The Bully of Order (25 page)

His head caved and went onto my boots and up my legs. Same house as where he'd hit my mother, not six feet from where she fell. So much blood it could've come from a hose. Reckless hardly captured what I'd done. I hadn't made a decision to do this. I'd done it, and it was irrevocable.

After standing there terrified and watching the red blood blacken for I don't know how long, an hour, two minutes, I wrapped his body in the blankets from the floor and dragged it outside to where he'd been cutting posts. There was no hiding what I was doing. At first I didn't feel like I had the strength to bury him, but once I started digging, I wasn't so tired anymore. I hit water a few feet down and rolled him in and covered him up. I stacked his fence posts on top of him and went inside the house and cleaned, sopped up the mess with some rags and then burned them. I wasn't trying to get away with it, I told myself, straightening up is all. Getting rid of his stench, making him disappear.

I made myself a cup of tea and drank it at the table. To my surprise, with Matius gone, the house seemed sorely inviting. A place to live. I'd nearly forgot. My mother. I sat there and watched the fire die and cried until I couldn't stand the weakness of it any longer. I picked up the shotgun and the shells and I left.

At the edge of our lot the limbless trunks stood damaged where the fell trees had scraped them clean, white as baby's teeth. Beyond, the forest was unscarred; true, huge darkness. I turned and looked back at the small house and barn, like toys tumbled onto the rough ground.

I knew it was awful, what I'd done, the worst thing ever. But I could live with it for now, and it would get easier. Sometimes the things I thought to be right ended up being the most wrong, and this, and what I'd done to Teresa, felt terribly wrong, so maybe when it settled it'd end up being right.

To keep it dry I slipped the shotgun under my coat and watched as the rain returned as a mist and almost disappeared and then turned to sleet. Soon the wind picked up and large flakes of snow tumbled toward me. The edges of the seasons were being torn apart, unraveling, and with the snow a deep quiet befell the forest.

I'd follow the river into town; it was quicker than the road, and I wouldn't have to bother sneaking by the Parkers. Last thing I needed was to run into Zeb, but I'd like to talk to him. I had the urge to confess. To apologize. Not so long ago he'd been a good friend. I didn't have many of those left.

The forest dressed in white, wedded to the faller and the mill. They're coming for you, sweetheart. Flakes fell filtering through the reaching limbs of the giant Doug firs and blanketed the ground. I was in Boyerton's lease now, trespassing actually. Add it to the list. His rights bordered mine like my interests bordered his.

The water in the river had swelled with the rain. Ice was beginning to dully glob on everything where the snow couldn't stick. Downstream, the river strained through a logjam and the current made the tree limbs dance. Someone, a logger named Wilkinson, had drowned in the jam a few months before. He'd been trying to attach a cable to it to break it apart when he fell in. At the graveyard I had straightened the man's windblown grave marker. You treat the dead well because they're still here. Mother taught me that. Even when you can't see the moon, the moon is there.

Watching the swirling water, I had an echo in my head as if it were full of tiny metal springs. I was standing just outside the noisy room of all the bad I had done.

Then I saw someone at the water's edge and crept downstream until I could see the leather patchwork coat and red wool hat. I recognized the coat. The hat looked new.

“Kozmin the Cossack,” I said, but the old man went about his business unaware. I shouted again, and the iron man Kozmin turned stiffly and held out his bloody hands and in the right was a knife. He swayed drunkenly. Behind him there was something dead and meaty on the rocks, halfway in the river, naked. A dirty drag mark led up the bank. The old hermit looked like he'd done something awful. I went forward and then stopped and hung on to a sapling so I wouldn't slip down the crumbling bank. But it wasn't a man; it was far too large. No, it wasn't human at all, or it was; it didn't have a head. Kozmin had carved it off. He was speaking now, but I couldn't hear him over the water so I held up my hand and made the jawing motion like a duck quacking and Kozmin squinted back at me.

I made my way down the riverbank. The water churned its muddy soup and was so active and boiling it hardly looked cold. As I crossed the snow-cleansed mudflat a somber feeling passed over me. I thought of Matius, felt the shotgun buck in my hands. I still had blood on my boots, trapped against the eyelets. I took off my hat, and the wind blowing off the river turned my part the wrong way.

