Only the Dead (5 page)

Had he gone too far from the river? Lance stopped to listen. The roar of the water was fainter. But that could also be the fault of some big evergreens, or a small rise in the terrain might be blocking the sound. He veered to the right, heading for the river. Soon he could see it. And at that spot the river curved.

A bald eagle was perched in a fir tree on the other side. Lance raised his rifle to look at it through the scope. There was always something solemn about eagles, he thought, no matter how often he saw them. Only in the very depths of winter, from Christmastime until mid-February, was the North Shore more or less bereft of eagles. But it hadn’t always been like that.

Lance had a vivid memory of the first time he ever saw a bald eagle. He was with his family on a driving vacation in Manitoba, Canada. When they parked at a rest area near a big river, they’d caught sight of an eagle sitting on a rock in the water. What a commotion that caused! He and Andy had almost come to blows, competing for their dad’s binoculars. And when the bird finally took off, flying low over the river with almost unreal flaps of his big, heavy wings, all four of them had cheered and clapped. That was how rare the sight of a bald eagle had been in the early 1970s.

Lance lowered his rifle. With the naked eye he could still see the bird clearly. Its neck and head gleamed snow white in the gray November light. He hadn’t been too far from the river after all. It was this curve in the riverbed that had altered the sound of the current slightly. Now he moved off to the west at a diagonal, away from Cross River again.

Seeing the eagle in his rifle scope made him think of other driving vacations. The family’s old Dodge Dart, which was always filled with smoke from his father’s cigarettes. His mother desperately trying to smooth out the map, and his father shoving it aside with annoyance as he tried to see where he was driving. The two brothers in the backseat passed the time reading comic books and thinking up competitive games. For example, who could come up with the most baseball players whose names started with the letter
A.
Then
B.
Then
C.
And on through the whole damn alphabet. Or who could count the most cows on “his” side of the road all the way through Wisconsin. Or how long would it take before Dad lit up another cigarette? Things like that. Once in a while they’d start hitting each other until their father told them to shut up and sit still.

What was it about Andy when he was a kid? Because there had definitely been something going on, but they never asked him. Not even why he’d beat up Clayton Miller, the boy everyone said was gay. Peaceful, shy Andy. Their parents must have been just as shocked as Lance was, yet they’d never talked about it. The incident had come right out of the blue, and no doubt it was best if it disappeared the same way. That was what all of them had thought. What they feared more than anything else was the
unpleasantness.
To avoid that, they preferred to let Andy keep his reasons to himself. What he’d done was bad enough. Talking about
why
he did it would have been unbearable. But what if it had been a different kid instead of Clayton? Would the episode have been equally unpleasant? It wasn’t unusual for high school boys to fight, was it? No, but in this case it was Clayton Miller, the kid who reportedly knitted his own scarves. Who the hell knits his own scarves? thought Lance, annoyed. But there was something about Andy that was also to blame. Something they’d never talked about. Of course they wouldn’t talk about it! Good Lord, they didn’t even
think
about such things back then. At least Lance couldn’t recall ever thinking about it before.

But now, now that it was way too late, he saw what it was: there had always been a certain
ambiguity
about his brother. As if the substance he was made of had never hardened in the mold but had remained in a liquid state. He was not like his peers. It was impossible to know what Andy liked, what he wished for, where he was headed. By now he was completely changed, but Lance had never noticed this transformation taking place. For the most part they had lost contact with each other years ago, and the deer hunting was the one thing that remained. Somewhere along the way the ambiguous and slightly odd Andy from their youth had become the man who was now on post up near the big bend in the river. Tammy’s grouchy husband, and seventeen-year-old Chrissy’s father.

It had started raining again. Lance pulled up the hood of his Gore-Tex jacket. The sound of the raindrops on the synthetic fabric reminded him of the nights they’d slept in a tent as kids. He and Andy would lie awake all night out in the backyard of their house in Duluth, listening to the sounds. The rain on the tent canvas. The passing cars. Voices in the dark. No, he didn’t want to think about that. As soon as this hunt was over, he would never again go out in the woods with his brother. He didn’t care what the rest of the family thought. After today, it was over. The last thing that had connected them was about to become history.

