Brown Dog: Novellas

by Jim Harrison

  In his radio room which had RADIO ROOM on the door I understood why he had all the aerials and wanted me to cut the maple tree with dead branches down. The room had a whole wall of equipment and Delmore is what you call a ham operator. It’s hard not to think of hams smoked off a pig when you hear “ham operator.” That’s just the human mind at work and there’s no connection. Delmore said name a country and I said Canada but he said that’s too easy name another. How about the lost country of Atlantis, and he said fuck you B.D., we’ll contact old Mexico. Sure enough in a few minutes he was talking to a guy named Ricky about this and that including politics and the guy’s family. He sent me to get the whiskey bottle and he contacted a lot of countries. Delmore’s got this theory, not ready for the man on the street, that the world hasn’t fit together since the Korean War. With these ham radios he can tell you where the shit has hit the fan anywhere at anytime within minutes, that way he is never caught off guard about anything. I didn’t say so but I like surprises though I am not exactly up to date on the fate of the world.

  Then I got a bit of surprise when Delmore took me into his Indian room though it didn’t say that on the door. It was full of snakeskins and shells of different kinds of turtles, some of them real big snapper and mud turtle shells. Over in the corner there was a full hooded bearskin, a war club, and a bunch of rattles hanging from a hook. Then Delmore says that the bear medicine he got as a boy up by Ontonagon was too hard to maintain unless you could give it full time. It was too much medicine for him when he went south to work in Detroit but on his farm north of town he had lots of dreams about serpents and turtles so he turned to them and they had stood by him. Then he asks about what animal I dream about and I said I dream about animals every night of my life because I’ve lived full time around them. I also dream a lot about dogs which seems reasonable given my nickname. He said he’d have to think that over and gives my face a little scratch with a snapping turtle claw for good luck. You’re a true mongrel, B.D., which isn’t all that bad.

  There’s not a lot you can say about cutting pulp all winter long except that it’s easier than in the summer when the woods can be chock full of blackflies, mosquitoes, ticks, deerflies, and horseflies. I’m partial to the cold and live in the right place for it, and would rather freeze to death than boil any day. Grandpa told me I had been left in a hot cabin in August when I was a baby and that accounted for my love of cold weather and cold water. He said in another day I would have looked like a miniature mummy, the way Egyptians buried their dead like they were making venison or beef jerky, not that the dead minded that much.

  Anyway I didn’t write my memoirs for three months because pulp cutting didn’t give me any memories. Everything was used up, simple as that. You cut the tree, trim the branches, cut the logs to the proper length, then every few days when you have a load a custom skidder comes in to haul the logs out to the nearest two-track where a log truck with its own hydraulic lifter can load up. There’s a saying that there aren’t any old pulp cutters. You wear out before that, or a falling tree bucks back and catches you, or a “widow maker,” which is a loose branch or a tree that gets caught up on another, falls on you and you are so much crushed meat. What saves the job is that you’re outdoors, and if you’re troubled in mind you are too wore out at the end of the day to give a shit, period.

  Delmore is only giving me fifty bucks a week plus room and board, which means the cabin plus the groceries he picks up, a free breezy use of the Studebaker without any windows but the shitty windshield. He says all that’s worth about eight hundred a month in value so the fifty bucks cash per week makes me overpaid. You’re not likely to argue if you don’t have a choice, let alone a Social Security number. We should all be grateful for work if we don’t push it too far.

  Also, a few days after he showed up Mr. Beaver’s article was in the paper speculating that I represented some secret “Red Power” group from Wisconsin or farther west. He also said I was a well-known U.P. drifter with several scrapes with the law, and come from our “outcast subculture,” the “forgotten outsiders” from the lowest ten percent of our wage earners. It was no wonder that I was outraged when my religion was going to be violated by anthropologists and archaeologists and that I and my organization might consider violence. He also added that the university people were within the law, and the State Police said I was being closely watched.

