Chasing a Blond Moon

by Joseph Heywood

  McCants said, “Everybody out where we can see you,” she said, pointing her light ahead.

  “She Injun?” a voice asked.

  “Cain’t you be a-seein’, she’s gook?” another voice challenged.

  “You got weapons?” Service asked. The situation was feeling increasingly uncomfortable.

  “We plan to far ’em we halfta, donchu know,” the original voice said.

  McCants said, “We’ll find out what happened to your dog. Everybody just chill.”

  Service counted five men, ponytails, full beards, camo shirts and muddy pants, faded orange vests and hats.

  They all had slung rifles.

  “Place your weapons on the ground and step back from them,” he said, trying to make it sound like a neighborly suggestion.

  “Damn fine gook womarn,” one of the voices said.

  “Weapons on the ground,” Service repeated, this time not trying to impart anything other than precisely what he wanted. “Now.”

  “Okay, boys, you-uns don’t be peartin’ off. These-uns is the law,” the first voice said.

  Too many people for two officers to handle, Service thought. Way too many.

  The men put their rifles on the ground.

  One of them complained, “I just done cleaned hit.”

  “Handguns?” Service asked.

  “In ta trucks,” the first man said. After his initial challenge he was sounding calmer, and like the leader. Service said, “Hold up your coats.”

  The men did as they were told. McCants had reached her truck. Service went over and put the first two men’s weapons on the passenger seat and turned to the weapons on the ground. None were loaded, but he put them in the truck anyway. McCants was on the driver’s side, reached in and picked up a mike. “Delta County, DNR Forty-One Twenty-Eight is requesting backup. Code Two.” This meant urgent, but no lights or sirens. She gave the location and hung up the mike. “Twenty minutes,” the dispatcher said. McCants turned on the truck’s headlights and blue flashers before she got out, and left her door standing open.

  The huge size and geography of the Mosquito was such that police agencies from any of four counties might respond. A voice on the radio chirped, “ETA, five mikes.” Service recognized the voice and the call sign. It was Linsenman from Marquette County.

  McCants said, “Everybody stay calm.”

  Service felt edgy, glad backup was close.

  Dogs started barking in one of the trucks, and a man said, “I’ll fetch’em some water, Eulik.”

  “Never mind water.” Service said. All they needed was for dogs to get released in this and they would have total chaos.

  “They’s a-callin’ for water,” the first man said, adding, “Who shot my dawg?”

  “Eulik?” Service said.

  “That be me, Eulik T. Somcoc.”

  McCants said, “Okay, Mr. Somcoc, let’s just relax so we can do our jobs.”

  “I be waitin’,” the man said.

  “Yankee justice,” one of the men near Somcoc groused quietly.

  McCants said to the first two hunters, “Okay, let’s see your licenses.” She followed the two men over to their truck. Valda leaned in, moved and tossed things around, cursing under his breath. He went on for two or three minutes, then straightened up. “I speck they be back ta camp.”

  “Mind if I look?” Candi asked.

  “I done looked,” the man said, standing his ground.

  Service looked at Atbal. “You got something to hide in there?”

  “Hay-il no. Ain’t ma truck, is all.”

  “Mr. Valda,” McCants said.

  “They in camp,” Valda insisted.

  She looked at Atbal. “Sir, I can smell alcohol on your breath. You were in the woods with loaded weapons after legal shooting hours, no hunter orange, no licenses, littering. It’s just gonna keep piling up. A little cooperation will go a long way here.”

  Valda said, “Ain’t mine. Belongs ta Dermid.”

  “May I look inside?”

  Valda stepped aside. McCants pawed around under the seats, found a one-gallon freezer bag, lifted it out, held it up for Service to see, and held it up for Valda. “A little weed—as in half a pound?”

  “Done said ain’t mine,” he said. “Talk at Dermid.” He added, “Tole you don’t be smokin’ that shit!”

