Specimen Song

by Peter Bowen

“What if I pick another way?” said Du Pré.

  “I’d have to check,” said Bart.

  “These Hydro-Quebec people are to spend twenty billion dollars on these dams,” said Du Pré, “so I think they plan to make more than that. So with so much money in it I don’t think they play fair.”

  “Capitalism and its absolutes,” said Bart.

  “Just a bunch of poor Indians,” said Du Pré, “who would care?”

  “A lot of people would,” said Bart, “if they knew about it. That Lucky is one smart man.”

  The murmuring from the crowd of reporters and cops and Indians changed a little—a different rhythm, different notes. A woman screamed.

  Du Pré looked at Bart. They began to walk fast, then ran.

  The crowd was standing in a circle, looking down at something on the ground. A Mountie was moving around something, his hat in his hand.

  Bart and Du Pré bulled their way through the crowd.

  There was a big black raven on the ground, wings flapping.

  It had two bleeding notches in its upper beak and one wing was injured.

  The Mountie put his hat over the bird and tried to grab it. The bird scratched hard with its feet and the Mountie cursed and dropped it.

  The crowd stood and stared.

  The bird quit struggling and stared back.

  Little ropy crimson strands of blood hung down from the deep notches.

  Du Pré picked up a stick, stepped forward, and crushed the bird’s skull.

  The Mountie opened his mouth. He shut it.

  Du Pré picked up the dead raven and looked at the beak.

  He was angry, breathing hard, his eyes seeing red.

  He heard wings. Night.

  Owls.

  CHAPTER 34

  DU PRÉ LOOKED AT THE little telephone. Bart could call anywhere in the world or from anywhere at all in the world.

  This twentieth century is a goddamned terminal disease. Du Pré thought. It is getting into every little corner of the world. We left beer cans on the moon. There’s no place to run.

  Bart handed the little black folding phone to Du Pré.

  “Hi,” said Detective Leuci. “I bet you hate this thing.”

  “Yeah,” said Du Pré.

  “At least you can check in on your trip,” she said.

  “Yes, Mama,” said Du Pré.

  “We didn’t even know where Chase was,” said Michelle. “Aren’t we good cops? Guy’s like water, any little hole. What do you make of the bird?”

  “I don’t know,” said Du Pré.

  “Is Chase going to follow you?”

  “I ask him, call you back,” said Du Pré.

  “We’re talking to the Mounties,” said Michelle.

  Du Pré said nothing. So what the fuck some dumb cops from Montreal or Ottawa going to do for us? This guy is here somewhere, he knows us, and we don’t know him. How did Benetsee know about the bird? The bird is not a person, it is a sign, a badge, a calling card, a warning.

  One guy with a rifle take us all out sitting on the water like them ducks. We can’t get in the water, it will be so cold, we will die in a few minutes. This guy, he knows the bush. This guy is a fox.

  “You check out those two guys who were with Chase last summer?” said Du Pré.

  “Of course,” said Michelle. “Sean St. George and Tim Charteris. Both working on doctorates. Both absolutely clean. Good students, good family, good this, good that.” Chase has a lot of weird stuff in his past, but no prosecutions.”

  “These guys, what are they working on for this doctorate thing?” asked Du Pré.

  “Anthropology,” said Michelle.

  “I didn’t think it was rocket science,” said Du Pré, and then he felt bad, having been snotty.

  “I am sorry,” said Du Pré. “I just wondered what exactly they are writing these things on.”

  Michelle called over to someone, waited.

  Du Pré could hear someone reading painfully, limping along a sentence full of words that were beyond his pronunciations.

  “Tim Charteris is writing something on the Basque penetration—doo wah—of the Canadian wild. There were Basques there a long time ago.”

  Du Pré had heard some stories about that, knew a couple of fiddle tunes. The Basques had been killing whales off Newfoundland and Nova Scotia centuries before Columbus had stumbled ashore in Dominica. Very clannish and closemouthed were the Basques. They would set sail from Bilbao and come back with barrels of whale oil and never a word where they got it.

  “And St. George is doing something on …” She paused, struggling with the word in front of her. “Hungwitching shamanism.”

