Only the Dead

by Vidar Sundstøl

  It must have been after they were done fishing. The cabin had to have been some distance away from where they’d been fishing because they’d arrived by car. It was late in the evening, but the moon shone brightly over the woods. They were planning to stop somewhere to look at the moon. But first their father had turned onto a narrow side road that was almost completely overgrown, with a ridge of tall grass between the tire ruts. Tree branches scraped over the roof of the car.

  They’d walked a short way along a path, and then he saw it very clearly up ahead. The moon high above the treetops. It must have been a full moon, he thought. Or at least almost full. Yet it was so dark on the path that he had trouble making his way forward. Two dark figures were in front of him, one short and one tall, his little brother holding his dad’s hand. Finally they emerged onto what looked like a viewpoint. Could it have been Carlton Peak? he wondered. But no, it must have been much farther away from Lake Superior. It was the sight of the lake that he happened to think about now. They stood there together, the father and his two sons, somewhere in the woods, at an elevated spot with a view. Their father must have taken them there to show them exactly what Lance was now thinking about. The dark forest world all around them, spreading out in every direction. Not a single electric light, only the darkness of night and the metallic gleam of the huge body of water beneath the moonlight. Surrounded by darkness, it looked like it was floating in space. How could he have forgotten that?

  And now here he sat, half a lifetime later, out hunting with Andy. He ought to be feeling good. I like hunting, he thought, always have. But here he sat, as if in a tunnel, with the rest of the world blocked from view. A tunnel that led only one way and shut out everything else. Andy was somewhere up ahead in the tunnel. Lance wasn’t sure what all these thoughts meant, but the tunnel image best described what his life was like now.

  It’s not much of a life, he thought. Andy was a murderer, and he himself wasn’t really any better. When he lay in bed at night, unable to sleep, it was usually because he was thinking about Lenny Diver, the twenty-five-year-old Ojibwe man from Grand Portage who was in jail in Minneapolis. He’d been charged with the murder of the Norwegian canoeist Georg Lofthus. Lance knew Diver was as good as convicted even before the trial began. The murder weapon, a baseball bat with the victim’s blood on it, had been found in his car. And he’d also given a phony alibi. In other words, he might as well have confessed to the whole thing. But he hadn’t. On the contrary, Diver stubbornly denied being anywhere near Baraga’s Cross on the night in question. And Lance believed him. He knew the baseball bat that had been found in Diver’s car had the initials “AH” carved into the wood, just like on Andy’s bat. And with his own eyes he’d seen his brother drive down the road to Baraga’s Cross just hours before the murder occurred. The next day Andy had shown up at the ranger station and told Lance and everyone else who was there that he’d been out at his cabin on Lost Lake the previous night. He claimed to have gone out in his boat to fish and had stayed out there until midnight. But Lance knew he was lying. So he was enormously relieved when he heard that they’d arrested an Ojibwe and that the blood found at the crime scene proved the killer had to be a man with Indian blood. It had to do with a gene mutation that was found almost exclusively in American Indians.

  But his relief abruptly vanished when he discovered that his great-grandmother Nanette had been Ojibwe. Which meant that the evidence from the crime scene was not conclusive when it came to determining whether Lenny Diver or Andy Hansen had committed the murder. And with that, Lance was right back where he’d started, harboring a strong suspicion that his brother was the guilty party. This knowledge had transformed Lance into a corrupt police officer who was protecting a family member from the law.

  Yet even worse was the thought of Lenny Diver sitting in a cell in Minneapolis, awaiting the court trial in which he would undoubtedly be given a life sentence. He was there because Lance had not come forward with the truth. Isn’t that the same thing as taking a life? he thought. A form of murder, just slower. In spite of everything, Georg Lofthus must have died quickly. For Lenny Diver, it would take the same length of time for him to lose his life inside the prison walls as it would have taken him to spend his life outside.

