Murders Among Dead Trees

by Chute, Robert Chazz

  “You want something?” I asked. “You’re not my type.”

  He laughed at that and reached past me into the pack. He yanked out a bottle of beer. I watched his hands. “I’ll help you lighten your load, little brother.”

  He wiped dribbles of beer from his chin with the back of his hand. “I could get used to this unemployment thing,” he said. “We could really make the insurance money last, you know? You think walking around up here with a pack is work? Try digging around somebody’s attic for a wire and a junction box covered in itchy pink insulation. Man, you don’t know what work is.”

  A chickadee sang its sweet persistent song, oblivious.

  Jason fished out a couple Mars bars he'd hidden in a side pocket. He offered me neither and ate both at once, mouth open as he smacked and sucked down the chocolate. Watching him eat, I knew why Jason’s love life was a series of first dates. Some women don’t mind a man with a temper, but who could sit across from that noisy mess at a dinner table and keep an appetite?

  “What’s on your mind, sunshine?”

  I said nothing.

  “You scared I’m gonna hit you?”

  “Some.”

  “That don’t need to happen no more,” he said. “Brothers can be hard on each other, but I’m the new boss man now. Doin' it right.”

  “Hard on each other, yeah?” I said. “I don’t remember me being hard on you. The beat-down train only ever runs in one direction as I recall. When do I get to be hard on you?”

  Jason sighed and lowered himself stiffly until he was cross-legged in the soft, tall grass in the middle of the logging road. He cradled the rifle like mothers hold babies. “Check the safety. Pull the bolt.” He relished the rifle shell’s sunlit gleam before slamming the action back. Clack-clack! “I love that sound. It just sounds...right.” He opened the breech and slammed it shut again.

  He belched and let sour air hiss out between crooked teeth. “Ate too fast,” he said, grimacing and patting his stomach. Instead of opening his next beer, he held the sweating glass to his forehead. “Got to slow down. That chilli you made last night isn’t sitting right.”

  “Complain to the guy who put the chilli in the can, not to the guy who put it in the pot for you.”

  “Fair enough.” My brother frowned as he surveyed the woods. “According to Dad, if you shoot a deer in the heart, it’ll jump straight up in the air before it falls down dead.”

  “Yeah? You believe that?”

  “’Course.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  Jason belched loudly and gave me a tight smile. “Dad told me he got buck fever once. He was hunting deer with Granddad. They’re at the edge of this field and out from the woods come five deer. This would have been Dad’s first kill. Granddad hands him his rifle with a scope on it so he lies down, lines up his shot. There’s a big twelve-point buck out front. Dad follows this buck through his scope an’ he starts to sweat bullets instead of firin’ ’em. Then he starts to feel it.”

  “It?”

  “Buck fever starts with a little shake in the hand. The shakes snaked up his arm until he’s shakin’ like a seizure.”

  “He get the deer?”

  Jason shook his head. “Fired five shots and none of the deer even felt the wind of a bullet. Not even close, even by accident. Dad said he had to work up to it. The next year he shot a couple partridges and that next winter he bagged a couple rabbits. The next time he had a deer in his sights, he knew not to think about it too long. He said he felt a little shake in his trigger finger and before it could get worse, he pulled it quick. Bang! Bagged his first doe. After that, the killin’ came easy.”

  Jason opened his beer, took a swig and squinted at me as if guessing my weight. “Dad said when you got a problem, it’s better not to think too long. That’s your problem, Joey. You think about things too much. You got a problem? Just rip that Band-Aid right off. Stop tryin’ to worry it off. And do something about your acne. It’s makin’ me sick.”

  Jason bobbed his head and raised his beer high in a toast, our meeting adjourned. Before he could bring the bottle to his lips he grimaced again, one hand to his stomach. “Hoo. Goddamn chilli.”

  I watched his face. Beer kills too slow, I thought.

