Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet (9 page)

“Before I had time to fire off a shot, the cougar pounced on me, knocking the rifle from my hands and then raking my face with its claws. Like the Roman gladiators of old, I wrestled the big cat with my bare hands, until finally, on the verge of exhaustion, with the beast’s hot breath on my throat, I freed my kukri knife from its sheath—” Quick as lightning, Salisbury snatched the knife from its sheath and slashed it through the air above the campfire: “—and beheaded the brute with a single blow.”

“Whoa!” Lester said.

Salisbury returned his knife to its sheath.

Lester admired the fangs decorating his hatband. “Those’re cougar teeth?”

Salisbury nodded. “Took ‘em as a trophy,” he said, “and to remind me of the sheer cunning of my
true
enemy … the North American skunk ape.”

“I oughta get me one of them cookery knives,” Lester said. “Gotta problem with cougars myself.” He waggled his eyebrows. Eliza glared at him and he quickly wiped the leer off his mug.

Salisbury glanced at me. “You’re no stranger to scars yourself, Levine.”

“Comes with the job,” I said.

“But you didn’t always … ?” He searched for the word.

“Bounce? Sure feels like it sometimes.”

“I noticed your news cutting behind the bar.”

“Hell, I didn’t put that there. Not exactly something I’m proud of.”

“You were a prizefighter?”

Lester announced me like a ring emcee, “‘The Bigelow Bleeder’ Reggie Levine!”

“I thought I was …” I said, “Once.”

“What happened?”

“You saw the cutting,” I said, maybe more huffily than was necessary. “I got my fucking ass kicked.”

* * *

Salisbury took the watch, while the rest of us bedded down for the night. Lester and Eliza were cocooned inside a ratty single sleeping bag. I’d pitched my bedroll on the other side of the campfire. I lay back and stargazed, trying with little success to ignore the racket Lester was making. After complaining at length that he wouldn’t sleep a wink, Lester had promptly passed out, and was now snoring loud enough to, if not wake the dead, at least ensure I couldn’t sleep. Eliza was apparently accustomed to the noise; nestled in the crook of his arm with a peaceful look on her face, perhaps dreaming of the opportunity that awaited her in Austin, Texas, if we could only catch the skunk ape. Soon she was softly snoring, too. I wondered if instead of sheep, she counted ejaculating mongoloids to help her doze off.

I preferred thinking about the skunk ape.
Was it really out there?
I thought back to when I was a kid and my Momma first warned me about the shaggy-furred beast with the devil-red eyes that stalked the Bigelow Sticks. I remembered how easy it was to dismiss such things in the cold light of day. But the night has a funny way of clouding rational thought, and I moved Walt’s shotgun a little closer to my bedroll.

I glanced around the clearing for Salisbury, but couldn’t see him anywhere. He might have been stalking the woods, patrolling the camp perimeter, watching over us from the boughs of a tree. For all we knew, he’d retired to the Minnie Winnie and was sleeping in relative luxury. But somehow I didn’t think so.

As the campfire crackled, and Lester snored, and night noises echoed from the woods, it suddenly occurred to me that Salisbury had left the three of us staked out in the open clearing like sacrificial goats, and I recalled what Walt had said about not trusting the skunk aper, and a chill shivered down my spine. Forcing the thought from my mind, I shut my eyes and tried willing myself to sleep.

But Lester’s snoring made that impossible; it sounded like Leatherface was rampaging through the camp with his chainsaw. “Lester, keep it down!” In frustration, I hurled one of my boots at him. It thwacked Eliza on the head and she woke with a startled curse, lurching up in the sleeping bag and checking the sky for more falling footwear. Fortunately she was too groggy to link the boot to me, and I was able to feign sleep until she settled back down. Actual sleep was out of the question; after all that excitement, I needed a piss.

Earlier that night, I’d watched in disgust as Lester had whizzed into an empty beer can. I might not have said anything, had he been subtle about it. But he was whizzing all over the place, even getting some in the can. I said, “You can’t find a tree? We’re in the damn woods!” He’d siphoned the last few drops into the can and said, “With that thing out there? You must be crazy.” Faced with the prospect of venturing alone into the pitch-black woods to pee, I could now see his point.

I looked around camp, but couldn’t find any more empties. Maybe Lester was hoarding them for his own future use? I dreaded to think what might happen when he needed a dump. I tried holding out till dawn, but it was no use.

