Oslo, Maine

by Marcia Butler

  Sandra loped down the hill and stopped just short of Pierre, who squatted beside a swath of dark rust saturating the ground. She inhaled a quick breath and covered her mouth, both involuntary reactions of shock. Pierre turned and smiled. She searched his eyes, expecting him to understand, but his face remained an expression of naïve discovery. He handed over several patches of fur that looked to have been ripped from an animal’s body. She fingered them, trying to summon up a reasonable theory. Then the irony struck; it was Pierre himself who, earlier that afternoon, had provided a partial explanation. His memory paper and the rifle shot. She threw the fur to the side and abruptly grabbed his hand.

  “It’s nothing,” she said. “Probably some animal fight. Come on. We should get back.”

  As they climbed, Sandra spied a parallel path of flattened grasses leading up the hill. Speckled blood had turned green to brown. Pierre saw it as well and pointed. But she pulled him along, even picking up the pace, trying to protect him from such ugly destruction. This was what raising a child must be like, she thought. Harrowing. Every day requiring a million decisions with so much left unspoken because it was more convenient or too awful, like this bloodbath. And now, Sandra herself was complicit. She’d hustled Pierre past where a dying or dead animal had been dragged, all the while acting as if nothing was wrong. Regardless of the fact that Pierre had no memory of this, how strange and sad that he played along.

  When they breached the crest, panting from the climb, a man was standing beside her motorbike, his back to them.

  “Luc?” Pierre asked, squinting into the setting sun.

  “Yeah, Pierre, it’s me,” Luc said, turning around. “Mrs. Kimbrough,” he added, touching his head as a greeting. He brushed a lock of wavy black hair off his brow, which then sprang right back.

  “What are you doing up here?” Sandra asked with suspicion. The man stood stock still, his legs like giant cylinders of bread, his arms puffy, even under his jacket. She’d always sensed that Luc could lift a house if the need arose.

  “Some chores for Claude … he asked me to clear his land.”

  An explanation of pure foolishness. She gave Luc a dubious look, then noticed he held a rifle behind his back.

  “Were you firing that rifle this afternoon?” she asked.

  Luc looked to one side and scuffed the ground with his boot.

  “What in hell?!” Sandra yelled, throwing her hands up in disbelief.

  “I saw a bunch of rabbits and thought I’d get one or two shots off. I didn’t hit anything …” He tapered off, as if missing his target forgave the behavior.

  “It was more like half a dozen at least, and you scared the crap out of me. And God knows who else.”

  “You want me to clear your land, too?” he offered.

  “I don’t need my land cleared, Luc,” she said with a sarcasm she doubted he would appreciate. What his specific deficits were, Sandra had never been told. His gram, who loved him with religious devotion, had summed it up—Luc was faithful to a fault. Edna could trust him to step on an ant or run into a fire. Celine christened him as harmless, a nonentity. Jim pled the fifth. For Claude, Luc was a henchman, and he held his job at the March due to Claude’s influence. Which was why, Sandra assumed, he was in the woods performing useless chores. Claude had Luc wrapped tight as a mummy.

  A thrashing sound behind a nearby grove of trees interrupted them. Luc dropped his rifle and they both ran toward the disturbance to find Pierre crouched close to the ground next to the carcass of a fair-sized animal. His body trembled, and he sobbed deeply in that noiseless way that made Sandra pray for him to take a breath. Luc got behind Pierre and engulfed him in his arms.

  “Whoa, Pierre. Steady,” he said into the boy’s ear.

  “Get away from him!” Sandra demanded, trying to pull Luc away.

  “I know what to do,” Luc said with unexpected authority, and continued to rock Pierre and whisper to him. To Sandra’s surprise, his efforts seemed to work. The boy soon relaxed and heaved a final spasm before sitting with his back against a tree. He even gave them both a smile.

  Now the scene spread out before her. Sandra quickly deduced that the animal had been killed in her clearing, then dragged up the hill, and finally deposited here with debris thrown around as camouflage. At first glance it looked to be a small deer. Then she saw its rounded snout poking through and fur too dark for a deer. Sandra caught Luc’s eyes. He palmed sweat from his forehead and looked away.

