Brown Dog: Novellas

by Jim Harrison

  “Up to your old tricks again, Brown Dog,” said the doctor. “You’d fuck a rock pile if you thought there was a snake in it.”

  “Kiss my ass, you dickhead butcher,” B.D. barked, but then it dawned on him the doctor was none other than Marten. “Jesus, Marten, I didn’t know you were a doctor.”

  “I’m not. I swiped this disguise down the hall. There’s a detective following me and I need a little time to sort things out, man. How many people do you have behind you? If we’re going to protect that burial site from the wasichus, we have to get organized.”

  When B.D. told him the grim news that he was working alone and at random, Marten admitted that he suspected as much, adding that his own group, the Windigos, was presently shorn of membership. “It’s just the two of us to man the battle lines. In fact, today I bought an old fort as a cover for our operations. Actually I represent a group of investors—a fancy word for dope dealers, I suppose. My first love is film, but my integrity as an artist depends on my becoming engagé at times.”

  B.D. tried to buy time by offering Marten one of Karen’s fruit and fiber muffins. He had taken a bite of one earlier and it reminded him of fruitcake pumped full of air. He didn’t like fruitcake. Even gravy couldn’t help fruitcake. Marten’s comment about manning the battle lines brought to mind Delmore’s Korean War theories. “The bottom dropped out and the top came off,” Delmore liked to say. You could start as B.D. once had, with so simple an act of justice as pouring a cold beer down the neck of a truly mean-spirited woman, and end up in jail. The idea of standing with Marten and defending the ancient burial site against the college people, not to speak of the police, did not appeal to him.

  “I’m going to have to think this over. They got an injunction until next October against my showing up in Alger County. Prison would make me a shrunken man.”

  “Go ahead and think this over,” Marten said. “Just don’t cop out on me. You got this thing started and I came from California to help out. I already invested in a fort.”

  At that moment B.D.’s actual doctor came in and Marten slipped out after advising a polio shot.

  Five days later, against all advice, B.D. checked out of the hospital wearing an elaborate knee brace. He had been through a dark time what with the administration of fewer and fewer drugs and the brutal fact that Elise had been transferred to another wing of the hospital after having been caught toying with his weenie by her superior. He had written Elise an affectionate note and her reply had been discouraging: “You got me in dutch. My career is at stake and you’re doing the devil’s work. Don’t be bothering me anymore.” Somehow far worse was that all animals had fled his dreams and he realized the extent he had counted on them for good feeling to start the day. Now there were mostly people with big pink faces squeaking a strange language. With the bum knee and crutches he doubted he could even make it down the trail to the cabin. How was he supposed to live without ravens and other birds? That was the question. Also it was April Fool’s Day, which meant trout season would start in three weeks—not that he was a great observer of seasons—and how was he supposed to wade creeks and beaver ponds in his current condition? This was not an occasion for self-pity, an emotion alien to him, but a question.

  Delmore, fresh out of Vegas, was waiting in the car. An orderly helped B.D. in and Delmore, without a greeting, waved a letter from Gretchen in his face. This cunt Gretchen Stewart was threatening Delmore with all sorts of financial mayhem over B.D.’s logging accident.

  “I took you in as an orphan and now this,” Delmore said, pulling up in front of the fanciest hotel in town, the House of Ludington, the same place Brown Dog had stayed with Shelley last October. In the dining room they were met by Delmore’s lawyer, who patted B.D. on the back and said, “Just call me Fritz,” so he did. B.D. was completely ignorant of Michigan’s generous workers’ compensation laws. He was plied with a half-dozen drinks and a T-bone steak which mixed wonderfully with the Percodan he had taken for knee pain. Before dessert he was asked to sign a paper releasing Delmore from all financial liability for his accident and injury for the consideration of fifty dollars a week for one year, plus the use of the cabin for that same period. To the consternation of Fritz and Delmore B.D. became cagey, almost captious, leaning back and staring at the paper as if it were a tout sheet. Finally he handed the paper to Delmore, ignoring Fritz.

