CLAWS 2

by Stacey Cochran

  A pig’s head lay face up in the snow. They’d thrown a severed sow head at her. She looked up toward the forest road and saw the red glow of the ATV’s taillights fading into the distance.

  “Damn.”

  The Bronco’s ignition was dismantled. There was no phone service inside the cabin. Angie patted at the back of her shirt, feeling the pig’s blood. She wasn’t as afraid anymore; they were just screwing with her. At least she hoped they were just screwing with her. The man did have a machete, but if they’d wanted to physically harm her, they could have done it.

  Still, she was going to have a ten-mile hike into town if she was going for help. She looked up at the screen door on the front porch. The snow continued to fall. She glanced out at either side of the cabin just to make sure that she was alone.

  She heard the whine of the ATV engine, now a half mile in the distance. She listened to the wind.

  It was going to be a very long night.

  “Welcome to the neighborhood,” Angie said.

  Eight

  Angie couldn’t sleep. Every creak and groan of the wood in the cabin sent an unnerving jolt of adrenaline through her veins. At first, she was cold. Then, she piled on the blankets and was too hot. She pulled a pillow over her head, but then felt herself beginning to sweat. She rolled over and looked out the window into the night.

  “God, please help me,” she whispered.

  The snow brushed up against the window, and Angie sat up on the edge of the bed. She looked at the clock atop the nightstand. It was just past midnight.

  “You’re not going to walk into town at this time of the night.” She stood up and walked toward the stairwell. “Not in this weather, you’re not.”

  She looked down from the bedroom at the top of the stairs. She could see the kitchen table, the sofa, the coffee table, the embers glowing in the fireplace. She could see the white lawn outside through the windows by the fireplace.

  Angie stood still at the top of the stairs for a moment. She listened to the wind howling outside. She listened to her breathing. She could feel her heart beating in her chest.

  “What am I supposed to do?” she said. “They dismantled the truck. I got no phone service hooked up yet. And it’s a ten-mile walk into town. It’s snowing and below freezing outside.”

  She saw the bear books atop the table and started to walk down the stairs. She crossed to the kitchen sink and removed a glass from one of the packing boxes. She removed the crunched up newspaper from inside the glass and filled it with water.

  Wait a minute, she thought. Is it really a ten-mile walk into town?

  She realized that it was about ten miles all the way north to Telluride, but the thought occurred to her that it was only two miles from the cabin down to State Route 145. Maybe if she walked down to 145, someone would give her a lift into town. She wasn’t sure exactly what she would do, though, even if she made it into town.

  “You could get the police out here,” she said.

  She thought about the snow outside. It would probably have covered over any sign of the ATV or footsteps in the yard, but the truck ignition was dismantled. There was also the bloody pig’s head. She needed to let the police know about that.

  She walked over to the front door, turned the knob, and stepped out onto the front porch. The cold wind cut through the fabric of her long T-shirt. She stood there on the front porch in her T-shirt and white cotton panties. Her bare feet felt the ice-cold wood of the front porch.

  It was cold out, a dry cold mixed with the snow settling in. She looked out across the yard’s white landscape in the dark. The sound of snow touching on the ground made her shiver.

  “They were just pranksters,” she said, “a couple of local teens, who saw the article in the paper and wanted to scare me.”

  Somehow she had convinced herself that it wasn’t serious. Maybe because the thought of someone seriously wanting to harm her was so frightening she simply didn’t want to consider it.

  She stepped back in from the cold and pulled the front door shut.

  “There’s not even a grizzly bear up here,” she whispered. “All of this, it’s a waste of time.”

  She stepped over to the sofa, sat down, and propped her feet on the coffee table in such a way she could feel the warmth from the embers in the fireplace. She picked up one of the bear books and opened randomly to a page.

