Plots

by Sky Curtis

Niemchuk was defensive. “They bite through bug hats you know. If the mesh is touching skin, they poke their little stingers through the holes and suck your blood.” He was looking smug.

  Andrechuk sighed. “And that’s why I wear it over my cap. The bill holds the mesh away from my face.”

  Kowalchuk followed suit and stretched his bug hat over his cap, making sure it wasn’t touching his skin. “Okay, let’s go. Robin, you might as well lead the way.”

  So, I was in.

  The four of us marched across the muddy yard to the orange piece of tape wrapped around the trunk of the tree at the edge of the forest that marked the beginning of the trail. Within seconds, we were surrounded by clouds of blackflies looking for a place to bite. We made speed, trying to keep ahead of the bugs. I could see Cindy’s blue hoodie in the distance, heading up a small incline.

  “Wait up, Cindy,” I shouted. She didn’t.

  We crackled through the leaves on the forest floor, over hill and dale, following the orange bits of tape around trees. Our feet squelched through the swamp and we slapped at the air, trying to keep the sudden influx of flies from landing on us. The wind had picked up a bit, now that it was later in the afternoon, and the tops of the trees swayed, their branches rustling in the breeze. The forest smelled like damp leaves disintegrating into rich loam and there was still a scent of winter lingering in the air. We trudged along in single file, each person reaching behind to stop long branches from snapping in the face of the person following them. Our boots sunk in the soggy soil and new maple shoots bent under their weight. No one spoke. Finally, we reached our destination.

  Cindy was lounging near the Carhartt jacket, pretending to buff her nails, feigning nonchalance. But I, who knew her well, could see the lines of tension around the edges of her mouth. Perhaps the gruesome scene reminded her of the power of nature, of the force that we mortals tried to contend with but rarely surpassed. The spirit of the universe could be felt in this place, and maybe she was simply in awe of its generous pervasiveness. Or maybe she was just plain scared of the bear.

  The scene looked pretty much like we had left it. Highly disturbed. I glanced around and noticed with dismay that it was definitely obvious that we had been here, interfering with the evidence. Leaves had clearly been scattered, leaving brown arcs of damp dirt where Cindy’s toe had scraped through them to the ground in her quest for bones. My stomach contents were visible in the undergrowth; wilted lettuce and soggy pieces of bread dripped from the twigs of a small bush. We would have to answer for this, I knew.

  Off to the right, the blank eye sockets in the dead man’s severed head stared blankly at the bits of sky visible through the canopy of budding branches. The arm bone with the fragments of reddish-black tissue still leaned against a tree. I looked up and saw the long, white leg bone was still way up high. How had it come to rest up there? Had the bear tossed it over his shoulder after picking it clean, like knights did at medieval banquets? Or maybe a wild cat had come along and dragged it up into the tree to keep the booty safe from other predators. I doubted I would ever know.

  Kowalchuk and his merry band stood stock-still in a small group, their eyes busily surveying the scene. I watched them absorb the details: The numerous arcs of scraped earth, the drool and puke on the bushes, the far-flung body parts. Kowalchuk cleared his throat and took charge.

  “Andrechuk, I am not sure what we have here, but I want you to document the scene. Start taking pictures here.” He pointed at the jacket.

  Andrechuk dutifully walked over to the jacket and took numerous photographs from a variety of angles with her phone, her lithe body bending this way and that. I watched Cindy watching her. Yup. Definite interest. When Cindy caught me looking at her, she smiled impishly and looked away, pretending to be a professional journalist assessing the scene.

  “Don’t forget this piece of evidence.” She pointed up one of the trees to the leg bone wedged in the branches and their eyes followed. Andrechuk took a picture of it with her cellphone and then walked around the tree and took another. Then Cindy pointed at the head off to the right that was partially buried in some dried-up leaves. It’s a wonder she hadn’t kicked those away as well. Andrechuk aimed her phone at the head and I could see her activating its camera’s zoom function as she walked closer to the skull.

