by Adam Howe
“And that’d be dancing at The Henhouse?”
Eliza nodded happily. “Lester lined up the interview with Walt, and the rest is history … Now here I am on the verge of making my mark in a real honest to goodness dirty movie. And who knows where that’ll lead?”
I thought I had an idea.
“I know you and Walt don’t approve, Mr. Levine—but sometimes I gotta pinch myself just to be sure I ain’t dreaming. Cuz from where I’m from …” A flicker of darkness clouded her pretty face: “Believe me, I’ve already overachieved.”
If jacking off mongoloids was a step up in the world, I shuddered to think about her family history. On a brighter note, if it turned out Eliza really was Walt’s lovechild, she was giving me plenty of ammunition to bust his chops.
“Well,” I said, not knowing what else to say, “I hope it all works out for you.”
She dazzled me with a smile. “Oh, it will, Mr. Levine. You just wait n’ see.”
Salisbury thumped the butt of his gun on the roof of the camper, startling us.
“That’s enough jawing!” he roared.
Eliza rolled her eyes at me.
“Missy,” Salisbury said. “Give that bullhorn another blast!”
She muttered Aye-aye, sir and activated the loudspeaker.
“Levine!”
No longer ‘Mr. Levine,’ I noted.
“Keep running that bait line!”
I didn’t know which was worse, the stench of the bait, or the skunk ape’s mating call. Then I prised the lid from another bucket and decided it was definitely the bait.
11.
We camped for the night in a rough dirt clearing, choked with brush and corralled by looming pines that creaked arthritically in the breeze.
There wasn’t room in the camper for us all to bed inside; given the stench of the bait buckets, nor would we have wanted to. I managed to convince Salisbury to leave the Minnie Winnie outside the clearing and upwind of our camp.
After slopping out bait all day, I looked and reeked like I’d gone skinny-dipping in a cesspool. Ducking behind the camper for privacy, I hooked a hose to the water tank, stripped down to my undershorts and hosed myself down. Why I felt the need to protect Eliza’s modesty, I do not know. Given everything she’d told me, the sight of me in my drawers was unlikely to trouble her, though maybe I was flattering myself.
As clean as I was ever going to get, I fetched a change of clothes from my bag and rejoined the others. Lester had gathered some wood, built a campfire, and commandeered the coziest spot in front of it. Eliza was cooking a pot of beans over the flames. “Where’s Salisbury?” I asked them.
“Went off to lay down some traps,” Eliza said.
I considered seeing if Salisbury needed help—thought, Fuck it—plopped myself in front of the fire with a tired groan, and watched Eliza as she stirred the beans. The stench of the bait was still fresh in my mind, not to mention my nose, and I wasn’t sure I’d ever eat again, but one whiff of the beans and I was surprised to hear my stomach growl. While I waited, I picked a twig off the ground and used it to scrape away the bait caked beneath my fingernails, and then incinerated the twig in the fire.
Having laid his traps around camp, Salisbury returned from the woods in time for supper. He seated himself Indian-style in front of the fire. Eliza doled out the beans and we ate in silence, watching the flames of the campfire dance. We did our Blazing Saddles impressions, and then Lester shared out cans from his crate of Keystone. Only Salisbury refused one, with a fussy shake of his hand. I recalled what he’d said to Walt about not drinking alcohol. Imbibing, as he’d called it. A skunk aper needed his wits about him. I had no such scruples.
Lester raised his beer can in a toast.
“To Ned,” he said in a choked voice, tears welling in his eyes.
I regurgitated the last mouthful of lukewarm beer back into the can, raised it in a toast, spluttered “To Ned,” and then gutted down the same mouthful.
“You think he’s still alive?” Lester asked Salisbury.
“I hope so, son,” the skunk aper said. “I hope so …”
But his eyes told a different story.
Before the atmosphere turned grim, Lester drained his beer can, fished a harmonica from his pocket, and began blowing a brave attempt at a tune. I expected Salisbury to object—Lester’s harp sounded little better than Salisbury’s recorded skunk ape calls—but he didn’t. Maybe he thought it might attract the skunk ape?
