“But why?”
I pressed my finger to his lips. “It was a promise I made to myself. Please don’t make me talk about him.”
He wanted me to tell him, but he could see the pain. Kevin smiled and kissed my finger. “I won’t. I figure if you’re ever ready, you’ll tell me about it.”
I never did. And like all lies, it returned to haunt me. I was still wondering if I ever would be ready to or anyone else the circumstances of my childhood, of my mother’s death, when I opened the kitchen door at Metcalfe. Theresa had her long braid pinned up in a bun. She spooned portions of a tossed salad from a metal mixing basin to wooden table bowls. Sheila stood on tiptoes, peering out the window above the sink. They hadn’t heard me come in.
“It’s pitch-black out there. I don’t know what you expect to see,” Theresa said to her.
“Graver’s still out there,” Sheila replied.
“Grover’s never on time for dinner. He’s always down at his rock, talking to the birds or the ghost of his mommy or whatever it is he does.”
“Don’t make fun of him!”
“Hey, hey, take it easy, eh? I’m not making fun of him. He’s just… weird, that’s all.”
“He’s not weird,” Sheila said. “He just don’t know any better. I think he goes down to the rock because he’s lonely. Don’t you ever feel that way?”
“I guess.”
Sheila noticed me. Her hands disappeared inside the folds of her apron. “Dinner’s not for another ten minutes,” she said. “The others are out by the bar, telling stories.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I was never much for boasting.”
Theresa’s breasts jiggled when she laughed. “Came to the wrong place, then, I’d guess. Deer camps are worse than fishing camps for boasting, eh?”
Sheila glanced at Theresa and then at me. “The hunting was good… today?”
“Second day in a row I saw big, big deer and couldn’t get a shot.”
“What a shame,” Sheila said.
“Shame nothing,” Theresa said. “Wish you had got a shot just so I could have seen that guy Earl’s face, eh? Imagine two women tagging big deer while he’s bringing in a little skipper like that on the Metcalfe Estate.”
“Theresa!” Sheila complained.
“C’mon, that deer was puny. And I get the feeling Diana’s not easily shocked.”
“Lately you’d be surprised,” I said evenly.
Sheila laughed nervously and retied her apron. “Well, lasagna for dinner. I hope you like lasagna and salad and lots of garlic bread.”
I was about to say I did when Cantrell came through the swinging doors. He looked at me, then at Sheila and then at me again. He brought out his best forced smile. “Dinner ready, hon?”
“Yes, but Grover’s not back yet,” Sheila blurted out.
“She’s tighter than a bird that’s found a cat peering in the nest,” Theresa said. “Grover’s just out at his rock longer than usual.”
“Mike?” Sheila said. “I think someone should go look for him.”
“He’ll be fine,” Cantrell said.
“Mike, please?”
Cantrell threw up his hands. “I’m gonna lose my mind in this place. I’ll see if Tim’ll go down to the rock and take a look.”
Theresa scowled as she slid by the outfitter with a tray of salads balanced on her tremendous breasts. “That’s nice. You take my husband’s dream job and now you want to make him your gofer to boot.”
“Don’t start, Theresa,” Cantrell warned. “I’m not in the mood.”
“You may pay me, buster,” she said coldly, “but you don’t own me or my Timmy. Got it?”
Cantrell pursed his lips. “I’ve got guests who want to change hunting locations. I need to see to their wishes. If you don’t want Tim to go, who would you suggest: Patterson?”
Sheila turned away, scratching at her throat. Her eyes watered. God, he’s cold, I thought. Theresa adjusted the weight of the tray. Reluctantly she said, “I’ll ask Tim if he’d mind taking a walk to Loon Rock.”
“Much appreciated,” Cantrell said. He waited until Theresa had exited, then turned to me. “I need to talk with my wife. Alone.”
“I just wanted to know…”
“Later, Ms. Jackman.” His tone threatened. I bowed my head and hurried through the doors, passed Theresa and went out into the lounge, where the other hunters were making merry.