  A half hour must have passed by now. Lance turned up the volume on the radio, which had been on the whole time but turned down so low that it was nearly inaudible. He caught the tail end of the news broadcast. A helicopter had been shot down, several soldiers had perished, but he didn’t hear where this had happened.

  It was eight thirty. Time to head out. He decided to do his best to ensure that this hunting expedition was as brief as possible. Today he was going to shoot the first deer that came within range, regardless of its size or sex.

  He went to the back of the Jeep to get out the small backpack that held a thermos of coffee, a bottle of water, and two chicken salad sandwiches. He slipped his arms through the straps of the backpack, then slung his rifle over his right shoulder and began walking across the parking lot toward the woods.

  As soon as he got in among the low birch trees that grew at the end of the parking lot, he became covered with a thin layer of moisture, from his hair all the way down to his boots. It wasn’t raining, but all the branches were laden with shiny drops. The air felt damp, like a thick mist, as he breathed it into his lungs, but there was no rain or fog. It was just an overcast November day, the kind that never gets fully light. Lance was moving slowly. Cautiously he pushed aside the branches as he tried to make his way through the trees. He wasn’t especially good at this. Andy was the expert at stalking prey. But it didn’t really matter, because in this dense birch forest he wouldn’t be able to shoot at anything. So he kept his rifle slung over his shoulder, but he still tried to move as quietly as possible. They didn’t want some deer to race past Andy’s post at too high a speed. Then it would be difficult to hit. The ideal scenario was for the deer to approach at a slow pace, nervous and on guard, of course, but not panic-stricken. Like when the deer had appeared at Copper Pond yesterday. It wasn’t frightened; it had simply stood there, checking the scents and the terrain. If Andy had come tramping through the woods, shouting loudly, that same deer would have been nothing but a brown streak racing across the marsh. Then Lance remembered how his brother had knocked on the window on the wrong side of the Jeep. Had he even been anywhere near Copper Pond?

  He veered to the right, heading closer to the sound of the river. The source of Cross River was in the huge complex of marshes deep within the Superior National Forest. It started out as a slow-moving and meandering current, more like a wide, quiet creek. Gradually it increased in size by absorbing water from the countless other small creeks, but it continued to flow gently through the extensive, almost-level conifer forests. When only a couple of miles remained, the river took on a more impressive form. The flat, at times slightly undulating, forest landscape abruptly changed to a hilly terrain that ended down by the narrow shoreline and Highway 61. These hills finally allowed the river water to become a foaming, rushing torrent. Then, after this short but dramatic phase, the Cross River calmly flowed on for roughly two hundred yards before emptying into Lake Superior at Baraga’s Cross.

  Lance was still near the lower, steep part of the river. A bit higher up the water passed through several clefts, but the Cross River would never be as spectacular as, for instance, the Cascade River or the Manitou.

  At one spot he found fresh deer scat. After that he was even more cautious, carrying his rifle in his hands, ready to shoot at a moment’s notice. He would have preferred to happen upon a deer and get this hunt over with as quickly as possible, but from experience he knew that would be difficult. He’d never shot a deer that way, when taking the role of driver. Andy, on the other hand, had done it several times. He had no idea how his brother was able to sneak up on deer, which were such wary animals.

  Where in this area would he be most likely to find a deer at this precise moment? The answer was
“on the slopes along the river.” He didn’t ask himself why, just blindly trusted his experience, which was not simply the result of a quarter century of deer hunting but was based equally, or maybe even more, on the fact that these woods were his workplace all year round.

  The river was his most important partner. Because of the high water level, he figured it was improbable that any deer would try to cross the river, which meant that the current would serve as a reliable right flank for him. He was the left flank. If he was careful to maintain a certain distance from the river, the deer would probably continue straight ahead. Ideally this would lead the animal to a lethal encounter with Andy’s Winchester up near the power line. From that position he would have an unobstructed line of fire. But if Lance got too close to the river, he would remove his own left flank, and the deer might flee in that direction. So he made a point of keeping the desired distance from the river.

