Page 53 of God’s Country

“The ones he married anyway,” Stan said. “He always had at least one woman on the side. That’s where Crispin came from. Our bastard half brother.”

“Our father’s most beloved,” Ollie said sarcastically. “The boy who never disappointed.”

“Dad wouldn’t tell us a thing about that pack, but he spilled the beans to little Crispin,” Stan said.

“Look where that got the kid.” A big grin spread across Ollie’s face. “And look at who’s holding the bag.” He’d kept the pack in the center of the canoe, clinging to it as if it was a precious child. Now he lifted it, beaming. “I’m going to live it up and every day I’m going to damn Crispin and my old man to hell.”

I thought then that family is a guarantee of nothing. I’d seen the same when I was a cop responding to domestic disturbances, families doing only harm to one another. Love doesn’t come simply from a bloodline.

The sun finally made an appearance, and with it came the mosquitoes and the blackflies. I watched the two brothers swatting at the air. The rain had washed them clean of the mud and urine mixture they’d applied the day before. I almost laughed when Ollie walked away from us, peed on the ground to make mud, and began to cover his bare arms and neck and face with the mixture. When I looked at Stan, I saw that a sly smile was on his lips. He glanced at me, said nothing, but reached into his pocket and brought out a small green plastic bottle of deet, which he must have finally discovered somewhere in his gear. He rubbed the repellent on his skin, then returned the bottle to his pocket and with obvious pleasure watched his brother slather himself in a mixture that made him smell like a well-used outhouse.

CHAPTER 30

We canoed through the day, but not much toward Canada. We portaged more than we would have if I were truly interested in guiding the Kennedy brothers well, and I chose portages that would challenge even a veteran of the Boundary Waters. With great pleasure, I watched them tire, Ollie with a back that gave him no relief from pain, Stan with a body not at all used to hard labor. By the time we stopped in the late afternoon, Ollie was ready to collapse, Stan had blisters on the palms of his hands, and we were only a few miles nearer the Canadian border.

We made our final landing of the day at a campsite on one of a series of pools connected by a sluggish flow of water thick with reeds. The brothers were exhausted. I figured Cordell hadn’t pushed them at all, had given them no real sense of the ordeal that a trip in the Boundary Waters can be, especially for the uninitiated.

There’s an old adage in choosing a tent for wilderness camping: Lightweight. Low cost. Durable. You can have only two of the three. When I began canoeing the Boundary Waters, first with my father, then with our Boy Scout troop out of St. Agnes, the tents were canvas. They were durable, probably reasonably priced, but heavy. It took some experience to set them up correctly, and if it rained, we were always cautioned not to touch the roof or sides because doing so would cause the tent to leak. Tents have come a long way since then, in both design and materials. Cordell Bishop had chosen the Timberline 2 for the Kennedy brothers. It’s a good, durable polyester tent at a reasonable price. Although the name implies that it’s designed for two people, in truth, those two people would have to be munchkins for both to fit inside comfortably. Which was probably why each Kennedy brother had his own.

Ollie, using the threat of another pounding to my head, insisted I set up camp. As soon as I’d erected the first tent, he handed the Glock to his brother and said, “You watch him.” He crawled into the tent, holding on to the pack he’d cradled all day, rolled out his sleeping bag, and lay down.

Stan held the gun as if he was thinking of shooting Ollie. “Fat bastard,” he grumbled, then sat with his back to a tree and watched while I erected the second tent. We could hear Ollie snoring immediately.

“I don’t know what’s in that pack, but I know it’s worth killing for,” I said. I didn’t look at him, just concentrated on my work.

Stan said nothing.

“You ever think about not having to share with your brother?”

“Kill him, you mean?”

“You don’t seem all that close.”

“He gets under my skin, but he’s still my brother.”

“Ever wonder if he thinks about not sharing?”

He didn’t answer me, but when I glanced his way, I saw him studying the tent where Ollie was snoring up a storm.

Stan needed to rest, and I knew he was hoping to snooze some, like his brother. But after I’d got his tent and gear settled, I said, “I need to gather wood if I’m going to cook us some supper.”

Stan took a deep breath and hauled himself up. “Let’s do it.”

I took the hatchet, and while Stan watched, looking beat to hell, I gathered two armloads. After I’d got a fire going, he called to his brother. When Ollie finally poked his head from his tent, Stan said, “You watch him now. I need to rest.”

“Let’s just tie him up again. We can both sleep.”

Which is what they did. Tied me to a birch at the edge of the water, then they both disappeared into their tents.

I was pretty tired, too, having done the lion’s share of the paddling that day, so I let myself drift off. In my sleep, I was given the first vision I’d had since I almost drowned as a kid. Because of its nature, I hoped to God it would be the last vision I was ever given.

I stand outside most of my dreams, viewing the strange, often confusing, events as if I’m watching a movie. Sometimes I’m a part of the dream, an actor, sometimes not. What I experienced in the wilderness was different. I was inside it. I was the mind of the dream. Which is why I have always considered it a vision.

Generally, dreams are vague when I try to recall them. But every element of the vision has stayed with me to this day. Here it is:

I’m hunting. Stalking. Although there is no moon and the forest around me is dark, I see everything as if it’s lit in intricate detail. My ears pick up every sound. The shift of underbrush as a hare bounds away at my coming. The skitter of a chipmunk inside a fallen, rotted-out tree trunk. The nearly silent beat of the wings of an owl. The rustle of leaves and branches as squirrels move about above me, watching my passage warily. But mostly I’m aware of the scent of the forest. It comes up from the earth under me and from the air around me. The mundane smell of tree bark, of pine needles, of moist, acidic soil, of a groundhog’s burrow, of urine marking the territory of a fox. But the scent that attracts me, the scent I’m intent on following is nothing that belongs in the forest. It is not the scent of a four-legged creature. It is the scent of an animal that walks upright on two legs. The human scent.

I feel my stomach roil, not with hunger but with anticipation. Saliva fills my mouth, flows over my gums, drips on the ground. But I make no noise. I am a silent hunter whose killing instincts are ancient.