Hard Ground

by Joseph Heywood

  Ivan’s pipe had been made for him before his old man passed on. His grandfather had made his father’s pipe, and he hoped one day to make one for his own son. He couldn’t imagine there wouldn’t be a son. Paula was gone, but he was still young.

  His bouffarde was large, made from hundred-year-old French briar root, Erica arborea, the word briar a bastardization of the French bruyère, for “heath tree.” His pipe had been fashioned from bruyère blanche and brought home from World War II from Saint-Claude, where the world’s finest pipes were made. His pipe was in the pot style, with a fat bowl. His father had taught him to puff, not inhale, the latter causing health problems. The French government had raged against the evils of smoking as a poison and a drug—until the government nationalized all tobacco businesses in the mid-seventeenth century. Since then? Rarely a government criticism, revenue being altogether more relevant and real than theoretical, pie-in-the-sky, or real health risks.

  Bouffardi wiggled his toes in the morning air and puffed contentedly, wondering if this was what it felt like to be old and tired in retirement.

  Movement across the pond caught his attention as a large doe came bounding along the north shore and collapsed in the water with a dramatic splash. Bouffardi saw blood pooling in the shallows, hurriedly put on his socks and boots, and tapped the dottle into his hand with two sharp taps of the bowl. He pressed the tobacco remains into the dirt with his boot heel, making sure there were no lingering embers. He carefully put the pipe in its leather carrying pouch and hung the cord around his neck. In the truck the pipe had a special box. He grinned at how the tobacco business in France paralleled marijuana here. By 1635 Parisian policy allowed the sale of tobacco only with a physician’s prescription. It was said that Napoleon in 1810 was at a party in Paris and saw a woman festooned in diamonds. He asked an aide who she was and was told she was the wife of a tobacconist. At the time, the government tobacco monopoly had been more or less “resting,” but Napoleon drafted new regulations reestablishing the state’s power over such sales, and little had changed since then.

  The conservation officer pulled the doe to shore. A crossbow bolt protruded slightly. Hard to believe the animal hadn’t fallen when it was hit, but the desire to live, whatever the species, often overrode theoretical and sometimes even real physiological limits.

  Bouffardi suppressed a smile. A date with Annisdottir, a fine smoke, a nice day, and finally what appeared to be a violator inside Perry’s fence, all of this contributing to a rush that left him feeling almost giddy.

  Having examined the deer, Bouffardi moved immediately into the wood, offsetting a few feet from the animal’s blood trail, which was clear in places, sporadic in others. The shooter would no doubt eventually follow the animal or move to another target. Bouffardi stopped and decided to wait.

  Soon came a man in full camo creeping low, carrying a crossbow. Bouffardi stood up. “Conservation officer.”

  “Motherfucker,” the man said with a groan.

  “Discharge the bolt into the ground by your right foot,” Bouffardi ordered.

  “I can just take it out,” the man said.

  “Do what I say,” Bouffardi said. “Now.”

  The bolt made a thunk as it struck the hard ground. “Crossbow down, and off with the camo mask.”

  The man complied.

  Oh, shit. It was L-Sun Banks, one of Perry’s longtime security men. Banks pretentiously spelled his name L-Sun, which made Bouffardi roll his eyes, and he had no idea why he reacted so. The man was black. Maybe that was why. He couldn’t be sure.

  “Banks.”

  “Your eyes is good.”

  “Got an explanation?”

  “How about I got six kids, and they like to eat meat.”

  “You have a job.”

  “You know what Perry pays? Minimum fucking wage is what, no benefits, no cost of living, no change for inflation, I’m talkin’ barebones, and he dictates where we live or can’t. And here he got all this damn meat right here, all these old bucks making his old Johnson stiff, and I don’t bother none of his damn trophies. Can’t eat antlers.”

  “You’ve done this before?”

  “Ya think?’

  “Jesus, Banks, that animal is your boss’s property.”