But there was something else that now bound them together. A bond that could never be broken. The knowledge of a murder. And the guilt. They were both guilty of robbing Lenny Diver of his life every single day. Regardless of whether Lance ever went hunting with Andy again, he and his brother were bound to each other by an unbreakable bond. And they were the only two who knew it.

Up ahead a flash of white appeared through the rain. It took only seconds before hail came pounding down, and Lance’s field of vision shrank to twenty or thirty yards. Then it was like someone had turned on the faucet full blast. He could no longer see even an arm’s length in front of him. He stopped, bent his head forward, and hunched his shoulders. It sounded like a landslide of gravel. The ground underfoot remained dark. The hail disappeared in the grass and heath. After a couple of minutes it once again turned to rain.

Lance continued walking. When he got to the top of a small hill, he paused to look around. He had a feeling something was going to happen very soon. With an experienced eye he surveyed the terrain. He needed to take one small area at a time—that was the secret. Not let his eyes jump around at random, because then he was certain to miss something. It was a matter of examining the landscape piece by piece, just as he was doing now.

As he shifted his gaze toward a clearing in the woods, about a hundred yards away, he saw the back and shoulders of a man disappearing between several tall spruce trees. The figure was visible for only a fraction of a second, and yet Lance had no doubt what he’d just seen. There weren’t supposed to be any other hunters around here. Not this weekend. The stretch of land along the lower section of Cross River was part of the area covered by the Hansen brothers’ hunting licenses. But this was a potentially dangerous situation, and he’d have to call Andy to tell him. They were going to have to stop the drive. He got out his phone and was about to tap in the number, but then he hesitated. It was still a good distance up to where Andy was waiting on post. What if he followed this man to see which direction he was headed? Andy had already fired at a buck without hitting it. There were obviously deer in the area, and Lance wanted to get this hunting expedition over with as quickly as possible. If they stopped now, he couldn’t say how things would go.

He walked quickly toward the clearing where he’d seen the man, but he was as intent as always about proceeding cautiously. Still holding his rifle in his hands, ready to shoot, he walked between the conifers. The man had gone toward the river. Why was he so sure that it was a man? It had happened so fast. But what would a woman be doing out here?

Lance had also caught a glimpse of a man yesterday. Or had he? He wasn’t sure what he’d actually seen near the creek coming from Copper Pond. A person who had swiftly retreated. That had been his first impression. But now? No, he was no longer sure.

The light was dim here among the huge spruce trees, as if dusk were already approaching. He stopped to listen but heard only the muted roar of the river. Thick tree trunks surrounded him on all sides. This was one of the sections of old-growth forest in this part of the Superior National Forest. To find trees of this size anywhere else, you’d have to go all the way up to the totally protected wilderness, up near the Canadian border. Lance didn’t know why this pocket of timber was still here. Some of the trees had to be well over a hundred years old.

He continued on toward the river. Maybe he’d be able to catch sight of the man there. If not, he’d have to make a decision. The sound of the water increased dramatically, and soon he was standing on the edge of a deep river gully. There couldn’t be more than a couple of yards between the cliff walls, and water was thundering violently through the narrow gap. His face got wet from the spray shooting up from the depths below. A little farther up he could see big rocks sticking out of the water, and it looked like it might be possible to cross the river at that point. When he went over there to get a closer look, he saw at once that it couldn’t be done. So the man must still be on this side of the river. The same side where Lance and Andy were hunting.

What should he do? They had never before failed to shoot the one deer they were allowed on the second weekend in November. If that happened now, Lance wouldn’t be able to refuse to go hunting the following weekend. If he did, that would make Andy even more suspicious than he already was. He clearly suspected that Lance was behind the break-in at his cabin this past summer. If Lance now refused to finish the hunt, Andy would take it as a final confirmation that his brother was keeping something from him. But did he know
what
Lance was hiding?

