Grizzly Trade

362 Pages·2014·1.49 MB·English

Grizzly Trade
Grizzly Trade
© 2014 Dale Brandenburger
all rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used
in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher,
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Printed in the United States of America
Cover Design: Claire Last
Luminare Press
467 W 17th Ave
Eugene, OR 97401
www.luminarepress.com
ISBN: 978-1-937303-30-3
LCCN: 2014945047
G r i z z l y T r a d e
Dale Brandenburger
luminare Press
eugene, Oregon

let he who kills God’s creatures for pleasure
and leave to linger until wanton waste
Forsake a fortune of earthly treasure
and rush to hollow death with haste
To land at hell’s infernal door
Where no light shall fall upon his face
To gaze upon the grass no more
as Satan lays his soul to waste
For the lord of the land hath decreed
and the grizzled killer best had heed
For he who commits the bloody deed
Has made a grizzly trade indeed
“I busted out of the place in a hurry and went to a saloon and
drank beer and said that for the rest of my life I’d never take a job
in a place where you couldn’t throw cigarette butts on the floor. I
was hooked on this writing for newspapers and magazines.”
—Jimmy Breslin

Alkoot, Alaska, 1992
A
week had passed since red found the corpse behind his cabin
and called the state trooper. He didn’t have a phone in his
dilapidated shack. He had to drive five miles down a rutted dirt
road to use the payphone that hung on the wall outside the ferry
terminal.
red knew what it was straight off; murder for profit, plain and
simple. a large caliber bullet had pierced the brown bear’s skull
just below her right ear, ricocheted off some bone, and exited from
the left side of her neck. a precise incision, probably made with a
razor-sharp hunting knife, slit the bear’s hide, and the gall bladder
had been removed. all four paws had been hacked off with a bone
saw, leaving the flesh ragged, the bone splintered. The coagulated
blood was crusty, the color of burgundy wine, and crawling with
black flies. driving to the payphone, wedged behind the wheel of
his tiny datsun pickup truck, red scratched at his curly red beard
and wondered how much a bear gall bladder and a set of paws
fetched on the aphrodisiac market in China.
Seven long days had passed and he was still having trouble get-
ting the grizzly image of the carcass out of his head. Crouching in
the shadows beneath a huge spruce tree, listening intently as the
breeze whispered lightly through the branches close to his head, he
gazed out at the gray beach. a tendril of mist swirled ghost-like over
the water. He smelled the spruce buds and heard the water gently
lapping at the shore. red tried to see, hear and smell everything
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4 Dale Brandenburger
around him at the same time, hoping that by focusing his attention
on every detail, he’d stop thinking about the mutilated bear.
He slung his rifle over his shoulder, leaned into a spruce branch
until it snapped, then cranked it back and forth, wrestling it from
the trunk of the tree. He used the bough like a broom as he walked
backwards across the beach, lightly sweeping his footprints from
the sand. When he reached the water’s edge, he hopped onto a log
and swept away the last set of tracks. anyone who hiked down this
rugged stretch of the coast would not see where he had entered
the forest. Better safe than sorry. it was bad enough that the state
trooper had come to his cabin. although he was smart enough to
never leave anything incriminating at his cabin, he didn’t like cops
in general and that cop in particular. He scampered along the log,
surprisingly nimble for a large man in his forties. living in the
alaska forest for the past twenty years had kept him strong and agile.
The back of red’s neck began to tingle. He looked over his
shoulder and scanned the beach once more, but it was just a breeze
beginning to blow from the southeast, not the tingling sensation
he had when he thought he was being watched. The bruised sky
threatened rain and darkness was falling fast. He jumped from the
log onto a large granite rock, still trying his best not to leave prints
in the sand.
When red’s parole officer, a sincere but annoying do-gooder,
heard about the poaching incident, he was afraid red would go
renegade. referring several times to red’s anger management issues,
he’d given red a book on zen Buddhism and suggested he take up