  “You forgot to put in the grub and two pints of V.O. It’s time I move up to top-shelf whiskey. I also want one dancing girl a week and your bearskin for keeps. I need it and you don’t. You agree to my terms or I’ll sue for five thousand.” He drew that laughable figure out of the hat because it seemed enormous at the moment. He had thrown in the dancing girl as a negotiating ploy to ensure the bearskin. Old Claude over in Grand Marais had told him that when your dreaming goes sour you should sleep outside naked, wrapped up in a bearskin.

  “You drive a hard bargain, B.D.,” Fritz said, holding up a hand to shush Delmore. He knew his client was getting the deal of a lifetime and wanted to close it forthwith. Such injuries most frequently result in a lifelong sinecure for the wounded.

  B.D. slept off lunch on Delmore’s sofa during which time Delmore burned Gretchen’s letter with satisfaction, put the signed release in his strongbox, and checked B.D.’s coat for incidental information. There was a short note from Marten saying that “the plot had thickened” and to “burn” the note, which in fact contained no useful information other than that B.D. was needed back on board the revolutionary express.

  The afternoon’s Mining Gazette had printed an article and interview with Marten that would immediately have gotten him locked up in any other country in the world. Delmore suspected it was a case of reefer madness, as before Marten left for the outside world he and his cronies had filled the local forests with patches of low-grade marijuana, so that every time the sheriff and deputies uprooted a small patch they’d proclaim a million-dollar drug bust (street value). Delmore would have to speak to the detective to find out if there wasn’t some way to ship this crazed urchin out of town without attracting the attention of the sharpsters from the ACLU. At least with Marten hogging the microphone, his idiot grandnephew might be saved from prison.

  Vegas had done a real job on Delmore and he trusted the oncoming spring to eventuate a recovery. He had been semi-hot on a local rich widow until she insisted they sit through the Wayne Newton show three nights in a row. That nasalate dipshit had driven him hysterical with boredom. And the chintzy banality of Siegfried & Roy brought desperate tears, so he climbed over tables and chairs to get out of the room. What saved him from heading home was a dark lounge where a luscious black woman sang the old Mabel Mercer–type tunes he had loved in jazz clubs in Detroit in the late forties and fifties.

  And now he had to give up his bearskin because Fritz had told him if B.D.’s case ever got into the hands of a good compensation lawyer, it would cost Delmore a minimum of a hundred grand. He went into the storage room and held the skin but not too close. The last time he wore it he had been dancing after a Mediwiwin ceremony up in Wisconsin when he was about B.D.’s age, thirty-five years before. For security he put on his turtle claw necklace and took the skin out before the fireplace where he examined it to the tune of B.D.’s slobbering snores. Goodbye my youth, thought Delmore, a somewhat pretentious emotion in that he was seventy-seven. His own son should have been wearing it, or his sister’s son, who had been murdered in a scuffle on a fishing boat off Munising back in 1950, after he had knocked up B.D.’s grandpa Jake’s worthless daughter, who had then run off with Delmore’s own son to disappear forever. How much Native blood anyone had never meant anything to Delmore—true Indians were those who observed the religion and the attitudes. Where it did matter significantly was in the area of fishing rights where Delmore figured a man ought to be one half by blood, and also when it came down to the pathetic benefits offered by the government. In the old days in the U.P. the bottom quarter of whatever background married whoever was availa
ble. He had even read how the Finns up in the northern areas of their country were actually a different kind of Indian. Delmore had never needed a free dime from anyone so a lot of the prolonged Native nightmare meant nothing to him. He had also read enough to know that notions of genetic virtue had caused the world a lot of problems in its sorry human history.

  Delmore laid the bearskin over B.D. on the couch so that the great toothed mouth was open near his face. He had shot the bear, a male of about three hundred and fifty pounds, up near the Fence River between Crystal Falls and Witch’s Lake. It took him two full days to drag it out, and when he brought it home his mother and young wife and all the neighbors had quite a celebration, though without alcohol, as they were traditional.

