A Death in Eden

by Keith McCafferty

  Cartwright, who’d been filming, switched the camera off and stepped into the fray. “Let’s save the pro and con for the fire tonight,” she said. “I don’t want you to get talked out.”

  “Oh, I don’t think there’s much danger of that,” Trueblood said. “Is there, Clint?”

  “Tonight’s fine with me,” McCaine said.

  “Sure,” Trueblood said. “A few hours won’t change the facts. You know what Mark Twain said? ‘A mine is a hole in the ground with a liar on top.’ I hear Clint’s honey-tongued spiel, and I need a double bourbon and a beer chaser.”

  “You have a cooler full of Coors Light. Pop the tab on one of those silver bullets and we can finish this argument here and now.”

  “A silver bullet, Clint. That’s not a bad idea. ’Cept it would be better if it was copper-jacketed. More apropos. Have to have steady aim. Your heart’s got to be a pretty small target.”

  McCaine stood, towering over Trueblood.

  Trueblood looked up. “What are you going to do? Hit me?” He fingered out the bridgework on the right side of his mouth. “You already did that, remember?” He waved the bridgework around so the others could see it.

  “That’s because you said . . .” He paused. “You know I can’t say what you said.”

  “I said her name. ‘Rebecca.’ There. I’ll say it again. ‘Rebecca.’”

  McCaine’s face had gone as red as the willows on the bank. Sean Stranahan stood to move between them. He could see the veins standing out in McCaine’s broad forehead. McCaine glowered, then he held his hands up and backed away.

  “This was a mistake,” he said. “This was all a mistake. Lillian, I’m sorry. But I can’t float another mile of river with that man.”

  “You’re stuck, Clint,” Trueblood said. “There’s nowhere to go.”

  “I can get a helicopter in on the sat phone.”

  “You do that. Lillian here can film you tucking your tail between your legs. See how that makes you look to the public.”

  A measure of silence fell. Then the current lifted its voice, smoothing over the break in the argument. Sam Meslik crumpled up his sandwich wrapper.

  “You can shoot each other as far as I care,” Sam said. “But do me a favor. Wait until we float a few miles and get the tents up. We get a couple cool nights, we can field-dress you and float you out before you start to stink. Or I got a better idea. Why don’t you take the canoe on this leg? The two of you in the same boat. You can kiss and make up, lower everybody’s blood pressure a few points. Up to you, really. Sean and I get paid either way.”

  “You agreed to this trip,” Cartwright said. Her eyes flashed from McCaine to Trueblood.

  Trueblood replaced his bridgework and smiled out of the right side of his mouth, one that went all the way back past his porcelain canine tooth.

  “I’m happy to paddle the canoe with Clint. We should all enjoy this slice of heaven while it lasts.”

  * * *

  —

  Harold had watched the confrontation with an impassive expression. He folded his arms across his chest and looked across the current to the face of the cliff. The light had changed and the scarecrow had fallen into shadow.

  Cartwright focused her camera on him, zoomed in, then slowly twisted the lens ring to its widest angle.

  “What do you call that, when you start with a tight focus and go wide?” The question came from Marcus.

  “A pullback shot,” Lillian said. “Are you interested in filmmaking?”

  “Yeah, I guess. They took us to a dino dig where they were shooting a documentary on the Maiasaura. I spent some time with the cameraman. We were there a couple days.”

  “He has a camera,” Harold said.

  “I have competition, huh? What camera do you have?”

  “Canon Rebel XS. Friend of my mom’s gave it to me. All I got for a lens is a crappy Sigma, but it takes pretty good video.”

  “He took some pictures of the scarecrow and the pictographs,” Harold said.

  Cartwright nodded. “I’d like to see them. What year are you in school, Marcus?”

  “I’m thinking of taking some time off.”

  “He’s going to be a senior in the fall. I’m trying to get him to finish up, go to Montana State,” Harold said.

  Lillian took the camera off her shoulder. “I could put in a word for you at the film school there. It’s one of the best in the country. They have a Native American film program called ‘Native Voices.’”