  “‘Contrary to popular belief,’” she read aloud in the fire’s dim glow, “‘bears do not hibernate. They do sleep deeply in dens during the winter, sometimes for weeks. But they often get hungry, lonely or restless, and step outside to forage for frozen roots, berries, and meat. Sometimes a bear will stay out all winter; that’s the one the Natives fear the most: the winter bear. Its fur tends to build up a thick layer of ice, rendering it nearly impenetrable, almost bulletproof. . .’”

  Her voice trailed off.

  Bulletproof?!

  She looked at the cover. It was a Moon Handbook titled Alaska. It wasn’t even one of her research books. She had picked it up on a whim at the library. She wanted to go to Alaska, the last true wilderness frontier. Alaska represented a new life and freedom, and she desperately wanted to escape from the mistakes of her past. No one would know her in Alaska. She looked at the line: “rendering it nearly impenetrable, almost bulletproof.”

  “Yes, but those are Alaskan grizzlies,” she said, “not the kind you’d find around here, even if there is a grizzly in southwest Colorado, which there’s not.” Still she thought about it. She said, “Bulletproof . . .”

  She read the passage again, just to make sure that she was not dreaming it. There it was on the top of page fourteen: bulletproof.

  “That’d be a hell of a thing,” she said.

  Nine

  They were all freshmen, sophomores, and juniors at Fort Lewis College in Durango. Two of the twenty-one-year olds—Dennis Bass and Todd Randall—picked up the keg from Liquor World on Camino Del Rio as soon as they got out of their last class that afternoon, and it chilled in a trashcan packed with ice for three hours before the first people started arriving at their Hillcrest apartment.

  One of the fools had stolen a golf cart from the Hillcrest Golf Club, and they were doing laps around the parking lot, smoking cigarettes, holding cans of Bud Light, picking up a new person on each pass by Dennis and Todd’s back porch. They managed to get eight people on the golf cart—three girls and five guys—before Dennis stepped out onto the porch and shouted, “We’re tapping the keg!”

  The golf cart suddenly swerved and made a beeline for the porch. Two guys fell off onto the pavement. One started cursing. The other just lay there like he was dead.

  By eleven o’clock, Dennis had returned with the second keg, and there were forty people crammed in and overflowing out of their ground-floor apartment. Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” blared from obnoxiously large speakers in the living room, and one of the girls was doing a keg stand on the back porch while a group of two dozen people stood around her counting as if in some kind of tribal chant: “Twelve! Thirteen! Fourteen! Fifteen! Sixteen!”

  The girl’s shirt fell down around her chest, and though she didn’t have on a bra, she didn’t seem too concerned about giving everybody a view. She made it to twenty-three before pulling her head back from the keg hose and shouting gleefully: “Twenty-three! Twenty-three! Who’s gonna beat it?”

  The two guys who’d held her legs up let her back to the ground, and she staggered for a moment looking bright-eyed, slapping high fives, and smiling at everyone on the back porch. A moment later, another girl was hoisted up into the air, and the crowd started chanting again.

  • •

  It was Todd who suggested the drive up to Marilyn’s Well, and he had an interesting way of doing so. He sort of mentioned it in passing to a girl named Carson Richards who he knew had four friends she could talk into coming. Including Carson, three of the girls were on the dance team, and two others wanted to be, and Todd was bright enough to know that Car
son was the girl to ask. She’d get the others to come along.

  He was nonchalant about it. “We’ll get rid of everybody here within the next half hour,” he said. “Dennis has got the new Explorer. We haven’t taken it up into the mountains yet.”

  “Well, Holly and Erin were talking about going to Solid’s,” Carson said. “I don’t know what the others want to do. We might be able to score some weed.”

  “We just bought an ounce,” Todd said.

  “You’d let some of it go?”

  “How much you talking about?”

  “A quarter.”

  “Shit, I’ll get you high, Carson,” he said. “We’ve got a cooler packed with beer once the keg runs out.”

  “Holly wants a bag.”

  Todd looked at her. He motioned for her to lean forward, and he whispered in her ear: “I could let a half go.”