During dinner I dutifully listened to Butch prattle on about the circumstances of his day, all the while wanting to tell him to shut up, to tell the others about the terrible things that were happening in the woods. And then I’d think: But maybe it’s him. He’s a bow hunter. And I’d bite my tongue.
Just before dessert was served, Earl, who’d been silently drinking most of the evening, announced to no one in particular. “I kind of like my deer. I really do.”
The table fell silent and he said it again.
Lenore regarded him sidelong. “Yeah, you’re a real woodsman.”
“That deer was running with a monster, only they must have shifted positions as they passed behind that clump of trees,” Earl insisted. “I saw horns and a shoulder and I shot. It’s an okay buck.”
“Bamcicide’s what it is.” Lenore sniffed.
“Aren’t you the sweet thing, saying sweet things,” Earl snapped. “Maybe I’ll start in on some things that aren’t so sweet ‘bout you, you keep this up.”
I saw something go out of Lenore for a second, the way it had the night before when she’d caught Earl groping me. Then she got strong again. “You’ve got a second tag, hon. There’s always tomorrow.”
Earl smiled. “That’s more like it.”
An abominable spell came over the rest of us. I looked at Cantrell, who glanced away, and then at Griff, who stared at the ceiling. Finally Theresa broke the hex, barging through the swinging doors with plates of strawberry shortcake. I didn’t know if I could stay awake much longer; my head was foggy from the long day and lack of sleep. I relaxed into the nether state that says go to bed or you’ll collapse. As if from far away, I heard Cantrell explain to Phil and Earl the topography of their new hunting locations. I yawned and started to get up from the table.
That was when the screams cut loose. Sheila and Theresa in grinding wails that sucked us all from our seats. Nelson side-slammed through the kitchen doors into the dining hall. He was deathly pale. “G-Grover…” he stammered. “The deer pole… I… “
Cantrell was by him and through the kitchen, shouting to Nelson to keep us back. But Nelson was in no condition to restrain anybody.
My next recollection is that I had traveled fifty yards outside the lodge and it was spit-snowing and there was a powerful flashlight playing in the darkness, resting finally and awfully on the inverted form of Grover, who had been suspended between the deer.
Like Patterson, he had been gutted, scalped and suspended by a rope passed behind his Achilles tendons. A white owl feather jutted from his doughy lips.
Theresa collapsed. Nelson tried to pick her up, but she shrugged him off and dragged herself with bare hands through the snow. She opened her mouth and, as I had done the evening before, relieved her mortal awareness.
“Oh, no,” Kurant was moaning to himself.
“No.” Sheila sank to her knees behind her husband. She coughed up sounds like choked burps when he played the torch over Grover’s body, then focused the beam on the slicing wounds on either side of his rib cage.
The rest of us slouched mute before this apparition, forced penitents unwilling to believe in the sacrificial form tossing ever so perceptibly in the breeze. My first impulse upon breaching from that miserable first wave of shock was to flee. Instead, I turned barbarous and screeched at Cantrell. “Where are they, Mike? You said you’d call the Mounties! Instead, you tried to cover it all up, and now there are two bodies!”
They were all looking at me now and I realized my whole body was racked with tremors. I heard myself screech at Ca
ntrell again. “Where are the Mounties, Mike?”
“What’s she talking about — bodies?” Nelson demanded numbly.
Cantrell tried to speak, but no words would come.
“Patterson,” Griff said sadly. “Diana found him last night way out at the end of the property — just like Grover. Mike wanted us to put him in the icehouse so you all wouldn’t lose control. We lied about him having the flu.”
Nelson took that revelation like a slap. “Don just had a baby,” he mumbled.
“I want to go home, Earl,” Lenore whined. “I want to leave right now.”
Earl nodded blankly, then suddenly came alert, the businessman responding in a crisis. “I want me and my wife on that plane going out of here, ASAP. They’re coming, the Mounties, right?”
Cantrell shook his head as if he couldn’t believe it himself.
Arnie took a step forward, his hands balled into fists. “What do you mean, no? This is a slaughter!”