  “Best you-un be a-shuttin’ thet mout,” Atbal said.

  “Okay,” Service said. “Mr. Valda, please join Mr. Atbal and have a seat.”

  “Ground’s cold, maht rain any minute, I speck,” Atbal said.

  “Bear hunters are tough,” Service said.

  When neither man moved, Service said, “Put your ass in the grass, now!”

  The two men did as they were ordered. Service looked at his watch, said to McCants, “Fifteen.” The law required a fifteen-minute observation period before sobriety tests could be administered. Usually this applied to the testing that went on at the station after the preliminary evaluation in the field, but Service had always followed the rule, wherever he was, and years before, he had taught McCants to do the same.

  “Capisce,” she said.

  They heard Linsenman coming down the road, bottoming out as he raced along. His vehicle needed a new muffler.

  His patrol car jerked to a stop and aimed its headlights from behind the second group of men. Linsenman got out and stood by his patrol car with his door open to shield him. “You want me over there?”

  “You’re good to go right there,” McCants said. “Thanks.”

  Now that they had everyone lit, Service began to relax.

  “We busted?” Valda asked.

  “Sir, it’s illegal to possess drugs,” McCants said.

  “Din’t possess nothin’, the man said. “Was thet nitwit dere who done hit.”

  “Who shot the dog?” McCants asked.

  “Weren’t no dawg ta be shet at,” Atbal said.

  “Was a she-bar an’ cub,” Valda said. “Sumbitch missed ’em both.”

  “Din’t miss,” Atbal said.

  “Did you shoot at both of them?” McCants asked.

  “Hit ’em both, d’ya know.”

  “You shot at a cub?” One of the men from the second group asked, his voice strained.

  “Make no sense ta pop mama bar, leave thet babe all to itseff,” Atbal said in his own defense.

  Valda nodded agreement.

  “You shot after dark,” McCants said.

  “Did not,” Atbal said immediately. “T’was still shootin’ light.”

  Service refrained from rolling his eyes.

  “What took you so long to come out?” McCants asked.

  “Din’t want no wounded bar a-jumpin’ us,” Atbal said.

  “Weren’t no wounded bar,” Valda said.

  “Was,” Atbal insisted.

  After fifteen minutes, McCants got her preliminary Breathalyzer test kit out of the truck and stepped over to Valda.

  “Stand up,” she said.

  “Thet a lie detectin’ thang?”

  “No, sir. Please hold your hands out level with your shoulders, then touch your nose with your left index finger.”

  He did as he was told, the finger striking above his left eye. “Okay, other hand.”

  Same result. “Sir, I want you to walk forward exactly nine steps, heel to toe, turn on one foot and return to me; do you understand?”

  As often happened with people who were high, Valda started walking before she finished the instructions, stumbled, went down to one knee, tried to get up, and fell on his side.

  McCants let him get up on his own. She held a penlight in front of his eyes and moved it slowly from right to left.

  “Give me a number between nineteen and twenty-one,” she said.

  “T
winny-two,” he said.

  Service cringed.

  “Okay, sir. Take a seat.”

  She repeated the same tests with Atbal, who did better on the walk-and-turn, but had the same impairments in the HGN test. Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus tested the subject’s ability to track a moving object. Neither man had passed.

  McCants removed the PBT device from its carrying case and took out a plasticized card and read Atbal his test rights under the Michigan statute. “You do not have to take this test,” she said after she had finished reading the card, “but you will have to take a test when you get to the station. That’s the law.”

  Valda said, “Din’t have thet much ta drink.”

  “How many?” McCants asked.

  “Four cans.”

  She didn’t hide her irritation. “There were four cans on the trail and one of you dumped another one on the way out.”

  “Each,” Valda said. “What’s ta trouble? We wunt drivin’.”

  McCants looked in the bed of their truck, saw two empty twelve-packs.

  “How long were you in your blind?” she asked.

