by Steve Himmer
Martin turns his face away, not sure he wants to hear this, but he can’t avoid listening without leaving the porch.
“It should be dead, it’s shot through the heart. But the damn thing won’t die. It’s flopping around, trying to get up. Blood all over the ground. Try to help and you’re likely as not to get kicked. Break your neck. Moving too much to shoot it again, not without making things worse, so you wait. Watch it die.” Gil takes a drink. “Awful noise, an animal dying. Even the ones you think don’t make sounds always find one way or another. Even a rabbit’ll put you on edge. Gets you like howling wolves.” He takes a long drink, and stares out into the yard, toward the hills across the street and beyond the building site, where the sun is approaching the peaks.
“Always go for the clean shot, Marty. Stay in control. You get panicked, you get jumpy, you’ll have a half-dead buck and a kick in the head. No good all around.”
Martin tries to shake the gruesome scene Gil has painted, but it’s lodged in his mind’s eye. “But, see,” he says, “I can’t help thinking that if the deer hadn’t been shot in the first place . . .”
“It would get sick from being crowded,” Gil snaps, “or it would eat your garden or get killed by a wolf. They die, Marty. Everything does. Can’t be helped so you make the most of it.”
Martin plunks tinny notes from the pull-tab on his beer can with both thumbs.
“Hell, say that bear’d killed you. Would you be complaining in heaven? Saying it wasn’t right? Bear shoulda left you alone ‘cause you don’t eat meat?”
“No, but . . .”
“No nothing. That’s how it works.” Gil waves an arm toward his outbuildings and yard or perhaps toward the woods beyond them. “Can’t have it both ways.”
An uncomfortable silence falls between them—uncomfortable for Martin, at least—as they finish their beers and look toward distant hills slipping into shadow as the sun dips into late afternoon. Then a phone rings, and the two men jump at the sound. Gil gathers their empty plates and heads into the house. Behind him, through the screen door, Martin hears one side of a conversation but he can’t make out the words. He watches a third crow join the others down in the yard, their beaks bowing in and out of the grass.
Gil’s back on the porch a few minutes later. “Takin’ a ride, Marty. Sheriff says Elmer Tully’s gone missing.”
“Did something happen to him?”
“To Elmer? I’ll bet what happened is he got drinking and took a walk. Curled up under a tree with a headache. He’s waiting for someone to bring him an aspirin.”
“But the sheriff is concerned?”
“Way he tells it, Elmer’s back door is all busted like something came in. Sounds like Elmer being Elmer to me, but I said I’d look.” Gil starts down the steps toward his truck, pulling his cap down tight on his head. Then he turns back and asks, “You coming? Or you gonna sit there and drink all my beer?”
As Martin empties his can and carries it to the bag, he hears Gil laughing to himself in the cab of the truck.
Gil isn’t rushing to Elmer’s rescue because he’s especially fond of the man. Neither is the sheriff, for that matter: it’s duty, for both of them. Elmer may be the town drunk, a troublemaker more often than not, passing out on the town square and shouting obscenities at public events when he isn’t muttering to himself or wandering catatonic; he may be all those things, but he’s also part of the town, as much as the sheriff is, or Gil. As much as he can be a burden, he’s one with whom folks are familiar so they’re willing to accommodate his peculiarities more than they might be for an outsider.
Better the eyes that glare by the light of your fire than those that gleam in the dark.
So Gil’s truck rattles along the dirt track from the main road toward Elmer’s farm, and the two men bounce around on its bench seat. The track runs through a swathe of thick weeds meant at one time as a vineyard, according to Gil, and when Martin asks if you can even grow decent grapes this far north his neighbor shrugs. There’s a crumbling white house at the top of the drive; its roof pitches sideways, lower at one end than the other as if it’s sliding off the walls. Rusted steel drums and old washing machines litter the overgrown yard, and an enormous red pickup truck stands under a carport and gives the appearance it hasn’t moved in a long time. Three iron bathtubs with clawed feet stand end-to-end by a collapsing gray fence, filled to their brims with rainwater and leaves.
