Cold (45 page)

She made her way back to the Jeep and knelt down in front of the windshield.
 
Monty had released his seatbelt and fallen down into the passenger seat.
 
His eyes were open and he seemed more alert than before.
 
He was holding the sleeve of his coat against his bleeding forehead.

“We hit Del’s Land Cruiser,” she said.
 
“But this girl Noel was driving and she’s gone.
 
I’ve got her little girl here.
 
Can you get out?”

His eyes scanned the interior of the Jeep a moment.
 
“Can’t move,” he said finally.
 
“You go on and get her out of here.
 
Can you drive the Cruiser?”

“No.”

“Go.
 
Take her and I’ll wait for Leo.”
 
He tried to smile.
 
“I’m fine, really.”

She reached for the microphone.
 
“He’ll be a while.
 
Call him every few minutes.”

“Why?
 
To keep me awake?”

“To give you something to do.
 
Don’t want you to get bored.”

“What do I say to him?
 
Tell jokes?
 
They’re wasted on Leo.
 
He never had much of a sense of humor.”
 
Monty’s attempted a smile.
 
“But you know he loves talking about the weather.
 
Watches the Weather Channel all the time, like me.
 
We’ll be all right.”

“I know.”
 
Putting the microphone in his hand, she asked, “What do you need?”

He closed his eyes.
 
“Last woman who asked me that ended up my wife.
 
And she’s home with a couple of girls with the flu and regretting it right now.”
 
Opening his eyes, he said, “You go on.
 
I’ll be fine.
 
Get the kid out of this.
 
And find Del.”

She squeezed Monty’s hand around the microphone.

•

Norman found the bear carcasses, large boned, skulls with broad snouts.
 
Entangled in them, Raymond Yates’ camouflage pants and vest were caked with dirt.
 
What gray hair was left had grown to his shoulders.
 
The eye sockets were clean black cavities and without gums his teeth seemed abnormally long.
 
A neat bullet hole in the forehead suggested a third eye, the knowledge, insight and spiritual wisdom of the true hunter.

He cleared away the bones.
 
What meat was left on them was frozen rock solid.
 
Lifting Yates’ body by the arms, he stepped up out of the hole and began to drag it through the fallen timbers.
 
Yates’ boot heels carved grooves in the packed earth.
 
When he reached the cage he put Yates down carefully.
 
The gate swung open on squealing rusted hinges.
 
He dragged Yates inside and sat him up against the bars at the back of the cage.

“You know, I’ve thought about you a lot, Yates,” he said.
 
“It’s what you do inside, you know—think about things.
 
You had something a lot of people don’t have—you really believed in something.
 
You believed in this place—this land.
 
You believed in hunting and how it connected everything.
 
You believed in yourself, that you could live out here by yourself.
 
No need for anyone else.
 
Except maybe a few good dogs.
 
But then you let yourself become dependent.
 
You know it.
 
You relied on Pronovost, because all this belongs to him now, and only he would let you stay on it, hunt on it.
 
So you became like one of your dogs:
 
loyal, obedient, hungry.
 
He said fetch, you fetched.
 
And when it was necessary, he just put you down.”
 
Norman went over to the gate door and turned back to Yates.
 
“I’m not sure who did the deed.
 
Who put that hole in your forehead?
 
Pronovost?
 
Or did he farm the job out?
 
Maybe Woo-San?
 
Or was it my brother?
 
You know, don’t you?
 
You probably didn’t even know why—it was just so they might put me away a long time.
 
But look at you, right between the eyes.
 
You saw it coming.
 
What do you think in that moment, when you see it coming?”

Norman went outside the cage, shut the gate and closed the padlock.
 
As he walked away the padlock swung against the iron bars, sending a soft chime through the air.

•

Once Warren got below the frozen falls he knew they were all heading to the sawmill.
 
From the tracks in the snow he knew Norman had taken the long way on the logging road that circumvented the broad, low hill above the falls and that Pronovost was following him.
 
Warren started up the hill, which would cut his distance in half.
 
The climb was difficult, but the effort helped him build body heat against the cold wind and he knew he could get to the sawmill well before Pronovost.

It was on the north side of this hill that Raymond Yates had found a bear den.
 
“They like to den on the north side so the winter sun don’t melt the snow and flood them,” he had said when he came into the lodge.
 
It was still morning and he was already drinking from a flask.

“This one won’t have to worry about snowmelt,” Pronovost said.
 
“Let’s go get it.”

Something was different about all this.
 
Warren said, “It’s November.
 
They’re hibernating now.”

No one bothered to answer him.

They drove out the logging road at the base of the hill and climbed up to an outcropping of granite.
 
Yates’ dogs were frantic.
 
Woo-San had a strange-looking pistol and, leaning into an opening between the rocks, he fired one round.
 
It shut the dogs up, though they still milled around, their tails wagging.
 
Woo-San then got down on all fours and crawled into the rock crevice.

“This is nuts,” Warren said.
 
“He’s crawling into a bear den.”

“I’d send you,” Pronovost said, “but he fits in tight places better.”

“He’s had more experience too,” Yates said as he raised his flask to his mouth.

There came another shot, small and muffled.