Does he know that I know? he thought.

The man had most likely followed the river down the slope and was now on his way toward Highway 61. It seemed highly unlikely that he would end up anywhere near where Andy was posted. Lance decided to continue on as if nothing had happened, and yet he felt slightly uneasy as he went back into the old-growth forest. Now a third person had entered the picture. A stranger. And he had no idea where the man was at this moment. If anything happened, Lance would bear the brunt of responsibility. Yet he still didn’t phone Andy to tell him what he’d seen. He just wanted to get this hunt over with. Then he’d have a whole year to think up an acceptable excuse for why he didn’t want to go hunting anymore. This was the last time. He didn’t care what the rest of the family thought. He was going to turn his back on his brother for good. Never look at his face again.

It was as if the huge spruces belonged to another era, and in some sense they did. They had probably taken root toward the end of the nineteenth century. Slender saplings in a forest that had never been logged. And here they still stood, those same trees, only many times bigger, a measure of the years that had since passed. The fact that it was so much darker in here only reinforced the feeling of isolation.

Lance placed his hand on one of the thick, gray tree trunks. How strange that it was a living being. He never used to think like that. He was a forest cop. And yet, inside this hard, rough bark he was leaning against there was a life that had already existed for more than a hundred years. Because it is a life, he thought. Maybe not conscious, but still a life. And the same was true of all the other trees surrounding him. It was perfectly obvious and yet overwhelming. More than a hundred Minnesota winters. All that snow. The blizzards. The cold that made the wood split with a sharp crack, like the sound of a gunshot through the woods. Yet they were still standing here, and as long as no one cut them down, they would most likely continue to stand here for years to come. The trees belonged as much in this moment as they did in a winter night a hundred years ago. As if he were standing in the midst of an expansive
now
that included much more than this one gray November day.

He emerged from the old-growth forest. All around him were mostly birches and shorter spruce trees. He didn’t have far to go to reach Andy. He’d find a spot with a view and try to catch sight of the man he’d just glimpsed in the woods.

A little farther along, Lance saw a big boulder that looked like it would provide a good view. He hurried up the slope. When he reached the top, he realized he would have to put down his rifle in order to climb up onto the boulder. He wasn’t happy about that. To be out on a hunt without ready access to his gun was not a situation any hunter relished, but if Lance wanted to go up there, he had to leave his rifle behind. He set it down at the base of the boulder and then clambered up.

The view was even better than he’d expected. Of course a lot of the terrain was covered with stunted birch woods, but the trees had all lost their leaves, so he had a bare forest ahead of him. It should be possible to spot a person among those trees. He straightened his back and began surveying the terrain. He took his time, but he didn’t see anyone. Nor did he see any deer, fortunately. It would have been annoying to have a chance to put an end to the hunt while his rifle was beyond his reach.

He was just about to climb down when he suddenly had a feeling someone was watching him. A metallic taste rose up into his mouth. Without even thinking, he jumped down in one big leap. As he landed, one knee came up and slammed into his jaw, rattling his teeth. But he didn’t care as he pressed his body as close as possible against the boulder. His heart was pounding wildly. He grabbed the rifle and placed it on his lap. It felt better to be sitting in the shelter of the huge rock, having the solid stone at his back. What exactly just happened? A sudden feeling someone was looking at him. As if an ancient instinct had been triggered. A warning from deep inside him, a place with which he seldom had any contact. But a warning about what?
Someone was aiming at me,
he thought. The idea just dropped into his mind. He’d been standing on top of the boulder, visible from a wide area, and somebody had taken aim at him.

The boulder slanted a bit forward at the spot where he was sitting, so that he had a partial roof above him, as well as the wall behind his back. At the moment he felt very protected. His dark green clothing would be barely visible against the dark rock, so no one would be able to see him here. On the other hand, his own field of vision was very restricted, and he didn’t like that. It would be easy for someone to sneak up on him as he hid here next to the boulder.