by Aaron Mach
“What you think, Freddy?” said Marty, one of the lesser minds of the group.
“Dunno, I’ll check the front door,” replied Fred.
He walked around the small cabin. It was very old with firewood lined up along the west side of the structure. In the front was a stack of un-chopped wood and an axe planted into a large stump. Before he reached the front door to knock, he heard wailing back from where he came.
“Ah! My leg, my fucking leg!” yelled one of the workers.
“Holy shit man,” replied Marty in disgust as he saw what had happened.
Fred ran up to the screams and came upon the men standing around the wounded worker. Holy shit is right, he thought as he looked at the carnage. What he saw was a massive bear trap and the worker’s leg, or what remained of it, completely severed. Another worker turned and threw up behind some bushes, and that made everyone even queasier.
“Alright, alright, uh, Marty, grab the med kit from the truck,” Fred yelled nervously. “You,” as he pointed to some of the workers, “give me your shirts, we gotta stop the bleeding.”
Fred took the dirty shirts and began to wrap them around the wound. Marty returned quickly with the med kit and gave it to Fred. Fred grabbed the pre-made tourniquet designed for chainsaw wounds and closed it around the worker’s leg just below the knee.
“You and you,” as Fred was pointing to some of the workers, “take him to the truck and get him the hell out of here. Take his leg with.”
The workers just kind of stared at each other, then at the wounded worker, then at the leg still in the trap, in a state of shock.
“Now!” screamed Fred.
One of them picked up the wounded worker and wrapped his arm around his neck and they began to hobble to the truck. The other moved to the trap and looked at the mangled body part. He put his forearm over his mouth to somehow hold the vomit in and it seemed to work. He saw the leg still in the teeth of the bear trap. He put both hands on the boot still attached to the leg and gave it a good tug. The bone in the leg was still gripped by the trap and he had to tug a couple more times before it was released. On the last tug he gave everything he had and the trap released, sending him flying backwards, the leg ending up on his chest. He pushed it off of him frantically while some of the workers stood and watched. Some horrified, others trying to keep the laughter in. He got up, snatched the leg with one hand and dragged it through the woods to catch up with the leg’s owner. Fred walked over to the bear trap to get a better look and noticed something peculiar. The traps’ teeth were filed down to a razor’s edge. Fred was no trapper, but he knew the teeth needed to be dull to keep the animal alive and fresh. Someone had done something to this trap, and it didn’t seem meant for animals.
Fred and the remaining crew went up to the cabin, with significantly more caution than before. They huddled around the front discussing what to do, not wanting to disappoint Arch. A few moments later, an old man, maybe in his sixties, came through the woods on an old path. He was very disheveled and looked like he had been out there a very long time. His beard was long and white, and his gray-white hair was in a ponytail halfway down his back. He wore animal skin clothing from head to toe. In one hand he carried an old flintlock rifle and a blade made from animal bone in the other.
“Look alive guys”, said Fred quietly. “Hello sir! Excuse me, sir?”
Eli came within a few feet of the men and, without any acknowledgment, walked past them to bring his fresh trappings into the cabin. He emerged moments later with the furs and hung them up on a string near the entrance. He had his head down. He grabbed his pipe from a pouch he wore and pulled some tobacco out. After he loaded the pipe he drew a match. He struck the match on the cabin exterior and slowly and meticulously lit it. Eli took a deep breath of the sweet tobacco and savored it for a moment. He looked up and in the calmest manner asked, “Can I help you gentlemen?”
“Yeah man, you fucking almost killed one of my guys with your fucking trap!” yelled Fred.
“I see,” replied Eli taking another puff from his pipe. His eyes barely visible below the brim of his animal skin prospector hat.
“You fucking see, well I guess everything is okay then!” screamed Fred.
“Is there something I can help you with, gentlemen?” Eli again asked in a manner unfamiliar to the other men. There was a quiet way about him. As if he had figured everything out and was content with the way the world was, or the way it had to be.
“So I guess you live here huh?” Fred stated with frustration and a mild case of disbelief.
