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.
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.
I follow the scent to a place where the smell of humans is powerful, a place where many of the two-legged creatures have been before.
There is that old smell left after departure.
But there is a warm, fresh scent as well.
I see the human standing, his back to me.
Although he is in the dark, I see him perfectly.
I pause, take one cautious step. Another.
Another. Still, he does not turn. He does not sense my killing presence.
In the moment before I attack, I utter a low growl.
Now he spins and I see his face. It is the face that has looked back at me from the mirror my whole life.
Then I smell his sudden, overwhelming fear, the scent that is most compelling of all, and it drives me forward.
He goes down under the force of my body.
He screams, struggles to grasp at me, but my teeth are already sunk deep into his neck.
His screams become a gurgle as I tear out his throat.
The taste of blood is maddeningly wonderful.
I snarl and rip and come away with flesh and cartilage.
The human animal struggles fiercely. This fight to hold so desperately to life is a thing of all animals, human or not.
It is a battle that fills me with savage purpose.
At last this human goes limp. But as I begin to tear at his stomach and chest, rip out his entrails and organs, the light of life has not completely left his eyes.
He stares at me as if begging for compassion, for mercy.
But I’m in a frenzy. The blood, the flesh, the viscera of the still living human fills my mouth, satisfying not only my hunger but my soul as well.
This is what I am. This is what I was born for. This instinctual beast is the true me.