Sheila’s burps slurred into halting phrases. “We… we tried all night… but the radiophone… something’s wrong… I, I told Grover to go check the antenna this morning… he never came back… and… and…” She couldn’t manage any more.
“Oh, Jesus,” Butch croaked. “Who’s doing this?”
“Who?” Phil cried. “We’re in the middle of fucking nowhere! There’s no one else in here but us!”
I could see it now in the way we all slivered our glances and arched our backs and bent our knees: we were turning on one another, pressing backward into the invisible corners of our minds, an instinctive response so far inside our genes we couldn’t have controlled it even had we wished to.
“You think it’s one of us?” the magazine writer asked in a slow, detached manner that I interpreted as shock.
“One of the bow hunters,” Hill announced. “See? That’s an arrow wound.”
“Through and through,” Nelson agreed.
“Then it’s you,” Earl said, jabbing his finger Griffs way. “Or Butch.”
Arnie took a step away from his friend. “Hey, I didn’t kill anyone,” Butch protested.
Lenore went walleyed and edged toward her husband. “We should lock the both of them up until the police get here, just to make sure.”
“Absolutely,” Earl said. “One of them’s a psycho.”
They were arguing among themselves now. No trust, no camaraderie, only the response of animals threatened with attack. Suddenly, for some reason, the shaking left me. I felt apart from it, able to act.
“No one’s locking anyone up yet!” I yelled. They quieted, expecting me to flip out again. But I was serene. I told them how we had discovered two sets of boot prints far out near the Dream leading away from Patterson’s body, and how it was impossible for either Butch or Griff to have hiked all that way in one day. They chewed on my information for several moments, the theories and suspicions it conjured vying for dominance.
“So there are two people hunting us. That what you’re saying?” Butch asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“But why?” Theresa blubbered.
Arnie stared out into the darkness. “Who cares why? If it’s true, we’re sitting ducks out here!”
“He’s right, Mike,” Griff said. “We should get everyone inside.”
Earl, Lenore, Arnie and Theresa hurried toward the lodge. Phil and Kurant seemed torn between staying and leaving. Sheila looked to safety and then to her husband. “Mike? What are we going to do?”
Wordlessly Cantrell handed his wife his flashlight. He unwound the cord from the cleat on the stanchion. Griff and Nelson got hold of the rope, too.
“Wait!” Kurant said. “We should take a picture.”
Nelson looked like he wanted to clobber the writer. But Kurant insisted: “They’re going to need photographs of the scene, aren’t they? The Mounties, I mean.”
“This better not end up in some story,” Nelson warned.
Kurant didn’t answer him. He just ran back to the lodge and returned with his camera. The flash burst three times, throwing long shadows toward the forest.
At last they let the rope run through the pulley on the crossbeam. The weight on the gambrel descended toward earth. Phil and I laid Grover on his back in the snow. Kurant took another picture. I leaned forward, swallowed, then plucked the white owl feather. I did not destroy it the way I had the raven’s quill in Patterson’s mouth. I wanted it.
They took Grover by his wrists and ankles and dragged him to the icehouse. They wrapped him in burlap, then laid him on the floor next to the similarly wrapped body of Patterson.
Cantrell squeezed shut the hasp on the lock to the icehouse and turned to face us. I remember thinking that he appeared to be watching something move at a great distance.
“We need to fix that radio antenna,” Nelson said.
The outfitter ignored his guide. He said, more to Sheila than to the rest of us, “I’m sorry.”
“We’ll go on,” his wife replied firmly. “We always have.”
Cantrell regarded her lovingly for several seconds.
“Okay,” he said finally. “Griff, Phil and Nelson, I want you armed. Diana, you and I will carry tools and flashlights. Kurant, you go inside.”
“No way,” Kurant said.
“Inside,” Cantrell growled. “Now.”
Kurant crossed his arms. “Sorry, this is the story now and I intend to be there.”
Cantrell stepped forward. “The hell you will. You reporters are all alike. You’ll turn it into something worse than it is.”
“Can it get worse than it is?” Kurant snarled.
Sheila put her hand on Cantrell’s arm. “He’s right, eh?” she said. “Let him take his photographs. Maybe it will help.”
