by David Haynes
“You think?” his colleague replied. He took his hat off Draper and carefully positioned it on his head.
“Well, if Mr Draper’s right about finding it back there, that’s the only explanation. Wolves.”
The two troopers nodded at each other and walked back toward the door. Draper was relieved to be out of there but he felt like a fool. The troopers probably thought he was too.
How would a wolf get in there, make a mess like that? Move such heavy timber and shelving just to get to the body?
As if reading his thoughts, the tall trooper spoke. “A she-wolf, skinny as a whip, could get back there. Probably not fed in a while and smelled that meat when you opened it up.”
It sounded plausible.
“She’s probably watching us from in there, right now.” He nodded at the dense forest behind the container.
Draper scanned the treeline. He couldn’t see anything. He didn’t want to see anything.
“We’ll take that number for Mr Burgess and make some inquiries. Other than that and without a body, there’s not much else we can do.”
“What about the blood? Can you take a sample of it?”
The two troopers looked at each other. The tall one spoke.
“Mr Draper, there’s more dirt and rust back there than blood. We ask for a CSI to come up here and check it out, we’ll be sent back to training school. We don’t know there’s been a crime here, we haven’t got any missing persons reports and whatever was back there has gone. There’s nothing more we can do.”
The two troopers walked away, leaving Draper staring into the forest. Maybe it had been a wolf, and maybe he’d seen it before. The first time he came up here, he thought he saw something wandering through the camp. He hoped the wolf wasn’t planning on making it a regular occurrence.
He jogged after the troopers who were laughing with each other again.
10
After dinner they sat around the fire pit that Mercer had dug outside the saloon. It wasn’t too cold, around forty-five degrees, but the fire was as much about tradition as it was warmth. It was eight o’clock but there were another four hours of light left in the day.
Mercer took a swig of his beer. “You know, Puckett, you make just about the best mac and cheese I’ve ever tasted.”
“Very kind of you to say, especially since I put my special sauce in your portion.”
Puckett was across the other side of the fire to Mercer. It hadn’t gone unnoticed that he’d placed his chair next to Meg, even though there was space elsewhere. He was only two or three years older than her. They were closer in age than anyone else.
There was a mixture of relief and then confusion when Draper told them all about the vanishing corpse. Mercer had just patted him on the back like he was giving him a piece of good news.
“So, how much more is there to process before we can start on the new cut?” Draper asked Flynn.
“Two hours,” he said. “At most.”
“Another day on the new cut and we’ll be ready to start processing,” Mercer said.
“Looking good then.” Draper felt encouraged. He risked a glance at Meg and saw her staring into the fire. It had been a long day for all of them.
“Everyone happy?” He looked at Vinson. “The pump’s running okay?”
After he’d finished with the troopers he’d gone back to the plant, expecting to see the bulldozer gone, but it was still parked in the same position as he had left it.
“Vinson?” he called up to Flynn in the excavator. Flynn just shrugged back. The water was flowing through the plant beautifully. The pump was doing its job.
Draper climbed back into the cab and drove back to Mercer who was still working his way along the cut. They carried on for another three hours, backward and forward, enjoying the monotony. Disappearing into their own thoughts.
“I guess our first day at Black Pine Creek has been pretty eventful, huh?” He paused and stared into the fire. “What happened to that guy was grisly and I for one don’t care to dwell on it any longer. The cops will talk to Burgess and find out who he was but there’s nothing more we can do.”
“Feels like bad luck to me.” Vinson said it quietly but everyone heard him.
“No such thing!” shouted Mercer and threw a bottle of cold beer over the fire at Vinson. The older man caught it and put it on the floor beside his chair.
“It’s like a biblical warning or something and the smell in there...”
“Come on, man,” said Puckett. “I’m trying to enjoy my beer and you’re talking about a dead guy. Ain’t exactly sweet fireside talk, now is it?” He finished his bottle and held his hand up for Mercer to throw him another.
