Forever Dead (3 page)

I slithered down a damp, rocky incline and felt the pack try to take me in one direction. I lurched the other way to compensate, just as a green beetle gyrated past my nose and landed ten feet in front of me, right on top of a large piece of some dead animal, its smell ripe and pungent. I came to a sudden halt, struggling to keep the pack's momentum from taking me with it.

“For God's sake, Cor. Give me some warning, will you?” said Ryan as he endeavoured to stop himself from slamming into me. But I ignored his flailing and kept my eye on the bug. I didn't want to lose it.

“This one's a beaut!” I said.

Ryan struggled up beside me.

“What's a beaut?” He stopped dead, as the stench reached him. “Oh, Jesus! What's the stink? Who died?”

“Probably part of a raccoon or porcupine, or maybe a deer. But there's no hair so it's impossible to tell.”

“You
would
call a dead raccoon a ‘beaut.'”

“Not the animal, Ryan. Take at look at what's on it.”

“Oh, gross. This is revolting, Cordi. How can you stand the stink?” Ryan pulled his shirt up over his nose. “It's crawling with bugs!” he said in disgust and looked away.

“They're not bugs —”

“I know, I know.” Ryan cut me short, pitched his voice higher, and I heard my own words coming back at me. “‘All bugs are insects but not all insects are bugs.' You biologists are all alike. But to me a bug is an insect is a bug. It's such a good guttural sound. Why waste it? You can really wind your disgust around that one little word:
bug
.” He dropped his voice so low that “bug” came out sounding like a twin of “ugh.”

Ignoring Ryan's diatribe, I pointed at the big green beetle balanced on a piece of the dead animal, its little antennae quivering in the wind, but Ryan kept his back studiously away from the beetle and moved upwind.

“Oh, come on, Ryan. This'd look terrific on the cover of one of your magazines. Maybe
Insect News
would buy it? Lime green. The art department will go nuts, and besides, I don't recognize it. Maybe it will be a brand new species and I'll become famous.” I heard the wistfulness creep into my voice and smothered it with a nervous laugh.

“Yeah, right,” said Ryan, who to my relief hadn't seemed to notice. He was too preoccupied with the stink of the dead animal. “I can see the headline now: ‘Beautiful bug on putrid porker.' Besides, you know
Insect News
pays diddly-squat.” Ryan sold his photos to the big-name magazines for good money, but bugs were seldom in great demand by the big guys, and so he usually tried to avoid taking their pictures at all.

I simply ignored him, having heard it all before. I eased off my backpack and pulled out another, smaller knapsack. Inside was a fisherman's tackle box where I kept all the vials and live jars for my day's specimens until I could transfer them at night to other large containers strapped to the undersides of our canoe seats. Insects weren't really my main line of research, but I'd taken enough courses and done enough research to know quite a lot about them, and that had landed me Jefferson's notoriously boring entomology course. That, and the fact that I was low woman on the totem pole. I rustled through the plant specimens, scats, and other animal paraphernalia I'd already collected and pulled out some jars with mesh lids.

“Cor, do we really need this? It's crawling with bugs.” Ryan's voice was muffled through his shirt. “Can't we just pretend we didn't see it? God, when I agreed to help you on this trip you never said anything about collecting bugs from dead animals. I'm fine with the mice and shrews and frogs, even the butterflies and spiders and the little nets and stuff, but frankly, this is revolting.”

“Look, I'm not sure I'm any happier about this than you are.” I sighed. “But I don't have any choice. I've got to come up with something for this taxonomy course that's not boring. Maybe if I offer some live labs along with all the dry dead stuff I can generate some interest.”

Interest my ass
, I thought. How many undergrads were going to flock to the taxonomy course this year? And if they didn't, what would the tenure committee think? Jim Hilson's smirk floated in front of me like an irritating mote in my eye. He'd make himself too valuable
to lose, and it was either him or me. I had less than two months to pore over the old course and come up with a new, madly exciting course before the fall term started. To boot, I had a paper that was close to being accepted for publication, but the reviewers wanted some extra analysis of my data. I wanted to concentrate on that, not on the entomology course.

