Brown Dog

by Jim Harrison

  It is now nine-thirty AM and time to take my vengeance on Jerk and Jerkoff. I made sure I had what I needed in the van and took off for the woods. After I settled their hash I would take a powder and head over to Marquette to see Shelley and Tarah to try to lighten their hearts. I stopped short of the campsite, put on my camouflage suit, loaded my Colt .22 pistol and grabbed a gallon of gasoline I keep for the dinghy’s old three-horse Scott-Atwater. The can was red so I sprayed it green with the last of the aerosol paint I used on the ice truck four months before. Waste not, want not, they say. I moved silent as a shadow through the woods, then came down a dry, brushy creekbed that only carries water during spring runoff. Just as I thought, there was no one at the campsite. Their Toyota was parked far enough from the tent and for a moment I thought of burning that too, but settled for letting the air out of all the tires. I doused the tent full of expensive camping gear with the gasoline, threw on a match and leapt back, and she burned with a fine roar. With a forefinger I traced a skull on the dusty side of their Toyota though it looked a bit more like a shmoo. For no reason at all I fired three shots in the air and hightailed it for my van. From my reckoning they’d have a thirteen-mile walk on their hands, by which time I’d be in Marquette.

  Somewhat to my surprise I didn’t get much pleasure out of the tent and equipment burning. On my way down toward Seney and over to Marquette I thought long and hard about protecting those ancient burial mounds. You better not hold your hand over your ass until you come up with thinking that makes a difference, that’s all I can say. Mine was the original sin of taking Shelley out there in the first place in my pussy trance. I knew Tarah had been confused enough afterward, but maybe on the way in she’d been smarter than I thought. Country people are always underestimating just how smart outsiders can be. I’ve seen men come way up here from Flint, Grand Rapids and Detroit with a bunch of high-price bird dogs and shoot more partridge than any fifty locals. Sometimes these same folks catch more trout on flies that you can hardly see than anyone who fishes with worms. Maybe Tarah had one of those brains like a camera you read about. The fire might slow down the effort for a while but in the long run you couldn’t stop these people if they kept up their gumption. Sad to say, in my thinking there was no way to get myself off the hook.

  I had to laugh when I crossed the Driggs River Bridge because this was where Bob had had his duke-out with the cops that got him two years along with illegally transporting a body. I wish I could have stayed to watch the fight. The one cop who was supposed to be the toughest around ended up in the Munising Hospital but so did Bob for a few days. While they were fighting I had turned off 28 and headed down the first of many log roads at top speed. I went so far into the brush I doubted the sunlight would ever reach me, deep into bug hell where you could grab a handful of mosquitoes out the truck window if you had a mind to. What’s more, I knew that at daylight the blackflies, horseflies and deerflies would join the cops and mosquitoes in the search for the truck. I had no insect repellent and nothing to drink but two beers that were getting warmer by the minute. There was nothing to eat and though I knew I was close to creeks, the Stoner and the Creighton, I had no fishing tackle. The fifty-one dollars in my wallet couldn’t buy a thing out in that black hell. If I needed to lose weight it would have been a fine time to diet.

  Rather than tire myself out with fear I curled up and slept for a few hours until so many mosquitoes managed to get in the truck cab I awoke to a swollen face and hands. I got out and checked on the Chief and found it was warming up in there. Above the whine of the mosquitoes I could hear the ice melt. I started the truck and the refrigeration unit to cool it off which wasn’t taking much of a chance as the search for me probably wouldn’t start until daylight. I was disappointed to see that I had less than a half tank of gas which would limit the time I could hide out. I was pretty sure Bob wouldn’t say anything as in the Navy SEALs he had been taught how to resist confessing under torture. And what could he say besides that he was driving a dead Indian to Chicago in a stolen truck? Of course he could name my name but everyone in Alger County knew we were partners and it wouldn’t take Dick Tracy to figure out I was involved.