“So what do you want to talk about, Puckett? What interesting topic of conversation would you like to discuss?” Mercer asked him and threw a beer.
“How about what we’re all going to do with the gold we mine this season? When Mr Scott Draper here makes us all rich.”
“I know what I’m gonna do,” said Flynn. “Pay some bills, pay the damn mortgage on my house for a change.”
“What about you, Ray? You’ve gotta have something more exciting than Flynn lined up.” Puckett leaned in closer to the fire just as it sent off a loud crack and a flurry of sparks into the air. He jumped back, spilling beer on his shirt. Everyone laughed.
“Well, my truck’s damn near falling apart so I should buy a new truck.”
“A truck? That’s it? You’re gonna buy a new truck?”
Mercer held up his hand. “I said, that’s what I should buy. I’ve got my eyes on a sweet ’67 Impala that sounds like thunder when she rolls. That’s what I’m gonna buy.”
“What about all the paternity suits you got pending?” Draper called across. “Lawyers don’t come cheap.”
Even Vinson laughed then.
“What about you, boss?” Flynn asked.
Draper ran a hand across his face. His eyes were stinging from fatigue as well as the smoke wafting from the fire. He’d stopped thinking or planning for the future a long time ago.
“I guess I’ll just invest it in another operation. Maybe next time I won’t have to go to crooks like Burgess to get a lease.” His eyes met Meg’s. “What about you, Meg?” he asked. For some reason his stomach was in knots. For that split-second he saw her eyes as they were when she was toddling around Bear Creek, when she was just five. The gold pan in her hands was almost as big as her and by the time she had filled it with dirt and rocks, it weighed as much as she did.
She stared back at him. It was a cold look. “I’m going to college and I’m going to pay for it myself.”
Draper looked away. Her comment stung him, as she knew it would.
“Hey, that’s your old man’s job. He’s got plenty of money,” Puckett said.
Mercer jumped in before that topic went any further. “Come on then, Puckett. What’re you doing that’s so interesting?”
Puckett sat back and crossed his hands on his chest. “When my mom and dad died, Gramma looked after me. From a little baby she made sure I was fed, clothed and kept comfortable, like all babies should be. One day when I was five, she was working the farm, as she always did since my grandpa passed on. I remember she was in the barn and I was playing with a toy tractor on the porch. There was a terrible screaming, blood-curdling it was, and she ran out of there with a goddamn wolf attached to her leg, chewing on her knee. She kept raising the shovel and bringing it down on the wolf’s head but it wouldn’t let go, it just kept chewing and I could hear the bones grinding, snapping and crunching between its teeth.”
Draper leaned over to Flynn and whispered, “Is this true?”
“Are you kidding?” whispered Flynn. “It’s bull. He ran away from home when he was thirteen. His parents live just outside of Chicago and his dad sells cars. He’s trying to impress someone.”
Draper looked at Meg who was staring intently at Puckett.
“So I picked up a knife,” continued Puckett. “And I marched over there and stuck
the knife in the wolf’s eye. Damn thing tried to turn on me, even when its eye popped out. So, I’ve been saving for a new leg for Gramma. I’m taking her to London to have the operation. She’s gonna have a leg like the runners – a blade.”
“That’s the biggest crock of shit I have ever heard,” Meg said and punched Puckett on the arm. She was smiling.
“It’s true!” Puckett feigned a look of shock.
“Like the time you went toe to toe with Sasquatch?” said Mercer.
“Or the time he tried to become a porn star and they told him his dick was too big?” Flynn shouted across.
“Too small, more like,” said Meg. “I’m going to bed. I can’t cope with all this scintillating conversation.” She got up and walked toward the saloon door with her empty bottle.
Vinson stood up and stretched his back. “Me too, been a long day.”
