After a while, Vanessa appeared out of the crowd and latched onto David’s arm. “There you are,” she said, nudging the toe of his Danner hunting boots. “You better be able to dance in these shitkickers.”
They moved off into a small cluster of people in the center of the living room, weaving to a song Byron remembered hearing at the construction site a few months ago. He studied the wall, looked at his phone. Another song came on and David and Vanessa stayed where they were, bumping into another couple. David said something to them, all of them laughing, Vanessa slapping David’s chest and throwing her head back.
Byron drained the last of his beer and refilled his cup. When he turned around, there was a man wearing a camo shirt and a headband waiting in line, a cigarette dangling out of the corner of his mouth. He was in his mid-twenties, a few inches taller than Byron, and rangy. He had a tattoo on his left forearm, Okit-something, the rest of the word disappearing up under his sleeve.
He said, “You leave any for me?”
Byron stepped out of the way. When the man finished filling his cup, he motioned Byron toward the door. Byron glanced at David, then followed the man out onto the porch and into the yard. The only other people outside were a couple making out against the side of the trailer house, the girl with one leg wrapped over the guy’s hip.
The man leaned against a truck. “You get your bear?”
Byron cocked his head. It wasn’t the question he’d expected; then he realized there was probably only one reason an American in camo would be out here, at this trailer house, in these clothes. “I missed.”
“With a rifle?” Eyebrow arched—just how the fuck you miss a bear with a scoped rifle?
“No, with my bow. Twenty yards, broadside. It came in right at dusk and my arrow hit a twig, or something I couldn’t see. It ran off.”
“Big?”
“Yeah.” He took a drink. “I don’t know, seemed big to me. Two-fifty, three hundred? Seeing it that close, I’m probably overestimating.”
“You’re good with a bow to hunt bear, you got good eyes. Probably know exactly how big it was.”
“Well, it’s still just as big,” Byron motioned toward the darkness of the woods, “somewhere out there.”
They both stared off into the woods, blackness broken only by the occasional flicker of a late-season firefly. The man turned back to Byron. “You hunted the same bait after that?”
Byron nodded. “Five more nights. Nothing but skeeters.”
“You with that Davis bunch, then? Hunting up north of the Little Glutton River?”
“How’d you know that?”
The man smiled. “Jimmy Davis is the laziest guide around. He don’t know how to set his baits up right for bowhunters, or don’t care, I guess.” He glanced up at the night sky, where faint aurora shafts danced. “There’s so many bear around here, his guys sit there and shoot ’em off the pile like dogs coming in to their bowls. With rifles, you know? Archery hunters, they might get one chance, but Jimmy ain’t got enough stations lined up to set you up with one that’s got the right wind.” He held out his pack of Marlboros. “I’m Billy.”
“Byron.” He took a cigarette. “You a guide?”
“Nah. I don’t like bear; too greasy. Most of the time guys who come up to hunt ’em are greasy, too.”
“Yeah, well, there’s some doozies at camp. There’s one guy, from Texas I think, he—”
“You come here with them Fineday girls?”
Byron nodded, suddenly cautious. The guy couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, and his northwoods accent and relaxed manner had lulled Byron into bullshitting mode. And this guy, Billy, he was still relaxed, leaning against the rusty quarter panel of the Ford F-150, his cigarette held lightly between his index and middle fingers. Relaxed, but getting to the point.
“Sharon and Vanessa?” Byron said. “Yeah, we ran into them down at the bar. The Caboose?”
“You ran into them? So you already know them, eh?”
“Met them, I mean. If they’re with you—”
Billy held up a hand. “Hey man, I don’t care. They’re kinda wild, you know? Always cadging drinks, and when there’s new guys in town they like to party. We don’t get much of a chance to get out of Highbanks. Everyone knows their game, it’s usually not a big deal. Just, you know. Be nice to them.”
“They’re not your sisters or something, are they?”
Billy laughed. “No, I’m a Martineau. You ready for another beer?”