  “Pierre, honey? Come away from the animal. It’s not safe,” she said, kneeling down.

  “It can’t hurt us. It’s dead,” Pierre protested.

  “No, I mean it could be diseased,” she explained weakly. “Go back to my motorbike with Luc. Okay? I want to see what’s happened.”

  Luc reached for Pierre’s hand, pulled him up, and together they walked away.

  The area looked like a battlefield with no winners. She grabbed a few sticks off the ground and brushed away the debris. Now the horror of the animal’s death was too evident. The head pointed in one direction, the body in opposition, the legs bent as if still in mid-flight. A catastrophic gun blast to its neck had almost decapitated the thing. No doubt this was the moose’s calf she’d searched for while sitting in the truck waiting for Jim. All she could think of now was how truly lucky it was that Pierre had memory lapses. And with more luck he’d forget this entire episode, as well. Then she wouldn’t have to explain anything. Sandra, disgusted with herself for having such a thought, threw the branches to the side and walked away from the ruin.

  “Where’s your truck?” she asked Luc. “You’ve got tools, right? A shovel?”

  “Down that way,” he said, pointing toward a road Claude had cleared years ago.

  “Pierre, we’re going to let Luc take care of the animal. He’s going to bury it. He’ll be very good to it. Right, Luc?”

  “Yeah, I’ll give it a nice burial, Pierre.”

  Before they mounted the motorbike, Pierre took out his phone.

  “I want to remember,” he said without enthusiasm.

  Sandra grabbed it from him and shoved it in her jacket pocket.

  “Not this time, sweetie,” she said quietly.

  She kicked the motorbike to life. They headed south, leaving Luc to bury the moose calf. Trees flew by and the beauty of her land seemed sullied by everything she now understood—Pierre had been there when the calf got killed. She both hated and feared the thought. For the rest of the ride home, Sandra was only aware of Pierre’s cheek pressed against her back, her own heart pumping hard in her chest.

  THE MOOSE HAD returned to her dead calf every day. She had been waiting for him to rise. Now, the male human with black fur leaned over her calf and kicked his body. He dragged him some distance by the hind legs and heaved him into the back of a large metal container. This sound, her dead calf landing with a heavy thud, disturbed all surrounding nature. Birds ceased chirping. Insects went quiet. Wind died to nothing. The sun above traveled behind a cloud. The entire area diminished in its vitality. The moose watched the metal container travel down the path, her calf’s legs waving in the air. She feared for his fate. Would he rise? Would he ever enter the animal world beyond?

  HALLELUJAH

  CLAUDE CUT THE ENGINE AND COASTED to a stop. He sat inside the truck for several minutes and dragged on a cigarette. When he finally climbed out, he slammed the truck door as hard as possible. Only a murder of crows, dispersing from nearby power lines, reacted to his arrival. Not exactly the species Claude was hoping for. His house appeared as deserted of life as a beach after a shark attack. He leaned against the side of the cab and smelled his fingers. Reeking of smoke, they trembled. His nerves. At the one hospital visit Claude deigned to attend, Pierre’s doctor had ambushed him in the men’s room to accuse him of causing his family undue stress.

  Locate your patience.

  Ease up on your son.

  Try to be an engaged father and supportive husband …

  Thes
e were the suggestions of young Dr. Whatshisname, who’d apparently taken up social work as a side gig to Head of Neurology. At first, Claude indignantly pointed out that they were the ones who’d changed, not him. Then, well, they both had their dicks out, so what real choice did he have other than to promise he would try? But the only adjustment to his behavior he’d managed was this door-slam routine—a preemptive warning of sorts. Claude figured whatever the hell was going on in there, his family could damn well sort themselves out and greet him properly. Because what about his stress?

  Claude lit up again and imagined them actively ignoring him. Pierre was most likely completing his tenth book in as many days. And Celine, all tucked up and sassy in her new bed with her new shoes at the far end of the house (where he entered by invitation only), was surely out like Lottie’s eye. If that’s the way they coped, goody for them. For his part, he was back to forty a day. Claude tamped down the stub on the sole of his boot and tucked it into his back pocket; his renewed habit was still a secret. Yes, they were in there. He could feel it.