Draper said, “Before everyone goes, tomorrow after we’ve processed the last of the old cut, I’ll do the clean-up with Puckett and Flynn. While we’re doing that, Mike, can you give the plant a service? It’s been sitting for a long time, so have a good look at it. I don’t want it breaking down on us. Ray and Meg, can you keep going with the new cut? I want to be processing that as soon as possible.”
He stood up and finished the last of his beer. “Sound okay?”
Everyone nodded and started walking toward the saloon. Meg, Vinson and Flynn were already inside, with Puckett close behind. Only Draper and Mercer remained. Mercer finished his beer and stood up.
“Guess I’ll be going too,” he said.
“Ray, just a minute.”
Mercer walked over to him. “What’s up?”
“What was all that biblical crap from Vinson? Is he religious?”
Mercer shrugged. “Damned if I know. He kept himself to himself at Johnson’s place. Got on with his work and kept his nose clean. Knew you liked that kind of guy.”
“Just a bit odd coming out with something like that. Did you see his face when I asked him to go in there and start the generator?”
“Hey now, you can’t go blaming him for that. I didn’t want to go in there either.”
Draper shook his head. “Maybe not, maybe I’m over-thinking it, just don’t want...”
“You don’t want any bad apples in the barrel, I get it, but this isn’t Delta Junction and Mike Vinson isn’t Tom Briggs or Neil Evans. I know that’s what you’re thinking. You’re looking for the first sign that someone doesn’t fit, that one of the guys bears a grudge and gets ideas about how to resolve things. It ain’t gonna happen, Scotty. It ain’t the same, that was a one-off.”
Just the mention of those two names made his heart beat faster, but Mercer was right. He was looking for things, for signs, that simply weren’t there.
“Yeah, you’re right. I should stop worrying.”
They walked into the saloon together. The kitchen smelled of mac and cheese and fresh pine. There were worse smells in the world.
“Pretty brutal, wasn’t she?” he asked Mercer.
He drew in air through his teeth. “A little.”
“She sent all the college money back, you know. Every last cent of it. There was a note too, a simple two-word note. Fuck you! That’s what it said.”
“Now that’s brutal.”
“Yep, yes it is.”
*
It started getting light around three-thirty and patters of rain on the camper’s roof woke Draper. It wasn’t heavy, just incessant. He lay there for a while until he knew sleep was gone for good. His mind had kicked in when the weak sun made an attempt to poke through the gray sky. And now it had started, it was impossible to shut down. The last vestiges of a nightmare slipped away before he could feel its nasty threads wind through his skull.
He climbed out of bed and turned on the tap to fill the kettle to make coffee. The tap spluttered a few times and then released a thin stream of air. The water tank was empty. Had he even filled it since arriving? He couldn’t recall doing it, he’d had so much on his mind.
He pulled on the clothes bundled up on the floor and his jacket from the back of the door, then stepped into the morning. It smelled fresh and clean, as if the earth, the trees and the rain were cooking up something aromatic and delicious. He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply for a few seconds. Black Pine Creek bubbled away down the slope and the birds sang a melancholy, subdued song as if they had just woken up and were disappointed with the weather.
Draper pulled the hood over his head and opened the locker holding the water tank. It was empty, just as he’d expected. Thirty gallons gone. The saloon had water, and coffee. He could walk over there, make some then come back to the camper and climb back to bed for a couple of hours.
He closed the panel quietly and started the walk across the dirt. The rain had grown heavier in the last few minutes and there was a gray quality to the light. Like the birds, it was subdued. As he reached the steps, he stopped. The sound of rustling came from his right, from the treeline. It was the sound of movement… not something small either. He turned his head to look in the direction but the gloom was all-encompassing in there. Whatever it was had stopped moving too. Whatever it was, it was probably staring at him, unseen and hidden.
If anything came charging out of there, he had enough time to get inside out of the way. But nothing moved at all. Draper turned and took the steps to the door. It was only then that he thought about the silence.