As they went back into the house, Byron reached forward and tapped Billy on the shoulder. Billy turned. “What do you mean, it’s usually not a big deal?”
Billy shook his head, still smiling. “Man, you better have a shot with that beer—relax a little. You’re on vacation, ain’t you?”
* * *
It was after three in the morning, and the party had changed, the pace becoming frenetic and then slowing, picking up again and now almost dead. The people had changed, too, some leaving, others slipping off to one of the small bedrooms down the hall, several more passing out on the stained carpet or the shiny vinyl couch. A few others had come in, more sober than the rest of the party, four serious-looking guys, each one holding bottles of Budweiser. It was the only American beer Byron had seen in this land of Labatts and Molsons.
Byron stared blearily at his cards. They were playing a game called smiley, and the lowest hand won the pot, which was now just under twenty dollars, Canadian. He had a pretty good hand, but he couldn’t remember what the other guys had in their hands, even though they’d shown each other after the last round of betting, per the rules. He couldn’t remember what was in the dummy hand, either—stinky, they called it—and when he closed his eyes for a moment, he couldn’t remember what he was holding in his own hand.
“Eh, lookit Sleepy over dere,” someone—maybe Weasel?—said. The accents got thicker as the night went on, and Byron himself seemed to have lost control of his mouth. Not what he said, just how he said it. A grin and a slur. “C’mon, Sleepy, your turn.”
“In and good,” he said, slapping his cards down. Inanngoo. If he won he would take the pot; if he lost he would pay the pot. Someone handed him the bottle of cinnamon whiskey. He held it up to the kitchen light, sloshed it back and forth, took a drink. He wondered if they were trying to get him drunk so they could take his money, but he didn’t think so. They’d already taken plenty of his money earlier in the game; if anything, he was getting better at this smiley game the drunker he got.
“In and good,” Weasel chirped. He was small and thin, so white as to be albino-ish, except for his dark eyes. “Doesn’t even look at his cards and he’s in and good! Moose nuts on this one.”
“Mooose nuts,” Billy said, drinking down the last of the cinnamon whiskey. “I’ll take a card.”
Byron blinked several times. They were looking at him, heads cocked. For a moment he wondered what he’d done wrong, and then they started laughing and he realized he’d fallen asleep.
“Turn your cards over, Sleepynuts,” Weasel said. Byron flipped them over, saw with relief he had lost to Billy—he couldn’t quit after winning the biggest pot of the night, but he could quit honorably after losing—and dropped a twenty on the pile. One way or another, he was going to find a ride back to town; let David figure out his own logistics. He was pushing himself up to a standing position when someone screamed from the back bedroom.
The door flew open and a bottle careened through it a second later, shattering against the thin wallboard and knocking a framed picture to the carpet. David stumbled backward out of the bedroom in his underwear, arms covering his head. A glass ashtray shot out of the doorway next, striking him in the forearm. He swore and stumbled away, this time avoiding a throw pillow.
“Piece of shit perverted motherfuck!”
Vanessa charged out of the room in her bra and panties, eyes wide open with fury, and swung a roundhouse punch that connected with David’s ear. He tripped over the pillow, one hand slip
ping along the wall as he tried to keep from falling. Vanessa swung again, reaching way back, and hit him high on the head. One breast had fallen out of her bra with the last punch, and Byron could see there were red welts on her chest. Not scratch marks—more like hickeys, or burn marks.
David uncovered his head and looked up. “Hey, listen—”
Her left fist caught him in the mouth. As Vanessa reared back for another punch, David reached out, his hand flat against her sternum, and shoved. She flew backward, her feet skimming across the short pile carpet, her shoulders smacking into the wall. Her head snapped back after her shoulders hit, and she fell to the ground, a dish-sized indentation in the wallboard. Then the trailer house was silent.
Shit, Byron thought, and burped up foul-tasting cinnamon breath.
