Brown Dog

by Jim Harrison

  B.D. pushed his luck on the solemn occasion and tried to get some information on his parents, but Delmore just held up his hands and said “Nope.” They played a game of cribbage and B.D. had the specific feeling Delmore had cheated while he went to the bathroom. It was only a matter of thirty cents, and he supposed that to stay ahead in this life you had to work at it all the time. When they said goodbye Delmore gave him his first hug since he was a boy and had brought Delmore a mess of trout.

  It was a warm night for May, with bright roundish clouds scudding across the moon, and the ravens croaked above him as he passed under their roosting tree. There was also the call of the whip-poor-will from down by the creek, the mournful notes doom-ridden and settling beneath his breastbone. How could he leave this lovely place for a series of acts that might land him in prison? He stopped to think things over in the cabin clearing amid the friendly whine of mosquitoes. All of the ifs of his life descended on him: he could have been a preacher, a licensed welder, a captain or even a mate on an ore freighter, an important guy in a high skyscraper, a world-famous lover. Instead, he felt like the small print of a painting in Grandpa’s living room called Orphan in a Storm where a tyke in a thin coat faced the wintry blasts alone, perhaps to die a frozen death. Grandpa would never tell him whether the kid died or not, though he did warn him against trying to fight the battles of others. He certainly wasn’t an Indian, or not enough so that it mattered. It wasn’t as if a noble and ghostly voice had told him to further defend the burial site he had betrayed. He had already gotten his ass in a sling trying to balance that score. But maybe not enough of a sling, and as he drew closer to the cabin he felt, at least for a moment, that he should die for this cause. It was a real difficult concept for him but there was no question that he had fallen in love and betrayed his honor. Shelley was a beautiful woman and she had dangled him on strings as if he were Howdy Doody, finagled his secret, paid him off, and sent him packing. “That bitch!” he screamed at the night.

  In the cabin it occurred to him that he had done so much worrying he had been neglecting his drinking. He poured the last two ounces of a pint, then remembered that Delmore, the tightwad peckerhead, hadn’t given him his new ration. A dim lightbulb lit up when he recalled that the burial site couldn’t be more than a mile from the Luce County line. If he parked on the main logging road south of Potter Creek, then walked up the trail across the make-shift bridge, he would only be a half mile from the site and maybe be able to get back to Luce County before being caught. Perhaps he could wear a disguise. He had always fantasized about having a giant ruffed grouse costume to scare snowmobilers. Maybe a giant beaver or woodchuck costume, but they were all out of the question. In the pale yellow light cast by the oil lamps he stared up at his hanging bearskin. Of course it was sacred, but then so was the burial site. He couldn’t very well leave his most prized possession behind. He hadn’t slept outside in it yet, as Claude had instructed, because the nights had been pretty cold. Also he had forgotten to. He lowered the skin with the clothesline and pulley and embraced it, his father bear. He filled a plastic milk bottle with cold water, grabbed his mosquito dope, and headed out near the raven platform, wrapping himself in the skin and staring at the moon as if she might tell him something. He had thrown a nice, fat roadkill raccoon up on the platform a few days before and he hoped he might wake up to ravens. There was the mildly troubling thought that bears can help you if you stay out in their world, but not in your own. Time will tell, as Grandpa used to say.

  B.D. awoke at dawn from bear dreams to a very real bear, a full adult weighing over two hundred pounds, its neck craning toward the carrion on the raven platform while the ravens whirled and pitched, trying to drive the bear away. The air was thickish and dew-laden, and when B.D. growled at the bear it scooted off through the grass in a shower of mist, turning for an instant at the edge of the clearing to see the source of the noise rising upward from the grass.

  The Muskol had worked fine on the mosquitoes save for a protruding ankle covered with welts. B.D. scratched, yawned, shivered, peed, figuring it had been the best night of sleep ever, peering out now and then at the drifting moon from beneath the bear’s jaw. His mind was empty, clear as a ringing bell or spring water, and he did not say what ancient warriors had said on the eve of battle: Today is a good day to die. Such an awesome utterance would have distracted him from the course that was set, locked into, predestined by everything that had happened to him in the past two years.

