Hard Ground (10 page)

“Your point is beyond my horizon.” Bapcat had learned this phrase from the Russian and liked it.

“Imbalance invariably brings eventual violent reaction.”

“Like Bunker Hill and all that?” Bapcat's knowledge of his country's history was limited at best.

“No, your country's revolution was fomented and orchestrated almost exclusively by the rich, who didn't want to pay more taxes to England. The rhetoric was woven around the concept of freedom, but make no mistake, it was and is about the colony's rich protecting their money. If true human freedom had been the goal, the originators of the separation would have made sure there were no more slaves. It took you another war and millions of dead to make this happen. America says many fine words about freedom, but they are just often a mash of words. Money is what drives your country, Lute. All countries.”

“The strike here was a kind of revolution,” Bapcat offered.

“If widely construed, that is perhaps true, but at least the strike came from the bottom, from the workers themselves, not from the top. Those suffering the conditions and privations themselves fought to change them.”

“The miners lost,” Bapcat said.

“They all lost. Mr. Ford down in Detroit will steal labor from here by offering more than mine operators are willing to pay. The die is cast, and there will come a day in this country when the imbalance between rich and poor, have and have-not, will become so extreme that the little people of this country will rise up and take what they think is rightfully theirs, or more precisely take away from others what the masses view as not rightfully theirs.”

“This has happened in other places?” Bapcat asked.

“France, and I think it will soon happen in my Russia as well.”

“A Russian revolution,” Bapcat asked. “Who will win, the czar?”

“No, the czar is impotent, uncaring, and will be easily displaced, but it is impossible to predict what will replace royalty in the short term. Long term, all Russians will suffer and lose. It has always been so. We Russians have no experience in determining our own fate, individually or collectively. We are a political vacuum, naïfs awaiting disaster. First came Genghis Khan and his Mongols, later Bonaparte. Who and what will come next?”

“You came here,” Bapcat said.

“An exception proving the rule, my friend.”

“Like our Swedish friends, then?”

“Perhaps.”

“We need to call John Hepting and the coroner and get them down here,” Bapcat told his partner.

“They will shed few tears,” Zakov said. “Death in these surrounds is an unwanted but familiar neighbor. More importantly, what of the good mule, Joe?”

“I think we will build a shelter for him, mebbe where the truck is now. We can build something else for the truck.”

“At least the creature will be outside,” Zakov said.

“But it will take us a while to build his shelter for him. We'll have to keep Joe with us until breakup comes, and he can be outside.”

“I foresee extremely unsettling domestic conditions,” the Russian carped.

“I've been saying the same thing since the first day you showed up,” Bapcat quickly countered, thereby ending the interchange and discussion. He rolled a cigarette and lit it. The violence of last year's strike had never left him. On Christmas Eve more than seventy innocents had died, and he and the Russian and their friend Dominick Vairo had helped recover the bodies, mostly young children.

Cuba had been about principles, it seemed to Bapcat, fighting a foreign enemy for your country. But the strike had been about money and power, and nothing more, and this fact left him with an annoying edge that he was having trouble blunting. Having little formal education made the deputy warden self-conscious about his deficiencies and created in him a determination to improve himself. He wanted only to do a good job by doing the right thing and enforcing the law, but how did a man decide what right was? Who determined this? He didn't know.

Bapcat exhaled. In this case, right was taking care of the mule. That was an easy one. He knew most situations would be far more complicated and jumbled, and he hoped he would be up to the many tasks ahead.

“Have you considered that the state may adjudge this mule to be its property, not yours?” Zakov asked.

He had not. “Well, good. If Joe's theirs, I guess they can't complain about the money we spend on him, and if he ain't theirs, he's ours, and they won't have much say in what we do with what's rightfully ours.”

“The dispatch with which you speed to the simplest solution is forever astounding,” Zakov said, “and quite commendable.”

“Go find a telephone and call the sheriff. I'll stay with the brothers and think about all the things we should be doing for our new partner.”

“You propose a lowly mule as our partner.”

“Well, he
is
living with us, ain't he?”

“Temporarily, that is, for the time being.”

