Northern Lights: A Scorched Earth Novel

by Boyd Craven III

  “Yeah. My… I haven’t been able to go to funerals,” I admitted.

  “I know this is going to sound like shit, but everybody dies someday, man.”

  “I know, it doesn’t make it easy, though.”

  Brian leaned in, hitting my shoulder with his. “And quit making me look like a loser in front of my wife.”

  “What?” I asked, surprised.

  I turned to face him and saw he was grinning. “Gotcha. Listen, I was uncomfortable earlier. Part of me was jealous I guess. You two have a shared history. I didn’t realize it went as far back as sixth grade and a white picket fence separating you two.”

  “Yeah, we were friends first. Should have just stayed friends.”

  “You were young,” he said.

  “Young and stupid,” I admitted, welcoming the change in subject. “Brian, I just want you to know, man… I’ve kinda had an epiphany up here…”

  “If you try to kiss me I’m going to knock your teeth out,” Brian said, making me chuckle despite the situation.

  “I’m done trying to nurture my hurt feelings and anger towards Tracy. I’m done with that. I just hope you trust me, that I’d not break the friendship by…”

  “Dude, I know. It looks like you’ll have your hands full, though. You and Jordan both.”

  “I don’t even know what to think about that,” I told him, “I think what I’m feeling is mutual, but I’ve only known her a day.”

  “Sometimes that’s how it works. Sometimes that’s cupid shooting you in the ass and not the heart. Either way, just go slow.”

  “Her father just died and I’m too chicken to go in and be with her, trust me… I’ll be lucky to even manage slow - if she’ll even talk to me,” I said dropping my head into my hands a moment, letting the afternoon sunshine on my head.

  A headache was forming, and it was going to be a doozy if I didn’t get in the dark somewhere soon.

  “Just be there for her,” he said getting up and walking away.

  I heard the door shut and felt footsteps as somebody walked out and sat down next to me. Tracy? Wrong again. Denise sat so close our hips touched and leaned her head over on my shoulder. I put my arm out and around her.

  “What do we do?” she asked through the tears.

  “We’ll bury him,” I told her. “We’ll live on.”

  It really wasn’t that simple was it?

  “What about Mom? She hasn’t got much time left.”

  “You won’t be alone,” I told her and she cried harder, her arms encircling my chest.

  12

  Weeks later, we were back at Denise and Tonya’s cabin, digging another grave. Debora’s health had faded quickly once her husband was gone. It was a testament to how much she’d been putting on a show for him, so he wouldn’t worry more than he already had. She’d got so weak she’d not leave the couch or bed for long periods, and she slept more and more. She quit breathing in her sleep and never started back up. The girls had waited a day to come by canoe and found us at our little homestead putting up more food.

  They were no strangers to our site and Jordan and I had gone back and forth when we had free time, as did they, but they’d never left together before. I took one look at their expressions and went and got Jordan. That’s how we found ourselves under the same tree that Debora had picked out for her husband. The shoveling was surprisingly easy, and when it was done, we placed her to rest beside her husband. Carving her name in the tree below her husband’s was our last act.

  Both canoes were loaded with what remained of their clothing and supplies and we towed them back to our side of the lake. I didn’t tell them that they’d left a treasure trove behind, but it was too soon and it would be ghoulish of me to even suggest it.

  “…and you can totally have my bunk,” Jordan was telling Tonya.

  I was only hearing part of the conversation. He wasn’t signing to her, but speaking aloud. It was how nervous he was. Unlike me and Brian, he’d never really slowed down long enough to notice the ladies or get attachments. He had fallen and hard. I knew I really liked Denise, but it wasn’t the bone crushing, all encompassing—

  “Penny for your thoughts?” Denise asked and my hand slipped off the throttle, making the boat lurch wildly.

  I righted it and apologized.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Tracy says that. A lot. Just threw me hearing you say it,” I admitted.

  Tracy smirked from her spot at the front of the boat next to Brian.