  The man countered, “What that doe is, is food for my old lady and kids, nothin’ more, nothin’ less.”

  “You can get one legally elsewhere in the state season.”

  “That old man got us tied up all the time. Not slaves, see, but indentured servants, and like that.”

  Bouffardi started to say something about finding another job but held back. There weren’t any jobs these days.

  Banks said, “Okay with you, I gut this old girl, head to shack, relieve Leekie.”

  Banks rode with Bouffardi to the guardhouse. Annisdottir looked surprised to see the men together. Banks went into the change room to dump his camo, put on his uniform.

  “He do this often?” Bouffardi asked her.

  “He takes wonderful photographs,” she said.

  Photos? “What photographs?”

  “Wildlife. He wins awards, hopes to go pro, make a real living, not this hand-to-mouth gig we have with Perry.”

  Banks emerged in uniform. Annisdottir went to change into her civvies.

  “Photographs?” Bouffardi asked.

  “That girl don’t know what fum what,” Banks said.

  “You really take pictures?”

  “Yeah. That against the law?”

  “Your cover?”

  “My passion, man.”

  “Don’t bullshit me L-Sun, we’re both brothers of the suck in the way back when. Both of us are ex-Marines.”

  Banks had served in Iraq, been wounded, and won a silver star.

  Leekie came out in a diaphanous sundress, paper-thin sandals, tanned legs. “Have a fine day, boys,” she said, heading for her white Toyota.

  “I ain’t taken no trophies,” Banks said, diverting Bouffardi’s attention from the woman’s shapely legs.

  “It’s still theft.”

  “What you call how Perry treat people?”

  “Legal,” Bouffardi said. “His property, his rules. America.”

  “That good enough for you? Legal? What about fair, what about moral, you know, or what’s right?”

  “I enforce laws, that’s all.”

  “That’s bullshit, man. If the law told your sorry ass to shoot all dogs you see on patrol, you’d do that?”

  “I don’t see a way around a ticket here, L-Sun.”

  “Perry’s gonna fire my ass quick-fast, sue me for redress, you hear what I’m sayin’?”

  “Hey, you’ll be free of him.”

  “Man, you ig-nant. Perry try put my ass inside. The way he is, he crush everybody, death to all motherfucking enemies. That old man would kick a six-year-old’s ass in checkers just to show who’s best.”

  “Be a chance for you to pursue your photography,” Bouffardi said.

  “This economy? I lose this sorry-ass job, I be dead, and my family, too. Whatchugonnado, Ivan? Semper Fi, man. That shit means something, right? Once a Marine, always a Marine. We brothers, right?”

  Bouffardi tucked his ticket book under his arm. “This time, this once. Do it again, all stops are out.”

  “You the man,” Banks said. “Watch the gate while I load meat in my vehicle?”

  Bouffardi thought: In for a penny, or whatever that saying was. He got out his pipe, loaded it, and lit up.

  •••

  Annisdottir met him at her door wearing her workout clothes, barefoot, and handed him a beer. “Red Jacket,” she said. “Microbrewery in Houghton, eh?”

  “You a Copper Country girl?”

  “Michigamme-born,” she said, beamin
g.

  She took trays out of the fridge. “I took the liberty of starting the grill. Weber, plain-old charcoal, good by you?”

  “Simple is best,” he said.

  “You want to chef the meat?”

  “Sure.”

  He took the platter outside, removed the aluminum foil that covered it, and found backstraps, thin, beautiful backstraps, fresh, not store-bought, no freezer burn. He turned toward her, found her examining him.

  “I’ve seen this meat recently?”

  “Fair chance,” she said, the hint of a grin on her lips.

  “You guys are in this together,” he said after a long pause.

  “Just this one, Ivan. L-Sun, he said your tight ass got no flex. I told him you are cool, thoughtful, fair. And I was right,” she added.

  “You like being right?” he asked.