The sheriff’s car is in front of the house with a second cruiser behind it. “Let’s see what’s what,” Gil says, and he and Martin climb out of the truck. A few seconds after their doors slam closed, Sheriff Lindon emerges from behind the house. His legs look too skinny beneath the brown pants of his uniform to support the barrel of torso balanced on top, and when he walks his body sways with each step as if battling its own inertia.
“Gil,” the sheriff says with a nod. He glances in Martin’s direction, but doesn’t acknowledge his presence.
“Lindon,” Gil answers. He’s always called Sheriff or Lindon, and Martin doesn’t know if that’s a first or last name. He hangs back a few feet away as the other men step toward each other, both smoking.
“Well?” Gil asks.
“Somebody broke the back door pretty good. Cracked the jamb and popped the screen from its frame.” The sheriff’s voice is so rough that it makes Martin thirsty from listening, and he swallows twice to sooth his own throat.
“Seen Elmer?” Gil asks.
“Nope. That’s why I called you.” Lindon squints in Martin’s direction then takes the last puff of his cigarette before flicking the butt hard at the dirt of the drive. He scratches at one of his bushy, salt-and-pepper sideburns with the fingertips of one hand. “Come out back, Gil. I’ve got something to show you.”
Martin follows the other men around the side of the house, where an electrical line coming up from the street sags close to the ground. The gray steel junction box it’s attached to has pulled away from the wall far enough that a hand could slide in behind it.
A white aluminum storm door is propped against the back stoop, twisted and sharp where the metal has split, and black shreds of screen flutter all over the ground. The door frame itself, unpainted wood gone gray with age, is gouged with sets of parallel lines. They could be the scratches on Martin’s chest only deeper, deep enough that if the wood was his skin he’d be dead.
He touches a hand to his shirt, and feels the dull pain of the cuts under layers of cotton and gauze and the sharper pain of his bruises where he’s pressed them.
“The hell?” Gil mutters as he climbs two cement steps to the doorway and crouches with his eye near the scarred wood. Martin tries to get a look at the damage without bumping into the sheriff.
Lindon sighs, then fishes around in his shirt pocket for a loose cigarette. “You know what folks’ll say happened.” Gil nods without bending away from the door frame. “We’ll wanna nip that in the bud.”
“What?” Martin asks, but no reply comes. “What will they say?”
“Those scratches go right down the hallway,” Sheriff Lindon tells Gil. “Bedroom’s a mess. Blankets torn up on the floor and pillow foam everywhere.” He steps up beside Gil and looks into the house as he smokes. “Seems it oughta be bloody with all that damage, but there isn’t a drop.”
“If something got Elmer in bed,” Gil says, “it’d be bloody. Can’t see how it wouldn’t.”
“Sure.”
Still on the ground at the bottom of the steps, with no room beside the other two men for him to squeeze up for a look through the door, Martin asks, “Did something attack him?”
The sheriff pivots his head for a quick look at the interloper, then turns back to Gil and keeps talking. He gestures lazily toward the yard behind the house and says, “Found some of his clothes in the yard here. Ripped all to hell, too. Gorman’s using them for scent with the dog.”
Gil runs his fingers and eyes around the sides of the doorframe. Then he stands up and lights a cigarette. �
�Nothing broke in, Lindon.”
“The fuck’re you talking about? Something did this.”
“Take a look at these scratches.” Gil points at the gouges nearest the doorknob with the glowing tip of his cigarette. “Door’s pushed from the inside.”
“Now what’re you . . .” the sheriff sputters, then leans close to look where Gil’s pointing. “Son of a bitch, you’re right. What the hell happened?”
Gil doesn’t answer but steps from the stoop to the yard. He shades his eyes with both hands wrapped around the brim of his cap. Martin follows his gaze down the slope of Elmer’s farm toward the woods on the other side of a cornfield. “Look at that crush in the corn,” Gil says, pointing. “That’s where it went.”
“Goddamnit.” The sheriff pulls the radio from his belt and tells someone somewhere what’s going on.
