He'd bought the general store about ten years ago but had almost lost it to Kentucky bourbon, booze on his breath from dawn to dark. So Sam hadn't been surprised to learn that Dunnegan went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in Lizzie City.

After buying a Sprite, popping it, and taking a sip, Sam asked, "You know anyone around here who goes to cockfights?"