  “Hungwitchin,” said Du Pré. The People of the Deer. Far, far to the north, in the forests. “Michelle, could you maybe do me a favor? You find out what those Hungwitchin believe in, you know, what they got for a religion, maybe?”

  “Okay,” said Michelle.

  “Also, you could maybe call Madelaine, have her see that old fart Benetsee is around,” said Du Pré, wishing to Christ the old fart was right here. Even some of his riddles would help.

  Du Pré handed the nasty little black magic object back to Bart, who murmured into it for a while and then folded the talking piece back into it and stuck it in the pocket of his vest, which had about forty, the kind photographers wear to announce that they are photographers. If you filled each pocket, you probably couldn’t stand up.

  Du Pré was happier in other times. Maybe a rifle, some salt and tea, a horse. Eat your way along. No telephones. You die, you are a skeleton long time before they find you. Now you can’t even die, they airlift you out, plug you full of tubes, give you a full set of new organs.

  Twentieth century. Bah.

  The air still smelled sour. Burned cloth.

  A few people milled around down by the water. The Mounties were gone. They had taken the bird as evidence.

  Maybe it’s got microfilm in its gizzard, Du Pré thought, a little videotape. Computer chips.

  Shit.

  Chase was off by a copse of old spruces, talking earnestly to the woman reporter, who was taking notes, and waving his hands a lot. He saw Du Pré and his speech stumbled. He turned away.

  I scare him, thought Du Pré. Good.

  But what about his Charteris and St. George? They are not here.

  No, I just haven’t seen them.

  Du Pré rolled a smoke, lit it, and went looking for Lucky.

  Lucky and Eloise were in their cabin, going over the checklists of supplies for the trip, arguing in soft voices.

  Du Pré found a box and sat on it.

  “Anybody camp around here you wouldn’t know about it?” said Du Pré.

  Lucky shook his head no.

  “You sure?” said Du Pré.

  Lucky shook his head yes.

  Du Pré took out one of the soapstone balls and twirled it in his fingers.

  A plane? He threw the bird out of a plane, Du Pré thought. Shit. So much coming and going.

  And I am off and don’t look up.

  Du Pré went looking for Bart. He left so quickly, Eloise came after him to see what was wrong, followed a ways, shrugged, and went back to the lists.

  He couldn’t find Bart. Chase was still talking to the woman reporter. Du Pré’s eyes locked on him and he started running and so did Chase, leaving the woman shouting a question, pencil poised over paper.

  Chase was fast, wearing running shoes and desperation. Du Pré’s rubber-soled boots were heavy and not made for such work. Chase made the mistake of looking back and tripped over a downed sapling and crashed into the brush. Du Pré was on him before he could struggle up and get to speed.

  Du Pré lifted Chase clear of the ground, rage swelling his strength.

  “I am tired of this shit,” said Du Pré. “So I tell you, you cocksucker, anything more happens I come after you, and not to tell you a funny story. I don’t care you got anything to do with it or not.”

  Chase wriggled; h
is tongue crawled out of his mouth.

  Du Pré just held him for a moment and then set him down.

  Chase was wheezing hard, like he had asthma.

  “DU PRÉ!” Bart yelled, “Goddamn it. Quit!”

  Du Pré turned. Bart was standing there, looking stricken.

  “I thought you were going to kill him,” said Bart, shaking.

  “I might,” said Du Pré.

  Chase ran.

  They heard him fall again, hard.

  They walked back to the village.

  CHAPTER 35

  IT TOOK TWO DE HAVILLAND Otters to ferry the gear and the people to the canoes waiting in the malevolent forest along the Rivière de la Baleine. One whale, not two, or many.

  The forest below was the color of dark dreams, the kind you rise through to a grateful waking.

  The river was past spate, dropping, milky with soil and glacial dust. Du Pré shuddered. The water was cold, cold, cold.

  Black soggy trees floated on, barely breaking the surface.

  There would be logjams. There would be ice jams.

  I live in a goddamned desert, Du Pré fumed. I am never going to go anywhere again that don’t have prickly pear cactus in sight.

