Wicked Winters

by Melanie Karsak et al.

  “Well, you are a very kind man to remember that after all these years, and patient to wait that long to get an elk.”

  Tye blinked, trying to make sense of what she said.

  “Huh?”

  Her face softened. “Oh, you must not know. My Myron went elk hunting five years ago this past November and didn’t come back. The sheriff found his truck, but they never found him. They had dogs and helicopters and everything.”

  Tye blinked again. He realized he was standing there with his mouth hanging open.

  “Uhhh. I didn’t know. I’m sorry.”

  “Thank you. It was hard, but in a way it suited him. They diagnosed him with the cancer that summer, and sometimes I wonder if he just found a place that looked pretty and sat down and died. He loved it in the mountains.”

  “Uh. Yeah. It’s beautiful up there.”

  With that the conversation stalled out. Tye wondered why she would lie to him. Tye wondered if she was uncomfortable with a complete stranger showing up at her doorstep. Or maybe she believed what she was telling him and had just gone off her rocker.

  She looked at him expectantly.

  “Well, uh, I’d still like to give you elk meat.” He thrust the cooler at her.

  “Thank you so much. I miss elk meat. None of our boys hunt. They moved to town. I couldn’t even get any of them to take their father’s truck when he passed away. Come in while I put this away.”

  He followed her through the small, well-kept house. On the mantel sat pictures of her and a much younger Myron Gilford. One showed her in a wedding dress, him in a suit. The wedding picture was flanked pictures of their kids at various ages.

  Plates of cookies covered the kitchen counter.

  “Let me get you coffee. Have some cookies. My great-grandkids will be here soon. Do you live nearby?”

  As she bustled around the kitchen, He told her about Gary, May their land, and their plans. As they talked, she put the elk meat in the freezer, then wrapped a dozen cookies in foil and presented it to him.

  “Thank you so much for the meat. It would make Myron happy to know you got your elk.”

  Tye nodded.

  “You bring your friends by someday, so I can meet them.”

  Tye said he would, made his farewell, and stepped back out into the cold.

  On the way to the truck he made a slight detour, so he could get a better view of Gilford’s truck.

  It had been sitting there awhile. Decaying leaves stuck in that spot between the hood and windshield. Moss grew on one side of the bumper. That definitely hadn’t been there when he saw the truck in the mountains.

  It looked like the truck he’d seen just over a month ago, just unkept.

  As Tye drove back, he turned it over in his mind. Perhaps Gilford had a touch of dementia. Maybe he’d faked his death up in the mountains, bought an identical truck and roamed around the woods like he always did.

  People did crazy things sometimes.

  The trailer was empty when he returned. Tye poured himself a glass of milk and munched on a cookie while he waited for their ancient laptop to boot, then searched for “Myron Gilford missing.”

  The first story dated from five years ago. Elk hunter, Myron Gilford, was missing near Cougar Rock in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Tye scrolled to a picture of Gilford looking at him. The next story told how search and rescue teams found his truck, but there was no sign of him. Finally, after days of searching, the sheriff called off the search.

  Tye sat there, blinking at the screen.

  The front door slammed, and Tye jumped. He hurriedly closed the browser window.

  “Hey,” Tye said as Gary came in holding an armful of wrapped Christmas presents.

  “Hey yourself,” he answered. “You ok? You look pale, like you’ve seen a ghost or something.”

  Tye gave a nervous laugh. “I’m ok. Just tired.”

  Gary sat the presents on the counter next to the cookies.

  “Where did you get the cookies?”

  “I took a cooler of meat out to the wife of that old guy I met up the mountains.”

  “He wasn’t there?”

  “No, he wasn’t there.” Tye stood. “I’m going to work on that hide.”

  Tye was never this dishonest with Gary. He wasn’t lying, exactly, but he was sure leaving plenty out.