  Norman Rose — “Chief” to everybody in Poeticule Bay — was both police and fire chief. At that moment, he must have been looking at his watch, sausage fingers hovering above a button. I never actually saw it, but I always pictured a big red button, like the president must use to launch nuclear missiles. The fire hall’s siren rose up in one long wail as it did every weekday. I called that daily rising and falling blast the audible comma; all of Poeticule Bay paused at noon. That siren was my secret reminder that I was supposed to live somewhere too big to need to test the siren; New York fire stations don't need to test their sirens. Their sirens go off all the time and nobody needs a reminder that the day is half-done and things are changing. New Yorkers are busy living and changing all the time. Bayers don’t change. They’re allergic to change.

  Though I had no money to go anywhere, some of my classmates would escape to universities and bigger towns. Most would join the family business and fish or farm. A few of the most desperate would go into the military. I didn’t want to join the Perma-war, though. The TV said the army was fighting for freedom. From where I stood, America must be losing. Freedom is only among strangers. There is no freedom where there is no anonymity. Growing up in a small town didn’t teach me much, but I got that lesson.

  Here, I would always be Darren Kind’s son or Jason’s little brother. They didn’t know what was going on behind my father’s eyes — or mine, either — but they all thought they did. Small town people act as if they own you by the power of two accidents: birth and geography. Unhappy accidents, like a drunken brother or a father chewed up by saw blades or a town so small it strangles? That shit can define you forever.

  These were my thoughts as the siren rose and died. Then the sight of the buck erased my thoughts. It stepped out of the woods, large and quite close, but its hooves made no sound I could hear. My mouth dropped open. I should have shouted, not to draw Jason’s attention to the deer, but to scare it off.

  The .30-30 boomed. The sound rolled up the mountainside to fill the blue sky. The shell’s force staggered the deer left and its front legs buckled. Then it regained its height and bounded off into the woods, its rump a white flag. I froze but Jason tore after it. He crashed through the brush yelling for me to follow. He disappeared from my view, yelled something incoherent — all vowels. It was enough to give me a bearing.

  The stag took the path of least resistance down the mountain. I followed Jason’s yells. The sprint through the undergrowth soon winded him and I caught up, one strap over my shoulder, the other dragging. He grabbed at his side again and grimaced, chest heaving. “Got a stitch,” he wheezed. “Where were you?”

  “You got the gun, so behind you.”

  The moss was soft and springy, like walking on the carpet in the office at the funeral home. If I were dying, I would lie down where the moss is soft and deep and go to sleep. It buoyed me for a few minutes until the green cushion gave way to loose shale and, more cautious, I started walking sideways down the slope to avoid twisting an ankle.

  The blood trail led us through dense branches that scratched and pulled at us. Jason swung the rifle muzzle in front of him in a wild arc back and forth. When he pushed the branches away, they sprang back, whipping my face. The deer, disoriented from blood loss and panicked with pain, moved in loose circles.

  “Didja see?” Jason yelled. “I shot him just about as fast as I saw him! I wish Dad had been here to see that! We got to finish him quick though. First thing Dad taught me 'bout hunting. Never leave an animal wounded. We’re gonna do this goddamn right.”

  “Yes, I wish Dad were here, too.”

  Though we were headed downhill, Jason wheezed and complained his stomach and chest hurt. I ignored him and pointed him down the grade, scanning
the trees. We lost the trail once. Jason told me to walk in a wider circle and, after ten minutes, I found blood again.

  “There!” Jason screamed. He raised the rifle and got off another shot. Missed. My ears rang. I glimpsed the buck leaping in a high arc just before the forest swallowed it again.

  The air among the trees cooled our sweat-slick necks. Jason’s hair stood out in wet spikes. His face was a sheen. Trickles of sweat joined forces to hang in drips from his nose and chin.

  “I just wanted to eat ’em before,” Jason said. “Now? Now I really want to kill him.”

  We walked in another circle. We weren’t halfway down the mountain but the terrain levelled out here. The deer’s trail now described a jagged tangent. Just ahead, the staggering deer crashed through water and broke branches. Jason’s war cry turned into a ragged curse as he stepped forward. Soft black mud sucked his left boot down. He held the rifle high over his head, unsure how deep his weight would take him into the water. The new logging road stretching above us toward the Scar must have diverted a creek to create a swamp in the hollow head of this small plateau.

