A Cold War

by Alan Russell

  She followed Baer into a narrow canyon. It wasn’t an easy walk—ice and snow had formed over the trail—but as they wended deeper inside, the way gradually widened. Wind rushed down through the pass, and with it brought the joyous canine chorus. Nina wondered if she had ever heard such excited howling and barking, and the welcoming calls made her feel a little giddy.

  “The dogs sound so happy,” she said.

  “You’d be happy, too, if you knew dinner was on the way and you hadn’t eaten in a week.”

  Nina wasn’t sure if she’d heard correctly. Her thoughts were jumbled, and she was still having trouble focusing. It wasn’t the drugs anymore—those had to be mostly out of her system by now—but the cold and the circumstances made thinking more difficult.

  “The dogs haven’t eaten in a week? That’s terrible! Why would you starve them like that?”

  “There aren’t exactly any kennels around here.”

  “That’s no answer,” she said, speaking over the desperate howls.

  “I wish I had your self-righteousness, but I guess that only comes when you’ve had a lifetime of privilege. Before I left, the dogs got about twenty pounds of meat each. They ate until they couldn’t eat anymore. They had their feast, and now they’ve had a bit of famine. In the animal world, that’s the way it is for carnivores. It’s pretty much always been that way for humans, too. But then you’re not a carnivore, are you? You’re a vegetarian.”

  To Nina’s ear he made it sound like a dirty thing.

  “You could have left them dry food.”

  “I wonder why I didn’t think of that. Or I could have left them cake. Next time I’ll let them eat cake.”

  Nina had to bite her tongue. It wouldn’t do to engage this psychopath.

  “Let’s pick up the pace, Marie,” he said.

  Although Nina tried to keep up with him, it was all she could do to keep Baer in sight. From up ahead he yelled something back to her, but his voice was lost in the chorus of dogs.

  “What?” cried Nina.

  “Follow my path exactly!” he yelled.

  At first she couldn’t understand why he wanted her to do that, but that was before she began encountering objects on the trail meant to discourage two- and four-legged trespassers. Any misstep could have landed her on boards out of which poked large nails, what her father had described as “fifty penny nails”—but those seemed to be the lesser hazards. There were waiting steel traps that looked wicked even in the dim moonlight. Falling the wrong way meant potentially losing a limb.

  Up ahead she was surprised to see lights being activated by their motions. The lights illuminated the front of a cabin and the outline of a shed. Stacked high along the front of the cabin were piles of cut logs waiting to be used as firewood. Baer was already busily removing plywood boards that barred the entrance to the cabin. The plywood had a porcupine defense: sharp wood screws riddled the board, pointed deterrents to anything seeking entry. The pointed spikes brought to Nina’s mind the image of an iron maiden, and she shuddered at that thought.

  Baer used a long screwdriver to remove the screws holding up the plywood blockade. He cursed a screw that was giving him trouble, and his invective seemed to scare it into submission. After removing the plywood, he lifted up what looked like a spiked unwelcome mat and propped it against the side of the cabin. Baer reached for the door handle and opened it. Unlike doors Nina was used to, it opened out, not in.

  “Hurry it up,” he shouted, motioning her to get inside, “before I go deaf.”

  The dogs were loudly clamoring for dinner.

  Nina stepped inside the cabin, and Baer closed the door behind her. Outside she could hear him working on clearing away other nail blockades. Finally the dogs grew quiet; their long-awaited dinner must have arrived.

  The quiet made it easier for Nina to think. She tried to ignore the distasteful smells in the cabin, breathing through her mouth so as to not be overwhelmed by the odors. It smelled as if something had died while burrowed deep within the walls. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to stay here more than the one night. In the morning they would set out for the spot where Baer’s money had been dropped. The sooner he got the cash, the sooner she would be released.

  The cabin only had one window, and little of the late afternoon light penetrated inside, leaving the interior shrouded. The space wasn’t large—probably not even four hundred square feet. She remembered that Thoreau’s cabin in the woods near Walden Lake had only been 150 square feet. Her professor at Smith had said Thoreau had just enough space for a bed, a desk, and three chairs. That was the extent of his furnishings. For Thoreau it had been enough.

