Only the Dead

by Vidar Sundstøl

  I try spitting. My mouth is full of those pebbles. It’s almost impossible to spit them out. But then I realize that they’re not really stones. I open my eyes and see that I’ve fallen asleep with my mouth pressed against the crusted snow. As I prop myself up, I tear the skin right off my lips. I scream loudly and put my hand over my mouth. Blood warms my hand. I scream again because it hurts so bad. My lips are still lying on the snow, frozen to the ice. I can’t see them, but I know they’re lying there somewhere. I get to my feet, hunching forward to cradle the part that hurts. I feel warm blood running down my chin and neck. My lips are gone. They’re lying in the snow among the fir trees. My whole face is stinging with frost. I went into the woods in order to cross the creek, and then I fell. That’s what happened. And I fell asleep. Dreamed about another forest, up in the sky. Good Lord, I don’t want to die! Not now. Only a few more hours and then it will be over. Then I will have arrived in America at last. I try to shout the word “America!” But with my bleeding mouth it comes out like the lowing of a cow.

  I hear the creek again. The sound is more muted. Could it be that the water is running underneath the ice? It’s only a few yards away, but it’s so dark here. I set one foot in front of the other, moving slowly, one step at a time. The ground is uneven, and it hurts to walk. But then I see the creek! The moonlight reaches all the way down through the trees at this spot. A big patch of light. The snow sinks down into the creek bed and then rises up again on the other side. I can’t see any open water at all. But I know that I don’t dare trudge down into it. If I fall through the snow and into the water, I’m done for. But in the middle I see what looks like a skull sticking up. It must be a rock in the middle of the creek. It would be easy enough to jump across here in the daylight. I’d just need to land on the rock with my right foot, and then I could leap across to the other side.

  It’s worse in the moonlight. Then you can’t really see how high or low anything is. But there’s no way to go around. I’ll have to gamble everything on landing on that rock with my right foot. First I have to make sure my knapsack is strapped properly on my back. I try to forget about what’s hurting me. Because it really does hurt. Both my face and my side. But I need to forget about that. Right now all that matters is the creek. Me and the creek. I walk all the way over to the edge, or what I think is the edge, and try to judge the distance, but that’s hard to do in the moonlight. Then I take off from my left foot, launching myself forward with my right leg out. I touch down on the round shape sticking up in the middle of the creek, and instinctively throw my left leg out, not thinking about whether I can do it or not. I just do it, and then I’m lying on the other side, digging my fingers into the hard-packed snow. My knapsack and snowshoes have slid forward and are lying on top of my head. Cautiously I turn onto my side and see that I’ve made it across.

  Now it’s just a matter of following the creek down to the lake, and then I can keep going like before. But I won’t be able to handle many more creeks. Not with this sharp pain in my side. It hurts terribly now, after jumping like that. I really must have cracked something. Maybe a rib. But that’s not so dangerous, is it? A person can’t die from a broken rib. I get up on my knees. Something scrapes and stabs inside me. But I have to get up. All the way up. I scream, it hurts so bad. I try to scream “America!” but it just comes out the same way, a crazy lowing sound, because my lips are still lying on the other side of the creek.

  I start walking toward the lake, going much slower now. Every time I lift my left foot, something scrapes inside me. A broken rib. But I can’t let something stupid like that stop me. Soon I’ll arrive where my uncle and Nanette are living. I pause. Tip my head back and look up. I see a star. The trees are too big to be just trees. I’m being sucked up between them. High above the treetops I don’t feel how much it hurts. My old life is on the other side of the ocean, just like my lips are on the other side of the creek. One day I happened to read a letter from my uncle, about the big lake and all the money that could be made. After that I couldn’t think of anything but America. But I’m not quite there yet. First I need to smell the food cooking and the heat coming from the cabin where Knut lives. Right now I’m sitting on the ground again. I must have fallen. I need to get up and head down to the lake. I’m not going to get any porridge or coffee this way. But I have a terrible pain inside me. I stand up and start walking, groaning out loud with each step I take. Up ahead I can see the lake between the tree trunks. The black water. The moonlight.

  IT HAD STOPPED RAINING. Lance could hear the sound of rushing water being squeezed between the cliff walls in the narrow gap a short distance away, off to the right. The river was still at his right flank, but this was a longer drive than the first, so the chances were greater that a deer might break out of this one. He had no idea where the deer had come from on the first drive. But he had definitely not flushed it out. Regardless, his brother had missed. And from what Andy had said, he hadn’t wounded the deer. They hadn’t found any traces of blood either.

  Although it might seem like he was the only living thing here, Lance knew there was plenty of life all around him. Nuthatches, woodpeckers, hazel grouse, hares, and squirrels. There might also be mink and otters along the river. And deer, of course. Yet the landscape appeared utterly dead. Even the birches looked dead as they stood there, leafless and covered with shiny droplets. He didn’t hear a single sound that might be ascribed to a human being or to a man-made object. As soon as he got a short distance away from any houses and roads, the only sounds were the ones that had always been present. Gusts of wind, river water, rain, maybe the snapping of a twig. If he closed his eyes and listened, he could have been the first Frenchman who’d ever set foot in the woods surrounding Lake Superior. He stopped and closed his eyes, shutting out all sight of himself, the modern sports clothing, the rifle with the fiberglass stock. He heard only the roar of the river and the sound of his own breathing. Felt the cold, damp air on his hands and face, noticed the smell of rotting vegetation and wet earth.

