Buckular Dystrophy

by Joseph Heywood

“Not all, but a lot. Got a whole generation now that knows nothing but elevated stands, food plots, and bait. Put them on the ground with no bait, and they’re clueless. They couldn’t track a wounded elephant from the shower to the toilet.”

  “My pipple don’t use no blinds,” Allerdyce said, joining in.

  Duckboat bristled. “What exactly constitutes your people?”

  Allerdyce smiled. “Youse know.”

  “No, I don’t,” the young CO said.

  “Youse’s job ta know such stuff,” Allerdyce said, turning to his partner. “Ain’t it?”

  “Who the hell are you to tell me how to do my job?” Duckboat challenged.

  “Sonny boy’s partner is who.” Allerdyce handed a cup to the man. “Pour youse’s own; ain’t no wait-on-your-asses in dis camp.”

  The junior CO poured coffee and grinned. “You sure are feisty.”

  “Learn it fum best,” Allerdyce said.

  Duckboat turned back to Service. “Seriously, I’m going to start sleeping out there to look for hunters. Is everybody seeing the same thing? It’s slow.”

  “Haven’t talked to everybody.”

  “What about you?”

  “This and that, you know; the normal dull roar.”

  “Geez, everybody calls you the Main Shitmagnet, and if it’s slow for you. . . .”

  “Every season is different; each one has its own pulse and speed.”

  “But there are trophy animals in the Mosquito and nobody seems to care. How can that be?”

  “Lotsa pipples scared by da wolfies,” Allerdyce said.

  “They may carp about wolves, but they still hunt.”

  “Talkin’ two-leg wolfies wit’ da long memories,” Allerdyce said.

  Duckboat downed the rest of his coffee. “Thanks, guys; I gotta roll. Boredom and dream time are calling my name.”

  Service put a finger in the young officer’s face. “You slack for one minute and it can kill you. Keep your head in the game, copy?”

  “Yes, sir, I copy.”

  “Use your head. If you wanted to go deep into where the animals are, and not walk, how would you do it?”

  The officer stared at him and went out to his truck.

  Service guessed that the heavy hand he and McCants had laid on the Mosquito was still being felt. Few outsiders had the nerve to even find the place, much less hike into it.

  “Normal dull routine,” Allerdyce said. “Why you don’t tell ’at boy trut’?” “Don’t want to demoralize him.” Service looked at his partner. “Twolegged wolfies?”

  Allerdyce raised his cup in salute.

  He called Friday on her cell phone. “Everything all right back there?”

  She said, “I don’t know. Is it? Sixty-eight tickets in one stop and I don’t hear a peep out of you? Seriously, what the hell is going on, Grady Service?”

  No easy answer for her. “Not sure. You don’t sound happy.”

  “Happy? What exactly is happy? We’ve just learned that a deer hunter beat his wife to death in Palmer, our garage got burned down, my insurance agent says my coverage does not cover arson, and I’m so horny I’m making goo-goo eyes at green bananas in the grocery store, bananas named for a goddamn woman, and you have the gall to ask if I’m happy?”

  “Don’t worry about the garage,” he said. “It may be time you and I had a talk.”

  She countered, “A talk or the talk?”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “You don’t know, seriously? You are such a guy, Service.”

  “We can talk about talks when we talk,” he said.

  She laughed out loud.

  “I mean it; don’t sweat money or the garage. I’ve got this,” he said.

  “I wish you had this,” she said in her wily feminine voice. “What’s ahead for you guys?”

  “More patrols and trying to solve the big mystery.”

  “Which is?”

  “Why Harry Pattinson and those camps are not seeing deer. I talked to Wildlife. The answer is not wolves.” This had been scratching at the back of his mind since his first talk to Torky Hamore. “I love you,” he told Friday.

  “Talk is cheap, bub. Be safe, please?”

  He closed the phone and looked over at Allerdyce. “Do you like puzzles?”

  “Not lessen dey harder’n Finnlanders’ square heads.”