  Baer’s cabin was at least twice the size of Thoreau’s, but it still felt small and crowded. Nina was already feeling claustrophobic.

  The door opened, and Nina moved back, edging toward a wall. Baer walked to a rough-hewn table in the kitchen supported by a leveled stump. There he lit a match and applied it to the wick of an oil lamp. After adjusting the flow of the fuel, the small cabin was better illuminated.

  “Home, sweet home,” he said.

  A woodstove sat in one corner, but not the kind Norman Rockwell would have drawn. It wasn’t made of cast iron as much as it was cast-offs. The sink, if it could be called that, was a big plastic bucket that had once housed detergent. Resting on a shelf above the bucket, a five-gallon rectangular water container fed tubes down into PVC piping that served as a sink faucet.

  The kitchen took up about a third of the cabin. The combination living room and bedroom were closest to the kitchen. Instead of a traditional mattress and box spring, a homespun futon with fur blankets and skins covered a wooden support. Next to the bed was a worktable, and lining the cabin wall were apparently the tools of Baer’s trade—at a glance, Nina could see snowshoes, traps and snares, stakes, cables, coil springs, knives, brushes, shears, and frames. On another wall hung dozens of hides of all shapes and sizes in the process of being prepared.

  Nina had never been inside an abattoir, but she suspected it would have a stench much like that which pervaded the cabin. As a girl she’d read lots of fantasy novels. It would be easy to imagine this place as a troll hole.

  The toilet—if it could be called that—also contributed to the stench. The toilet bowl was a five-gallon plastic bucket that hung down in a slot cut out from a homemade chair. Covering that bucket was a toilet seat attached with bungee cords. Everything was out in the open; privacy wasn’t a consideration. There was a container that held wood shavings and sawdust. Nina felt as if she’d stepped back into time. She was sure even Ma and Pa Kettle would have had better plumbing than this.

  Her look of revulsion appeared to amuse Baer. “There’s an outhouse just down the path,” he said, “but in the middle of winter, this indoor toilet is somewhat of a godsend. When it’s thirty below, this is usually the preferred alternative.”

  Nina didn’t comment. She saw no need to discuss toilets, but Baer continued with his potty talk.

  “Toilet paper is another luxury you probably take for granted,” he said.

  “I doubt whether most people consider toilet paper a luxury.”

  “The Inuit used snow to wipe themselves,” he said. “Most of the year I do as they did. In this climate that makes a lot of sense.”

  “What makes more sense is proper plumbing. There have been more deaths from untreated sewage than there have been from all the world’s wars.”

  “Is that so?” said Baer. “I guess you know your shit.”

  Nina ignored his comment and his mocking smile. She shouldn’t have said anything. It was better to not engage him. She finished looking around the cabin—not that there was much to see. The area was functional. Everything had its purpose—or multi-purposes. But she had trouble understanding the reason for the enclosed space that abutted two of the cabin walls. The caged structure looked almost like a cell. The pen was constructed of heavy wire mesh and rebar. Maybe it was a holding area for minks and other furred animals. The
re were no furs in Nina’s wardrobe, and there never would be. Maybe that’s why she was getting this bad feeling in her stomach.

  She could feel Baer’s eyes on her, but tried not to acknowledge them. “When will we leave?” she asked.

  “Leave?” he said, and scratched his beard as if trying to fathom her question. “I guess you don’t know your shit after all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  But at a primal level, Nina was afraid she did know what he meant. Her heart hammered in her chest. She could feel a flush coming over her skin. Every warning sign in her body was activated, every defense mechanism primed.

  “You think I don’t know how fast Dudley Do-Right would come down on me if I tried to collect ransom money? Besides, what good is money out here?”

  “But . . . what about my finger?” Nina asked.

  Beneath her terror she knew the answer.

  “I threw it out in a field right after I removed it,” he said. “I’m guessing a raven probably found it. Or it’s being chewed on by some vermin.”