Gil turns and walks back toward his truck. He calls over his shoulder, “Guess I’ll go see.” Martin and Lindon follow him around the side of the house. He reaches into the cab and pulls a rifle from the rack in the window. Then he pops open the rusted cargo box in the bed of the truck and digs around in a rattle of tools before emerging with a cardboard box of ammunition; the box and its bullets are taller than Martin expected, but all he knows about guns would fit inside either one. After stuffing the box into his pocket, Gil digs out another and loads the gun, adjusts his cap, and asks, “Who’s coming?”
Lindon says, “I’ll stay here and see what turns up.” He nods toward the deputy’s car parked in back of his own. “Gorman’s still looking down by the road.”
Gil claps a hand to Martin’s shoulder and pushes him toward the corn. “Come on, Marty. Help me out here.”
As they start walking, Gil loosens his grip.
They crunch into the cornfield, rustling through tall, late-summer stalks. Martin isn’t sure, but he thinks all the other cornfields he’s noticed in town have already been cut, while Elmer’s still stands so high.
Gil walks in front, bent toward the ground with the rifle across his body. Martin wishes, despite himself, he was armed, too. He’s never fired a gun, or held one at all, but right now his hands feel too empty. He walks with his arms bent in front of his body, trying to keep the dry, sharp-edged plants from his face.
Gil stops and kneels down, touching the trampled husks and soil on the ground. “Went through here,” he says over a shoulder.
“What do you think it was?”
“Probably Elmer. Got drunk and smashed up his house. Not the first time he’s lost himself.”
They press forward into the corn, startling four fat, black crows. The birds burst into the air screeching and cursing. Martin tries to imagine a human being—even one who drinks to the point of violence—doing the damage he saw at the house, but doesn’t see how it could happen. “Could a person have done all that? Even drunk?”
“Folks do all kinds of things. Saw their own arms off to get out of a trap.” Gil’s voice is flat and direct in a tone that leaves no room for questions, though his analogy doesn’t make much sense to Martin. Gil crouches and pushes apart some plants where they’re pressed to the ground, then pulls something out from between the stalks and holds it up to his eyes. “Lookit.”
Martin moves closer to look at a small tuft of yellow fur, pinched between Gil’s oil-stained fingers. “What’d that come from?”
“Well, it wasn’t your bear,” Gil laughs. He rolls the tuft between the pads of his fingers and it tightens into a braid. “Color’s too light to be any of the usual animals around here. Maybe that cat Elmer ran into.” He points out some vague indentations in the dirt where they show through the crushed corn. “Footprints say so.” Gil rises from his crouch and moves deeper into the field.
“Jesus,” Martin mutters as he stands up. He looks around but all he can see is the corn rising over his head. When a breeze blows it rattles as if the field is full of snakes. “I thought you said a mountain lion wouldn’t stay around here.”
Gil stops walking and snaps his head around to look right at Martin. There’s a new edge to his voice when he asks, “When did you get to be such an expert? If the cat’s still here, it’s still here. That’s what the gun’s for.”
Martin keeps to himself any questions about endangered species and the legalities of shooting them, especially if you go looking to do it. He’s too new in town to start crossing people who have been around as long as Gil has, not if he wants to get his houses built. And his neighbor has spent more time around animals, and more time in the woods, than he ever has. Far more. Besides, the snarl that has come into the older man’s voice makes Martin less than eager to ask any questions.
They stand facing each other for a few seconds longer, then Gil’s expression softens back to its usual red, wrinkled calm. But doubts must still hang on Martin’s face because Gil finally tells him, “Well shit, Marty, we won’t shoot it if it isn’t a threat. Come on now.”
They carry on through the corn without speaking until at last the field ends and they emerge at the edge of the forest. As his body sweats and strains, the pain increases in Martin’s ribs. His bruised muscles ache and his back feels tight. In time, Gil points his rifle at a gap in the scrub and says, “In here.”
The woods feel familiar to Martin within a few steps. These aren’t the same acres he crossed yesterday, but they are filled with the same plants and sounds. They’re drenched in the same sticky-sweet, rotten smell. The air under the trees is as hot and humid as a greenhouse, and sweat runs down Martin’s neck to his chest and soaks into the gauze of his bandages, making the wounds sting again.