  They got into the truck and were about to pull out when he saw something red. The damn cigarette pack he’d seen before. He got out, walked over, picked it up, threw it into the bed of the truck, and pulled out.

  “Should leave dere, Sonny,” the old poacher said. “Snow make go ’way till da birdies comes home.”

  CHAPTER 35

  Harvey, Marquette County

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23

  Yesterday had been uneventful and unproductive, but not a total loss, because they’d managed to get two consecutive nights of normal sleep. Friday had texted him that she was moving home tonight and had dropped off the pets this morning on her way to work.

  First stop this morning was the Marquette courthouse, where he handed in tickets and the cash he’d collected as bond money, mostly from the outlaw gun camp. He saw Sally Palovar in the magistrate’s office. She smiled at him and asked, “Any excitement yet?”

  Had she not heard about the crap they were colliding with? Everybody else seemed to know, and the backslappers were out and full of attaboys as he moved through the building. Lt. Rusty Ranka tried to tell him about a case he’d once made and how it had propelled him to sergeant. He excused himself from the bigmouth, stepped away, and saw Sally Palovar again, this time outside her office in the hallway, staring at him. He sensed she wanted something. She had said something odd a few days back, but so much had happened in the intervening days that he no longer remembered details or contexts. “You okay?” he asked her.

  “Which part of me are you asking about,” she came back.

  Peculiar response. “Not sure, I just thought . . .”

  “What exactly did you think?”

  Her voice had a grating quality. He shrugged because he had no idea what else he could or should say.

  “Do not interrogate me. I’ve been trained to resist.”

  She said this with a slight smile, and it seemed to him she was straining, like a truck trying to pull an overloaded trailer. He gave her one of his cards. “If you ever need to talk . . .”

  She rolled her eyes. Was she vamping or blowing him off? “Call you? You, the game warden?”

  He knew he was missing something, but he had no idea what, or how to connect to her. He said, “You’ve got my number,” and started to leave.

  She tugged on his sleeve and turned him. “Do you have my number?”

  He looked at her and found her glaring at him, almost angrily. What the hell? This wasn’t a come-on. That he could have and would have read. This is something else, something subtle and troubling, something beyond my grasp, a reminder that you don’t know this woman at all.

  The encounter left him uncomfortable as they headed for Friday’s house. He’d made a call to an Ishpeming company that specialized in demolishing and hauling contaminated debris, especially rubble from burned buildings. They promised to take care of the garage within forty-eight hours. He didn’t ask for a price estimate. The black pile looked ugly. Do we rebuild or not? She’s gotta have a garage for winter, something to keep her vehicle out of the snow and ice. Forget that stuff now. Get it out of your mind. You can solve that later. Keep your mind on real business. It’s deer season.

  Allerdyce was at the truck with two cups of coffee. “We workin’ outten truck t’day?”

  “If we go out in the snow and dirt, people will just irritate us.”

  “Dere problem, eh. Youse want shake trees, dat’s what I want, Sonny.”

  “Knowing that affords me great peace of mind.”

  “Dat piece like womans give, or da kind like dove birdies bring?”

  “At some point we were sort of talkin
g about how you tracked big buck locations.”

  “Weren’t no pocket science. Jes wrote down ever’t’ing heard, see?”

  Pocket science? “You wrote it all down on a piece of paper?”

  “No; I got dose typogrammical maps from guv-mint.”

  “Topographicals from USGS?”

  “I don’t know all dat letter soup, Sonny, t’ink youse need youse’s ears-check.”

  “You mean a hearing check.”

  “Dere youse go again. Why you do dat me? I say what mean. What dey check when want know youse can, hear? Ears, it an ear check.”

  Hopeless, unwinnable battle to debate or correct the old man. “Okay, so you made notes on the maps?”

  “Jus’ tole youse dat.”

  “Over how long a period?”

  “Dunno, one second, two mebbe.”

  Good God. “No, I mean over how long a time did you keep your notes?”

  “Keep t’ree set. Dis year, last two years, last t’ree years, diff-ren’ color ink each year.”

  “Do you still have those maps?”

