by Kirk Landers
It was by accident that he saw the fat boys. Paddling west out of the last creek portage, he mistook a shallow bay for the large bay he was looking for. When he realized his mistake, he paddled back to the creek. Movement in the east caught his eye. He could see two people in the portage area he had just left, not even a kilometer away.
Alarms went off in his mind. He wanted to believe it was just a couple of trippers. This route saw a little traffic every year, mostly trippers on a route that bypassed Annette’s lake in favor of a chain of small lakes that hopscotched west, then north. But Pender’s instincts burned with certainty and dread. It was the fat boys. Son of a bitch. Five days later, they find a needle in the haystack. What was it with those guys?
Pender hastily moved out of their line of sight, entering a two-bay lake and sliding a few feet south to put a landmass between him and the canoeists. He studied his map quickly. The route to Annette’s lake was through the northern bay of the lake, but if those were the fat boys back there and they saw him heading into that water, they would know where he was going. There would be no escape then. They’d catch him at the portage trail for sure.
In the south bay, where he sat now, he was about a kilometer away from the portage into the more popular small-lake route. If those canoeists were just regular trippers, they’d head for that portage. If it was the fat boys, they’d figure him for that portage too. Pender paddled through a tiny gap in the shore, just a few feet wide, that led to into a marshy pond. In the pond he would be invisible to the canoeists traveling west, but he would be able to see them as they passed.
As he waited for them, Pender thought about his next move. If they were just trippers, he would proceed with haste. If it was the fat boys, his safest option was to wait them out, stay right in the pond, pull everything into the bush, out of sight, and deal with it all tomorrow. But Annette might be gone by then.
He would have to go for the other bay. The question was when to make his move. He could wait until they portaged into the next lake. That seemed like the smart bet until he thought about how smart they were. They wouldn’t find any sign of him at the portage, and they’d look for other possibilities.
He would have to bolt for the north bay as soon as they passed his position. It was risky. If one of them turned to look behind their boat, they’d see him and come on the fly. And those guys could really fly, he thought. Jesus, they overtook him when he was paddling at a racing pace!
Pender visualized sliding out of the pond after they passed and disappearing into the other bay before they reached their portage area. By the time the fat boys looked around, he’d be in a place they’d never look. He and Annette would have a good lunch, get acquainted, and talk over old times. It would be nice, at least for a little while, and in a day or two or three, he’d move on, north and east, probably, and forget all about the fat boys who paddled like the wind.
When they passed the pond, he saw it was them. Two burly guys moving like a racing team, not carrying much gear, the hull riding high in the water despite the proportions of the paddlers.
After they passed, he paddled out of the pond and burned hard for the north bay. But it didn’t work out the way he envisioned it. The stern paddler somehow sensed movement to the rear and used his paddle like a tiller to quickly turn the canoe. Both men saw Pender at the same time.
Pender was tracking the fat boys’ movement and saw them turn, saw them thrash their paddles in the water to come after him. His mind erupted in fear and expletives. He streaked for the north bay and his portage, trying to plan an escape as he ripped paddle strokes. He thought if he got there with enough lead time, say, fifteen minutes, he could throw one pack into the bush, single portage into Annette’s lake, then look for a place to hide. He tried to convince himself it could work, but it couldn’t. The fat boys would find him if it came down to just one lake with only two ways in and out. Plus, he didn’t have a fifteen-minute lead. He’d be lucky to land five minutes ahead of them. He wondered if he could talk them down but realized they’d tracked him for a week in one of the most rugged wildernesses in North America. They’d want blood.
He paddled flat out until he was a hundred feet from shore. He had to slow down to dodge submerged rocks. That would be the perfect end, he thought, gutting his canoe just as two angry rednecks the size of NFL linemen were bearing down on him. As he lowered his cadence, it occurred to him that the few moments of rest might help him deal with the fat boys. Two huge, crazy maniacs who had been chasing him for days, who had impossibly found him in a vast wilderness.
