by Nadia Bozak
The metal kid shakes his head, his cheeks patched with acne.
“Older guy.”
“Sorry.” The metal kid finishes his Coke, says goodbye.
When the women come back, the kid’s got fresh diapers and clothes on, is clean and washed and sleeping. They say they tried to feed it, but it wouldn’t take to a bottle. Needs its mom, they say.
“How’s a boy like you going to look after this baby properly?” they ask. “This one should still be at the breast.”
The stranger shrugs, wishing suddenly they’d offer to take it in and adopt it, insist upon it even. But they don’t need an extra kid, there being plenty of little ones running about the women’s feet.
The women hand over diapers, a baby bottle, packaged food and formula, sandwiches from the café. The stranger gives them money and buys cigarettes too. Steel wool for scrubbing up the front grill. There’s a whisky bottle in the front seat taken from one of the cases. Then, money in the pocket, baby wrapped up tight in blankets and strapped into the passenger seat, they get ready to head out, stopping at the gas station for a fill-up. The stranger wipes down the windows, fills the tires tight with air. Scarred-up fingers take the steel wool to the grill, scrub and scour at that black blood of rust, for its haunting smell in the heat of the engine makes the stranger sick inside. Pays for the gas and also buys a postcard. Fills it in standing there in the store, then stamps and drops it in the mailbox by the road.
CHAPTER TEN
Muskrat River I decided to rename as Mad Trap. Told that to Dave and also how the Indians around Black Dew Seat would come across these psycho trappers in the forest in spring after the long winter had finally broken, holed up in their rotten old shacks and gone inside out with all that loneliness. Up there winter’s a long time for someone who’s got nothing much to think about. If they weren’t already dead by their own shotguns, they’d be bone racks by then, eyes rusty red, fingers chewed to the raw, hairless heads. Sometimes, I said to Dave, they’d come fleeing out of the forest, crying and shaking. Usually good old Kate took them in, kept them nice and liquored until the season broke and Slava O’Right or some other trucker drove them out.
Though the map would never say so, we had crossed over into some other territory, a land of men and a place less empty. We smoked by the fire, shivered and spat, and wiped snot on our sleeves. Dave was rubbing that piece of flat pearl between his fingers, eyes blank, staring ahead. He was going at it hard, trying to wear it down.
“What you got there?” I asked him.
He said nothing, just put the thing back in his jacket pocket.
Half a moon washed over by cloud cover, its white glow turning off and on like a short-circuit. Night felt long and drawn, a pain that had to be stuck out. Had found a stone down by the water and on it I was sharpening the hunting knife, turning its blade into something more like razor.
“You know who it is, don’t you?” I said to Dave.
Dave looked over. “Who?”
“Would have expected it to be an Indian after you. Not a White guy.”
“Fuck you,” he said. “I don’t know any Indians and never intend to. Wrap your small little mind around that one, kid.”
Shrugged my shoulders at that. Someone not an Indian was after him—it made me feel a little better and then a little worse.
Already a day and a half on its waters, the Mad Trap River wound a long-drawn route through the forest, now made of hardwoods like maple and alder, beech, and softwoods like red and white pines. The land here was rock-terraced, rising up into highlands the further on we paddled, and the river was thick with fallen trees, beaver dams, and rapids. It slowed our way with all this goddamn portaging and so was taking forever to finish. But the nights seemed milder now, and it hadn’t rained for a whole goddamn day.
Dave and me, we were getting someplace. Getting to be less and less north. Feeling good, jackets undone, we had our boots off and drying out. Dave was patching the belly of 37. Just smoking in the sun, and then I caught sight of a canoe coming at us from downriver.
“Shit, someone’s coming.”
Dave turned around. Together we crouched there, watching the canoe. It was far enough away that its paddler maybe hadn’t seen us.
It pulled over along the opposite shore, and a dark shadow got out and tied it up and then crouched there much like we were doing. It was a man, a White guy, short and stocky of build. His shirt was red plaid.
