Forever Dead

by Suzanne F. Kingsmill

  I picked my way over to the tree. I could see that the rope had been wound around the trunk several times and then knotted, but the knot had been gnawed through by animals and the rope had broken, slithering around the trunk as the pack slipped until the rope had caught and wedged itself in a crotch of the tree. Not far enough for the animal, whatever it was, to get at the pack. There was a scrunched-up ball of blue paper litter caught in the rope. I pocketed it with the rest of the litter I’d picked up that day, which I’d burn on the fire that night, a reflex habit I’d gotten into years before. I couldn’t resist pulling on the rope to feel the weight of the pack. I watched as it jerked at the end of the line, the axe head glinting in the sun. The movement disturbed a cloud of flies that swarmed off the pack and circled it. I watched, puzzled, as they regained their quarry. I grabbed the taut line and shook it once more and watched the flies in growing alarm.

  I struggled to free the rope from where it was wedged and then carefully paid out the rope and watched as the pack slowly descended to the ground. Even at a distance of a few feet the stench of rotten potatoes was overpowering. Who in their right mind would haul up a food pack and then let the perishables rot? It didn’t make any sense, unless the owner was hurt, a decidedly unwelcome thought. I backed away and looked around in alarm, but no one came limping out of the woods or screamed at me to get away. Quickly I hauled the pack back up out of reach and secured the rope to the tree. How long did it take for potatoes to rot in the summer sun? I looked around for another way out of the glade and saw a trail leading back toward the portage trail from the direction in which I’d come. Too bad I hadn’t seen it from the other end. I could have saved myself a slew of cuts and scratches. I’d go back that way. I scanned the grove looking for another route, the route taken by whoever owned this pack, and saw the cat sitting at the entrance to a trail, mutely watching me.

  The narrow path wound through the jack pines and rock boulders and made its way toward the water. The cat darted off ahead of me and disappeared.

  After a hundred yards or so the earthen path led me out into a well-used clearing with flat spaces for five or six tents. Beyond it I could see the blue waters of a small bay in the lake we had just paddled across.

  Immediately in front of me I could see the backside of a big white canvas tent, and as I approached it a red squirrel chattered noisily and scooted away to the safety of a tree where it continued its shrill rant. A clothesline had been hung between two trees to one side of the tent and there were some socks and a large pale blue flannel bush shirt and some running shoes, with most of the toes missing, hanging from it. Next to the clothesline there was a large ten-gallon tank, and as I shoved it with my toe there was a slosh of water. Whoever had set up camp here had spent many weeks in comparative luxury.

  “Anybody here? Hello?”

  The words reverberated through the woods like a physical assault and made the following silence seem unreal, as the flies buzzed and a woodpecker pecked and the breeze shook the leaves in the trees overhead. But no answer.

  I turned back to the tent. The front was open to the elements, the bug netting and door tied back to the tent proper. It was big enough for a man to stand erect in. Cautiously I peered inside. There was an old makeshift wooden table, the kind found in thousands of fishing camps all over the country, and a couple of logs as chairs. Tin cans of food were stacked on shelves made from rocks and old, swollen plywood. Dirty plates and cutlery were laid out on the table as if someone had been interrupted in the middle of a meal, and a bottle of iodine tablets had rolled under the table. Opened tins of sardines lay scattered about the needle-carpeted floor of the tent, all now licked clean by chipmunks or coons.

  I came out of the tent and cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled again, but there was no answer, just the red squirrel chittering away like a dentist’s drill.

  It was then that I noticed the second tent. It was the colour of the clump of jack pines that surrounded it on three sides. It stood on a small rock outcrop twenty yards from the mess tent and close to the water. It was a faded old green canvas tent with an awning over the front door, which was tightly zipped shut. One of the poles that held the awning up had fallen over, and the wing was flapping in the breeze. I noticed then that the cat had taken up a position in front of the tent, as if guarding it.

