Nothing Ventured

by Roderick Price

  During his childhood, when he’d first seen these iridescent pools, he had dreamed of deep oil fields; of oil seeping to the top of his father’s farm down by Lacrosse, making them all very rich. But what if there was oil here? What if no one had ever looked for it, here in the woods of northern Wisconsin? As a geologist, he knew that the oily, iridescent film was from algae and decaying vegetation. Now in the silence of the snow, he smiled blankly as the flakes melted innocently in the warm spring’s shiny pools.

  After a while, he got out his big knife and went to dress out the deer. In an hour, he had neatly cleaned the innards from the huge buck and then dragged it a few hundred yards back up to the trail he had come in on that morning. There was no way for him to drag it out to the road on his own. He strung it up in a big pine tree which camouflaged it in the dense undergrowth. Only the most veteran hunter passing by would be able to spot an irregularity in the long shadows of the late, gray afternoon, and spot the deer. About an hour before dark, Martin’s brother came striding down the trail, dressed light and moving fast. Martin eased off his stand and moved briskly across the forest floor to meet him.

  “You get one?” His brother asked bluntly. “I figured when you weren’t at the car, you needed some help.”

  “Yeah,” said Martin dryly. “Had some luck today.”

  “What in the hell did you do to your hand?” Steve asked.

  Now dried and frozen, as stiff as cardboard, Martin had forgotten about the ugly, dark stains of blood on his glove from the prickly ash tear.

  “Wasn’t watching what I was doing,” answered Martin. “Ripped it on some thorns.”

  “That’s going to be a great scar there, slick. Where’s the deer?” Martin motioned silently toward the big tree where the deer was hanging. “Can you use your good hand to help me pull the deer out to the road?”

  “Yeah, I’m all right,” said Martin. “Let me show you the deer.”

  Martin led his brother back up the trail and over to the hanging deer. The sun was losing its vitality, and twilight would come in only thirty minutes on this cloudy, winter day. Martin could see his brother look admiringly at the deer.

  “You know Martin, I’ve been hunting up here every year since high school and I’ve never seen one bigger than this.”

  “Well,” said Martin, “I appreciate that. He is a beauty, isn’t he.”

  “Hey kid, good shooting! Richie’s gonna go ape shit when he sees this.”

  “Bro, thanks for inviting me up this year. I’m sorry about last night,” said Martin.

  “That’s okay. You were right, it was none of my business. Anyway, I’m glad to see you still got it in you, kid. Now let’s drag this monster back to the truck. It’s going to take us awhile.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Leaning over the marble-topped vanity, Anita put on fresh lipstick and eyeliner. In two minutes, she had her hair brushed out, and the rest of her makeup touched up. From her bag, she grabbed a pair of black heels, slipped off her flats and put on her heels. It was only by chance, but at the last minute this morning she had put on a black-knit dress and she smiled silently to herself knowing Hilton would like the look. Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was already 11:05 a.m., and Hilton was always on time. After he had left her waiting in the doorway a couple of times at lunchtime, she let him know the importance of being on time for her and he had gotten the message. She needed to be on time, too.

  Quickly she snapped her compact shut, picked up her bag and headed for the elevator. It was only two floors down, but she never walked it. Looking out over the atrium she could see Hilton’s black Mercedes waiting outside. She walked directly to the car, Hilton watching her every move. In a moment, she was settling in on the big leather seat, and letting Hilton see some good leg as she leaned back for the seat belt and shut the door.

  “Damn, you look good today,” said Hilton. “I’ve been thinking about you all morning.”

  “Oh, you have not,” said Anita. “You’ve been thinking about your oil company.” Anita knew Hilton. Often out for a drink, over the phone or even after making love, Hilton would go into a long, rambling discussion. He would talk about who was saying what and where in the world. And he’d explain why oil prices were therefore going to go up or down or stay flat the rest of the day. Hilton lacked a lot of things a woman looks for in a man, including fidelity, but he loved to trade oil. He also knew how to make money. She had dated her share of deadbeats over the years, and at this point in her life, she’d take money over a lot of things.

  Hilton swung the car out onto Ashford Lane and headed north toward I-10. Just before reaching the freeway, he turned left at Threadneedle and took the back entrance into the hotel. She went to the lounge and ordered their drinks while he made arrangements at the front desk. This was a pretty well-rehearsed routine. In five minutes, he was by her side at a corner table, running his big hands teasingly over the inside of her thighs as they talked.

  “So, are you doing all right?” Hilton asked. Nobody but Hilton ever asked her that question. And whenever he asked, he listened until he had a real answer.

  “Well, Amanda’s got a cold. I finally took her to the doctor yesterday after work because she’s just not getting over it. That cost me sixty dollars and a prescription for Amoxicillin that’ll cost me another sixty. My annual deductible’s a thousand. But, as long as they continue letting her go to school, I guess it’ll be all right.”

  “So, you’ve been working a lot, huh?” Asked Hilton.

