Harder Ground

by Joseph Heywood

“Can’t if I can’t move my damn legs. I’m froze in place here.”

  “Deep breaths, Paul. Control your breathing. This is just dark, nothing more.”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I don’t believe you. It’s all you talked about driving up here.”

  “I was whistling in the graveyard.”

  “This is not a graveyard, Paul.”

  “In your head, maybe.”

  “C’mon, give it a try.”

  Darlecky kept listening and inching forward, closing in.

  “Okay, one more time and if I can’t, I can’t.”

  “You can.”

  “Don’t push me, Tank.”

  “I’m encouraging, not pushing.”

  “It feels pushy. Perception is reality.”

  The CO knelt and listened, heard no more voices, thought she heard the vague sound of boots pushing wet leaves, an occasional twig popping. No flashlight from the voices and no sound, damn impressive sound suppression.

  Several times she got on her knees and shone her red penlight to find where leaves had been ruffled. They were quiet all right, but not trying to hide their trail. Got you, she thought. She moved ahead, picking up her pace.

  Their sign led her over a ridge and down into the bottom where it cut directly east, and they must’ve hurried on because she heard no sound and picked up her speed until she heard faint voices again, found the leaf trail leaving the two-track up into some rocks.

  She was easing between two boulders when a bright light lit her up and stopped her like a deer, wide-eyed, mouth hanging open.

  “Who the hell is dogging us?” a voice demanded.

  “Get your light out of her face. She has a badge, Tank.”

  “Badge? Who the hell are you?” the first voice challenged.

  “I heard your voices and wondered who was out here. Conservation Officer Darlecky, Michigan Department of Natural Resources.”

  The gruff voice. “Outside our wire we get followed by a girl game warden in full battle rattle and we never hear shit until she’s on top of us. If she’s Muj, we’d have been meat.”

  The light was still in her face. “I’m sorry, guys,” Darlecky said. “How about you get the light off me and we talk?” As soon as they turned off their light, she turned on her SureFire and put it right in their eyes.

  “Hey!” the gruff one barked.

  “Turnabout. Want to see who I’m dealing with.”

  Having said that, she found it hard to keep the light steady, and finally clicked it off. She had just seen something so horrible, so unimagined she could hardly describe it to herself.

  The three stood in darkness. “We’re not supposed to be out here?” the less gruff voice asked. The one called Paul, she thought, guessing.

  “Not at all, you guys are cool. This is state land.”

  “So why you want to red-ass us,” gruff voice asked.

  “Just doing my job,” Darlecky said.

  “Give it a break, Tank,” the other voice said.

  “Are you guys lost?” she asked.

  “Do we look lost?” This the voice she now identified as Tank.

  “You guys camping out this way?” she asked, changing subjects.

  “Camp RFC,” the one called Paul said. “Got up here two days ago.”

  She’d never heard of a Camp RFC. “Just the two of you?”

  “Ten of us,” Paul said.

  “Nine, ass-wire,” Tank grumbled. “Harlan ain’t makin’ it.”

  “If you fellows don’t need directions, I’ll be on my way.”

  “You work a lot in the dark?” Paul asked.

  “My name’s Steffi,” she said. “We work at night all the time during certain times of the year.”

  “This time of the year?” the second voice asked and added, “I’m Paul, he’s Tank.”

  “Not so much this time of year.”

  “So why you out here?” Tank asked.

  “Had several reports of unusual activity out this way.”

  “Fuckin’ screamers camp,” Tank complained.

  Paul said, “We encountered some people over the last two nights and we musta scared them some.”

  Tank said. “They run off screaming like maniacs.”

  “We’re just out working on some issues in our rehab,” Paul said.

  “Rehab?”

  “Army,” Paul said. “We come out to the woods to readjust to darkness.”

  “Vets?”

  “We’re housed in a trauma unit in Dayton,” Paul said. “Some of us have been under reconstruction for four years.”

  “You saw our faces,” Tank said. “We’re in what the sawbones call the close-enough stage.”

  She was at a loss for words and decided to mostly listen. “So you’re up here.”

  “Mostly it’s a little R&R,” Paul said. “Fish, consume some brain grenades. You want some coffee?”

  “Wouldn’t mind. You got a thermos?”

  “Back at camp, not with us.”

  “Sure,” she said, thinking, Ohmygod. She had never seen such disfigurement before, not ever. It was beyond imagination.

  •••

  Their faces might be wrecked, but the men were in impressive physical condition, their camp two miles from where she’d encountered them, a nice cabin on a feeder creek, not a hundred yards from where it dumped into the East Branch of the Huron River. Rocky country, with terrible footing, a hair off the grid and great for brook trout, if you were willing to make the wading effort.

  The men introduced themselves, stared her in the eye and she did her best to do the same, but it was really hard. Felt almost like they wanted to make her flinch and look away. But she refused to let herself. Paul and Tank reintroduced themselves in the light. Then Garrett, Ratface, Noseguard, Looselip, Alexander, Barak, and Toejam.