  I turned off the ignition and the refrigeration unit and got in back with the Chief to avoid the warm night and the mosquitoes. I thought of moving him off the easy chair and taking a snooze but it didn’t seem right, so I sat on the arm and leaned back just touching his left side. It remains to be seen if I was asleep or awake, and maybe I’ll never know, but the Chief spoke to me there in the ice-cold dark. It didn’t seem to be in English, though that’s the only language I know by heart. Some of it was in a jumble but I remember it pretty well. “B.D., my son, you haven’t exactly panned out but then you didn’t start with much. To whom the Lord gives much, much is expected so you are not on the hot seat in regard to gifts. Someday branches and leaves will grow out of you and you’ll understand how fish, birds and animals talk and I don’t mean in chirps and growls. You’ll be a green man is what I mean, with leaves coming out of your ears. Don’t cross the Mackinac Bridge and don’t go south of Green Bay toward tropical places. Your greed got you into this. Beware of women with forked tongues. Buy yourself a hat because your hair is thinning on top. Don’t rely on alcohol so much for good times. Sneak up on animals and just say hello. Don’t try to take vengeance on those who killed me or they’ll kill you too. It wouldn’t hurt you to read a book about nature cover to cover. Remember when you were so good at square dancing in the seventh grade?” How did he know this? “Well, don’t come tromping into the Halls of Death, but live your life with light feet. Before I forget, bury me in the forest where I belong, not with the fish.”

  That’s pretty much what he said. I started to relax when he stopped talking and he sang me a few songs like nursery rhymes which were beautiful. I imagine this is what fathers do for sons who are hurt and grieving.

  I awoke bone-chilled on the Chief’s lap to the sound of water trickling on the inside and bird songs on the outside. I opened the door to let the light in and heard the first of the spotter planes above the bird sounds. The treetops above formed a pretty good canopy and I added to it with brush. It was about six AM and already warm and the breeze was from the south so I knew it would be a hot one. This made my heart ache for both myself and the Chief. I cranked up the truck and sat on a stump trying to make a plan, mindful that the original one had been short on good sense. I quickly drank the two warm beers out of thirst and for courage. Why hadn’t I put the beers inside with the Chief to cool off? It showed that in desperate straits you can’t think clearly. By and large, though, I felt pretty strong from my talk with the Chief. There was no way I was going to get away scot-free, and the best plan had to take this into account. We should have been leaving Chicago now with a paper sack full of twenty thousand dollars. I was going to buy a newish used van and check out some locations in Canada as the U.S. seemed to be filling up. Shelley was due in the evening and would get her ears full of my fuck-up. In short, the whole damn situation didn’t look good.

  I opened the door and it was cooling down nicely. About all I could manage by way of a plan was to bury the Chief properly and turn myself in. I decided to remove the blue eyes but they were stuck so it meant the Chief was swelling up. I took off on foot out of the woods and across the marsh and the Stoner Spreads toward Worchester Lake where I hoped to break into a cabin and find something to eat. It was a tough walk as the marsh was spongy and two of the creeks were neck deep. I watched an otter family fooling around so long I about forgot what I was doing, but was brought awake by the DNR (Department of Natural Resources) spotter plane. I wriggled under a clump of elder until the plane got tired of crisscrossing the area. At the Stoner Spreads I drank my fill at a cold spring I knew about from brook trout fishing and smeared some silt mud on my face and arms to try to slow down the blackflies.

  The cabin I had in mind hadn’t been used yet this year so the pickings were slim. I ate at a can of baked beans and
a can of green beans until I was all beaned out. I took a bottle of water and half ran back the Creighton truck trail because the Chief would need cooling off. Twice I had to jump off into the brush, the first time for a State Police cruiser with a big German shepherd tracking dog in the back, and the second time for a County Sheriff’s car. It made me feel important for about ten minutes, then I saw the back end of the deal. I’d hate to miss the big storms of winter in a jail cell.