  “Guess, dunno. Why?”

  “I’d like to take a look.”

  “Youse want bust my chops for ole stuff?”

  “Not that. Can I see them, yes or no? The statute of limitations is long gone on your stuff.”

  “Got drive all way out my place. What if youse see some’pin dere not gone by statue of imitations?”

  “I’ll ignore them. We’ll make a quick stop at the Harvey house, and head out your way.”

  • • •

  Newf, Service’s Presa Canario, was 160 pounds of bulging canine muscle. She went ballistic when she saw Allerdyce behind him. Soon thereafter, Cat, the nameless feline misanthrope he had saved years before, took umbrage at the old man’s singular attention to the dog, hissed like a cobra, sprung up, and viciously chomped one of the dog’s ears. The dog batted the cat away like an annoying fluff ball and kept by Allerdyce’s side, leaning into him, whining, and begging for him to pet her. Service had been deathly afraid of dogs most of his life, until an old girlfriend gave Newf to him. Living with the giant dog all the time began to lessen his fear. Not entirely, but enough not to be immediately horrified and petrified.

  Why the animals adored Allerdyce escaped him. You’d think they’d sense what a multispecies murderer he was and run for cover. Instead they battled each other for his attention.

  Allerdyce rubbed Newf’s large head and cackled and grinned and coughed; Service could stand no more of the display and headed into another room where he didn’t have to watch.

  He called Tuesday on her personal cell phone. “We’re at the house.”

  “Is Allerdyce included in that we?”

  “Oui, we” he said. “The animals like him.”

  “They also like to drink fetid swamp water and smell each others’ butts,” she reminded him. “There’s no accounting for taste, and they have IQs of what, like 14 tops?”

  “Still,” he said.

  She said, “My day’s great, how’s yours?”

  “You know,” he said.

  “No, in fact I don’t know, which is why I asked. The killing I told you about? The father copped to it out of the gate, but I’m not buying his story. I have two sources telling me that the son hated his mom and batted her around on more than one occasion. I smell dad taking one for junior. What the hell is wrong with people?”

  This was not a question she expected an answer to, and he knew to keep his yap shut. She was venting. It had taken most of his life to figure out that when a woman was in vent-mode, the last thing she wanted from her partner was problem-solving. His job during a vent rant was to shut up and listen, period. No exceptions.

  She continued, “I mean, if the father wants to do time, why should I care? It’s his life, right? Never mind that junior will be free to strike again. It’s not my place to interfere, right?”

  There was a question here, not quite rhetorical, but neither was it sincere. It was more in the line of a feint designed to find out if he was listening. “OK,” he said in neutered cop talk, which translated to “I just heard the words you said,” which is to say, the sounds that came out of your mouth, “but I neither agree nor disagree, and, yes, I am listening to your every word.”

  She plowed on. “Maybe I should shoot the punk and do everyone a favor before he strikes again. What do you think, hon? Should I?”

  Now it was time to answer.

  “If you do that, use a shotgun with birdshot, number sixes. Birdshot’s a lot harder to trace in the lab.” He heard her voice catch, followed by a girlish giggle.

  She asked, “Whatever do I see in you? Seriously.”

  He answered, “Seriously? I’ve got no clue.”

  “Yet I love you.”

  “It’s as mysterious as pocket science.”

  “What?”

  “An Allerdycism.”

  “I have to tell you that it makes me shudder to think that creepy old man is inside our house.”

  “We won’t be here long. We’re headed out to his place.”

  “Out in the jungle?”

  “You want help from the beast, you have to go to its lair.”

  “You have a peculiar way with words.”

  “Yah?”

  “No,” she said. “Be safe.” She hung up.

  “Do we need to grab groceries on the way to your place?” Service asked his partner.

  Allerdyce cackled with obvious pleasure. “Sonny, my place is da grocery store.”

  This was not exactly what he hoped to hear from his “reformed” partner. He got his bag of plat books from his basement corner office and grabbed a bottle of 2007 Coppola Claret from the wine rack in the living room. “I bet we’ll have venison,” Service said to the old poacher.

