Page 55 of God’s Country

“You keep snacking and we won’t have enough food to get us to Canada,” I advised him.

“The hell with you. I’ll shoot us a deer or something.”

“With that Glock? Good luck,” I said.

He took a bite of his candy bar and said as he chewed, “I don’t like cops.”

“You’re not alone in that.”

“Why were you a cop?”

“My dad was a cop.”

Ollie gave a little huff. I wasn’t sure if it was a laugh or a grunt of recognition. “My old man was a gangster.”

“How’d he know about Wollersheim and whatever it is that’s in the pack? I mean, Wollersheim was a businessman.”

“My ass. That’s what he liked to call himself.”

Ollie took another deep swallow of the Four Roses. The whiskey seemed to be loosening his tongue.

“Wollersheim’s business was trafficking in drugs and prostitution and anything that’d bring him a good black-market profit. My old man and my uncle were partners with him. When he hightailed it out of Canada to live in the States, he took everything with him.”

“Why Duluth?”

“He grew up there. Dual citizenship. His father was Canadian, his mother from Duluth. He should’ve moved to Australia or someplace far enough away my old man and my uncle couldn’t reach him. But he was a conceited old bastard. Thought he was immortal or something.”

He took another drink of whiskey. His speech was beginning to slur a little.

“When we were kids, he insisted we call him Saba. That’s ‘grandfather’ in Hebrew.”

I couldn’t help thinking of what my grandson called me—Baa-baa. It was close.

“Saba,” Ollie said and spit.

“You married?” I asked.

“Twice. But not anymore.”

“Any kids?”

“Nope. Shooting blanks, I found out. Okay by me. Kids’re nothing but a pain in the ass. Ask my brother.”

“He has kids?”

“A couple. Boys. Twelve or thirteen, something like that.”

I wondered what kind of father Stan was. Did his kids curse their old man the way he and his brother cursed theirs?

“He doesn’t see them much. Him and the old lady divorced a while back. Hit him pretty hard.” Ollie took a final drink of the whiskey, then threw his Snickers wrapper into the fire. “Gonna hit the sack.”

He stood up slowly from the log he was sitting on. It was clear his back was still giving him trouble, but the whiskey had contributed significantly to making him unsteady. He grabbed the BearVault and the pack with its mysterious precious contents, never far from his grasp, and headed into his tent. In no time at all, he’d commenced to snoring.

It was a clear night with a three-quarter moon on the rise. The light on the still surface of the pool made the water look like molten silver. As I watched, a fish jumped, sending out glittering ripples. Among the reeds, frogs gave out their deep-throated mating calls. It was too early in the season for crickets, but I heard the slap of something, maybe a beaver’s tail, on water. There were other sounds, unfamiliar. I’ve often heard mysterious stirrings in the wilderness at night, sounds with no clear origin. Henry Meloux once told me that there are more things at work in the forest than a man could ever imagine, more things than any human could ever hope to understand.

I considered the vision I’d had that day, one of those experiences beyond human understanding. If this was what Stephen and Waaboo felt when they saw their own terrible things, oh my God, what a curse.

Even though I was fully awake, the taste of blood seemed to linger in my mouth, and the triumphant feel of the brutal killing, the thrill of it, still haunted me. Is that really me? I wondered. In the deepest part of me, in my very soul, is that who I am? Is this the beast that will consume what is human in me?