  “Since ta sun got own high,” Valda said.

  “You weren’t here at two and I saw your truck at four.”

  Valda shrugged. “Four each is all we had, swear to God. I ain’t takin’ no test.”

  “Me neither either,” Atbal said. “If we ain’t gotta, we ain’t gonna.”

  “This is only a preliminary breath test—a PBT,” McCants said. “There will be another one at the station.”

  “We wunt drivin’,” Valda said. “Why we gettin’ took ofe ta jail?”

  McCants got out her Miranda card and read the men their rights. The onlookers were all listening intently and quietly. When she finished, she said, “Here’s what we have: hunting while impaired, no orange, no licenses, littering, carrying loaded weapons after dark, shooting while impaired.”

  “You-un ain’t sayed nothin’ ’bout ma dawg a-bein’ kilt,” Eulik Somcoc said from the group between Linsenman and the two conservation officers.

  McCants said, “We’re going to take care of it, sir.”

  “Best you do,” Somcoc said. “Winston a-been with me onta five year.”

  The dogs in the truck kennel started barking again. McCants said, “Go ahead and give them a drink, but don’t let them out.”

  She looked back at Valda. “Anything you say can be used against you in court. I suggest you say nothing more until you talk to a lawyer.”

  “Where we get a lawyer up here, you-un?”

  “Sir, the state will take care of that for you.” She read Atbal his rights as well, then asked each man to sign a form verifying that they had read and understood them.

  Two Delta County deputies had arrived; the whole area was illuminated now. Above them lightning was flashing inside the cloud cover, turning the night sky a ghastly yellow.

  “Deputies,” McCants said.

  The two Delta deputies came forward. McCants put one-time cuffs on each man and the four officers took the prisoners to the patrol cars and put them in the backseats. She gave the deputies the weapons and drugs and had them sign evidence custody cards. One of the deputies looked at the bag of dope and grinned, “Chocolate Thai make an elephant fly.” They drove away silently with flashing lights.

  McCants took off her hat, ran her hand through her hair, and turned to the group. “We need to look at your licenses, boys.”

  Eulik T. Somcoc said, “I want thet dawg a-mine.”

  The licenses were all in order.

  “I’m sorry. I can’t let you have your dog yet,” McCants said. “Your dog is evidence. Where’s your camp? Soon as we’re finished, I’ll bring him to you.”

  “Ain’t right,” Somcoc said. He told her where their camp was. “How long you be? We expected down home next week.”

  “Sir, do you want this taken care of or not?”

  “I surely do.”

  “We’ll get Winston back to your camp as soon as we finish with him.”

  “We be leavin’ Thursday.”

  “Okay, your licenses are good. Why don’t you and your friends head for your camp.”

  Service and McCants watched the trucks drive away.

  Linsenman came forward. “You want coffee?” Service asked.

  “Works for me. Man, that was some dicey shit. That bunch looked like they’d creep out the squeal-like-a-pig crowd,” Linsenman said.

  McCants said. “We need to go find their blind, pick up cans.”

  Service nodded.

  “Thanks for coming,” McCants told Linsenman as he poured coffee from her thermos into his travel mug.

  As soon as Linsenman left, the two COs got a plastic trash bag, hiked back to the swamp, found the hunters’ blind, and recovered twenty-three empty cans. The overarching canopy kept most of the rain from penetrating, but Service said, “If it turns into a downpour, we could lose the blood trail.”

  They got back to his truck at 10:30 p.m., and McCants grabbed her poncho and her rifle case.

  “What’re you doing?” he asked.

  “Rain. We need to track that bear.”

  He looked at her. “I’ve been thinking. If he keeps going it could take us hours to find him, and if we lose the blood trail, he’s gone. Better to wait for daylight. There’s nobody around for him to blunder into.”

  He saw skepticism in her eyes. “Grady Service using discretion,” she said. “Meet you here at sunrise?”