  “Barak?” she asked the one man.

  “Yah, sounds like the Prez, but I didn’t get the same pigment gene.”

  “He’s a Jewboy,” Tank said. “Ignore his shit.”

  The men’s faces were horribly disfigured, some much more severely than others, but all bad, none of them looking like anything other than a primitive mask. For some reason they reminded her of the floppy bug-eyed faces of newborn birds, all nasty, distended fleshy angles and splotchy blotches of discolored flesh.

  “You guys serve together?” she asked, immediately sorry. It was a stupid question.

  Paul said, “No, we met in various rehab units along the way. Most of us will get back to active duty if we can get our heads on straight after the surgeons finish. We’re the lucky fuckers. So many guys with no arms, no hands, legs, feet, dicks, you name it. We all just got whoomped by the ugly stick.”

  “Sandbags,” Tank said. “Some guys just sacks of sand.”

  “Shutup, Tank,” one of the men said.

  It all settled after awhile. They gave her coffee and Darlecky stepped outside with Paul. “Those people you guys ran into, what happened?”

  “Not much. They walked up on us in low light and freaked out. I can’t blame them.”

  “You’re not offended?”

  ”No, we see this crap all the time, every time we leave our ward or base and we get it from people who should know better too, including doctors. We just didn’t expect it in the north woods,” he said with a laugh.

  “Lot of people out looking for morels,” she told him.

  “We don’t want to be a bother.”

  “You’re not.”

  “If we’re going to freak out the locals, we’ll need to stay deep in our property.”

  “Baloney,” Darlecky said.

  Paul stared at her with owly eyes.

  “You game to try something?” she asked him.

  “Try what?
>
  “Work on issues,” she said.

  •••

  The auditorium of L’Anse High School was full. In two days, Darlecky had drummed up major community and media interest in the monster sightings and she announced a Friday night press conference to reveal her findings.

  She looked at the wall clock. It was 7 p.m. She walked across the stage to a lectern and said, “Okay, everybody, I guess it’s time.” TV lights came on.

  Someone in the rear of the auditorium yelled, “It’s about damn time!”

  Darlecky stared out at the audience. “Do you believe in monsters?”

  They responded with applause and some foot-stomping.

  Another voice yelled, “Stop jacking us around and get on with it!”

  Darlecky went over to the side door on the stage and opened it. Nine men in various military clothing filed out and stood in a line behind the lectern.

  She introduced them left to right, by name, by rank, by where they had served, and where they had been wounded.

  Not a sound came from the audience. A cough now and then, labored breathing, someone sobbing.

  My Perfect Italian

  Dating? Seriously? He was nice enough to look at, polite, full-haired, straight white teeth, trimmed and manicured nails, a lawyer, well traveled, worldly and experienced, charming, everything a woman could want. And she couldn’t remember his name. He had hit on her meekly but relentlessly for weeks and finally she had caved to the pressure, and here they were and she had no clue to his name. None, it was gone, blank, lost in a void.

  Nametags should be mandatory on dates, she told herself.

  What’s his face is holding his menu, looking over at her. “What will you have? Do you like fish?”

  “Only sole, only plain.”

  “Nothing else?” he asks.

  “Just sole, that’s all.”

  “But you must try other things. Life requires risk,” says he.

  Risk? She was a conservation officer. Her life was risk, nearly every minute of every workday. “With my food, I want no risk. I know what I like and I know when I’m hungry.”

  “Are you hungry now?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “What about wine?” he asks.

  “What about it?”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Some of it. I know what I like.”

  “And nothing more?” his voice is tinny.

  “No.”

  He orders a Pouilly Fuisse, same price as a box of ought-six ammo. This sort of spending offends her sense of propriety and frugality, what she calls the art of living thin.

  But he pushes the issue in a tender way and this amuses her and to some extent, astonishes her. The wine is good, very good.

  “You like it?” he asks.

  “Yes, it’s very nice.”

  “Would you have it another time?”

  “No.”

  “No?”

  “It might not be as good next time and that would disappoint me. I’d rather remember this time and how good it was.”

  He has a foie gras starter, followed by fricasseed lobster in a thick white sauce, with steamed vegetables and fresh warm bread.

  She has sole, plain, grilled, alone, the way she likes it, no frills on the side.

  No desserts. Both of them work hard to maintain their figures and condition. Superfluous calories are enemies.

  “A nightcap at Gagnon’s?” he asks as they await the check.

  “No, too many drunk college kids and the wait-staff treats you badly.”

  “I know a quiet little place in Negaunee. Very quiet, not filled with beery kids, almost like a club. They will treat us respectfully.”

  “If not,” she says, “we will go elsewhere.”

  The place is small and dark, a half dozen tables, intimate, faded furniture, a little dusty, she likes it immediately.