Ryan dumped his pack rather noisily on the ground next to the dead beast, but the insect miraculously stayed put.

“You move the insect away from that ‘thing' and I'll snap its picture. Then you can collect your grubs for your live labs,” said Ryan in a voice that held itself away from the gruesome scene like a pair of verbal tweezers. He didn't mind taking the photos for me as long as he didn't have to get cozy with the bugs themselves.

“Really, Ryan. If I try to do that he'll fly. Just plug your nose.”

Ryan resignedly squatted down beside me. He unclipped his camera gear from his pack and extracted one of his close-up lenses and a tiny tripod and set to work. Once the photos were done I cornered the little bug with a miniature bug net and put it in one of my jars. I then collected a number of the grubs, some of which were stuck to a cedar twig that went into a jar as well. While I was waiting for Ryan to store his equipment away I slung my collection bag over my shoulder and padded back down the trail. The pines lining the portage acted like a sieve for the early afternoon sun, which squeezed through the cracks, weaving a tapestry of light patterns that swarmed over the forest floor. The thumping roar of the rapids, the moist smell of rich humus, and the sticky heat of the sun were like an elixir — it just was not possible to stay depressed out in the wilderness.

I walked further along the path a short way to see
what lay ahead of us and suddenly stopped, cocking an ear in the gentle breeze. I could hear something crackling in the woods off to my left, but it quieted when I stopped and all I could hear was the loud buzzing of a bee as it flew past me, the hot sun dripping on me like heated honey. The crackle began again and slowly approached me. I could see the bushes jerking and could clearly hear the soft sound of an animal swishing toward me. I waited, watching the branches moving, judging the animal to be small: maybe a coon, maybe a weasel. It couldn't be anything much bigger. I hoped Ryan wouldn't come gallivanting down the path and scare whatever it was. I stood statue-still on the path, holding my breath as the animal came closer until I caught a glimpse of a small, slim black form. Not a coon. Maybe a marten. Too big for a weasel. And then it was there on the path in front of me, its golden eyes glowing in its black face, one small black ear dangling at a strange angle. The cat stopped and stared back at me. Slowly I stooped and held out my hand.

“Hey ya, kitty.” The bedraggled cat held its ground, the leaves swished gently overhead, and then slowly, carefully, the cat moved, stiff legged, toward me; I noticed that it had only three legs as it brushed its body against my own.

“What happened to you, eh, puss?” I asked as I glanced uneasily at the cat's ear, matted with blood, its tip hanging on by a thread. There was a huge gash down the cat's left flank, caked with dried blood, as though some animal had raked it with its claws. But the loss of its leg was an old injury — there was no blood there. I reached out my hand and tried to scratch the cat, but it backed off and stood staring at me, not moving. Suddenly it meowed loudly and moved off down the portage trail. It looked back once and then stopped as if inviting me to follow, all the while emitting a low, haunting whine that made me
shiver. Why was the cat alone? Where was its owner? I called out to Ryan, and when he came loping down the path toward me he stopped dead when he caught sight of the cat.

“Is that a cat?” he asked incredulously.

I didn't answer. Instead I moved forward slowly, but the cat loped away into the woods ahead of me, its agility surprising after the loss of a leg. When I reached the spot it had run to I could see the cat sitting under some bushes looking back at me, waiting. I looked up and saw something glinting high up in the trees about a hundred yards into the bush. As I watched, it seemed to swing slowly back and forth, like a pendulum sparkling in the sun. The cat sat patiently waiting, tilting its head, silently, unnervingly watching me. I glanced down into its golden yellow eyes and suddenly felt an inexplicable coldness steal through my sweaty body like a thief. I couldn't fathom what it was trying to steal, but I didn't like the feeling one bit. Instinctively I backed away and then felt foolish as the cat broke the spell by running back toward me and rubbing itself against my leg.

“Someone must have left something behind, besides the cat,” I said as Ryan came up behind me. I pointed toward the woods.

“Twenty feet up a tree?” quipped Ryan.

I repositioned my collecting pack from my shoulder onto my back. “I'm going to take a look,” I said. “Just in case the cat's owner is hurt.”