“Well, I don't know about that,” Bapcat said. “I done some thinking on the subject. Did you look around and sniff the Swedes' place when we were inside? I think our Joe, unlike them Brazilian boys, your Frenchmen, seems pretty civilized and fits right into our place. The house hardly stunk at all.”

Zakov looked as if he had something to say, but instead he took his snowshoes and announced he would go find a phone and call Sheriff Hepting. He turned after a couple of steps and looked back. “If our civilized mule suffers failings, I will not be cleaning up after him.”

Bapcat smiled. “Aren't you always lecturing me to see the best in people?”

“A mule is not people.”

“Well, I guess we're gonna find that out,” Bapcat said.

Black Beyond Black

A Grady Service Story

Doctor Vince Vilardo was standing beside his new 1974 Ford Country Sedan, gnawing his meerschaum pipe, which Conservation Officer Grady Service had never seen him light. Service eased shut his door and walked over to the internist-turned-county medical examiner.

“What's going on?”

There were four sheriff's cruisers and a state cop blue goose all parked in front of the small house, and first in line was Sheriff Hugh Vale Swick's gold Buick station wagon with its outlandish white five-point stars on the doors, roof, and hood.

Vilardo said in a hushed tone, “Bear carried off a three-year-old girl about an hour and some ago. Took her right off the back porch as her mama watched.”

“Who's on the trail?”

“Nobody. Swick called Imago Moiles to bring his dogs.”

Jesus
. “Moiles couldn't find a Percheron in a pony stall.”

“That's why I had the county call you,” Vilardo said.

Thinking out loud, Service said, “Let's hope Beany Moiles leaves her old man to home. He'll be deep into his cups this time of day.”

Beany was Barbara Jane Moiles, Imago's wife, and the actual tracker-hunter-dog breeder in the family if you ignored her bigmouth husband. The peculiar couple bred special bear dogs that reputedly brought top dollar from houndsmen around the eastern US.

“Beany shows alone, point her at me, and tell her to leave the dogs in her truck until we can talk,” said Service, who feared dogs, all sizes, all breeds, all temperaments.

His concerns aside, Service knew that Beany had a strike dog named Stagger Lee, said to be the top bear dog in the state. But he didn't want any dog on the scent until he and Beany could map out a plan.

“If Imago shows up alone, play dumb. I don't want that drooling asshole anywhere out in the woods with me.”

“I alerted Rudi Venable, too,” Vilardo said.

Venable was a longtime area veterinarian, a native Yooper, and someone who spent most of his spare time hunting and fishing. Service knew that the young medical examiner was thinking about what would happen after they killed the bear. Venable could perform a bush autopsy and organ necropsy to verify stomach contents. Service didn't dwell on this aspect. He needed to find the animal and the child first.

“Thanks, Vince,” Service said. “Good call on Rudi.”

Service retrieved his Remington .12 gauge shotgun from the soft case in his 1973 Plymouth Fury, checked to make sure the weapon was loaded with slugs, including one in the pipe, and dumped a handful of shells into his pocket. He pulled on his rucksack, shrugged it into position on his shoulders, and headed across the small grassy backyard behind the house.

“Hey,
you
,” a voice yelped. Service saw the corpulent Sheriff Swick sashaying toward him. “Just what do you think
you're
doing here?” the man demanded officiously, puffing with exertion from having crossed the small backyard. Hugh Vale Swick was blockily built with blue veins spidering out to his cheeks from the bridge of the piggish snout on his booze-drenched puss. “Halt,” the sheriff wheezed.

Service turned to face the man he considered contemptible—a cheat at worst and an unprofessional clown masquerading as a peace officer at best. Word was circulating that Swick would run for another term as sheriff, then retire to the general contracting-vacation real estate business he had built over the years, much of it on the county's time and dime. Some of the man's own deputies called him the Thief of Police behind his back.

“Who's got the track?” Service threw out gruffly.

“Put a call in to Moiles.”

Service grunted his displeasure. “I were you, there'd already be somebody tracking. Response time counts here.”

“You aren't me, and I don't want to spoil the site or the track for the professionals.”