  Out in Doris’s yard he played a version of ring-around-the-rosie with Berry while Marten ate his breakfast and packed. He and Berry twirled until they were dizzy, then Berry would shriek like an osprey and they would throw themselves on the ground. It made his knee hurt so they stopped and he showed her the incision scar which she traced gravely with a forefinger. The school bus arrived and Red came running out with his lunch bucket, yelling to B.D. to “kick ass.”

  Out at the fort they had their war council on a picnic table pilfered from a roadside park, moving the table inside after a few minutes because Marten’s paranoia was growing by the moment. B.D.’s attention was distracted by a pail of fresh smelt the Wisconsin warriors had seined the night before, also by the two cases of beer and loaves of bread he had noted in Fred’s truck. That morning he had been full of bears and ravens, and after his last cup of coffee at the cabin he decided to fast to prepare for battle. Now a couple of hours later he had changed his mind about fasting. Of all possible meals God had concocted, fresh fried smelt with salt, bread and butter, and a couple of cold beers were one of the best. It was like Jesus with the loaves and fishes for the multitude.

  Marten stirred him by barking, “B.D., are you in a pussy trance? Pay attention. You know the fucking area and we don’t.”

  Luckily one of the braves and big Fred could properly read a topographical map, so B.D. was able to trace their intended route from Escanaba east to Grand Marais, then south into the outback, on only thinly defined log roads. B.D. was startled to discover that one of the warriors had been a schoolteacher and another a master sergeant in the army. They never said much but even B.D. sensed that they had a purity of intent lacking in both him and Marten. Perhaps even Rose had it. Meanwhile, he and Marten would be coming up from the south, walking about a mile in the dark before they started their cherry bomb and M-80 barrage at first light. Rose would be in Fred’s 4WD pickup and the braves would haze the camp on their motorcycles. Rose was going to leap out of the truck and throw red paint on the anthropologist campers, for whatever reason. Fred’s noble mission was to subdue any aggression with his bare hands, for which he was eminently qualified. Fred told B.D. that ever since he was a baby he had liked to knock heads, and that was what made him a successful football scholar in the Big Ten until he had pummeled an assistant coach into a rag doll.

  When the wind turned and fog came in off Lake Michigan, B.D. started a bonfire as a tip-off to start thinking about a smelt fry. The fucking hogs must have hit the Burger King before he showed up, he thought peevishly. When the coals were ready he raked a flat bed of them aside, set the Dutch oven in place, and filled it half full with oil. Since the smelt were small there was no need to go through the onerous duty of cleaning them, to which no one but Fred objected. “Then clean your own, asshole white boy,” Rose said. There was no flour to dust them in, but there was a lot worse things to be without, B.D. said, whipping the bottle of hot sauce out of his coat to applause.

  They ate the whole pailful and drank most of the beer, sleeping it off until near sundown. There was a quarrel about omens when the sunset made the foggy lake look like it was on fire. Marten said sententiously, “We push off at midnight.”

  B.D. went back in the woods to gather firewood and the notion occurred to him that he could keep on going. But no, the cards were on the table, the dice and gauntlet had been thrown, the genie had been unleashed, the circus animals were ready to make war. Fred wanted to sing “We Shall Overcome” but no one could remember the words bey
ond “someday”and their voices trailed off to the crack-ling fire. Marten applied some war paint to the Wisconsin braves’ faces, then went out front with Fred to change license plates on the Lincoln Town Car and Fred’s pickup. Rose beat on the upended pail and sang what she knew of a war song in an eerie, quavery shriek. The braves danced around and around the fire with contorted and violent motions, a mime of war, but always keeping an intricate step to Rose’s thumping. B.D. thought the braves sure beat hell out of anyone dancing on American Bandstand, a program he had watched with Frank back at the Dunes Saloon for the obvious reason of all the beautiful pussy, especially the black girls. The immense difference was that the dance of the three warriors scared the shit out of him, as did Rose’s chanting. Fred and Marten came back and one of the braves grabbed B.D., forcing him to dance with his cane in hand, then all were dancing right up until departure. Marten made everyone take a black beauty, a type of magnum speed, to ensure alertness. Fred, Rose, and the braves were sent up and over by Route 28 while Marten and B.D. would take Route 2 over to 77. In case either group got stopped by the police the others could carry out the mission.