He made coffee and filled his mug. Maybe it was his own senses closing in, maybe his mind was centering itself for the fight or flight mechanism, but for that single moment Black Pine Creek had been mute. The water had stopped rumbling over the rocks and the birds had ceased the morning chorus. Even the darkness inside the forest seemed to strengthen. He rubbed his face and sipped the coffee. Rain bumped off the roof in a relentless percussion. It was just his brain telling him it needed the caffeine to work properly.
He finished the mug and filled another to take back to his camper. The tingle of the caffeine started in his fingers and made them tremble. Another hour and he’d come back and make some eggs. He stepped out of the saloon into the daylight again. The eerie silence he thought he’d experienced earlier had gone. Black Pine Creek was back to its noisy brilliance.
To the side of the saloon, closest to the creek, the rain had opened up a narrow rivulet in the dirt where water flowed down away from the camp. If the area was waterlogged, mining would be more difficult, the earth harder to work and hauling dirt an energy-sapping endeavor.
He pulled his hood tighter around his face to keep as dry as possible and looked down at his boots. They were already turning a deep red as the dirt coated the aged leather. He kicked at a couple of sticks, sending them spinning across the wet earth.
A few years ago, Puckett had spun some story about being a karate expert. He reckoned he could break any-sized stick with a single chop. When he got drunk, Mercer produced a stick as thick as his arm and challenged Puckett. Like an idiot he accepted, and broke his hand and two fingers. They were still crooked now.
He cocked his leg to kick another and stopped. This one was different. It wasn’t the same color as the dead, broken limbs of the pine. It was pale, and where the rain had washed it, it was a gleaming white. It was a limb, not a tree limb but a bone from a living animal.
He pushed it with his foot and it rolled over. It wasn’t unusual to find the remains of prey. Predators had to eat, after all.
But his heart hammered louder in his chest when he looked closer. There was an angled joint at the top and a ragged break at the other end. Attached to the side was a thin sliver of material. Of blue denim.
“Shit,” he whispered. It was the femur of the dead guy from the container. It had to be.
Could he have missed it when he walked the other way? Possible but unlikely. Apart from a few sticks and twigs, and of course the dirt, there was nothing here. He wouldn’t have missed it. That meant that the wolf watching him from the forest – he knew it had
to be a wolf now – had walked through the middle of the camp and dropped it there for someone to find. For him to find.
He scanned the treeline again, wishing he had the Beretta clamped to his waist. So what now? Call the cops again? That’s what he should do. Vinson would have a hissy-fit about it, no doubt. Probably start spouting off about it being biblical again. But there wasn’t anything biblical about it. This was the natural order up here. Wolves needed to eat just like every other living creature. They had an easy meal out of a dead gold miner and this was their territory. They were just letting Draper know that they were at the top of the chain up here, not him.
Rain fell on the femur, polishing it up to a high sheen. He didn’t want to touch it but he had no choice. He’d lost the body once, he wasn’t going to lose it again and risk looking like a lunatic to the troopers. He carried it back to the camper, thought about taking it in with him. Instead he kicked it underneath and climbed back inside. The coffee was cold, diluted by the rain. He tipped it away and stripped out of his wet clothes.
His bed looked inviting and warm so he clambered back into it and closed his eyes. Rain drummed heavily on the roof, the hypnotic sound chasing him all the way to sleep.
11
The camper shook with the force of the bang. For a moment Draper thought he was sliding down the hill, washed away by the rain into the bottom of Black Pine Creek. Then the bang came again and this time it was accompanied by Mercer’s unmistakable voice.
“Oh, Scotty. Wakey wakey. Rise and shine!”
Draper sat up. “Give me a minute.”
“Get out of bed!” Mercer shouted. “Puckett’s made eggs and I don’t want to miss them.”
Draper scrambled out of bed and pulled on his wet clothes. “Just wait there. I need to speak to you.”
Mercer’s thick brown hair was sprinkled by a fine mist of rain. He was staring toward the saloon, toward breakfast.
“Come on then, what’s more important than eggs?”