  Delmore said the article should teach me to keep my mouth shut and it was easy for them to find a reason to put me in jail, far from whiskey, pussy, and a decent meal. I admit I got scared though I was interested in seeing myself described in print in better terms than in the court papers in Munising. There is supposed to be free speech in this country but you say a few things and they come down on you like a ton of shit. To be frank I was afraid to go to town and Delmore encouraged my fear because he liked my company for dinner. He said my spirit and body would die in prison and I would come out a shrunken man.

  Every night after dinner and Delmore’s lecture about life I’d head down to my cabin with whatever was left of my whiskey ration (a pint of Guckenheimer every three days) and stoke up the banked fire. One thing about a well-built cabin is that once you get the walls warm it’s not too hard to maintain fifty degrees in winter. I can’t say your body will cook in that temperature but it will maintain life.

  Sad to say Marcelle only came out twice, the second time after a deep snow, and she had trouble walking with her one short leg so I pulled her on the toboggan and being from Louisiana she couldn’t stand the coolness of the cabin. Also, Travis was being sent home from Africa with a case of amoebas in his intestines, all of which left me out of luck except for an occasional poke with Vera from the country bar, the Buckhorn Tavern, two miles down the road from Delmore’s. I only go there on Saturday nights out of my police fear but it’s hard to imagine them hanging out there. Sometimes Delmore comes along and he’ll point out some old backwoods, scab-faced stewbum and say he might be working undercover for the police so I better behave.

  Vera has been married three times and is not exactly a dieter but is full of affection which makes up for a lot. She said that before her family moved over to Felch she was in the third grade when I was in the sixth. I admit that I didn’t remember her but she said that was a hundred fifty pounds ago and starts laughing. We sneak off to the storage room at the back of the bar for a quick one and it’s comforting to see beer stacked in cases and rows of liquor stored on shelves, neat as a pin. The first time we did it she got to kicking and broke a few bottles. There was no way to save a single drop.

  Late in January and I had a big nature day that filled my thoughts. First off there was just a bare hint of day when I got to the logging site. There were almost too many stars above and west and a trace of light in the east. There had been a small thaw the day before, then it went down to zero, so I could walk right on top of the snow. I carried my saw and a can of gas way back to the corner of the forty near the edge of a tamarack marsh. I stood still for a while thinking of where to start a fire to warm up my hands during the day when I heard a whooshing sound. I didn’t have time to think before a snowy owl hit a rabbit on the edge of the swamp. There was a squeal from the rabbit then that’s all folks. I had to stand there stock still for a half hour to make sure the big bird got his meal without me roaring him off. These owls come all the way down from the Arctic certain years when they run out of food up there, but it can be a long time between seeing one. Then around midmorning I looked over about a hundred yards to where I had been clearing out smaller trees to fell a big one the day before and there were three deer feeding on the slender popple tops. When I shut off the chain saw they’d get edgy, but when I cranked up again they’d go right back to feeding. Some people know a chain saw is a dinner bell. Hunger must be a lot stronger than fear.

  Delmore had filled a wide thermos of chili and I shook a bunch of hot sauce in it. I have to keep the hot sauce in my pocket or it will freeze up. I was feeling good so I took a st
roll across the county road from the forty. I wanted a snooze but it was no fun waking up cold and stiff on the pickup seat so I headed into this real thick stand of cedar that even got thicker. It was grand being able to walk on top of the snow so I made a pretty big circle with an eye on the sun so I wouldn’t get turned around. I came upon a small pond with a steep bank and a pile of deadfalls on the far side. I was about to pass it by when I noticed a small black hole in the snowbank by the tree roots and I smelled a musty smell in the cold air. I could have jumped for joy but I didn’t want to make a racket. What happened is that I found my first bear den blowhole in my life. Grandpa showed me one when I was a kid and I did the same thing I had done years ago. I lay down and smelled the strong scent coming out of the hole which was an inch wide, then I put an ear to it and listened to the slow stretched-out snores. I couldn’t remember when I felt luckier. I would have to bring Delmore back here to help the bear medicine he gave up.