  Leekie Annisdottir laughed and took his hand. “Beats the alternative,” she said.

  Special Powers

  The two conservation officers lay hidden on the shore, using their binoculars to watch two men in an aluminum boat, not fifty yards away in the water. They had counted at least fifty fish brought over the gunwales, none released. The only species in Holland Lake was brook trout, the daily take limit five per person, artificial baits only. The men in the boat were using worms, and they were passing what appeared to be a large spliff back and forth, laughing maniacally.

  At one point, one of the violators picked up a revolver, pointed it at shore, and yelled, “Pow, you motherfuckin’ bears and motherfuckin’ Martians!” This set off another laughing fit as they had another puff and pitched empty beer cans over the side.

  Conservation Officer Jespert Ivory leaned against a tree, took a chew of tobacco, and smiled at his partner, Sergeant C.A. Collar. “Ripe,” Ivory said, “very pregnant indeed.”

  The sergeant wasn’t sure what his partner meant. “Clarify?”

  “The situation, the timing, the opportunity.”

  And the word Martians? This Ivory kept to himself.

  “You sure?” Collar quizzed.

  “Eighteen years gives one a certain sense,” Ivory said.

  Collar had less than eight in uniform, not six full months as a sergeant. He seemed as befuddled by his promotion as others. He had applied, of course, allegedly just for the interviewing experience. He didn’t actually expect to be promoted his first time in the system.

  Ivory, on the other hand, had long ago rejected promotion, liked where he was, loved what he did, and did not want to get drowned by paperwork and other bullshit flowing downhill from Lansing. An officer in the field had enough to do; he couldn’t imagine a sergeant’s burden. Supervision, it seemed to him, meant taking on all the major and picayune dramas of the people you supervised, like some kind of sin eater, though he had no idea where this notion had come to him from, or even what it meant, other than somebody absorbed the burdens of others.

  Meanwhile, there was no doubt about the men in the boat. These fools were primo candidates.

  Ivory had told Collar about a “certain” approach he wanted to try, and all his sergeant had said was, “Are you kidding?”

  “These two are perfect,” Ivory said. “You don’t believe this works, just watch, but you still have to help.”

  “I’m not so sure,” Collar said. “Seems, I don’t know . . . unorthodox.”

  “It is weird, that’s the beauty of it. Think of it as a learning moment. Believe me, C.A., these opportunities are rare.”

  The officers were here because the girlfriend of one of the fishermen called to report the strange stuff her boyfriend and his pal were doing. Arriving at the lake, the COs had talked to the girlfriends, both of them young and attractive chemical blondes. Hell, the two morons had taken a loaded .44 Magnum in the boat with them out of fear of bears. In the middle of a sixty-acre lake? Did they expect a bear to swim out and attack the damn boat? And, the girls said, there had been pills, though they weren’t sure what kind. “You know, like, you know, meth or something?”

  “Yah, this pair for sure, C.A. You in or out?”

  “In, I guess,” the sergeant said.

  “You recall the order, right?” Ivory had explained it all in advance, just in case, outlined what would happen, the order, and so forth.

  Collar said, “Fish, then dope, then gun. But shouldn’t we get the gun first, you know, for officer safety?”

  “If we start with the gun, lines of resistance will firm up right-quick, and we’ll be adversaries with a line drawn on the ground between us. It’s easier and safer to mesmerize them, calm them like kittens.”

  “You’ve done this before, right?”

  “Affirmative, but you’ve always got to evaluate the situation first. Sometimes I use coon bones on the hood of the truck and read them like magical tea leaves, but this is better, less time, happens so fast they get stupefied.”

  “Geez, I don’t know, Jes,” the reluctant sergeant said, using his subordinate’s first name, a technique all cops were taught to depressurize stressful situations and contacts.

  “Sarge, I fuck this up, and you can always reprimand my ass and cover your own.”

