She quickly got dressed, found the flashlight, and went out to the privy. It was still dark. The full moon was hidden behind thick clouds. A faint breeze passed through the treetops, and she felt the cold lightly scratching against her cheeks and biting the end of her nose.
When she came in again, the aroma of coffee filled the cabin. Nisse was making coffee for everyone in the hunting party in a big aluminum pot.
Embla and Karin helped set the table. Due to the early morning hour they did not exchange many words; once they had a little breakfast in them they usually got more talkative. Each person in the party had to make their own sandwiches to take into the forest. Likewise everyone filled their thermoses; it was important to stay warm all day.
Einar and Tobias came in with a tired, stiff Tilly. The dog collapsed on the floor next to the stove and fell back asleep at once. She would perk up as soon as they were out in the woods.
The next moment Peter stepped through the door with a friendly “good morning.” Sixten arrived last and grunted as usual at everyone and no one in particular.
It was chilly in the cabin but because they had their hunting clothes on, no one felt cold. Embla always thought she looked like one of the guys. On a scale of one-to-ten her glamour factor was zero. She had put on a light-gray wool sweater with a short zipper in the high collar, and under that she wore a long-sleeved flannel shirt layered on top of a T-shirt. Her jacket and pants were of a flexible water- and wind-proof material. Her boots were sturdy and practical. And the hunting cap that completed the finery was a bright red-orange.
Before they left the cabin she retrieved the most important thing: the rifle, a 6.5 caliber Sako. And she remembered to take a box of ammunition. Last year she had forgotten that and had to go back to the cabin to retrieve the bullets.
A faint dawn crept from the east as she settled in on the tower. To Embla, this was the best time of the whole hunt. The darkness was just starting to let up, there was a stillness in the air, and she had a heightened awareness of all the scents surrounding her. As she sat there in the stand, she was aware of the watchfulness inside her. At dawn and twilight the wild animals are usually moving, and that was the best time to catch sight of them.
But around her stand it seemed calm that clear morning. The only living being that disturbed the peace was a boreal owl that landed in a pine tree not far from her. It was a breed that was rarely seen, but the little owl looked at her unafraid, its big yellow eyes glistening in the semi-darkness, giving it an almost demonic appearance. After a minute or so it flew off with jerky wing strokes but then quickly rose in circles over the clearing a short distance away.
As the upper part of the sun’s disk started to appear over the spruce tops, a light gust of wind made the remaining leaves on the aspen trees tremble and rustle. Like so often before the start of the hunt, she thought she sensed a streak of sorrow in the wind as it passed through the treetops. Many of the forest’s inhabitants would die during the next few weeks. At the same time she was convinced that hunting was necessary; the population of game must be kept at a certain level to prevent damage to the forest and collisions on the roads.
The sound of a shot broke the silence, and her adrenaline came rushing. The feeling was always the same when the first shot went off. Now the hunt has started! A few minutes later Sixten’s voice crackled over the two-way radio.
“Break! Search for wounded moose cow. The search will be between stands three, five, six, and seven. Will come back when I know more about which direction the animal is moving. Over and out!”
Shit! The hunt had barely begun before someone messed things up, Of course, it could happen to the best; the animal could jump and change direction. But Embla was irritated that the year’s hunt started with a wounded animal.
After half an hour of searching the dogs caught up with the moose cow. They were barking excitedly. The cow had been hit in the front leg, a good ways down on the shoulder. Clumsy! thought Embla, pursing her lips in her solitude up in the tower. Nisse would bring down the wounded animal.
At noon Sixten’s voice was heard again on the two-way radio: “Gathering at the meeting place.”
The temperature had risen to a few degrees above freezing, and the sunshine flooded down between the branches of the trees. A squirrel scampered up and down a tree trunk. Curiously it looked at Embla with its sprightly eyes from a safe position behind the trunk. She stopped and clicked her tongue at it. It didn’t let itself be lured, and disappeared up to the crown of the tree instead.