meditation. red promised he would give it a try and, surprisingly,
he had found the book interesting. He’d just spent two days at his
secret camp, sitting on the edge of a cliff, counting his breaths and
contemplating his navel with his third eye.
He traversed the next stretch of coast, a series of tidal pools
dotted with small boulders, and tried to practice being present by
repeating his mantra, Now, now, now, as he leaped from rock to
Grizzly Trade 5
rock to rock, but his mind kept flashing on the image of the dead
bear. He felt the blood rush to his head. How do you not think? If I
try not to think, then I’m thinking about not thinking. This is bullshit.
Those Zen monks are a bunch of liars, claiming their minds are like
polished mirrors. Those guys are thinking about women and rice wine,
just like every other Tom, Dick and Hari Kari.
He kicked a mussel off a rock and sent it skittering across the
water. If a monk ever asks me what’s the sound of one hand clapping,
I’m going to smack him right in the face. That’ll get him thinking. I
wasted two days sitting around. Maybe I should have tracked down
those poachers. Purple veins pulsed on his neck and his pale skin
flushed crimson as he thought once again about the dead bear.
Balancing on one foot, he punted another mussel into the sea, lost
his balance, and crumpled onto the rock he’d been perched on. red
rolled off the boulder into the tidal pool and gripped his scraped
elbow, cursing. Frigid water soaked his jeans as he sat up in the
shallow tidal pool. He gasped, stood up and peered into the trees,
making sure nobody had seen him tumble off the rock. Then red
began to laugh wildly.
Now I know the sound of one hand clapping. red heard his sop-
ping wool socks squish inside his boots as he stepped out of the pool.
He bent and picked a stalk of oyster leaf at the edge of the water. He
chewed on it as he gazed out beyond the inlet at the snow-capped
mountains, jagged like broken teeth. The oyster leaf, pungent and
briny, tasted like the sea. He felt the first drops of rain falling on
his face. The monks say all of life is an illusion but who could dream
a dream this beautiful. Certainly not a soaking-wet nitwit like me.
He thought about gathering some mussels from the tide pool
but he was already shivering and the last gray light of day was
fading to black. He hurried down the beach, smiling at his own
buffoonery. When he was almost to the road he saw tracks where
a brown bear had meandered along the water’s edge. The tracks
were different than black bear tracks, the toes closer together and
6 Dale Brandenburger
in a straight line. The breeze still tickled the back of his neck. red
figured the bear had got wind of him and was long gone. Still, he
pulled his rifle off his shoulder, chambered a round, and switched
on the safety. He had a great respect for bears.
He followed the tracks until they veered off into the forest. Then
he saw the boot prints and scarlet beads of blood in the sand. No,
not again. He slung the rifle over his shoulder, pulled a flashlight
from his jacket pocket and charged into the gloomy underbrush. a
few minutes later he found the dead bear, blood still draining onto
the forest floor where the paws had been sawed off.
red dropped the flashlight, raised his arms and pulled at his
hair. all the anger and anguish of a lifetime boiled up inside him.
He howled into the darkness. red had an anger management issue.
f
Tim Branson’s balls felt like a midget boxer had been using
them for a twelve-round speed-bag workout. leaning back in his
office chair, he uncorked the whiskey bottle and put his feet up on
the desk to ease the pain. He stared at the gritty coffee cup on his
desk, a cigarette butt floating in an inch of cold coffee, and con-
templated the long walk to the sink, ten feet away. He slid the cup
back and drank straight from the bottle.
A vasectomy is a relatively painless operation. Obviously a woman
had started that rumor. He picked up the phone, took another long
swig from the bottle, and dialed. He knew the number by heart. it
was the third time he’d tried to get through to her that evening. He
let it ring for a while not expecting an answer. He was about to hang
up when he heard Christine’s distant groggy voice.
“Hello?”
“i got a vasectomy.”
“Who is this?”
“This is Tim. it’s official. Mr. Chuckles is now shooting blanks.”
“Congratulations, i guess.” Then he heard muffled conversation.