David started to get up, saw men staring at him, and went to a knee next to Vanessa instead. “Hey, come on, I’m sorry,” he said, touching Vanessa’s shoulder. “Wake up.”
Vanessa’s hand waved feebly at him, pushing him away. Sharon emerged from the other bedroom, saw Vanessa on the floor, and immediately advanced on David, who reared backward, avoiding her nails by a fraction of an inch. Sharon paused, shooting David a murderous glance before dropping to the ground next to her friend. She started slapping Vanessa’s cheeks, first one side and then the other. “C’mon, honey,” she said. “You’re all right.”
Byron noted that her slaps were keeping time with the beat of the music. Finally got some harmony, he thought. Man, I wish I wasn’t so drunk.
Sharon looked up. “Get me some water, you limp-dicks.”
Someone pushed past Byron and filled a glass with cloudy water. Sharon dumped it over Vanessa’s face, and she spluttered and pushed herself up on her elbows. Sharon reached over and tucked Vanessa’s left breast back into her bra. From behind Byron, the screen door hissed as someone quietly left the house.
“Wha’tha fuck?” Vanessa said, one hand creeping around to touch the back of her head. Her palm came away sticky with blood.
“You okay, hon?”
Vanessa blinked twice, her eyes coming into focus. “Yeah, shit. I’m okay.”
David disappeared into the bedroom, and Byron could hear him rummaging for his clothes. The trailer house was still very quiet, and to Byron it felt like the air had been replaced, simultaneously charged and stale. The room was like an animal’s den, one he had stumbled into and one in which the denizens were just now becoming aware of his presence. Well, not his presence, not yet. Nobody was looking at him. They were waiting for David to reemerge from the bedroom. But there were two strange animals here, two things that were not like the others, as the song went.
One of the men got up from the couch, his shoulders sloped into powerful arms. He held a bottle of Budweiser by the longneck between his thumb and forefinger and swung it back and forth like a metronome, his eyes assessing the room. He was wearing fatigue pants with a wide utility belt, a knife strapped to one side and a phone on the other. He turned to look at the table, and Byron could see where the man’s nose had been broken, probably more than once, the line of cartilage zigging first to the left and then the right. There was a semicircular scar going through and above his right eyebrow, the scar tissue still pink.
“Billy?” the man said.
“Yeah, Darius.”
“How long it take you to put on your pants?”
“What do you mean—oh shit.”
Billy crashed through a couple men and threw the screen door open, while another man ran to the bedroom. The others were moving too, Weasel and Garney following Billy, the remaining men moving away from the kitchen table and toward Darius. Byron stood where he was, wishing David hadn’t run, wishing there was a way they could take their beating and be done with it. That he would be exempted never crossed his mind.
“Fuck!” someone shouted from inside the bedroom. “Window’s open!”
Darius waved his beer bottle at the rest of them. “Go on, help Billy-dog. He runs fast, but he ain’t a fighter.”
“Which way?”
“Use your goddamn ears,” Darius said. For the first time there was annoyance in the clipped voice: Youse your gott-dam ears. “Go!”
The men streamed down the porch steps and onto the weedy drive. There they paused, silent as attentive hounds, and from farther down the road came the sound of a man’s grunt. They raced down the driveway, the dark knot of men spreading out and disappearing from the rectangle of view afforded by the screen door.
Darius looked at the open door and back to Byron. He inclined his head slightly and cocked an eyebrow. Byron sat down.
Darius crossed over to the two women and conferred with them in a soft, almost paternal voice, kneeling next to Vanessa and taking her hug when she offered it. He stood and watched as the two girls went into the back bedroom, the lock clicking behind them, then walked over and sat opposite Byron.
They said nothing for a minute. Byron found he wasn’t scared, just disgusted that David’s little fetish—he’d heard rumors about his partner’s sexual bent through friends of his girlfriend, had caught some hints about it from David’s offhand remarks from time to time—had come out at this inopportune time. He didn’t know exactly what his fetish was—not exactly—but he’d also heard David didn’t always try to ease his partners into the concept. He’d chalked it up to different strokes for different folks, figured it was none of his business.
