by P W Ross
“Let’s go light a fire, Jack.”
And, light a fire they did. After, on the dock they sat in the Muskoka chairs, side by each, wrapped in towels, not risking a glance at each other. They watched the stars, the dipper, listened to the loons and perhaps mutually shy, did not speak. Her hand went out and cautiously groped for his and connected.
She asked herself what she was doing spreading her legs to a man she had really only known for a week.
Neither knew, neither cared. They only knew, each in their own space, that it was right, honest and it felt good. Something neither of them had experienced in a long time.
Before them shimmered the Aurora Borealis, The Northern Lights. Waving streamers of whitish green and shafts infused with pinks. The Earths’ magnetic field interacting with charged particles of the sun. Into the bargain some say they have heard soft sounds coming from them, like the bursting of soap bubbles.
“What do you want out of life Jack?”
No hesitation.
“I’m fifty and it’s half over. It’s been a great ride and the runway is clear. I want a cool, easy ride to the end. Like to try and help some folks that never had the chances I did. Like to survive long enough to see a kinder, gentler world. The ‘Lost Generation’ revived.”
Jesus, she thought. Who is this man and where did he come from? Is he a naïve fool or a Nuevo Utopian?
“Jack, come back to bed. I’ve got a surprise for you.”
He pulled her up from the chair and they noticed Duff who had intently observed the proceedings.
“Keep this to yourself old man,” he said as he headed into uncharted waters and followed her up to the cabin and the old brass bed.
“And Jack, ... call me Pony.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Norval’s charter party woke him at dawn out of a fuzzy, irritable funk brought on by too much navy rum with Abe the night before. Now he had to spend half the goddamn day with these clowns.
“Morning gents,” he greeted them with feigned civility. “Get your gear aboard. I’ll go up and get us some coffee.”
Dumb fucks, he thought, dressed and outfitted for a TV fishing show.
The drill was simple. Once he had them up the lake and lined up a troll, he would allow one of the party, usually the guy he figured was paying, to steer the course and call out the bottom and fish depth. Norval set the lines himself and always ensured the first two fish got into the boat. After that, his credibility as a guide established, he only drove the boat and they were on their own. If they lost a few fish, which invariably they did, so be it. As he navigated, he could never quite tune out their hogwash. Mindless chatter about jobs, cars, houses, stocks, bonds, bankruptcies, wives, mistresses, kids, and divorces. These guys could never leave it behind even if that's why they came in the first place. The more they drank, the more bullshit they spewed.
They caught a sizeable lake trout that morning and had shore lunch at a favourite campsite outfitted with a deep fire pit and iron grill. Fish fried in a huge black cast iron pan with an inch of Crisco. It was a trans-fat nightmare but what did these guys know. Southern fried lake trout.
They got their money’s worth, tipped Norval fifty bucks when he deposited them back at the lodge and he arrived at his camp at three in the afternoon.
He oiled the spring on the trap one last time before placing it in the bow of the steel boat and covered it with an old blanket.
There was a light spinning rod and reel in the stern along with a net and his tackle box. Looking like just another fisherman he was ready and eager to go but it was too early and he poured himself three fingers of rum to take the edge off.
His bile got up as he replayed his meeting with Alexander. Wouldn’t you know that asshole would be with the best-looking woman in town and the idea of wanting to give him, Ami Norval, advice on fishing trout. Where the fuck did that come from?
Alexander had passed him on the lake that morning and he knew he shouldn’t have been fishing the hole where he had dumped the bodies but he couldn’t resist revisiting the scene. What was Jack doing up in the North Arm? If he was out fishing he was returning too early. Best keep an eye on Alexander and his latest flame.
At twilight, Norval fired up the Honda and tore off through the opening of the South West Arm, motoring south along the west shore. Behind the skyline preserve, Sturgeon Lumber had been granted a license to cut pulpwood south of Gull Lake. Ralph Sawchuck who lived on the lake year-round came by boat, roped up at a dock on the mainland and walked in half a mile each morning on an old portage trail. Like his father before him, Sawchuck had logged all his life and as foreman on this cut he was first man in and last man out.
Two hundred yards off shore, Norval seemingly trolled for walleye but his eyes fixed on the two open steel boats moored at the loggers’ dock. Two men sauntered down the trail and tossing their packsacks in the bow, cracked a couple of beer cans and revved off down the lake. Fifteen minutes later, Sawchuck emerged and pointed his boat north out of the arm. Norval gave it another fifteen minutes to ensure no one had forgotten anything and might return. Then he raced to the landing. Anyone seeing his boat would assume it belonged to one of the loggers.
He lugged the trap seventy-five yards up the trail to a glen where poor drainage had created a depression in the ground. The trees overhead covered the trail like a bower and shrouded it in darkness. The trap fit snugly in the hollow and Norval positioned it over the boot tracks of the men who had just departed. Gingerly he opened the fearsome jaws and delicately set the release. Its pressure was set so that no small animal would cause it to spring in error. Like the jaws of a great white shark, agape and flat on the ground, it awaited the unsuspecting.
