A TV crew from Channel 6 News had arrived on site and had recorded the whole sequence. When the bear went into the trap and the door came down, onlookers whistled and cheered and whoop-whooped, and drivers honked horns, like Imus had just scored a touchdown. A female reporter came over pointing a boom microphone at him, but he begged off any kind of interview. There was still a traffic hazard, and he needed to get the animal relocated pronto.
“How far you taking him?” the reporter asked.
“Far, far away,” he said.
“Second star on the right?” she countered, getting into the spirit.
“Not that close,” he said, getting into his truck.
Imus drove back roads all the way to east of Munising, connecting with M-28 south of town, and headed east on the two-lane highway toward the Seney Stretch, debating whether to make the drop north or south of the roadway. When he saw a good road, he went north, crossed Walsh Creek, drove three miles down a beat-up and sandy two-track, past a decaying, abandoned hunting camp, and stopped. He peeled a candy bar and pushed it through the bars to the animal, which inhaled it happily, clacking its teeth for more.
“Okay, En-ree, boy, this here’s your new home.” Imus put two whole pizzas on the ground thirty feet from the trap, stood on the fender of the trailer, sprung the door, and expected the animal to leap out for the food. But the small bear sat in the cage, tilted its head, and looked up at him. “Bear, you got a screw loose or something? This is world-class blueberry country. The cage ain’t got none.”
Imus frisbeed more pizza at the pile. The bear yawned, circled, and lay down.
“No nap, En-ree, me-boy,” Imus said sharply, as he took out his baton and poked the animal. “Hit the road, fella.”
No response. Imus poked again, and the animal reluctantly jumped down and ambled over to the pizza pile.
The officer leaped into the truck and sped away, not stopping for a mile. When he stopped, he looked back. No sign of En-ree. Good, relocation complete. He’d noticed that the animal had very little hair on its rump. Disease? Not sure. Henry looked good other than that small flaw.
Ten minutes passed. No En-ree. Imus felt good.
•••
Next morning at the district office near the state prison, El-tee Alvin Crate joined Imus getting coffee. “About ten days ago a man called, said he legally purchased a bear he used to train his hounds, but training was done, and he wanted to give us the animal. I told him since he purchased it legally, he could dispose of it the same way. He wasn’t real happy,” the lieutenant added.
En-ree had been all over the news and Internet last night. Suddenly the bare spot on the animal’s rump made sense. “Cement floor in a cage,” Imus said. “I’m guessing your caller dumped the animal west of town. He was totally unafraid of people.”
“Where’d you take him?” Crate asked.
Imus took the lieutenant into the conference room to the wall map and showed him.
Crate chuckled. “That ought to do ’er, but why drive so far?”
“Wanted to be sure.”
“You know better, Amiziah, there’s no certainty in our line of work.”
•••
Three months later El-Tee Crate grabbed Imus as he was coming into the building and steered him back to his office. “Coffee’s on my credenza,” the lieutenant said.
Highly unusual. Crate was a fine man and a good leader but not the chummy type. “I do something wrong, El-Tee?”
“I just wanted to share something. It seems a troop of Boy Scouts were camping and canoeing at the Little Bear Lake Campground in Pictured Rocks. They were making s’mores over a campfire, and a bear came into camp and ran at them like a big dog, right at them. They panicked and ducked under their canoes. The bear tried to get underneath with them, which totally freaked ’em, adult leaders included. The group’s scream was so loud that it brought a Pictured Rocks ranger on the run with a shotgun, and he killed the animal. The scouts and their leaders fell on the dead bear with knives and hatchets and chopped it to pieces. The ranger said it was surreal and savage, like Lord of the Flies or something. It made him sick. Next morning he told them to pack up and get the hell out of the campground. His report says the bear’s backside was nearly bald.”
En-ree, Imus thought, gulping.
The conservation officer went into the conference room and measured the distance from where he’d put the animal to the campground in question. It was less than twenty miles as the crow flies. Should have put him south of the highway into the Seney Wildlife Refuge. Poor Henry. Not his fault. Mine. Oh-fer-eight. Shit.
Funnest Man Ever
The scene was grisly, the man sprawled on the railroad track, cut in two. But there wasn’t that much blood, all things considered. Conservation Officer Meglizabeth Vesco had gotten a call from the dispatcher and been first on the scene. The vic looked to be in his forties, sort of small, though it was impossible to judge with the two parts about three feet apart. Oddest of all, there was a smile on his face, not a smirk but a full shit-eating grin, a Joker-size smile.
Vesco had been a conservation officer for eleven years and seen death in all its forms: suicides, vehicular accidents (the snowmobiles tended to be the worst—many beheadings), death by violence (guns and knives, even fists, one with a broomstick carved and fire-hardened into a spear). Mostly the rictus of death left a shocked look on the faces of the dead, never a smile or a grin. Not like this.