Kozmin hopped gingerly from foot to foot. His pants were wet to the knee. “You can help me with this, can't you?”

“What'd you do?”

“Near finished.” He pointed the knife at the mess. “But if you help me, I'll split it with you. I get the hide. You won't talk me out of it.” The old man smiled. “The meat is what I'm offerin, and you look hungry as ever. This'd feed you for a month at least.”

The old hermit had truly winked out. He was talking about a dead man and sharing the meat. The hide?

“What'd you do, Kozmin?”

“How'd you mean?”

“What'd you do it for?”

The old man looked at his knife because I was looking at it. “For the hide, like I said.”

We were both murderers, by rights horrible men. I went closer and soon realized that the body on the rocks wasn't a man at all but a bear.

“I thought you'd killed somebody.”

“Eh?”

“I thought it was a man, and you'd killed him.”

A glimmer of recognition passed over Kozmin's face. He shook his head no.

“It looks like a man,” I said.

“Cold weather does that, makes everybody seem purely evil or purely good. Look at that forest.” Kozmin tipped his blade to the trees.

I looked at the drifting pale.

“Winter makes a person pick sides.”

The bear seemed so nearly human, only one incomplete rotation away from my uncle, from my father, from me. I woke under the trees like a bear in the spring, but it's winter now. Why was the bear awake? Why had it found Kozmin? Was it on the same map that led me to the frozen steelhead?

Like he'd heard my thoughts: “I found it here drowned.”

“I'm not eatin it or havin any part.”

Kozmin's eyes narrowed, and the wrinkles at the edges were deep enough to hide coins on edge. His features softened as he considered this, considered his outstretched arms. His arthritic fingers couldn't be straightened with a vise. “I wanted the hide mostly. I did, and I got that done.” He gave me a once-over. “How's your uncle faring?”

“You heard?”

“Course I heard.”

“Heard what?”

“Cut his foot in half. What else?”

“He's dead.”

“When?”

“This morning.”

“Jonas know?”

“You're the first I told.”

“From the foot? The cut killed him?”

“I killed him.”

Kozmin pursed his old cracked lips. “I never liked the man.”

“Me neither.”

Kozmin smiled, and a sneaky look settled onto his face. “Hey, why do old loggers hate oatmeal?” He thought I was joking about killing Matius, that I was joking about him being dead at all, so I let him.

“I don't know, why?”

“Heartbreak.”

“That makes no sense.”

“To you, a fool that wanders around getting swell ideas like twisting Teresa Boyerton's arm.”

“Who told you that?”

“Don't matter.” The old man showed me his gums, what was left of his teeth. “Boyerton is gonna whoop yer ass.”

“Good luck findin me.”

“You hurt his girl. He'll find you.”

“It was an accident.”

“Don't matter.” Kozmin lifted his arm and wiped his nose high on his sleeve. “You can stew bear meat, and it ain't bad.”

“It's turned. See the black.”

“That's just the fat. Meat's fine. Freezin out here, if you hadn't noticed. It'd keep till spring if nothing fed on it.” The old man leaned over and stuck his knife into the dead bear's hip and set to cleaning the blood from his hands and arms.

I watched him and tried to settle the fear from my blood, Boyerton coming for me, Matius dead. Winter wasn't the only thing that made you pick sides. Up the bank a ways, stretched over a boulder, was the bear hide with the head still attached. The land was filled with snow and the ground seemed to be flying upward toward the sky, against the storm, and upward still against the current of the river: all was moving then, and the water stood still. My feet were not touching the ground.

Teresa has gray eyes that almost seemed green, but they weren't. She won't come back to me, not after what I did. Over my shoulder I could see a five-fingered paw, like a hand with the claws added later, hanging in the water, fanning current. And even from thirty yards away the bear's eyes were dead blue and locked on to mine. Strangely, I felt more pity for the dead bear than I did for my uncle. It seemed to want to move on, that's what its eyes were saying, the head with a cape of fur. Get my body gone. I've seen enough.

