Black River

by Will Dean

  Why would someone leave that here under a warning triangle? Is that one of Sally’s taxidermy creations?

  I photograph it, and my senses are on high alert as I walk further in. There’s an escarpment over a valley and the lumberjacks are working down there: one in the harvester tractor and one on foot with a chainsaw and a helmet and visor.

  I wave my arms around to get their attention but they do not see me. I jog over towards the front of the harvester and eventually he cuts his engine. All I can hear is the scream of the other chainsaw. One cutting blade. Eventually he kills his engine too. They both stare at me. But then their heads turn the other way. And I can hear it as well. Something. Through the pine trunks. A song. I can hear the black-haired woman who sang before at the reservoir, the herding call, that ancient haunting wail. Kulning. Like you might imagine a fisherman’s wife crying from the top of a cliff when she’s told her husband’s trawler didn’t make it back. The kind of wailing she might do, staring out at sea on an October night, inky water staring back, knowing her son was also on the boat. That kind of wailing. From deep within. Some feral noise from down within the bones, from the pelvis and the base of the spine. The three of us, me and these two lumberjacks, we look towards the noise and see nothing but condemned spruce trees queuing up for their orderly execution.

  ‘We got to get back to work,’ says the man from the steps of his harvester. ‘Ain’t safe here. Turn back.’

  ‘Have you seen anything?’ I ask. ‘Anyone visiting the abandoned houses in the village? The Carlsson’s place, the one up for sale? The ghostwriter’s house with the wraparound veranda? The hoarder’s place near the main road?’

  He shakes his head and then he wipes his face sweat on his sleeve.

  ‘See now,’ he says. Then he wipes his face again. ‘Chief of police already been to visit all them places. What else? I seen Björnmossen from the gun store, just about the last honourable man in your excuse of a town. And seen Karl-Otto from the yard up the road; he came by to give us a new battery when we needed one. No, not for this beast, just for my truck. Any more questions? You want to know what size jockstrap I take?’

  His mate grins at this, revealing his diving-board tooth.

  ‘Extra small?’ I say.

  ‘Say what now?’ he says.

  ‘Your jockstrap. Surprised you even need one.’

  I turn and walk slowly back the way I came. I should probably run. I shouldn’t have said those things but I am too tired and too much in need of a drink to care. I peer over my shoulder, my stun gun in my bag, but they’re not coming. Their chainsaws start up screaming again and soon I hear a trunk snap as an elderly pine falls down to the exact same soil it once sprang up from.

  I can’t get lost walking back. I’m sweating and I have mosquito bites all over my ankles and my neck despite smacking them all dead when I can, but I am less scared than I have any right to be. Maybe I’m getting used to the woods or maybe I just have less to lose.

  There’s a rock I don’t recognise up ahead. It’s the size and shape of a man crouching down. A man praying. It’s white like bone and the grooves and valleys of the quartz resemble the musculature of some pale miner, up from the pit, folded over with exhaustion in a tub of blackening bathwater. A miner with a quartz back strong enough to wield a pickaxe a mile underground. I don’t step on it, I walk around.

  My truck’s there where it should be.

  I drive back out and there’s a moth inside the cab of the truck so I turn down my window and push it out. The thing is dark matte-grey and the size of a child’s hand.

  On the way down the hill, past the stacks of pine trunks waiting to be picked up and driven to the pulp mill, I remember a tale my aunt once told me as a girl. My memories of Aunt Ida back then are vague because her and mum fell out when I was five and I didn’t see her again until the day of mum’s funeral. Which was basically me and Aunt Ida and five of Ida’s relatives. The tale – I’m not sure if all children get told it or if it was Ida’s own creation – has never left me. She told it at bedtime but that might just be my memory playing tricks. She said there was once a tall, grey man of the forest. A loner with a broken heart. The tall man hid children, not his own, children he found. He didn’t snatch them, they came to him. The tall man gathered together the children he found and hid them for years in air pockets created by the roots under old trees. He kept them alive. Stored them. Whispered to them through the soil. Through rabbit warrens and mouse burrows. He told them stories from long before, from underneath another tree in another forest, from when he was like one of them. I’ll never forget Aunt Ida’s tale. The tall man and the children.