Woo-San turned on a flashlight down in the hole, which was lined with twigs, leaves and grass.
 
Leaning down until his face was only inches from the granite, Warren saw the bear, its eyes were open but it seemed dazed and the forelegs were crossed over its chest.
 
There was no blood and he was breathing gently.
 
Pronovost began feeding rope down into the crevice.

“What you shoot him with?”
 
Warren asked and again no one answered.

Yates removed the flask from his hunting vest and, after taking a long pull, offered it to Warren.
 
“Looks like you could use a little tranquilizer yourself,” he said.

Warren ignored him and stared into the den at Woo-San.
 
“That what you did, tranquilize it?”

“You tell us how to hunt?” Woo-San said from down in the hole.
 
He was trussing up the bear’s shoulders with the rope.

Warren turned to Yates as he took another pull on his flask.
 
“Hunting?
 
You don’t believe this is hunting.
 
I know you don’t.”

“My father was the last real hunter out here,” Yates said, his voice melancholy drunk.
 
“No one
owned
the land then.
 
If you could hang some meat and survive off of it, that was all you needed.
 
It wasn’t a matter of po
ssess
ion.”

“I own it now,” Pronovost said.
 
“You want to stay on it, help us pull him out.”

“No way,” Warren said.
 
One of the dogs was nuzzling at his crotch and he pushed it aside with his hand.
 
When the floppy-eared hound sniffed his jeans again, Warren kicked him away.

“Hey now!”
Yates said.
 
“You don’t be kicking
my
dog!”

The dogs kept swarming around Warren, snouts cold and wet against his hands, tails thumping his legs.
 
Woo-San climbed up out of the hole and squeezed through the granite crevice.
 

“Come on now and cut the bullshit,” Pronovost said.
 
“Help us get him out.”

“Yeah.
 
Right.”
 
Warren started down the hill and one of the dogs yelped.

“Not my dogs!”
Yates shouted, following him.

“Fuck you.
 
Fuck all of you,” Warren said.
 
Yates took hold of his sleeve, and Warren turned and pushed him so hard he fell down.

Yates got to his knees, swearing.
 
He took his rifle off his shoulder, pointed it at Warren, and said, “Where you think you’re
going?
 
I take enough shit from those rich assholes that fly in here.”

“You’re not pointing that at
me?”
Warren said.

“Somebody kicks
my
dogs they’re looking to get
shot!”

Pronovost came down the hill and grabbed the rifle by the stock and yanked it out of Yates’ hands.
 
He turned to Warren while Yates got up off his knees.
 
Warren walked down the hill without once looking back.
 
It was a long walk and all he could think about was the bullet that would blow out the front of his skull before the sound of the shot even reached his ears.
 
He walked deliberately, without haste, and when he reached the overgrown logging road he knew he’d make it.

Now, when he reached the top of the hill, winded, sweat running freely beneath his clothes, he could see the logging camp below through the skein of branches.
 
He scanned the valley and saw no sign of Pronovost, who must still be around the western side of the hill.
 
Only one set of footprints—Norman’s—crossed the snow to the sawmill, where the carcasses were buried.
 
It was the last thing Warren had done in Pronovost’s employ last fall.
 
The trees had shed their leaves after several days of freezing rain blowing in off Lake Superior.
 
The bears had to be killed before the first big snow came, before the ground froze.
 
At dawn Pronovost, Woo-San and he went out to the logging camp in two trucks.
 
The bears were quiet until Pronovost shot the first one.
 
Then the rest of them moved around in the cage, frantically pawing at the bars, until each was dropped with a head shot at close range.
 
The reports echoed through the building and it was over in a minute.

Dressing out the bears took hours.
 
They removed what was valuable—gall bladders, paws, the leaner cuts of meat, hides—and loaded them into Pronovost’s truck.
 
He told them to clean up and then drove back up to the lodge.
 
Warren and Woo-San spent the late afternoon burying the carcasses.
 
It was hard business and Woo-San never let up.
 
The damp air smelled of blood and raw flesh. Warren’s back ached from digging.
 
After a while he threw down his shovel and went to the door and lit a cigarette.

“You no work hard,” Woo-San said.

“I no work period,” Warren said.
 
“I’m fed up with this.”

“You keep dig.”

“I no dig no more.”

Woo-San continued to fill in the hole.
 
As he tamped down the last of the dirt he said something in his own language—a prayer for the bears or perhaps a testament to his consuming sense of purpose and industry.
 
With Woo-San it was hard to tell.

Staying up in the woods, Warren circled the logging camp until he was around to the far side of the sawmill, where his tracks wouldn’t be detected.
 
Walking out from the trees, he took the constable’s .38 from the pocket of his coat.

Twenty-Two

Liesl walked slowly, hunched over so she bore most of the girl’s weight in the baby-sling on her left shoulder.
 
“What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Lorraine.”
 
Her voice was tiny, fragile, hurt.
 
A lovely girl’s voice.

“Do you know how far it is back to the lodge?”

The girl didn’t answer and Liesl decided not to repeat the question.
 
The child was about three years old; time and distance were different to her.
 
“I’ll bet it can’t be far,” Liesl said, trying to sound reassuring and certain.