  It was Thursday and when I told Delmore about the bear den he shook his head no and said it would be too much for his heart. He had killed a bear as a young man and that was its skin in the other room. His point was since he had abandoned his bear medicine this one might come out and get him. Then he wore another long face and said Marcelle told him that morning that Travis was looking for me and I shouldn’t go to Vera’s Buckhorn Tavern on Saturday. She was baiting me, for sure. Just when I get over the worry about the State Police spying on me even out in the woods I got this black-belt nut case on my tail. I told Delmore to tell Marcelle that this country was too small for both me and her husband. Delmore asked what movie I got that from and I said I thought it was one I saw with Randolph Scott when I was a kid.

  Friday was a mean and blustery day in the woods and I damn near quit but there was no point in stewing in the cabin. I built an extra-big bonfire because it was darkish with low clouds whistling past out of the northwest. I tried singing while I worked but I don’t know whole songs, only parts. “Yes, we have no bananas, we have no bananas today.”And there was one my pardner in the diving salvage business, Bob, used to play on his pickup stereo called “Brown-Eyed Women and Red Grenadine” that was beautiful though I could only sing the title. I didn’t know what grenadine was until I met Shelley and she bought it to pour in rum drinks. It is a kind of sweet syrup that wouldn’t be good on pancakes. While I was singing “Row, row, row your boat, life is but a dream,” it occurred to me why Travis, or Fred for that matter, wouldn’t attack me in the woods. If you jumped a man running a chain saw you could get cut up pretty bad. I thought of this because once in the Soo, when Bob sold some ship’s lanterns we got off an old wreck, we saw this movie called The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. I walked out halfway through and went to a bar. My idea of fun is not seeing people get sawed up. I also swore I’d never go to Texas. Delmore has been there and said they got a lot of cowboys but drove all the Indians out.

  On Saturday morning I didn’t work because I was fretting about my face-off with Travis that was coming up. I tried to read a book about nature with plenty of photos that Delmore gave me back at Christmas at my request. When I asked for it I was remembering that the dead chief in the ice truck told me to read a book about nature. Under a picture of a cottonwood tree it said the tree drinks two to three hundred gallons of water a day. This didn’t seem possible but then I’d never seen one. Come spring I might just have the urge to head out west again like I did when my dead van was brand new. I’d check out cottonwood trees. Then there was a bang on the cabin door and I jumped for the rafters. It was Berry on her Bushwacker skis I got her for Christmas. They cost me more than a week’s pay but I was thinking she might never get the hang of a bicycle, and these cross-country skis are short and wide, more like snowshoes so she can get around in the winter. What surprised me is that Berry only visits on Sundays. She comes in sounding like a flock of pissed-off bluejays and gives me a note from Doris. The upshot was that Fred was back in town from burying his dad in Flint and was on my trail. Doris heard Rose tell him she’d heard I was in the Buckhorn every Saturday night. Rose isn’t allowed in the bar because she had a pretty mean duke-out with Vera last summer I was told.

  Fine. Two on one, if that’s fair. I made Berry hot chocolate in a soup bowl because she always wants seven marshmallows in it. We played one game of Chinese checkers though she doesn’t know how and I sent her on her way so she could ski home before dark. Then I went up to dinner at Delmore’s before the big showdown. Delmore knew about Travis but when I added Fred he was troubled indeed. He took me back in his pantry where he’s got a big flour bin full of every lightbulb he’s ever used up. When I asked him why he said “Waste not, want not.” From another drawer he took out a pair of old-time brass knuckles and gave them to me for extra help. They had a nice heft to them, especially on a haymaker. He also put a German Luger in his suit-coat pocket but he didn’t have any shells for the pistol. He said he was willing to scare someone for me but wasn’t going to jail on my account. He had made a good little venison roast plus the heart for dinner to give me strength. He made me eat the heart and I said deer aren’t all that strong. “But they can run,” he yelled, laughing his guts out, which picked up my spirits. It had been a long time since I’d had a fistfight but it wasn’t likely to be the end of the world, just a real expensive way to pay for getting laid a few times.