  When I exit the shadows of Utgard forest I notice something standing upright in the field opposite.

  Something blackened.

  Cremated.

  42

  It’s a Midsommar pole, the greenery all dark and limp. The pole itself looks scorched. It stands erect and alone in the centre of a field. A field in the middle of nowhere. I drive up the road a little way and park up on the verge.

  Benny Björnmossen passes me by in his truck. There’s some kind of XL dog kennel strapped into the rear flatbed. It has a water bottle attached to a metal bracket and a clear plastic tube runs from the bottle to the inside via a drilled air hole. Probably for his hunt dogs. He slows and reverses and lowers his window and says, ‘You broke down, Tuva?’

  ‘No, I’m good, thanks.’

  He pulls his handbrake and parks up in the middle of the road. You can do that kind of thing around here. No traffic to speak of.

  He says something more but I can’t make it out.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You out of diesel?’

  ‘I’m just out for a walk, Benny.’

  ‘A walk?’ he says. ‘Here?’

  A faint voice. A whine. Must be the chainsaws in the distance.

  I nod and he says, ‘Well, take care of yourself.’ Then he scans the horizon and tuts and spits and releases his handbrake and moves away.

  The pole is facing away from me as I walk to it. It’s not a normal domestic fibreglass flagpole dressed in birch: this is a wooden pole. Black painted timber. Like it’s been hit by a lightning strike. I can see it’s been dug down into the earth with shovels and it’s supported at the base with a burial mound of small boulders.

  It flexes and creaks in the warm breeze.

  A dragonfly buzzes past then loops back and hovers right in front of my face like it’s judging me.

  I walk through the wheat growing in the field. Why have a pole in the centre of a cropped field?

  When I get up close I can see balls hanging from the horizontal pole. One on the left and one on the right. I move around and there’s something in the balls. Rings of birch twigs and dead leaf. One larger than the other. In the centre of each ring is a photograph. Laminated, just like the flyers in Utgard. Shining in the midday sun. On the left: Tammy. On the right: Lisa.

  Who is doing this?

  A long wasp hovers close to my shin. A queen? I stare up at their photos. I’ve been uneasy all week, scared even. But this is worse. Same people who hid the flyers in the Utgard hollow? The rings on the pole twist and flex in the summer breeze and Tam’s perfect face spins and contorts, the laminate reflecting so sometimes she disappears from view, then the ring twists and she’s back again, staring out at the nothingness of Gavrik Kommun.

  The only thing facing the photos is a scarecrow on its own much smaller stick about twenty metres deeper into the crop. A scarecrow with a seed bag pulled tight over its head. A scarecrow with straw bulging out all over like a bloating drowned corpse set to burst. Red paint on its sleeve.

  The wasp buzzes closer. I think it’s a hornet. Its drone is deep and pulsing like Karl-Otto’s wolverine doorbell tone.

  Stuck between this nightmare Midsommar pole and that scarecrow with its execution-style mask, a plan forms in my head. Something to push events forward. I need to force hands.

  I take out
my phone and google the contact details of Lisa’s big brother, the one leading the search parties.

  ‘Svensson,’ he says.

  ‘Hi, it’s Tuva Moodyson here.’

  He says nothing.

  ‘We need to escalate the searches. We need to get more people out.’

  ‘I’m listening,’ he says.

  ‘Snake River Salvage. Gavrik police say they’ve looked there but they haven’t. Not really. The owner’s late husband was good friends with Chief Björn so I don’t think the police are taking it seriously enough. We need to force their hand.’

  ‘Force the police?’ he says.

  ‘Hear me out. I’ll handle the police, you just need to do one thing. If Chief Björn or anyone else from the station talks to you or your brothers and asks if you’re planning to search Snake River today, armed, by force if necessary, you tell them, damn right you are. Tell them if the police won’t then you’ll have to.’