  They are seated by an elderly woman. “What will you have?” she asks.

  “Irish coffee,” she says.

  She toys with the cream-berg on top when the drink is delivered. There is music coming out of the walls or ceiling.

  “Do you have a boyfriend?” he asks.

  They always ask, sooner or later. “Not at present.”

  “You like, live alone?”

  Ah one of the like-folk. She hates this speech convention. “Yes, of course.”

  “Do you like living alone?”

  “It’s what I do and how it is. Yes, of course, I like it very much.”

  “What about vacations?”

  “What about them?

  “Do you take holidays?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you go anywhere special?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Downstate?”

  “To Italy, in the south. I can’t abide the north.”

  “What do you do there?”

  “I walk in the hills.”

  “And you walk a lot in your job?”

  “Yes, a great deal, but in Italy there are stone steps up to remote villages, the sort of places where you don’t have to see other tourists. Children in the village crowded around me, made me feel special.”

  “You like children?”

  “Sometimes, not always.”

  “You walk, that’s all?”

  “Sometimes I go down the hills to the sea and get wet and dry myself on a large flat rock.”

  “You’re a sun-worshipper,” he asserts with a smirk.

  “Not at all. I use the sun only to dry me.”

  “Do you wear a bathing suit?”

  “Never. Once in Sicily a man came to the rock and looked at me for a long time. He was short with dark skin and black curly hair. His teeth were bad. He had a shotgun on a rope sling.”

  “Were you afraid?”

  “I rather liked it, but he went away.”

  “Did you cover up?”

  “No, I wanted him to look, to see. He was only looking. A lot of men are like that.”

  “What sort of man do you want in your life?”

  “I don’t know. I met an Italian guy in college, seven years older than me, an instructor. He was good to me, very kind and generous. He gave and he gave, and I took and I took. He was the best of all of them.”

  “All? How many is that?”

  “I don’t know. Must there be a number?”

  He ignores the question. “What happened to your Italian?”

  “His contract was up. He went back home.”

  “Did he ask you to go with him?”

  “He begged me, but I said no. I had just gotten my own apartment, just begun to be on my own. I wanted independence. I think I will never know another man like him.”

  “If it were now, would you go?”

  “In an instant.”

  “But you had that chance.”

  “No, I had not had my independence yet, and I didn’t want to give that up before I knew what it was.”

  “Relationships require sacrifice,” nameless date says.

  “Not for me.”

  “But aren’t you lonely?”

  “No, I am alone. That’s not the same as lonely.”

  “Do you want to remain alone?”

  “I don’t know. That’s the way it is, isn’t it? There have been men, all bad except my Italian.”

  “When you go to Italy, are you looking for him?”

  “Never.”

  “What made the others bad?”

  “They took.”

  “But you took from your Italian, took and took, you told me about it.”

  “Only from the Italian. He knew I needed that. The others didn’t know what I needed.”

  “Which is?”

  “To
be alone,” she says. Is he thick?

  “You can’t be with someone and alone.”

  “I have. Lovers should live apart, not spend all their time together.”

  “I don’t understand what made the Italian so special,” he says.

  “He allowed me to be whimsical, to play the radio and stereo as loud as I wanted. I read, only pre-1900, but even before that time, there are many bad writers to be discarded.”

  “TV, movies? You don’t strike me as a reader,” he says.

  “Because I’m a cop?”

  “Not that. I don’t know why. What exactly do you read?”

  “Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, he’s much maligned you know.”

  “Do you cook?”

  “Only waffles. I hate to cook. The stove is my enemy.”

  “What do you do at night?”

  “When not on patrol? I read, but if my day is too long, I get overstimulated. Then I can’t sleep.”

  “When you can’t sleep, what do you do about it?”

  “Nothing. I lie there and fret about it.”

  “What about exercise?”

  “That only stimulates me more. My Italian knew how to calm me. He lived close by. We lived together apart. I would call him and he would come and put me to sleep.”

  “But no boyfriend currently.”

  “There was one not long ago, but I sacked him. He was no good.”

  “In what way?”

  “In all ways.”

  “How old was he?”

  “Forty-seven.”

  “That’s too old for you, too great an age gap.”

  “Not at all. At twenty-four I had a lover sixty-two. It was okay.”

  “Do you know what you want in a man?”

  “To let me be me, to allow me my whimsy, to know what I need without being told. He must be a good dancer and to come to me when I cannot sleep. To take me to dinner but not order for me.”

  “What about marrying for love?” he asks.

  “It’s better to marry for companionship.”

  “Why?”

  “Passionate love and mystery evaporate if you’re together all the time. It’s better to marry a companion, have your sex and passion with others.”

  He looks totally bollixed and she tells him, “I don’t know how to take care of a man, not really.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My hand, my mouth, I don’t know how to do all that, don’t know what a man wants or expects. I don’t need orgasms to enjoy sex,” she discloses, looking at him eye to eye.