  “What would they want with an Indian who can’t shoot a basketball?” Marcus said.

  Cartwright shook her head. “Don’t sell yourself short. Being Blackfeet works to your advantage. When I started out, people accused me of using my looks to get ahead. They called me Three Button Lilly. I’d unbutton three buttons of my shirt and show some cleavage when I wanted to get someone to talk to me, then I’d button them back up when I went in front of the camera. I felt like I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to get ahead. Television isn’t a flat playing field; nothing in life is if you’re a woman. You have to use what gets you to the goal line. Up at the university, they need Native American enrollment. An intelligent young man like you, you would have to be a fool not to take advantage of it.”

  “Okay. Thanks, I guess. I’ll think about it.”

  “You do that.”

  She turned to Harold. “You haven’t taken your eyes off that cliff in twenty minutes. All the time those guys were working up to drawing knives, you’re looking at that cave.”

  “He thinks there’s something hinky about the sign,” Marcus said.

  “Oh? What?”

  “Probably nothing,” Harold said. “Just strikes me as odd, the way the letters are painted. You would think that somebody who wants you to read the words from down here would paint in block capitals, not write in longhand. But that’s what he’s done. Only the first letter of the first word is a capital and he’s writing cursive, linking the letters together. It’s very carefully done, all the loops just so, like in a grade-school primer. What do you make of that, Marcus?”

  “This is the kind of shit he pulls,” Marcus said for Cartwright’s benefit. But there was no malice underlying the words. “Always trying to get me to think, like I know jack shit about it. I haven’t written a word in longhand since maybe fourth grade.”

  “So what’s that tell you?” Harold waited.

  “Tells me he’s old?”

  “Old, or old-fashioned?”

  “Whatever.”

  Harold looked into the lens of the camera and gave a slight shrug to go with his smile. Kids these days.

  Cartwright twirled her finger, urging him to get to the point.

  “Printing is a static form of expression,” Harold said. “People who choose to print are hiding their identities. Cursive is more revealing of personality and emotion. All these letters have open loops. That’s the sign of an open, artistic person. And they’re relatively small. From here, when the cliff falls into shadow, you really need binoculars to read them. That tells me he’s uncomfortable making a bold statement.”

  “But the words themselves are threatening, aren’t they? And the scarecrow, it’s also a threat. That’s bold, if you ask me.”

  “You’re right about that. That’s what has me wondering. It’s like he’s driven to create this effigy of a watchman, but he’s not so comfortable making his statement with it. His personality conflicts with his mission.”

  “You’re sure you’re reading this right?”

  “I’m not sure at all. I took a handwriting class, part of my continuing education as an officer of the law. But my initial impression, going right back to the girl’s story about her shoe, is that whoever we’re dealing with, it’s not a caveman with a club.”

  “Why choose a scarecrow to make his point?”

 
“Same question I asked myself. I came here yesterday, I was under the assumption the job had something to do with defacing pictographs. But this guy’s not defacing pictographs. He’s making a connection between the pictographs and the mine. Maybe he’s saying this is sacred land that should be protected, but beyond that I’m just thinking out loud.”

  Cartwright shut her camera off and ran her ChapStick over her lips and capped it, buttoning it in her pocket over the swell of her breast. Harold saw Marcus watching her, Cartwright fiddling with the button longer than she had to.

  “I Wikipediaed ‘scarecrow’ after the story broke in the Tribune,” she said. “The Vanir were nature and fertility gods in Norse mythology. They were said to keep the settlements safe, and the villagers would build effigies of the Vanir in their fields; hence, the scarecrow. Gods protecting the crops and so on. Sometimes it went as far as offering human sacrifices, one man and one woman.”

  “God of Scarecrows,” Harold said. “The little girl who saw the scarecrow, she said he was God. Like Jesus on the cross.”

  “The Scarecrow God. I like it,” Cartwright said. She nodded. “Native Americans built scarecrows.”