“The meat's bad,” I said. “You can't eat it.”

“So you said, and apparently you believe that yer opinions carry large quantities of water, but I'd argue they might be shit and worthless besides.” He smiled and patted his pockets until he found his flask. Unscrewed, drank, screwed, didn't offer, repocketed.

“It'd poison you,” I said of the meat.

“I've eaten maggoty meat a hundred times, and I'm still here.”

“Are you starvin?”

“I'm always starvin.”

“Wastin away.”

“Right.”

“You got the hide.”

“We established that already.”

Kozmin easily pulled his knife free and tried to wipe it off on his sleeve, but his coat was so greasy that it just smeared it around. He knelt at the river's edge and rinsed it, looked up, spoke: “Yer father's back.”

“You've seen him?”

“How else would I know he's back?”

“Where is he?” I didn't want to look over my shoulder for fear he might be there watching me.

“He's got a place cross harbor, not far from the Soke. Know where that is?”

“Not even a real place. Made up fuckin mythical logger nonsense, just like yer oatmeal and yer heartbreak.”

The old man blinked hugely and then grinned. “I guess you chose yer side then.”

I could strangle him.

“Hate to see that much meat go wasted,” he said under his breath.

“I don't want to look at it anymore. I swear it's starting to stink. I don't care if it's frozen or not. Goddamn stinky dead piece a shit.” I sat back on my hands, but I only had the use of one because I was cradling the shotgun and used my legs to shove the corpse off the rocks. The bear rolled in the current and raised an arm or leg, all legs—bears have no arms—and was gone in a boil. I saw it downriver, neck full of bone, headed headlessly toward the logjam.

I stood, and the water lapped over my boots and pooled with the blood. I closed my eyes and had a waking dream that instead of standing like I was, I'd fallen in the river. It seemed very real, and I could feel the bear pulling me toward it like I was a tree that'd been cut through but had yet to fall. At first I was in the shallows and wet, but nothing to worry over. I tried to hold the shotgun up, but it got caught in my coat and then I dropped it and fell on top of it. My face went under. When I went to stand, I slipped again and the current had me. Kozmin was in the water, going for me. I swam for him but made no gain. The old kook staggered to a stop and stood alone, rooted to the snow and churned mud like a scrub pine, all dirty cubes of leather with his pink hands. His bear hide on the bank behind him, hollow as the mouth of a cave. He was calling to me but I couldn't hear him. The cold water plugged my nose and I was coughing and wheezing and when I bumped against the logjam I went under. I felt the current drive me down. The water was like smoke, and I was carried by it like an ember on the wind.

“Hey, Duncan, the hell you doin? You all right?”

“Havin a dream.”

“They sallow in the daytime.”

“Good-bye, Kozmin. I'm off to the wars. See you when I see you.”

“You be careful, Duncan. Maybe hoof it outta here for a while. Go see yer father, go south.”

“Like a bird.”

“Self-preservation isn't nearly so repugnant as yer ongoing stupidity.”

“Strikes me as bein a bit vain. Let come what comes.”

I left Kozmin as I'd seen him in my dream, a rooted man. I followed the river until I made the bridge. The mist coming off the water froze into crystals and dusted the settling night. The crossmembers were icy and too slick to climb. I had to crawl up the snowy bank on all fours, flopped onto the roadbed like a birthed troll. The noise and lights of town were still too far off, but I could smell the salt of the sea. If I turned my back on it and went inland I'd pass through the log camps and into the mountains. Indian trails awaited, snowdrifts and caverns crawling with bears and cougar. I imagined a future as a lonesome trapper or a solitary gold miner. I saw myself in a wild and unexplored land, noble fool. Maybe Teresa would come to find me. We'd embrace beneath mountains whose peaks were lost in the clouds, beside rivers that had never been forded. We'd raise a family in a cabin I'd built using Matius's bloody ax. His ghost would follow us. My father too. I'd be with the ghosts, forever. I milled around the bridge, kicking the rails and let the flying water do the talking. I had the shotgun, and seven more shells than I needed to do what I was thinking about doing.