As Lester blew his harp, Eliza snuggled up next to him and rested her head on his shoulder. For a moment, they looked almost sweet sitting there, and I wondered why the hell I was still living alone. When I finally recognized the tune Lester was murdering, I broke into a grin. Clearing my throat, I started to sing along—badly—but my singing was no worse than Lester’s playing.
A-hunting we will go, a-hunting we will go
Heigh-ho, the derry-o, a-hunting we will go
Lester winked at me over his harp and kept playing. Eliza joined me for the chorus. I suspected Salisbury wanted to join in too—a tight smile peeked through the bristles of his beard—but he had his reputation to uphold.
Lester finished playing and took a little bow as Eliza applauded.
Maybe Lester wasn’t such an asshole after all? I thought. Then I remembered why I was there and decided the beer must have gone to my head.
Looking pleased with himself, Lester put away his harmonica, cracked open another beer, took a slurp, wiped his lips with the back of his hand, and then blurted out to Salisbury with a drunk’s childlike tactlessness: “So how’d you get your scar, Jimmy?”
Eliza slapped his arm. “Lester!”
“What?” he said.
Salisbury looked like he couldn’t decide if he was offended more by the question or that Lester had called him ‘Jimmy.’
But now that Lester had pointed it out, none of us could help sneaking peeks at the vicious scar bisecting Salisbury’s beard, and he felt obliged to tell us the story.
“I was in the wilds of North Carolina,” Salisbury said, “tracking a skunk ape to what I believed was its lair in the ruins of an old civil war fort. There, much to my surprise, I encountered not a skunk ape, but one very ornery cougar. The thing about skunk apes, they’re crafty devils—and they are devils, make no mistake about that. In retrospect, I’m convinced the skunk ape knew I was hot on its heels and deliberately lured me into the lion’s, or rather the cougar’s den.
“Before I had time to fire off a shot, the cougar pounced on me, knocking the rifle from my hands and then raking my face with its claws. Like the Roman gladiators of old, I wrestled the big cat with my bare hands, until finally, on the verge of exhaustion, with the beast’s hot breath on my throat, I freed my kukri knife from its sheath—” Quick as lightning, Salisbury snatched the knife from its sheath and slashed it through the air above the campfire: “—and beheaded the brute with a single blow.”
“Whoa!” Lester said.
Salisbury returned his knife to its sheath.
Lester admired the fangs decorating his hatband. “Those’re cougar teeth?”
Salisbury nodded. “Took ‘em as a trophy,” he said, “and to remind me of the sheer cunning of my true enemy … the North American skunk ape.”
“I oughta get me one of them cookery knives,” Lester said. “Gotta problem with cougars myself.” He waggled his eyebrows. Eliza glared at him and he quickly wiped the leer off his mug.
Salisbury glanced at me. “You’re no stranger to scars yourself, Levine.”
“Comes with the job,” I said.
“But you didn’t always … ?” He searched for the word.
“Bounce? Sure feels like it sometimes.”
“I noticed your news cutting behind the bar.”
“Hell, I didn’t put that there. Not exactly something I’m proud of.”
“You were a prizefighter?”
Lester announced me like a ring emcee, “‘The Bigelow Bleeder’ Regg
ie Levine!”
“I thought I was …” I said, “Once.”
“What happened?”
“You saw the cutting,” I said, maybe more huffily than was necessary. “I got my fucking ass kicked.”
* * *
Salisbury took the watch, while the rest of us bedded down for the night. Lester and Eliza were cocooned inside a ratty single sleeping bag. I’d pitched my bedroll on the other side of the campfire. I lay back and stargazed, trying with little success to ignore the racket Lester was making. After complaining at length that he wouldn’t sleep a wink, Lester had promptly passed out, and was now snoring loud enough to, if not wake the dead, at least ensure I couldn’t sleep. Eliza was apparently accustomed to the noise; nestled in the crook of his arm with a peaceful look on her face, perhaps dreaming of the opportunity that awaited her in Austin, Texas, if we could only catch the skunk ape. Soon she was softly snoring, too. I wondered if instead of sheep, she counted ejaculating mongoloids to help her doze off.