  “Yeah, quite a bit. I haven’t been working any overtime unless Martin personally approves it, but the guys are really busy. I think they’re thinking of selling some West Texas stuff to help fund this Russian deal. Several of the guys were out in Odessa all last week again and now I’ve got slides for three “show-and-tells” and they just keep changing and changing and changing the slides.”

  “Damn you look so damn good. I want you bad, baby. Let’s head up to the room,” said Hilton.

  “Hilton, I’m not even finished with my drink.”

  “I’m just going to bring mine with us.”

  Hilton looked damned good himself today, Anita thought. Always tan and trim, it looked to her like he had lost a few pounds. He didn’t smile much, but when he did, it was that big smile, white teeth and tan, with lots of wavy black hair brushed just right over the collar. Anita squeezed his hand under the table and moved it closer to her. She could feel overwhelming heat.

  “You know Hilton, I’m really glad you called me today,” Anita said slowly.

  They picked up their half-finished drinks, eased out of the table and headed for the room.

  CHAPTER 13

  It had been a great opening day off the North Country Trail. Early in the day, his brother had laid down a really nice three-year-old forked buck, not more than two hundred feet from the Jeep. Don had gotten a six-pointer in heavy brush at dawn. They had all seen plenty of deer. Martin’s dad had seen thirteen, not a horn to be found. After forty years of deer hunting, he was not about to settle for a doe. It was legal to shoot does in this area on opening weekend. The last two winters had seen light snow and there were plenty of deer, given the mild winter. Three years ago, with a heavy snow, the deer had yarded up early and had starved by the thousands. Even though he was down in Houston, Martin remembered seeing news clips of some groups trying to feed the deer by air, dropping giant bales of hay and corn from huge, odd looking helicopters from the National Guard over in Superior. In the end, it was hopeless. There were too many deer and it was too expensive to do much about it. Winterkill, as they called it, was just one method of herd management. The gun season was another.

  Dragging the huge buck, Martin and his brother had their hands full and needed to stop and rest. It was pitch black. The woods had long ago cleared from that day’s hunt. After standing around for thirty minutes after closing time, a couple of the guys had trailed after Martin’s brother. The two of them met Martin and hi
s brother only a mile from the road, and they were exhausted from dragging the giant deer through the snow. This buck was, in fact, a big one. Martin’s dad said it was one of the biggest he had ever seen north of the Chippewa River.

  By the time this State Forest was formed back in the thirties, some of the oldest families had already lived on their homestead more than fifty years. Many of the original settlers had left almost immediately in the 1880s and 1890s when the promise of gold and silver riches in South Dakota and Colorado lured them away. Another wave left in the early 1900s when western Minnesota was taking shape. The deep rich loam of Rochester and Albert Lea, and even western Iowa was attractive to the homesteaders. That soil compared favorably with the coarse, rancid soil of northern Wisconsin that had been found when their fathers or their grandfathers had cleared this land for the original homestead. By the time that Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps laid down the markers for the state forest lines, there were only twenty-six families left living on land within the boundaries of the state forest. The government offered very nice relocation packages to each of the twenty-six families, and a few families happily accepted and moved on. Later, the government offered very attractive buyout options to the twenty or so families who still kept their struggling farms within the Forest. The state threatened to condemn their land for public use. The government even got tough and said if the families didn’t take the buyout offer, they’d be paid only a pitifully small amount for their land. Most of the families didn’t want a legal battle and they took the buyout and left their homes.

  But there were still eighteen farms left. The remaining families, either too proud or too foolish to move, vowed to fight it out. In the end, only eighteen families stayed. Together they controlled nearly four thousand acres of poor farmland and marginal forest. Still, they stood out curiously, in the middle of the huge Chequamegon State Forest, which was otherwise uninhabited. After years of idle threats and legal saber rattling, the government finally gave up. The state, terming it “socially symbiotic” for the farmers to stay, finally got the settlers to sign an agreement that they could never subdivide their land. This would keep the parcels barren and prevent the landowners from selling off their land in small pieces to other families or vacationers who might want to build a lake house or hunting cabin back off one of the secluded forest roads.

  As the Deer Gang drove back to camp in the darkness, Martin noticed the occasional, lonely, rusted mailbox along the road. Through the trees he could see the houses or outbuildings, still perfectly square from the Old-World craftsmen who had put them there. They needed paint, many were in disrepair, but most still housed family members. Most of them were barely hanging on by their teeth. The livestock were gone from the land that once used to grow hay in the government’s Soil Bank program. One of the yards had a two-year-old Oldsmobile sedan in the yard. No doubt somebody in the family, maybe an older son, had caught on with the pulp plant over in Ashland where they could make upwards of eight dollars an hour.

  At last they pulled into their cabins and strung up the deer. In no time they were all showered and hunkered down around the big plank table at the Green Top. It was the Saturday night before Thanksgiving, and time for the annual Deer Hunter’s Ball. The group recalled again their most memorable hunts, their finest moments in sports, and of course, their greatest exploits in the art of womanizing. As the evening waned, Martin sat back and watched, he listened, he laughed, and among friends he found himself more alone than he had ever been in his entire life.

