Big Man, A Fast Man

by Appel, Benjamin

  I knew I wasn’t being fair. He was after Art and he couldn’t drop any hints about playing footsie with Washington to the son-in-law. That’s logic. But stronger than logic as it’s always stronger is the hunk of meat we all are. For if Art went to jail, it was nip and tuck for me. The only real consolation I had was the bait. The million-dollar organizing campaign for the South.

  From Seattle we flew to Sitka. Then we flew across the gulf to Dutch Harbor. The fog was blowing when we landed. The gray fog of the Aleutians. Stealing the roofs off the houses, wrapping up the Eskimos so that they looked like walking spooks. Just the same I’d calmed down. It was all worked out in my head. Soon as Jim shot his bear and felt like a big hero I was talking to him. The next day we took off in a Grumman Goose. We had our guide along, a sawed-off quiet fellow by name of Sherr and our cook, a half-breed Indian. This Serge Yanoff. About two hours out we dropped down through the fog into a little bay with two small sandy islands. They stood there like a couple of guards, behind them the main island. Twin Island, it was called because of the two little islands. It was a sight to see. The fog shifting. All that wild country. Slices of valleys showed up and disappeared, the tundra all brown like old hay, and up in the hills unmelted snow. “We’ll be the only human beings here,” Jim said. Christ, was he happy. He looked ten years younger. But me, I felt ten years older. There was something about that now-you-see-it now-you-don’t island that made me remember Art’s talk about a hunting accident. It was that gray fog creeping and Jim asking questions like a boy scout about some animals out on the flats. They were fox feeding on stranded fish. And he had to know. A boy scout, nature, the little animals, the little bugs. No friendly witness, he. And me, I just hated the whole world and most of all I hated him.

  That first night after supper all they did was talk bear. I pulled out a bottle of rye. Hunters’ vitamins, I call it. We sat around drinking. It was cozy in that cabin. The wilderness in style. Every comfort flown in, even the timber for the cabin. Trees don’t grow on the Aleutians. Only the wall-to-wall bear rug in the cabin was a homegrown product. We drank and the wind howled and the waves on the beach kept it up. There’s no worse sound in the world when you’re down in the dumps than waves. Monotonous as hell, sad as hell.

  The next day we hiked inland to harden up our city muscles, not to hunt. The second night it was bear all over again. What does a real sportsman do when he comes across a bear? Shoot when the bear’s down on all fours? No, sir, not a real sportsman. You let the bear see you so he can get up on two legs. You talked to the bear to let him know you were a man. In most cases, the bear walks off. But if it’s the specimen you want you put a bead on him and start shooting. Once a bear’s hit, the Alaska bear, he’s as dangerous an animal as there is. I was sick of hearing them yack. Hunters can go over every last detail a hundred times. Talk, talk, talk, and me thinking, talk of dangerous animals. There was nothing more dangerous than a God damn Christer turned stool pigeon.

  The next day it was foggy when we set off, and me I kept hoping Jim would get his bear so we could have it out. I was getting all goofed up. I admit it. Go and control your mind. It was foggy. Jim’s red hunting cap was a kind of pale gray and pink, and in the lead the guide was just a spook. I was glad when the wind began to blow. Blue patches of sky showed. You could see the birds. It was spring although you couldn’t believe it in the fog. In the alders the songbirds were singing. New grass had poked through the brown tundra. And I felt something that wasn’t good, that wasn’t me, blowing away with the fog. I asked myself what I would’ve done if I was in Jim’s shoes. The same damn thing. No, not the same exactly. I would’ve had to be a Tooker inside out to be able to cooperate with a bunch of snoops and not have it on my conscience.

  We kept to the ridges where the wind had blown away the snow. The footing was good. No spongy moss underneath. And that wind kept blowing until it was all clear. The fog all gone and the wilderness as far as you could see. Snow on the hills, tundra down in the valleys, the birds in the sky. Ducks quacking. Small birds in the thousands like leaves fluttering on a tree. A tree without a trunk. It was beautiful. Every once in a while this guide Sherr stopped to use his binoculars. I had a pair myself and when I wasn’t using them, I passed them to Jim, and he’d grin. And I’d grin back. Two hunting pals.