  Tye had cut the hide into four sections, and brain tanned it. Now it was stiff and unusable. He worked some neatsfoot oil into one section and started working it back and forth across a rounded board. This was called “breaking” the hide. The backbreaking labor, kept him from dwelling on Gilford, but still he felt that pressure building in his head.

  By evening he’d turned one stiff sheet of tanned elk hide into soft leather. His arms and hands ached, but he fell into bed exhausted enough to sleep.

  He woke up in the morning knowing what he had to do. The pressure behind his eyes was building. He knew if he just sat at the house, it would become unbearable.

  Gary and May were asleep when he slipped out. Tye wanted to give them their first Christmas together, and he craved the solitude of the woods. He left presents on the kitchen table: for Gary a translation of the "Cold Mountain" poems by the 8th-century Chinese recluse Han Shan and a copy of Pojar’s Plants of the Pacific Northwest Coast for May.

  His gear was always ready, and well before sunrise he was in the truck with a thermos of coffee. The elk skull sat on the floorboards. Tye had cleaned it, and it gleamed white.

  He drove up to the landing where he’d met Gilford. On impulse, Tye turned in, drove to the end, and stopped. He shut off engine and got out.

  There was a giant pile of fresh elk scat in the middle of the landing, along with several matted impressions in the grass. They were beds, where the elk had lain to chew their cuds after eating.

  It was silent here on the landing. The air was still, and no birds were flying. In the valley, mist billowed up as the air in the river canyon warmed. In his mind's eye, Tye could see Gilford’s truck driving down the rutted road, bouncing on its suspension. He pictured the old guy in his mind.

  “He was really here,” Tye whispered.

  He shivered, then got back in the truck.

  As he gained elevation, the snow was deeper. The truck's wheels slipped, but the four-wheel drive and the heavy lugged tires kept him going until the snow was too deep to go any further without getting stuck. He parked a mile away from the ridge where he shot the elk.

  He donned snowshoes and strapped the elk skull to his pack. Even now, with the flesh boiled away, it was heavy.

  The woods were still around him as he snowshoed along the road. Times like this made Tye grateful just to be alive. He forgot his other worries and just enjoyed the tracks in the snow. The tiny prints of a bird crossed the marks of a rabbit. Not long after, a bobcat had trotted by, looking for an easy meal.

  Soon he hit the end of the road. Because of the heavy tree cover, there wasn’t enough snow on the ground to need the snowshoes, but there was more than enough to be slippery. He picked his way down the slope gingerly.

  He passed broken branches where he knew he’d pulled himself up. He still couldn’t quite believe he’d made all those trips pulling the elk out. He remembered the bone crunching weight and the pain in every joint.

  Tye walked to the place where he’d sat with his rifle. From there, it was easy to find the place where the elk fell.

  There were still bones scattered in a wide circle. He walked around, finding vertebrae here, a rib there.

  He picked up a stark white rib and his fingers traced the smooth curve. A lump rose in his throat. He thought about the meals of elk they’d eaten and how many were left.

  “Thank you,” he whispered.

  Instead of letting the rib drop, he placed it back in the place where he’d found it and started looking for a tree.

  He found a gnarly old big leaf maple with a low branch and shinnied up. Tye realized he was enjoying himself. He hadn’t climbed a t
ree in years. He didn’t go much higher than his head. He didn’t want to fall and break a leg this far from help.

  By wrapping one leg around a branch and leaning out, he wired the elk skull to a branch, facing east. He stayed there a minute in the tree, surveying his handiwork.

  Eventually, the skull would fall on the forest floor, where small animals would chew it for the calcium and it would get recycled back into the forest. But for now, it seemed right for the skull to be in the tree, facing the sunrise.

  He made it back down without breaking anything, gathered up his gear, and headed back towards the top. He frequently detoured, checking out an elk track here, a pile of scat there. The area held a bunch of elk sign of different ages.

  He would hunt here again next year.

  Halfway up the slope, he came around a switchback and he saw the mound of plastic. Tye had forgotten it. He had plenty of room in his pack, so he bushwhacked his way over through the knee high Oregon grape.