  “Blackfeet? I never heard any of the elders mention that.”

  “Zuni. The children had contests to see who could make the scariest.”

  Harold nodded. “They did more farming, so I’m not surprised.”

  “Fish could be considered a crop. Maybe these scarecrows are meant to protect the trout.”

  “Could be. Make for a good story.”

  Cartwright nodded. “I know this sort of fell into your lap, but your work here is part of the story now. Do you think you could camp with us tonight? We’re going to be at Canyon Depth. Plenty of room for another tent and I’d like to get your perspective on film. You, too, Marcus. You could help me set up the campfire shoot. And don’t take it personally if I snap at you. That’s just me. If you can put up with me, I can teach you some tricks with your Rebel. What do you say?”

  Harold looked at Marcus, who shrugged. Harold said sure, and she went to get release forms from her camera bag.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Harold said.

  “Her?” Marcus grinned. “Yeah. She reminds me of my Auntie Gemma. No bullshit. But you better watch out. She’s got an eye for you now. You see the way she put that lipstick in her pocket, rolled it around with her fingers? She’s giving you the three-button treatment, for sure. And she’s got a voice, like to bite your head off, but with you, she’s a meadowlark singing. She’s out snaggin’ for you. She’ll be creeping in your tipi you don’t zip that flap.”

  “I’ll keep the bear spray handy,” Harold said. “But you think about what she said, about the film school.”

  “I’m thinking about it. White people, man . . .” His voice trailed off as he shook his head, the merriment in his eyes. “Those two guys, I’m not so sure I want to be sitting by no fire with them. They like to kill each other.”

  “Distinct possibility.”

  “Like you told me, I guess. Tribal as they come.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  War and Peace

  If the first scarecrow looked like a black widow spider on a scoop of ice cream, the second was a chameleon, constructed of driftwood in tans and grays that matched the lichen splotches on the rock ledge it was propped against. Harold had the advantage of the coordinates and the ranger’s description. Even so it took him a minute to spot it, several hundred feet above the east bank of the river. What finally gave it away was a slash of red that on inspection with binoculars revealed itself as a bandana tied around the scarecrow’s neck. The sign—Not on my watch—was painted in light-colored letters rather than black this time.

  “He’s getting cagey,” Marcus said. “Making it a challenge.”

  Harold lowered his binoculars. “Ranger told me that a trapper used to camp under the ledge. An old hermit named MacAllen.”

  “Do you think Trueblood and McCaine can climb up there? It’s steep, but it’s not scary steep.” Harold and Marcus had been the first down the river; the raft and the other canoe were not yet in sight.

  “If they haven’t already shot each other,” Harold said.

  * * *

  —

  No shots had been fired and no one begged off, although the rocks made for iffy footing. As they climbed to the overhang, Bart Trueblood stopped more and more often, leaning forward to put his hands on his knees and breathing heavily.

  “Go on.” He waved them on and up. “I’m having . . .” His breath wheezed. “Just a mild disagreement with Father Time.”

  “You sure, Bart?” It was McCaine, with what sounded like genuine concern in his voice.

  Harold, who was in the lead, with Sean Stranahan a few steps behind him, caught his eye. Stranahan shrugged. Maybe the two adversaries, in the confines of a single canoe, had taken Sam’s suggestion and made up.

  Twenty minutes of testing footholds and fighting through thornbushes saw them to the overhang, all but Trueblood, who had dropped farther and farther behind.

  The condition of the scarecrow was what drew the eye. In contrast to the one Harold and Marcus had examined upriver, this one was much deteriorated, the branch that made the arms broken off and a large hole in the basket weave of willows forming the head. Something had attacked it, a bird with a strong beak, or an animal with sharp teeth. Perhaps a raccoon, Harold thought. Whatever had done the damage had taken the venison as its reward, and the only trace of the meat that Harold had come to regard as the brains of the effigy were dried brown blood smears and a few deer hairs adhering to the branches. Harold brought one up against the light of the sky. The barred pattern of the hair was different than the hairs he’d examined upriver. It was body hair from a whitetail deer, not a mule deer.