The meeting place was a clearing where the hunting party had buried a large cement pipe in the ground. Half an hour earlier someone had filled the pipe with wood and lit it. The fire had died down to perfect grilling embers. Around the grill there were rough logs to sit on. Most preferred to stand; you got stiff after sitting at the station for several hours. Einar and Tobias placed a loose grate over the cement pipe and spread out sausages of various lengths and sizes on the makeshift grill. Beside them were some bags of buns and magnum bottles of ketchup and mustard. The aroma from the sausages made Embla’s stomach contract with hunger.
She went over and set her cleared rifle with the others’ guns. At the same moment she caught sight of von Beehn’s hunting party, who came walking through the bushes. The Swedes in his group had Carl Gustafs, caliber 30-06, but the new guy who had joined von Beehn and the others—German, she figured, based on his accent—had a rifle that she thought looked like a Heym. A beautiful shotgun. She turned her eyes away when she discovered that the German was inspecting her. Reflexively she brought her hand up toward her eyebrow. She had removed the surgical tape from the championship match some time ago, but a light swelling and discoloration were still there.
That dork Greger Liljon had dressed in a tweed jacket, golf pants, knee socks, expensive boots, and cap. She knew he was the nephew of Anders von Beehn. He had been there during the last three hunts, but they had never spoken. An out-and-out upper-class brat, she had thought the first time she saw him. That impression had remained.
“He’s the one who wounded the moose cow,” Karin whispered in her ear. The cousins exchanged a meaningful look.
Sixten began to speak and declared himself satisfied with the morning. They had killed two yearling calves and two adult moose cows, including the wounded cow.
Anders said that at about ten o’clock Greger had caught sight of a stately sixteen-pointer, but he didn’t have a good firing angle. He gave his nephew a sharp look, who blushed and tried to pretend he didn’t detect the gibe, but his wandering gaze betrayed him.
Embla saw that he seemed ill at ease. He continuously rubbed his palms against his wool pants and rocked worriedly in his expensive boots. His whole body language signaled how tense he was.
The dogs sat among the hunters and begged for pieces of sausage here and there. Happiness for them came when someone fumbled a bun and dropped a sausage on the ground.
Sixten stuck strictly to the prohibition on alcohol during the hunt itself, but Embla wondered to herself whether Jan-Eric had broken the agreement. His face was ruddy, he laughed too loud, and when he took his sausage and bun it was obvious his hands were shaking.
The last one to arrive was Peter Hansson. He looked energetic and fresh and declared that he was starving. When Embla asked how he thought his first morning as a moose hunter had been, he answered happily, “Uneventful but completely amazing!” He hadn’t seen any moose, but, he said with a grin, he had seen several deer and a badger.
The day before Sixten had informed them that they were right next to a wolf preserve with a parent couple and at least two cubs. Besides that, a bear—a female with a cub—had been spotted in the vicinity late in the summer. There was even pictorial evidence. The pictures were somewhat blurry because the woman out picking cloudberries had shivered as she took a picture with her phone. Fortunately the bear took no notice of her; there had been a pretty good distance between them.
Peter said that he hoped to catch
sight of at least one of the predators that were in the area. Good luck, thought Embla. The older men in the party had hunted for forty years or more and had only encountered a wolf on scattered occasions. Embla had never seen one herself. Sixten claimed to have met wolves at least twenty times, but he was alone in that, and there was a question about whether his claim was true. The only real close contact with predators that any of them had had was when Einar walked right into a bear during the moose hunt six years ago. Fortunately the bear only glared at him, then turned around and lumbered off. What saved him that time was that he didn’t have Tilly with him.
Three adult animals and five yearling calves. That was a good result for the first day’s hunt, Sixten summarized contentedly.
It had taken time to prepare the animals and hang the carcasses up in the shed. It was almost eight o’clock before everyone was gathered around the table in the bigger cabin. On the yard outside Tobias and Einar were grilling grouse, so according to Sixten it “stank like a fucking crematorium.” But the Lindbergs were true grill masters and had brought a bottle of their homemade secret-recipe oil with them up to the cabins. Sixten, Einar, and Tobias had shot the grouse during a few days of hunting at the end of August. The birds had been carefully prepared, boiled, and frozen ahead of the moose hunt.