  “I was thinking about everything. I wish we could do more; I wish…”

  “Look at that,” Jordan interrupted, and I looked to where he was pointing. Swimming across the girls’ lake was a moose or an elk. I never figured out which was what and was too embarrassed to ask.

  “Doesn’t even care that we’re in a boat, zipping across the water.”

  “Nothing changes up here for them,” Brian said. “Boats and planes came and went. I wonder how long it is until not even that’s going to happen.”

  That thought was a lot darker than what I’d been thinking and we all fell silent.

  “Have you set out any snares like you were talking about?” Denise asked, probably to break the uneasy silence.

  “Yeah, I’ve got about a dozen small to medium sized game sets out. I’m going to make a deer snare later on today, actually.”

  “What if a bear or elk steps into it?” Jordan asked.

  “Should hold. I’m going to use the cable from the aircraft. Some of that is 3000lb weight strands. That big coil is made up of a ton of strands. We just have to see if I have stoppers and stuff to make them.”

  “Yeah, you sort of forgot about that,” Tracy snarked from the front. “Like you were going to do that a couple weeks ago.”

  “I know,” I said.

  Other than putting up food and firewood, we’d done very little else. Each day, a pair of people - for safety - went and collected the now ripe blueberries, enough to fill two or three of the screen window trays that we’d made. We ate as much as we dried, and craving the sweet juices had us all wondering about fermenting. That was something that Denise had hinted at she knew about. In all, we’d see. It had also gotten colder in the last couple weeks and we’d been wearing our sweaters in all but the heat of the mid-day sun. Summer was coming to a close, and soon Fall would take over.

  “We don’t have to bring it all at once,” Denise told me as I cut the motor and beached the boat on the sandy beach on our side.

  “It isn’t a big deal,” I told her. “It’s the boats that might get left just on the trail somewhere.”

  “I don’t want to be a bother; we still haven’t figured out the sleeping arrangements as it is.”

  Tracy smiled and started to say something as she was stepping off the boat, but her husband clamped a hand over her mouth and whispered something into her ear. She nodded and grabbed a big backpack full of Denise’s gear and headed off. We’d all done the trail so much, it was clear and marked out on both sides of the trees to make it easy for everyone to navigate. We grabbed the contents of the boat and went back to our little homestead.

  “So, what’s for dinner?” I asked aloud.

  “Your night for cooking. Just pick something non-toxic,” Brian said.

  “Ok, so I’ll leave your wife’s cookbook out of it,” I said. “Who’s in the mood for some biscuits and rabbit stew?”

  “Rabbit stew?” Tracy stopped and turned around to look at me.

  I pointed. The snare I’d set on a lark a couple days ago to show them how I did it was now sprung. It hadn’t been when we’d left to go bury Mrs. Wood, but it looked like a nice fat cottontail.

  “Damn, just that easy?” Jordan asked.

  “Sometimes,” I said walking over and untying the rope I’d used as an anchor line and slung the carcass over my shoulder.

  “You know how to clean them?” Denise asked me.

  “Of course, do you?” I asked her, curious.

 
; “I love rabbit,” she said, and Tonya made a face at her.

  Denise stuck her tongue back out at her sister and we got walking again. I know, for grownups, we sure acted maturely. Then again, we were in the middle of nowhere, with almost no entertainment. Snark, sarcasm, and pranks had become the new norm, although campfire songs were still highly rated.

  “What do you have for veggies?” she asked.

  I didn’t.

  “Nothing really,” I admitted.

  “Ok, I’ve got some stuff in my pack. Rabbit stew it is.” Denise walked faster, leaving me the last one in the line of friends.

  * * *

  “Ok, so you got a big piece of cable. This is so entertaining,” Tracy droned in a monotone voice.

  “You’re not helping,” I told her.

  “You wasted some of your weight on that? That has to be like, 8 pounds.”

  “Something like that,” I told Jordan.

