Hard Ground

by Joseph Heywood

  She left her truck at the cable and walked a quarter mile back to the camp and three hundred yards in found the old man turtling along the two-track, both of his pant legs folded behind what remained of his legs and pinned in place. He was headed the same direction she was.

  Wintermute said, “That looks like mighty slow going, Cramp.”

  The old man stopped but didn’t look up. “Good joke. Never woulda thunka that one, Edwy,” he said with a series of grunts and gasps.

  “Penny misses your weekly tête-à-têtes.”

  “Why God make miserable coose like dat?”

  “Variety maybe. You seem to be short some appendages since last we met, Jacques.”

  “Da sweet blood finally got to ’em. VA over Iron Mountain took ’em off. I told dat PO bitch I had surgery comin’ up, and VA even sent letter. She said, yada-yada, yada-yada, sucks to be you.”

  “You’ve been in Iron Mountain five months?”

  “Dere t’ree and some, rest of time seein’ old chums. Ya know, like R&R, eh?”

  “Like a snowbird to Florida,” Wintermute said. “Lositch says there’re charges pending, sex with a minor, namely your granddaughter.”

  Cramp said, “Hell wit dat bullpuckey. You seen paper wit charges?” Only then did he finally look up at her.

  “No.”

  “Won’t neither. Word out Lositch got her tight ass in sling. I hear she put on warnin’ by state for not doin’ her job, eh? Way I see it, I disappear, she does, too.”

  Cramp stopped, twisted to his butt, took a pack of Camels out of his waist pack, and lit one after offering the pack to Wintermute, who accepted and sat down cross-legged, facing him. There was standing swamp water not four feet away, a carpet of Indian sweet grass between them and the water. The ground smelled vaguely of vanilla.

  Normally, Wintermute didn’t smoke, but today she sensed something momentous in the air and decided to partake. His violating ways aside, she’d always been oddly fond of Jacques Cramp, who never made excuses and always owned up to his faults and crimes once captured.

  The two of them sat smoking mindlessly, exhaling, and watching blue tendrils hang in the summer morning air. “Your family know you’re out here?” she finally asked.

  Cramp showed the game warden his callused hands, which looked like leather baseball gloves. “Pal dropped me nort’ of town, and I come up fum dere.”

  “Crawled?”

  “The hull way on old tote roads. She weren’t too bad, hey. I seen bugs lots worse for sure, eh.”

  She calculated the crawl had been twelve to fifteen miles. “Long way,” Wintermute said.

  “Made it is da point; rest is just jaw-chew.”

  True enough. “Now what?”

  “Get camp, settle in, live high on hog,” the old man said, laughing and gasping for air.

  Wintermute laughed with him. The old man had always treated her with respect, as if they were the friendly opposition to be outsmarted. “Your camp provisioned?” she asked him.

  “Got all I need,” the man said, flipping Wintermute a key. “Do me favor? Scoot on up dere, open ’er up, eh?”

  “I could carry you,” Wintermute said. “Fireman’s carry.”

  “Come dis far on my own, reckon I can finish ’er dat way.”

  She had no rejoinder and walked to the camp to open the door. Two floors, eighteen by twenty feet, kitchen and larder in front of the ground floor area. She opened cabinets and found nothing, which led to a heart-sinking realization as she heard a single gunshot, ran outside, and saw the old man on his back, not fifty yards from the cabin. He had scratched “thanks” in dirt he had smoothed. He was shirtless, ribs protruding, his shirt tossed up on a raspberry bush laden with ripening fruit. A second note in the dirt read, “My PO wunt see me.”

  Wintermute thought she understood, and called Lositch, who answered with an irritable, “What is it?”

  “No sign of Cramp. I’ve exhausted all my sources. I think he’s disappeared.”

  “Fuck he has!” Lositch swore and cut the connection.

  Wintermute used her boot and a leafy branch to erase the man’s “Thanks,” picked up their cigarette butts, and carefully put the wiped key into his shirt pocket, where she found a note like the one on the ground. “My PO refewds see me.”

  Wolves and coyotes would make short work of the old man’s body, spread the bones around. Cramp would truly disappear, but the shirt would be found, leaving a circumstantial mess.

