On the way to the truck Ben prayed his prayer in case it might help: please, God, whoever you are, last day of moose season and the freezer’s empty.
“Ready, little brother!” said Boak and revved her.
“Ready,” said Ben.
Ben slammed the passenger door. Fine. Fine. Shit-kickers on the dash. The water boiled in the thermos for later. The yard needed raking but would wait.
Boak floored her.
Ben: groggy and sluggish. Map in pocket. The rifle in the jump seat. A bluebird day for raking.
A slap hard to the meat of the thigh.
“Wake up, little brother!”
“Just drive on,“ said Ben. He rubbed his leg.
The sun came up over the bar, then firehouse, then the truck turned. At the T, Ben goodbyed Boak and Sue’s, a little blue house still sleeping with the mailbox open and the front door closed. Once it had just been Sue. Sue at the T this, Sue at the T that, the new gal in town, and no Boak whatsoever. When Ben still had a chance.
“What?” said Boak.
“Nothing,” said Ben.
“You were always a mumbler.” Boak bit at cake from some bake sale.
“I said nothing at all,” said Ben.
The truck missiled out of town.
Boak chewed, crumbs fell, and Ben wiped them to the floor.
“Some bull is ready to end his days!”
Boak yelled it with the cold windows down.
A hunt is a tiresome thing. A moose is big and unaccommodating: fifteen-hundred pounds, tall as a shed roof, well-hidden as needed. He likes to browse and chew and sleep and gnaw and live.
They drove the morning with no success, drove, bumped, groused, walked, drove on farther, turned, bumped again, groused again, slogged, aimed, reloaded, and cursed their luck. They saw cows galore in the willow browse, and their calves too, so easy for the taking by the despicable. At Crooked Creek it was grouse, more grouse, and a mateless swan. At Puritan nothing, a porcupine. Dry Creek, rabbits, got one with the truck, didn’t notice. Ermine Creek, birds and birds, seagulls, but why? The sea is far away from here. Why bother asking, who cared? A fox, but Boak missed and laughed. At Heartbreak Creek, nothing, a yearling bull with velvet horns, and they let him go by the book. Washout Creek, nothing. Goodbye, nothing. Winston Churchill, nothing.
“Damn it to hell,” howled Boak when granddaddy bull popped in the alder on Doubleback. But the shot was high and that’s why they call it hunting.
They drove north and gassed up at noon. Ben found a penny in the men’s room. Boak found the man with the bull in the flatbed and made friends at the pump.
“Nice one,” said Boak.
“Lung shot,” said the man.
“Help us out?” said Boak. “Last day.”
The man swiped his map from the dash and tapped with his finger on what looked like nothing. He made an X with a pen and circled it.
“Can’t miss there,” the man said. “It’s a regular zoo.”
“What’s it called?” Boak said.
“I never heard. She’s too little for naming,” the man said.
“All right,” Boak said.
“You boys try it,” the man said, and he and the bull turned south.
Ben watched Boak and the man with the bull on the flatbed from the Coke machine. There was the big glass window. The Coke machine was empty. Ben waited hand on hips, nose to glass.
Boak: good-natured face, balding with ball cap, goatee, shit-kickers, Wranglers, knife on the hip.
Please, God, whoever you are.
Then Ben and Boak were driving again, looking for moose.
In the north the sky was clear. A bluebird day for driving. The road was empty: trees and trees and a yellow dashed line. A few trucks passed and saluted with hands. The boys saluted back and Ben counted vehicles, each of them going by, for miles.
“One,” said Ben.
They swallowed cold coffee from the station. Styrofoam squeaked beneath Ben’s boots. Sinatra sang on the tape deck. The truck rumbled warm and sleepy and the yellow leaves fluttered and smoothed the pavement, which was a conveyer running to its end. Ben sang along with Frank until Boak pinched them both off with his fingers on the dial.
“Can’t Miss Creek,” Boak said. “Zoo Creek.”
Trees and trees. “Two,” Ben said as a semi passed.
“Granddaddy Creek,” Boak said. “I like the sound of that.”
A hill passed.
“Nice Guy Creek,” Boak chimed. “Gas Up Creek.”
A dozer passed aimed west.
“Three,” Ben said, getting sleepy.
The sky. A dull sky.
“No Name Creek,” said Boak. “That’s what, that’s what.”
The road twisted and straightened. Trees and more trees, a house, a barn. A gas station boarded up, a culvert crushed by something even bigger. A fire engine sped south without the siren and waved.
“Four,” said Ben.
“Last Day Creek. Where’s My Moose Creek. I Got Mine Creek,” said Boak and laughed. “Ha ha ha.”
Once at Mother’s, Ben drank milk from a glass and it was delicious and cold. But before the last swallow, he felt a thing on his tongue: a shave of glass long as a nail. Ben showed the glass to mother. She shook her head and made batter for morning. Ben kept the glass on his sill by the jar with the lucky pennies.
“Five,” said Ben at a Harley whizzing up and by.
Once, Boak kicked a baby pool out of his way.
“How Bout Lunch Creek,” said Boak.
Ben grabbed the sack of deviled ham and Swiss from the back. They drove north and chewed like twins: twin mouths, twin noses, with exact matching rotation. The hands rose from the elbow with the same angle and thrust.
Hills and trees, lakes and birds, hills and lakes. A bird alone. A flock. A flock and an eagle on a phone line sagging. Can the caller on the phone hear eagle’s claws? Hills and hills. A bag of trash in the ditch.