Stumbling along behind Gil, he asks, “What if it wasn’t Elmer who messed up his house? What if something really did take him?”
“Elmer’s too big to be taken by much,” Gil answers without turning around. “Figure he left the door open and something locked itself in. Had to claw its way out. Maybe even this cat you’re so fond of.”
“Does that happen?”
“As often as Elmer gets drunk. Animals’re always looking for a door to walk in. They’re curious. Lazy, if you give ‘em a chance. A few weeks ago I found a raccoon behind my couch sleeping away. Elmer says he caught a deer eating salt in his pantry.” Gil shakes a cigarette into his mouth and lights it without missing a step. “Of course, Elmer sees things.”
“I think something was on my bed last night,” Martin says. “I found some fur there this morning.”
Gil laughs, and then holds the smoldering cigarette in one hand as he coughs. “Teach you to leave your door open.” He smiles, and his eyes, angry a moment ago, become brighter. Martin considers telling Gil about the strange sensations he got from smelling the sheets where the creatures had been—that he knew it was two bodies rather than one, how it set off his senses—but he doesn’t want to explain why he was smelling the bed where something had slept.
The trees thin around them as they walk, and the two men emerge into a clearing. A round patch of dirt in a pool of tall, swaying grass is lit from above by the sun. It’s the same spot he dreamt of when he fell asleep on his plans, or another similar spot, and without meaning to he says it looks familiar.
“You been here before?”
“Uh, I thought so, but . . . maybe not,” he stutters, covering his tracks, unwilling to tell Gil about the dreams he’s been having.
“Maybe you passed by here wandering around yesterday.”
“Maybe,” Martin agrees, but he’s trying to remember exactly what happened here in his dream, and is trying equally hard to keep his face from revealing more than he wants to.
He might not be so reluctant if he knew the dreams Gil wakes from every night in a sweat, when he’s able to sleep. Forty-some years since the war, since he slogged through all that mud and through jungles peeled clean by chemicals sprayed from above, and still the blood washes over his dreams and keeps him awake. It’s gotten worse through the years until now he hardly bothers going to bed—the occasional cat-nap in his chair on the porch
, or on his couch in front of the TV on winter nights, is the closest he comes to real sleep most of the time. As soon as he closes his eyes, his mind grows crowded with the shredded bodies and hollow voices of men whose faces and names he remembers as well as anything else in his life. The strange bushes and spiders and snakes, after years learning these woods and thinking he knew the world, only to find a whole green, wild world he knew nothing about. A world that knew nothing of him, not even enough to avoid groups of men and their guns.
The harder he tries to push all that out of his head, the more insistent the phantoms become until he gives up on sleep, gets out of bed, and pours himself a drink on the porch where he can keep an eye on the woods. It’s worse since he retired—he hasn’t had one good night’s sleep since he stopped guiding hunters and stopped hunting himself, more or less—and the amount of whiskey it takes to come close makes the next day hardly worth waking up for. So he sits through the dark, night after night, listening to the forest around him, and somehow just sitting quiet for hours does almost as much for him as sleep used to do.
The lonely and homesick half-orphan, the old soldier haunted . . . they’re types, they’re familiar, as indistinct as I suppose you find one bear or fox from another. It’s so easy to pay attention to the wrong parts of their lives and to get hung up on where a life comes from and not where it’s going. Too easy to think the point of other lives lies in touching your own, in confirming how you know the world works, but why tell a story you already know?
We could go on about Gil’s bloody dreams and the war he brought home, the map of some other place and its memories he laid over this land years ago, layered among all the maps and other memories spread out by one generation after another. But this story’s not his. Gil’s not the kind of dreamer I’m after. Martin is malleable, his desires as easily bounced off their target as a satellite dish knocked askew. His will is more easily replaced with my own, because so much of what makes him up is empty space. Gil’s seen too much, he’s too set in his ways and too sure of how little his life adds up to in the end, but Martin hasn’t a clue what his own life is worth.