  The CO took a final look at the old man and his shirt and hiked back to her truck. Some violators weren’t all bad, or even bad all the time. And some presumed good guys weren’t good at all. Cramp had always been a great violator because he worked alone and planned meticulously, even his final act, it seemed. Wintermute admired the sheer audacity and remembered what some Hollywood star was supposed to have said, that revenge was a dish best served cold. She hoped Lositch would find hell.

  Song in the Woods

  In two years as a tribal cop on the Keweenaw Bay Reservation in Baraga, three years as a Michigan state trooper, and the last fourteen as a conservation officer in counties below and above the bridge, CO Foresta Quinn had never seen so much debris from a two-vehicle crash, never imagined there could be so damn many pieces, and wondered if manufacturers were doing something differently and hiding it from consumers. It wouldn’t surprise her. Little did anymore.

  First on scene, she called Central, the multicounty dispatcher who covered city cops, county sheriffs, conservation officers, and state police for Mackinac, Chippewa, and Luce Counties. Quinn asked for assistance with victims and traffic control. She used her own truck to block the westbound lane, then asked a civilian to temporarily signal vehicles to turn around, go back up the hill to Epoufette, and detour north and west through Rexton on the Hiawatha Trail.

  Quinn went first to the eighteen-wheeler. The log hauler had been filled with two pups of ten-foot pulp logs, now spread all over the highway like squat pick-up sticks. She found the driver still seat-belted into his cab, multiple facial cuts, but nothing serious or life threatening. Still, he wasn’t conscious, and that wasn’t good. His pulse felt all right. He could hold for now. She glanced at the red oval Peterbilt logo gleaming on the ground, which she had first thought was blood.

  The conservation officer looked for a second vehicle and finally got her mind to reconstruct the remains of what appeared to be a small foreign-­model pickup. She used her imagination to guess where the pickup cab might lie in the debris field, went to it, and there found a body still pinned inside. She stretched her arm as far as it would go and got two fingers on the neck, but there was no pulse. A troop came up behind her. “What we got?”

  “This one’s gone. Rig driver’s out cold but alive,” Foresta Quinn said as a large houndy dog went to the wreck, sniffed loudly at the body she’d just examined, whined ruefully, and limped across US 2, holding up a bloody front leg. The dog’s hindquarters were smeared in blood. The troop was seeing to the truck driver, EMTs from Naubinway were arriving, and a Mackinac County deputy and another troop were turning traffic back in both directions. Quinn saw the dog disappear into a copse of aspens to the north and made a decision. She told the EMTs she was stepping away and jogged after the animal, following a faint blood trail, which she eventually lost in dense ferns. She stopped to listen. In the woods your nose and ears were often better than your eyes.

  A voice sang, “I thank God for this amazing day.”

  The voice was sweet and high, soft as warm honey, and Quinn felt drawn to it, thoughts of the dog momentarily gone. The singing continued, “For the leaping greenly spirit of trees.”

  Foresta stopped in a small clearing, the floor blanketed with forget-me-nots, and the voice went on, “And a true blue dream of sky, for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.”


  The conservation officer saw a woman ahead and approached her. The dog was approaching, too, whimpering ever so softly, and Quinn saw the woman reach out to the animal and caress its forehead and ears. The dog settled down by the woman’s leg as she suddenly looked over at Quinn, smiled warmly, and sang, “Some say they’re going to a place called glory, and I ain’t saying it ain’t a fact.” The woman closed her eyes and eased the dog into her lap and sang in almost a hoarse whisper, “But we been told we’re on the road to Purgatory, and we don’t like the sound of that.”

  The woman hummed something Quinn couldn’t make out and looked over at her. “We’re okay, hon. She made it to me in time, and thank you ever so much.” With that, the woman slowly lay back, and the conservation officer moved quickly to her but found only the body of the brown dog. She rubbed her eyes, feeling like she wanted to cry, or maybe to laugh, or to applaud. She knew she’d seen and been part of something special and had no idea what or why.

  She guessed she’d never know, and she knew that was often the way among people who dealt firsthand with life and death. Sometimes in the woods in this job you saw things, and there was no explanation. None.