  Jason reached for my shoulder to steady himself and almost pulled me into the cold water. A spasm contorted his lower lip. “Good Christ, that hurts! This is the worst goddamn heartburn I’ve ever had.”

  I wasn’t sure if he was telling me or talking himself through it. I pulled away to stay on dry land as Jason slogged forward through water past his knees. He cursed the cold as it invaded his boots. After a few steps, he found his footing on a rising bar of sand. I heard a flutter of branches and leaves as he disappeared from my view. He let out a whoop and I knew he'd found the buck. I braced for another burst of gunfire but instead I heard a heavy thud followed by my brother’s surprised cry. After a moment of silence, a volley of shots.

  “Joey!” he yelled. “C’mon! What you waitin’ for?”

  I left my pack at the foot of a pine. I couldn’t avoid the water soaking me to my knees so I opted for speed. I waded through as quickly as I could and peered through the thicket, parting the way with my hands and body, choosing each step carefully to avoid more watery sinkholes. The deer’s head was a mess of blood and gore. I glanced and looked away. I refused to look at it directly and focused my eyes on the body instead. The deer was well-muscled and the short smooth fur was a perfect light brown.

  Only when I noticed Jason’s hunting knife, unbloodied beside the deer’s neck did I look up at him. A deep gash marked Jason’s forehead above his left eyebrow. Blood ran down his face so thick he couldn’t see from that eye. He ignored his head wound, however, and grabbed at his chest and tore his shirt open. Though the skin was unbroken, a semi-circular bruise above his left nipple, was already turning purple and black. Hoof print.

  “I thought it was down and done. I was just going to walk up and slash its throat. The goddamn thing kicked out at me. I should’ve just stepped back and blasted it. Stupid! Stupid!” He stomped his feet. “I came up on it too quick. It was bleeding to death but it wasn’t dead enough.” Jason’s breath came in little gasps. “I was feeling shitty, but he really did a job on me. Real fighter. Good thing I unloaded on him.” Jason smiled despite his pain. “Told you I could do it! We’ve got venison for the winter!”

  My brother’s triumph would have been better spent on Dad if his ghost was watching. I felt much worse for the deer than I did for my brother.

  It was a heavy nine-point buck. Jason sent me back to the pack with the rifle. My brother’s sweat had wet and warmed the stock. I felt queasy. I tried to wipe a few droplets of his blood from the gun barrel but instead of wiping it off, it just smeared and dirtied my jacket sleeve. Jason tried to haul the deer on his own by the antlers. The water, the slippery ground and the animal’s weight colluded to bring him down. Jason’s fierce lips stretched wide over bared teeth as he fell. He would have cursed more but his breath became more ragged. It was as if Jason’s lung’s had shrunk. I wrapped my hands around the antlers, too, and pulled as hard as I could.

  By the time we got the deer to dry land, we were both sucking wind hard. We managed to move the deer another few feet, though its hind quarters still dragged in the water. Our footing was sure again, but the dead weight was too much. Jason told me to stop and when I looked up, his eyes showed something new. I had seen his pain, but now there was fear, too. We’d made it as far as the pack and the gun under the pine tree. We could go no farther.

  Jason sank to his knees and clutched his chest. “Dear, Jesus! That — !” He paused and, cheeks bulging, almost threw up but swallowed his gorge.

  I watched as he fought the urge to vomit, his bare torso convulsing in waves.

  He flopped over slowly, his head beside the deer’s limp neck. “Oh, Jesus fuck! I got pain!” He gasped and then added, “Down both arms!” He took another minute before he could speak again. “Pressure,” he gasped. He pointed to his chest. Then he did puke. Bright green and black. He continued until there was nothing left. I turned him on his side so he wouldn’t die choking like a druggie rock star.

  When there was nothing left to vomit, I watched the spasms through his guts pull him forward and back. My brother, the dying puppet.

  When he got his breath back he said, “I’m sorry, Joey. I shouldn’t have gone up to the deer like that. If Dad were here — ”

  “If Dad were here, he’d tell you to shut up,” I said.