Pender still didn’t have a plan when he reached shore, but he had priorities. He’d get his boat and gear onshore. If they were going to take anything from him, they’d have to go through him first. Of course, that’s what they wanted to do, but Pender didn’t want some kind of stalemate that ended with them taking his food pack and his canoe. He’d rather die first.
He also started working on his attitude. He had to change his focus from running to attacking. You can’t fight scared. You have to be the meanest motherfucker in the valley. Be violent. Be cruel. Leave your mark.
When his canoe crunched ashore, he leaped out like a cat, dragged it onto shore, grabbed one pack in each hand, and ran them to the mouth of the portage trail at the edge of the clearing. He ran back for the canoe, dragging it at a trotting pace to the packs, ignoring the scratching sounds of the hull scraping over rocks. He glanced to the lake. The fat boys were so close he could see their red faces and clenched jaws.
He snatched his backup paddle from the canoe, wielding it like a pugil stick. He glanced back at the water. The fat boys were almost to shore, and the closer they got, the stronger and meaner they appeared. The paddle felt light and flimsy. He threw it to one side and foraged in his gear pack, felt the stiffness in his back, ignored it. The fat boys’ canoe crunched into the shallows, and the guy in the bow was just getting out. The power paddler.
Pender thrust his hand down one side of the pack and finally felt the handle of his hatchet. He yanked. It moved a few inches and then hooked on something. He looked to the beach. The bow paddler had pulled the canoe ashore, the stern guy was getting out. Pender yanked again. Nothing. Again. Nothing. He looked to the beach. They were coming for him like two mammoth clouds in a world-ending thunderstorm. They were huge and they were fast, and he was going to absorb a terrible beating. He yanked on the hatchet again.
This time it came free.
Pender held the hatchet in his right hand and moved toward the approaching fat boys, trying to surprise them, stop their initiative. He crouched a little, trying to work the stiffness out of his back and look lethal.
The stern paddler stopped short when he saw the hatchet. It still had the leather casing over the hatchet head, but something about Pender told him he knew how to use it. The bow paddler, Gus, kept coming.
“Be ready to die, motherfucker!” screamed Pender. He ripped the cover from his hatchet blade. The guy was as big as a mountain and moved like an athlete.
“Fuck you, asshole!” bellowed Gus. His lips curled back in a battle scream, and he charged Pender like a messenger of death.
Pender dipped to one side, scooped up a rock, and flung it at the man. Gus ducked instinctively but kept coming, just a few feet away. Pender set his feet and feinted with his hatchet hand. It was just enough that Gus flinched a little and reached out with his hands defensively, but he kept coming.
When Gus was there, right there, ready to crush him, Pender dodged to one side, dropped to his knees and swept the hatchet in a murderous arc, knee high. The blunt end of the tool caught a piece of Gus’s shin, and the hasp of the hatchet caught the rest. Between the velocity of the swing and the speed of the lunging attacker, the trauma of the impact dropped the huge man as if he’d been shot dead.
Gus wasn’t dead, but he was in awful pain, screaming, so overwhelmed by pain he couldn’t form words, couldn’t curse, could only bellow and howl at the top of his lungs.
Bil
l started to charge. Pender raised one hand and drew back the hatchet with the other.
“Think about it!” he shouted over Gus’s screams. “I’ll do what I have to.” Bill was massive himself. Pender would have to disable him or be overwhelmed.
Bill looked at his friend. “You broke his fucking leg, you moron!”
“Maybe, maybe not. But if you come for me, I’ll have to bust you up. I’ll have no choice.”
They glared at each other amid Gus’s screams. Stalemate.
Gus’s bellowing eventually subsided into grunts and groans of agony. Bill went to his side, ran his hands down the damaged shin bone.
“I can’t feel a break,” he said. He rolled the man’s pant leg up to the knee. “I don’t see a break. Not that that means anything.” Blood was starting to flow, and a huge black bruise was forming. The sight of it repulsed Bill. He looked away, then to Pender.