Norval looped the attached chain around a substantial pine and then meticulously covered the trap and chain with ground cover and light brush, taking the care to ensure that not even a seasoned bushman would suspect the presence of the fearsome toothed vice left behind. When the men returned in the morning it would be just coming light and they would see nothing.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Of sturdy Ukrainian stock, Sawchuck was two hundred and thirty-five pounds packed on a six foot two-inch frame. Pure muscle made not firm but rock hard by twenty-five years of cutting and hauling. His rugged flat face was crowned with thick black hair not yet greyed and topped with a yellow hard hat stained brown with pine sap. Disembarking at the dock he gently lifted a Stihl Wrap Chainsaw. Eight horsepower and weighing in at just less than twenty-two pounds it was the ideal saw for cutting medium to heavy timber. Unlike many of the men, he never left his saw at the site regardless of how waterproof the case. It went home with him every night and he religiously cleaned, oiled, sharpened and tightened the chain for the next day’s work. The saw was not a tool or machine but a valued partner in work of which he took immense pride. He went through at least one a year and his meticulous attention to maintenance was the main reason for all of his fingers still being attached to his hands and his hands connected to his arms.
There was a light chop on the lake that would soon grow to whitecaps and before heading to the cut he saw two boys coming toward him in a battered steel craft that should have been taken out and sunk but it was all they could afford. Rookies. He grinned, hard workers and enthusiastic but with the carelessness of youth. Too many nights in town partying and not yet understanding the danger of working in the bush with a hangover. If lucky, they’d get through the season under his tutelage with all their parts still in one piece. They would be on time, but just barely and one of them would invariably have forgotten his lunch and mooch half of his.
He flicked them a wave, cleared the dock and trod steadily up the trail toward the cut. The dew was still heavy on the trail and the bush emanated a hint of muskiness from dead and decaying debris in the underbrush. His left bicep had grown to ‘Popeye’ proportions from years of cutting and as he swung the saw it accentuated his momentum up the hill. A pair of partridge flushed with a feathered e
xplosion off the path and careened between the trees and out of sight. Approaching the flat of the trail, early morning light filtered through the trees of the porous tunnel around him and ahead a young jackrabbit squatted, unconcerned as he watched the logger draw near.
Traversing the bower, his eyes were drawn to those of the rabbit and locked on them. As the pressure of his boot released the trap the rabbit’s ears came to attention, its eyes registered alarm and then, hearing the terrifying clash of the fearsome iron teeth ripping into Sawchuck’s leg, it leapt upward, twisting in midair and disappeared into the ferns.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The last moments of the logger’s consciousness registered in slow motion. The saw slipped from his grasp and he looked down in disbelief, seeing his right leg shattered in the teeth of crescent-shaped jaws that he recognised clearly but unbelievably as an immense bear trap. It had caught him just below the knee at ninety degrees and through shredded flesh blood spewed in all directions.
Stupefied, he initially felt no pain as his hands groped for the top of the trap that they never reached as he twisted and tumbled forward onto the side of his face and right shoulder. His hard hat bounced away down the path. As he lay on the ground an excruciating pain kicked in; an electrifying all-consuming agony that would not pass with the gritting of teeth but only with death. He bellowed one long, agonising, echoing scream of angry resolution before passing out. After all these years in the bush what kind of grievous way to die was this?
The scream pealed down the trail and the boys raced up the hill in steel-toed boots to find Sawchuck on the ground surrounded by a halo of fine red mist spraying from his leg. Impossible as it was for them to fathom the horror of the scene they remained remarkably calm and efficient.
“Christ Ralph, don’t you die on us here like this,” the young one pleaded as he removed his belt, wrapping it around Sawchuck’s lower thigh and pulling tight.
“Hold this tight as you can, see if you can stop it and I’ll try to figure out how to release this goddam thing.”
“Jesus, this is fucking unreal. It’s a bear trap.”
Frantic minutes later, with blood-slippery hands they pried the jaws apart and cinched off the belt. As they lifted him, one at the shoulders and the other at his upper thighs, the leg dangled limply, twisting back and forth, flattened at the gash held only by the ragged flesh of the upper calf.
They struggled down the path, twice falling awkwardly. Still breathing faintly, Sawchuck was dead weight. Swathed in blood they staggered onto the dock.
“Get him in his boat, it’s faster than that piece of shit of ours. Call and let them know we’re coming in and to have a doctor and an ambulance ready to go.”
“What should I tell them?”
“Just tell them what the hell we found and to be ready for Gods’ sake!”
The chop on the lake was coming up as Sawchuck had predicted and it was rough going as the boys pounded their way toward town. Word was out. The pier was abuzz with fifty townsfolk peering down the Northeast Arm. The ambulance waited with lights flashing at the gas station above the dock. Binoculars to his eyes, Eugene stood at the edge of the wharf with Parsons.
The attendants were at the ready as the boys landed. Two townies and the two paramedics hoisted Sawchuck onto a litter and needlessly raced him to the ambulance which sped away immediately south to North Bay. The boys slumped back into the steel hull, one comatose and the other holding his hands over his face, elbows on knees, head hung low. Both were smeared in blood and the boat was awash in pink and red. Eugene gave them a few minutes and then escorted them to the station.