  Kowalchuk growled at Cindy and me, “Looks like the two of you had a field day in here, checking out the body and the surrounding area. I’m surprised. Everyone knows not to do this. Even TV makes it very clear that scenes around a dead body are not to be touched. I don’t understand you two. It’s very important to not disturb any scene around a dead body, whether or not you think the death was caused by an act of nature and not a murder. There are unusual things about this scene and I don’t quite know what to make of it yet. It doesn’t help that you interfered. Now I have to figure out what mess was caused by the attack and what mess the two of you made.” He looked around, clearly puzzled by what must have been a frenzied assault. “Bears don’t usually leave quite this amount of chaos behind. But I don’t think anything here is suspicious, in fact, I’m almost a hundred percent sure it isn’t, but nonetheless, you should have called us right away. Immediately. Before you did anything. All sudden deaths must be investigated.”

  Cindy and I, chastised, both looked at the ground.

  Andrechuk held her phone up high. “They couldn’t call. No service here, Sir.”

  So, she had Cindy’s back. And mine too, because that was exactly what I was about to say. I piped up, “We really didn’t do much. I lost my lunch on that bush over there.”

  Kowalchuk didn’t have to follow my pointing finger. “Yes, I noticed that.”

  “And Cindy was looking for bones with her foot. That’s what all those scrapes in the earth are. We are really sorry. She’s a journalist as well and our curiosity got the better of us.”

  “You’re both journalists? Well, that explains a lot.”

  I didn’t like the way he said that.

  “What media do you work for?”

  Cindy and I both said, “The Toronto Express,” simultaneously.

  The detective harrumphed and pulled a latex glove out of his left front pocket. He snapped it on to his right hand with more vigour than was needed. I could guess what he thought of journalists. He bent down and with his thick thumb and forefinger lifted up a corner of the jacket and peered underneath. Cindy and I had struggled unsuccessfully with our combined strength to get the jacket completely out of the mud and I marvelled at his strength. Two of his beefy fingers would easily match the strength of two very fit women. Okay, one fit woman and another woman having a fit. I watched his face as he took in the gore under the jacket. His features betrayed nothing at all.

  “Andrechuk, hand me a twig or something. Maybe a pen. I want to get this clipboard out,” he grunted as he balanced on his hefty haunches, still holding the jacket containing the torso slightly off the ground.

  “Here, Sir.” She handed him a weathered branch that had been whitened by time. It was thin and fairly short, but strong.

  Cindy’s eyebrows raised approvingly. Andrechuk caught her eye and shrugged modestly. I felt a bit left out in this exchange of inside forest knowledge. I knew it was a good stick, too. Sure I did. Then I reminded myself that there were much more important things at hand. Like a dead man. Get over yourself, Robin. This isn’t the time to be jealous of your friend.

  Kowalchuk prodded the clipboard out from under the torso with the stick, careful not to touch it with his ungloved hand. When it was finally lying on the ground away from the torso, he hooked the stick into the metal hoop at the top of the board. He lowered the jacket to its resting place and stood up, the clipboard’s muddied hook hanging on the twig. The clipboard dangled in the air for all to see, it’s sodden pages, shredded in places, sticking together and blackened by blood, earth, and mould. Whatever had been written on that paper
was long gone. Still, Kowalchuk squinted at the top sheet, trying to discern anything that would give him a clue as to why the man was in the bush.

  “Here, Niemchuk, you have better eyesight than I have. Can you read anything?”

  The young man walked over from where he was standing about ten feet away from the torso. He didn’t look at the clawed jacket as he walked gingerly around it, and I felt a wave of sympathy for the young cop. He was about twenty years old, fresh-faced and eager, and I wondered if he had ever seen a dead person. He put his nose about a foot away from the gory pages and peered intently. “Not a thing, Sir. There’s a lot of blood and mud. I can’t see any writing through the dirt.”

  “I’ll send this to the lab. We’ll see if he was an unlucky birdwatcher who got mauled to death by a bear.” With his right hand he pulled a large plastic bag out of another pocket and gingerly lowered the clipboard into it. Once it was protected, he pressed the ziplock closure shut and then placed it carefully on an old tree stump.

  “Niemchuk, how are you at climbing trees?” Kowlachuk pointed up high. “I need you to bring that leg bone down. Andrechuk can gather the bones on the ground.”