  He walked up the stone path and let himself into the mudroom, jammed with at least twenty pairs of rubber clogs, dozens of useless high-end gardening tools, and every kitchen gadget (never opened) known to womankind. Paper grocery bags were stacked floor to ceiling—their reuse, other than as a fire starter, questionable. In fact, he doubted any of this crap would see sunshine before the end of civilization. Claude shimmied through the spoils of a mere fraction of Celine’s more recent catalogue acquisitions and entered the kitchen, which appeared much cleaner than when he’d left for work that morning. Claude saw this as a sign that the circus act Celine had performed the previous evening actually meant something.

  He’d returned home the previous night at a reasonable hour for a change, and they’d scarfed frozen dinners of mystery meat in about eight minutes flat. As soon as Pierre excused himself to read Beowulf, or some such book on animals, Celine dropped to her knees and clasped her hands under her chin. She lifted her face to the heavens and vowed to the lord above that she was done with the pills. Done, done, done. Done. Claude’s bullshit needle spiked to eleven. She’d promised to ditch the pilules on multiple occasions, just one example being a tragic episode involving ice-cream cones in the truck with Pierre. But now, as he recalled Celine’s submissive posture and the fact that she had prepared a meal last night for the first time in as good as forever, Claude weighed the pros and cons.

  On the one hand, there’d been something in her face he’d not seen for quite some time: a determined set to her mouth coupled with a brightness in her eyes. Which reminded him of when they’d first met. When she was still a mystery. When he was desperate to understand her nature, which he imagined would ease the ache in his body because he badly wanted to be with her. And the very fact of this strange and wonderful ache confirmed for Claude that he’d found a treasure of a woman.

  On the other hand, it looked like a botched voodoo ritual gone high Catholic or, more aptly put, a skillet of shit on high heat. Because as long as he’d known Celine, she’d never prayed. Nowhere near God-fearing. Yet there she was, genuflecting as if to Jesus himself.

  On the third hand, earlier in the day while working his shift at the March, Claude found himself praying that he’d return home to that same face. That her willpower was real and so was her promise. Which was probably why he’d stopped at the Robinet, Oslo’s dingiest watering hole, to swallow a few shots and chain-smoke half a pack before coming home. To talk himself out of that hope.

  Now he looked around the kitchen and shook himself free of any doubt because, hallelujah. The dishes had been washed and dried, the floor mopped, and mail was stacked on the kitchen counter waiting for his inspection. The napkin holder had been stuffed to capacity, and bottles of vitamins (which none of them ever took) lined the windowsill. Even the chairs had been tucked under the table with precise spacing. Celine just might have made it through the first day of the rest of her life after all.

  Pleased with this upgrade to his home life, Claude shuffled through some bills and tossed about twenty catalogues into the trash bin. He opened the refrigerator, removed a half-eaten lasagna, and dumped the contents on top of the catalogues—the tomato sauce meant as a deterrent, should Celine spy something irresistible. His stomach growled. He grabbed a cookie from the mason jar and snuck a few swallows of milk directly from the carton. By now, five whole minutes had passed. With his family an obvious no-show, Claude considered his options. He could have a shower, because he stank (but who actually cared?), or hunker down in “his” bedroom to binge on the Hunting Channel.

  Then, a lone rubber band on the kitchen table grabbed Claude’s attention. The kind wrapped in wrinkled cloth, obviously for a woman with long hair. And this one had silver strands strangling the bright-pink color. Were these her paw prints all over his kitchen? Come to think of it, he smelled her. Violets. Saint Kimbrough. Merde. After a soul-crushing shift featuring an argument with Luc about that damned dead moose calf, and then drinking and smoking himself into a dither at the Robinet, it seemed a man couldn’t even return to the comfort of his filthy kitchen. Claude’s hope promptly took a kamikaze.

  He stuck his head into Pierre’s bedroom. MIA. Not exactly a surprise. Still, it stung. More deflating, the boy’s room mirrored why he felt like the weird uncle who visited every third year. Books smeared across the bed. Music volumes stacked on his desk. That godforsaken violin propped in a corner. He perched at the edge of Pierre’s bed, dragged his hands through his hair, and allowed himself a rare moment of self-pity. The details of his son’s life, and the fact that none of it rang a single cowbell in all of Maine, brought up a terrible sense of alienation. He felt useless, and a fraud. His nerves. The March. His family. The stress. And then, there was Luc Sibley and that dead moose calf.