“Motherfucker’s watching us,” said Dave. “Waiting for us.”
“Maybe he’s scared to come closer. Especially he sees we’re two.”
Wished me and Dave were not so alone out there.
“You ever seen Deliverance?”
Said I didn’t think so. But maybe I had.
“Well, you’d remember it,” said Dave. “These guys on a canoe trip down the Mississippi get raped by these hillbillies.”
“Shut up,” I said.
“Well, don’t worry too much, ’cause this sure’s not Mississippi,” said Dave. “It’s fucked up in the north, but at least it’s not the south. People here just fight, that’s all.”
“So down there is butt-fuck country is what you’re saying, and up here it’s more ass-kicking.”
“Yeah,” said Dave. “Something like that.”
Said to Dave that if that was all, then that was nothing. And I meant it too, being more than used to fighting. Back in Black Dew Seat, the kids, and some old enough to be adults, were always jumping me just because I wasn’t a rocker or into hockey, because I had the Goddamns painted on my jacket, and because I put bleach and spray paint in my hair, painted my lips with magic marker. Once some girls came up to me and said, “We’ll give you eyes to go with those black lips, bitch.” Had turned and ran, but they caught up to me and pushed me and I fell and they shoved snow down my back. Covered my head while they kicked me a few times. Then I got up and went home. That’s just the way it was, back in Black Dew Seat.
“Let’s go,” Dave said. “Before he does something.”
So we went, and we looked behind us and he was still there, and then we looked again and he was gone.
We saw him later when the sun was starting to fall. Somehow he’d come out ahead of us. We’d rounded a bend in the Mad Trap and saw a canoe pulled over along the western bank. Glided past, watching the boat and the bush out of the corner of our eyes. Thought we saw a shadow, a rustle in the brush. Me, I saw a flash of red plaid, but Dave missed it. Felt all menaced, still imagining there should be no one else out there but the two of us.
Paddled on until it was almost dark and we were sure we were too far ahead for him to catch up. Camp that night was pitched a way back in the bushes. The fire we built was real modest. Slept light and uneasy on Mad Trap, each of us fully booted, ready with our weapons.
* * *
Carried on again before it got light. Mad Trap, it seemed, was endless. Searched the banks for signs of life and we saw none. Around noon we came to a naked trunk lying far out in the water a few inches above the surface, roots still held pretty tight to the shore. Near the top a few chips had been knocked out of the wet wood and into that a peg had been driven and over that a ring had been passed. So we pulled over, and Dave grabbed hold of the bare trunk. He fished around in the water until he came up with the chain the ring was supporting. He pulled it from the water. A big drowned muskrat dangled from the trap at the end of the chain, its foot bitten between steel jaws. Dave held it high for me to see.
“Nice,” I said looking back over the shoulder. “Someone’ll soon be back for that one.”
Left the thing where it was, not wanting to piss anyone off any more than we’d already done. Paddled on. Stopped and ate the last of Dave’s beef jerky. Portaged around a beaver dam. Saw a bull moose feeding in the reeds across the river. So quiet as we passed, it didn’t even look up. More spring animals meant more m
en out to fish, shoot birds, and clear traps, just like Dave had said. After a time our strokes grew lighter and our minds took in deep breaths again. Me, I began to think it was all nothing—that there would be no fight, no ambush, no fucked butts or kicked asses.
We did not see him again until that night when we were camped along the bank. Saw what we thought were animal eyes glinting across the water. Then there came the first red licks of a fire that grew into a full-blown roar of flames. Someone was camped right there across the river. We didn’t eat much because there wasn’t much left. Wouldn’t say how scared I was, though by the way Dave’s glazed eyes were fixed on the fire across the way, I knew I was not alone in that. Fought back the regret of going on with Dave, knowing full well he was in some kind of danger.
We sat so close to each other our bodies were touching. And we spoke in violent whispers.