  By seven Wednesday morning they had eaten breakfast, loaded up, and gotten on the road. By 8:30 a.m. they were in Hayward, home of the annual Lumberjack Championship and the Sportsman’s Bar featuring the world’s largest Muskie fish ever caught. The tone was subdued. Martin woke from his nap as they exited off Interstate 94 and came to a complete stop in Osseo. The windows were covered in salt and slush. You couldn’t begin to see out any window except the windshield. Eyes barely open, Martin heard the whir of the power window as his dad cracked open a window to see the intersection. Outside, in the grays and whites and blacks of town, Martin saw neat little houses lying peacefully in the late morning mist.

  “So, we stopping here or Whitehall?” It was Steve. Six days’ beard. Eyes bloodshot. The appetite for deer hunting satisfied for another year.

  “Let’s stop here in Osseo,” said Martin’s father. “I haven’t seen Lee for at least three years, and they get all their lefse from Whitehall anyway.”

  Martin smiled an easy smile. This was a tradition. Nobody had to remind them; no one ever said a thing. There would be a big Thanksgiving dinner; a true feast. And every year, on the way back from deer hunting, they would stop here in one of these small Scandinavian towns and buy lefse. It was a sort of tortilla-like flat bread made of potatoes and flour in round sheets and then folded into triangles and placed in packages of three. A lot of wives and mothers still made it the old-fashioned way in farmhouses up and down the hills and valleys. It was tricky to make properly, and it was expensive in the store. Lefse remained somewhat of a holiday delicacy for most.

  They pulled into the IGA and all three of them got out—jeans, wool shirts, Redwings, and Steve with his huge Buck knife still strapped in his belt. They pushed through the front door, the smells of warm produce and wooden floors enticing Martin’s memories from narrow clefts and deep caverns of years long passed.

  “There’s Lee back behind the meat counter,” said Martin’s dad. “I’m going to go back see if he recognizes me.

  “Guess I’ll join you,” said Martin’s brother, peering toward the back of the store. “Man, old Lee’s gained some weight.”

  “Always been kind of heavy,” said Martin’s dad.

  “Look, I’ll get the lefse,” offered Martin, “and meet you guys in the back.”

  They nodded and parted ways. Martin could see loaves of bread stacked neatly in the left corner of the store. The aisles narrow, the wooden floors smooth from a hundred years’ wear. Martin turned right at the bread and headed down the far aisle, looking, looking, and looking. There was a cart half full and a woman with her back to him, staring at the lefse. It used to be that lefse was lefse. These days some of the packages were wheat flour, some were multigrain. She seemed to be checking her options.

  He was waiting for a second behind her; waiting for her to make her selection. She saw they were both after lefse and took half a step to one side. Black hair, a ski vest with last year’s lift pass from Telluride dangling off the back of the vest.

  Martin looked back at the lefse. “I better take my time here; this might be the biggest decision I make all week.”

  She turned. It was Taylor. “Oh, this is too weird,” she laughed. “You really are stalking me!” She laughed again.

  Less than a foot between them,Martin said, “I really am with the guys! I’m not stalking you. My dad knows Lee, the owner of the store.”

  “Sure, sure, stick with that story.” Taylor had the most beautiful smile.

  She stood for just a moment, keys dangling from her left hand, then stepped into him with both hands around his waist and said, “God I’ve missed you, too.”

  They kissed again. Together, back in college at Madison, he had entered Wisconsin’s geology program and she was a history major, hellbent on going on to law school. In August of his senior year, he had been sitting out on the patio at Memorial Union. Camden, Steve, Doc, Paula, and Stark had all been with him. It was Friday afternoon—happy hour; dollar pitchers; sitting out overlooking Lake Mendota. It was still hot and humid, but in the shade of late afternoon, ending the first week of classes; they were in fine form. Martin had watched her out on the patio for a while. First, she had been alone, reading the Capitol Times, drinking a Shiner, and carrying the biggest backpack he had ever seen. After about twenty minutes, a couple joined her, and they engaged in deep conversation. She was tan from the summer. There was just something about her. He could see she had a big smile an
d yet an uncommon intensity. It would be weeks later in the library before he could get up the nerve to talk to her.

  Now, here in the store in Osseo, they talked. She was now actually Head of the Department of Natural Resources in Madison. She had finally gotten what she wanted. He was with Basin Oil, of course, as a geologist. She had heard of Basin but didn’t know much about them. She had gotten to know many of the oil companies over the last few years; it hadn’t all been pleasant. They exchanged business cards, laughing at the titles on each other’s cards. After her divorce, she just hadn’t gotten around to getting remarried. “Too busy,” she said. He lived in Houston, of course. Texas was a lot different—and a lot warmer—than Madison had ever been. She was driving back to Madison, had stopped here to buy some snacks for the rest of the drive, and ended up grabbing some lefse.

  “So, are we buying lefse or are we getting the Osseo weather forecast, or what?” It was his brother, with his dad, of course, in tow.

  “What the Hell,” said his brother, “how did you arrange this, Martin?” His brother and his dad laughed. Everyone stood around nervously stomping their feet for a few minutes trying to make normal conversation.