by Andrew Gille
This was the end of April, so it was funny I was actually thinking about applying for a Michigan bear license since I’d seen some evidence of bear up at our property. We’ve got them up there, but I’ve never done the work it takes to try to apply for the license, bait the bear all summer and then get up here for the season. I figured by summer I might be in Kalamazoo and have more time for it so I actually thought that when I got back, I would apply since the deadline for the bear application is June 1st. After this trip I never really wanted to hunt bears again, the bear hunting trip in Russia was an experience that took that desire out of me forever.
My flight out of O’Hare was uneventful, it was actually pretty nice. Smooth skies, a layover in Denver. You and I have been to Colorado together, you know how much I enjoy it there, not that airports give you any kind of feeling of being in the city, but you can see the mountains, and if I have to have a layover, it isn’t the worst place. It took about six hours with the stop in Denver, and I got to the Vancouver international airport without a problem. I have hardly anything on me, and the Canadians ask me why I am in Canada, I tell them it's for a conference, and they ask which one, I tell them the American Retail Alliance conference. They type around on their computer and have a funny look. The lady goes back and calls someone. She spends an awfully long time on the phone, and I wonder what is going on.
All of a sudden, guys with machine guns in bulletproof vests with little red maple leaves come up to me. I’m shocked because I’ve got nothing on me, there’s barely anything in my bag. I’m really worried that I left a bullet or some part of a gun in my check-in luggage or my carry on. My heart is pounding out of my chest when these guys come to talk to me.
“You’re Mr. Brubeck?” The biggest Canadian guy you’ve ever seen says, he has a flat top hair cut, and his arms were almost ripping out of the body armor.
“Yes,” I said meekly, barely eeking it out.
“There is no American Retail Alliance Conference in Vancouver this week, you’re going to need to come with us,” This guy says, and he didn’t look like one to joke around.
So these two escort me through the airport, and they put me on one of these little trolly things, and they are driving me through the airport with the little flashing light on, and I’m holding my briefcase in my lap, and I am sweating through the one suit I’ve brought for this trip.
Then they get to the exit of the airport, and I see him, the son of a bitch, I guess that’s not a very nice thing to say about your great aunt Elaine, she didn’t ask to have such a bastard of a son. There’s your cousin Colin, and he’s laughing at me. That obnoxious laugh that he makes when he really thinks he has done something smart, you know the one Scott?
Well, he’s standing there and these Canadian military guys look kind of apologetic, not sure if it was because they were embarrassed to be in on his trick or if they felt sorry for dumping me off with Colin Crossfield.
Either way, the big guy said, “Welcome to Canada Mr. Brubeck, enjoy your trip,” and took off on that trolly thing, I think the tires almost spun when he left.
Now, back then, I only had an idea of what kind of a person Colin was, it took this trip for me to really find out. Nowadays, I’d have him arrested for kidnapping or something, although he’s probably got much better lawyers than I can afford. Anyway, I was pretty glad to see him after what I’d been through, and I still wasn’t entirely clear on what was going on.
He’s dressed in some parka with a fur hood, and he’s got sunglasses on that I can tell cost as much as my watch. There’s a limo waiting outside of the airport exit.
“Glad you could make it Uncle Mason! How was the flight from Chicago?” He asks me.
Still confused and just glad to not be in a Canadian jail I answered him, “It was good, great, thanks,” that was all I could muster.
“I suppose you’re wondering what you’re doing in Vancouver since the American Retail Alliance Conference is canceled, well, actually there never was one,” he says as he puts his arm around me and we start walking out the door.
“Yes, I’d like to know what is going on Colin,” I said, now a little perturbed that he’d brought me all this way for a joke.
“Well, that limo is going to take us to general aviation, and we’re going to get on a plane, and we’re going bear hunting in Russia!” He says like I’d won a prize on a game show or something, I expected to hear some theme music and an audience cheering.
I have to admit I was excited about this. I’d never hunted bear, and he and I had talked about this a few times when he’d been up in Otsego at the property. He was never a great hunter, very impatient and very short attention span. He also liked to sleep in his stand, it was a good thing he was rich and bought the best harnesses, so he didn’t fall out of the tree. His bows and guns did a few times, I don’t know how many bows he bent that way. He had talked about getting a crossbow because he thought I could get a dispensation from Michigan due to my shoulder and then he could hunt with it and I asked him, “What happens when that thing falls out of the tree and shoots you while you’re asleep?” He never brought it up again. Of course, since then, he built that stand out there, the one that is basically some kind of adult tree house, nicer than the cabin, you know. He wanted to run power to it, I told him no. Christ why not just put a toilet in it too and hunt right from that you know? Anyway, he hasn’t been up to Otsego in many years, and after he stopped coming over, you were old enough to start learning and I don’t really need him around distracting our hunts with some drone that he’s using to find the deer or whatever he’d do to make hunting easier for himself these days anyway.
