(1995) The Oath (7 page)

Oh, shoot, Levi thought. Charlie was crossing the street toward the garage. Levi turned to go inside, hoping Charlie was just crossing the street, that’s all, and wasn’t coming to see him. Even though Levi often ate lunch at Charlie’s Tavern, Charlie never bought gas from Levi or brought his car over to be looked at or gave Levi any business at all that Levi could remember. So why this visit now, and right when Levi was saying good-bye to one of the few friends he had?

Levi made it to his little corner office and sat down behind his desk among the stacks of old tires, crates of motor oil, tools, and shop cloths. He picked up a pencil and a work order from the county, trying to look busy. He hoped Charlie would pass by.

No such luck. Through the grimy window he could see Charlie hurrying right between the gas pumps and toward the door.

The door was open, but Charlie stopped short of coming in and knocked on the doorpost.

Levi worked up some pleasantness before saying, “Yeah?”

Charlie poked his balding head in. He wasn’t all that ugly, Levi observed, but he wasn’t a pleasure to look at either. Either his thick glasses were crooked or his face was, but the two never lined up.

“Hi, Levi.” His smile was a bit crooked too. “Busy?”

No, just trying to look like it, he thought. “What’s on your mind, Charlie?”

Charlie stepped inside and approached Levi’s desk, his hands in his pockets. For a long time he just stood there, and it was easy to see he was having a hard time getting out what he wanted to say. Levi, not feeling too gracious, didn’t help him but just stared at him, waiting. You came to me, pal. The floor is yours.

“So,” Charlie finally said, “how’s it going?”

Levi was enjoying watching Charlie squirm, so much so that he felt a little guilty about it. In answer to Charlie’s question, he just nodded his head as if to say okay. “And how’s the new mercantile shaping up?”

Charlie must have sensed it wasn’t a friendly question. He seemed to be having trouble answering it. “We’re, uh, we’re working on it.”

“Got a grand opening coming up, I see.”

“Yeah. Next week, hopefully.”

“Guess you’ll have to paint a new name on the front.”

Now Charlie looked away. “Well . . . maybe. Not sure.”

“Have a seat. You’re making me nervous.”

Charlie looked around for a chair and finally found an old metal folding chair with Cobb’s Garage stenciled on the back. He pulled it up to the desk and sat on it.

“Levi . . .”

Maybe now we’ll finally get down to business. “Yes, Charlie?”

“Listen, I’m not snooping or anything, you understand—”

“Mmm.”

“But I hear you’ve been sleeping in your camper out behind your house.”

Levi looked over the top of his glasses. He couldn’t see very well doing that, but he felt it gave his response a nice emphasis. “If you’re not snooping, somebody is.”

“Hey, it’s nothing like that.”

“Then what’s it like?”

“Well, everybody knows that once in a while, you—uh—you help people; you take them in, you know?”

Levi set down the paperwork he wasn’t really working on and leaned back resolutely. “Charlie, I’ve already been asked about Maggie, and I haven’t had a whole lot to say to anybody.”

“But I’m not snooping, Levi, I just—”

“I’ve got nothing to say one way or the other, but I’ll tell you this: If Maggie Bly ever came to me because she had nowhere else to go, sure, I’d help her out, which is more than any of you did the other night.”

That stopped Charlie cold. It took him a moment to pick himself up mentally. And boy, was he nervous! Levi thought. “Listen, Levi, I’m not really prying into Maggie’s business. I’m not. But would you have any idea, I mean, just for the sake of information, would you happen to know—”

“What, Charlie, what?”

“Well, this mauling, this guy that got killed up on Wells Peak—”

Levi just stared at him.

“Was he, you know, were he and Maggie . . .”

“Now what kind of a question is that?”

“Well, she’s Harold’s wife.”

With that, Levi almost laughed. “Charlie, are you scared of something?” Charlie said nothing, but Levi didn’t think Charlie could deny it, seeing as he was hiding it so poorly. “I’m impressed that suddenly another person’s problems matter to you.”

Charlie was really getting flustered. “Well, I was just kind of wondering.”

Levi wanted the last word at least. “Charlie, you know my message is always the same.” He closed one eye and sighted down his pointed finger at Charlie’s heart. “Before you start worrying about some critter in those mountains, you’d better worry about the critter you’ve got right in there. That’s the one that’s gonna kill you.”