  It took Tye a second to realize he was looking at a skull. It wasn’t a pile of trash. It was a human skeleton under a poncho. He walked slowly, doing a half circle. A small scrap of wispy hair still clung to the top of the skull and blew in the gentle breeze. The jawbone hung slack and open, and Tye saw a glittering gold tooth.

  “Gilford,” he breathed.

  There was a break in the trees here. Tye looked to the south and could see Mt. Hood, over on the Oregon side of the river, and far beyond that, Mt. Jefferson. In between were dozens of ridges and peaks, poking up out of the mist that lay in the valleys.

  “You sure picked a pretty spot,” Tye said.

  He turned back to Gilford, unsure of what to do. In his years of working Search and Rescue, Tye had discovered over a dozen bodies in the wilderness. His training said to mark the spot, notify the authorities, and disturb things as little as possible. But his gut reaction was just to let Gilford be. He looked like he was exactly where he belonged.

  Tye looked at the ground. There was a ring of animal tracks around the body. He recognized deer, elk, coyote and a bear track. He found one faint impression in the soft duff that he was sure was made by a cougar. He’d never found such a high concentration of animal tracks in one area.

  None of this made any sense to Tye. In a matter of days, Gilford’s body should have been disarticulated and scattered all over the forest, just like the elk. Instead he was undisturbed, although dozens of animals had been walking around within feet.

  He reached over and lifted the corner of the poncho. One sole hung off the bottom of a rotten boot, held on by only a couple of threads. Tye could see a jumble of small bones inside. His jeans were full of holes, displaying long stretches of leg bone. One had a metal rod running along the tibia. The old elk leather belt around his waist was still intact, but the Arrow shirt was now just a few strips of rotting cloth laying on Gilford’s ribs.

  Gilford’s old Winchester was across his lap. Tye started to lower the poncho, thinking he shouldn’t have disturbed the scene as much as he already had, when the skeleton shifted and settled a bit. The Winchester slid down Gilford’s legs and, by reflex Tye caught it.

  He let the poncho go and stood there, holding the old rifle in his hand. Gilford’s skeleton settled lower on the tree. His jaw bone came loose and bounced down the front of the poncho.

  Tye’s shivered. He inspected the rifle. The nylon poncho had done a good job of protecting it. There was a patina of rust on the metal parts, but Tye figured most of it would come off with steel wool and oil. The last couple of inches of the butt stock had poked from under the poncho. It was grey and weathered where the finish had lifted. There were small cracks and splits radiating from the rusted buttplate, but Tye knew wood well enough that he thought it was fixable.

  At first, the lever stuck, but Tye gave a sharp tug, and it popped open, ejecting a corroded green cartridge. He worked the lever a couple more times, ejecting the rest of the old ammo. It was easier each time, but it was still stiff and crunchy. Tye figured a little oil might loosen things right up.

  Something else hit the ground with a thump. Gilford’s knife was resting in the dirt by Tye’s foot. The loop on the sheath had rotted away. He picked up the blade and drew it. The elk horn handle warmed his hand.

  Tye had never in his life taken anything that didn’t belong to him, but walking out of the woods with Gilford’s rifle and knife just felt right. Tye was thirty-two, and was just starting to understand what was important in life. He’d learned that every time he’d trusted his gut it worked out. His gut was telling him Gilford wanted him to have the rifle and knife, and Gilford wanted to be alone, right here on his mountainside.

  “Thanks for everything,” he said to Gilford’s skull.

  He turned to go. After a few steps he stopped and looked back.

  “I gave Mrs. Gilford elk meat. She seems to be doing ok.”

  He realized probably Gilford already knew both those things.

  He walked back up to the truck, wondering if he was in a dream. If it hadn’t been for the rifle in his hands and the knife in his pack, he would have thought he imagined the whole thing. As he slid the rifle behind the seats of the truck, he realized he was going to have to figure out a way to explain the battered old Winchester to Gary.