  There’s not a lot more to this part of the story. As soon as it got dark I drove over to the Bear Trap Inn near Melstrand. I knew the bartender and he sold me a six-pack and fifteen bags of ice through the side door, and let me use the phone in the back room. He said I was getting real popular with the police as they had stopped by three times that day to check on my whereabouts. I called Frank and asked him to drop off a shovel and a bottle of whiskey at a certain part of the woods. Frank said, “B.D., you got your ass in a sling.” I asked if there was a reward for my capture because I wanted him to have it, but he hadn’t heard of any reward. Shelley was in the Dunes Saloon waiting for me to show up and Frank put her on. “B.D., I beg you to give yourself up, my darling.” I told her where she could meet me at dawn with the cops and hung up. I instantly regretted this as I had a hard night of work ahead of me and would need a nap before I turned myself in. Then I tried to call David Four Feet to see how you went about burying an Indian chief. There was only one number under their American name and I got an older woman. I said this is B.D. and she said “I know it.” This was the same woman who I had helped have a baby over thirty years ago. Sad to say, she told me my buddy David had got himself killed in Jackson Prison ten years before. She said Rose was living in the house with her two kids and I asked to talk to her. There was a pause and voices, then she said Rose was watching L.A. Law and wouldn’t come to the phone. Maybe if I stopped by someday with a present she’d be likable. I hung up the phone with a bad feeling in my stomach from Rose just like in the old days. The power of love to make you feel awful is something to see.

  I took log trails all the way to Grand Marais and past it, picking up the shovel on the way. There was a note from Frank taped to the shovel handle: “Do not shoot it out as if you get your ass shot off we will not get to hunt and fish anymore. There is no cold beer in hell. Yr. friend, Frank.” This note scared me a bit as it had not occurred to me that the cops would shoot me.

  I reached the location a half mile past the burial mounds and spent the next four hours digging a hole the size of a well pit for the Chief. I hauled him out and set him down, then sat next to him and had a cigarette and a cold beer. I put my arm around him and looked up at the moon, listening to some whip-poor-wills from along the river, and way in the distance a gang of coyotes yipping after a rabbit. I said “Goodbye, Dad” and almost cried, and gave him a shove so he toppled into the hole. By the time I filled in the hole there were the first traces of daylight in the eastern sky and I knew I had to give myself up to the law.

  Now it’s October and I am a free man driving to Marquette to see the woman who saved me, Shelley, and her dingbat cousin, Tarah. I imagined Brad might be having problems getting his ten pounds of vegetables per day at the hospital. I stopped at the Corktown in Munising for a pick-me-up and felt lust in my heart for the barmaid who had a large, solid fanny. I was nervous as the thought came to me that burning up the tent and expensive equipment might be a violation of my probation. No doubt it was, but someone has to stand up for what’s right. For some reason I couldn’t remember why Jesus came into Jerusalem on a donkey and why they threw palm branches in front of him. There was the idea that back then they maybe didn’t have riding horses. Grandpa bought me a horse once for twenty bucks and you could hardly ever catch him, but you could see him at dawn and in the evening from the kitchen window, way out at the end of the field hanging out with the deer.

  I checked at the desk at the Ramada Inn but the clerk didn’t want me to go up to Shelley’s room until he called ahead. I should have dressed better, I suppose, and when I felt my head my hair was sticking up. I went on up and found they had two rooms, what is called a “suite” with a living room and a bedroom. If you ask me, neither of them looked too good. They were both edgy and pale around the gills and I figured they must be sitting up day and night with Brad, but I discovered later it was something else. Tarah gave me a bleak hug and went off into the bedroom to take a nap.

  Shelley closed the door on her and immediately became crosser with me than ever before. She accused me of playing a trick on Tarah so that she heard a voice when she lay facedown on the burial mound. This had given her a nervous breakdown as she had never got an out-loud response from the spirit world before. Shelley said she thought of herself as a scientist type and didn’t believe in this bullshit but I had to have done something to freak out her cousin who was also her best girlfriend. I said I couldn’t throw my voice like Edgar Bergen did to Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd, but she had never heard of these people, which shows the difference in generations. I explained like I did to Tarah that the noise was just a bear cub crying for its mother. Then Shelley accused me of fucking Tarah when she was practically passed out from fright. Shelley was standing right in front of me so I had to stonewall it by saying that Tarah was “delusional” just like they’d said about me at the trial. It seemed to work as Shelley gave me a beer from a tiny refrigerator like a boat refrigerator over in the corner. She took a vial from her purse and snorted white powder that I knew was coke with a miniature spoon. This was out of character, I thought, as she is usually down on drugs. She said she and Tarah had been tired and sad from their problems so they bought a bunch. She offered it to me and I said no. A few years before, Bob and me met some tourist girls in the bar and went to their motel room and did some coke and whiskey. I got real excitable but my weenie wouldn’t stand up so I got drunk. The idea of paying a hundred bucks for a half-master is beyond me. My head hurt so bad the next morning I rolled around in the weeds next to the cabin and yelled.