  “I’m not like that,” Collar said quickly.

  Jespert Ivory had been around. All supervisors covered their asses, more these days than when he first joined the force, but even back then CYA automatically came with the three stripes on the arm, one chevron for each letter. It was worse for lieutenants and captains, who wore shiny gewgaws pinned to their collars.

  “Launch our boat?” the sergeant asked.

  “Nah, we’ll let them come to us and step out on them on dry land, use the element of surprise.”

  “But they have a gun.”

  “It’s for the damn bears and Martians, C.A. Did you not listen to their blimbos?” The two women, he’d noted earlier, were not the kind he associated with such lowlife male companions, and he wondered how and why the hell they’d gotten mixed up with them. Still, over the years he’d seen odder matchups. There was no judging the human heart, never mind logic. Highly educated, classy women sometimes inexplicably chose scuzzlebags for partners. Accept it and move on. He couldn’t ask his new sergeant about such things because his goody-two-shoes new wife thought Lions and Packers were some biblical characters and so far seemed to have not an iota of street sense about anything.

  “Not sure I agree with this,” Collar said.

  There it was: naked CYA. “Well, decide now. You’re the boss man, and this gambit needs two players. In or out, game on or game off?”

  “Okay, I guess I’m in,” Collar said, almost in a whisper. “With reservations.”

  “Yeah, I got that.” Ivory spit out his tobacco and lit a cigarette.

  Collar said, “They might smell it.”

  Ivory winced. Fifty yards out in the lake, drinking beer, smoking dope, howling and laughing, dead fish in the boat. “Guess again, Sarge. These guys are in their boat on the interplanetary express. They wouldn’t smell a rotting moose in the back of their boat.”

  “What about our image?” Collar came back. “You know, the division, the department.”

  “We’re alone,” Ivory reminded his boss. “Rules say no smokes in patrol vehicles or in front of civilians when we’re in uniform. Neither condition pertains here, eh. Stop being so goddamn uptight.”

  It was an hour before the two anglers stood up in the boat and pissed off both ends, making the boat wobble erratically. Shakes done, they pulled up two anchors, started the outboard, and headed slowly shoreward.

  “Let’s go,” the sergeant said, excitement in his voice.

  “Relax, let them get to the ramp. Call them up to you, and when you have them close, I’ll step out below and start my deal.”

  “Start what? You haven’t been exactly precise
on what’s gonna go down here.”

  “Fish, dope, gun. I have special powers. Take your lead from me.”

  “This feels like a questionable idea.”

  “New things usually do,” Ivory said. “Don’t be such a wuss.”

  •••

  He watched the boat approach. The assholes were heaving empty beer cans in their wake, like an arrow of aluminum turds pointing right at them. One man stood in the bow, like Washington crossing the Delaware. Ivory thought it was Washington, but he couldn’t remember for sure. He thought there was a painting, or a cartoon, something like that. History wasn’t his long suit. What he was good at was catching dirtbags.

  No state registration number apparent on the boat, probably no personal flotation devices, littering. He’d already run the two through the Retail Sales System and learned neither had a license, this year or any other year. One of them had a couple of busts for drugs—holding, but no current wants or warrants on either man. The second fool had one DUI, four years ago. Clearly, these were minor league losers on a one-day howl. Not unusual. Basically, they were ignorant and harmless, though the gun bothered him. Bears and Martians? Jesus with a jump rope!

  The boat bumped its nose on the sloped concrete ramp, and the two men stumbled out. Sergeant Collar stood at the top of the ramp, but the men didn’t notice him. “Conservation officer; any luck today, boys?”

  “Oh, fuck yah!” one of them shouted. “We killed the perch, man.” The spokesman had purple and green hair. The other man had white hair in a shoulder-length mullet, high PWT fashion in the mouth-breathing community.

  “Secure your boat. You can just put the anchors on the ramp,” the sergeant said. “Step up here so we can talk.”