  “Okay,” he said.

  When she was gone, he got his rifle out of its case and walked down into the cedars and began tracking alone, his natural state, nobody to worry about but himself.

  It was raining steadily in small cool droplets, but the canopy captured most of it and would keep doing so until the foliage was completely saturated. Only then would the rain penetrate, and it would be like standing under a waterfall. For now the ground was damp but not soaked, and the blood trail still reflected black under the beam of his light.

  The trail remained obvious all the way to the river. As wounded deer often fled to water, so too did bears, and this one had come south in a straight line, never veering. Thunder rattled like snare drums in the northwest, rolling steadily. Not close, he told himself. Even the lightning had little effect, creating muted pale green flashes through the gaps in the canopy.

  As he tracked he tried to stay focused, but he was tired and his mind was jumping around. They needed the animal to recover the bullet, assuming it was still in it. If he didn’t find the bear tonight, the coyotes or wolves would tear it apart. It had to be tonight, he kept telling himself, and suddenly he was at the river’s edge, his head down. He had to lean back to keep from walking into the shallows and cobble bottom. Break, he told himself. He poured a couple of fingers of coffee in his thermos top, swallowed it, and felt the plume of warmth bottom out. He put the thermos back in his pack and stood up, aiming his light across the river, trying to pick up blood on the other side—but the rain had soaked the rocks along the river and it was impossible to determine blood without fording across.

  He wanted a smoke, but a cigarette here would quickly disintegrate. Focus, he said over and over. Retrace your steps, shit-for-brains. He had come to the river. No . . . he had suddenly arrived at the river. En route, he had reached a spot where if he stayed directly on the trail he would have to crawl over a blowdown, or scramble over upturned roots and relocate the trail. The bear had not once deviated from its course, so he had veered right by two or three steps, then cut back and found himself at the river’s edge, too tired to think, cold and wet. His teeth began to chatter and he willed them to stop, but knew in time the cold would have its own way.

  He left the river and went back to find the obstacle he had skirted, stood there, aimed his light two or three feet out, and turned slowly like a radar b
eacon, totally focused on the beam against the littered ground. On his second revolution, he extended the light beam to five feet, but there was nothing. The animal had come straight to the river and ten feet from the shore had disappeared.

  A coyote barked to his west and was answered by another, their voices trailing off into whines that suggested their noses had something. If the bear was dead they would eventually tear it apart. Maybe not tonight, but soon. He was tempted to cross the river, to keep moving, but when you tracked you didn’t move on until you had sign that told you where the animal had moved. He pulled the light into two feet, narrowed the beam and started again.

  Only a bobbing light to the north broke his concentration. It was coming down the blood trail, clambering over the same obstacles he had crossed. He turned his light off, squatted. Raindrops bounced from the canopy to things below, beating a heavy tattoo. The bobbing light came forward, all sounds absorbed by the damp ground and unrelenting patter of raindrops. Thunder overhead exploded with a sharp clap that left the air sizzling with ammonia.

  “Fuck!” a voice bellowed.

  It was McCants. He turned on his light. “Here.”

  “Grady?” she asked.

  “Me.”

  “Asshole,” she said. “‘Wait till tomorrow,’ the man says.” There was no anger in her voice.

  “No sense both of us drowning.”

  “Bullshit,” she said. “You’d think a father would think about somebody other than numero uno.”

  “Spur of the moment,” he said, knowing this was not true and that she knew it too.

  “Right,” she said. “The trail was pretty clear all the way in.”

  “It stopped here,” he said, explained what had happened, how he had let his attention lapse.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s both offset to the left and work our way east. If we come up empty, we’ll come back here and try the west side.”

  She got into position without asking his approval. He watched her set herself fifteen feet to the east of him, turn on her light, start turning slowly. He moved five feet off the blood trail, did what she did. The rain continued to fall, the thunder back in the distance, some of it crackling like a pine fire.