  “What is it?” Denise translated for me.

  “It’s a crimper for my snare parts. Now, this isn’t the usual wire I use, it’s stiffer and is slightly different dimension,s but it’s close enough for me to crimp parts with it.”

  “This is like the rabbit snare you had earlier then?” Brian asked.

  “It will be. The only difference between that one and this one,” I said drinking a cup full of the thick stew, “is the weight of the wire and the type of cam lock I use.”

  “Ok, so break it down for me,” Jordan said leaning in close.

  We were all sitting around the kitchen table and I was having mock snare class while we ate.

  “You put in the cam locks on the unprimed wire. Go ahead and let it fall to the bottom for now,” I said heading off Tracy’s questions she was already trying to ask, “Then loop the end, cam locks open end, making a loop. Then crimp on a stop ferrule.” I paused to show them.

  “Put a double ferrule on one end and push it in three inches roughly. Then take the end that’s sticking all the way through, and make a bend and guide it into the open hole,” I told them as I showed them.

  I finished the crude loop by crimping it closed with my tool that looked like bolt cutters.

  “That’s it?” Tracy asked. Just a basic loop.

  “Hold your arm out,” I said and when she did, I pulled it tight.

  Jordan took a hold of the wire and pulled, testing it, “And they can’t back out?”

  “No, they have to mess with the cam locks to do it. If we were snaring monkeys I might worry, but we’re not,” I said smiling.

  “Well, show this monkey how to release the cable,” he said grinning. I showed him.

  “Then you take the small loop and use that to attach it to a tree or a drag.”

  “What’s the drag for?” Jordan asked, “Why not just hook it to a big tree?”

  “Depends on the placement and what you’re likely to snare. For something low to the ground like a wild boar, I’d say tying off to a tree is ok. Going after something bigger like a bear or an elk… I’d probably prefer to use a drag.”

  “Ok, but what is it?” Tracy asked.

  “A log or large rock you can tie the snare off to.”

  “Why, though?”

  “Well, you want the animal to get its air choked off and die as quickly as possible. Sometimes something big like a bear can just push a tree over and get loose if the loop didn’t close tight,” I told her. She nodded.

  “And you know this illegal method of taking deer because…” Denise asked, an eyebrow arched in a question.

  “I watch a lot of YouTube,” I said going for a chuckle but it fell silent and dead in front of us.

  “Sorry, no more YouTube. My bad,” I apologized.

  “Hey man, at least somebody here knows,” Jordan said.

  “Now you do, too. Placement is something you’re going to just have to get a feel for, that and picking out how to set up the traps for whatever it is you’re hunting.”

  “How long you been doing this?” Jordan translated for Tonya.

  “Since I was a kid,” I said shrugging.

  “Why are we just now getting real meat then, huh?” Brian asked, adopting a high pitched voice that got him an elbow to the gut by Tracy.

  “That’s for stealing my line,” she said and then leaned in to give him a kiss.

  “We’ve had so much going on,” I said, “I dunno. I think putting back as much as we can at this point would be the smart thing to do.”

  “Hey, we could always go see what’s in the old cabin by us sometime,” Denise piped up.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, surprised.

  “There’s an old cabin further back in the woods. I think it’s the owner’s original. The roof’s still on, but it’s in rough shape.

  I looked around and everybody shrugged.

  “It’s worth a look sometime,” I said, thinking about the sheets that had been left behind for lack of room, all the million billion little things they could use.

  “Ok, so now that I’ve had some real meat, I want MOAR!” Tracy yelled in her imitation of Brian’s bass voice.

  I smiled and noticed that Tonya was nodding and making that knocking motion with her fist. That must mean yes.

  “Good, so I have a ton of traps to walk tonight, and then we’ll figure out the sleep situation.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Tracy said slyly.

  “Don’t,” I pointed at her.

  “What?”

  “You’re dead to me,” I said and she picked up part of the biscuit she’d had left on her side and chucked it at me.