I preferred thinking about the skunk ape. Was it really out there? I thought back to when I was a kid and my Momma first warned me about the shaggy-furred beast with the devil-red eyes that stalked the Bigelow Sticks. I remembered how easy it was to dismiss such things in the cold light of day. But the night has a funny way of clouding rational thought, and I moved Walt’s shotgun a little closer to my bedroll.
I glanced around the clearing for Salisbury, but couldn’t see him anywhere. He might have been stalking the woods, patrolling the camp perimeter, watching over us from the boughs of a tree. For all we knew, he’d retired to the Minnie Winnie and was sleeping in relative luxury. But somehow I didn’t think so.
As the campfire crackled, and Lester snored, and night noises echoed from the woods, it suddenly occurred to me that Salisbury had left the three of us staked out in the open clearing like sacrificial goats, and I recalled what Walt had said about not trusting the skunk aper, and a chill shivered down my spine. Forcing the thought from my mind, I shut my eyes and tried willing myself to sleep.
But Lester’s snoring made that impossible; it sounded like Leatherface was rampaging through the camp with his chainsaw. “Lester, keep it down!” In frustration, I hurled one of my boots at him. It thwacked Eliza on the head and she woke with a startled curse, lurching up in the sleeping bag and checking the sky for more falling footwear. Fortunately she was too groggy to link the boot to me, and I was able to feign sleep until she settled back down. Actual sleep was out of the question; after all that excitement, I needed a piss.
Earlier that night, I’d watched in disgust as Lester had whizzed into an empty beer can. I might not have said anything, had he been subtle about it. But he was whizzing all over the place, even getting some in the can. I said, “You can’t find a tree? We’re in the damn woods!” He’d siphoned the last few drops into the can and said, “With that thing out there? You must be crazy.” Faced with the prospect of venturing alone into the pitch-black woods to pee, I could now see his point.
I looked around camp, but couldn’t find any more empties. Maybe Lester was hoarding them for his own future use? I dreaded to think what might happen when he needed a dump. I tried holding out till dawn, but it was no use.
With a sigh, I climbed from my bedroll, fetched up Walt’s shotgun, pulled on one boot, retrieved the other boot with which I’d clobbered Eliza, and then I went out into the woods to pee. I chose a tree, propped Walt’s shotgun against the trunk beside me, and was emptying the Keystone from my bladder, sighing with relief … when I heard stealthy footsteps stalking through the brush towards me. My senses screamed a warning siren and I whirled towards the noise, the last few drops of piss spattering the leaves at my feet. “Salisbury?” I hissed into the darkness. The footsteps stopped abruptly at the sound of my voice.
Then a breath of wind whispered through the trees and I smelled a musky animal odor that prickled the hairs on the nape of my neck.
I glanced down at the tree where I’d left—
Walt’s shotgun wasn’t there!
Had someone—or something—stolen it while I was peeing? No, I must have knocked it to the ground as I whirled towards the footsteps; it had to be lying somewhere on the shadowy forest floor.
But before I could search for it, the footsteps started towards me once more.
And they were no longer stealthy, they were gathering speed, as whatever the thing was, and it sounded big, sounded huge, charged me from the darkness.
With a panicked cry, I turned and ran—
Into an overhanging tree branch that clotheslined me like a wrestler.
Splayed on my back, dazed, I could only watch in helpless terror as the monstrous silhouette loomed through the woods—before the beast burst from the brush with a bellowing roar. Rearing onto its hind legs, the monster towered above me, slashing powerful arms, claws glinting in the moonlight, saliva spraying from the fangs within its cavernous maw. I cowered against the ground, ducking my head as the wicked claws raked the air above me. Tensing itself to pounce down upon me, the creature took a step forwards—
And sprang the trap that lay buried in the leaves between us.