“
Moiles
?” Service said, his voice dripping sarcasm. “I'm taking the track now.”

“I haven't authorized it,” the sheriff said by way of mild protest.

“Exactly,” Service said and turned his attention to the challenge ahead.

“Damn state, damn DNR,” Swick grumbled.

Service tuned out the man, who had built dozens of houses in bear habitat that had once been isolated and where there had been little chance of human contact. Because of the isolation, the sheriff had bought the land parcels on the cheap, and his pals on the county zoning commission had been good-ol'-boyed into approving his housing plans and building permits.

“Take it up with my supervision,” Service said over his shoulder to the self-serving sheriff.

“Goddamn antiprogress obstructionists, the whole damn lot of you state people,” Swick grumped, causing Service to smile. The DNR was trying to get the county zoners to reverse their rulings where land plans disrupted animal habitat, or at least block future projects that might disrupt wildlife. Swick and his pals were not happy with what they saw as unwarranted state meddling in a purely local issue.

Service was on the edge of the yard and moved east to west, looking down until he found two drops of blood on a fern. With this finding, he began to push everything but tracking out of his mind.

He moved almost lazily. Not a lot of blood, no splashes. He could see where the animal appeared to have put down the child briefly, perhaps to get a more secure carrying grip. Adjustment made, it moved south toward the massive Bread Creek Swamp.

Service's mind churned: Three-year-old girl? Shit. Clear your mind, pal. Focus. She's a goner. No berries this summer and a damn poor fall mast crop looming, all from a long drought. The animals need to fatten up for winter, and there's nothing to eat. Some are going to get desperate and stupid. But you don't
know
the child's a goner, he corrected himself.

Ten minutes later he found where the bear veered south, roughly paralleling the swamp perimeter, and minutes later he came upon a bear run used so heavily it was worn down to mineral earth. He looked back up the hill. Not 250 yards to the house, and here was a virtual bear interstate, the largest he'd ever seen in the UP.

The houses on the hill were a disaster in waiting.
Damn it, Swick!

Blood sign remained sparse, and the CO advanced slowly, moving his eyes from just in front of him up to the terrain ahead and on all sides. Bears were like blobs of India ink in the forest, black beyond black, easy to spot. Usually.

He tried to will himself into the animal's head. Maybe an old bear with bad teeth, starving and desperate. Putting the girl down to get a better hold could be evidence of this. Or maybe it was a young animal cashing in on opportunity. Young bears were erratic, impulsive, and hard to read, much less predict. Young males in spring could be real pains in the ass, coming out of their dens. But this was August, not April.

He leaned his thinking toward an old animal, whose sole focus would be on food, and Service guessed it would cache the meal in a place where it would be difficult for other animals to try to take it away. Theory was worthless, of course. He needed evidence, especially a fresh track, to help him understand what he was dealing with. When he reached a small trickle from an underground seep, he got what he wanted—a clear, fresh track in wet, black dirt. Big track,
really
big track. Old animal, probably desperate. Not good for the child, not at all. Service felt his heart racing, took a deep breath, and exhaled slowly.

Less than a quarter mile farther along he found a splash of blood the size of the palm of his hand. It appeared that the animal had again stopped to regrip its prey. If the child had been miraculously alive before this, that seemed highly unlikely now. The blood was dark red, almost black.

The officer increased his pace and his vigilance, crossing the stream and following the blood sign downhill to a dense copse of young gray-green popples. The sign seemed clear. The animal was heading into heavy cover to protect its prize and to not be disturbed.

Decision time: Wait for the dogs and let them push and tree the animal, or go in and find it. Crappy choices. The kid, he thought, she's first. What if she's still alive? No choices here. Do your job.

Service eased his way to the edge of the aspens and froze, using his eyes to scan, careful to not move his head and give the animal a visual clue. In heavy cover there would be no reaction time if the animal came after him. Service felt sweat beading on his face, tried to control his heart rate, his breathing, straining to summon a cold heart and the quiet nerve of the dispassionate hunter closing on prey. He saw blood on a diaphanous flap of a young paper birch, a wine-colored stain on unsullied bark. It made his stomach flip.