  He suddenly became aware of a sound and then realized that it had actually been present for a while. It was the sound of rain striking his Gore-Tex clothing. At the moment it was no more than a drizzle. He pulled up his hood. This was good hunting weather. A fall day with sunshine and a cloudless sky might be beautiful, but sounds carried much farther through crisp, clear air. Smells did too. No, gray days that hovered like wet woolen blankets over the forest—those were the best. Then the chances were greater for getting close to a deer.

  Lance stopped at the top of a small rise with a view of the river. He was breathing hard. He wiped the mixture of rain and sweat from his brow and proceeded to examine the terrain, in particular several clearings along the river. But he didn’t see anything of interest. The only thing moving was a small flock of songbirds, apparently searching for food in the birch trees. Then the birds moved to a fir tree only a few yards away. One of them crept headfirst down along the slippery trunk. Lance knew that only a nuthatch could do that. The flock looked to be a mixture of nuthatches and black-capped chickadees, with maybe a few boreal chickadees or brown creepers.

  He thought of his mother holding up the palms of her hands, the way someone does to catch the first drops of rain. They had been standing outside a small house on a secluded street in Two Harbors, where she and Lance’s father had lived during the first year of their marriage. One morning she had gone to the kitchen window to look outside. It was snowing, and snow had already covered the trees and the fence. Oscar was out there feeding the birds, as he did every morning. But Inga said this time a little bird had landed on his hand. And soon more did the same. They were swarming around her husband as he stood there in the yard with the snow falling all around. When she saw how surprised Lance was to hear about this incident, Inga asked him whether he’d ever seen his father feeding birds from his hand. No, Lance had told her. His mother thought this was strange, because she said Oscar used to feed the birds in their yard in Duluth when Lance was growing up. But he couldn’t recall seeing anything like that, and it had bothered him ever since. If he’d really seen his father do something as special as that, why didn’t he have even the slightest memory of it? And if he’d forgotten about his father’s ability to attract the birds, what else might he have forgotten?

  The flock of birds now flew over to a tree farther away. How long had he been standing here, thinking about his parents? Maybe a couple of minutes. But that wasn’t good. It had broken his concentration. He started walking again, but the thought of his father and the songbirds soon returned, along with the memory of the day when his mother told him the story. Afterward they had stopped at a rest area because her knees were starting to ache. And there . . . down by the lake . . . Lance had seen the back of a man sitting near the water. Apparently his mother hadn’t noticed him, even though she was standing right next to Lance. An Ojibwe Indian. He didn’t belong in the same world as Lance and his mother. And yet Lance had seen him. He looked as if he’d wandered out of a black-and-white photograph from sometime around 1900. And Lance knew who he was. It was Swamper Caribou.

  A shot rang out in the woods. It came from the correct direction. Andy had fired a shot. Lance raised his rifle to chest level and stared at the clearings down by the river. If his brother had missed, it was conceivable that the deer might turn around and run back, away from the gunfire. In that case, it would pass very close to where Lance was standing. But if his brother had brought the deer down, he would soon call on his cell to say so.

  But nothing else happened. No deer came bounding past, no more shots were fired, his cell phone didn’t start vibrating. Andy must have missed, and then the deer took off in another direction.

  Lance lowered his rifle and began walking again, on the alert the whole time. Maybe Andy had hit the deer but didn’t kill it. Sometimes merely wounding an animal couldn’t be helped. Soon he’d reach the power line. Before he got there, he had to call Andy to warn him, but for the next few minutes he could still focus all his attention on the hunt.

  He enjoyed the supremely goal-oriented nature of hunting. The fact that everything he heard and saw was important. That each step he took, and the way he moved, counted. That everything had significance. And yet almost nothing happened. Maybe he saw a flock of nuthatches. Maybe he heard a pinecone fall. An entire day could pass in that fashion. It was almost like experiencing a great, liberating nothingness. But then all of a sudden, in the midst of that nothingness, a deer might be standing there, on alert, its long ears moving like remote-controlled antennas. Then it all came down to a few seconds of deliberate action. As if all of existence had been kneaded into a compact little ball. And when he fired, he also shot a hole in that ball, and then everything once again resumed its usual dimensions. Although not quickly. It was true that it took time. But slowly the day would return to normal. Gradually his hands would stop shaking from adrenaline. The deer would lie there, steaming on the ground.