  I turned away from the cat and the tent, firmly convincing myself that I didn’t need to look inside it. Instead I walked through the camp, calling out as I went, more to reassure myself of some semblance of normalcy than expecting an answer. At one point I thought I heard an animal creeping through the forest, but when I stopped and listened there was nothing and when I glanced back at the cat it seemed unperturbed. Probably just a coon. Lots of coon sign about.

  I called out again and walked down to the shore, the cat silently watching me from its position near the tent. The land jutted out into a peninsula forming one end of the bay, and although I couldn’t see our canoe I knew it was there, just around the corner. I turned back then and looked along the shore and almost missed it, so well did it blend in with the driftwood on the beach. The warm wooden sides of a cedar strip canoe lay hidden among some bushes as if it had been thrown there, its stern line still dragging in the water, the bowline pulled taut from the base of the tree where it was tied, as if it had been yanked or blown by the wind. On the bow there was a white silhouette of a really badly drawn eagle in full flight looking as though it were trying to flee the confines of the canoe.

  Where was the guy? If his canoe was still here but the food in his pack had gone rotten and the awning of his tent was flapping enough to drive someone nuts, where was the person who owned all this? As long as there had been no canoe I had almost managed to convince myself that whoever had been here had left in a big hurry in their canoe. In which case it hadn’t been my concern. No more.

  The forlorn feel of the place, the juxtaposition of the obvious care and pride put into the site with the equally obvious neglect, was disquieting. I glanced uneasily at the cat and the green tent, its tarp still flapping ominously in the gentle breeze, and I knew I had no choice. I approached the tent the way I used to approach my dentist’s office: with great reluctance.

  The cat rubbed against my leg as I squatted in front of the tent looking for the zipper to unzip the door. Maybe the guy was a heavy sleeper and had just not heard me yelling out. A really heavy sleeper.

  “Hello?”

  My voice sounded tiny, hesitant, and almost made me jump as it garrotted the silence. But there was no response. I fumbled with the zipper on the tent door, and when I got it opened halfway the cat pushed its head in ahead of me and went inside. I carefully pulled the tent flap back, peered inside, and then reeled back in sudden panic as something moved on the far side of the dimly lit tent. I backed away, my eyes glued to the door. There was a squeal and a nasty wet gurgle and the cat suddenly slipped out, a dying chipmunk in its jaws, and disappeared around the side of the tent. My heart slowed to a sprint and I approached the tent again, angry at myself for being frightened by a chipmunk.

  The inside of the tent was musty and damp with the stale air of disuse. As my eyes adjusted to the light I saw the bunched-up shape of a large down sleeping bag and two substantial foam pads that served as a very comfortable mattress. This guy sure knew how to camp in luxury.

  I scanned the area where I had seen the chipmunk move and saw the remains of a Mars chocolate bar tucked into a pocket on the side of the tent. Right below it was the telltale hole in the tent where the chipmunk had chewed its way in to death. A small palm-sized black book with an orange slash on the cover and a man’s name printed across it lay close by as if dropped there by accident. An expensive-looking camera lay on top of the sleeping bag, partly out of its case, and an empty black plastic film canister lay beside it, as if someone had just loaded the camera and been interrupted. Nothing here to say what had become of the owner.

  I backed out of the tent and let the flap drop behind m
e as I breathed in fresh air. I saw the cat sitting near the mess tent, its tail flicking lazily from side to side as it licked its paws. Its cool aloofness was beginning to give me the creeps.

  I shivered. A warm snug campsite was warm and snug only when filled with a human body. Like an empty house it loses its warmth and humanity the minute its people leave it behind. It loses its soul. There was no soul here now, only the tantalizing potential of soul. Where was the owner?

  I surveyed the campsite one last time, then followed the trail back to the glade and the dangling food pack. I resisted the sudden urge to look behind me as I skirted the glade and found the trail I’d seen earlier that would lead me back to the portage trail. I hadn’t walked very far when I rounded a bend in the trail just where it merged with the portage trail and the stench hit me like a physical blow. I stopped and then I saw it, a large formless shape lying to one side of the trail, silent, mute, and threatening in its inevitability. And I saw what I didn’t want to see. Sticking out of the heap, white, flaccid, and bloated in the strong summer sun, was a single human finger curled into a miniature fist of death.