“What kind of a shit-eating bastard are you anyway? You low-life motherfucker! We try to help you, we offer hospitality, we do this for a stranger, and what do you do? You try to ruin our trip. You trash our stereo, and you steal our canoes. You fuck us over, and all you know about us is that we tried to help you when you were in harm’s way. What kind of a miserable rat bastard are you?”
Pender stared at the man, then at his injured friend, then back at the man. “If you leave now, your friend will still be able to paddle and maybe walk. You can make it home.”
“Don’t worry, asshole. We’re going. Just as soon as Gus is able. But you’re still a motherfucker and shit for brains.”
Pender shrugged, watched, went back to his pack, and pulled out a T-shirt. He took it to the water, soaked it, brought it back to the injured paddler. “Put this on the bruise. It’ll help control the swelling and maybe numb some of the pain.”
“Oh thanks, motherfucker,” said Bill sarcastically. “Like this is going to make everything all better and get you into heaven, right? No way. I still want to know what made you do that. What a bullshit thing to do to people who tried to help you!”
Pender stared at him for several counts, long enough that Bill thought he might have pissed off the guy.
“I shouldn’t have taken your canoes. I’m sorry.”
“So why did you?”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me.”
Pender paused. “You dishonored this place.” It sounded stupid when he said it out loud, and Bill stared at him in disbelief.
“I don’t believe it,” Bill said. He unleashed a chain of curses.
Pender shrugged. How can you explain peace to someone who’s never known war?
“That’s it? Really?”
Pender nodded his head yes, a little sheepishly.
“You ruin our vacation because we drank beer and played music in the park?” Bill’s voice was filled with disbelief.
“I thought someone should teach you a lesson,” said Pender.
“Why didn’t you just ask us to stop?”
“Why would I? If you cared about this place and the other people in it, you wouldn’t have been doing what you were doing.”
“You’re a chicken-shit motherfucker,” said Bill.
Gus worked his way into a sitting position, his groans giving way to intermittent grunts. He looked up at Pender once, then away.
“You ready to travel?” Pender asked.
“Don’t worry about it,” Bill said. “We’ll go when we’re ready to go.”
“I’ll help you get him to the boat.”
“No. Go on. Get out of here.”
“I can’t really do that until you leave, know what I mean?”
“You afraid we’ll do to you what you did to us?”
“Exactly.”
“We aren’t like that. We aren’t like you.”
“Right. You guys chase me all over Quetico and charge me on a beach, two against one, because you want to have a Bible meeting?”
“Crazy nut-job,” Gus said, finally able to speak. “Fucking coward. Using a lethal weapon against an unarmed man.”
Pender laughed.
“That’s funny?” Bill said it, mad. Gus was flushed with anger, too.
“Two guys against one? Two guys going, what, two-seventy each, in their thirties. You calling me a bully?”
Gus started to respond, but Bill cut him off. “He’s a crackpot. Let’s get out of here.” He helped Gus to his feet. As they hobbled to their canoe, Gus threw Pender’s T-shirt on the beach.
Pender watched them paddle away. They were very good paddlers. Very good. He wondered if they might have been friends if they’d met under other circumstances. Maybe. Unless it was a war and they were on the other side, trying to kill him. He’d have had to use the sharp end of the hatchet.
Life can be a mind fuck if you think about it, he sighed. He turned away from the lake and grabbed a pack, ready to finally portage into Annette’s lake. He could still make lunch.
* * *
When Annette landed at the portage area, Chaos bolted after some waterfowl in the shallows, splashing into the water. She strolled up the trail. He’d probably still be swimming when she got back.
As she walked, she marveled at the irony that her lake and her private campsite were suddenly barren and lonely for her. This had always been her refuge, a place she often visited alone. Amazing, she thought, what new expectations can do to your perspective and your life.