Another step in, and he saw a tiny white sandal tipped on its side, like a small abandoned boat. No blood, only the orphaned shoe. Leave it for later. He sniffed the air, breeze slight, wafting softly over his face like a gauze tail, direction in his favor. He reasoned: This bear wants food, which means it won't be so fussy about wind and scent. Normally, bears were easily spooked creatures. Just like a human violator, this animal was locked on the prize, its tiny brain probably causing thin streams of saliva, small jolts of all-encompassing anticipation.

One more step. Stop. Keep a tree to your front to help block a charge. Listen. Sniff. Look. Listen. Wait.

Step again.

There! He could smell it, the fetid stench pinching his nostrils closed. It's damn close. Ease off the shotgun's safety, bring barrel up. Move again, follow your nose.

Another step, smell stronger, wind holding in his favor. And another step.

With each step, deeper, closer.

Heard it before he saw it—

—a peculiar sound like a heavy boot stamped once on gravel, a crunch of quiet yet somehow epic proportion, small in volume, big in his imagination, all his alarms blasting full on. He raised the shotgun barrel toward the sound, stared ahead into a small round of grassy space buried in the trees, bright sun beaming thin devil's smiles from above, the light angled slightly from the west.

—found himself looking directly into gleaming, intense brown eyes set back from a rusty snout. The animal softly woofed annoyance, clacked its teeth loudly: Keep away. Mine. Just mine. Grady Service took aim, drew a deep breath, and let it out slowly. How many times had he and Treebone done this in Vietnam, but with a man on the business end of the barrel? Too many times.
Don't think about the girl, just the bear.

He expected the animal to stand on its hind legs to get a better look, or better air, but it remained on all fours, a black blot occasionally looking at him, its jaws working silently.

His mind was racing. In such thick cover, he second-guessed himself, momentarily wishing he had double-aught buck in the boiler. Thought: But the child's still there.
Can't hit her, in case she's alive. Buckshot might tear into her and leave lots of damage.
He let disturbing thoughts dissolve and put the bead sight on the animal's forehead, lining up between the eyes, but it suddenly lifted its head, presenting the top between the ears, and Service's inner trigger whispered, “Fire.”

He was so focused on the target, he didn't feel the Remington's recoil. His only focus was the bear, which rolled backward as if it had been swatted by the hand of an invisible giant, somehow recovered its feet, and bounded southward.

Service stepped sideways with the animal, like the bear was his dance partner, and calmly pumped two more rounds just behind the animal's front left leg. It went down onto its jaw and skidded perhaps three feet, its legs still, but the head pushed up.

The bony time now, the waiting. Service stood with the barrel leveled at the animal. No movement, no more sound, just the stench. He stepped forward and used a stick with his left hand to touch one of the animal's eyes, while his right hand was on the shotgun's trigger, holding the gun on the animal. No response or reaction, no breath motion. Dead. The stink was disquieting. Fresh blood on the dead animal's snout. The girl.

He moved quickly to the child, felt lead gathering suddenly in his legs, but willed himself forward. Her face was unmarked, strangely white, an alabaster doll on a green bed, four ticks crossing her cheek under her right eye, looking to escape to better prospects, her blond hair spread out in a halo, sticky with her own blood and animal saliva, a flat, matted crown. Service forced himself to check for a pulse he knew wasn't there, probably hadn't been since the first time the animal put her down. No pulse. Shit. But you had to check, right, do your duty? Nothing. Skin still warmish. The bear was still, the child was still, the breeze stopped, all sound died all at once to create a stillness few other than the dead would ever experience. Silence was nothing, was death.

Service left the child and returned to the animal. Back of the bear's head gone, much of the brain with it. What had it used to move, a single cell somehow still connected to its nervous system? Weird. Shots two and three had hit where he aimed, hammering in quick succession into the heart area, leaving behind a gaping crater on the far side. When they opened the animal, its vitals would be obliterated. He hoped this wouldn't screw up the science. The officer went over to a windfall, sat down heavily, and lit a cigarette, placing himself so he wouldn't have to look at the child.