  He got out his cell and phoned his brother.

  “Yep,” said Andy.

  “Was that you shooting?”

  “Yeah, but it was moving at a helluva speed. I missed. Was it you that flushed it out?”

  “I don’t think so. I was driving really cautiously, so . . .”

  “Have you noticed anyone else in the area?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither.”

  “Well . . . regardless . . . I’ll be there soon.”

  “Okay,” said Andy and ended the call.

  Lance picked up his pace, no longer trying to move quietly. Soon he reached the clear-cut for the transmission line, which was mostly low shrubs and heath-covered ground. He walked forward and then stopped in the middle of the open landscape as he looked for Andy, but he didn’t see him. The high-voltage lines hummed overhead. For a moment he wondered where the power line came from. He realized he’d never asked himself that question before, no matter how many times he’d looked at it. It was just a power line, buzzing with energy. He had no idea where it came from or where it ended.

  “Hello?” he shouted, raising one arm in the air.

  His brother had to be able to see him, standing out here in the open. The transmission line clear-cut was well over a hundred feet wide, stretching as far he could see in both directions. There wasn’t even a bush that reached much higher than his knees. He must stick up like a lighthouse.

  “Hello?” he shouted again. Still nothing but silence all around him.

  Vapor issued from his mouth in a thick cloud each time he exhaled. He noticed that it was also rising from the neck of his jacket, from his warm body under the Gore-Tex. He thought about the buck that he’d aimed at yesterday, how the steam had risen from its body as it stood there in the rain on the other side of Copper Pond. He should have shot it; then he wouldn’t have needed to come out here to the woods with Andy today. But it was too late now.

  Again he looked all around, letting his gaze survey a small section at a time, just as he usually did when searching for a deer. That was when he caught sight of his brother on the other side of the clear-cut strip. Partially
hidden behind a fir tree, Andy was standing there, watching him.

  It’s impossible to cross the creek. I’ll just have to follow it through the woods to see if it gets any narrower. I don’t like this dark forest. I just don’t. Back home we had hardly any forests. The trees that we did have stood far apart. Here it’s nothing but miserable darkness. I start walking along the creek and reach the first of the fir trees. I didn’t know there were trees this big anywhere. If I try to see the tops of them, it’s like the whole vault of the sky comes plunging down on my head. They’re trees and yet they’re something else too. They’re too big to be just trees. I walk in between them. The trunks are so thick it would take at least three men to link hands around them. I hear water running in the dark. That cursed creek! I say. But my words fall straight down to the hard-packed snow. The sounds don’t travel even a few feet in this forest. But I still carry them inside me. There I can think about the old words from back home.

  I hear the water but I can’t see it. I have to be careful about setting down one foot in front of the other. Then I fall. I land hard on my side and lie still. I lie there looking up through the tall fir trees. It hurts bad. Way overhead I catch a glimpse of a star. Did I break something? I mustn’t injure myself now. There can’t be more than a few hours left. From the boat shed it’s supposed to be a straight path up to the log cabin where my uncle and Nanette live. But here I lie, with my ribs hurting. The trees don’t look like trees. They disappear up there among the stars. And on the other side of the stars they keep growing to form another forest. There the sky is blue and sunlight glitters on the lake. Tiny glints of sun flash across the surface of the water, almost like sparks from a fire. A fire in the middle of the night. I hear a snap every time a spark flies out into the darkness. Those dry, sharp snaps echo inside my skull. It’s more beautiful than anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s red and green and white and yellow. And it crackles as if somebody had tossed tiny pebbles into my mouth.