  B.D.’s eyes opened to the fierce countenance and he kissed the bear’s nose—a good sign, thought Delmore, who had been hoping for a frantic wake-up call. He made B.D. take a hot bath, then put on some fresh clothes, including the old plaid hunting shirt Delmore had shot the bear in and saved. Any more ceremony would have been wasted, though he relented a bit and opened his medicine bundle. He took out a small leather bag containing the bear’s gallstones. B.D. treated them as if they were diamonds before he pocketed the pouch.

  B.D. was wondering again if he could make it to the cabin on crutches, so they went out on the porch to check the weather. It was the beginning of twilight, the air warm enough for the crutches to penetrate the snow, with the sky’s cumulus billowing a promise of the first rain. Delmore wanted company for dinner and his post-Vegas depression but B.D. was eager for the cabin with its deep, non-hospital scent of pitch pine, the sound of a running creek rather than groans, pukes, moans, and nurse whispers.

  There was no way for B.D. to carry the heavy skin, so Delmore wrapped it around him, tying the arm and leg thongs and fitting the hollowed head over B.D.’s own. He had become a standing bear on the porch, then a walking bear on crutches as he headed off down the trail toward the cabin. Delmore had wanted to give him a hug for the first time but then thought it would increase his own internal quakiness. After the rifle shot so long ago the bear had stood up, its forepaws on a deadfall log, and howled and roared at Delmore for taking its life. That was certainly too much medicine to deal with at his age.

  At the cabin B.D. lit a lantern, then burned a green cedar bough over the kindling to remove the musty odor. He had fallen three times on the trail for lack of a flashlight, but by God he made it, throbbing knee and all. He pumped a quart of cold water, then frightened himself when he looked in the small mirror on the kitchen cupboard. He quickly shed the bearskin, listening to the hiss and crackle of the fire. It would take hours for the cabin to warm, so he got in his sleeping bag, drawing the bearskin over him so the head was on the pillow beside his own and the lantern light shone off the teeth.

  Deep in the night he got up to stoke the fire and take a pain pill. The rain was deafening on the roof, and over that he could hear the roar of the rising creek down the bank. There was only one pleasure on earth to equal that of a hard rain on a cabin’s tin roof, or so he thought as he peed out the door into the night. He suspected the tiny creek in the gully between the cabin and Delmore’s place would be filling with water, so he was doubtless trapped on this island in the forest, far from his only problems on earth which included Marten and his own big mouth. He had known it was wrong to show Shelley the ancient graveyard in the first place, but then she was that rare college woman who could have taken first place in any skin show. It was definitely her wiles that led him astray, and though he could not specifically name the principle he had wronged by showing an anthropologist the burial mounds, he knew there was one.

  At daybreak he noted that he was ill provisioned for his isolation. There were three cans of pork and beans and one of Spam. He didn’t care for Spam unless it was fried hard in lard, and the closest lard, he thought, was around a pig’s ass on the farm down the road from Doris’s place. He heated a can of beans, reflecting that Mr. Van Camp was cheap with pork. At least there was flour and a single egg left. He could make a loaf of bread which would be a bit chewy as there was no yeast. Better to use the egg for cornbread. He glanced over at the bearskin and remembered the idea old Claude spoke of: going without food to purify your mind and body. It was called fasting and he thought he might give it a go-around after the beans. The minute in which you got thrilled with an idea passed into the next minute when you weren’t. For instance, at the hospital Marcelle was a pea-brain dipshit and he didn’t want to see her again, but with the first spoonful of beans halfway to his mouth he remembered the charming way she cocked her bare butt at him like a house cat.

  By noon he had reached page one hundred of One Hundred Years of Solitude and marveled at how people bore up under the burden of all the things that happened to them. He liked a genuinely empty future, and his own smoke-blowing ideas for disrupting the excavation, plus Marten’s solider plans, stood off on the horizon like an immense nugget of doom, definitely spoiling the view. He was staring into the cracks of the floor when last night’s dream came to him. He was holding his childhood teddy bear to his chest. It was missing one leg and the fur was crinkly and singed from the time he put it in the oven to dry it out. The teddy bear started out cold and damp, then got warmer and warmer against his chest, then began to squirm and move of its own accord, wiggling and stretching, coming to life, then stood on its hind legs and looked around, whuffed as bears do, then curled up and went to sleep. What a relief, B.D. thought, to have my dreaming back, then he heard three rifle shots in succession and scrambled for his crutches.

