by Sky Curtis
“If it were mine I would want someone to hang it up, you know, so if it rains it won’t get all muddy.”
“I know, but some people are weird about their possessions. They don’t want people touching them. I mean, what if some guy left it there on purpose, as a marker or something? Maybe it’s on a rock. It is sort of humped up into a mound.”
I agreed, “Yeah, it does look like it was left on a rock. I don’t know why he bothered. Look how stained the back of it is.”
“What is that? Mud? It’ll be hard getting that out.”
“You’re such a mother. Did you bring your stain remover?”
“You’re the one who noticed the stain. Are we going to hang it up or not?”
I thought for a minute. People could be possessive about their stuff. And people who wore Carhartts were people used to going in the bush. And those people could be hunters. With guns. “Okay, let’s do this. Let’s leave it where it is and finish our walk. We may bump into the guy and then we can tell him where it is, just in case he forgot. If we don’t bump into anyone, then we can hang it up on our way back. The trail loops around up ahead and comes back on itself, so we’ll pass by it again.”
“Suits me. Let’s go. Is that an orange marker up ahead? Over there?” She pointed to her right.
“Yes. We go over that way and eventually come to the shore. It’s pretty rocky on the way, and lots of scrubby bush, but eventually we come out at a pretty little beach.”
“Beachfront, huh? That’s worth a mint.” Cindy stopped and pirouetted around in a full circle, her hand shielding her eyes and looking up. “I’m pretending I know how to determine our direction by looking at the sun,” she said, laughing. “Don’t have a clue. Which way are we facing?”
“West. Well, more like southwest.”
“Southwest facing beachfront. Sun all day long. Sunsets. Prime, prime, prime.”
I grabbed her by the arm and pulled her towards the marker. “Come on.”
We scrambled over some rocks and plunged into the bush. The orange marker could be barely seen up ahead, a small slice of the edge of the tape barely visible through the thick branches. Blackflies were attacking us in full force again. I wished I’d put on some bug spray after all. Maybe that skin product made by Avon that people swore by.
“Whoever dreamed up that blue theory and bugs was full of shit,” said Cindy madly swatting at her head.
“I’m with you on that. But we will be out of this bush soon and at the waterfront. There will be a breeze and the bugs will be blown back into the woods.”
“How do you know there will be a breeze? You a shaman or something?”
I laughed. “No, but there was a light wind through the trees back there and a light breeze in the forest usually means a gale at the shore.”
Finally, we made it to the water. We sat on a large piece of driftwood that had been bleached by the sun and took off our bug hats, shaking our heads to loosen our damp hair off our scalps. The fresh gusts of wind kept the bugs at bay, and we relaxed from our constant vigil against them. I stretched my left arm out and said, “All this land to the left of us belongs to this huge plot. And if you look over there,” I pointed right, “you can see my family’s cottage.”
“Wow, I didn’t realize we’d come this far. Are we in the middle of his land?”
“Yeah, about that. There’s probably three thousand feet of waterfront to the right of us, and more to the left. He has about a mile, or slightly over.”
“Did you ever notice that waterfront is measured in feet, not metres?”
“I know. And fruit and vegetables are sold by the pound, not by kilos.”
“A truly bilingual country.”
I stretched my legs and hoisted myself up, trying not to groan. I really had to lose some weight. “Let’s head back. The trail circles around a bit that way and then joins up to where we were when we found the jacket.”
“I’d forgotten about that. I wonder if it will still be there.”
“I haven’t heard anyone scrabbling about in the bush, so probably.”
We put our bug hats back on and took off into the forest again. I would have to talk to my kids about clearing the trail a bit in the summer. No, wait, this wasn’t land we could use anymore. In fact, Cindy and I were trespassing right now. We followed the orange markers for five minutes when I noticed a plastic spray bottle half-buried under some sprouted maple keys. I wouldn’t have noticed it if I weren’t focused on placing my feet carefully between roots so I wouldn’t trip.