  ‘Not too far from the truth,’ he says.

  ‘Good. So you’ll say it.’

  ‘You think Lisa’s on their site?’

  ‘I don’t know but the place needs looking into. Too many hiding places, too far away from prying eyes.’

  ‘You’re right about that. We’re searching the old allotments, the ones out near the cross-country ski trails. You need us, call me up, do not hesitate.’

  I end the call and dial Gavrik police.

  ‘Gavrik police. Thord Petterson speaking.’

  ‘Thord, it’s me. You need to listen.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I’m doing,’ he says.

  ‘I got new information, don’t ask me where from, that the Svensson boys will raid Snake River Salvage this afternoon. Small army from what I heard. A mob. You know most of those Svenssons are ex-military. Heavy-handed. And they’re better armed than you police.’

  ‘What?’ he says.

  I have his attention.

  ‘Only way you’ll prevent some kind of bloodbath is if you and your team get down there first and start searching. The Sandbergs also have guns. They won’t take this lying down. I’d say you have about an hour.’

  ‘Chief’s going to hit the roof.’

  ‘I’m just trying to help.’

  ‘Okay, Tuvs, I gotta go.’

  I drive straight to Snake River leaving that blackened Midsommar pole behind in the field. Was it a memorial? A grave marker? I can’t even think about that. Some kind of shrine? Or someone genuinely trying to help? A version of our flyer elevated so it could be seen by traffic? What traffic?

  The broken ‘Welcome to Snake’ sign is blinding in this midday sun. It looks blank. I turn left at the car wrecks and follow the curve up to Sally’s shack. Nobody there. Just a midsize snake pinned out on a plank of wood to dry out in the shade. I park.

  ‘Sally?’ I say.

  No response.

  There’s a FedEx box on her deck and the label on the front says ‘bio transfer: live insects’. I look closer. The label says ‘dermestid beetles.’

  The air is humid today; sticky and thick.

  I walk around the side of the shack and she’s there by the river swilling out one of her acid buckets.

  ‘Sally,’ I say.

  She looks up.

  ‘Thought you’d be at church, friend,’ she says.

  ‘Not me.’

  Sally’s wearing a floral dress. She has a tortoiseshell clip holding her thick grey plait. She looks out at the water as it bubbles past our feet.

  ‘I’m like you,’ she says. ‘But my late husband, he wanted a church service, he insisted on it. Then a cremation. Big Sven’s wishes were clear, he was always organised and very specific. Told us what kind of pot he wanted to be put in, told us he wanted me and Karl-Otto there and any grandchildren he might have, he wrote the will when he was a younger man you see, told us he wanted me and Karl-Otto and any grandkiddies. Well, there wasn’t none, still isn’t, more’s the pity, he wanted us all on this very bank. Told me to choose a fine day. Told us to scatter his ashes in the waters of Snake River.’ Sally looks at me. ‘Well, friend, we did as we were told but I’ll be honest with you, most of them ashes never even made it into the water. Flew back straight in our faces. Got the wind wrong, we did. So by the end of it I had big Sven’s ashes in my hair, in my ears, I even ate some of him although I don’t like to dwell on that.’ She sticks out her tongue and shakes her head. ‘You can think ahead all you like but things don’t always go according to plan.’

  A small red rowboat drifts towards us and I have to look twice.

  The glare off the water?

  No.

  The rowboat’s full of soft toys and teddy bears. There’s a doll propped up at the rear and her arm’s been taped to the rudder.

  ‘What the hell?’ I say.

  ‘Kids,’ she says. ‘Upstream kids.’

  ‘Sally, you’ve got some police heading here.’

  ‘Björn’s already been here sniffing around.’

  ‘They’re on their way back,’ I say. ‘Fresh intel. Out of town cops running things now, people from Karlstad. I came here to warn you.’

  ‘You came to warn me?’ she says.

  ‘I did. I wanted to forewarn you.’

  ‘Forewarned is forearmed,’ she says. ‘We ain’t got no secrets to hide.’