  Niemchuk looked doubtfully up at the tall pine. “I’m not that good with heights, Sir.”

  “Me neither,” I volunteered so he wouldn’t feel too ashamed of himself.

  Cindy preened. “Well I, on the other hand, can scale a pine in seconds flat.” She looked at Kowalchuk. “I’d be happy to go get that leg bone, Sir, unless, of course, you want to. Sir.” She faked subservience.

  Kowalchuk manufactured a lame excuse. “No, no, that’s fine. I need to coordinate activity here on the ground and I would appreciate you getting the bone. Niemchuk, you help Andrechuk look for body parts and bag them.”

  He handed Cindy a very large bag and a latex glove. “Try not to touch it too much and hold it very gently. If the bone has fingerprints on it, I don’t want them smudged. We’ll take your prints for elimination purposes later in any event, but a clean bone would be better than one that has been handled even ever so carefully.”

  Cindy took the glove and bag and tucked them into her back pocket. “I have no intention of handling a long, hard bone with a careful hand,” she said innocently as she walked to the base of the tree.

  I stifled a giggle.

  Andrechuk poked her in the ribs as she sauntered past. There were definite sparks happening between the two of them. If Kowalchuk were aware of it, he gave no sign.

  Niemchuk collected the arm bone from the base of the tree and then stood off to one side, the bag dangling from his hand while he looked up and watched with admiration as Cindy shimmied up the trunk and then swung her leg over the lowest branch. From there, she hoisted herself up and began the long climb. I could barely watch, my stomach dancing in my throat, and turned away from the group, trying to divert my attention from her acrobatics. I breathed slowly and deeply, looking as far as I could into the expanse of forest.

  Kowalchuk said, “You two, back to work. You’d think you’d never seen someone climb a tree.”

  Andrechuk and Niemchuk quickly bent over and sifted through the earth, lifting leaves carefully with their gloved hands and rummaging around for bones in the dirt. Kowalchuk was absorbed in the torso and had rolled it over, staring at the front of the jacket and taking some measurements. Yes, I thought, it must have been a very big bear. There was hardly a sound as everyone engaged in their tasks.

  I drifted off to the right, deep in thought, wondering what on earth I was doing here in the middle of the woods trying not to step on a dead person’s bones. I looked down as I walked away, making sure nothing other than leaves crunched under my feet. I was meant to be investigating the development of land, not the death of a person. I’d been given a list of angles for a story from my editor and “dead body” wasn’t on my list. I looked at my watch. It was past three-thirty and now there was no way that Cindy and I would be able to get to Huntsville and check out the Town Hall for information about the land ownership. Was it a shady deal? I wasn’t sure. On one hand, Kowalchuk had acted as if it were a bona fide sale. But I simply didn’t know and I wanted to confirm my facts. I had to check it out. Was it Crown land or did it truly belong to a Rosedale fat cat who’d sold it to another fat cat?

  I sighed. A full day was gone. I wondered if Shirley, my sexpot editor at The Toronto Express, would want a complete report on the story’s progress today. Well, I guess I could tell her the truth about stumbling over a dead body. I brightened at the thought. Maybe she would be happier with a dead body than a shady real estate deal. I would emphasize the long, hard bones. She’d like that.

  God, I had such a weird job. The death of a human being trumped pieces of paper acknowledging land ownership. Did anyone really own land? Now there was a question. Oh well, papers had to be sold, stories had to be clicked open in apps. Every click counted so advertisers would be happy about their reach.

  I didn’t dare look at how high Cindy had climbed. The view from up there would be stunning. I cast my eyes around the forest. I loved it here. Tiny atoms of rage against the developer multiplied like hot fire in my chest. In that moment, I understood why someone would want to murder anybody associated with destroying a forest. Maybe that’s what had happened here. Maybe this dead person was a land surveyor. And maybe someone had murdered the land surveyor and left his body to the wildlife. I laughed to myself; if you try to destroy the forest, the forest will destroy you. So ironic. Ugh. I was mocking what was maybe a murder. Not good, Robin. You should do a Buddhist chant to protect yourself from uncharitable thoughts.