At any rate, I was both excited not to be in a Canadian jail and to be going on a bear hunt. Really it was a dream of mine for a long time, and like I said, I had been toying with the idea of applying for a bear permit here in Michigan before the trip so to be able to go was pretty exciting. We got in the limo and headed over to general aviation where his jet was parked.
CHAPTER THREE
The Trip
HIS JET WAS a Gulfstream III at the time, and he now has something newer, a Gulfstream 5 or 500 or something. I know he got a new one because all he did was complain about this passenger jet he owned, he’d ridden on someone else’s, Oprah’s or Warren Buffett’s I think. I remember thinking they were a nice person and I couldn’t imagine Colin being on their plane. That’s what he does though, he hobnobs with those people you know?
I have my little briefcase, and I’m dressed in this sweaty suit, and he’s dressed in some loud shirt with skulls on it, and I think it had angel wings on the back. It looked like the tattoos of some rock star with poor taste, those shirts were fashionable then. His jeans are wrecked, I wasn’t sure why he wore pants because I could see the pockets sticking through these things. Then he’s got some ratty Addidas shoes on, except they are painted, like some artist clearly painted these shoes for him, each stripe has the word “Crossfield” painted carefully in some hipster font onto them.
He’s loudly making small talk with me like he does and he’s wearing these big gold sunglasses, they have jewels on them, and holes in the ear stems they look like something Elvis Presley would have worn. If I wore these things you’d think they were joke sunglasses or something, but this is what he wears unironically. I remember thinking that every piece of his wardrobe probably cost more than my suit and this entire gaudy getup is perhaps $6000, and I’m just too out of touch with the world of haute couture to appreciate this thing some stylist probably put together for him.
I see this beautiful jet parked on the ramp in Vancouver and we stop at it, and the ramp is already out so that we can board the plane. He’s talking so much and so loud about how funny I looked coming in on the trolly cart that I haven’t been able to get any words in. So finally, I just shouted his name and he kind of shook his head, shocked that someone would interrupt his important stream of conscious babble.
I said, “Colin, I really appreciate that you�
�re taking me on this trip, I really do, but where is my luggage? I need to make phone calls before we leave for Russia, I can’t just go there. Aunt Diane thinks I’m going to be gone for only a few days, not two weeks.”
Then he says, “Oh, yeah, no worries Uncle Mason. Your luggage is already packed in my plane. I mean, you aren’t going to need it, I’ve got you outfitted with hunting clothes, boots, some casual wear, everything you’re going to need. And Aunt Diane is in on the whole thing! I sent her to Hawaii with her sister Connie, they’ve got a resort at Waikiki beach, getting massages, they’re going to a luau, taking a helicopter tour around a volcano. I can actually have them dumped in there if you want.”
I wasn’t quite sure if he was serious about the last part, he laughed like he thought it was quite funny. That explained your grandma’s cheerful attitude about this business trip, things started making a lot more sense after that.
So he keeps complaining about his plane and laughing about the way I looked holding my briefcase on the trolly with that giant Canadian, and we get up into this jet of his. I think you’ve been on that thing, he took you to Beaver Island maybe? That’s a pretty short runway for that thing, I don’t think he’s really supposed to land there with that thing, because of his insurance, but when does he ever follow the rules?
He gives me some hangars covered in paper that have “Crossfield” written on them and gives me a leather bag with my name embroidered on them. Very nice actually, I still have it. He tells me I look uncomfortable and says there are some casual clothes inside the bag for me. Well, to tell the truth, I was embarrassed, my suit was soaking in sweat from the scare he put me through and the undershirt I had on had been shrunk a little too much in the wash, didn’t tuck in very well and was bunched up around my waist.
I go in the bathroom on this plane, you’ve been in it, it’s nicer than any bathroom in this house. I look in this bag, and yeah, there’s some casual clothes in there, not like anything I wear though. Some kind of fancy bowling shirt and chinos with these Italian leather shoes. I haven’t really watched the show, but I got the idea that he wanted me to look like Tony Soprano with this outfit. It was fine, it was nice of him to get me some clothes to wear on the way over, I guess I shouldn’t talk like that.
These clothes were a perfect size, and I complimented him on the fit and asked him if he had called Aunt Diane for my measurements because they fit better than anything I buy myself at Kohl’s.
He said, “Oh, no, last time you were in Minneapolis, I had your body scanned.”
When I had been in Minneapolis to see a Lions game from his private box in the Metrodome, he had me try out some virtual reality helmet, and while I was looking around at some virtual reality representation of the top of the Eiffel Tower, he must have been scanning me. I mean, again it was nice of him to get me custom tailored clothes, but in retrospect, it is kind of an invasion of privacy. I’ve only been there a few times since the trip, but when I visit his house, I’d kind of wonder what other data he is collecting on me.