“Hey, look at this.” I picked it up. “Just what we need. Bug spray. It’s the same brand of insect repellent that I found on our kitchen windowsill.” I held it up to my face. “It has a word written on it with black magic marker. ‘DOG.’” I took the lid off and took a whiff. “I don’t care how bad the bugs are, I would never use this kind. It stinks.”
I handed it to Cindy to smell. “Ugh. That’s disgusting. No wonder someone used it on their dog.”
She screwed the lid back on tightly and handed it to me. I debated about throwing it deep into the woods but Cindy, the litter police, probably sensed what I was about to do and shook her head just once. I put it in my back pocket.
“No point in leaving litter around,” I said to appease her. “Look, there’s the jacket.”
Sure enough, the jacket was still humped up on the ground. Cindy marched toward it. “I’ll get it and hang it up.”
I followed close behind. When we got to the jacket, we could see that its edges were covered with earth, and only the corduroy collar was available for grabbing. She tugged at one corner of the collar to lift it out of the earth. She grunted. “Seems to be buried in the dirt or something. I can’t seem to lift it.”
“Here, I’ll help pull.” I wandered over to the front of the coat. “It’s probably been here awhile. It sure is caked in mud. And it’s kind of ripped too. Probably someone’s favourite coat and they couldn’t bear to part with it even though it was long past its prime.” I bent over to inspect the collar. As I got closer to the jacket, I nearly gagged. The stench coming off the material was unbelievable. “It smells pretty bad.” I wrapped my fingers around the opposite edge of the collar that Cindy was holding.
“Okay, let’s pull on the count of three.”
Cindy nodded at me, her auburn curls bouncing on her forehead, inches from mine, and said, “Sounds good.” We both took a breath. “One, two, three.”
The coat made a sucking noise as it lifted out of the muddy earth. The smell got worse and worse. It was so heavy. Why would a jacket weigh so much?
And then we screamed when we saw what was holding the coat down in the earth.
A bloody torso.
6.
WE MADLY SHOOK OUR HANDS and hopped up and down in tight little circles, screaming at the top of our lungs. My whole body was vibrating. I had never in my life seen a headless torso. It was awful. There was a stump were the neck had been severed. The skin around the stump was shredded and there was a bit of white bone protruding. It had teeth marks in it, much like the ones Lucky left on his marrow bones. It was like the severed neck of a store-bought chicken, but on a much larger scale. I thought I was going to throw up.
As suddenly as we had started, we both stopped screaming and dancing around. Cindy was walking around the jacket-covered torso, kicking at the ground with her feet.
“What are you doing?” I shouted. “This could be a crime scene and you’re disturbing it in a pretty major way. Don’t disturb the crime scene.”
“I’m looking for other body parts. They must be around here somewhere.”
“Cindy, we should get the police.”
“Naw, the guy was killed by a bear. The police can wait.”
“How do you know he was killed by a bear?”
“Claw marks on the front of the body.”
That shut me up. I hadn’t seen the claw marks and I certainly wasn’t going to check now. I was completely repelled by the neck stump. But I wasn’t convinced of her theory. Bears in Ontario simply did not randomly attack people. If my fingers worked— if my phone worked—I would google the statistics. But I knew the statistics were really low, like one attack every forty years or something. While I was thinking about this, Cindy kept parting the plants on the forest floor with her foot. She was determined to find something.
“Bingo,” she shouted a few minutes later. “Come see.”
Did I want to? No, but I was propelled forward as if by some unseen force, like a moth to a flame. I knew it would turn my stomach. I knew it was against my newly found Buddhist belief that one needed to stand apart from the negative in the universe and simply observe, but on I went anyway, my feet moving of their own accord, my stomach lurching with every step.
Cindy stood proudly beside her trophy, pointing and grinning. “Stop while you’re ahead,” she said.