The accident took place near Menominee, about a mile from any main intersection, and by the time Vesco got down the tracks in her patrol truck, she found a crowd of about thirty gawkers, all intent on seeing the body. She had no idea what sort of psychology attracted the living to the bodies of the dead, but the pull for some folks seemed undeniable.
Vesco checked the mangled corpse and began herding people away to make room for EMTs and the county medical examiner, an old gal named Gwendolyn Goldie Golt, whom everyone called Three G.
The conservation officer stood with the gawkers. The stiff had no identification in his clothing. “Anybody see what happened?” Vesco asked.
“Hitted by a train,” a man said. “Thud, then flump!”
“Thud, then flump,” several voices said in unison, and Vesco turned and looked at the gawker chorus. There was one group of perhaps seven or eight, and they all had small, distant eyes that sparkled.
“Thud, then flomp?” Vesco said.
“More FLUMP! than flomp,” a man corrected her.
The small group nodded in unison and shouted, “FLUMP!”
Vesco took an involuntary step back and turned to look at the body. The group scream sounded eerily like something of substantial solid mass was striking something of flesh and bone. Onomatopoeic, a voice in her head said, and then she began to have a hard time getting it to go away, an earworm. Geez, what a pain. “One of you folks see this . . . flamp?”
“FLUMP,” a man said with a hiss. “Not flamp, not flomp, not flimp!”
The group shrieked FLUMP! and caught the officer off guard again.
The man standing in front of her was a wide body, with gray hair combed over, thick glasses with black rims, an earring in his right ear (gay or not gay, Vesco couldn’t remember), University of Michigan sweatshirt, Detroit Tigers baseball cap, and weird red lips, like pasted-on licorice strips. “What’s your name, sir?”
“Not telling the man,” he said happily and waggled a forefinger like a metronome.
“I’m not the man, I’m Meg Vesco. You can tell me.”
“I don’t think so,” the man said. “FLUMP!”
The chorus echoed the FLUMP, and Vesco looked at them and began to wonder exactly what the hell she was dealing with. “Anybody here know the man on the tracks?”
“FLUMP!” the group cackled in unison.
“The fun
nest man,” a woman said.
“Anything for a grinsky,” someone added.
“FLUMP!” the chorus said, and they all began to applaud enthusiastically, flippers over their heads like trained circus seals.
Clearly there was something off bubble with these folks, and when Vesco looked more closely, she decided they were all mentally deficient. Not a diagnosis, but a quick cop-take on reality. Droolers, she thought, and having had this thought she felt ashamed and turned away from the group to face the other onlookers. “Anybody here actually see what happened?” Vesco asked.
A woman with a ring in her lower lip and another in her left nostril pointed at the group. “They were all standing here when I got here, and I was first of all the rest of these dudes,” she said, indicating the other people around her.
“They were here?”
“Right where they are now.”
“Doing anything particular?”
“Like now, just standing there staring with their mouths hanging open.”
Vesco asked, “Do you know those people?”
“Don’t know them, but by the look of them I’m guessing they come from the House of Joy, back across that field behind us. It’s a group home for some kind of short-bus brigade,” she said matter-of-factly, pointing.
Vesco turned back to the group. “You folks from the House of Joy?”
“FLUMP!” they answered.
A single female voice said, “We stayed right here, Little Joe. Just the way you said.”
“And we laughed. This was the funnest,” another person said, this from a man of thirty, though the more Vesco looked, the less certain she felt about guesstimating ages.
“You saw the train hit your friend, and it was the funnest?”
No group yell this time. The group nodded solemnly as one.
Unbelievable. “But he’s dead.”
“Dead as dirt,” somebody said.
“Always had a split personality, now his body matches,” a woman called out.
“He said he wanted to go play train,” a man said, and Vesco homed in on him.
“Your friend wanted to go play train, he said that?”
“Joe-Joe said.”
“Okay, Joe-Joe wanted to go play train, is that it?”
“No, we all played. TEAM.”
“FLUMP!” the group roared.
“What do you mean, you all played?” she asked, not sure to whom to direct the question. Vesco selected a man at random and pointed at him. “You all played. What’s that mean?”
“Joe-Joe got his. We told him.”
“Told him, FLUMP!” the group called out.
“I don’t understand. Joe-Joe was the funnest man?”
“And meanest,” a woman said meekly.
“Not nice, not nice,” a man said, and began rocking from heel to toe on both feet, staring up at the sky. “He’s gone, he’s gone, the funnest man is gone.”
“FLUMP!” the group shouted and began to whoop and whistle and clap their hands.
Vesco said, “You’re glad he’s dead, is that what you’re telling me?”
They all smiled.
Vesco felt queasy. “Was this Joe-Joe’s idea, to come over here and do this?”
“Yah,” a woman whispered. “Was his idea.”
“But you came to watch?”
“No law against watch,” the woman said with a hint of defiance in her voice.
Vesco tried to sort out the gibberish. “So Joe-Joe was mean and fun?”
“Two Joe-Joe’s then, two Joe-Joes now,” a voice called out.
The group shouted “FLUMP!”
