* * *
—
It took the surveyors a few weeks to show up. In the meantime, I continued angling on the Balsam River. Although the beauty of the place didn’t change, my sense of it did. A heaviness lay on me, as if a death sentence had been handed down. Dying doesn’t require that a beating heart be stilled. The spirit of a place can be killed, and what’s left in the wake of its passing is an emptiness sad enough to make the angels weep.
The wolf remained my companion for a while longer. He was another reason for my concern. What would happen to him when the big machines came to cut the trees and bulldoze the land? Sometimes he sat at the edge of the woods and watched. But occasionally he would come to the very edge of the river and lie in the tall grass and wait for me to throw him a leftover ham bone or the last part of a pot roast or the occasional trout. He didn’t need my handouts. He’d healed and had become a hunter again in full, a powerful predator from the look of him. But he still accepted my offerings.
When the surveyors arrived, he vanished. It didn’t surprise me. His territory was being invaded and there was nothing he could do about it. I knew that feeling. I was pretty sure he’d gone back to wherever it was he’d come from, probably the safety of the deeper forests farther north. And then I heard news that sent an arrow of sadness deep into my heart. A wolf had been killed fifty miles north, shot by a farmer who claimed it had brought down one of his sheep. For several days after that, I wandered Weyerhausen Woods, thinking that maybe it was a different wolf that had been killed, hoping I’d catch a glimpse of the wolf with the white star on his forehead. Eventually I was forced to accept the truth, and I found myself grieving, shedding tears as if I’d lost a brother.
Still, my search of that ancient forest wasn’t completely in vain. Near the end, I found the carcass of a deer, a young buck with its throat torn out and its bones stripped of flesh. I could see that the animal had been dead a good long while, well before the wolf had vanished. It was frightening to think of the violence that must have been involved in that kill. But as I stood there, staring down at the empty cavity beneath the white arch of the rib cage, I felt something in me stir. Something ancient and brutal and startling in its appeal. And I thought that the wolf and I and my far-distant Neanderthal ancestor were not so different after all.
* * *
—
My first idea was to shoot Grogan, lie in wait somewhere in the woods when he came to check on the progress of the surveyors, and put a bullet from a hunting rifle through his heart. It happens all the time in Wisconsin, this kind of fatal accident. But it usually happens in hunting season, and that was still far away. Besides, I wasn’t a hunter and had no idea how to fire a rifle accurately. So hit and run, maybe? An ATV accident as he strolled through the meadow? But there were problems with that, too. For starters, I didn’t own an ATV. Also, I knew they were noisy little machines and there was no way Grogan wouldn’t hear it coming. And even if I did manage to run him down, there was no guarantee it would kill him. I’d probably have to hit him several times, and I couldn’t see that scenario playing out easily. No, dead immediately was best. If I were truly a Neanderthal, I thought, I’d simply smash his head in with a club.
That’s when I remembered an incident on the Balsam River many years ago. A neophyte angler had slipped on mossy rocks along the riverbank, fallen, and hit his head. He’d tumbled into the stream and had drowned in three feet of water. I rolled this over and over in my head and finally decided that if I planned it right, with one swing of a club, I could let the Balsam do the rest of my dirty work.
* * *
—
“You invited him to fish with you?” Robin looked at me as if I’d lost all good sense.
“Not exactly. I said that I would be willing to show him the spots for angling so that his lodge guests might have a better chance at being successful, if fishing is what they have in mind.”
“Those places are sacred to you, Perry.”
“Were sacred,” I said.
She eyed me carefully. “There’s something in it for you.” She put down her dinner fork and considered what that might be. Then her eyes widened. “You’re not hoping to weasel your way into his good graces so that you can continue to fish the stream?”
I looked away.
“Oh, Perry, tell me that’s not true.”
“That’s not true,” I said without conviction.
“Trout fishing is so important to you that you’d sell your soul to that devil?” She got up from the dinner table and left the dining room.
* * *
—
The next morning, the stream and meadow and woods were as beautiful as I’d ever seen them. The sky was liquid sapphire. The song of the larks reminded me of the sacred chants that greeted each day in ancient monasteries.
In the middle of the Balsam, I cast my line again and again, the fly lightly touching the surface of the water in exactly the same spot each time, a skill from a lifetime of angling.
Grogan arrived long after first light, his loud passage through the deep meadow grass making the larks fall silent.
“Goddamn dew,” he said shaking the water from the soaked cuffs of his pant legs. “First thing I’m going to do is lay an asphalt path along here.”
He stood at the edge of the stream, waiting for me to acknowledge his presence, but I continued to cast.
“I haven’t got all day, Palin.” Now that he had what he wanted, he dropped all pretense of civility.
“That’s the thing about trout fishing, Grogan. It takes you out of time for a while. Nothing matters but you and the stream and the trout. It’s harmony.”
“Did you bring me out here to feed me some poetic crap, or are you going to show me where to point my guests who want to catch trout?”
“I see you wore expensive shoes. Italian?”
“What the hell difference does it make?”