  Late in the morning we saw our first bear but the wind was against us. He smelled us. The smell of men, all leather and guns, and ran like hell. Jim was so excited he broke the rule about no talking. “Look at it go,” he said. This Sherr whispered to keep it quiet but Jim had to know how big that bear was. It was a seven-footer, the guide said, not a big bear, and to keep it quiet. Listening to them my whole mood changed. Miami and Washington and all the God damn cities, they were gone with the fog. There was only the three of us in the wilderness. The wilderness where a man felt clean. Where all the things a man might have done with his life seem to hang like a lantern, all pure and white. And to be left there until the next trip.

  Luck was with us. An hour after the first bear, the guide froze and pointed to an alder grove. Through my binoculars I made out a brown patch fringed around with pale green leaves. I passed the glasses to Jim. He took a good long look. Then he turned to the guide like he was asking: Is this a big one? The guide nodded and Jim got all red in the face. We advanced single file so if that patch saw us, it would only see one hunter and not an army. The wind was blowing from us to the bear. We had to quarter into it, and that patch got bigger and bigger. You could see it without the glasses. When it lifted its head, we froze in our tracks. There was no stopping us now. We went downhill and that tundra sounded like breaking dishes. That’s how it sounded. Freezing, moving, freezing, moving. The same technique in stalking a rabbit. Covering ground when the game was feeding or looking elsewhere. The sun was hot as hell now. My knees caving in. My heart banging away like an old motor about to conk out. But who cared, not with the hunting fever in you. We reached the next ridge and down below that patch was no longer a patch but a bear. And what a bear. Its body was one big brown mass, its head another. Like some kind of a snowman, it was. A brown one. The guide signaled to spread out, no more single file. And that was when the bear heard us. It swung up on its hind legs, its head swinging too as it tested the wind. But the wind’d sold the dumb bastard out. “Now,” the guide said and Jim went forward. He went forward talking to that bear. “Hey bear, hey bear, here I am,” he said over and over and then you couldn’t hear him in the blast of his rifle. There was a second blast and that bear, that big bear big as a house was on the ground. His head rolling, his paws twisting, and out of somewhere the blood had come. “Give him another,” the guide said and his voice, low and quiet, was the voice of old man death.

  A brown mountain of dead meat. Jim started to run but the guide stopped him. They sneaked forward, foot by foot as if maybe that bear was still alive. It wasn’t. It was dead. “There’s your rug,” the guide said and Jim ran up to that bear like a kid to candy. He lifted its great big head and fingered its claws. “I can’t believe it,” he said after a while. “It was alive a minute ago.” He had the kill jitters that hunters get sometimes. I pulled my flask out of my parka but he wouldn’t drink. His face was white and kind of sad. “Friendly as puppies. Natural clowns,” he said. He gave me the creeps. All that natural history stuff. I made him take a drink. But when the guide began stripping off the hide, when the meat showed up piece by piece, pink and raw, Jim couldn’t look. And when the guide wiped his bloody hands on the ground before tying the hide to his packboard, I had the strangest damndest feeling I ever had in my whole life.

  Something I’d never felt before. I looked at that big animal robbed of its fur, dressed in its raw meat and blood and I thought Jim was right. It was murder.

  We returned to camp and stretched out in our bunks. I was beat but I kept thinking of murder. Animal murder and human murder. It was awful. Every muscle in my body ached but I didn’t conk out for a long time. When I awoke it was almost s
upper time. Jim was awake. He was reading a book at the table. I made up my mind right then and there to have it out with him. I said, “How about working up an appetite?” He said, “Okay,” and we went down to the beach. If Jim was sorry for killing the bear he didn’t act it. He was the big hunter now. The big hero. He rehashed that whole day. The chase, and the big second when the bear was up on its two legs. And me, I waited for my chance to put the cards on the table.

  The sun was sinking way over behind that volcano down in the Aleuts. That Shishalden volcano. Purple and far away. The little bay colored gold. The thinnest kind of gold. It was that beautiful that one of those notions you get in the wilderness got into my head. How that bay was like some ballroom floor. Some golden floor where angels might have danced. Christ, it was that beautiful and peaceful. We sat down on a rock and watched the wind cut up the bay like a pair of scissors. The waves began and I hated the sound of them. I thought, What am I, sitting like a lump? Words, ugly words filled my mouth. Stool pigeon and friendly witness. But what I said was, “I’ll never forget the sight of you talking to that bear, Jim.” He got going again, which is what I wanted him to do. Cold as hell, that was me. Priming him for a heart to heart talk. Page Shafer and his God damn advice.