  I stumbled away from the body, the nausea coming in waves that touched and sickened not only my stomach but also my mind. A million whirling thoughts crowded into my brain, pulling and twisting it like a Chinese puzzle. The sun shone down through the trees and the birds still called sweetly, but for one human being life was now over and there was nothing to mark the passing of whoever it had been; someone who had once had hopes and dreams, now gone. The smell of the hot sun on warm earth enveloped me and I breathed in the freshness of air not touched by death. I sank to my knees and threw up.

  chapter three

  “Ryan! Ryan!” My voice came out sounding like the croaking rasp of a cricket. Why is it that when you really need your voice it so often betrays you?

  Ryan was lying slumped against the tree where I’d left him sound asleep, months ago it seemed.

  “Ryan!” This time I put more force behind my voice but it still croaked, so I leaned over and grabbed his shoulder, the nausea rising again inside me so that I let go quickly and straightened up.

  Ryan grunted and slowly propped himself up on one arm and looked at me, his eyes taking a long time to focus. Suddenly he sat up and rubbed them as if to clear away an unpleasant vision, and then he looked at me again.

  “What’s up, Cordi? Jesus, you look awful,” he said. “What’s wrong? What’s the matter?”

  I couldn’t seem to find any words that would work. My tongue felt thick and fuzzy and trying to make it perform balletic manoeuvres with words seemed impossible.

  “What’s wrong?” Ryan asked in growing alarm. He stood up, gripped me by the shoulders. Nothing like a concerned brother to loosen my tongue.

  “There’s a dead guy just off the portage trail, or what’s left of him,” I squawked. “Near where you took the photo.”

  “‘Dead guy,’ as in human dead guy?”

  I nodded. Ryan didn’t say anything at all, just reached out instinctively and hugged me.

  “Or dead woman,” I added. “The animals have got at the body. There’s not much left to recognize,” I said into his armpit. “I don’t even know if it’s male or female it’s all so bloated and covered in grubs and twigs.”

  When Ryan didn’t respond I pulled away and looked at him. He just stood there looking dumbly back at me, his jaw hanging loose, his eyebrows raised in an I-hear-you-but-I-don’t-want-to expression that ordinarily would have made me laugh.

  “Who is it? What was he doing around here?” said Ryan.

  “I found a food pack hauled up between two trees. It was crawling with flies.” I waited for some reaction, concentrating on my words to keep the images from crowding out my tenuous self-control.

  “Flies on the food pack?” he finally asked.

  “Yeah. Strange, isn’t it?”

  “Who’d let food rot?”

  “That’s what I thought,” I said, glad to find my voice returning to normal. “There’s a campsite over there. Two tents, one’s a mess tent and the other is for sleeping. Only there was no sign that anybody had been around for at least a few days. There’s a canoe hauled up and battered by the wind and it looks abandoned. But it’s all mostly so neat and tidy, so I looked inside the tent.”

  I brushed a pine needle off my arm and watched it fall to the ground as I tried to obliterate the vision of the body before I continued.

  “But there was nobody in there. No sign of the owner. So I came back and the smell hit me.”

  “You think it’s the guy from the campsite?” When I didn’t answer he said, “Where is it? We’ll have to report this.”

  “It’s down the path near where we picked up our grubs. It’s in at least two pieces along the trail and …” I suppressed a gag and pointed back the way I had come.

  Ryan rallied at this. “Oh gross, Cordi, don’t tell me we took grubs off a dead body, a dead human body …”

  When I didn’t answer Ryan stared at me and raised his hairy eyebrows.

  “Better lead the way.”

  “You sure you want to see this?” I said.

  “You did.”

  “Yeah, but I had no choice. I practically tripped over it. It’s not a pretty sight.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe there’s a photo op here for the local paper. I owe them a favour.”

  It was my turn to roll my eyes.