  He opened his eyes and checked to make sure his cell phone was pressed against his thigh so that he’d notice if it started to vibrate. Then he slowly began walking again. The same wet woods. The same rotting leaves on the ground. The same low-hanging, leaden sky cover.

  Why hadn’t Andy answered when he was standing out there shouting in the transmission line clear-cut? Instead he’d stood half-hidden among some fir trees, watching him. It reminded Lance of yesterday, when Andy hadn’t picked up any of his calls.

  A blue jay flew out from a spruce tree. A swift glimpse of its iridescent blue feathers and then it was gone, as if it had never been there.

  Lance still had a long way to go to reach the big bend in the river where Andy was on post. A long, steep climb. This was a hard drive. Once again Lance felt annoyed with himself because he hadn’t shot that buck yesterday. If he had, he could be sitting at home right now. Not that he knew what he’d be doing if he were, but at least he could have avoided spending the day out here in the woods with Andy.

  Had he gone too far from the river? Lance stopped to listen. The roar of the water was fainter. But that could also be the fault of some big evergreens, or a small rise in the terrain might be blocking the sound. He veered to the right, heading for the river. Soon he could see it. And at that spot the river curved.

  A bald eagle was perched in a fir tree on the other side. Lance raised his rifle to look at it through the scope. There was always something solemn about eagles, he thought, no matter how often he saw them. Only in the very depths of winter, from Christmastime until mid-February, was the North Shore more or less bereft of eagles. But it hadn’t always been like that.

  Lance had a vivid memory of the first time he ever saw a bald eagle. He was with his family on a driving vacation in Manitoba, Canada. When they parked at a rest area near a big river, they’d caught sight of an eagle sitting on a rock in the water. What a commotion that caused! He and Andy had almost come to blows, competing
for their dad’s binoculars. And when the bird finally took off, flying low over the river with almost unreal flaps of his big, heavy wings, all four of them had cheered and clapped. That was how rare the sight of a bald eagle had been in the early 1970s.

  Lance lowered his rifle. With the naked eye he could still see the bird clearly. Its neck and head gleamed snow white in the gray November light. He hadn’t been too far from the river after all. It was this curve in the riverbed that had altered the sound of the current slightly. Now he moved off to the west at a diagonal, away from Cross River again.

  Seeing the eagle in his rifle scope made him think of other driving vacations. The family’s old Dodge Dart, which was always filled with smoke from his father’s cigarettes. His mother desperately trying to smooth out the map, and his father shoving it aside with annoyance as he tried to see where he was driving. The two brothers in the backseat passed the time reading comic books and thinking up competitive games. For example, who could come up with the most baseball players whose names started with the letter A. Then B. Then C. And on through the whole damn alphabet. Or who could count the most cows on “his” side of the road all the way through Wisconsin. Or how long would it take before Dad lit up another cigarette? Things like that. Once in a while they’d start hitting each other until their father told them to shut up and sit still.

  What was it about Andy when he was a kid? Because there had definitely been something going on, but they never asked him. Not even why he’d beat up Clayton Miller, the boy everyone said was gay. Peaceful, shy Andy. Their parents must have been just as shocked as Lance was, yet they’d never talked about it. The incident had come right out of the blue, and no doubt it was best if it disappeared the same way. That was what all of them had thought. What they feared more than anything else was the unpleasantness. To avoid that, they preferred to let Andy keep his reasons to himself. What he’d done was bad enough. Talking about why he did it would have been unbearable. But what if it had been a different kid instead of Clayton? Would the episode have been equally unpleasant? It wasn’t unusual for high school boys to fight, was it? No, but in this case it was Clayton Miller, the kid who reportedly knitted his own scarves. Who the hell knits his own scarves? thought Lance, annoyed. But there was something about Andy that was also to blame. Something they’d never talked about. Of course they wouldn’t talk about it! Good Lord, they didn’t even think about such things back then. At least Lance couldn’t recall ever thinking about it before.

  But now, now that it was way too late, he saw what it was: there had always been a certain ambiguity about his brother. As if the substance he was made of had never hardened in the mold but had remained in a liquid state. He was not like his peers. It was impossible to know what Andy liked, what he wished for, where he was headed. By now he was completely changed, but Lance had never noticed this transformation taking place. For the most part they had lost contact with each other years ago, and the deer hunting was the one thing that remained. Somewhere along the way the ambiguous and slightly odd Andy from their youth had become the man who was now on post up near the big bend in the river. Tammy’s grouchy husband, and seventeen-year-old Chrissy’s father.

  It had started raining again. Lance pulled up the hood of his Gore-Tex jacket. The sound of the raindrops on the synthetic fabric reminded him of the nights they’d slept in a tent as kids. He and Andy would lie awake all night out in the backyard of their house in Duluth, listening to the sounds. The rain on the tent canvas. The passing cars. Voices in the dark. No, he didn’t want to think about that. As soon as this hunt was over, he would never again go out in the woods with his brother. He didn’t care what the rest of the family thought. After today, it was over. The last thing that had connected them was about to become history.