  “What was that for?” I asked her, finding the chunk that landed back on the table and eating it.

  “You’re stealing my lines now too!” she pretended to pout but was smiling.

  Tonya signed and when she was done both Jordan and Brian snickered. Denise smiled.

  “What?” Tracy asked.

  “She says that someday when she grows up, she wants to be a sassy spoiled brat just like you.”

  Tonya’s mouth dropped open and she quickly signed, looking at her sister.

  “Apparently we weren’t supposed to tell you that, she was joking of course.”

  “Of course,” Tracy said pointing two fingers towards her eyes and then using them to point at Tonya’s.

  “I’m watching you.”

  “It’s getting deep in here,” I said, slurping down the last of the stew, “I’m going to go check my traps. Anybody want to come with me?”

  Surprisingly, it was Tonya who popped up with her hand raised high up in the air.

  “I was going to go for a walk with him,” Denise said, arching a curious eyebrow at her little sister.

  “You were going to show me how to use your necklace spark thing for making a fire,” Tracy whined.

  I shrugged and Denise gave me a smile and shrugged back.

  * * *

  Tonya walked beside me. Whenever I could, I tried to turn my head to her when I talked so she could read my lips. I showed her the simple game trail sets I’d set up on a game run. She smiled and we kept walking and checking them. One of the hoops of the snare was partially closed and Tonya looked at me questioningly and then held the snare off the ground a little bit as if to ask me what happened?

  “I think a squirrel or something pulled it down. They like shiny stuff sometimes.”

  She nodded and we kept walking after I made that loop larger. I was setting things for really small game. Rabbits, raccoons. Nothing like squirrels or birds, though I wouldn’t turn one away if I got it. Which reminded me, I took my day pack off and pulled out the AR-7 Old Henry camp gun and put it together. Tonya stopped to look at it, fascinated.

  “You ever shoot?” I asked her.

  She nodded. I put it together and handed it to her.

  “That’s the safety on it, and this is how you release the magazine,” I showed her, “and this is the charging bolt…”

  She smiled and pulled the bolt back, feeding a shell into the chamber
.

  “We don’t want to scare the animals off,” I told her, thinking she was going to take a potshot at something.

  Instead, she held it up as if to aim at something, dropped it down and put it back up getting the feel of it. For somebody who didn’t like to speak even though she could, she made herself known through body language and basic hand gestures. I didn’t have to understand sign language to see now that she was just checking out the gun.

  She held it up and pointed to the safety showing me it was on and then handed me the gun.

  “You shoot one like this before?” I asked her.

  She shook her head no and then held her hands out almost 3’ apart and then held her hand out in front of her body making a big circle with her thumb and pointer finger.

  “A bigger rifle or shotgun?” I asked her.

  She nodded, smiling and then tilted her head to the side, telling me to come on, hurry up.

  “So can I ask you something?” I asked as I fell into step beside her.

  She nodded.

  “Why don’t you talk? I know you can.”

  She was quiet for a long time and then spoke, her voice monotone and a bit nasal sounding.

  “My voice sounds funny to other people. Embarrassing.”

  “Well, it’s just the six of us up here,” I told her. “I don’t think it’s funny sounding.”

  She smiled and clapped me on the shoulder. I pointed up ahead and her eyes followed mine to the last of the snare sets. It was almost all the way to the blueberries. This one was also empty. Like the one before, something had pulled on the loop a bit, or I didn’t set it up right.

  “Let me,” Tonya said.

  “Ok, sure,” I said watching as she went and made the loop larger again.

  She studied it for a moment when she was done and then looked at me and held up a finger.

  “Wait,” was what she told me and then went and collected dead sticks. She shoved them into the ground on either side of the trail. I watched halfway fascinated as she made a tunnel of wooden sticks. It would channel an animal right to the snare if they went that way. Would the sticks spook them?

  “Bait?”she asked.