  He tried to get up but only made it to his knees. Jason swayed and fell on his back. He pointed to the center of his chest again with one hand and clutched under his rib cage with the other.

  I knew what his frantic miming meant: I look like my father and Jason has our mother’s nose. Watching him point to his chest, I was sure my brother had inherited Mom’s trick heart, too. Or maybe the kick to his head was enough for a concussion and blood was sloshing into his brain. Either way, he wasn't going to make it down the mountain. I didn't know how I felt about that.

  Jason told me to tear his shirt into strips. I helped him back into his jacket and tied the makeshift bandage around his head. I don’t know if it did much good since it soaked red almost immediately.

  He winced again, tried to throw up but could only give a hoarse retching sound that must have torn his throat raw. The puddle of green vomit made me nauseous. I looked away and took shallow breaths through my mouth to avoid the acidic stink. When Jason could talk again he told me to run to town. I did not move or say anything. “Joey, go get help,” he said again. One hand remained a frozen claw at his chest. His other hand pointed me downhill, toward Poeticule Bay.

  Before I left, I snatched up the gun. I looked back and forth from the deer’s caved-in head to my helpless brother. The rifle felt heavier than it should. My arms trembled and my palms were slick with sweat. I knew if I held the rifle any longer, I would begin to shake. I gritted my teeth and abandoned the gun beside him. I left him the box of shells. Truth? I hoped the pain might inspire him.

  “Leave the pack, too,” he whispered. “Just run.” The spasms worked up and down his body again. The splotch at his forehead spread out through the fabric of the bandage, reminding me of a poinsettia blossom.

  As he began to shiver, he looked less human. It was as if I was numb and standing outside my body. I watched myself study his torture and memorize his pain. No, not numb. There was a trickle of something new. Jason’s torment felt good. His pain was like air scrubbed fresh by a summer downpour. His fear made me feel taller. The out-of-body experience was so strong that, when I shook myself awake, I scanned the woods expecting to glimpse myself. I really thought I might look around and see me, or a ghost of me, watching a new and improved and different me standing beside my brother.

  Of course, it was a mind trick born of shock, but I must have been rising out of the shock quickly. When I looked around a second time, it was to make sure we were alone.

  I walked in the direction of the trail, but perhaps just fifty feet away, soft moss among the trees spread out, a silent invitation. I coul
d see where the foliage thinned ahead. The oak and birch branches spread farther apart by the logging road. The afternoon sun brightened the sky. The forest shadows were short stabs of darkened quiet. I didn’t have a watch, but it couldn’t even have been two yet. I was tired. The moss was a mattress.

  I sat with my back to Jason. I couldn’t see him but I could hear him. He thought he was dying alone, cursing and crying and grunting. My father once told me that when you are in the woods, find a spot and sit still so the forest can forget you. “First things go all quiet, like the woods are listening for you. Then everything wakes up around you. Pay attention and the wind will whisper things. You’ll swear it says something if you listen long enough.”

  I waited. At first, all I heard was Jason struggling. Then birds sang to each other, first one or two at a time. More birds joined in and they sang louder and more often, confident in their safety. I listened to Jason cry, but I was thinking about the deer. After a while, I closed my eyes and pictured Times Square on New Year’s Eve. I would lose myself amid the city noise, drown in it. I would have Dad’s insurance money and I would not be owned anymore. With a smile on my lips, I fell into a doze.

  When my head bobbed forward, I rubbed my eyes. The daylight had dulled and Jason was quiet. I didn’t move until sure of my reward. The only breath I could hear was my own and the shallow sigh of the cold wind breathing on the nape of my neck. The wind said nothing to me. I took the silence for a message: God is not watching. Nature does not care. I stretched out stiff legs and crept toward the trail. I did not want to disturb the birdsong.

  The Scar was up to my left. I turned right toward town. I felt fresh, calm, and rested. My legs and feet were still wet but I was weightless. I memorized this feeling so I could revisit it. “Today everything changes,” I said. “New start. The slave is free.”