“I was just trying to save some of our life from the vultures.”
“I know.”
“What are going to do, Cantrell?” Earl demanded for the fifth time in as many minutes.
“I’m thinking on it,” the outfitter responded.
We were back in the lodge, had been for close to an hour since inspecting the antenna. The gravity of our situation pressed down on us like some brooding and malignant hand. I kept thinking about the radiophone and how much I wanted to call Emily and Patrick and even Kevin, to tell them I was okay, even if I wasn’t. And yet that world, or what had been my world for so many years, now seemed like one in which I was no longer a welcome resident. I was taut and jumpy and questioning my sanity. Who wouldn’t have? I had been the last person to see Patterson alive and one of the last to see Grover. I couldn’t help asking if I might be the next to go. And the second I did, I understood that was what was going through everybody else’s mind, too. Especially after what we’d found at the antenna tower.
Nelson had led the way through pines to the bare knob of rock three hundred and fifty yards behind the camp where the transmitter stood. We moved single file, with flashlights blazing. Easy targets. I spent the entire march fighting off the same claustrophobic reaction to being hunted that I’d suffered in the woods near the Dream earlier that day.
Miraculously, we reached the antenna without incident. Nelson and the others stood guard while Cantrell and I climbed the knob. In the frigid air, the snow had become a driven talcum dust that abraded our exposed flesh. I cast my light on the snow. “He’s been here,” I said. “The one with boots too big for him.”
“I see ‘em,” Cantrell said grimly. “Those there are Grover’s. He’s been wearing them chain-tread pac boots since Sheila bought ‘em for him a few weeks back.”
We called the others up. Griff and Nelson went to a green metal box at the rear of the superstructure. I shone the light on the tracks for Kurant, who took a couple of photographs but didn’t know if they’d be sharp because of the snow glare.
“Sonofabitch!” Griff groaned from around the other side of the tower. “The repeater’s smashed!”
Cantrell’s flashlight arced up the side of the antenna. “Got the coaxial, too. Cut th
e whole thing out.’!
Nelson leaned his head against the tower.
“What’s going on?” Kurant demanded. “What does that mean?”
Cantrell’s shoulders sank. “It means they’ve cut us off. We have no way to talk to the outside world until the floatplane comes back on the twenty-sixth.”
“Cut off!” Kurant cried. “For how long? Don’t you have a cellular phone, anything?”
Cantrell shook his head. “One of the things we were gonna do after the season. We’re in this alone until the plane returns. Eight days.”
Which is what Cantrell had to tell the others upon returning to the lodge. As a group, we were used to being alone in the woods, self-reliant, able to tolerate physical and mental hardships. Everyone in the room listened to the outfitter with a stoic expression, but there was an unmistakable odor in the air. The faint, burning-wire scent of panic.
“Is that all you’re going to say?” Lenore said shrilly. “ ‘I’m thinking on it’?”
“That’s what I said,” Cantrell snapped.
“Great,” Lenore announced. “Our leader is frozen, unable to act. Earl, honey, for all your faults, you do know how to assemble facts, see what needs to be done and make a decision. Take over for these rubes.”
Nelson pointed at Lenore. “You, rich bitch, shut your mouth or I’ll shut it for you. No one’s taking over here, least of all some computer twerp and his catalog wife.”
Lenore couldn’t believe it. “Well… well…” she sputtered. “I guess we know who isn’t going to get a tip on this trip, don’t we?”
Earl looked at his wife incredulously. “Ahh, stow it for once, will you?”
For a moment Lenore lost all color, then regained her composure, turned and poured herself a drink. A big drink.
“How about barricading the doors?” Arnie asked.
“Barricade?” Phil responded. “You think I’m staying in here for the next eight days, you’re out of your mind. I don’t like being inside.”
“You’ll be where you’re told to be,” Cantrell said. “The only way we’re going to survive is to stick together.”
“What about the snowcats?” Butch asked. His ponytail had come undone and his hair hung in his eyes. “Couldn’t we ride out to the nearest town?”
The Purification Ceremony Page 11