“And I'm going to stay right here and have a snooze! No way I'm bushwhacking my way down that poor excuse for a trail. It's probably only a piece of tinfoil.”

“But what about the cat?” I asked.

Ryan shrugged, sat down, leaned against a tree, and pulled his cap over his eyes. “Let me know what you find.”

I peered unenthusiastically at the tangled undergrowth converging on the old trail. It was going to be a lovely bushwhack. Did I really want to do it? I glanced at the cat. Something in the way it stared at me sent a shiver of fear down my spine. I looked back at Ryan, who had slouched further down against the tree in a spectacularly contorted position that looked impossibly uncomfortable, and yet he was already softly snoring. A wisp of his red-blond hair, like a coiled golden snake, had escaped from the confines of his cap and now sproinged across his right eyebrow, which suddenly twitched in annoyance. I took a deep breath and waded into the woods after the cat, shoving aside the branches and twigs of the dead layers of jack pine that grabbed at my legs and arms. I stumbled over a tangle of hidden roots and watched in envy as the cat nimbly moved through the underbrush, patiently waiting for me each time I got tangled in the bracken.

Eventually the undergrowth thinned and we broke out of the bush into a glade, a legacy of the sudden violent death of a pine whose great gnarled and naked roots stood upended in a mocking reversal of life. After being torn from the earth, the great tree had toppled and taken out a handful of other younger trees. Directly in front of the downed tree and dangling from a rope thrown high over the limb of another tree was a medium-sized olive green canvas pack.

The glint I had seen from afar came from the sharpened edge of the blade of a bush axe. As I approached the pack I could see that it was held in place by the other end of the rope tied around the girth of the same tree. The result was that the pack swung below the limb by about five feet and above the ground by about fifteen feet. It was a professional job: whoever had hauled the food pack off the ground to keep the bears and other wildlife at bay was no newcomer to the bush. I suddenly felt like an intruder and did not particularly want to be caught drooling over someone else's food, but then again curiosity is sometimes a strong incentive to ignore common sense. I looked around. There had to be a campsite nearby.

I picked my way over to the tree. I could see that the rope had been wound around the trunk several times and then knotted, but the knot had been gnawed through by animals and the rope had broken, slithering around the trunk as the pack slipped until the rope had caught and wedged itself in a crotch of the tree. Not far enough for the animal, whatever it was, to get at the pack. There was a scrunched-up ball of blue paper litter caught in the rope. I pocketed it with the rest of the litter I'd picked up that day, which I'd burn on the fire that night, a reflex habit I'd gotten into years before. I couldn't resist pulling on the rope to feel the weight of the pack. I watched as it jerked at the end of the line, the axe head glinting in the sun. The
movement disturbed a cloud of flies that swarmed off the pack and circled it. I watched, puzzled, as they regained their quarry. I grabbed the taut line and shook it once more and watched the flies in growing alarm.

I struggled to free the rope from where it was wedged and then carefully paid out the rope and watched as the pack slowly descended to the ground. Even at a distance of a few feet the stench of rotten potatoes was overpowering. Who in their right mind would haul up a food pack and then let the perishables rot? It didn't make any sense, unless the owner was hurt, a decidedly unwelcome thought. I backed away and looked around in alarm, but no one came limping out of the woods or screamed at me to get away. Quickly I hauled the pack back up out of reach and secured the rope to the tree. How long did it take for potatoes to rot in the summer sun? I looked around for another way out of the glade and saw a trail leading back toward the portage trail from the direction in which I'd come. Too bad I hadn't seen it from the other end. I could have saved myself a slew of cuts and scratches. I'd go back that way. I scanned the grove looking for another route, the route taken by whoever owned this pack, and saw the cat sitting at the entrance to a trail, mutely watching me.

The narrow path wound through the jack pines and rock boulders and made its way toward the water. The cat darted off ahead of me and disappeared.

After a hundred yards or so the earthen path led me out into a well-used clearing with flat spaces for five or six tents. Beyond it I could see the blue waters of a small bay in the lake we had just paddled across.