  Carson smelled his cheap cologne and felt the warmth of his cheekbone against hers. He was a big, strong-shouldered guy with a sensitive yet intense way of looking at her. She didn’t much care, but he did drive a white Corvette and lived in the best apartment complex for Fort Lewis undergrads.

  Everyone else around them at the party was getting drunk and acting stupid. Todd had only had a couple of drinks, and he wouldn’t invite anybody who couldn’t behave.

  “I’ll ask ’em and see what they say,” she said.

  “It’s no big deal,” he said. “Hell, I’d just as soon go downtown.”

  • •

  Carson liked guys with whom she could be great friends, guys who liked her even though they knew her flaws. Dennis and Todd were like that. They’d known her for two years, and all of them had grown up together at Fort Lewis. She knew that Todd was showy, but she was okay with that. He liked to pride himself on living in a good apartment, driving a sports car, and playing golf on the weekends, but his biggest weakness was an insecurity that manifested itself in the form of anger or hotheaded comments.

  She knew this and yet she still liked him because he was willing to listen to her if she called him on it. He was honest enough with himself to be attractive. He wasn’t perfect.

  They managed to fit nine people into the Ford Explorer, and Dennis, who had only had three drinks, drove. There were five girls and four guys, and one of the girls rolled a joint in the backseat as they climbed up into the mountains north of Durango.

  “So why do they call it Marilyn’s Well?” one of the new girls asked.

  Erin Ramon said, “Because Marilyn Monroe used to come up here.”

  “Get out.”

  “I’m serious,” Erin said. She had blue eyes, shoulder-length dark black hair, and a wide smile. “Tell her guys.”

  Dennis said, “It’s true. Or that’s what the story says.”

  Erin passed the joint forward to the front seat, and Todd took it from her. He took a draw, handed it to Dennis who took a draw and then he passed it back.

  “Is it starting to snow?” Carson said.

  Everyone looked forward through the front window into the headlights’ shine. Sure enough, it was beginning to snow.

  “How come people don’t come up here?” Holly said. “What if there’s people up here when we get there?”

  Someone handed her the joint, and she took a draw. Everybody but Dennis in the driver’s seat had an open beer.

  He said, “Because people don’t know about it. You’ll see.”

  “And it’s okay to swim in it?” Holly said.

  No one replied. She was worrying. Dennis had only country and rap stations programmed into his stereo, and he found a station playing some Faith Hill, then turned to another playing Ludicrous.

  “I’ve measured the temperature up here once before,” he said. “It’s like a hundred and six degrees.”

  “Like how big is it?” Erin said.

  “Oh, it’s really big, honey,” one of the guys in the back said.

  “No, I’m serious,” she said. “Is it like a hot tub?”

  Todd said, “It’s more like a pool, probably about forty feet by forty feet. It’s big.”

  Dennis checked his rearview mirror, and though there was no car behind him, he gave his turn signal, slowed the SUV, and pulled off of deserted two-lane 550 up onto a narrow forest road. There was more snow on the ground up ahead, and he put the four-wheel drive on and they continued to climb, now crawling slowly through the trees.

  “It’s dark,” Holly said.

  “Are you scared?”

  “No,” she said. She took a drink of her beer.

  The SUV slowed down, and everyone saw a gate across the forest road. The woods were dark and dense on either side of the narrow trail, and Dennis climbed down from the driver’s seat and approached the gate.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “The gate is locked,” Todd said.

  Erin opened the back right door and said, “There’s like a half foot of snow on the ground.”

  Dennis popped the latch on the gate and swung it open. He came back to the driver’s side, climbed in and pulled the SUV forward. Erin closed her door, and they pulled through the open gate. Once on the other side, he climbed out and closed the gate shut behind them.

  “Who wants a beer?” Holly said.

  She leaned over into the back and opened the cooler. Everybody wanted another beer, and Todd took everybody’s empty and put them in a black trash bag.