  Foresta Quinn took the dead dog into her arms, cradled it, and made her way back to the highway. EMTs had just pulled a woman’s body from the wreck and had her on a gurney, and Quinn looked, blinked hard, and lost her voice.

  A sobbing man came up to her. “My mom and that damn mutt were inseparable. They were always together, everywhere.”

  Foresta Quinn couldn’t look at the man, mumbled only, “They still are,” gently placed the departed animal in his arms, and walked away in tears.

  Airzilla

  Conservation officers around the state called the man Buck Rogers, but his real name was Ralph Haliday, and he had flown three combat tours in Vietnam and since 1970 piloted for the Department of Natural Resources. Haliday had innovated and perfected tactical flight techniques for law enforcement that had been adopted by states all around the country, but his accomplishments and competence aside, rumors were flying around that all CO pilots would soon lose their flight duties and become full-time ground pounders. There were numerous quiet bets, some of them substantial, that Buck Rogers would retire rather than be relegated to mere truck-and-foot patrols.

  Elliot Rose, twenty-seven, with less than three years on the job, had no bets or opinions on Haliday and had never met the man, but this would change today. Rose’s sergeant had pressured him into flying as Haliday’s airborne spotter. “Easiest job ever. Old Buck can see deer turds from five thousand feet and tell you when they got dropped. Just sit back and enjoy the ride and the scenery.”

  Elliot Rose had been disturbed his entire life by the prospect of flight. He’d flown, of course, but only when there were no other options. Now, this was one of those times. He’d avoided spotter duty for three years, but no more. Looking at the small, single-engine plane inside the hangar at the Escanaba airport, Rose felt his stomach roll. Some smartass had painted Airzilla in gold script on the side of the plane.

  “You Rose?” a gravelly voice asked from the shadows.

  “Yessir,” Rose answered automatically.

  “I ain’t no goddamn sir,” a rotund, red-faced, gray-haired man snapped at him. “I’m Haliday, an officer just like you.”

  “Yessir, I mean . . . I know.”

  “Afraid to fly, Rose?”

  “No, I just don’t care much for it.”

  “Fair enough,” Haliday said. “I like mitigated candor. So why’d they pick you?”

  “Sergeant Brown thought I should see night ops from topside.”

  Haliday grinned and nodded enthusiastically. “Cool; this will be a memorable night, Rose. First time always is. Ain’t a puker, are ya?”

  “Not on boats anyway.”

  “Boats ain’t birds. Your sarge go over the tactical plan with you?”

  “Five trucks, ten officers. South and east Marquette Counties, east Delta, west Schoolcraft, finishing down in the Garden.”

  Haliday chuckled. “Finishing. I like that. You know those douchebags down to the Garden, the DeRoche brothers?”

  “Know of them. I’ve done some fish patrols down there.”

  “Open water or ice?”

  “Both.”

  Haliday smiled. “I always save my A game for the Garden clowns,” the pilot said and began walking around the plane, looking at it, gently touching it in places, almost like a lover’s gentle caress, like the damn thing was a living creature, a favored pet, or something. Rose found it creepy and looked away.

  “Got your parachute?” Haliday mumbled over his shoulder.

  “No,” Rose said. “Why?”

  “Funnin’ ya, Rosey,” Haliday said and handed him a webbed harness of some kind. “You don’t need no damn chute with Buck Rogers and Airzilla, son. I always land what I take off. Go ahead and put on your harness and climb in first. You’ll be right behind me. You get the big windows, which we’ll leave open for the duration.”

  “What’s the harness for?” Rose asked.

  “Egress infrastructure,” the pilot said, pushing him up. “Haul your butt up there, Rose, and remember, in the sad and improbable unlikelihood we have to get out fast, your port window pops out. Just grab the red strap on top, kick the red mark at the bottom, and out she’ll pop, no sweat.”

  They strapped into their seats, and Haliday started the engine and immediately taxied out of the hangar. “DNR Air One, VFR. Runway, tower?”

  “Runway Three Six, DNR One, wind three three zero at six knots, clear to runway.”

