Dead Meat (12 page)

“Listen,” he said. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

I dragged deeply on the cigarette. It calmed me. “Of course I’m okay. But you didn’t answer my question. What in the hell are you doing here? I mean, it’s a big woods. Plenty of room for both of us.”

He snorted through his nose, a humorless laugh. “I’m looking for my brother. Decided to drive the back roads. Mr. Wheeler was kind enough to let me borrow one of his four-wheel-drive trucks. The cook mentioned this burial ground, told me how to get here, and I figured, it’s someplace, maybe appropriate that I should come here looking for Ken. The road’s only a few hundred yards that way. There’s a little path, even, that leads right in here.” He gestured back over his shoulder. “So I parked the truck and followed the path. I came to this moose. Looks like somebody’s going to come back for it. Anyway, I heard you coming. Do you know that you were talking to yourself?”

“I was probably cursing the goddamn blackflies.”

“Whatever. It sounded like there were two people coming, all the noise you were making and the conversation. So I hid in the undergrowth. I couldn’t make out who you were. Waited until your back was to me. Then figured I’d confront you. Guess you didn’t come for the moose, huh?”

“No. I just wanted to see the place, like you. Saw this shape hanging over here, decided to take a look.”

Rolando sat on the ground beside me. “So do you think this has something to do with what happened to your brother?”

He shrugged. “Supposing Ken stumbled on to something like this moose. And supposing whoever killed the moose happened upon him, the way I did with you.”

“You think some poacher is going to kill a man just because he found some illegally killed game?”

Rolando shrugged. “It’s one idea.”

“Actually it’s happened,” I said. “Wardens get killed. Up in these woods folks have a peculiar concept of justice, you know.”

“So I understand. Still…”

“Your brother wasn’t a warden, was he?”

He frowned. Perhaps he noticed that I had used the past tense. “Of course not,” he said.

“Because,” I continued, “I understand that selling poached game is a pretty big business. Matter of fact, even the federal government has gotten involved. Game killed on national park land, for example.”

“This isn’t federal land,” said Rolando.

“No, it’s not. But the other thing is, taking game across state lines to sell it puts it in federal jurisdiction.”

“We’re a long way from another state.”

“You said there’s a road near here. A truck could load up with a couple moose, drive from here to a butcher, then to New Hampshire or Massachusetts in less than a day. I don’t know what a man might get per pound of moose meat, but I’ll bet this cow would dress out at six or seven hundred pounds of the most delicious eating you can imagine. Say even a couple bucks a pound. Two moose. That’d be way over two grand. Big money in these parts.”

“Big enough to kill a man for, maybe,” Rolando mused aloud.

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe somebody thought your brother was a warden. Wrong place at the wrong time. All it’d take. It’s possible.”

Rolando was staring at the suspended moose carcass. “Big sucker, isn’t she?” he said.

I nodded. “You’d think it’d take a bazooka to bring her down.”

He nodded. “High-power rifle would do it, I guess.”

“An arrow got this one.”

“How do you know?”

I pushed myself to my feet and went over to the dead beast. “Here. Look.”

Rolando came over, and I showed him the wound on the moose’s neck. He prodded it with his finger. “Looks like an arrow wound, all right.” He moved around to the other side of the animal. “Look at this.”

I went to his side. There was another wound, virtually identical to the first. “Went clean through her,” I observed.

“It’s all muscle here. Tough gristle and hide. Takes a hell of a lot of power to send an arrow clean through. A strong man pulling a mighty bow, I’d say.”

I nodded. “Smart, too, if you’re a poacher. No gunshots to attract attention. I don’t imagine it’s that difficult to stalk a moose. They’re not easily spooked. A well-placed arrow is just as deadly as a bullet.”

“Sounds like Indians,” said Rolando.

I glanced sharply at him. “Indians aren’t the only ones who hunt with bows. Matter of fact, I bet Indians don’t hunt with bows at all anymore. They don’t hunt for sport much. You ever see one of those modern compound bows?”

He shook his head.

“They’re short—no more than four feet from tip to tip. Made out of space-age alloys. They’ve got gears and pulleys—wicked-looking contraptions, and they can really zip an arrow. Thing about them is, you can get about eighty pounds of thrust for only forty pounds of effort. And they’re accurate as hell.”