  The girls opened up both back windows. Erin put her hand out on her side, and Holly put hers out on her side. They could feel the snow hitting them, and the SUV continued to crawl through the woods.

  “Oh, the weather outside is frightful,” Holly sang, “but my fire is so delightful. . .”

  By the second verse, all four girls had joined her. They were tipsy, and with the windows down, they sang loudly, merrily, having a great time. Todd and Dennis joined in, and their two friends Clark Duncan and Eddie James laughed and smiled, too.

  The SUV climbed through the darkness up the mountainside.

  • •

  The bear—a large grizzly—watched the SUV pull up to the steaming water. It stood in the woods on the far side of the pond completely enveloped in darkness. The doors of the SUV opened, and people stepped out. The snow continued to fall.

  This bear had not eaten more than roots and berries in several days, and it watched the people a moment. Then, it began moving slowly and with utter silence through the trees around the pond. It was moving closer to the SUV.

  • •

  Carson said, “Check this out.”

  “It’s beautiful,” Holly said.

  They stood in the darkness by the SUV, looking out at the steaming mineral pond. Todd stepped from the back of the SUV.

  “Can you help me with these?” he said. He held several lawn chairs in his right arm and a stack of towels in his left.

  Carson, Erin, and Holly stepped around the back. They saw the cooler and a bundle of fire logs in the back. There were a bunch of towels sitting on top of the cooler, now.

  “Where?” Carson said.

  Todd walked down to the water. “We’ll build a fire beside the water, so it’ll be warm when you come out.”

  Erin grabbed one side of the cooler and Carson the other. They carried it down to the water’s edge. Todd started setting up the lawn chairs in a circle. Dennis grabbed a handful of towels, and Clark and Eddie started with the fire logs.

  “Did you hear that?” Holly said. She stood at the back of the SUV with the other two girls, freshmen Acacia Santos and Jordyn Wright.

  The three girls looked up into the woods beyond the Explorer. It was too dark to see into the woods very far. Holly closed the back door and stepped out away from the Ford. She looked from right to left into the woods, but neither of the other girls had heard it.

  The guys made a clearing in the center of the lawn chair circle. Todd stacked up the wood, dowsed it with lighter fluid, and threw on a match. The girls had all started gathering down near the water’s edge, except for Hol
ly who stood at the back of the Ford.

  “She gets so paranoid when she gets high,” Erin said to Carson.

  Carson knelt down and felt the water with her hand. It was hot. She looked back up toward Holly.

  She called, “Holly, is everything alright?”

  Holly stared into the woods a moment more, then turned and said, “I guess so. I thought I heard something.”

  She started down toward the water and everyone else.

  It only took a couple of minutes to get the fire going, and everybody took a lawn chair. They continued drinking the beer.

  “Who’s going in first?” Carson said.

  “We should play a game,” Dennis said.

  “What game?” Erin said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Some kind of game.”

  “Like what?” Todd said.

  “Strip poker.”

  One of the girls actually laughed. Todd noticed that the towels were stacked in a chair beside the water. He’d laid out a blanket so that they could step from the blanket down into the water. There was a good deal of snow on the ground at nearly eight thousand feet. Everyone was dressed in ski jackets and jeans, but it was still cool.

  “Alright,” Todd said. “If nobody looks at me, I’ll do it first.”

  All five girls looked at one another. Each one of them broke into curious smiles.

  “Not a little bashful are you, Todd?” Erin chided.

  “I haven’t had as much liquor as you guys,” he said.

  “Oh, I can hold my liquor,” she said.

  “Excuses,” Carson said.

  There was an awkward silence for a moment. They listened to the crackle of the fire. They could hear their breathing in the cold mountain air. Holly took a drink then said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”

  “You’ll do it?” Dennis said.

  “Just don’t be gawking at me.”

  Dennis shrugged. “Who’s gawking?”

  Holly stood up from the lawn chair. She threw back her beer and then swayed a little.