Conrad Brautigan would later note in his official report that the jaws of the trap had snapped Sawchuck’s femur like a twig and severed his popliteal artery as if it were a garden hose. The top of his calf muscle, the gastrocnemius, was shredded. His mates had done their best to apply a tourniquet to the superficial femoral artery in his thigh but blood loss inevitably drained away his life.
Jack stood in the crowd, staring quietly into the steel boat as if it held some secret. It didn’t, just two inches of pink water below, bright red blood spatters covering the hull, a couple of lifejackets and a wooden toolbox. At the sound of a camera shutter he glanced left to see Parker working the scene with a Nikon.
“Well Alexander, our boy has struck again. This is going to make for one hell of a town meeting.”
“Parker, why don’t you piss off? Mind if I ask you a question?”
“Shoot.”
“Can you see your reflection in the mirror?”
Eugene and Jill came between them.
“Jack, let’s the three of us take a ride down the lake.”
The all too present yellow tape was already in place around the dock and up the trail when they arrived. Two of the officers from North Bay were waiting for them.
“Everything okay fellas?”
“Yes Sir, we came down as soon as they called in for the ambulance and as far as we know nothing’s been touched.”
“Thanks boys. Give us some time here, will you? I’ll call if I need you.”
“Watch where you step. I doubt it, but there could be some surprises.”
“Got it.”
“That goes for you too Jack.”
As he walked, Eugene poked the ground in front of him with a thick, long stick. He stopped ten feet from the trap as if it were a dangerous animal. Rigid, hands on hips, baseball style OPP hat tilted back on his head.
Jack slowly walked a circular perimeter with a twenty-yard radius from the trap. Every once in a while he would stop, kneel and look for a sign but there was nothing to be found in the surrounding bush. He came in and knelt on one knee a yard from the trap, hand to chin, staring intently.
It was on its side, three-quarters covered with blood. The surrounding ground was still bright red and there were splatters four feet in every direction. His eyes followed the chain to the pine and the lock.
“So where does something like this come from, Jack? And who the hell would be using one?”
“You can still buy these in the US or even over the Internet. It’s still legal to trap bear in certain states but this isn’t a new trap. Bet it’s fifty years old. Tell you one thing, no one ever bothers to sharpen teeth on a bear trap the way these have been done. Just don’t need to. This thing is freshly oiled, sharpened and I don’t know why it’s chained to that tree. Nobody’s going anywhere with this clamped on their leg.”
“Old habits die hard. Guy used to trap bear and that’s the way he always does it.”
“Maybe.”
Jill was kneeling where the chain wrapped the tree. “Jack, which way you figure he came in to plant this thing?”
“No way he schlepped it through the bush. Probably waited until the crew was all out, walked it up the hill and camouflaged it.”
Eugene knelt on one knee, unable to keep his eyes off the trap. “Jill, what did you find on Sawchuck?”
“Lives on the lake, logged for twenty-five years, upstanding guy, foreman on this cut.”
“Hmmm... Jack, this is number four and we know it’s got to be the same guy. Loggers walk this trail every day so he knows we’re going to find the victim right away.”
“How do we know he got the guy he wanted?”
“Maybe he doesn’t care.”
“Nah, I don’t buy that, he does. This trap was set last night for sure or else it would have snapped up one of the crew yesterday. Betcha he knew Sawchuck was going to be first in.”
“You seen one of these around here?”
“Nope, nobody uses these things any more. Only place you’ll see one of these is in Bob’s bar. There’s one half this size hanging on one of the walls.”
“What about Bear Island? You telling me that the odd brave hasn’t trapped a bear or two over the past few years and sold the gall bladders to some Chinese crackpot.”
“Don’t go there Gene. If you want a bear nowadays you can go to the dump any
day of the week and poach one, no hassle.”
At the dock Rummell stood hands in pockets, overlooking the lake under a bright midday sun.
“Know what I think Jack?”
“I think you’re going to tell me.”
“We’ve got ourselves a local on our hands. Someone who, for whatever reason has snapped his wire and wants to teach us a big lesson.”
“And what lesson is that?”
“You tell me. Come into the office tomorrow. We've got a session with everyone involved on our side including an RCPM profiler and I’d like you to be there.”
Jack raised his face up toward the pine tops, considering his options and realized he really didn’t have any. He couldn’t beg off anymore. He was in deep and knew he wanted to get this guy as badly as Eugene.
“Time?”
“Four o’clock. We’ll meet for a couple hours at the station and then go to the wake.”
“What wake?”
“Bob’s holding a wake for Henry Wainright tomorrow night at the Miniwassa.”
“Christ, they haven’t buried him yet. He’s still in the North Bay morgue.”
“What the hell difference does that make? You think he’s gonna get any deader?”
“Eugene, there’s that unique way with words again”
“Agreed, now let’s get the hell out of here and get a drink.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Jack met Pony at the chip wagon and they walked slowly toward the arena at the north end of the town site. The meeting was for seven o’clock and although it was only six thirty, a steady stream of cars, mostly pick-ups and vans passed them on the way to the rink.