He shrugged. “An Indian could have one of those bows.”

“So could anyone else.”

We moved away from the hanging carcass and sat on the ground. I lit another cigarette. “I had quit these things,” I remarked to Rolando.

“And I went and drew a gun on you. Blame me. Things like that put a man back on the weeds, I suppose. How long did you quit for?”

“Couple hours, at least.”

“Very impressive,” he said. He gazed up at the moose. “Wonder who’s doing the poaching.”

I shrugged. “Could be anybody. With those logging roads, men could come from pretty far away. There’s a lot of marshland around this place.”

He nodded. “Well, anyway, I don’t think I want to be here when they come back. I’m going to just mind my own business about this.” He stood up and brushed off the seat of his pants. “You want a lift back?”

I shook my head. “I’ve got a canoe stashed down the hill. I’ll have to take it back. Not looking forward to another bout with the blackflies, I can tell you that.”

“See you later, then,” he said, and in a moment he had disappeared through the undergrowth.

I took one last look at the dead moose and tried to think of something appropriately reverential to do to pay proper respect to the sacred Indian place. I ended up swatting at a cloud of blackflies and plunging back into the undergrowth.

As I fought my way down the hill through the blow-downs and briers and blackflies, several questions nagged at me. Who the hell was this Rolando, and what was he really doing at this old burial ground deep in the Maine wilderness? Why did he carry a weapon—and, from the looks of it, a professional’s gun at that? And who, for that matter, was his brother? And how was his disappearance—or death—related to a dead moose?

Who had killed the moose?

And what did any of it have to do with an offer the Maine Indians had made to Vern Wheeler to buy the Raven Lake sporting camp?

They all sounded like pretty good questions. I couldn’t answer any of them.

When I nosed the canoe onto the sand beach, it was after five o’clock. Between the weariness of my muscles and the constellations of blackfly bites on several tender parts of my body, the only thing I wanted was a long cool bath.

But when I entered the lodge, happy hour was in full swing, and Tiny saw me and waved me over.

Happy hour seemed to have developed a singularly unhappy tone on this particular occasion.

Guests and guides had gathered into a tight knot by the bar. I sidled up beside Tiny, who handed me a bottle of beer and whispered, “Little argument goin’ on here.” Tiny seemed uncomfortable about it.

Woody was seated by the bar, his face granite. Rolando stood close to him, his chin outthrust and his eyes flashing. “… anything I feel like saying. About Indians or Poles or Eskimos,” Rolando was saying.

“I didn’t kill no moose,” muttered Woody.

“They’ve been goin’ at it for a while now,” Tiny whispered to me. “Mr. Rolando came in, had a couple quick pops, and started shootin’ his mouth off.”

“I didn’t say you shot that moose,” said Rolando, his voice tense. “I said that Indians don’t respect the law.”

“That’s just crap,” said Woody, lifting his eyes to stare hard at Rolando. “And anyone who says it is full of crap.”

Tiny pushed his way toward the two men. He touched Rolando on the shoulder. Rolando whirled around. “Get your goddamn hand off me.”

“Come on,” said Tiny. “Let’s change the subject.”

“It’s okay by me. I said what I wanted to say.”

“Apologize,” said Woody.

“Aw, leave it,” said Tiny.

“The white man insulted me.”

“No apology,” said Rolando. “And don’t call me white man.”

Several people who had been listening chuckled at this. Rolando glanced around. He seemed to notice for the first time that there was an audience. After a moment, he smiled. Then he looked back at Woody. “Look,” he said, “I didn’t mean anything personal, okay?”

Woody stood up. He was several inches taller than Rolando, and he stared down at the shorter man from a dignified height. “Was that an apology?” he said.

“By Jesus, it wasn’t an apology,” said Rolando. “It was an explanation. Take it or leave it.”

Woody glowered at him for a brief instant. Then he pivoted and stalked out of the room.

I
AWAKENED THE NEXT
morning, itching. I had blackfly bites between my toes, inside my ears, in my armpits. When I sat up in bed, I discovered stiff muscles where I hadn’t known muscles existed. A day of paddling and hiking had taken its toll on my middle-aged body.

