Migrators (23 page)

“Sounds like a prince,” Alan said.

“He did what he thought he had to,” Buster said. He smiled at a memory. “He was trying to ensure that each of us went farther than he did. Gordie was far enough down the chain that he knew when to keep his mouth shut. The other brothers told him what to expect for his training, so when Dad taught him how to set a line, Gordie kept his mouth shut and just listened.

“Gordie’s last day with Dad’s instruction was when he finally asked his first question. It was near the end of October and Gordie had a trap he couldn’t clear.”

“I thought you didn’t work in October,” Bob said.

“Not after that one, we didn’t,” Buster said. “Of course I was just a little one, running around with my first twenty-two then. Gordie had set a trap down near the water’s edge. Dad wouldn’t let him shoot a trapped animal. Gordie had to beat or drown anything still alive. He liked to use a little leg trap that was weighted underwater. It would snag a beaver and then hold them under until they drowned. Gordie would get a perfect pelt—no need to bash in the skull. The problem was, he didn’t catch a beaver. He caught something much bigger and it was still alive. He went and fetched Dad. Gordie worked up his courage and then asked, ‘What do I do if I can’t kill something I trapped?’ He said that Dad was excited at first. He figured that Gordie had trapped something big. Since Dad was a shitty hunter and I wasn’t pulling in game yet, the family was mostly living on small stuff that Gordie brought home. Dad was itching for a big hunk of venison or bear.

“Gordie took him down to the edge of the lake and pointed. He said that Dad didn’t believe him for awhile. The thing he’d caught was so good at lying on the muddy bottom of the lake that you had to know exactly what you were looking for or you didn’t see it. Gordie got a big stick and poked at the thing. It started thrashing. It came all the way up out of the water and almost grabbed ahold of Dad before my old man backed away. Dad told Gordie to keep an eye on the thing and then he went back to the house for his gun.

“That’s the only thing I think I remember about the event, but I can’t say if it was a true memory or not. They say I cried and cried when Dad left the house with a gun and I didn’t get to come along. Of course, I don’t have any memory of Sophia, so maybe I just think I remembered it. Dad shot the thing five times, according to Gordie. The thing thrashed and jumped each time, but didn’t seem any closer to dying.”

“What did it look like?” Alan asked.

Buster ignored the question and kept going. “After that, Dad had Gordie rig up a rope to loop around the beast. They used a come-along anchored to a tree. Gordie said the thing was too strong to pull out by hand, even with both of them working together. They pulled it on shore and Gordie said it was stuck between the two tethers. There was the trap holding its leg in the water, and the rope pulling its arm up on land. The trap was fixed to a submerged log that must have weighed a ton. Even so, Gordie said that the thing pulled so hard that the log moved.

“When it stopped moving, Gordie said it was like magic. It settled down into the leaves and just seemed to disappear. Dad shot it again, maybe because he was frustrated. Gordie said the bullet went right through and puffed up dirt on the other side of the thing.”

Buster stopped talking. He folded his hands on top of his belly.

“Well?” Alan asked.

“Well what? You can guess the rest, can’t you?”

“You’re saying that the thing we saw is the same kind of thing your brother caught in the trap?” Bob asked.

Buster nodded.

“You don’t want to tell us the rest of the story, do you?” Alan asked.
 

Buster didn’t reply. He looked at Alan with wide open eyes and didn’t reply.

“You think that if you tell us the story, then they’ll smell it, right? That’s what you asserted earlier—they can smell when someone talks about them,” Alan said. “If that’s true, then surely you’ve already said too much.”

“Maybe I have and maybe I haven’t. It’s hard saying, not knowing,” Buster said. His next burp must have been the grandfather of all his previous. It ripped from between Buster’s lips and caused him to lean forward. The footrest on his recliner clicked down a notch. “Pardon me,” he said. Buster frowned. “Dad cried. He sat down on a big rock, let his gun fall to the ground and put his fists to his eyes. Gordie welled up just telling us about it, all those years later. Dad told Gordie that he knew there was a price to pay. He didn’t let on what he’d bought. Quid pro quo.