“Yes sir, I do,” replied Eli.
“Well, hate to say it bud, but you won’t for long,” Fred said with some pleasure.
“I see,” replied Eli without an ounce of reaction.
“So like uh, you gotta pack up, okay?” Fred queried.
There was no response from Eli. He simply stood there and puffed away on his pipe. He looked up into the trees and admired the sun shining through the leaves. He looked back down at the men. “Rain’s coming, you better pack up if ya don’t want to get wet,” said Eli.
“Rain is fucking coming, what the fuck are you talking about, there isn’t a cloud in the sky!” Fred exclaimed “We are coming through here with a full mechanized lumber operation in a few weeks, you gotta be outa here, okay? If not, you know, my boss ain’t as nice as me. He’ll run right over your little paradise here and laugh while doing it.”
Eli nodded in acknowledgment of the statement but not in acceptance of its terms. Fred knew this was not a man that would just lie down. He had a feeling that this was the beginning of something and he was afraid of what Arch would do. Fred wasn’t a killer, but he knew Arch was, and had.
“Three weeks, okay old man? Oh, and I gotta tell the boss what you did to my friend and his leg, he ain’t gonna just let that one go.”
Eli just looked at Fred and was unwavering in his concentration on him. Fred looked down and yelled to his crew that it was time to leave. They walked past the bear trap and felt the urge to vomit rise again. A few revisited that bush and eventually they were all on their way back to the truck. They got in and began to drive back to the main office. Fred was driving and soon he noticed drops of rainfall on the windshield.
…
Anders woke in the middle of the night. He had been sweating profusely while experiencing the same nightmare he had most nights. Aponi woke with him, “what’s wrong sweetie? The same dream?”
Anders nodded, “The same dream. This time it was different somehow. It started the same, but the details were clearer. I think I remember one of the guys I served with in the war.”
“Who?” His wife asked.
Anders ran out to the living room. The morning light was just beginning to break through the living room window. The baby began to cry and his wife went to comfort her. Aponi came out of the spare bedroom with the baby and began to rock her back and forth. Anders grabbed the photograph of him and his comrades that sat on the mantle. He looked at it in the morning light. A look of wonderment and disbelief spread across his face. He pointed to a man in the photo, “I saw him.”
“Of course you did, you guys served together,” said Aponi.
“No, I mean I just saw him, he was released from the prison yesterday.”
XI
The drifter lay there for a few minutes to get his composure back. He looked at the ankle and it was already swollen to the size of a grapefruit. He got up on his one leg and limped himself back to his makeshift campsite. He was many miles away from help, but he had been injured worse before and resolved to continue his journey. As he collected his things and ate the last of his rations, he turned to where the wolf had attacked him. There was something about it that was familiar. He had seen the rage in the wolf’s eyes before. He grew up with that animalistic rage that did not understand its origins but was compelled to inflict it upon others. This was not simply the nature of the animal. There was something human in its cruelty. He was no stranger to t
his cruelty.
After this reflection with no conclusion, he was awakened by the pain in his ankle and was resolved to continue his journey. He began to push north, further into the Montana wilderness and further into isolation. Hours had passed and he began to think back upon how he had gotten to this point. There was never really a time that he could remember when he actually reflected upon his own life. He had resolved at an early age to simply exist. He glanced around the landscape and was reminded of all the beauty that dwelled in nature. The creek he walked along made the quietest of sounds but brought the most profound peace. The trees swayed under the wind, and the sun coming down over mountaintops brought rays of light in a multitude of colors. He was beginning to feel alarmed at his level of inflection and what pain may come of it. Not from the war so much as what led him to it. His father. What was it about that man that he hated so much and left him so scarred? He had shut himself off to the world when he was so young, at the moment of his mother’s death, a moment he not only blamed his father for, but also himself. A smell came in the air and he knew a storm was coming. Just as he made this realization, he noticed several stakes in the ground with various color tags on them. The wind began to pick up and he needed to find cover quickly. The ankle was beyond pain from the many miles of him pushing its limits. The rain began to come down in sheets and he fell in the mud in agony. The darkness around his eyes began to come in around him, as he knew that consciousness was no longer a luxury he could afford. As reality began to slip, so did the calm of the day, and within a few minutes there was a thunderstorm in full strength. The lightning crashed on the mountainside and the creek swelled another foot. The man looked up in his haze and thought to himself that perhaps today is as good as any to simply fade away. There would not be a soul that would remember his passing or even spend the time to look for him. He had no family, friends, acquaintances, pets, or even enemies, for that matter. He had never left much of an impression on most, as they simply thought of him as a ghost in the landscape, a soul forever lost, and one to never interfere with. His mind began to wander and his eyes began to close. The man fought and fought because that was what he did, it was all he ever knew. Should he lose consciousness now the current would wash him down into nothingness and into nothingness is where his mind was already. From the last glimpses of the forest to take with him to that other side, he saw a figure in the darkness of the rain. Barely perceptible, for all he could make out was soaking wet animal skin and a leather hat with the brim below his eyes. The figure came closer and closer as he slowly faded away.