I dressed as quickly as I could and shuffled downstairs. Bud was up early, and I silently thanked him for the urn of coffee on the table in the dining room. I poured myself a mug and decided to take it down to the dock. I could watch for the swirls of rising salmon on the misty surface of the lake and wait for the sun to come up.

I padded onto the porch. The predawn air lay in a wet, gray opaque blanket of shadowy fog. The pewter face of the lake glimmered dully through the trees, a misty blur that mingled with the ground and the sky like a watercolor wash. Where I stood, it was still night. Everything was shapes and shadows. Back in the woods a few birds had begun to try out their morning songs.

I picked my way carefully down the steps, groping among the eerie, distorted shapes of tree trunks toward the lake, touching them as I passed.

I went down to the end of the dock. I sat on the edge, dangling my legs. The surface of the lake looked as if it had been layered with smoke.

Suddenly, almost at my feet, a large bass broke the surface. I could see it swirl and dart back under the dock where I sat.

I moved so that I was lying prone on the dock. I eased my head and shoulders over the edge to see if I could spot the spawning bed under the dock.

Instead, I saw a man’s hand. It was attached to an arm, which was attached to a body. The body was lying facedown in the water. It appeared to be unclothed.

I extended my torso as far as I could over the edge of the dock and found I could reach the hand. I tugged at it, and it floated readily to me. I managed to maneuver it out from under the dock, and as it emerged, I saw that the body was clad in pajama bottoms. It wore no top. That enabled me to see clearly the bloodless, puckered tricornered wound on its neck. A leech had attached itself alongside the wound.

I floated the body around the side of the dock to the sand beach. Then I jumped down from the dock and tugged it up out of the water. I rolled it over.

It was Philip Rolando, recognizable even though his face had swollen and turned pasty white after his now-still heart had pumped out his lifeblood into Raven Lake.

He wore a matching three-sided wound on the other side of his neck. Through and through from the side with an arrow.

I noticed also that a strip of his hair was missing. His scalp was strangely white. It took me a moment to recognize what had happened.

He had been scalped.

I stood quickly, revulsed by the realization. I hugged myself against the shudder that shook my spine. Then I sprinted back to the lodge, went inside, and shoved open the swinging door into the kitchen. Bud and Polly and Marge were there, creating what normally would have been inspiring aromas. But this time the good smells barely registered.

Marge turned and stared at me. “Brady, what the hell…?”

“Where’s Tiny?”

“He’s upstairs getting dressed.” She frowned. “What’s the matter? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“Yeah, like that,” I muttered.

I went up the stairs and pounded on the door to Tiny’s bedroom. “Tiny, for Christ’s sake, open up.”

It took him a moment before he pulled open the door. He stood there tucking in his shirt. His hair and beard were snarled, but he was grinning. “Hey, Brady! What’s up?”

“Phil Rolando’s been killed.”

“What are you talking about?”

“He was floating under the dock. He’s been shot with an arrow, it looks like, and he’s been scalped. Get the damn sheriff here.”

“Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “You’re not joking, are you?” He shoved past me and bounded down the stairs. He was very nimble for a big sixty-five-year-old man. I hurried after him and caught up to him down on the beach next to Rolando’s body. Tiny was staring at it.

“Holy shit,” he said. “What are we going to do?”

“I already told you. Call the sheriff. Tell him someone’s been murdered and that he’ll need to bring whatever passes for a medical examiner up here. Don’t let anybody near the body. Don’t let anybody walk around out here. If I were you, I’d just tell the folks that there’s been an accident and somebody drowned. And don’t let anybody go out on the lake. I’m sure the sheriff’ll want to talk to everybody.”

The next couple hours were a blur for me. I watched the sun come up and burn the fog off the lake from a seat at a table by a window inside the lodge. I drank coffee and smoked cigarettes. All the others had gathered inside, as Tiny had quietly asked. The folks talked among themselves in low, grim voices. Marge came over once and sat down across from me. We shared one of my cigarettes. We didn’t talk. After a while she wandered away.

When the sheriff pushed open the front door to the lodge, everybody turned to look at him. He was a tall, stoop-shouldered, hollow-chested man in the gray years of middle age. Behind his round wire-rimmed glasses were small, watery eyes. He had caved-in cheeks and a wide, mournful mouth.