  10.

  LOST IN THOUGHT about the loosey-goosey framework of my moral compass, I kept wandering away from the group, shuffling through the brittle leaves on the ground and looking down, immersed in the concepts of right and wrong. Who owned land? Was it ownable? That’s not a word, Robin. Possessable? That’s not a word either. I kicked at the leaves with my foot, partly because I didn’t want to step on a small bone, and partly because I liked the sound of my foot brushing against them. It was such a soothing whisper. It felt as if my foot was caressing the skin of the earth. The low rustle reminded me that the planet was always there, always solid. My moral compass had a good foundation, even if it danced around, sometimes a bit drunkenly. Okay, more than a bit. One day I would stop that hand to mouth thing I did every night. I breathed the rich loamy smell deep into my lungs. No, land could not be owned. Not really. Of this I was certain. But could it fight back? I thought so.

  People might think they owned land. There were tons of industries set up to divide it into plots. There were real estate companies, lawyers, surveyors, even whole departments in governments, all doing their best to chop the forests up. But, at the end of the day, the land remained. Nonetheless, I was perturbed that someone had bought the very land I was standing on and were going to change it, building something or another. And all for the sake of civilization. Why couldn’t people leave the land alone? Why did they have to destroy the wilderness?

  It made me so sad. And so fucking angry. Oh, let it go Robin. Getting angry wasn’t going to solve anything. I looked around to make sure I was alone and did a quick Buddhist chant under my breath to calm myself down. To hope for protection for the land. Chant, chant, chant. I was whispering. Wouldn’t want the cops to think I was a little cuckoo. I wasn’t worried about Cindy. She knew the score.

  I had meandered quite far away from the group and felt better after chanting and being away from the blood and gore. I didn’t want to be near that dead body. It was so gruesome. My nervous system couldn’t cope with the shock of it all. I was full up with shocks. Done with them. Trevor’s death from being hit by a drunk driver. Bringing up four feisty kids alone. Things that had happened in my own childhood. I was done. No more shocks for me. I was hypersensitive to every curveball that life threw at me. Maybe that’s why I drank.

  Oh geez, n
ow I was back to the moral compass thing. I kicked at the leaves and resolved to call Sally Josper, my naturopath, as soon as I got back to the city to get a better handle on my drinking. It had to go. With that resolution in place, I looked up from the rich earth to see where I was.

  I could hear the low hum of the group’s chatter, but they were out of sight, beyond the knoll I had just clambered over. I looked around to get my bearings. It really was a beautiful forest, full of old-growth trees standing tall and swaying gently in the breeze. I took a deep breath and felt gratitude for witnessing such grace and let it fill my being. My heart ached to think that someone was going to destroy all this loveliness and build a golf course or a resort or a bunch of trails for ATVs. A paintball enterprise. A condominium resort for seniors. Who knew what would happen. The sun was shining through the small green leaves, casting a soft green light into the pine-sweetened air. Yes, I understood why someone could kill anyone who was determined to destroy such beauty.

  Out of the corner of my left eye, I spotted a large shadow moving swiftly through the forest, weaving around trees and seemingly floating over small bushes. As it got closer, the form took shape. It was a huge bear, running straight for the hill the group was behind. I stood frozen as it charged about a hundred feet away from me through the undergrowth. I could hear twigs snapping and felt the earth vibrating under my feet. It was massive and it was heading right for them. Thank God it hadn’t seen me. I stood perfectly still and held my breath, hopefully praying that bears have poor eyesight but an excellent sense of smell.

  Once it raced past me, I opened my mouth to shout but no sound came out. I frantically patted my pockets, searching for my air horn. Fuck, I had put it on the living-room sideboard when I got back from discovering the body. I flapped my arms, warning of danger, but of course, the group couldn’t see me. I frantically looked around for a solution. I had to warn them! And then I looked up and saw Cindy, perched aloft and looking down at me, a look of puzzlement on her face. Why was I flapping my arms? I pointed numbly at the retreating bear as he scrambled up the small hill toward the cops. I watched her head turn as she followed where I was indicating from her vantage point high in the air. Suddenly, she could see the bear.