“I’m not sure how we lived there so long without trouble. Maybe it was just because we were naive. But Dad knew that the easy days were over as soon as he saw that thing thrashing in Gordie’s trap. He told Gordie that it would just be a matter of time before more would come. They would find a way to spring the one he’d caught and then they’d come after the family. They wouldn’t stop until they’d taken one of ours as payback.”

“How did your dad know about them if nobody talked?” Bob asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe some old timer wanted to get it off his chest. Maybe my Dad pieced it together from all those books he read before he gave them to us. Like I said, he was a Jack of all trades, and one of those trades was local legends. Lots of people had theories where the migrators came from originally, but none make much sense in the light of day. People say believe half of what you see, and none of what you’re about to hear, but this is my understanding.

“For every living thing that builds, there’s something that evolves to break it down. It’s just all part of the natural ebb and flow of things. Species rise and fall. That works for our physical bodies and the things we create, but what are the worms and beetles that help decompose our souls?”

“I don’t follow,” Alan said.

“You grow as a person, spiritually, as you live on this planet,” Buster said. “You build up your character and your soul. What happens to those when you die?”

“I don’t believe in that stuff,” Alan said.

“You go to heaven,” Bob said. “Or your soul rejoins the sea of souls, right?”

“I think your spirit lays there quietly, right alongside your body. The undertaker burns up your body, but then your soul, your character, your will, all that other stuff is left behind. That’s where the migrators come in. They move downhill and gather up all the leftovers of human spirit. They gobble it up and break it down into whatever the equivalent elements are. That’s what I think.”

“So why wouldn’t they hang out at cemeteries then? Or why would they only move through one patch of land to go to the Kennebec river? People all around the world should know about them,” Alan said.

“You can’t touch a soul. You can’t hold it in your hands. What makes you think it adheres to the physical laws that govern other matter?” Buster asked. “As far as we know, they do live everywhere. Maybe there’s some bigger reason it got caught in Gordie’s trap.”

“And this is the nonsense your father told your brother?” Alan asked.

“Nope,” Buster said. “The information Dad passed to Gordie was completely pragmatic. He told him that migrators are devious, intelligent, and vengeful. If you interfere with one or even talk about them, then you’re on the list. Nothing can get you off that list but flesh.”

“So they feed on souls, but if they’re pissed, they’ll eat a baby,” Alan said.

“Yup, kinda like a priest,” Buster said. He laughed at his own joke.

“And nobody has ever seen one or heard of one. Science has never documented them. No naturalist has a picture. They’re more elusive than a yeti,” Alan said.

“That’s right. And I’ll add to your description—they migrate through a very small area, or maybe areas, they’re perfectly camouflaged, and then hunt down anyone who traps or talks about them. How’s anyone supposed to document that?” Buster asked.

“You assume that they have the ability to magically track down people who talk about them—that words leave a scent somehow,” Alan said.

Buster raised his shoulders in a shrug. A bubbling gurgle rumbled in his belly and Buster patted it down gently with his hand.
 

“You made Gordie tell,” Bob said.

Buster nodded. For a second, Alan thought that Buster wouldn’t continue. He thought the old man was going to leave the story half told and never let them know what happened to the little sister. But, now that the story was rolling out, it seemed that it would keep rolling.

X • X • X • X • X

“They tried to figure a way to let the thing loose, but then they ran out of time. Gordie said he’d never experienced anything like it. You couldn’t exactly see what was coming, but you knew it was all around you. The leaves moved funny. The wind picked up and then died. The lake swirled and then kicked up a little waterspout out of nowhere. Gordie and Dad could sense those things closing in on them and the thing on the ground rattled. They ran.

“Back up at the house, Dad called all his boys inside and he locked all the doors and windows. We spent the rest of the day and all night locked up inside. None of us knew why at the time. I heard Paul saying it was a twister. The only twister I’d ever heard of was the titty variety, so I wasn’t anxious to get outside and investigate. The next morning, Gordie and Dad went down to check the trap again. It was empty. They were about to come home when Gordie spotted the other thing just up the bank.”

Buster paused. He laid a hand across his forehead, like he was a worried mother checking a temperature. He looked Bob and Alan directly in the eye before he continued.

