Page 62 of God’s Country

But they were brothers. And Ollie relaxed and the fists became simply hands and Stan breathed a sigh of relief. And they were good.

I made some noise to alert them to my coming.

“Struck gold,” I told them and dumped my haul on the ground at their feet. “Fish and wild mushrooms and a salad of plantain leaves. You’d have to pay a lot for a meal like this in a fine restaurant.”

Stan looked amazed and grateful. Ollie eyed my harvest warily.

“How do we know you’re not going to poison us?” he asked.

“You don’t.”

I gathered up the ingredients for our supper and got to work.

I sautéed the mushrooms. Not all of them. I kept a few slices of the morels out of the skillet, hidden under the plantain leaves. I grilled the fish, then put together a tin plate with fish, mushrooms, and plantains and offered it to Stan.

“Wait,” Ollie said, grabbing Stan’s arm as he reached for the food. “You eat first,” he said to me.

I sat and ate the mushrooms and the fish. When I’d cleaned the plate, Stan turned to his brother and said, “There. Satisfied?”

I put together another tin plate for Stan. But when I dished up the plate for Ollie, I slipped the slices of raw morels in with the cooked mushrooms and stirred them all together. I offered the plate—fish, mushrooms, plantains—to Ollie, who proceeded to wolf down the food so greedily I didn’t think he gave himself the pleasure of actually tasting anything.

I got no thanks from him, but Stan said, “I’m not sure I’ve eaten a better meal.”

“Everything tastes good out here, especially when you’re starved,” I told him. Then I said to Ollie, “Take the fish leavings out and bury them a good distance from our camp.”

“I was going to smoke a cigar.”

“The fish first.”

He looked into the dark as if expecting to see wolves there. “Couldn’t we just throw them in the lake?”

“We could,” I said. “Some do. I don’t. I bury them. Make sure they’re far enough away that bears aren’t going to be drawn into our camp. We don’t want that to happen again, now, do we?”

“Why can’t he do it?” Ollie said, pointing toward his brother.

“He’s washing dishes.”

Which was news to Stan, but he didn’t complain. In fact, he seemed to be taking pleasure in Ollie’s discomfort. “Still afraid of the dark?” he said to his brother.

“Screw you.”

Among the few items the bear had left intact the night before was an empty plastic bag, gallon size. I put the fish guts, bones, and skins in the bag and handed the mess to Ollie. He eyed the dark again.

“Take a headlamp,” I suggested. “I saw one in the Duluth pack. Bring the bag back after you’ve buried what’s inside.”

Ollie found the lamp, banded it to his forehead, turned it on, and step by wary step, entered the woods. I watched the beam of light swing this way and that as he looked for anything that might leap at him from the darkness.

Stan was laughing quietly. “He’s always been afraid of the dark.”

“Odd for a guy that big.”

“When our old man was pissed at him, which was often, he used to lock my brother in the basement. That was after the beating. He’d be in the dark down there because our father would cut off the power to that part of the house. Sometimes, I’d sneak down to give him some food or something and I’d find him curled up in a corner, scared out of his mind.”

“You never got that treatment?”

“There was a different punishment for me.” His words were like slivers of ice. Then his voice thawed a bit. “But it was never as bad as what Ollie got. My brother did his best to protect me.”

After all the cleanup had been accomplished and Ollie had returned, he lit up a White Owl.