  Allerdyce smiled and said, “Wunt s’prise me none.”

  “Long frozen and not fresh, I hope.”

  “Why youse say dat, Sonny?”

  “Because you’ve been with me the entire firearm season and you’ve not had time to hunt.”

  “Dere’s bow and arrow before, eh? An’ road kill keep-papers. Youse want, check craputer stuff on what license I buy.”

  Service laughed.

  “Dare youse,” Allerdyce said. “Youse and me need get dis shit straight.”

  Service called Station Twenty, checked the retail sales database, and found that his partner indeed had bought an archery tag.

  “How many you got so far?”

  “Two,” the old poacher said.

  “You arrowed deer with your bow?”

  Allerdyce went into a laughing fit, and when he finally got himself back under control, he blew his nose and said, “Arrow a deer sound stupid—like wrench a nut, knife a steak, bullet da bear.” The laughing jag began anew.

  Grady Service drove on, suspecting he was going to need a serious vacation when this deer season was over. Buckular dystrophy, deer-killing disease, it seemed, was everywhere, in various forms—an unseen epidemic yet to be identified by public health experts.

  ACT 3: A SOUP CALLED SERENDIPITY

  Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better, it’s not.

  —Dr. Seuss, The Lorax

  CHAPTER 36

  Southwest Marquette County

  MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23

  They made the drive quickly and uneventfully, stopping only to wait at a parked truck and check licenses of three NMU students coming out of the woods to get some coffee before they went back in for the end-of-day sit in their blinds. Everything checked out—unloaded guns, no concealed weapons, proper amount of orange, tags matched driving licenses, all had hunter safety training. This was, Service thought, the equivalent of the doctor checking your virgin teenage daughter and reporting back, “Everything is A-OK.”

  “Great work, fellas,” he told the students. It was nice to see not just young hunters out in the woods but the young ones actually following the rules in letter and spirit, s
omething a lot of older hunters increasingly seemed unable or unwilling to do.

  “Think the deer will be moving tonight?” Service asked his partner after they left the trio.

  Allerdyce answered with a disinterested shrug. “Will or won’t. What we do t’day?”

  “Visit camps, schmooze, listen, keep our eyes and ears open, check whoever we run into, handle complaints as they come to us.”

  Sadly this described the routine activity during a lot of deer seasons. It was also a fact that in many counties in the state, complaints would not roll in until days and weeks after the season ended, when nothing could be done about them. Trespassers, over-baiting, shots before and after hours, hunter harassment, no orange in the field, all sorts of things COs might have been able to take care of when they were occurring would go unaddressed if the complaints came too late.

  He was of the opinion that late calls were largely nothing more than hunters and camp owners trying to set themselves up for the next season by putting DNR pressure on certain competing camps, individuals, and situations. Got a problem this year, don’t call yet. Grin and bear it. Wait until the season is over so you can make sure your own house is clean. Then you lodge the complaint to get your local CO looking in the direction you pointed when the next season rolled around. He knew this view was jaundiced, but he had seen evidence that it was often true and part and parcel of the trivial unsubstantive, neighbor-versus-neighbor, relative-againstrelative conflicts that marked most seasons. Conflict, justified or not, was the air most cops breathed.

  And it was a pattern every DNR officer quickly came to recognize and loathe, especially in those counties composed mainly of private property. Many such complaints were disinformation and smear campaigns, not genuine calls for righting serious legal wrongs, a sort of low-intensity gossipinformation war aimed at only one outcome, improving the complainant’s imagined competitive position. Many of these calls, maybe most of them, were a waste of time because they were so late and therefore impractical and most often unactionable.

  Although some complaints were serious, many were trivial at best.

  Their route was a zigzag across the southern reaches where a chunk of Marquette County thrust south and lay between segments of Delta to the east, Dickinson to the west, and Menominee County on the bottom perimeter—an area some of the old-time officers referred to informally as the Quad of Mutes, a wild and woolly area where camp owners rarely called the DNR and tended to deal with their own problems and perceived slights.