  Delmore and me got to the Buckhorn fairly early so we could get set up. We decided to sit at the bar and we played a few games of cribbage while we waited. There was extra size to the crowd which was usually twenty or thirty, the kind of drinkers who wore out their welcome in town. I guessed that some of them heard there was going to be excitement and showed up for it. I was glad to see Teddy, a great big mixed-blood I’d been to school with. His dad put him to work in the woods so he had to drop out in the eighth grade like a lot of my friends. Grandpa made me finish school so I’d have a diploma. I misplaced this diploma somewhere. Teddy waved to me and pointed at the ball bat he had leaned up against the fireplace on the far side of the bar. I had Vera take him a pitcher of beer as Teddy always drank straight from the pitcher. The ball bat made me feel a trace warmer in my very cold guts.

  About eight o’clock in comes this tall, wiry guy dressed up like he was God’s own commando. He was sort of dancing on the balls of his feet as his eyes swept the bar. He had to be Travis as Fred was a lot thicker when I saw him on Doris’s porch and in the rearview mirror of my van. It was then it came to me that these guys wouldn’t exactly know what I looked like. Marcelle must have given him a general description because he sidles up and asks if my name happens to be B.D. I naturally say no, but B.D. is a friend of mine and is due any moment because we got a pool game coming up. I estimated Travis to be only about one-eighty but his arms were made up of cables. He orders a drink next to me and Delmore, looks around, and heads to the toilet.

  Just at the moment Travis goes into the toilet (Bucks and Does at the Buckhorn) in comes Fred, half drunk with his eyes boiling red, his neck real thick like the football players on TV. To be frank I’d rather fight a bulldozer. The bar is silent except the jukebox which is playing George Jones’s “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” Again, he comes up to me and asks if I’m B.D. and Delmore interrupts and says what I was about to say, that B.D. is in the pisser. Fred starts jumping up and down to juice himself up, then heads toward the corner just as Travis comes out. Fred looks back at Delmore for a split second and Delmore nods yes, then they were engaged in mortal combat.

  It was a real bar sweeper and enjoyed by all. Fred was more powerful but Travis had the moves. Travis whacked and kicked him about thirty times and would have been the clear winner if he hadn’t tripped on a chair. Fred came down with a knee on Travis’s guts, then got him in a choke hold but Travis reached up and gouged Fred’s eye and Fred whirled him around by the neck and threw him against the pinball machine which broke. That was enough for Vera who called the sheriff. I was surprised when Travis bounced up but he did. Teddy made his way up to
the bar and said he thought I was the one supposed to fight and I said shut up. Then this old guy and other folks started screeching because Travis drew a knife, and Fred took out one of his own. I was sure glad I wasn’t involved. They started circling through the tipped-over furniture and it was then that Delmore jumped off his barstool with a war whoop. Delmore always wears his old three-piece suit so he could be someone official. That and the fact he had drawn his German Luger got their attention.

  “Fun is fun, boys, but now you are destroying public property. Throw down your knives or I’ll blow you both to hell.” They threw down their weapons so Delmore took it a little further. “Now lay facedown. The law is on its way. Teddy, if they move you bash the skinny one while I shoot the other through the skull.” Teddy bonked his ball bat on the floor near Travis’s head.

  So that was that for the meantime. The deputies came and took them away without protest. Everyone knows that the cops in the U.P. like to mix it up so there was no further trouble. Delmore who had only let me have two drinks to start bought a few rounds for the house. Vera said the pinball was on lease and nobody played it much, though I will miss the painting behind the glass, part nude woman and part robot. Next morning on Sunday we had pork chops and potatoes and coffee royals, a popular special-occasion morning drink in the U.P. (coffee, whiskey, sugar). Delmore liked to add a lesson to everything and said that spuds and pork had made America. He was still high with the last night’s excitement and almost turned on the TV. He had pulled the plug during a thunderstorm years ago, then didn’t watch again because Ronald Reagan said a lot of Indians were oil rich on their “preservations.’’