  B.D. had been bright enough to let the black beauty spansule slip under his tongue, then to spit it in the weeds before getting into the car. The world was going fast enough all by itself without cranking up your brain. One night his salvage partner, Bob, had chopped up some white crosses and hoovered them, leaving a line for B.D. to snort before going out to a bar. B.D. had drunk ten drinks instead of the usual three, danced alone for an hour in front of the jukebox to Janis Joplin, slept with his feet in the river to slow down the world, and caught a bad cold.

  In the car Marten was rattling on as if he had way too many batteries, so B.D. listened closely to the undercurrent of the radio on a golden oldies station and it was like hearing all of your used-up emotions. Before Manistique he had a brainstorm, to which Marten agreed, and called Frank at the Dunes Saloon from the car phone. Marten’s Ann Arbor spy had been right on the money. Frank had snuck up for a look-see in case B.D. called, but all Shelley and her friends were doing was pounding in stakes and measuring. Frank hadn’t seen a single shovel but had noticed a couple of deputies from Munising on the closest log road, no doubt waiting for a possible appearance by B.D. Also, when Shelley and the other graduate students came in the bar they had a real big guy with them who wore a sport coat and didn’t act at all smart like a college graduate does. In addition, the man drank boilermakers, and Frank supposed the guy was someone Shelley’s father had sent along to look after her.

  Marten was thrilled by the news but B.D.’s sole operable thought was how he was going to outrun the deputies if they showed up, what with a bum leg and a cane. The main thing going for the Windigos was the earliness of the assault and the weather, which was getting bad with the wind coming around from the northwest and rain turning to sleet, not an uncommon thing for May in an area that has seen sparse snowflakes on the Fourth of July. B.D. was not one to deny his emotions, and as they drew near Old Seney Road off Lavender Corners he remembered Grandpa’s remarks about Italian soldiers turning to froth and jelly. If you added incipient diarrhea and strange needle pains shooting through the neck, B.D. thought, you’d be right on the money.

  When he turned off onto the final log road he made a prayer to a god unknown. The rain and sleet were picking up and the wind was bending the treetops. Marten had flicked on the dome light and was sorting through his munitions, stuffing them in a parka pocket. B.D. mused that if Marten caught on fire there would be shreds of him all over the landscape. One blockbuster was too big for the slingshot and Marten announced that it could only be used in the manner of a grenade if the enemy drew too close or chose to pursue them, or in any way hindered their escape.

  “Where we escaping to?” B.D. asked, peering into the dark for the narrow trail that ran to the north. The trail had once been used by off-road vehicles until he had laced it with carpet nails which had settled the noise problem. He had also weakened a small wood bridge over a culvert they used.

  “Westwood. I got a colloquium.” Marten now had his ordnance sorted, jacket zipped, and was beating out a dashboard tattoo to the fading song “Young Girl (Get Out of My Mind).”

  B.D. decided to pretend he knew what a colloquium was. He certainly remembered that Westwood was in California, which was a definite violation of the dead chief’s advice not to go south of Green Bay, Wisconsin. More troubling was the notion that trout season had just begun and he needed to check out certain streams north of Escanaba he hadn’t fished since his youth. His favorite fly, along with the muddler, Adams, and woolly worm, was the bitch creek nymph, a name of ineluctable sonority.

  “Where am I supposed to fish in California?”

  “They got the whole ocean, you jerk-off.”

  B.D. had pulled up alongside the trail and Marten was itchy to get going. It was a scant half hour before first light.

  “I don’t think I could handle the ocean. It doesn’t move like a creek. There aren’t any eddies or undercut banks.” Now he was feeling plaintive.

  “There’s a pond in a botanical garden that’s chock full of orange carp.” Marten jumped out of the car and turned on his flashlight, his back to the wind-driven rain.