Leaning over to stoke up the fire I said to Dave, “How you learn all that karate stuff?”
Dave tossed a piece of birch into the fire.
“My dad taught it to me, see. I didn’t have much choice in it.”
“What kind is it? Real karate?”
“No. It’s bastardized. No-name. Stuff he learned here and there, in the militia or else from movies. Makes some of it up on his own, but that doesn’t mean it’s not tough. And he’s really goddamn sensitive about that too.”
“So you really don’t have a real weapon?” I asked him.
“Just what he taught me. Fighting techniques. That’s all I need.”
“Almost like you’re the weapon.”
“Something like that.”
Started all of a sudden. Sat up. Dave jumped at my movement, though he tried not to show it. Didn’t want me to know his bowels were as full of fear as mine were.
“Listen,” I whispered. “You hear that?”
“No,” said Dave. He spat into the fire.
“Maybe it was just the wind or something.”
“But there’s no wind tonight.”
Sat quietly and listened tight. Heard nothing save the rustle and burn of the fire and what came from yonder Mad Trap.
Going through my pack for the steak knife buried somewhere deep, I wanted Dave to have some weapon that was not a goddamn staple gun. Unpacked the whole goddamn bag almost, but the steak knife was gone, fallen out somewhere between Mad Trap and Black Dew Seat.
* * *
“Those things reek,” Dave said when I pulled out the boots I had stashed inside.
He said I was really crazy to be carrying those smelly old things around, and I just ignored him.
“They belong to Pickles.”
“Big suckers, too,” said Dave.
Me, I just nodded.
“Pickles must have been some guy.”
Nodded that he was. Said he was a swell guy. “Started out a pal of my uncle, then my uncle turned on everyone, but Pickles and me stayed friendly. Had a hard time of it. His life, his health. So thin he was. Tall, all spine.”
“So why’s he called Pickles?”
“Because of his liver,” I said. “His pickled-up Indian liver. Was a time he drank a lot. Him and Bellyache—that’s my uncle—they gave each other those names long time ago.”
“So what? He drank himself to death, passed out, and froze or some shit?”
“No,” I said real quiet. “He got killed by a drunken truck.”
Dave gave me silence.
“Hit and run,” I said. “Dead in the ditch.”
“So how’d you get his boots?”
“When I found him, I took them.”
“Well, they’re quite a souvenir. Pretty fucked up. Like in Alfredo Garcia, toting around proof that the bastard’s dead.”
“Don’t know about that,” I said. “It’s just no one cares Pickles is dead, see. That’s why I took his boots. Got his knife too, to remember him. Plus it’s just a wicked knife. I wouldn’t have left it either.”
“Sure. And you just left the body?”
“No,” I said.
Dark and dirt. Fire and filth. All around the smell of me and Dave and the cold sweat of the earth. Dave fed some more wood to the flames. Sparks shot out like from a grinding wheel.
“I buried it.”
“Buried it?”
“That’s right,” I whispered. “Because I know who hit him.”
“It was O’Right, I bet,” Dave said. He snapped his fingers and then pointed at me, all excited. “Wasn’t it? That’s why you’re going to see him, the business you have. Pay him a little visit, get a little revenge for Pickles.”
“Let’s just say that the O’Rights are some bunch of trouble. Fucking me all around and all over.”
“Too bad, kid, that your friend’s dead and all.”
And Dave let it go at that. Quit bugging me about the dirty, bloody fingernails and carrying around those boots, for a while at least. Guess I earned a bit more respect from him too, the shit I was in being even deeper than his own.
“You really don’t have a knife, Dave?”
Dave shook his head.
“Some say around Black Dew Seat the Indians up there would sharpen their paddles into points and then use them for weapons. Your Indians have any tricks like that?”
“Whose Indians?”
“Yours.”
“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” Dave said. “I don’t have any goddamn Indians.”