I took one look at the skull’s black soulless eye sockets, felt my stomach heave, and tossed my tuna sandwich into a small bush.
Cindy tutted and shook her head, “Don’t disturb the crime scene,” she mimicked before continuing on her meticulous search. She stopped at the base of a large maple, struck a pose, and gestured at some roots as if she were showing off a prize on a TV game show, smiling with all teeth showing. I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and took some deep breaths. How could she handle this?
“This isn’t as bad as the head, Robin. Come and look.”
“No.” This wasn’t working for me.
“No, really, it’s okay. You won’t get hurt, the guy is completely armless.” She threw back her head and laughed.
I guess we all handle death differently. She made jokes. I barfed. And I did so again. Only this time, I tried to throw up on my old barf, just in case this was a crime scene. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that Cindy was proudly pointing at a bone, not long enough to be a leg, leaning against the root of the tree. There were bits of red muscle attached. I heaved again, only now nothing came up. Even so, I bent over and drooled over the wet patch of wilted lettuce and semi-chewed bread. Why hadn’t I brought a tissue?
Cindy continued on her search, using her right foot to stir up the leaves in front of her as she slowly walked in a widening circle around the jacket, her eyes casing the ground and all around. A few more minutes went by and then she shouted triumphantly, “Ta-dah!” Her head was tilted upwards, looking up to the sky. About twenty feet up, in the crotch of two adjoining tree branches, was a long white bone. It was missing the hip joint but still had a few long white tendons attached to the other end.
I could feel my stomach rise in my throat and then fall again. This was a human being we were looking at. Cindy was finding pieces of a dismembered person. A somebody. A living creature who had a mother, maybe a wife, maybe children. This was horrible.
“Cindy, stop.”
“Robin, really, it’s okay. The person is dead. He doesn’t care. Come see. Maybe this is your story. You’ll get a leg up in your career if you take a close look at the facts.” She laughed. “Leg up. Get it?”
It wasn’t funny. “No. This is horrible. How can you be so flippant?”
She continued on her search, one foot gently probing the earth in front of her. The air was filled with the sound of Rice Krispies crackling as she walked over the dry leaves. After a few minutes, she stopped and dug into the earth with the toe of her hiking boot. She then turned her back on her find and started to kick backwards at the spot with her heel. “Hey Robin, I found something else.”
“I’m not coming to look.” I was deep breathing, trying to get the whistling out of my ears. “You are really disturbing the crime scene. If it is one.” I thought it was. Bears did not attack people. Except bears that had been eating batteries.
“There. Finally, I got it.” The sound of her kicking at the earth stopped and I hazarded a peek. She was on her haunches, stirring at the damp earth with a stick. “Hey, Robin. Come here. Let me give you a hand,” she laughed. I wished she’d shut up. “I see a ring. Beside a finger. Maybe the poor schmuck was married.” She dug in the earth with the stick and then picked up the ring. “Nope, it’s a ruby ring. Weird for a guy. But, you never know. Come take a look.”
No way would I go over. “This is so disgusting. How can you get so close?”
“Oh, honey, this is nothing compared to seeing the face of a drug lord shot off by some gang member.” Cindy had seen a lot while writing her series on gangs. She stuffed the ring in her front pocket.
I’d had enough. “Listen, we had better go back to the cottage. I want to call the police. And get an ambulance or something.”
Cindy threw back her head and laughed again. I detected a touch of hysteria. Maybe she wasn’t doing that well. “This guy doesn’t need an ambulance. He’d give an arm and a leg to live again. He’s dead in the water. Hahaha.” She was pointing to a foot lying in a puddle and then looked at me to see my reaction to her pun. I wasn’t appreciating the joke. “Is the EMS for you? You need a wah, wah, wahmbulance?”
Did she ever stop? She was almost maniacal. I shook my head. Maybe this was her way of coping with the shock of it all.