Her contemplations ended as blood-curdling shrieks filled the air, coming from the other side of the portage. Human voices making inhuman noises, like a horror movie. Her mind seized as she tried to fathom how to respond. She was an independent woman of the wilderness, a guide, a leader. But this sounded violent. A bear attack? A murder? She felt weak and vulnerable, wanted to run, but kept thinking, what if someone was hurt? She had to see if she could help.
She trotted as fast as she could along the trail. The screams grew louder as she neared the beach. She could make out male voices and terrible obscenities. It sounded like war, violent and bloody. A few steps from the beach, she slowed to a creep, crouched behind the brush, inching forward to see what was happening.
Peeking out from the foliage, she saw three men in confrontation. One had his back to her and stood a few feet in front of a canoe, two packs, and two paddles; he held a hatchet in one hand. The other two were near the water, one sitting and groaning in great pain, holding his leg, which was red with blood and black with bruising, the other kneeling next to him, concerned. She wondered if the man with the hatchet had broken the injured man’s leg. She wondered if the man with the hatchet was Pender. The other two weren’t. They were too big, too heavy, and too young. The man with his back to her was trim, athletic. She couldn’t tell his age. But if anyone was going to get into a fight twenty miles from the next human being, it would be Pender.
And that’s when she remembered. The ranger, looking for a solo canoeist who had done something to some fishermen. Could it be?
The man with his back to her said something she couldn’t make out, his voice soft and projected away from her, and the concerned man responded scornfully. “Don’t worry about it. We’ll go when we’re ready to go.” Loud. Angry.
The man she couldn’t see said something else she couldn’t hear, but his tone and his gesture made it seem like he was offering to help.
“No. Go on. Get out of here,” said the concerned guy. His friend glared at the man she couldn’t see, gritting his teeth in pain, hatred written on his face.
She was trying to figure out why the guys on the ground were giving the orders. She edged closer to the confrontation but stayed camouflaged in the bushes.
“I can’t really do that until you leave, know what I mean?” She could hear the man, even though she still couldn’t see his face.
“You afraid we’ll do to you what you did to us?”
“Exactly.”
“We aren’t like that. We aren’t like you.”
“Right. You guys chase me all
over Quetico and charge me on a beach, two against one, because you want to have a Bible meeting?”
It had to be Pender. It was the sort of thing Pender would say. Sarcastic, cutting.
The injured man spoke for the first time. “Crazy nut-job,” Gus said, finally able to speak. “Fucking coward. Using a lethal weapon against an unarmed man.”
The man with the hatchet made an indistinct noise and shook his head.
“That’s funny?” the other man asked.
“Two guys against one? Two guys going, what, two-seventy each, in their late thirties. You calling me a bully?”
It sounded like Pender.
The concerned guy cut off his friend’s response. “He’s a crackpot. Let’s get out of here.” He helped his friend to his feet, and they hobbled to the canoe, throwing something behind them. They got aboard and paddled away. The man on the beach watched them until they were well on their way, and then turned to the portage trail.
It was Pender. Sunburnt, a little bent, some gray hair peeking out from his bush hat, but the rest was familiar. The structured face, athletic body, the way he moved with a limber nonchalance that spoke of arrogance, somehow. As if the person in the body had never worried about anything. As if all things came easily to him. Including violence, apparently. What had just happened here? What kind of man was he?
It was too late to back out now. Annette stood up to show herself to him. At that moment, Chaos came roaring out of the brush, saw Pender, skidded to a stop in shock, and began barking crazily. Pender stared at the dog in disbelief, then at Annette just as incredulously, as if he was trying to fit these two images into his reality.
As Chaos continued yapping, Pender forced a smile and nodded to Annette. She gave a hesitant wave and nod back, and he started to approach her. Chaos inserted himself between them and growled. Pender winged a kick at him, not a serious kick so much as a dismissive one, like the dog was about as intimidating as a croaking frog. The dog dodged the kick and cowered as Pender snarled an obscenity at him. Quiet descended on the shore. Pender stopped in front of Annette.