  Lucky was riding up with the pilot. Suddenly, they banked and dropped, flew over a long lake, turned once more, and set down. Du Pré flopped against the belts when the Otter eased down in the water. Waves raced to the shore.

  There were three Indians standing on it, their clothes so stained with wood smoke that they were the color of old bark.

  Du Pré helped shove the two canoes out of the Otter’s belly, one fiberglass freighter, one fiberglass half-ton, and he got down in the big canoe and caught the duffel Lucky tossed to him.

  The plane with Bart and Eloise on it set down and taxied to a stop.

  Lucky tossed bags swiftly. There was a lot of gear, broken down into fifty-pound nylon bags. Du Pré moved to the smaller canoe. When it was full, he caught the paddle from Lucky and dug for shore. The day was windless. The water was clear. He saw a pike in the weeds on the bottom, broad head pointed toward a school of minnows.

  The three Indians waded out till the water got up to their ankles. One caught the painter Du Pré tossed, and pulled the canoe over the gravel and duff till it halted. They unloaded the gear. Lucky nosed in to shore and the other two helped him. By the time they were through, Bart had landed.

  Du Pré looked up and saw a dark figure with a rifle behind a bush. Felix. He waved but didn’t take his eyes off the far shore or the sky. So Nappy would be with the birch-bark canoes.

  An hour later, the Otters were gone and the lake was settling back to glassy smoothness.

  They began to portage the gear over a rise to the river’s banks. The river had cut down into the rock and soil. The two big bark canoes were moored bow and stern, and a linked boom of logs curved round them.

  Du Pré hadn’t seen Nappy yet, which was fine.

  I don’t see him and I know that he is here.

  “Any other planes, they come by?” said Du Pré to Felix.

  Felix shook his head. “Up thirty thousand feet, maybe,” he said. He kept flicking his eyes here and there. “But all they got to do is wait. We just got the one river, you know, goes the one way. So.”

  Logjams, ice, cold, wet, rain, freeze-dried food, snipers, thought Du Pré. I am not an adventurous man. But I will be one. He thought of the two little girls dead and bleeding in the cabinet.

  By sundown, they had the gear and canoes down to the water. They set up a camp. Lucky and Du Pré got the early watch, two to sunrise. They were tired from the flying and the lifting and hauling. Du Pré ate a can of tuna and gnawed at a roll of fruit leather and didn’t bother to find any of the Canadian whiskey he had somewhere in the mound of duffel.

  He crawled into the tent and slipped off his boots and stuck them outside upside down on the boot stakes. He slid into the bag and after it warmed a little he slipped off his pants and heavy shirt and piled them under the bag’s flap for a pillow. The air was damp and close and smoke from the fire wandered in. He woke up sneezing once, then didn’t wake until Lucky pulled his foot.

  Du Pré went up the river a quarter mile to a sort of blind Nappy had built, a place where he could see a long stretch of water. Lucky was over by the big lake and Guillaume was downstream, high up in a tree so he could actually see the campsite if anyone came into it. Not a really tight arrangement.

  This Hydro-Quebec, they probably hire retired commandos, thought Du Pré, shivering in the frost. Why worry, I’ll be dead before I know it. He opened the bolt of the hunting rifle and checked the shell in the chamber and the safety.

  Benetsee. Benetsee. I need to talk to him, even on Bart’s magic telephone. The old man would hate that thing. Any shithead can talk on it from anywhere. Don’t need the coyotes and ravens.

  Nothing happened all night except that it got damned cold, and when the sun gleamed up in the east and the air inversion began, it sucked all the heat out of Du Pré’s body. He was shivering when he walked back to the camp.

  They had a hot breakfast of oatmeal and raisins and coffee.

  They began to sort and load.

  A dead caribou floated past, bloated enough to ride high in the water.

  Like the last time, Du Pré and Nappy would ride point and Bart and Bart’s magic telephone would ride in the rear. The only person who was on this trip who was inexperienced, Bart could be expected to float past the others if anything happened.

  “We dig you a nice grave,” said Du Pré.

  “Fuck you,” said Bart.