  It turned out to be Teddy and Delmore standing on the other side of where the gully was filled by the feeder creek, Delmore in a yellow Great Lakes Steel slicker and Teddy with a bag of groceries, his rifle leaning up against a tree. It was a good thing Teddy was there, because Delmore never could have pitched the cans of food across the water, especially a fair-sized tinned ham. When it came to the pint of whiskey B.D. leaned his crutches against a tree and caught the bottle, falling in the process, but then it would have been quite the kick in the balls if the whiskey had broken.

  “Delmore, you cheap sonofabitch,” B.D. yelled, noting it was Four Roses, not the agreed-upon top-shelf V.O.

  “I forgot. I’m real old.” Delmore laughed, flipping him the bird and turning back to the trail.

  “You got any pussy over there?” Teddy yelled, his voice booming through the rain.

  “Not so as you would notice,” B.D. called, trying to figure out how he’d carry the stuff back to the cabin on crutches. It wasn’t as if someone would steal it if he left it there until needed. He settled on taking the whiskey, a fatty piece of chuck steak, a loaf of bread, and a can of peas. Halfway back he dropped the peas and let them lay for the next trip. At that moment he remembered that the Chippewa name for bear was “mkwa” and kept repeating it over and over until he was yelling it out to the downpour by the time he reached the cabin. On the platform three ravens fed on the remains of the deer Teddy had tossed up there for them. They let B.D. pass unremarked.

  A full week later he was out at the fort, unable to further avoid Marten, who had appeared the night before at the cabin, stoned almost senseless and making chicken sounds through the window. There was a temptation to shoot him but he ran off in the dark, hooting and clucking. When they were young if someone called you a chicken as Marten had, you either took the dare or fought on the spot.

  Rather than barge right in, B.D. pulled his breezy Studebaker off the road a few hundred yards away and peered at the scene through an old spyglass he borrowed from Delmore. At the fort they were as busy as bees. The rickety structure was made of upright half logs that had become quite warped. A half-dozen motorcycles were parked outside and it occurred to B.D. that they must be owned by those tough Red Power types from Wisconsin he had seen Marten talking to at the powwow. There was a pretty good-looking woman in a tight Levi’s outfit and B.D. zeroed in when she leaned over to pick something up. Now that he
was out in public again he might as well track down Marcelle. He swerved the spyglass, seeing a low-flying hawk cross far down the road. He didn’t pick up the hawk but back in the evergreens there was a man with binoculars watching the fort, then swiveling to look at B.D. himself, who lowered his spyglass. It was the detective who had come into the diner when Delmore had defended him the same morning after Rose totaled the van.

  At the fort B.D. told Marten about the spy in the underbrush. Marten looked through the spyglass, then went into what he called his official office, coming out with a couple of cherry bombs and an M-80, which he lit one by one and launched with a slingshot toward the vicinity of the detective, who had disappeared. B.D. was introduced as the original hero to the Red Power guys, who were generally immense, with long black hair in braids and favoring tattoos. He was wondering what happened to the woman in Levi’s he had spotted when Rose came around the back corner of the fort with her dreaded boyfriend, Fred. B.D. made for his Studebaker as fast as his crutches would carry him but Marten stopped him.

  “It’s time to put aside our petty bourgeois miseries for the sake of the cause,” Marten said, drawing them altogether.

  B.D. couldn’t get over what Rose looked like. He recalled that three months ago at Christmas Delmore mentioned she was taking the cure but he hadn’t paid attention. She must have lost thirty pounds of her bloat after she quit drinking. He was stunned.

  “B.D., you started this fucking thing and it’s time for you to stop hiding out,”she said, giving him a hug.