“He your brother?” Darius said after a bit.
Byron shrugged. “Sure.”
“Like blood brother, I mean.”
Byron considered the question. “Tonight he is.”
“Yeah, okay.” Darius leaned back in his chair and looked at the yellowing ceiling, flecked with flyshit and laced with darker brown from leaks in the roof. “Hunters.”
“Hunters.”
“You didn’t come up here to check out the land, maybe buy a piece of property?”
“What?”
“You know,” Darius said. “Maybe invest in some property, see if it gets more valuable over time? Cree land, the stuff we own outright, ends not far from here. There’s plenty interest in Crown land lately, maybe you and your brother are like that. Hunt a little, prospect a little? There’s money in the ground, is what we hear. Something special.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, maybe not.” He leaned forward on the table and smiled, his eyes lighting up. “Hey, why you want to come up here, shoot one of our bears? You don’t got no bears where you’re from?”
“Not very many. What are you going to do with David?”
“That his name? David?” He leaned back in his chair. “Man, these bears up here, I feel bad for ’em. Dig around all summer for bugs and worms, maybe a few blueberries, always hungry and the food tastes mostly like shit, ’cept for the berries, and it’s goddamn hard to get full from berries. Then one day he smells something and be like, what the fuck? Someone left some goddamn doughnuts out in the woods? And what’s this—oatmeal and honey?” He laughed. “Holy shit, what’s the catch?”
Byron could hear the men outside, yelling encouragements at each other somewhere down near the end of the driveway. Another grunt, then a strangled call for something—help, mercy, maybe God’s intervention; Byron didn’t know. He closed his eyes, then flinched back when Darius flicked his earlobe.
“Sleepynuts,” Darius said. “Come on, you gotta stick with me. So these bears, man, they finally, finally, find something good, right? You know how it feels, a long day in the woods and you got a hollow belly, all shrunk up, even your mind a little messed up ’cause there’s not enough sugar in your blood? Bear be like that for four, five months and then all of a sudden, one day, boom! Manna from heaven.”
A burning trickle of acid was working its way up Byron’s throat. He fought to swallow it back down.
Darius took a swig from his bottle of beer. “They go on like that, up to the minute somebody blasts them. Okay, fine—there’s
worse ways to go, right? But bears are smart, man, they know there’s a catch, they know it from day one. Maybe he ain’t a brother to man, but a bear’s different from a moose, different from lots of things. Smart and mean and sometimes silly. Even grown bears get silly.”
They were coming up the driveway now. He could hear feet dragging in the gravel, the panting of the men, one of them breathing wet and gurgley, like he was trying to hold in a mouthful of fluid.
Darius leaned forward. “See, that’s the part that’s hard to think on. It ain’t that they get baited like a dog and then shot like a dog. The bears know, they know that there’s a catch, but they keep coming back. They eat the little bit that’s given to them and they know it’s gotta end bad, but they still play the game. Can’t help themselves, you understand?”
The men dragged David inside and propped him against the wall next to the keg. Byron looked at his friend. One of David’s eyes was swollen shut, and his left earlobe was ripped and hanging from the side of his head. Blood streamed from his ear onto the collar of his shirt. His hands were pressed over his groin, and there were boot prints etched into the fabric over his ribs. David had made his own marks: Billy had a swollen cheekbone, and one of the others had a bloody lip. They were all looking at Darius, and Byron had a sense that if Darius had given a nod, the men would have fallen on both of them like a pack of wolves.
“And then,” Darius said, “one late summer night, some asshole with a thousand-dollar rifle knocks the doughnut outta his mouth mid-bite. And the bear knew it was coming, and when he dies, he’s embarrassed. That’s the sad part, friend. The part that makes me sad.”
Resurrection Pass Page 3