“I got the worst of my dad, and it was because of that day. That little girl meant everything to my old man. After Gordie found her, stripped of everything outside her bones, Dad was reckless and mean. If I was shooting and I missed my mark, he’d snatch that gun from my hands and pop me on the back of the head with the stock. Sent my eyes black a few times. They told me that they wrapped little Sophia in Dad’s shirt and carried her back up to the house. That was the end of the month. I remember Hubie crying that night because he wanted to dress up for Halloween. He didn’t understand that Sophia was dead. He just knew he wasn’t going to get any candy if he didn’t dress up.

“Gordie was the only one who knew what happened to our baby sister until we all ganged up on him all those years later. The folks buried her out back and got a headstone. That little grave was such a part of my life that I never even questioned what it meant until I heard the whole story. After Gordie told us what she looked like, I would sit about twenty feet away from that headstone and just imagine that little girl down there, all naked without her skin. She ended up with the best Halloween costume of them all, but she never got any candy either.”

Buster shook his head. He blew a silent burp over his shoulder.
 

“I don’t suppose one of you healthy young men would care to fetch me a refill,” Buster said. He held his mug up.

“I’ll get it,” Alan said. His knees popped as he stood from the couch. He didn’t feel particularly healthy or young, but he was starting to suspect that in comparison to Buster, he might as well be an Olympian. Alan took the mug from Buster’s big swollen fingers. He found the doorway to the kitchen.
 

The light switch had a metal lever and clicked when Alan pushed it up. Little lights came on behind wooden valances over the windows. It was a cozy effect, but not particularly illuminating. The shades drawn tight over the glass didn’t help. To the right of the sink, the illuminated switch of the coffee maker drew Alan’s eye. The brown liquid in the bottom of the pot was thick with sediment and the lid of the machine was open. Alan saw the secret to Buster’s strong coffee. Instead of using a filter, Buster used a cone made out of a double layer of window screen. Alan poured the coffee and left a decent amount of room in the mug for whiskey.

It didn’t steam. The side of the mug wasn’t even warm. Alan put the mug in a little white microwave and set it for one minute.

The kitchen was packed with stuff. On top of the fridge, the old man had seven boxes of cereal lined up. It was the generic equivalent of some high-fiber brand. Every inch of counter space was filled with a box, or jar, or appliance. On the underside of the cabinets, hooks held even rows of unmatched mugs. The big green one in front said “KISS ME, I’M IRISH!” in shouting white letters. Alan leaned forward to look at blue boxes of pasta packed between the microwave and the toaster. They were all in a perfect line and a little piece of string held them all in place. Alan plucked at the string and it snapped back. He imagined the kitchen was like a ship’s galley, built for rocking and swaying without dumping food all over the floor. He wondered why.

The microwave finished with a little ding. Alan opened the door. Now it was steaming.

He took the mug back to the old man and set it down on the coffee table first. He opened the whiskey and began pouring. Buster’s eyes watched the procedure and he motioned for Alan to continue. When the liquid was near the brim of the cup, Buster signaled Alan to stop pouring. He reached out and took the mug with both hands, warming them on the burning sides of the cup.

“Where was I?” Buster asked.

“You made Gordie tell,” Bob said. It was the same prompt he’d used several minutes earlier.

“Yes we did,” Buster said. He took a careful sip of the steaming coffee. “We ganged up and he spilled the beans. But, as I mentioned, it seemed like he wanted to. When he was done with the story, Paul made the decision. He said, ‘We’re going to work through October, but we’re going to take precautions. Gordie—no trapping or fishing in the lake until November. You can work the fields and out back. Buster—no hunting. Your only job is to stake out that shoreline. Gordie will show you where. You see any weird things, you run and tell us all. I’ll work the north woodlot. Skip and Hubie, you stay inside as much as you can. Hooker—you can do what you want. I don’t think Gordie’s phantoms are interested in gardens.’ I think Paul’s orders hit me the hardest. Everyone else got to go back to work, but I just had to watch. They didn’t have to think about those migrators all day, but it’s all I had to think about. Every leaf that fell looked like a spook to me. I sat out near the shore of that lake for a week, and I grew tired. It’s like those flies in October. They know the end is coming and they’re slowing down, so they swarm on anything that stands still. As bad as those flies were, the day they went away was worse.”