“Let’s go, Cindy.” I took off down the trail and hoped she’d follow. I had gone about twenty yards when I heard her footsteps in the dry leaves behind me. I turned around to make sure it was her. You never knew. Maybe the bear was still around.
I didn’t understand this situation. Not at all. If it had been a bear, what on earth had the man done to antagonize the creature? Did he have a salmon sandwich in his back pocket? I had personally never heard of a bear attacking a person. Sure, there were always stories circulating about bears tearing through campers’ tents to get to their food packs. Anyone canoe tripping in Algonquin Park knew better than to fall asleep with their food anywhere near their campsite. Some campers tied their food pack to a rope and hoisted it up a tree, securing it about forty feet up in the air, dangling over a branch. Sure, bears could climb, but if the branch the pack was hanging from was barely strong enough to hold up the pack, but not strong enough to support a bear, well, the food would stay safe and the bear would wander off the campsite looking for a different convenience store.
Some trippers lashed their food packs to the thwart of a canoe, covered it with a tarp, and then towed the canoe out to the middle of the lake. There they anchored it, leaving it to bob in the water for the night while everyone slept peacefully in their tents. Most bears, especially those in Algonquin, weren’t ambitious enough to swim out to a canoe and try to get the pack. Word got around the bear community that the packs were hard to get, and at the end of the day, the effort wasn’t worth the reward. Bears weren’t natural hunters while swimming. They preferred their feet on the ground.
So, I didn’t understand what had gone on here. Why might a bear have attacked this man? It didn’t make any sense.
“Did you find any tin foil or wax paper or plastic wrap while you were looking for the guy’s … pieces?” I asked Cindy over my shoulder as we walked.
“No, why?”
“I wondered if the guy was carrying some food in a pocket or something.”
“No, I didn’t find anything like that. Not a crumb.”
“Because bears don’t attack someone for no reason.”
“They don’t?”
“No. I can’t believe you don’t know that from your forester days.”
“I only wanted to be a forester. I never was one.” Cindy was a trifle defensive.
“I mean, there are some rumours, sort of underground drumbeats, about some bears going nutso because they’ve eaten poison in people’s garbage. Batteries. Cleaning fluids. The mercury and chemicals make their brains scramble. Those bears will attack.”
“Poor bears.”
She didn’t mean it.
“Maybe my brother ate a battery.” I said half-heartedly, trying to lighten up. But I was being unkind. “Just joking.”
“No, you’re not.”
She was right.
“So anyway, I’m wondering why this guy got attacked.”
“He got attacked because he was an asshole.”
“How do you know that?”
“All men are assholes.”
“Cindy, you know that’s not true. Most gay women are gay for other reasons.”
“Not this one.”
“Okay, but why do you think this particular guy was a dipstick?”
“Other than the fact that all men are stupid?”
I sighed. “Oh, okay, I’ll play. Other than that.”
“He was carrying a clipboard.”
“First of all, how do you know that?”
“There was a clipboard underneath his, um, torso.”
“I didn’t see that.”
“You were busy with other things. Like throwing up the delicious lunch I made for you.”
“I helped make it.”
“Oh, slapping already made tuna salad and already washed lettuce on bread is helping?’
The truth was coming out. I’d have to make dinner if I wanted to eat again.
“Lots of guys have clipboards. That doesn’t make him stupid. Maybe it makes him smart.”
“Bears hate clipboards.”
“Cindy. Now who’s being stupid?”
“Okay, but he had a pencil attached to the clipboard. With an elastic.”
“So?”
“What kind of nerdy person does that?” She started singing Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” only changing the lyrics to “Nerdy Nerdy Man.”
“That song’s from the late sixties. You were what, ten?”
Cindy huffed, “I wasn’t born yet.”
“Nice try. Besides, I’d attach my pencil to my clipboard with an elastic. If I had a clipboard. Personally, I use my recording phone app. But if I did use a clipboard, I’d use an elastic. You don’t want to lose your pencil.”