  The clouds rolled in as he drove along the ridge. His mind felt too full. He decided to just be there in that moment, to look at the sun streaming through the trees, and the mist rolling up from the valleys.

  As Tye approached the landing where he’d met Gilford, he saw a beat up old pickup truck parked there. A young guy studied the ground where the giant elk scat had been.

  On impulse, Tye turned onto the landing. As he got closer, he could tell the guy was even younger than he’d thought. There was a very familiar looking copy of “The Elk of North America” in his hands.

  Tye stopped the truck, pulled on his gloves against the chill, and got out.

  “Seeing anything?” he asked.

  About David

  David Barbur lives in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. He can be found wandering the forest with a longbow in his hand, tracking animals and trying to figure out what happens next in his latest story.

  David Barbur Facebook

  https://www.facebook.com/AuthorDavidBarbur/

  David Barbur Email List signup landing page:

  https://www.subscribepage.com/TyeCaineHolidayGiveAway

  The Tracks in the Snow by Angelique Archer and J. Mills

  The Tracks in the Snow

  Siblings Amber and Cameron “Cam” Danvers are taking the train home after spending Christmas Day at their grandparents’ house in the mountains. Nine year-old Cam wanted only one thing for Christmas: to spend quality time with his teenage sister again like they used to when they were younger. But like most fourteen year-old girls, Amber’s main interests are her friends, boys, and mindlessly scrolling through her social media accounts to pass the time. When the train runs into an unexpected mishap on the tracks, Amber and Cam find themselves facing a fabled Christmas creature only their worst childhood nightmares could conjure up.

  Prologue

  Cherryton, San Bordelo Mountain Range

  In spite of Walt Ackerman’s windshield wipers furiously shifting back and forth on the old cherry picker, the snow was piling up so quickly on the glass that he couldn’t really see more than a few feet in front of him.

  “What the hell kind of company sends a man out on Christmas morning?” he grumbled angrily, leaning against the steering wheel, his eyes narrowed to slits as he tried to navigate through the snow.

  The power had gone out in Cherryton and a few of the other neighboring towns, and they wanted him to go out and fix it.

  Most of the other electrical linemen were away for the holidays this year, just his luck. He was one of three men who were still local, and he happened to draw the shortest proverbial straw, being less senior than the other two.

  Walt had just started opening gifts with his wife and
children when he got the call about the downed power line. The timing couldn’t have been worse. He and his wife had finally purchased the shiny black bike his son had been begging for over the last eight months, and the boy’s hands were tearing at the awkwardly wrapped Christmas paper when his work phone started to ring.

  It wasn’t one of those calls he could ignore or send to voicemail like he did with his pestering mother-in-law all the time. His boss was on the phone, with orders from his boss that people could not be without power for Christmas.

  He slowed the truck when he finally spotted it. One telephone pole was resting at an angle, while the one beside it had completely fallen, taking down several power lines with it. A few thick black cables dangled precariously from the slanted pole.

  Walt groaned. It was much worse than he’d imagined. He wouldn’t be able to fix this by himself.

  Knowing his boss would be angry if he left without providing some kind of damage report, Walt sighed and parked the truck as close as he safely could to the downed lines. He pulled on another jacket, his ski mask, and some heavy gloves and climbed out of the truck. After he was in the bucket, he pressed the remote to ascend until he was eye-level with the pole and could see everything else beneath him.

  The damage was bad. And it wasn’t just the two poles and fallen lines. A few poles down the road showed the same misfortune.

  Walt frowned, his brows furrowing as he surveyed the disrepair.

  There weren’t any downed trees, any sign that the poles had been knocked over from the snowstorm.

  What had brought them down if it wasn’t the weather?

  Yanking off his glove with a grimace, Walt snapped photos of the damage with his phone as best he could, the battery nearly empty as the frigid temperatures sucked the life from it, but the images were difficult to see, blurred with the flurry of snow flying past.