Powdered béarnaise sauce would have to do, which Nisse whipped up in a saucepan on the stove. Karin conjured up a large bowl of potato salad, and with the last tomatoes from Björn’s greenhouse at home on the farm, it was a real feast.
With the food they had water, beer, or wine. Once again Peter hauled out a bottle of O.P. Anderson and new small plastic shot glasses. Why must he treat to aquavit every evening? Embla thought. The others could usually stop after one or two shots, but Sixten drank until the bottle was empty.
When Nisse put on the coffee kettle after dinner, Sixten said suddenly, “I wonder what’s gotten into Frippe.”
“What do you mean?” Nisse asked.
“Don’t know. Stig said the dog seemed out of sorts. It was lying in the car and looked sick. It vomited. Couldn’t even raise its head. I think Stig should take the dog straight to the vet. I know it’s getting a bit late, but the one in Ed has a home practice, so he promised to take a look at the dog.”
Einar frowned and sent a worried glance toward Tilly, who was sleeping on a patch of rug in front of the stove. She was the same as always but the others understood his worry. It could be something contagious.
Nisse looked at Seppo, who was lying on the wood floor next to his friend. When the dog felt his master’s gaze, he raised his head at once and stood up. Are we going out? Yes, yes! Please! his whole body language said. He too was the same as usual, alert and sensitive to signals.
“I’m going out for a walk with Seppo. Tilly can come along if she wants,” said Embla.
“I’ll join you and hold the flashlight,” Peter said quickly.
Tobias’s expression turned dark but he could hardly say anything. Married with two children, he forced himself to keep quiet. The summer vacation when they were fourteen he and Embla had had a summer flirtation, and it was as if he had never completely let it go.
“Embla, watch out if he asks you to hold the flashlight. You may get something else altogether in your hand!” he threw out after them.
“All the same. Just so it shines!” she responded.
It was nice to get out, the air inside the cabin got heavy after a while. Thick clouds concealed the moon and the darkness was impenetrable. She was grateful that Peter had offered to go along; it would have been hard to manage two dogs on leashes while holding a flashlight, and she didn’t dare let them run around on their own. There were predators in the vicinity; the butchering offal that was left behind in the woods after the day’s hunt lured them out.
Peter turned on the flashlight and they started walking across the yard. After a short silence he asked, “Does von Beehn have another dog?”
“No. His dad always had several, but Anders only has one.”
“Then the gang in the Hunting Castle won’t have a dog tomorrow.”
“No. It’s a shame because Frippe is really good, but there are these two dogs, too.” She was forced to stop to untangle the leashes, which had gotten twisted up during Seppo’s meandering.
“I can take one of them,” Peter offered.
“Thanks.”
They walked a bit in silence. The beam of light played across the ground, revealing branches and hollows that could treacherously fell a hiker.
Now or never, she thought. “Listen . . . I have to ask you something.”
“Yes?”
“Why do you always treat everyone to aquavit?”
“What do you mean? I thought that was part of it.”
The surprise in his voice sounded genuine.
“Maybe in the past. But we’re trying to skip strong alcohol during the hunt for Sixten’s sake. As you know, he gets worked up once he starts drinking.”
“Sure, I know. But I actually brought the bottles with him in mind. To be honest, I was hoping it would make him like me better.”
“Is the fuss about the rent?”
He sighed audibly. “Yes. He wanted to buy Dad’s land. Obviously at a low price. When I didn’t agree to that, he proposed renting it all. But I said no because I wanted to start hunting myself. He got really upset.”
“He is a little . . . special.”
“Yes, I’ve realized that. I said that of course he could keep a room in the cabin, but I don’t know if that made things any better.”
Feuds between neighbors over land can get terribly contentious, she knew from her time in the mobile unit. Land was the only resource there can never be more of. The earth that exists is all that we have and that’s what we have to fight about, as Nisse liked to say.