XII
Arch picked his head up from the desk after setting it there for what he planned to be a few minutes. As he noticed on the wall clock above the file cabinet that it was two in the afternoon, he had a blank look on his face as he stared at the wall. The next moment there was a knock on the door.
“Not now!” yelled Arch.
“Sir, uh, it’s a lady from the Department of Agriculture. She has some questions for you,” replied Fred from outside the trailer door.
Shit, thought Arch to himself. “Give me a minute!” He got up and tucked his shirt in, though with his massive gut it was nearly impossible to do so. Like it would have mattered, as the sweat and tobacco stains on the once white shirt would cancel out what tucking in might accomplish. Arch pulled a comb out of his back pocket and combed his hair straight back in an attempt to cover the bald spot. He glanced in a very small mirror next to his desk and all he saw in it was the reflection of a thousand nights where he tried to be the first man in the world to drink, snort, and screw everything in a one-mile radius. Fuck it, he thought to himself for the tenth time today. He opened the door and saw a striking and very conservative looking woman in hiking boots, brown cargo pants, and a white button up shirt. Her hair was shoulder length and her eyes were stunning. Big and round as if they weren’t even real. She had a pencil behind her right ear and a thick clipboard that rested on her hip. She smiled.
“Sir, I thought I might be able to ask you a few questions. My name is Marie, I’m from the Department of Agr-”
“Yeah, yeah, you said, come in,” Arch ordered.
“Oh, okay, thank you,” she replied, stepping through the trailer’s entrance.
“Where you from again?” Arch asked.
“The Depart-“ Marie attempted to reply.
“No, no, your accent.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, yes, I moved here from Paris when I was young.”
“Ah, how fascinating,” Arch stated sarcastically.
Awkward silence. “So…if you don’t mind, a few questions?” Marie asked.
“Shoot.”
“Now I want you to know this is all preliminary and I’m not here to step on anyone’s toes or anything,” Marie started.
“Uh-huh.”
“Yeah, well, okay.” She smiled and looked down to her notes. “I am an investigator with the Department of Agriculture assigned to corporate logging firms to ensure ethical practices in the communities that they operate.” Arch nodded. She acknowledged and looked back down at her notes. “So, we have been getting some unofficial reports of people being asked to leave their property when they have not signed over any lease to log their land. So my question to you, do these reports have any validity?”
Arch simply stared at her for a few moments. He pulled open the bottom left drawer of his desk and looked to grab a pack of cigarettes. He stared at the bottle of whiskey and glanced at her again, thought it best not to reveal any impropriety in the operation, especially drinking whiskey straight at 2:30 in the afternoon. He grabbed the cigarettes and a book of matches. He lit one and placed the cigarette between his lips and took a long puff. He blew it straight at Marie, but pretended it wasn’t intentional. He stared outside and looked at the rain beat against the window.
“Blowing pretty hard out there huh?” Arch asked.
“What?” Marie replied.
“The wind, the rain, you know the storm,” as Arch pointed outside.
“Oh yeah, whew, must be hard to work in this.”