  B.D. got out shivering and remembered that for the five-hundredth time he had forgotten a warm coat just because the day had dawned bright and fair. The thin army-surplus fatigues were no good in this fucking weather, so there was no choice but to haul the bearskin out of the trunk. It sure as hell had kept a living bear warm, he thought, and now it’s my turn. Marten fidgeted as he helped tie the bindings and then they were off into the moist and windy darkness, the small flashlight beam a puny comfort.

  Day dawned, but not much of it. The clouds were nearly on the ground but the rain had stopped. B.D. was cozy in his wraparound bearskin while Marten jumped and flapped to keep warm, studying the windage for the slingshot. Through Delmore’s spyglass B.D. dimly made out three tents, plus Shelley’s Land Rover and a big black 4WD pickup down the hill about fifty yards. He also glassed the closest log road, about a half mile away at the end of a long gully, for the possible sight of a cop car. It seemed to be getting darker again and he looked up from the spyglass only to receive a big raindrop in his left eyeball. He flipped the bear head back over his own as Marten readied the first shot which would be an M-80. They knelt behind a huge white pine stump, B.D. flicked the Zippo, and Marten sent the first charge soaring toward the encampment, followed instantly with a succession of three cherry bombs. B.D. went back to the spyglass and saw a big man running down toward the pickup. Marten sent an M-80 in the man’s direction and he hit the grass, rolling downhill and hiding behind a stump. The rain began in earnest again and B.D. put down the spyglass because the Zippo was too hot on his other hand. He took out a spare butane, then noticed Shelley sprinting toward them, following the coursing fuses as if they were tracers. She was about halfway to them, dressed attractively in bra and panties and screaming when she wheeled, hearing the three motorcycles and Fred’s truck attacking the camp.

  “B.D., you motherfucker!” she screamed, at a dead run again. Before B.D. could stop him, Marten sent a cherry bomb in her direction but it didn’t slow her down. Marten grabbed the spyglass and studied the mayhem at the camp, still stooped behind the stump in case the big guy started shooting. It didn’t look good for Fred. The big guy was clubbing him into the ground despite the fact that Rose was on his back, jerking at his hair. The motorcyclists were doing a fine job on the tents.

  “B.D., you motherfucker!” Shelley screamed again. He was swept away, peeking over the stump, watching her nearly nude form running toward him in the rain. If only it were for love, he thought, jumping out at the last moment with a mighty howl. Her bare feet slipped from beneath her as she threw herself backward, her screams now in terror rather than anger. He was on her like a bear, crawling over her, growling and howling, giving her a very wet kiss.

  “It’s just
me, your long-lost love,” he whispered, before he felt Marten frantically pulling him off. She opened her eyes for a moment, then rolled sideways, covering her face with her hands. Marten was yelling something and when B.D. stood he could see the big black truck heading toward them, jouncing sky high on the rolling ground. B.D. trotted and hobbled back toward the culvert bridge, turning to see Shelley running off toward the camp and the pickup closing in on Marten, still kneeling behind the stump and lighting his blockbuster. He held the fuse just short of disaster, then pitched it onto the pickup’s hood. The big man threw himself sideways, the bomb went off, and the driverless pickup crashed into the stump. Marten ran for it and when he reached B.D. they watched the big guy wandering back toward the encampment, still in his underpants.

  A scant but speedy hour and a half later they had crossed the International Bridge at the Soo, and in a few hours were in a town on the Superior coast with the unlikely name of Wawa. B.D. had wanted to stop for breakfast which had astonished Marten, who had said, “We’re on the lam, asshole.” Back in the woods near Hawk Junction they slept for a while at the hideout cabin of a friend of Marten’s, a Canadian Mohawk on the run from the government, then they traded the Lincoln Town Car even-up for a muddy, brown Ford Taurus station wagon with bald tires and ninety-seven thousand miles on the odometer. The Mohawk fried up a panful of venison which B.D. relished even though it tasted of cedar branches. The rule of thumb was that you never poached a deer before July Fourth when their bitter winter feed was out of their system. While Marten attached one of his fresh license plates to the Taurus, B.D. leaned against the vehicle thinking about how lovely Shelley looked in the rain. The worm began to turn. He doubted that she would ever forgive him but he knew she wouldn’t forget him. They headed west.