Sat there the whole night, our bodies mashed together. Talking here and there, our words came in low gulps and tight gasps. Except for naps taken in turn, dozing off back and forth, we hardly slept and when the sky came light, whoever it had been was gone from the opposite bank. Gone, though we’d heard not even a trace of his leaving. Gone as if he had never been there for really we’d not seen anything of him save the gleam of his eyes and the flames of his fire.
* * *
We’d gone on and pulled over along a gravel shore when I saw the dehydrated leftovers of some animal carcass—a wolf, from the look of the mangy scraps of fur. Was looking for where its eyes should have been when Dave said, “Look over there to the right, but don’t make it obvious.”
Just near us in a tree was cached a clear garbage bag, just above eye level, so that it was plainly visible. Was blinded by the colours of cellophane food wrappers, especially the bright package of Dad’s Oatmeal Cookies, same colour yellow as Dave’s Walkman.
“Fucking right,” I said, trying not to look like Dave had told me.
“Ignore it,” Dave said low, his closed teeth making it come out real harsh. “He’s watching us and that’s a trap. Just get back in the boat.”
So we kept going. Put the canoe to water, went on for a half a mile, and then we pulled over, grabbing onto thick jutting branches.
Dave and me, we faced each other. Rolled tobacco. Was hungry and I wanted that food back there. We needed that food.
“A trap,” said Dave. “Like that rat in the water.”
“Trap or no trap, I want those goddamn cookies.”
We thought we’d wait until night fell, until after dark, and then we’d go on back for it. Stealthy, thieves in the night. So we were planning it out and everything and then Dave, he just said, “Fuck it.”
Grabbed his axe then. Got up and out of the boat.
“Wait ten minutes max, kid. Just sit tight, you and your knife.”
He took the red bandanna from his hair and tied it over his face like a robber, a guerrilla, and then he ran off into the bush.
Felt like I was begging for an arrow in the eye, a bullet in the back, so I laid down to wait for Dave, curled up in the basin of 37. A face full of dirt and leaves and gritty wet. Water rocked the boat and the sound of its gush and flow made me remember how bad I had to piss. Stayed put, though. Mitts off, picked a little bit at my nails and listene
d to the water and the woods from the hollow I was in. Counted to ten. Whispered words that should be sung. Then heard the crash of bush and slap of leaves, and before I could choke back my heart and pull the knife, Dave tossed the garbage bag into the boat. He jumped in and I bolted up, and without a word we got ourselves away and flew off down that Mad Trap River.
When our mad and messy paddling calmed enough so we felt once more how tired and hungry we were, we stopped along shore for a piss and dug into the loot. Beside the cookies there were granola bars and juice boxes, a pack of Exports, and a jar of peanut butter to go with a sleeve of crackers. There was even a plastic knife for spreading.
“No whisky, though,” Dave said. “The asshole.”
Dave said he’d just run up and cut down the cache and then had run away again. Said he didn’t look left or right or any way, and then he had fucked off back into the bush and back to the boat again.
Me, I tore into the goddamn cookies first thing. Scarfing them down two at a time, I stopped because Dave wasn’t having any.
“Just don’t want that kind. They’re for you.”
“So you get the crackers then. And the granola bars except one.”
“Sure, kid,” said Dave. But he still wasn’t having anything to eat. Just an Export to smoke, eyes trained on the bush.
Me, I didn’t care where that food came from, especially those fancy goddamn cookies. Out there in nowhere and forest and shit, it was like seeing yellow for the first time, so I stared at it, hypnotized.
“You ever wonder why it’s Dad’s cookies? I mean, I never knew a dad that made or even ate cookies.”
“It’s the mom that makes them for the dad is how I thought of it,” Dave said. “Though no mom I knew ever made cookies either. Not real ones anyway.”
Had my mitts off and then Dave, he was eyeing my nails because they were all runny and smelled too, so I covered them up before he could ask why they were like that, or say about how ugly and gross they looked. So I ate with the mitts on, just my way of saying to Dave that I knew how to be just a little polite.