  Luc had been Claude’s pet project and ongoing disaster since Edna asked that he secure him a job at the March. The mill wasn’t union, but a long history of nepotism made it as good as. A man had to just about kill somebody to get fired from the March. And it was easy enough to squeeze Luc in, since Claude was a shift foreman and wielded power. Before too long, Edna wanted more—would he mentor her grandson? Her term. And why not? Initially, the man’s slowness appealed to Claude. Luc was malleable and settled into his bottom-level rank at the March nicely. That Claude used Luc from time to time for his own purposes, well, he saw it as hazard pay. And at this point well deserved, because Claude discovered soon enough that Luc operated in ways that didn’t yield nearly enough to justify mentoring him. But the most annoying thing about Luc Sibley was, in order to shift the man’s ass into overdrive, commands had to be stated over and over. And over.

  “There’s a dead moose calf up north on my land. I need you to pick it up and bring it down to the shed,” Claude had ordered a week earlier.

  “Uh-huh,” Luc said, eyes veering to his left.

  “Look at me. Get yourself up to the northern end of my property.”

  One nod.

  “Find that moose calf.”

  Slow nod.

  “Bring it down, clean it up, butcher it.”

  No nod.

  “Luc. Pay attention. Get that animal down here before it goes gamey.”

  Multiple rapid nods.

  Simple head movements, Claude knew, didn’t necessarily translate into action. So.

  “Okay, here we go. Three time’s the charm. You’re gonna use my truck and drive up north on my road. Right? You’ll find the dead moose calf behind a clump of trees with leaves and stuff thrown over it. Easy. Then you’re gonna bring it directly to the shed at the far side of the March. No detours. Lay it out on the table and carve the thing up. Just like I taught you. Okay? Then wrap it up and throw the meat in the freezer. Got all that? Do it today. Like, now.”

  “You got it, Claude,” Luc assured him.

  “Go on, then. Get it done. And remember, mum’s the word.”

  “Huh?”

  “You’re on the
QT.”

  “Um … what? I mean …”

  “It’s a secret! Don’t tell anybody.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Claude had left Luc alone for the entire week, figuring he couldn’t possibly mess it up, what with three distinct sets of instructions. Big mistake. Because earlier that morning, Claude discovered the freezer in the shed was empty. He stormed through the March, which took about fifteen minutes, and then finally found Luc in the bathroom taking a pee. The man was midstream, so Claude waited till he zipped up and then muscled him into a stall to rectify a now potentially risky situation.

  “What the hell, Luc? It’s been a week. Is that moose calf still in the woods rotting its way into oblivion?”

  “Yeah, probably.”

  “What does it take for you to follow simple orders?!” Claude yelled.

  “Sorry.” Luc flicked the seat down and sat.

  Claude loomed over him and pointed to Luc’s crotch. “Sorry helps about as much as your limp dick.”

  “I meant to do it, but Gram said—”

  “When’re you gonna act like a grown man? That’s what I’ve been trying to teach you.”

  “I know, but see, Gram had me on lots of errands this week. I guess I forgot …,” Luc stammered, now standing and shifting from foot to foot like he needed to pee again.

  “Your gram put me in charge of you. That means I’m supposed to be your priority.”

  Luc slumped back down on the toilet seat and palmed his eyes.

  “Look at me,” Claude said.

  Luc opened one eye through two fingers.

  “I got you this job, for Christ’s sake. Plus, I taught you the ropes, saved your ass a bunch of times. Am I right?”

  “I guess.”

  “Sure I’m right. But you gotta do as I say. Now get up there today. Bury the thing. And bring me a token—an ear, a tail, a hoof—anything so’s I know you’ve done it. And if I don’t find a body part on my desk tomorrow, you’ll be on shit duty for a month.” He flushed the toilet with a stomp of his boot to reinforce Luc’s potential job demotion, and walked out.