With a sigh, I climbed from my bedroll, fetched up Walt’s shotgun, pulled on one boot, retrieved the other boot with which I’d clobbered Eliza, and then I went out into the woods to pee. I chose a tree, propped Walt’s shotgun against the trunk beside me, and was emptying the Keystone from my bladder, sighing with relief … when I heard stealthy footsteps stalking through the brush towards me. My senses screamed a warning siren and I whirled towards the noise, the last few drops of piss spattering the leaves at my feet. “Salisbury?” I hissed into the darkness. The footsteps stopped abruptly at the sound of my voice.

Then a breath of wind whispered through the trees and I smelled a musky animal odor that prickled the hairs on the nape of my neck.

I glanced down at the tree where I’d left—

Walt’s shotgun wasn’t there!

Had someone—or something—stolen it while I was peeing? No, I must have knocked it to the ground as I whirled towards the footsteps; it had to be lying somewhere on the shadowy forest floor.

But before I could search for it, the footsteps started towards me once more.

And they were no longer stealthy, they were gathering speed, as whatever the thing was, and it sounded big, sounded huge, charged me from the darkness.

With a panicked cry, I turned and ran—

Into an overhanging tree branch that clotheslined me like a wrestler.

Splayed on my back, dazed, I could only watch in helpless terror as the monstrous silhouette loomed through the woods—before the beast burst from the brush with a bellowing roar. Rearing onto its hind legs, the monster towered above me, slashing powerful arms, claws glinting in the moonlight, saliva spraying from the fangs within its cavernous maw. I cowered against the ground, ducking my head as the wicked claws raked the air above me. Tensing itself to pounce down upon me, the creature took a step forwards—

And sprang the trap that lay buried in the leaves between us.

Monstrous steel jaws snapped shut around its waist, nearly cleaving the creature in two, and its roar became a keening cry of agony. It began thrashing wildly to free itself from the trap, but the vicious steel teeth only dug deeper into flesh and bone, blood steaming in the cold night air. Its struggles slowly weakened, the creature gave a pitiful sigh, and then it thudded to the ground and lay motionless.

Before I could catch my breath, I heard footsteps crashing through the brush behind me. Human, this time. I looked around and saw a flashlight beam ghosting through the woods towards me. “Levine!” Salisbury cried. “Here!” I called back, staggering to my feet as Salisbury and the others broke through the brush and found me. Salisbury shone his flashlight at me and gave a cry of horror and I feared the beast must have gored me.

Then he said, “Damn it, Levine— Put yourself away, man!”

I glanced down and saw my johnson flopping from my open zipper. I hadn’t had time to tuck it away before the beast bushwhacked me. I quickly zipped myself up.

Lester grinned and said, “Cold tonight, huh?”

He’d found Walt’s shotgun and I snatched it away from him.

“Shut up, Lester.”

Eliza gave a sudden gasp.

I double-checked my zipper.

“Mr. Levine! You’re hurt!”

Blood was dripping into my eyes; I must’ve cut my forehead when I ran into the tree branch.

“It’s nothing,” I said, because that’s what you say, but the wound was already starting to throb. I turned towards Salisbury. “Where the hell were you? The damn thing almost killed me!”

Salisbury shouldered past me, shining his flashlight down at the trap.

Lingering back with the others, I said, “Is it … ?”

“It’s dead,” he said.

He raised his flashlight, shining the beam into the woods.

“I just hope the mother isn’t out there.”

“Mother?” I said.

“Christ, how many of these things
are
there?” Lester said.

I warily approached where Salisbury was crouching in front of the trap.

Clamped between the steel teeth was a little black bear. The critter looked as cute and harmless as the star of an old Disney nature flick. Not a cub, but definitely a juvenile, and probably the runt of the litter at that.

“Oh, Mr. Levine …” Eliza said. “You killed Yogi Bear.”

“Yogi, my ass,” Lester cackled. “That thing’s smaller than Boo.”

“It … it all happened so fast,” I said. “I was on the ground … It looked much bigger in the dark.” Nobody said anything. “
Huge
,” I insisted.

Salisbury released the trap and wrenched the carcass from its jaws.

“Jesus—” I said, looking at the trap in horror. I realized how close I’d come to taking the last piss of my life. “One misstep and that could’ve been me.”