  But there was something else that now bound them together. A bond that could never be broken. The knowledge of a murder. And the guilt. They were both guilty of robbing Lenny Diver of his life every single day. Regardless of whether Lance ever went hunting with Andy again, he and his brother were bound to each other by an unbreakable bond. And they were the only two who knew it.

  Up ahead a flash of white appeared through the rain. It took only seconds before hail came pounding down, and Lance’s field of vision shrank to twenty or thirty yards. Then it was like someone had turned on the faucet full blast. He could no longer see even an arm’s length in front of him. He stopped, bent his head forward, and hunched his shoulders. It sounded like a landslide of gravel. The ground underfoot remained dark. The hail disappeared in the grass and heath. After a couple of minutes it once again turned to rain.

  Lance continued walking. When he got to the top of a small hill, he paused to look around. He had a feeling something was going to happen very soon. With an experienced eye he surveyed the terrain. He needed to take one small area at a time—that was the secret. Not let his eyes jump around at random, because then he was certain to miss something. It was a matter of examining the landscape piece by piece, just as he was doing now.

  As he shifted his gaze toward a clearing in the woods, about a hundred yards away, he saw the back and shoulders of a man disappearing between several tall spruce trees. The figure was visible for only a fraction of a second, and yet Lance had no doubt what he’d just seen. There weren’t supposed to be any other hunters around here. Not this weekend. The stretch of land along the lower section of Cross River was part of the area covered by the Hansen brothers’ hunting licenses. But this was a potentially dangerous situation, and he’d have to call Andy to tell him. They were going to have to stop the drive. He got out his phone and was about to tap in the number, but then he hesitated. It was still a good distance up to where Andy was waiting on post. What if he followed this man to see which direction he was headed? Andy had already fired at a buck without hitting it. There were obviously deer in the area, and Lance wanted to get this hunting expedition over with as quickly as possible. If they stopped now, he couldn’t say how things would go.

  He walked quickly toward the clearing where he’d seen the man, but he was as intent as always about proceeding cautiously. Still holding his rifle in his hands, ready to shoot, he walked between the conifers. The man had gone toward the river. Why was he so sure that it was a man? It had happened so fast. But what would a woman be doing out here?

  Lance had also caught a glimpse of a man yesterday. Or had he? He wasn’t sure what he’d actually seen near the creek coming from Copper Pond. A person who had swiftly retreated. That had been his first impression. But now? No, he was no longer sure.

  The light was dim here among the huge spruce trees, as if dusk were already approaching. He stopped to listen but heard only the muted roar of the river. Thick tree trunks surrounded him on all sides. This was one of the sections of old-growth forest in this part of the Superior National Forest. To find trees of this size anywhere else, you’d have to go all the way up to the totally protected wilderness, up near the Canadian border. Lance didn’t know why this pocket of timber was still here. Some of the trees had to be well over a hundred years old.

  He continued on toward the river. Maybe he’d be able to catch sight of the man there. If not, he’d have to make a decision. The sound of the water increased dramatically, and soon he was standing on the edge of a deep river gully. There couldn’t be more than a couple of yards between the cliff walls, and water was thundering violently through the narrow gap. His face got wet from the spray shooting up from the depths below. A little farther up he could see big rocks sticking out of the water, and it looked like it might be possible to cross the river at that point. When he went over there to get a closer look, he saw at once that it couldn’t be done. So the man must still be on this side of the river. The same side where Lance and Andy were hunting.

  What should he do? They had never before failed to shoot the one deer they were allowed on the second weekend in November. If that happened now, Lance wouldn’t be able to refuse to go hunting the following weekend. If he did
, that would make Andy even more suspicious than he already was. He clearly suspected that Lance was behind the break-in at his cabin this past summer. If Lance now refused to finish the hunt, Andy would take it as a final confirmation that his brother was keeping something from him. But did he know what Lance was hiding?

  Does he know that I know? he thought.

  The man had most likely followed the river down the slope and was now on his way toward Highway 61. It seemed highly unlikely that he would end up anywhere near where Andy was posted. Lance decided to continue on as if nothing had happened, and yet he felt slightly uneasy as he went back into the old-growth forest. Now a third person had entered the picture. A stranger. And he had no idea where the man was at this moment. If anything happened, Lance would bear the brunt of responsibility. Yet he still didn’t phone Andy to tell him what he’d seen. He just wanted to get this hunt over with. Then he’d have a whole year to think up an acceptable excuse for why he didn’t want to go hunting anymore. This was the last time. He didn’t care what the rest of the family thought. He was going to turn his back on his brother for good. Never look at his face again.

  It was as if the huge spruces belonged to another era, and in some sense they did. They had probably taken root toward the end of the nineteenth century. Slender saplings in a forest that had never been logged. And here they still stood, those same trees, only many times bigger, a measure of the years that had since passed. The fact that it was so much darker in here only reinforced the feeling of isolation.