  Du Pré and Nappy shoved off and floated out to the fastest current. They swung to and headed downriver, getting perhaps a mile ahead of the others, so that if there was a bad spot and they dumped, one or another dripping scout could make it back upriver to warn the rest of the party.

  “Let’s not go over,” said Du Pré to Nappy. “I don’t want to do this whole trip with my nuts up between my lungs.”

  “Yo,” said Nappy.

  The river was straight and smooth. It cut some, but not much, into the shield rock of eastern Canada, tough granite. The soil was not all that deep and the trees were not as large and more closely bunched than in the great forests to the west.

  Hunters would starve here, Du Pré thought. This is some tough country, green or not.

  Rafts of slush bobbed in the calmer waters toward the shore.

  The forest was silent—no birds, no squirrels chirring indignantly at invaders. The sun rose higher and the fog rose, tendrils and tentacles writhing in the sun.

  They hove to at the end of a long, calm stretch and waited till the first of the freighters came into view. The paddlers didn’t wave, so everything was all right.

  Du Pré’s hands were stiff and he had a cramp in the left one, a knotting charley-horse. He pressed hard against the thwart to stretch the muscles.

  They ate a little while paddling. When the sun was two hours from setting, Nappy pointed to a flattish meadowland with a couple sand eskers running at the far side. They were even and looked like berms.

  “What did these?” said Du Pré to Nappy.

  “Old riverbeds used to run on top of the ice,” said Nappy.

  Tough country, Du Pré thought.

  By the time he had finished his cigarette, the other canoes were nosing in.

  He went down to help off-load.

  He looked at the sky, hoping for ravens.

  CHAPTER 36

  THEY APPROACHED THE GREAT bay. Two weeks on the river and they had not seen anything threatening. A TV crew had descended once, planes flopping down, but the weather turned nasty and the pilots took off, with the cameramen shooting and cursing.

  Du Pré stood up and dropped his pants and mooned them.

  “They don’t use that on the five o’clock news,” said Du Pré.

  Nappy nodded; he was giving them the finger.

  No nothing. Not a trapper or a fisherman. The seaso
n was too late for good fur and too icy for good fishing. The bugs were just beginning to bloom in numbers.

  Lucky fretted. He had expected more coverage—more TV crews, more ink, more everything.

  “If there is no one there, we did this for nothing,” Lucky said. He was so upset, his cup of coffee lopped over the rim.

  Maybe this Hydro-Quebec bought everybody off, Du Pré thought. They probably do that sort of thing, they planning to spend $20 billion. Also New York, they need those hot tubs and lights.

  Bart was talking to Michelle. Every time they stopped, he punched in a number and there she was, usually. She could call back, too.

  No Benetsee, no nothing in Washington, no Paul Chase, who for all they knew was a day behind them or something.

  Maybe Chase come busting out of the side waters near the river’s mouth, Du Pré thought, but I think they will be waiting for him this time. That woman reporter is nobody’s fool.

  What a world, this twentieth-century. Du Pré tried to think of something he liked about it. He thought of duct tape and the penicillin, since he had gotten a good case of clap once. He couldn’t think of anything else right offhand.

  There was a town, Kuujjuarapik, just norm of the river’s mouth.

  Maybe two days down the river to the bay, Hudson Bay, shallow and mean with storms and shoal waters.

  And then the skies were full of helicopters and little floatplanes and Lucky quit spilling his coffee.

  Reporters paddled out in little rafts, helicopters flew down close enough to nearly capsize the canoes.

  The party paddled past, smiling. When they pulled into the last camp before the bay, the newspeople converged like flies on a nice cat turd.

  A couple of the smarter crews brought food—fresh fruits and vegetables and ice cream, steaks, booze. Bribes.

  Du Pré and Nappy still stood watch.

  Much easier now for something to happen, maybe, or maybe it would happen down at the bay, or not here in Canada at all. Maybe, Du Pré thought, I am wrong about everything.

  Bart wandered out to where Du Pré was sitting, rifle across his knees, with half a bottle of whiskey and a plate of food. He let Du Pré eat and have a couple snorts and then he dialed Madelaine.