  He thought back. According to the ranger, this had been the first scarecrow reported by floaters. The one Harold and Marcus had examined that morning was the last reported. If the ranger’s theory was correct, that the maker—Harold still had a hard time thinking of him as a criminal—had completed one long float and started another, then nearly a month had passed between his construction of the two scarecrows. Mule deer and whitetail were both common in the river bottom. Meat from two different animals could be explained by the time difference. A small detail, but it bolstered the theory.

  The pictographs under the overhang were ambiguous, mostly indecipherable swirls and smears, the one identifiable image a sun. As Harold and the climbing party examined the art, Bart Trueblood came wheezing up. He said he’d spoken too soon—the river canyon wasn’t a slice of heaven so much as a slice of hell. He took his hat off and wiped at the rivulets of sweat that ran down either side of his widow’s peak.

  Besides the pictographs, all the evidence of human encampment pointed to the hermit, not to the maker of the scarecrows. A fifty-gallon drum, blistered and rusted out, contained scraps of leather and a number of books, their pages yellowed, the covers gnawed by industrious teeth. Most curious were a pair of ice skates, the blades rusted, all the leather but the hardened soles devoured by rodents.

  Harold leafed through the books, mostly novels. The exception was the autobiography of Ulysses S. Grant, in the pages of which was an envelope. The canceled stamp was dated October 6, 1945. Harold slipped out two discolored sheets of paper along with a sprinkling of petrified mouse droppings. The pages were sticking and he drew his sheath knife and used the blade to carefully separate them. They were the military discharge papers of one Scott Henry MacAllen. DOB—April 26, 1900. Place of residence at time of enlistment—Hillardville, Florida. Rank at date of discharge—First Lieutenant. Harold photographed the two sheets and replaced the papers in the envelope.

  “I knew him,” Trueblood said to the assembled party. “Old Scotty, I saw him skating the river in those. He’d skate the big pools below our property line. Clint, you met him, t
oo, didn’t you?”

  Though Harold had already seen evidence of a thaw between Trueblood and McCaine, he was still surprised by the tone of voice. It was just a question, nothing in it veiled or argumentative.

  McCaine nodded. “He’d stop by, trade my dad a few pelts for groceries.”

  “Same with my folks,” Trueblood said. “The bottom had dropped out of the fur market, all the beaver were gone, muskrats weren’t worth a plug nickel, so he was down to trapping coyotes for the bounty. Nobody needed coyote pelts, especially if they weren’t prime, but coyote was all he had. My dad treated him with respect and always made it sound like he was getting the better deal. This would be back in the early sixties. He died ’71 thereabouts. So I was maybe ten. I can remember he wore this coat made out of elk skin and he smelled pretty ripe. When I made a comment, my dad set me down and told me how he’d got to be the way he was. That he’d fought in the Battle of the Ardennes in the Great War and seen so much blood soak into the ground that he’d said the hell with humanity, came to the mountains, and grew his beard and never left.”

  “He did though,” McCaine said. “He was on Okinawa in ’45, before Japan surrendered. Imagine, someone whose only knowledge of the outside world was fighting at the front in two world wars. No wonder he was a little mad.”

  “He wasn’t mad,” Trueblood said. “He had a lazy eye that made him look mad, and he had a strange way of not finishing his sentences, but you could understand him fine. One year he showed up with a red-tailed hawk that he’d caught as a fledgling and taught to hunt for him, kill ducks and rabbits. It would be on his arm, but it would fly away when anybody got close. He had it a few years, I recall.”

  He smiled. “They called him ‘Old Red-tail.’ Scotty, not the bird. You would think we had good times growing up. I suppose we did at that.”

  “Sure enough,” McCaine said. And then a pause, both men’s eyes swimming away to a land and time as faded as the pages of the books. A silence stretched into the corners of the overhang before Marcus’s voice broke it.