  When Jim finished I said I’d get my bear tomorrow or the day after and we’d be going home. “Makes a fellow think,” I said. “Home to the land of the free but when it comes to labor there’s no guarantees.” That was going faster than I intended. But I didn’t give a damn. Don’t ask me why. Jim, he played it innocent. He said we were on vacation and should forget back home. He was a good guy, a sweet guy, but he could put on a pokerface with the best of them. Why not? He’d spent years at the bargaining table with management, each with their hidden aces. That pokerface showed me what I was up against. I had a hunch I’d get nowhere playing it careful so what I did was open up. I said, “Putting Beck in jail was a crime.” I said, “Hunting Hoffa like he was a dog is another crime.” I didn’t give a damn I was going so fast. My heart pumping like it had on the ridge with the bear below. I let him have it even plainer. “Don’t tell me all over again jail’s what they deserve. What about all those solid citizens who played footsie with them? All this yack about corruption. Who but the teamsters — ” He never let me finish. He said, “Who but the teamsters. I know that argument of yours, Billy. The rank and file get theirs. The leaders get theirs. Perfume to sprinkle on the garbage.” His voice was sad. I tried to see his face but the light was gone. There was only one last beam in the whole sky and it was narrowing by the second. Like somebody was shaving it with a plane. “Jimmy,” I said quick, “what are we beating around the bush for? I know all about you being a friendly witness.” He said, “Billy, believe me. I swear to God, you wouldn’t have been hurt.” I said, “I believe you but I could go to jail if there’s a big exposé.” He swore never through him. I said, “I believe you, Jimmy, but I happen to be Art’s son-in-law.” He said, “Yes, but you’ve never had a treasury to loot. Even if you’d been that kind of a man and I know you’re not. Your heart’s always been in the right place.” That’s what he said. A lot of things like that. And I believed him. He wasn’t built to lie.

  I’ll never forget that talk we had. And that darkness. It was like the end of the earth with only the two of us left. I begged him not to go through with it. I pulled out all my arguments. “Art’s no prize,” I said, “but he’s no worse than a hundred I could name.” I said, “He’s so scared he’ll give you anything you want. An all-out campaign in the South.” And you know what that man said? He said he couldn’t take it.

  He said he couldn’t take it. Christ, I began to shake like a leaf. I said, “Why can’t you take it, Jimmy?” He said, “My conscience won’t let me.” He had to follow his conscience and why didn’t I testify with him. Christ sake, that’s what he said to me. To me who’d cut off his right arm first before I went to a bunch of labor-haters who got as much use for the workingman. Aw, Christ, Christ. I tried to argue with him but what he wanted was pie in the sky. To clean up the union once and for all. To get rid of the crooks once and for all. To get rid of Shafer, the power behind the throne. Sure there were crooks, I said. But since when was stealing the worst crime in the books? Even if Art’d invented one hundred and one ways to line his pockets he was just a chiseler compared to the big crooks in the country. I tried all the arguments I could think of. How Art was seventy-four and he’d die soon or retire and that’d be the time to clean up the union. The southern campaign could be the start. And all he said was, “I must do what my conscience tells me to do.”

  “What conscience?” I said. “Where is it in this country and I’ll buy it. Who’s better than labor? Big business? Don’t they have their scandals, don’t you read the papers? Are all those yapping labor-haters so perfect? We’re pretty clean for a big union.” That only made him laugh. “What big union?” he said. “We’re big all right. We’re a big dog on a leash.” He about killed me, he was that stubborn. “We’re not perfect,” I said, “but you tell me who hasn’t pulled a fast one, I don’t care who he is.” And he said, “Everybody’s pulled a fast one except J. Christ of the carpenters’ union and they crucified Him.” It was the old wisecrack somebody’s always cracking at union conventions. But in that darkness on that God-forsaken island, said like he said it, with all those waves breaking. It wasn’t a wisecrack. It was like — What was it like? What are the words? A prophecy. That’s what it was like. I tried to see his face but it was too dark. Black as hell, and me running in it, not knowing where I was running. Just running. This was no guy I could talk to. This was no guy I knew or could catch up with. But I made one more stab. “Jimmy,” I said, “Art’ll put up a million bucks for a southern campaign. It’s your dream, the South.” He said, “I don’t want it corrupted. If Art’s got a finger in it, it’ll be corrupted. The answer is no.” I let out a groan like a beaten dog. What he wanted was not what we could give him. Pie in the sky. Some God damn utopia.