  Shelley perked up fast and took a sport coat she bought me out of the closet. I hadn’t worn a coat like that, except a borrowed one to a wedding or a funeral, since I lost my graduation suit back in the Moody Bible Institute days. Things were looking up again, I thought, staring at myself in the bathroom mirror and wetting down my hair. Shelley came in and took off her clothes and we tore off a quick one watching ourselves in the mirror, and me with my new sport coat on. Shelley made a loud hooting noise and Tarah woke up and came out of the bedroom to see if Shelley was okay. We could see her behind us in the mirror and we all started laughing. It looked like it was going to be quite an evening.

  I had the rare treat of watching cable television while the girls spent an hour getting dressed. The cabins I live in never have electricity and Frank doesn’t turn TV on in the bar unless someone wants to see a sporting contest. Strange to say, there were twenty-seven channels and nothing interesting to watch. Shelley only let me have one more beer because we were going out to dinner at someone’s home and she wanted to guarantee my good behavior. I busied myself catching glimpses of them dressing through the bedroom door while I pretended to read the catalogue that lists every single Ramada Inn in the entire world. I caught Tarah bending over in a rear shot that made me wish I could work a camera so I could save the view for future generations, or at least for my cabin wall. She finished dressing first and came out and sat on the couch next to me with a dab of white powder under her nose and glittery eyes.

  “Shelley said that noise I heard was a baby bear.”

  “I told you that about five times.” I was nervous when she put her hand on my thigh because I was still a bit swollen from seeing her butt in underpants.

  “No you didn’t. It doesn’t matter anyhow. The voice spoke right into my stomach with a weeping sound.”

  “That was a bear cub,” I repeated. She traced a finger along the shape of my pecker and I glanced at the bedroom to make sure Shelley wasn’t coming out.

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nbsp; “I think it’s the way the dolphins used to tell me to get involved with Native Americans,” she said, giving my weenie a pinch.

  “Might be,” I said. Then Shelley came out dressed for church and we went off to dinner.

  After I thought it over later I can’t say I didn’t enjoy myself though I never got my balance back after Tarah’s pinch. The house was big and old but inside it was brand new which was peculiar. It was owned by a doctor younger than me who was taking care of Brad. He had a beeper on his belt and didn’t get to drink or do any drugs. Everybody else kept glugging drinks and disappearing into the bathroom for reasons I guessed President Bush wouldn’t approve of. I’d like to take him fishing as according to the newspapers, he never catches much in the ocean. According to Bob, the Japs are raping the oceans of fish for their yellow hordes.

  Meanwhile, at dinner there was also an attorney who kept saying “Super” and a newspaper guy who had been at my trial for a short period and who ignored me. The women were more pleasant than the men, also they were pretty and smelled better at close range than any bunch of women I had ever met. One of them could see I was uncomfortable at such a high-class deal and talked to me about her kids. Her husband had left for a while and came back with a fresh sack of coke. He was a nice fellow and we talked about fishing, exchanging our least-best locations as fishermen do. His wife said she was glad to see we were “bonding,” and went into the kitchen to help out. I said to the guy that I always thought bonding was when you repaired your waders or an inner tube and he agreed, though he was staring across the room at Tarah as if he wanted to jump her like a flying squirrel. All the men were paying the most attention to Shelley and Tarah because they were new in town, which pissed off the other women, who pretended they weren’t pissed off as they helped set out dinner.