Charlie looked out the window and fidgeted in the chair. Then he muttered, “This sort of thing just hasn’t happened in a long time.”

Levi looked at his paperwork and said offhandedly, “Oh-h-h, it hasn’t been that long, has it?”

Charlie turned from the window toward Levi. “Don’t talk about it!”

Levi locked eyes with him. “No, not that long. And I guess you’re afraid it might happen again. Is that it?”

“All right, fine; just forget it!” Charlie retorted. He jumped up so fast he knocked the chair over.

“Well, it might,” Levi said casually, looking down at his paperwork again.

“Forget it!”

And with that, Charlie was out the door, past the gas pumps, and across the street.

Now Levi sat there alone with only the tools to talk to. “What’d I say?”

IT WAS DUSK
. The mosquitoes were coming out and inquiring at every square inch of Steve’s body, trying unsuccessfully to find some avenue through all that camouflage gear and insect repellent. One was buzzing right near his ear, another near his brow. But Steve did not respond. He did not stir; his powerful muscles were stone steady. The thicket of serviceberries and willow that surrounded and concealed him remained undisturbed.

He was sighting through his rifle scope, his finger tightly around the trigger. About thirty yards below him, on the game trail, a grizzly, its body thick and ponderous, its shoulder hump pronounced, had found the bait and was now pawing and clawing through the doughnuts with its long, white claws, virtually inhaling them, lapping at the grease, snorting, licking, chomping. He wasn’t the biggest bear Steve had ever seen, but, at seven hundred pounds, he was impressive nonetheless. Steve was waiting for
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to turn sideways just a little more. He was going for a shot through the chest just behind the foreleg, just below the midline, a shot through the lungs and heart that would kill the bear immediately.

The bear moved forward a foot or so, and Steve followed him through the scope. Cliff would have envied this shot, this trophy. Had this been one of their many hunting trips together, Steve could have bragged about it just to give Cliff the old needle. It was so strange now to think that this bear had eaten—

Steve banished all thoughts except for the bear in his sights. Herman, you’re going down.

The bear moved forward, pawing through the doughnuts. The chest was exposed.

Steve fired, the rifle kicking back against his shoulder. He chambered another round and had
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in his scope again just as the bear toppled to the ground. Another round finished the kill in a matter of seconds. Somewhere in the gathering darkness he could hear Marcus hollering. The shots had been clean and true.

Steve moved for the first time, rising from the blind, his body aching and trembling. On any other hunting trip, this would have been a supreme moment. Today he felt no joy at all.

Marcus worked his way down from his hiding place, rifle ready, and approached the fallen beast. He nudged it with his rifle barrel, then stooped to read the small ear tag.

“Three-eighteen,” he reported. “It’s Herman.”

Although Hyde Valley is best known for its gold and silver mining, the rugged trails and forestlands of Wells Peak and Saddlehorse Mountain provide a unique outdoor experience for hikers, campers, anglers, and hunters.

While Hyde Valley is rumored to have had more bear attacks per capita than anywhere else in the contiguous United States, such rumors derive more from tradition than fact and should not be taken seriously. Nevertheless, care and caution should always be exercised in the wild to prevent accidental encounters with bears. Always stay on the trails and take precautions with food.

From a local travel brochure, circa 1970

There was one griz we called Old Scar, lived up above the Tyler Gorge. He ate Jack Friday, I know. Jack went up there fishin’ and never came back, and all we ever found was his pole and one of his boots. Coulda been Old Scar ate Jules Howard, and maybe he ate that lady cook we had—what was her name? Nancy, I think. Somebody found her apron and part of her foot out in the woods, but nothin’ else. Yeah, it’s always been that way . . .

Retired miner Homer Bentlow in recorded interview,transcribed in Hyde River Memories by Jill Staten, copyright 1965

THREE

THE VICTIM

H
ERMAN
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, thanks to a team of hefty volunteers and a pickup truck, was now laid out on two sheets of one-inch plywood and several sawhorses in Marcus DuFresne’s garage near West Fork. Some of the volunteers wanted to hang around and see the verdict, but Marcus, being sensitive to Steve’s situation, thanked them and sent them away.