They walked awhile without speaking. There was rustling from small animals in the undergrowth. A bird suddenly shrieked shrilly very close by. Both of them started and the dogs barked.
“That sounded like a soul in distress,” she said, to dismiss her fear.
Peter did not answer but quickened his pace. When he realized that she had a hard time seeing where to put her feet, he stopped and waited. She noticed that his breathing sounded a bit fast. Presumably he was still not used to all the sounds of the forest and had gotten scared. Side by side they walked in the direction of the outhouse; the path could only faintly be made out in the light. At last he broke the silence.
“How long are you and Nisse staying up here?”
“Until Thursday evening. It’s usually just Nisse, me, and Sixten by the time Thursday rolls around. The others work and leave on Wednesday. But they’ll come up here again over the weekend and we will, too. Then we hunt all day Saturday and half of Sunday. On Sunday afternoon we start cutting up what we’ve killed during these first three hunting days.”
Peter was silent for a long time. “And von Beehn’s group? Do they stay?” he asked at last.
“Just Anders and Jan-Eric. They always go home on Sunday. Ola Forsnaess did, too, but as you know he was killed in a car accident after the last moose hunt. So this year it might just be Anders and Jan-Eric. The others will probably go home on Wednesday.”
They continued up to the outhouse in silence. When they were there Peter cleared his throat. “If you want to go in I can hold the dogs . . .”
“I don’t need to. Karin and I usually go right before bedtime. It can feel a little eerie to walk alone in the dark with the wolves and other predators around.” She couldn’t see his face but sensed that he smiled in the darkness.
“If you have time you can come and visit and see what things are like at the farm,” he said.
His comment had come completely by surprise, and she didn’t know how to respond. Was it an invitation for something more? she thought, before rejecting the idea. No, he was probably just being friendly, and he may be a little lonely. Embla was aware that she was feeling more and more interest in the man who was
walking beside her. She knew that she always fell for the wrong guys: the slightly unreliable and dangerous ones, the ones who didn’t need her and that she definitely didn’t need. But Peter didn’t fit into her usual pattern. He gave signals that he was available, and he seemed rather harmless with his computers, the farm, and the animals. And he looked good. A real hottie! as her friend Mia always said.
“I’ll have to see if I have time on Friday,” she answered in a suitably nonchalant tone.
“Well, then I have to drive down to Gothenburg. I’ve got a new major customer in the works, and we’re going out for dinner afterward. But I’ll try to come back up here on Saturday. So maybe next week or the following weekend?”
“Maybe. I have vacation then, too.” To her own surprise she felt disappointed. Friday would have suited her just fine. But he did have a company to run.
In silence they walked back toward the cabin.
The others were just getting up from the table. Tobias gave them a searching look but didn’t say anything.
“Shall we?” Karin whispered in her ear.
“We shall.”
They took a flashlight and went out in the darkness. A dozen meters from the cabin they stopped and went behind some juniper bushes where they crouched and peed. They did that sometimes in the evenings when they didn’t feel like going all the way over to the outhouse.
When Embla sank down on her hard bed she set the alarm on her phone for five-thirty. Carefully she placed her iPhone on the floor. Like so many times before, she thought she ought to arrange a stool or a chair beside the bed but was too lazy to get up and do it.
She was awakened by a frightful noise. It took a few seconds before she realized that it was the alarm on the phone, working its way up to highest volume. Half asleep, she fumbled for the phone, which had slid under the bed, and managed to silence it. Exhausted from the effort she fell back against the pillow. The little bedroom was freezing and her nose felt ice cold, but inside the thick sleeping bag it was wonderfully warm and cozy. She longed to stay in bed for one more hour, especially given the weather. She could hear rain pattering against the windowpane. Or was it snow? It was a bit early in the season, but it was not at all impossible. The hunting area was high up, where it was always a lot colder than it was down on the flatlands. A few years ago they had had to plod to their stations in inch-deep snow. It was tough but with the right clothing and footwear it hadn’t been a problem.
Hunting Game Page 4