“In future,” Salisbury said, “perhaps you should check with me first before blundering through my perimeter in full dark to relieve yourself.”

“Or start whizzing in cans,” Lester suggested.

I could barely bring myself to look at the little dead bear.

“We should bury it,” I said.

“What’s this ‘we’ shit?” Lester said. “
You
killed it.”

Salisbury looked at me curiously. “Should we say a few words, too?”

I said, “I meant we should bury it before any game wardens find it. Even if it was bear hunting season, which it isn’t, I’m pretty sure there’s laws against killing … you know …” I trailed off.

“Cubs?”

I hung my head in shame and gave a heavy sigh. “Ah, hell.”

Salisbury considered for a moment.

“Very well,” he decided, “bury it.”

But first he unsheathed his knife, sliced the bear’s belly open, and began removing its entrails and tossing them splat at my feet.

“For the bait buckets,” he said.

Made sense, the bear guts smelled ripe enough for the job; I kicked them to Lester. “For the bait buckets,” I told him.

“The what?” he said, because he’d been passed out and had missed all the fun.

“Oh, you’ll see, Lester …” I said. “You’ll see.”

One day on bait detail was plenty enough for me.

Lester said to Salisbury: “Could you cut me off a piece for a trophy?”

I didn’t hang around to see what piece he chose.

I staggered back to camp and fetched a shovel to bury the bear.

And yeah, I did say a few words, mostly how goddamn sorry I was.

The next day I was still feeling foolish and guilty about the bear, and my head was pounding where I’d thumped it against the tree branch. I was cranky-tired from lack of sleep, and starting to think our great skunk ape safari was in fact nothing more than a wild-goose chase. But hey, at least I was driving.

Lester and Eliza were on bait detail.

Eliza was doing the lion’s share of the work, her sleeves rolled up and her hair tied back like Rosie the Riveter, as she slopped out the buckets from the back of the camper. Even splattered in Salisbury’s godawful bait concoction she still managed to look defiantly pretty. And surely the porn biz couldn’t fling anything worse at her than
this
goop. She seemed to be enjoying the adventure; compared to relieving randy mongoloids, or gyrating topless at The Henhouse, it must’ve been a refreshing change of scene.

Lester was taking to the task with far less enthusiasm. He could barely manage to prise the lids from the buckets and pass them to Eliza before the stench of the bait overwhelmed him and he started heaving. In half-assed emulation of Salisbury, he’d adorned the crown of his Bigelow Baboons cap with the bear’s teeth—its milk teeth, I noted, with another pang of shame.

I called out cheerily, “How’re you getting on back there, Lester?” Then I gave the loudspeaker a good long blast of the skunk ape’s mating call to drown out the sound of him cursing me.

But the novelty of driving, less so Lester’s discomfort, soon wore off.

By midday, the scorching sun had turned the camper into a sweatbox on wheels. There was no escaping the stifling stench of the bait. The fetid fumes fogged the windshield; dirty brown pearls of condensation jeweled the roof of the camper, dripping down over my head like a Chinese water torture.

Worse than that, I had no idea where the hell we were.

Before setting off that morning, I’d removed Salisbury’s map of the Bigelow Sticks from the wall above his camping bed, and placed it on the passenger seat to guide me. But as Salisbury barked directions to me from his rooftop hunting deck, seemingly at random, it soon became apparent we were completely and hopelessly lost.

I patted down my pockets, searching for my cellphone. When I couldn’t find it, I recalled Walt waving to me as the camper left The Henhouse.

I’d thought he was saying:
Fare-thee-well
. Turns out it was:
Don’t forget your cellphone
. I called back to Eliza. “You bring your cellphone?” I knew better than to ask Lester.

Still slopping out the bait buckets, Eliza glanced back at me and blew a stray strand of hair from her eyes. “Who you calling, Mr. Levine?”

Not wanting to panic them, I said: “Just figured to let Walt know where we are.”

Or vice versa.

And if we really were lost, Walt would need time to muster a search party.

Eliza fished her cellphone from the pocket of her cut-offs and thumbed it on.

“Let me guess,” I said. “No signal?”

“Nope,” she said. “All five bars—”

Then the camper hit a bump on the trail, the phone slipped through her greasy fingers and landed with a plop in an open bait bucket, submerging beneath the sludge. Eliza shouted, “Shitfire!”