“They might be nice in a business meeting, but you have to be careful here. A few years ago, a man died in this river. Slipped on rocks just like those at the edge of the riverbank where you’re standing, hit his head, fell in, and drowned. A freak accident, but if you don’t watch yourself in a trout stream, Grogan, anything can happen.”
“And you’re telling me this because?”
“Just figured you might want to warn your guests.”
I reeled in my line slowly and made for the bank. When I’d arrived that morning, I’d set my creel in the grass near the spot where Armand Grogan now stood, growing visibly impatient.
I set my rod on the ground and lifted the lid on the creel.
“Let’s get on with it,” the big man said. “I haven’t got all day.”
“Have you ever seen a trout in the water, Grogan? Beautiful thing. A creature wholly suited to its environment after eons of evolution. It belongs there.”
I was talking too much. I could feel my heart hammering, my breath coming in shallow intakes. My hands were shaking as I stood looking down into the creel, which was a fine willow design, and which Robin had given me on my fiftieth birthday.
“Goddamn it, Palin,” Grogan said. “This is too much. I’ve had it with you. I’ve changed my mind. You’re never fishing this stream again. You can say goodbye to your precious fishies.”
My mouth was almost too dry to speak, but I said, “Take a long look into the water. If you’re careful, you can see them, holding themselves steady in the stream, their perfect muscles working against the current. It’s a lovely sight, one I promise you’ll never forget.”
“Screw the fish.”
“Just do it, Grogan,” I said in a guttural voice that startled me, a voice that was not mine but that of an ancient ancestor.
The tone seemed to take Grogan by surprise, and he did as that brute voice commanded. He turned away from me and bent over the stream.
; I reached into the creel and came up with the pipe wrench and swung it against the back of Grogan’s head. But he didn’t tumble into the stream as I’d intended. That block head of his was thicker than I’d imagined.
He straightened up, looking stunned, and stumbled backward, the weight of his huge body carrying him away from the river. When he fell, it was into the grassy apron. He lay there, looking up at me, his eyes glassy. I raised the wrench again and prepared to bash in his skull.
In the moment of lifting that weapon, however, I hesitated. The first blow had come from a place inside me, ancient and brutal. Killing was all I’d had in mind, and I’d swung with a full heart. But now, seeing him helpless on the ground, another more evolved and humane element of my being took over, one that stayed my hand so that I couldn’t bring myself to strike the fatal blow.
Which was all Grogan needed. He swept his leg, as powerful as a rhino’s, and knocked me off my feet. In the next instant, he was on top of me and had gripped my wrist and forced the wrench from my hand. He bent down inches from my face, his hot breath breaking over me. Blood from the wound I’d delivered ran down the side of his head and dripped onto my cheek.
“Not your nature, Palin?” he growled. “Couldn’t follow through with the kill? That’s what separates the sheep from the wolves. Oh, I’m going to have so much fun ruining your life. I’m going to put an end to everything you love.”
His eyes were afire with the thrill of the kill. He pinned me for an eternity, his blood falling drop by warm drop onto my face, before he finally lifted his great bulk and stood above me, his hands fisted on his hips.
I rose slowly, a man defeated, and gathered the wrench and my creel and my rod, and left the field of battle. While I slunk away, he laughed cruelly at my back. I turned once and saw that he stood with his legs spread wide, his arms raised in victory, in exactly the pose, I imagined, of a gladiator who’d just finished the slaughter of some poor schmuck in the sand of the arena.
When I got home, Robin took one look at me and her face filled with concern. “Didn’t go well?”
I slumped into an easy chair. “Do you know the name of a good lawyer?”
Robin knelt and gazed up into my defeated eyes. “What do you need a lawyer for?”
“Neanderthals used clubs,” I said. “But I’m a modern man, and modern men, I guess, use lawyers.”
* * *
—
It was the surveyors who found Grogan’s body, their attention drawn to the deep meadow grass by a huge cluster of noisy crows, which scattered at their approach. I never saw any photographs of the scene, but in several newspaper reports I read graphic descriptions of how Grogan’s throat had been savagely torn out.
Over and over in my mind’s eye, I have imagined how it must have been: That handsome brute of a man leaves the stream and starts through the meadow. In the dark beneath the pines, the wolf waits, powerful muscles tensed, all his senses tuned to the movement of his prey. He has hidden himself in the forest long and well, hidden himself from all men’s eyes, even mine, patient as a good predator must be. Now, at the perfect moment, he launches, a streak of animal fury, gray against the green of the tall meadow grass. He hits Grogan with the full force of his body. The man topples, the wolf all over him. Grogan’s great hands struggle to keep the sharp canines from his throat, but the wolf is a blur of savage movement, an inexorable killing machine, the result of millions of years of perfect evolution. Grogan never stands a chance.
The death of Armand Grogan became legendary in my neck of the woods. Man killed by wolf. The state’s wildlife authorities launched an intensive hunt, but they never caught even a glimpse of the wolf with the star on his forehead. For a while, we were all cautioned against going near Weyerhausen Woods or fishing the Balsam, but I paid no attention.