  She gasped, the hollowness in her stomach making it hard for her to speak. “Why did you lie to me?”

  “First rule of trapping: entice the animal into the trap. You played along with me because it suited your wishful thinking. That’s why humans are easier to trap than animals. They don’t listen to their instincts.”

  “If you’re not holding me for ransom, why have you done this?”

  Nina tried to contain the shrillness of her words and hide her desperation, but even she could hear the panic in her voice.

  “How have you liked our honeymoon so far?” he asked.

  No. This wasn’t happening. This was the worst-case scenario she’d been afraid to think about. She needed to keep him talking. She had to play for time, for any advantage. “My idea of a honeymoon doesn’t involve abduction, drugging, and mutilation.”

  “You’re right,” he said. “It hasn’t been a proper honeymoon. We haven’t even consummated our marriage yet.”

  Talk wasn’t going to help. Nina backed up, looking around for a weapon.

  Baer reached for his belt and loosened it.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Nina awoke with a blinding headache. She gingerly explored her head and found a lump that ran along the left side of her temple. A layer of dried blood extended from her cheek to her chin.

  Her nose throbbed. It was swollen and painful to the touch. Baer had backhanded her, smashing her nose. The beating was bad enough; his talking had made it excruciating.

  “Women are like foxes,” he said. “All you have to do is hit Mr. Fox hard across the bridge of his nose, and he’ll stiffen up and fall. That smack to his nose knocks him unconscious. It works like a charm, and it’s a useful thing to know. If you hit him just right, you don’t damage the goods. Then all you do is break his neck or strangle him. Do it that way and the fox dies without a mark on him.”

  Nina had resisted his attack with every fiber of her being. With her teeth and nails, she’d lashed out at his eyes; with her feet and knees, she had kicked him. But her struggles had only seemed to excite him that much more. At first Baer just deflected her blows, but when she refused to yield, he began beating her. And then he had told his fox story, hit her on the nose, and knocked her senseless.

  With trembling fingers she reached inside her pants. Her insulated pants were loose, uncinched. She felt under her thermal underwear and discovered the stickiness on the inside of her thighs.

  She’d been raped. The realization made her stomach heave, and vomit spilled out of her holding pen onto the floor. She threw up until her stomach was empty, but that wasn’t enough. She retched over and over, dry heaves, until the tangled knots in her stomach made her feel as if she were on fire.

  Her body shivered violently. Rape was something she had never imagined could happen to her. She hugged herself and tried to still her shivering, but she seemed to have no control over herself. Her skin itched all over, and she started scratching. She was dirty, so dirty. She wondered if all the water in all the oceans could ever make her feel clean.

  Something moved across her leg, reminding her of Baer’s clawlike touch on her skin, and she found herself screaming. Immediately she regretted having cried out. Although it was dark inside the small cabin, there was enough light for her to see Baer’s form rise from under furred blankets. She felt the burn of his eyes on her and turned from them.

  “What is it?” he said.

  Nina fought off hysterical laughter. He had raped her, and he was asking, “What is it?” There were no words for what it was. If she screamed and howled for hours unto days, that might begin to speak to what it was.

  She realized he was still waiting for her answer. She wanted to spit. She wished there were some way to adequately show her hatred and defiance. It didn’t seem right that Nina should ever again speak to this subhuman. But at the same time, she feared the consequences of her silence. He’d shown what an animal he was. No, not an animal, she thought. No animal would be that brutal.

  “Something crawled over me,” Nina said.

  Baer nodded. From the corner of her eye, she saw him raise his chin. He was more animal than human the way he listened and then sniffed the air. In the silence she could hear faint sounds coming from within her pen: clicks and small squeaks. In the gloom she saw his lips pull back; it was like watching a jackal smile.

  “Shrew,” he said. “You can hear it, but even more, you can smell it. A shrew has a musky smell all its own. I hadn’t gotten around to cleaning out a mouse nest in your pen, but I’m sure there’s no longer a need. That shrew probably made a meal of them days ago and has come around again hoping to find some seconds.”