The two men went about the autopsy slowly, working under the ceiling lights and also employing a mechanic’s worklight at times. Just as Marcus let Steve have the first shot, he now let Steve handle the knife.

Marcus had already estimated the bear’s age to be between ten and twelve years. Herman was a healthy bear with a good supply of fat under his hide, so hunger wasn’t an obvious motivator for aggression. They found no significant wounds or injuries, only the bullet wounds Steve had inflicted.

As for the contents of the stomach and intestines . . .

“Well,” Steve said, wiping his hands on a towel, “we weren’t expecting much anyway, were we?”

Marcus shook his head. “I don’t know what to say.”

They found doughnuts and bacon grease, of course, but
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had also been feeding quite well on berries, roots, and herbage. There were a few shreds of food wrappings from someone’s garbage. As for flesh of any kind, there was no sign of it. Steve felt disappointed and relieved at the same time.

“He hasn’t been feeding exclusively on human waste,” Steve observed, “but I would say his diet suggests habituation.”

“Although that’s all it suggests,” Marcus countered.

“I agree. We can extrapolate and infer aggression, but there’s no objective evidence.”

They both looked forlornly at the old dead bear, its belly opened like a broken suitcase, its innards spread out over the makeshift table.

“And you’re sure you don’t have some other candidates out there?” Steve asked.

Marcus gave a slight chuckle. “Well, all I can say is that Herman was the best, most likely candidate; he was the most logical candidate, and given what we know . . . I guess we got the culprit.”

Steve was unsatisfied and didn’t hide it. “We’ll see what Evie has to say.”

“How’s she doing?”

“She was in bad shape yesterday, but I’m sure she’ll be okay, given time. I hope she can tell us what happened.”

“That would clear things up, for sure.”

Then came a silence. Both men were thinking the same thing, but Marcus was afraid to mention it and Steve didn’t want to talk about it.

Marcus finally gave it a try. “So when’s that autopsy?”

“It was supposed to be today.”

“I could give the coroner a call.”

Steve checked his watch. “Kinda late.”

“I can rouse him, I think.” Marcus approached his next question carefully. “What—how much do you want to know?”

Steve looked down at
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, regarding the rows of teeth and the long, white claws. “Just enough, Marcus. Just enough to know for sure.”

MIDWAY BETWEEN
dusk and dawn, amid the silhouettes of old ruins etched in charcoal against the velvet sky, a lone figure stole silently past the old, teetering walls and crumbling foundations, his black clothing blending with the deep, angular shadows so as to make him invisible. No one would know his business; everyone else was afraid to go near this place.

With silent, feather-light steps, he entered a large ruin, letting its three remaining walls shroud him in their shadows. In the center of the collapsed and rotting structure, he knelt before a large, flat stone and placed his hands on its corners, his gaze fixed upon the stone’s dim, gray image. Then he prayed, muttering his requests in a quiet monotone.

When he had finished, he drew a slip of paper from under his coat, placed it on the rock, and with a large, black pencil scribbled a name, which he repeated over and over, “Margaret Elizabeth . . . Margaret Elizabeth . . . Margaret Elizabeth . . . ”

With the strike of a match, he set the paper on fire. “Time for you to die, Maggie!”

THE THIRD
morning after the attack, Steve met Tracy Ellis at the Clark County Medical Center. Evelyn was coherent and recovering. It was time to talk to her about what had happened on Wells Peak.

They paused near the nurses’ station to compare findings. Steve was dressed in casual slacks and shirt. He no longer looked like a grizzled, half-crazed outdoorsman. Tracy was back in her uniform, armed with a notebook and the case folder for the upcoming interview.

Tracy looked troubled. “The team finished combing the area all around the campsite, and the dogs have searched the wider area around Wells Peak.” She shrugged. “They didn’t find anything.”

Steve only sighed. “The autopsy on
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showed a diet consistent with habituation, but beyond that, there was nothing conclusive.” He handed her a photocopy of his written report, which consisted of just a few paragraphs. “He liked berries, roots, grass, some human garbage, and the doughnuts we put out for him. But that’s all we could find. My report will take about thirty seconds to read.”