“Joe-Joe’s idea to come over here?”
Silence from the group.
“But you knew he was coming, and what he planned to do?”
Still silence.
“Did you know he was going to jump in front of a train?”
“Stand, not jump,” one of the group said, and the rest of them turned to glare at the man who said it, and together they said “FLUMP” in a throaty, low, growly tone. The man put his head down and began to sob.
“United we stand, divided we hang,” a female voice said from the edge of the group. It was getting dark, and Vesco was having trouble seeing who was saying what.
“Who said that?”
No answer.
“There’s no capital punishment in Michigan,” she said.
“Lansing is the capital of Michigan,” a voice said.
Vesco rubbed her eyes and wondered when the damn medical personnel would arrive.
“Okay, just between us. You all came over here and watched Joe-Joe step in front of a moving train, and now he’s dead and you’re laughing . . . why?”
“It was funnest to see,” a young woman said.
“Somebody dying is fun?”
“If it’s Joe-Joe,” she said.
The group thundered, “FLUMP!” and began to jump up and down.
A local deputy finally arrived. “Sorry it took so long to get here. Had a damn domestic call other side of the county, and I’m the only one on.” The man looked at the body, made a face. “Yuck, fricking gork, what the fuck is that all about?”
“The group behind me may be from the House of Joy, and I get the feeling they watched the poor bastard commit suicide.”
The dep looked over at the group. “That bunch?”
“Not just that, but I get a real bad feeling that somehow they may have forced the vic to do it.”
The deputy looked at them again. “Are you kidding? Rubber room rangers? That lot can’t plan where to take their next dump, much less engineer homicide.”
“Nevertheless,” Vesco said.
“These ain’t homicidal maniacs,” the deputy said. “They’re just a little slow on the uptake.”
A new man showed up, tall, young, freshly shaven. “Dr. David Peterson. I run the House of Joy.”
“Is the victim over there one of yours?”
Peterson exhaled slowly. “Alas.”
“I’ve been talking to your people.”
“You can’t trust what they say. They don’t lie, they just don’t have full contact with reality. They’re somewhat slower than the rest of us.”
Vesco said, “Listen, Doc, I think they watched the whole thing, you know, came over here to watch their pal step in front of a train.”
The doctor sighed. “That was Joe-Joe, anything for a laugh.”
“I get the feeling this was more than a joke.”
“You don’t understand,” the doctor said.
“Everyone keeps telling me that, and still I keep trying.”
“These are not the criminally insane; in fact, these gentle folk are not insane at all.”
“Well, something smells here,” Vesco said.
“I think you have an overactive imagination,” the doctor said. “These are sweet, peace-loving, harmless folks.”
Vesco felt like a heel. The doctor was probably right.
The EMS and medical examiner arrived, along with a state trooper, and Vesco explained what she knew and suspected and stood by the group. They all whispered “Flump” in an almost inaudible single voice, and someone added, “The tortoise brains won this race.” The group said “FLUMP” again, and Vesco looked at them and knew that they had somehow engineered the death of Joe-Joe and that this would never be pursued, much less proven.
“Must be tough to lose your funnest man,” Vesco suggested to the group and shone her SureFire on them. There were all smiling, a united front, undefeatable.
As she took a step toward the truck, a woman from the group said, “We’re sooo slow,” and giggled out loud.
The Third Partner
A Lut
e Bapcat Story
Twenty inches of snow fell last night, concluding its business around dawn, the latest storm in a long winter of muscular wallops. On Bumbletown Hill above Allouez, where the Keweenaw Peninsula’s two deputy fish, game, and forestry wardens lived, snow had piled up to the roof line on the north and west faces of their log structure.
Over the winter the deputies had dug three tunnels through the frozen drifts, one from the porch of the house to the shed, where they parked the state-owned Ford; another from the shed out to Bumbletown Hill Road; and a third directly from the porch out to the road.
“Starting to look like catacombs here,” Pinkhus Sergeyevich Zakov had remarked as they were clearing new snow.
Lute Bapcat had no idea what a catacomb was and had been too busy shoveling to ask at the time. The Russian-born Zakov, a former colonel in the czar’s army, was brimming with vocabulary and trivia, some of which were interesting and occasionally useful, but many of which were downright odd and seemed insignificant to Bapcat.
They were inside now, Zakov brewing tea, and Lute Bapcat, former cowboy, hunting guide, miner, trapper, and Rough Rider, was navigating the labyrinthine forests of a law text called Tiffany’s, the law bible for game wardens and other lawmen across the state. Bapcat liked to learn but found reading difficult and tedious. Written law for him was often like a cedar swamp where no light touched ground.
“I hear something on the porch,” Zakov announced. The former Russian soldier had keen ears, though it seemed to Bapcat that the man was most keen to hear his own voice. Come May, the two would have been partners for almost a year, and over the months, Bapcat had learned how to tune out his colleague, a difficult feat.
“Are you not listening to me?” the Russian pressed.
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