  “And you call me gross. No paper in their right mind would print a photo of this unless they wanted to scare their readers away.”

  “For God’s sake, Cordi, I didn’t mean taking pictures of the body. I was thinking of some pictures of the campsite, lonely, deserted. Imagine the pathos you could build up. And I could get a good writer to write the text: an article about camp safety and the dangers of camping alone. It could be very powerful as long as the writer doesn’t go all gushy and sentimental, and if we can find out how he died.”

  I had to admit that the campsite did look sad and lonely and it would make a powerful picture, especially knowing what lay in the bushes this side of it.

  We picked up our gear and I led the way. We walked back along the portage trail to where we had collected the grubs. Ryan grimaced at what we’d thought was part of a coon as I located the partly overgrown trail that led to where part of the torso lay half concealed in pine needles.

  “Jesus,” whispered Ryan. “What the hell happened to the guy? He looks as though he’s been ripped to shreds.”

  “He has. By scavengers.”

  “Oh gross, Cor.” Ryan shivered. I heard the tremble in his voice and watched his face turn a paler shade of white as he struggled to keep his breakfast down. He took two deep breaths and turned away from the body. I felt somehow relieved that he was handling it as badly as I had and then felt ashamed of my thoughts.

  “How’d the guy die?”

  “Maybe he had a heart attack or hurt himself and couldn’t get to help,” I said, not wanting to say what was in both our minds. Of course, Ryan had no such qualms.

  “You think it was a bear?” he asked, as he struggled with his pack.

  Ryan’s voice quavered on the word bear. Ryan wasn’t afraid of much, but he did have a pathological fear of bears. He’d once blasted a poor little mouse with the flare gun outside our tent when we were kids, thinking it was a bear. After all the screaming and yelling in the dark had died down he promised our parents he’d never use a flare gun again. He now uses pepper spray, and I watched as he struggled to get it out of his pack.

  “I’m getting the hell out of here,” said Ryan as he moved away from the body, shook the can of pepper spray, and checked the nozzle. Not for the first time I wondered what would happen if the wind changed direction just after he used it, or the spray bounced off the bear and back at us. Three blinded creatures lashing out in panic. Charming thought. Perhaps a flare gun would be better after all. What a team we made. I was afraid of rapids and we were both afraid of bears. So why wasn’t I afrai
d now?

  We figured our best bet to get help and still get out of the bush by nightfall was to portage our stuff and then go report the discovery of the body. The topographical map showed a lumber road near the end of the portage. We hoped we could flag down a lumber truck or something. The portage got progressively worse, with large sections of mud and swamp in the lower stretches of the trail. The rain in the last few nights had made everything a boggy, mucky mess. There were no recent signs that anyone had passed this way before us, and I wondered if the last person to travel this trail now lay dead by its side. At the end of the portage we dumped our gear and I emptied the specimens from my collection pack to lighten the load. It was pure habit. I never went anywhere without a collecting pack. You never knew what you might find.

  “Cordi, why not just leave it this time? We don’t have time to collect with a wild bear out there.”

  I swung the pack over one shoulder and, with Ryan twitching and jerking like a marionette on the lookout for bears, we retraced our steps back over the portage to get the canoe.

  It still lay peacefully in the water, safely tied bow and stern to some small boulders where the cliff that soared above had given up some of its weight.

  “You take the bow. I’ll get the stern,” I said above the din of the rapids. I untangled and untied my line and, holding tight to keep the canoe near the ledge, bent down and grabbed the gunnel.

  Ryan was still struggling with the bowline. The canoe still had some water in it. We hadn’t done a good job of bailing after the last set of rapids. When we pulled it out of the water it would all come my way first.

  “Hang on,” I said, as Ryan prepared to hoist it out. “No way I’m going to get soaked.”

  I grabbed hold of the rock ledge with one hand and stepped into the canoe, letting the water sluice by my feet to the stern. The bailer was behind the stern seat where my bug collection was strapped and I reached back with my free hand, retrieved the bailer, and began to bail.