  Haliday raced the plane across the tarmac, and Elliot Rose felt like everything was happening too quickly.

  As they neared the runway, Haliday radioed the tower, “DNR Air One approaching runway three six.”

  “You are cleared for takeoff, DNR Air One. Give ’em hell out there tonight.”

  “Damn betcha and roger that, tower,” Haliday said, then turned onto the runway, lowered the flaps, and slammed the throttle forward.

  The power of the little plane’s single engine caught Rose by surprise. The plane rolled a short distance and jumped sharply off the runway. Haliday said, “Flaps up, gear up,” and banked hard in a climbing turn as he zinged past the tower, saluting as he passed. “Off we go into the wild blue yonder,” he added over intercom. “Man, I love this shit! Let’s rock and roll, Rosey!”

  Climbing steadily northward, they leveled off at four thousand feet. The sun was sinking in the west. “Two One Oh One, DNR Air One is airborne, northbound. All you girls ready down there?”

  “Air One, we’re on stations, DNR Two One Zero One.”

  Haliday keyed the intercom. “Hey, nav, you got all the call signs?”

  No response. “Hey, Rosey, tonight you’re my nav, copy?”

  “Uh, roger, copy,” Rose said. Nav?

  Haliday laughed out loud, almost gleefully. “Roger? Attaboy, Rosey. Good on ya. Now, let’s us go kick some badasses.”

  They spent two hours over Marquette County and saw nothing suspicious. Rose was amazed by the view, but more by Haliday, who talked patrol trucks down lanes and trails only he seemed to see. It was like he had another dimension of vision from above and the omniscience of God.

  Moving south, Haliday radioed Sergeant Brown. “Two One Oh One, we’re moving into Delta County. Marquette sure was ugly quiet. Must have us an unprecedented outbreak of lawful behavior.”

  “Roger, Air One.”

  “I don’t see anything quickly here, we’re going to nose on down toward the Garden, copy?”

  “Sounds like a plan, Air One.”

  “Who we got in the Garden, nav?”

  “Pedretti and Vairo, Davey and Carter.”

  Haliday chuckled. “Ass-kickers one and all. This sh
ould be a hoot. Where they at now?”

  “Pedretti and Vairo are supposed to be by Stable Creek, and Davey and Carter are somewhere up on the grade.”

  “Okay, switch to our tac freq and tell them to put one vehicle at Hiram Point Trail and the other on County Road 436 below the double ninety-degree turn with County Road 435. No need for them to call in position.”

  Rose switched to the tactical radio frequency and gave the two teams their orders. It wasn’t easy, and for some reason he found himself choking on words, but when he was done, Haliday said over the intercom, “You were born to this shit, Rosey. I ain’t seeing diddly squat up this way, so we’re gonna press south.”

  Haliday suddenly began talking in a strange tone of voice. “First time I had to put a bird down was in pilot training at Harlingen, that’s down in the unshaved armpit of south Texas. Instructor had a coronary just as our hydraulics went south. Normally, we both woulda punched out, but he passed out, and I couldn’t leave that sonovabitch up there alone, and I couldn’t get the asshole to talk, so I declared an emergency, swung the bird toward the field, got her lined up on final, and both fucking engines flamed out. It was like flying a flagpole with graham crackers for wings, aerodynamics of a fucking brick, but I damn near got her to the hard top. I landed her in a plowed field filled with rattlesnakes and horned toads. Pilot was already dead, but I didn’t know that till we were down. No fire. Mangled the bird some, but I dragged his ass out, and the meat wagons got to us quick-like. No big deal except for him, I guess, but what could be better than dying doing what you love most, next to sex, eh, Rosey?”

  Elliot Rose felt his sphincter tighten. “Uh . . . I guess?” Oh, man. I don’t want to hear this shit.

  “My first tour in Vietnam I drove a Misty FAC, a hot and temperamental F-100. Reliable enough, but tricky; had to stay ahead of the power curve with that little fucker. Then some fuckhead Charlie with a popgun put a lucky fricking round through my hydraulic line on final approach. Hell, I even saw the damn tracer. Had to belly that mamu in, but they fixed her up, and she flew again, no big deal.”