  Baer rose from his pallet, naked.

  “Thing about a shrew is that it’s always hungry. Every day it has to eat its body weight in food, or it dies. Imagine that kind of pressure. It’s a part of what makes them what they are. Failure is death.”

  Nina turned her head. She drew her knees to her chest.

  “If there’s any source of food, shrews will sniff it out. What they can’t see, they make up for in smell. They’re pretty much blind as bats. And like bats they got a sonar kind of thing going for them. It helps them find food. That’s why you hear that clicking going on.”

  Baer made his way into the kitchen.

  “It’s their hunger that makes shrews vulnerable. That’s what you use against them, that and their sense of smell—and their nastiness. That’s how you get rid of a shrew problem.”

  She listened to his clattering. She wanted to scream to drown out his voice and the noises of whatever it was he was gathering.

  “Ounce for ounce there’s no more bloodthirsty creature on the planet. Two or three times I’ve stumbled on shrews fighting out in the wild. You couldn’t pay to see a fight any more ferocious. They jump and twist and bite and shriek and roll around. And what makes it even more interesting is that they often fight to the death. Neither is willing to give or get quarter. They open up cuts all over one another, and there’s no resting. You’d think the fights would be short, as fast and furious as they are, but I’ve seen them last a quarter hour or more. In the end there can only be one victor, and if you’ve got the stomach for it, you see what the fight was all about. The loser gets eaten.”

  Nina shuddered. The excitement in his voice—his apparent bloodlust—sickened her. She tried to hide her distaste, tried to hide any expression at all. She wanted to be invisible to him.

  Baer approached her cage. He paused to pick up two more items along the way: a key to unlock the handcuffs that secured her holding pen, and a pail full of sawdust. He casually spread the sawdust over her vomit, then unlocked the handcuffs. Nina moved as far away from the opening as possible, but the cage was too small, and she found herself trembling. She was furious at her own weakness, but that still didn’t stop her from shaking.

  “It’s time to tame some shrews.”

  She was sure he was looking at he
r when he said that. Even though her head was averted, she felt his eyes on her. Then she heard him reaching inside her cage, and she cowered. Two days ago she would have said with certainty that she was incapable of cowering at anyone or anything.

  “It’s the simplest of traps,” he said. “All you need is a wobbly stick, a bucket, and a pungent piece of meat. Every shrew in and around this cabin—every shrew within a quarter mile of here—is now getting a nose full of that meat. Mark my words: the dinner bell is clanging nice and loud. Mm, mm, mm.” He made a smacking sound with his lips.

  “For this shrew party, I attached a piece of jerky to the middle of the wobbly stick, and put some caribou meat down in the bucket. Now all we have to do is sit back and watch the tightrope act.”

  Nina had no intention of watching anything. She kept her head averted from Baer and his bucket. For a minute or two, there was silence. Then she heard him whistling the tune of “The Man on the Flying Trapeze.” It was as grating to listen to as his poem. But she would have listened to his poem all night rather than the sounds she was now hearing after something dropped into the bucket.

  “They never get as far as the jerky,” Baer said. “Shrews aren’t very good at logrolling. The wobbly stick gets them every time.”

  From inside the bucket, Nina could hear the sounds of the shrew tearing into the meat. It ate undisturbed for several minutes, but then Baer began whistling his tune again. Not long afterward, a second shrew fell into the bucket. Within moments it sounded as if war had broken out. Nina would have covered her ears but for fear of that drawing attention to her. She was forced to listen to this fight to the death. And when it was finally over, she had to endure the worst sounds of all: the crunching of bones as the victor began making a meal of the victim.

  “In the light of the morning, there will only be one shrew left alive,” said Baer, “and lots of little bones. All we have to do is wait a little while for the next one to come along.”

  Baer stayed around for two more battles, but finally even he grew tired of the carnage. He locked her cage with the handcuffs and then retreated to his pallet. It wasn’t long before Nina heard him snoring. Only then did she feel secure enough to let out her pent-up air. Her underarms were soaked. His being near to her was torture.