“We work in it all, sweetheart,” taking another puff. “I ain’t got a clue as to what those people are talking about. Everything we do here is on the up and up. We didn’t get to be the best logging operation in Montana for kicking people out of their homes,” Arch stated.
“Hmm, okay, there have also been reports about the residents being warned not to speak out against any operation in the area or there may be repercussions,” Marie said.
“What kind of repercussion?” Arch replied slyly.
“Well they said that if they didn’t sign over their deeds at reduced rates, someone was going to come find them, and remind them of what an agreement means. These are just reports.”
She smiled.
“Ah ha, I see.” Arch replied, “Nope, none of that funny business going on here.”
“I have a couple-” Marie attempted.
“Well, if that’s all, we really have a lot of work to do here.” Arch insisted.
She smiled again. Marie got up and walked over to the door. She handed Arch her card, forcing him to walk over and retrieve it. He did.
“I’ll be in touch, Mr. Grimes,” Marie said as she walked out the door. The rain was pouring and she placed the metal clipboard over her head as she ran to her Jeep Cherokee. She got in and sped off. Arch watched her as she left. He had seen folks like her through his whole career, never stopped him once. Time and time again they tried, but he always found a way around it, or through it. They had never come with such specific information before, which caused him to skirt the edges of alarm. He may need to call an old friend.
“Hey!” Arch yelled to Fred, who was smoking a cigarette in his truck. “Why the fuck everyone not working?”
“Well, sir, they’re a bit shaken up.”
“’Bout what?”
“We went to that cabin, you know, that the scouts found?” as he put the cigarette out and ran into the office out of the rain.
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“Uh-huh.”
“One of the guys stepped in a bear trap, took his leg clean off.”
“Shit.”
“We got him to the hospital, he’s gonna live.”
“What about the cabin?”
“There was some old guy livin’ there.”
“Some old guy?”
“Yeah, he was like a frontier person or something. Had a bunch of animal skins he was wearin’. I think he did something to that trap to make it for humans.”
“Why you say that?”
“It was filed down, like a teeth of razor blades.”
“What you tell em’?”
“We’re coming through in a couple weeks, best be gone.”
Arch stared at him, then outside into the rain. “Get them back to work right fucking now, I’ll take care of this frontier man.” Fred ran out to the men and began to yell at them as he was often yelled at by Arch. A vicious cycle stopping at its origin, the rage of Mr. Grimes. Arch walked out in the rain. What was left of the hair on his head was matted down with the torrential rains, making him look even balder. He looked over at Fred’s old truck and saw a hiking boot sticking out of the bed. “Hey! Wake up! Time to work, asshole!” wondering how anyone could sleep in this rain. He realized immediately the leg had no owner in close proximity. He grabbed the hiking boot with leg in tow and dragged it across the muddy roads used by the heavy equipment. The sound of the wood chipper was getting louder now, and the crews all stopped in horror as they witnessed what the boss was carrying. Arch tossed the leg into the chipper. He turned around, “back to work!”
XIII
Marie looked in her rearview mirror back towards the work site, then onto the road. The windshield wipers rhythmically moved back and forth. The rain came down in sheets and she was soaked to the bone. The heat was blasting on high, and with it came the sleepiness from a long day out in the bush. She came from Denver and was here for an investigation. The city was more her style. The comforts of a Starbucks up the street and her little corner government office overlooking the front-range. As she was daydreaming of an iced mocha latte from her favorite little café, she noticed a small and seemingly abandoned gas station just outside of the wilderness area. The fuel gauge was pinging towards E. She pulled in, turned the jeep off, and sat there with her head back on the seat. Her eyes briefly closed, and she eventually pulled herself out and stepped into the store. The majority of the shelves were empty, with a homely attendant intently staring at her. She was a beautiful woman and the likes of her didn’t enter places like this regularly. The man at the cash register had an old John Deere trucker hat and disheveled hair on his head and face. In his mouth was a large amount of tobacco, which he spit into a cup that he promptly returned to its place next to the Slim Jims on the counter.