  The boat drifts past. The doll captain is wearing a captain’s hat. Her face is damaged; the plastic bubbling and peeling away. I see that the back of her dress is open. Like a patient after an operation. More damage. Her plastic rear is blistered and burnt.

  As we walk back to Sally’s shack a police car drives in through the rusting wrecks with its lights and sirens off. No, I said bring everyone, bring manpower. How do I get decent police presence here? What more do I need to do?

  Sally sits on her swing seat and stuffs a tiny bag of tobacco under her lip and smiles at me and says, ‘Coffee?’

  Another police car drives in and drives round towards Karl-Otto’s place.

  ‘Yes, please.’

  ‘Cream?’ she says.

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Told you we ain’t got no secrets to hide, you can see I’m as calm as a bear in winter. You measure my heart you’d get nothing much over fifty.’ She takes a thermos of coffee from beside her seat and fills two floral mugs. Then she takes a can of pressurised squirty cream and tops the coffee.

  ‘I heard about them plastic eggs your friend wrote her messages inside,’ she says. ‘She sounds like a clever one.’

  ‘She is.’

  Chief Björn drives into Snake River Salvage and slows down outside Sally’s deck. He stops and winds down his window.

  ‘Sally,’ he says.

  ‘You back, Björn?’ she says. I have never heard anyone address the Chief by his first name to his face. ‘What’s all this now?’

  ‘Formalities,’ he says. ‘I see you got company.’

  She looks at me then looks back at him and says, ‘Coffee with can cream?’

  He shakes his head and drives off towards the cousins’ place.

  Sally looks at me and says, ‘Björn ain’t come here for us Sandbergs, see. He’s here for them two that call themselves cousins. Always knew they’d get busted. You want to go watch?’

  I’ll do more than watch.

  We drive round in my truck and park up just past the cuboidal crusher outside Karl-Otto’s warehouse.

  We walk side by side towards the cousin’s containers until we get to an out-of-town uniform cop with his arm outstretched.

  ‘Stay back, please.’

  ‘What did you say, I didn’t catch that,’ says Sally.

  ‘Police business, please stay back.’

  ‘Well, look now. This here was my husband’s granddaddy’s land heading back almost two centuries. Nearly two hundred years. We drained this bogland back when it was called Black River and we made it good. Now you come here from some outside city someplace faraway and tell me to stand back? You got some spine, kid, I give you that. Now
, move aside.’

  ‘This will be over soon. For now, stand back.’

  Sally sniffs and runs her hand down her plait and says to me, ‘Come on, friend.’

  We walk into the maze of wrecked Volvos, some with their bonnets up, rusted, some just with dents and smashed windows. We walk through and the cop watches us. Sally selects a beat-up VW pickup and she climbs up into the rear flatbed with the agility of a ten-year-old. Then she uses the bar on the back window and she climbs up on top of the cab roof. I join her.

  ‘Ringside seats,’ she says.

  The cop scowls over at us. Sally knows this terrain better than he does. She has the upper hand. We’re not far from the containers now, maybe ten cars from them.

  I take my binoculars from my handbag.

  ‘You got more scopes?’ she says.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  Two policewomen are searching the cousins’ main residence. Gloved hands. A dog outside on a leash being offered something to sniff. Tammy’s clothes? Lisa’s?

  A cop I don’t recognise unlocks a padlocked gravel bin, just like one of the plastic gravel and salt bins dotted along the Mossen village track in Utgard forest. He closes it again and slaps his face and then inspects the mess on his palm. His blood and the insect’s blood. Mixed.

  Björn’s talking to Alexandra, and then through the binoculars I see Thord open up a small container covered by a tarp sheet. The doors are wide open for me to look inside. Cooking grills, a tank of gas, a fridge unplugged with its door open. A counter. More spirals of sticky flypaper. Lots more. Like twisted tendrils hanging from a jungle canopy. A sign I can barely make out. Jade something. It’s the Chinese takeout van that could never compete with Tam’s. Jade Dragon. It’s still here.