  He put out his hand and patted my shoulder. “Billy,” he said, “try and understand me.” And he started talking how we were living in a new time. The world was sick and we were all sitting on the edge of the grave the scientists’d dug for us. He said, “I’ve got four kids sitting on their grave and I tell you we’ve got to organize for something bigger. Or we’ll all be done.” That’s what he wanted. A new America where everybody’d love everybody else like his own brother. The old brotherhood crap. I listened to him and it was listening to a crazy fanatic. He’s the quiet type but I swear to God it was like fire coming out of his mouth. “Where are we going?” he said. “Better pay and better hours isn’t the answer any more. That’s been our trouble. The rank and file aren’t human beings to us but pay envelopes. How many in this local and how many in that one. The more the merrier. It’s all a numbers game to play against management. Management with their plants. We with our locals. We’ve become big and we’ve become lost. We knew the answer once but we’ve lost it.”

  What he meant was the depression. How back then we’d been organizing for jobs, for shoes for the kids, but also for a better America for everybody. He said, “What are we organizing for now? The same old pork chops.” He said, “Pork chop unionism’s gone rotten like any old ideal past its prime. Pork chops for us and crumbs for everybody else in the world.” The world. The world. That’s all he could think of. That God damn fanatic. The fate of the world. I tried to knock some sense into his head. I asked him what would help the union most. An investigation that’d split us into pieces. Or to go along united. To organize the South and a southern federation with clean men. He said, “Art’d wreck it as he did once before.” — “No, he can’t this time,” I practically yelled, that happy to put a dent in him, “you’re sitting in the winner’s seat, Jimmy. You’re the man to succeed him. You’d have the support of your fed and a new southern fed and my support.” Put a dent in him, huh? When I got done he said I was wasting my time. He intended to testify in Septemb
er. “Go ahead,” I yelled, “clean up labor, what a joke. Don’t you know you can’t clean up labor until you clean up business and government and the whole God damn hoopla and that’ll be the day of judgment?” And he said and I’ll never forget it. He said, “The day of judgment is here, Billy.”

  That was Jim Tooker for you. The day of judgment kid, alias J. Christ of the carpenters’ union. When I crawled into my bunk that night I couldn’t sleep. All I could think of was our talk and how September wasn’t so far off and how he’d tell the Senators that his pal Billy was a good guy. Gentlemen, Billy Lloyd’s no crook but a fine labor leader, three cheers. Sure, he meant it. But what about the investigators, the lawyers? The dirt had to come out. The fast ones I’d pulled. So I’d pulled them for the rank and file. So what? I was that wound up. Go control your thoughts. I hated him for the bastard he was. I’m honest. Once Jim Tooker testified, he was just another stool pigeon. That’s what I thought. And between you and me I wouldn’t give a dime for one. Aw, I’ve spoken enough for one day.

  Mr. Lloyd, Bill. If you don’t mind. I promise this is strictly confidential. How far did you go in your thoughts?

  All the way. I killed him dead for the stool pigeon he was. The way I saw it. He was going to rat on me no matter what his intentions, and a guy low enough to do that, well. Put it another way. He was J. Christ and anybody with ideas like that is a menace all around. A problem, to say the least. As a trouble-shooter I was always ready to work on a problem. A hunting accident up in Alaska isn’t easy. That’s how far I went in my thoughts. It isn’t easy on account of the hunting laws which say the guide has to be along. Still I could kind of stumble when I had a bead on the bear. That’s how far I went in my thoughts. That’s how a man gets himself up to murder. He gets himself on a one-way street and can’t get off. The next day we went inland again and got on the trail of this bear. A giant, an nine-footer. We caught up with it and I slipped the lever of my rifle, throwing the load into the barrel. A 220 grain load to knock over a ton of bear. “Hey bear,” I called just like Jim. The bear jumped up. I could see Jim and the guide out of the corner of my eye. They were looking at the bear. Not at me. All I had to do was stumble. The thought made me sick. I fired but I missed that bear because I was shaking. Missed it clean and it took to its heels. They yelled at me what was the matter. “Buck fever,” I said. Jim shook his head. “At your age with your experience?” I looked at him and when I thought of how close I’d been to killing him, I threw that rifle down in the grass.