We sit down in these leather chairs around this kind of conference table in the jet. The jet is taxiing to the runway, and he’s got some stewardess on this plane. I think she was his actual employee, not just someone from some stewardess service, but he didn’t introduce her by name or act like he was familiar with her. That’s the way he is with his employees, very cold and professional. I’m not sure if he flies around with her by himself too, but it seemed overkill for two people. I can get up and get my own drink and pretzels, you know? She brings me a Pabst Blue Ribbon, my favorite beer and he’s drinking Spaten, back then he went to Germany for Oktoberfest every year. I made the mistake of going to that with him and some girls he knew once, that’s a story for another day.
The stewardess buckles herself in, and we do the same thing, and the jet starts rolling down the runway. He tells me we’re going to Vladivostok where he’s got a meeting, then we’ll be heading to Siberia for the bear hunt. He didn’t really give me more details on the location and to his credit, by this time, he was beginning to ask me questions about myself.
Drinking the beer in my Tony Soprano outfit, I remember talking about the Lions with him, and he said that he was actually considering buying the Vikings. I told him that I’d have to wear blue and silver in his booth in what was at that time the Metrodome. I don’t know whatever became of that. I think the guy who still owns it maybe threatened to sell it to Colin to force the city of Minneapolis to buy him US Bank Stadium. I don’t remember how that conversation turned to guns, but he got an excited look on his face and interrupted the conversation. By this time we were at cruising altitude so the seatbelt sign is off and he opens up a drawer in the sofa next to this table, we’re sitting at.
Inside is a rectangular box wrapped up very professionally with a bow. Of course, my birthday is in April, so I appreciated that he’d remembered and got me something.
I open the present, and it almost brings me to tears. It is your great, great grandfather Charles’, Savage Model 99 deer rifle chambered in Savage .300. He’d sold it in the ’80s to help me pay for college during the recession when my dad couldn’t pay for it anymore, and I’d always regretted that he’d had to do that. Somehow Colin found this thing, I guess he tracked it down to Coldwater where a guy still owned it, but it was in bad shape. So Colin had it reblued, had the stock refinished and fixed some things that were not working all that well anymore. He also had a very expensive Swarovski scope mounted on it. My granddad hunted with iron sights but the way you hunt bears in Russia, we’d need a scope.
Holding that gun was like holding a part of my grandfather. Bear hunting was something he’d told me that he wanted to do as well and we just never got the time, and then he got too old. Now I was going to go to a country that he couldn’t even think of visiting during his life and hunt bears like we’d always talked about with a gun that he’d held in his hands.
Colin is such a complex person, just when you want to hate the kid and you think you’re at the end of your wits with him, he does something like that. He can be very selfish and self-centered, and then he does something that is so thoughtful, and he’s obviously really put some time into thinking about you. I don’t know. One thing I am thankful of every day was that we were able to get that gun out of Russia. Of course, it is right up there above the fireplace. I think I’d have rather died there than left it in Siberia.
I was jarred out of choking back my tears and thinking about my grandpa when Colin shows me the gun he’s going to hunt with. It was an FN SCAR L in 5.56 which had just been released, so I wondered how he had obtained it as a civilian. It looked more like a piece of equipment from NASA than a gun, and the buttstock looked like a stormtrooper boot. It was desert tan and had a computerized Trijicon scope with a laser rangefinder, and I want to say that thing had some kind of thermal imaging on it. You’d never be able to use a scope like that for hunting in Michigan. Again, this is your cousin, when it comes to hunting he’s always trying to make it easy on himself and take any kind of challenge out of it.
Looking through the scope, I saw a bunch of numbers being calculated as I moved it around and he explained all of the features it had. This wasn’t hunting, it was like a video game, but you know, that’s the way Colin likes it.
Some very practical thoughts came to mind that I wasn’t thinking about just moments earlier when he had presented me with the Savage 99. Can you even bring this gun into Russia? What kind of technology is in this scope? At work, we have to be careful what types of encryption and other software we send to China when we’re working with our cash registers so I know you can’t just go carrying whatever high tech gadgets you have to whatever country in the world you want. I was pretty sure Russia is one of the places The United States doesn’t want you sharing certain things with and a high tech piece of military hardware like he had there was probably one of them.
“Wait, we can bring guns into Russia?” I asked him, I was suddenly concerned that
he hadn’t thought this through and that we’d get the Savage confiscated.
“I can probably bring a missile launcher into Russia if I want Mason,” he said laughing. Based on what happened later, I guess that was probably true.
I cracked open another Pabst Blue Ribbon, and I asked him several other questions about my visa, hunting licenses, getting the bears back, additional equipment for the hunt. It sounded like he had all those bases covered. I wasn’t sure if he’d had someone figure out the logistics of the trip or if he’d done it himself, but it was a well-planned trip considering that half the hunting party wasn’t aware of it until about eight hours after they’d left home.