Trapper

WINTER

The night of the snowstorm was a blur. Daniel remembered having gone to bed late from hauling firewood and waking up to the sound of Bud stumbling into the room. He didn’t actually see him in the dark but there was no mistaking the stink of beer and cigarettes. He lay still as Bud bumped against a table and knocked a lamp. Bud muttered and damned a couple of times and moved around the room as if trying to find his way, then stopped. There was a rustling in the bed next to Daniel's and Bud was slurring his words, telling Alfred to keep quiet and nobody would get hurt. But Alfred was struggling and telling Bud to get away. Daniel pulled the sheets over his head and pretended to be asleep. In a few minutes his mother came in yelling and she and Bud were yelling at each other. Daniel lay still under the sheets with his eyes closed and the voices thundering above him until the voices receded on to the next room. There the voices were joined by pounding and thrashing and then there was a weird silence. He lay awake listening to his heart banging against his chest and later he must have gone back to sleep.

It was daylight when he woke up shivering and to the sound of the wind howling. Alfred’s bed was empty and the covers were strewn halfway off the bed and over the floor. He rushed downstairs to find the front door open, blown in by the wind, and snow piled high up to the foot of the stairs. If Bud saw this Daniel would be in for a good thrashing. He shoveled the snow from around the door and forced the door shut. He then searched the downstairs, the kitchen, the living room, the basement. No one. He ran back upstairs and put an ear to his parent’s door. Bud, his stepfather, had warned the kids not to disturb him and their mother when they were in their bedroom, ever. They were not to knock or call when the door was closed. Daniel listened to the silence inside with his heart racing.

Back in his room he looked under the bed, in the closet and suddenly was startled by a rustling outside. He raced to the window to see that it was only the snow scraping the glass. Below, in the backyard there were fresh footsteps still not brushed off by the drifting snow. Most likely Crazy Roger setting out traps. Bud warned crazy Roger not to come by the house but he uses their backyard as a shortcut whenever he gets a chance. Crazy Roger is a weird guy, lives alone up in the hills, always carries a shotgun and never looks you in the eye.

Daniel again approached his parent’s bedroom and listened. He rapped at the door and waited with his heart leaping in his throat. He rapped a second time. Nothing. He knocked louder, knowing Bud would whip him up good. Bud could beat the daylights out of you for no good reason. He knocked again. He turned the knob and pushed the door open. He couldn’t remember the last time he went in his parents’ bedroom. It was torn upside down, clothes tossed on the floor, table lamps, pictures, his mother’s figurines, scattered every which way.

He wrapped himself in a heap of blankets and waited in the rocking chair he set by the front door. The house was ice cold, the fire having gone out sometime during the night and Daniel was shivering by equal measures of cold and fear. Numbed by the cold, he started dozing off when Bud threw the door open to a blast of cold air, Daniel’s mother crouching behind him, and roared at Daniel to get back upstairs.

SPRING

Every spring Daniel and Alfred would go fishing back of the woods. They would cast their line by the bank and wait for a bite, which seldom came as they drove the fish away with banter and hurling stones at the water. This time Daniel fished alone. Alfred had been gone since the night of the snowstorm two years back. Once, shortly after the storm, Daniel gathered the courage to question his mother. She said Alfred went to stay with Aunt Betty up north and that was that.

He cast his line into the river from high up on the bank although the fish wouldn’t bite as the river was swollen from the rains and loaded with broken branches and trees. Just as soon, however, something pulled on his line, yanking the pole away from him. He scrambled after the pole and lost his footing. The ground was wet and slippery and he slid down the steep bank towards the river, rolling over, trying to hold on to a rock, weeds, brush, anything. Reaching out at random he clasped on to a large rock, a boulder that came partially dislodged as it stopped his fall. He lay breathless, arms and legs wrapped around the rock. Then the rock began to shift. Almost imperceptibly at first, its balance upset by the incline and by his weight pulling down on it. The rock lifted a few degrees with a smacking noise as it separated from its bed. He braced himself on to the rock and tried to climb on it even as the rock tilted higher, swaying for a moment and toppling over, almost taking him with it as it tumbled down to the river with a loud splash. He let go off the rock at the last moment and clung to the edge of the depression left in the ground but the ground was soft and wet and it crumbled under his fingers. He dug in, tearing clumps of dirt, slipping down, feeling the river pulling down on him, when his fingers closed in around something solid. A root. He held on to the root catching his breath with the river splashing a few feet below. Holding on to the root he proceeded to pull himself up, pushing with his feet, until his elbows reached over the edge of the crater. Using his elbows as a fulcrum he raised his chest over the edge, then his hips, his feet pedaling back of him, and with one last push he was in, like a fledgling in its nest. The river raged down below, deafening, hauling its cargo of torn branches and uprooted trees. The top of the bank was twenty, twenty five feet up from where he lay and he couldn’t see how he would ever make it to the top.

His mother was at work at the diner and Bud was home getting drunk. Bud had spent most of the morning back of the house splitting wood, which was about the only thing he was good for. When he was done he drank until he passed out and pissed on himself. Hadn’t held a job ever since moving in with Daniel’s mother. Slapped her black and blue if she crossed him. One time he broke her arm and a deputy came around on a tip from a coworker but she lied, she said that she tripped carrying laundry and fell down the stairs.