Grogan’s widow, his trophy bride, had no interest in pursuing her husband’s plan to build the lodge. She donated the land to the county, which created a preserve. I have always suspected that she wasn’t particularly sorry to be rid of a husband like Armand Grogan. Self-preservation is part of the nature of us all. If there were ever a person born to crush the human spirit, it was Grogan.
I’m a modern man. But here’s the thing. Always in my imagining of Grogan’s demise, when the wolf has finished his terrible business and stands with blood dripping from his jaws, he turns his head and fixes me with his glacial-blue eyes, and before he returns to the forest, a look of perfect, ancient understanding passes between us and something deep inside me whispers, “Brother.”
Sad Onions
A Hap and Leonard Story
JOE R. LANSDALE
Me and Leonard were cruising back from a fishing trip.
We’d been at a cabin that Leonard’s boyfriend, Pookie, owned on the lake. Pookie couldn’t make it, but we had the key, and we spent a partial day and a lot of the night sitting in lawn chairs on the cabin’s deck where it overhung the water, sitting with big glasses of ice tea, now and again casting our fishing lines. During the day we hid under the shadows of our wide-brimmed straw hats, and pushed them back on our foreheads at night to feel the cool breeze blowing off the lake, rippling the dark water.
We caught four fish and threw them all back. Those fish would have stories to tell. Hope word didn’t get back to Aquaman. Things might turn nasty.
Of course, the trip wasn’t about fishing, it was about me and Leonard hanging, without distractions, talking. We had both been through the mill as of late, and some time off was doing us good, and it probably wasn’t hurting my wife’s feelings either. She and my daughter were spending a day doing pretty much the same thing Leonard and I were doing, minus the fish.
Now it was over and it was deep night and I was driving us home. The moon was a silver slice. Shadows hung from the trees on either side of the narrow road like crepe paper at a funeral. We were fifty or sixty miles from home. I was driving Leonard’s pickup and he was dozing on the passenger side. There were a lot of curves in the road and the headlights danced around them. I wasn’t driving real fast, but I wasn’t messing around either. I was ready to be home and in my own bed with Brett.
The road straightened out finally, rose up a hill where the trees were thick on my left and thin on my right. As the truck’s headlights topped the hill a woman showed up in my lane, waving her hands.
I swerved and crossed into the left lane, wheeled around her, found the right lane again, skidded to a teeth-rattling stop that nearly sent me off the edge of the road, where I would have bumped over a short drop of weeds and rocks, and possibly would have fetched up against a barbed wire fence. If the fence snapped, they might have found us and the pickup wearing a couple of cows.
Leonard came awake with a shout, looked at me. I didn’t say anything. I got out of the truck and rushed back to where the woman stood in the road, wringing her hands, crying, and yelling, “He’s down there.”
She was as pale as I was, had her blond hair up in a pile. Strands of it had slipped loose and fallen across her face like leaking vanilla. By moonlight, and I assumed by any light, she had a very nice face. She was carrying a white purse. It was draped over her shoulder by a long strap. She was wearing an expensive-looking white dress and had on a silver necklace and matching double bracelets on both wrists; they clattered together like the wagging tail of a rattlesnake. She wasn’t wearing any shoes.
By that time Leonard was with us. His black skin looked like sweat-wet chocolate in the bright moonlight. It was that kind of weather, even late at night.
I said, “I’m going down for a look.”
“I’ll get her out of the road,” Leonard said. “Come on, lady.”
Leonard gently touched her arm, guided her toward his pickup. I watched them go away, him walking slow, her balancing on her naked toes like a ballerina, trying to put as little of her feet on the blacktop as she could manage.
I
went down the hill. I could see a white Lincoln at the bottom of it. A ridge of trees stood in front of it, and between the trees I could see the barbwire fence that ran behind them. The car was mashed up primarily against a sweetgum tree, though part of an oak had got into the act. White smoke was hissing out from under the hood. The windshield was shattered, but still in place, the front of the Lincoln was as crumpled as an accordion.
I looked through the driver’s window. There was an elderly black man behind the wheel, the side of his head resting against it, a semi-deflated air bag pushed up against him; it made him look like a man hugging an oversized pillow. His face was turned toward me and the front of his bald head was warped so bad it looked like some kind of special effect. His face was coated in blood, his mouth was open, and there were teeth missing. One of them had nestled on his blood-covered chin.
I tried to get the door open, but it was locked or jammed up. I went to the other side and that door came open. I crawled across the seat and touched my fingers to the man’s neck. He was as dead as my youth. When I got out of the car, I noticed the lady’s high heels were there by her door, where she had left them to better climb the hill.
I climbed up the hill and got my cell out of my pocket, tried to call 9-1-1 but there wasn’t any service.
I went to the truck and spoke through the open driver’s side window.
“Listen,” I said to Leonard. “You take her into town, or get to some place where there’s service and call. I’ll wait here.”
Odd Partners Page 4