Monstrous steel jaws snapped shut around its waist, nearly cleaving the creature in two, and its roar became a keening cry of agony. It began thrashing wildly to free itself from the trap, but the vicious steel teeth only dug deeper into flesh and bone, blood steaming in the cold night air. Its struggles slowly weakened, the creature gave a pitiful sigh, and then it thudded to the ground and lay motionless.
Before I could catch my breath, I heard footsteps crashing through the brush behind me. Human, this time. I looked around and saw a flashlight beam ghosting through the woods towards me. “Levine!” Salisbury cried. “Here!” I called back, staggering to my feet as Salisbury and the others broke through the brush and found me. Salisbury shone his flashlight at me and gave a cry of horror and I feared the beast must have gored me.
Then he said, “Damn it, Levine— Put yourself away, man!”
I glanced down and saw my johnson flopping from my open zipper. I hadn’t had time to tuck it away before the beast bushwhacked me. I quickly zipped myself up.
Lester grinned and said, “Cold tonight, huh?”
He’d found Walt’s shotgun and I snatched it away from him.
“Shut up, Lester.”
Eliza gave a sudden gasp.
I double-checked my zipper.
“Mr. Levine! You’re hurt!”
Blood was dripping into my eyes; I must’ve cut my forehead when I ran into the tree branch.
“It’s nothing,” I said, because that’s what you say, but the wound was already starting to throb. I turned towards Salisbury. “Where the hell were you? The damn thing almost killed me!”
Salisbury shouldered past me, shining his flashlight down at the trap.
Lingering back with the others, I said, “Is it … ?”
“It’s dead,” he said.
He raised his flashlight, shining the beam into the woods.
“I just hope the mother isn’t out there.”
“Mother?” I said.
“Christ, how many of these things are there?” Lester said.
I warily approached where Salisbury was crouching in front of the trap.
Clamped between the steel teeth was a little black bear. The critter looked as cute and harmless as the star of an old Disney nature flick. Not a cub, but definitely a juvenile, and probably the runt of the litter at that.
“Oh, Mr. Levine …” Eliza said. “You killed Yogi Bear.”
“Yogi, my ass,” Lester cackled. “That thing’s smaller than Boo.”
“It … it all happened so fast,” I said. “I was on the ground … It looked much bigger in the dark.” Nobody said anything. “Huge,” I insisted.
Salisbury released the trap and wrenched the carcass from its jaws.
“Jesus—” I said, looking at the trap in horror. I realized how close I’d come to taking the last piss
of my life. “One misstep and that could’ve been me.”
“In future,” Salisbury said, “perhaps you should check with me first before blundering through my perimeter in full dark to relieve yourself.”
“Or start whizzing in cans,” Lester suggested.
I could barely bring myself to look at the little dead bear.
“We should bury it,” I said.
“What’s this ‘we’ shit?” Lester said. “You killed it.”
Salisbury looked at me curiously. “Should we say a few words, too?”
I said, “I meant we should bury it before any game wardens find it. Even if it was bear hunting season, which it isn’t, I’m pretty sure there’s laws against killing … you know …” I trailed off.
“Cubs?”
I hung my head in shame and gave a heavy sigh. “Ah, hell.”
Salisbury considered for a moment.
“Very well,” he decided, “bury it.”
But first he unsheathed his knife, sliced the bear’s belly open, and began removing its entrails and tossing them splat at my feet.
“For the bait buckets,” he said.
Made sense, the bear guts smelled ripe enough for the job; I kicked them to Lester. “For the bait buckets,” I told him.
“The what?” he said, because he’d been passed out and had missed all the fun.
“Oh, you’ll see, Lester …” I said. “You’ll see.”
One day on bait detail was plenty enough for me.
Lester said to Salisbury: “Could you cut me off a piece for a trophy?”
I didn’t hang around to see what piece he chose.
I staggered back to camp and fetched a shovel to bury the bear.
And yeah, I did say a few words, mostly how goddamn sorry I was.
12.
The next day I was still feeling foolish and guilty about the bear, and my head was pounding where I’d thumped it against the tree branch. I was cranky-tired from lack of sleep, and starting to think our great skunk ape safari was in fact nothing more than a wild-goose chase. But hey, at least I was driving.