If Alfred were around, Daniel wouldn’t be in this predicament. Alfred had more sense than running after an elusive line down a muddy bank. Daniel wished with all his might for Alfred to materialize at the top of the bank. Daniel was given to the belief that if he wished for something really hard, that if he focused his whole being into one single point, holding his breath until he felt his life essence seep through his pores, that he could make his wish come true. He now closed his eyes tight and summoned his life energy to converge into that single point and thought of Alfred, wearing his red cap, that he always wore. It never worked. It didn’t work this time either. He was alone in the woods and when the Sun dipped below the treetops there would be creatures more fearsome than squirrels and rabbits sprouting out of the woods. There were plenty raccoons and foxes and there had been the occasional bear. There was also crazy Roger. To tell the truth, he’d be more afraid of crazy Roger than of most nocturnal critters.

So far Daniel had made it through his ordeal without a sob but now, in the relative safety of his nest he felt utterly alone and a tidal wave began rising deep down in his chest. Defenseless against the groundswell he abandoned himself and let out a short cry, barely audible, tentative and pleading, followed by a plaintive mourn - when he heard a shout. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING DOWN THERE? It took him a few moments to locate the source with the river roaring below and the sound following tortuous paths in the woods. It was not Alfred but Bud at the top of the bank. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING DOWN THERE, DUMB ASS? Bud wanted Daniel to come up to where he was so he could whip his skinny ass but all Daniel could do was cry. Unable to control it, the wave burst out unrestrained.

Bud was picking up rocks and hurling them at Daniel, dumb girl, faggot, get the hell up here. Some of the rocks reached their destination, bruising Daniel on his arm, his back and grazing his head, bringing the taste of blood to his mouth. And it wasn’t like he was just sitting there. He was trying his best to crawl up the bank but kept slipping and sliding down. He then thought of the root that he was hanging on to. If he dug it out he could maybe use it to jab at the dirt and crawl up the bank.

He pulled on the root but it was too firmly imbedded. He dug around it with Bud yelling. As he exposed more of it he saw that it was more solid and smoother than a root and drier than he might expect in that damp soil. He realized that it was no root but a bone. Quite likely remnant of one of crazy Roger's unwanted catches. And a sizable one. This was no rabbit or squirrel. Either way it would serve the purpose. He pulled on it with a twisting motion, up and sideways and up… and it splintered. Too small a piece to be of any use. He dug deeper and came up with another bone.

At the top of the bank Bud was yelling to go on and hurry. To quit digging and come the hell up. Daniel dug out yet another bone and then another. The mother lode. There was an urgency in Bud’s voice, a harsh pitch. But Daniel was too absorbed with his find. He even waved a bone for Bud to see. A long bone with a paw still attached. Bud had had enough. He started crawling down bearing his weight close to the ground, knees bent, digging in his heels. But the slope was too steep and the ground too slippery and he fell back on his buttocks and slid down cursing the goddamned kid. He skidded to a stop a few feet up from Daniel, clutching on to the underbrush. Daniel, barely paying notice, was examining what looked like some sort of textile adhered to some of the bones, glued so firmly he could not pry it loose without tearing it. Bud crawled farther down on his back and his buttocks, sliding closer, his feet almost touching Daniel, who was intent on scrubbing the dirt off the material, uncovering a pattern of red and green resembling a plaid fabric.

Like his own plaid shirts. About all his shirts were plaid. The same with Bud and Alfred. Cotton, thick and sturdy to withstand the wear and tear of life in the woods. The fabric he was now exposing was torn, and time and moisture had eaten through it. Daniel turned to Bud, who was now close enough for him to see the rock that Bud had been concealing in his right hand. Bud slid down the last few inches separating them and came to join Daniel in his nest. His feet secured in the broken ground of the depression, he gained enough traction to stand up and bring the rock above his head, ready to strike. Daniel looked at Bud dumfounded, holding a bone out for Bud to see. He wanted Bud to look at the bone, to see that it looked like an arm, and couldn't understand why Bud wouldn't look and why was he holding a rock above his head when a loud crack tore over the roar of the river and reverberated through the woods. Bud hesitated with his hand raised, holding the deathblow in check. He turned his head, searching for the source of the blast. It was not a wise move. It threw him off balance causing him to tilt backwards, then forward, he then overcompensated backwards, letting go off the rock as he spun his arms around, then forward again and lunged straight into the river. He made it just in time to meet a large log bouncing in and out of the water.

Daniel lay stunned, licking the blood off his lips. He looked up. Atop the bank stood a bearded and ragged man with a large brimmed hat tipped over his eyes. Crazy Roger. The man laid down his gun and proceeded to uncoil a rope out of his trapping sack and lay one end down the bank towards Daniel. But Daniel was too engrossed with his last find to acknowledge the loose end of rope now dangling by his face. He was examining an article he had just dug out of the tangle of bones. Red. A sturdier fabric. He methodically wiped the mud off of it, brushed it, shook it clean and ceremoniously placed it on his head while crazy Roger patiently held on to his end of the rope at the top of the bank. It was Alfred’s red cap that he always wore. Even to bed. Alfred believed it made him look tougher, stronger, with it on nobody dared mess with him.