“I Gotta Piss Creek,” said Boak.
They pissed twin arcs at some pleasant-looking birch. They drove on. The road bent toward the mountains parting swarms of black spruce up the slope.
“Makes me think of winter,” Ben said to the high white.
“Of course. It’s October, little brother. What kind of dope needs whitish mountains to tell him that?”
The peaks jabbed at the sky and the sky just sat there and took it.
The station man’s creek ran up the rusted rail line to the Pass. Parallel the rails, the truck growled in low up the road that was really no road at all: just two lines of dirt in the brush that kept going. The cliffs climbed and made the day end early. The truck bumped and dragged and stalled and revved and wallowed in mud pits between. A moose ran by while they fussed with the winch. They passed many signs of life, all long dead: a locomotive off the tracks and in the trees, a cedar tank dripping rain at the rivets; a station house with a coffee can roof and a sign that said MINE YOUR OWN BUSINESS.
“Mine Your Own Business Creek,” said Boak. “Mine your own business. Mine. Your. Own. Business.”
They passed a handcar on a side rail toting green bottles. They passed a pallet with black punky cordwood, leather boots unmatched and tongueless hanging from a clothesline across the back deck of a caboose, trees chewed down, a beaver lodge built, lump coal in a pile, logs stacked and tarped, a ball of rebar big as an outhouse and twisted like some kid’s joke. More coal. More rabbits. More trees. More Boak. He rolled down his window and spit.
“We aren’t idiots!” he yelled to the Pass.
The rifle jumped off the jump seat any number of times. Ben righted it again and again until he wedged it between the seat and the bag of deviled ham and swiss. The road curved up and up and on along the railroad tracks. Another station house came and went in poor condition: its canned roof was caved and the walls were unreadable. The creek wagged and zagged by the boys like a friend. The eagles circled and swooped as was right for them to do. The eagles sat in treetops and snags when their wings got tired and watched the tiny truck driving. The headlights off. The sun was so west that the boulder, when it came, spread in the road as big as any blue whale. The boulder had tumbled from that cliff, five-hundred feet down. The crack in the mountain was just so wide, very narrow in fact, with no room for boulders rolling on and on and on. The boulder had flattened the rails like a penny. The boulder would sit for a million years. The rails would rust. The boulder had jumped from the cliff and flattened the rails on a day no one saw and no one remembered. The rest was just guessing.
“I guess it’s a bluebird day for walking,” said Boak.
“I guess it is,” said Ben.
The truck shuddered dead at the boulder. The boys shouldered their gear and got walking.
A Pass is a big cut that doesn’t end where it looks to. It just goes over the other side. They walked by a shot-up Ford with a fridge door leaning on the headlight. By a tree with one leaf left. By a bush turned red. By a bush with berries. By berries in shit.
Ben thought this:
Mountain: tall, rude or greedy on occasion, made of stone thrust up from elsewhere, terrible, sad, OK, invincible. Useful for poems.
Cliff: rock like a fence.
Rabbit: a small edible mammal, plentiful, friendly reputation, big families.
Magpie: a clever bird, black and blue, steals dinner if able and doesn’t care.
They walked and walked. Once, Ben was called to jury duty and heard this story: A man was gone three years and his wife wanted the insurance money paid. He was last seen on the ferry from Skagway in a mask, tank, and fins. Now what about that? Now what about that?
They kept walking and whistled.
“That scuba man was not for sure dead, I’m sure.”
“What?” said Boak.
“Nothing,” said Ben.
Trees: tall, usually unselfish, of variety and kindliness, carbon, sometimes terrible, sweet sad, appearing invincible to some but vulnerable to axes, old age, lack of sustenance, fire. Useful in cold.
“What were you saying?” said Boak.
“Nothing, that scuba-man trial.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Boak.
Heat rises and cold sinks. The cold sank.
Hand: a necessary appendage.
They passed by a butte and by a gorge with a waterfall with no name either. They heard hooves pounding, branches snapping. Ben ducked, Boak fired, but the game was safe, gone in the darkening trees.
They passed by a rusting wheelbarrow, pouring nothing out sideways, looking like a crab.
Bear: top of the chain so will eat you or part. Good for stories at gatherings and postcards.
“Goddamn It Creek,” said Boak in blue gunsmoke. They walked.
Boak: puckered when sweating, long strides like no tomorrow, gloves always deep in butt pockets, shaft on shoulder, straight like a Roman, half step forward like a queen gets to lead.
Poem: a set of words put together to say something that can’t be said. Ben once slid one in Sue’s mailbox in his best pretty longhand, but Ben’s longhand and Boak’s longhand were perfect twins.
Mix-up: a mess that causes the wrong or undesired result, brought about by fear or happiness or love or an absent mind or poor penmanship.
Sue: pretty, sweet, nice, sets her chin on her knuckles while listening. Gap-toothed. Holds her head while laughing hard.
Mix-up: a terrible mess brought about by poems. Boak won that one too. Boak always won.
“Wins what?” said Boak.
“Nothing,” said Ben.
“How the world is declining,” Boak said. They shook their heads at injustice. The brothers walked on, sweated and walked. They heard gunfire the next drainage over and walked faster.
Leg: a necessary appendage, needing another.
When the boys were young they played charades with friends. First, they did presidents and movie stars, like everyone, and the notable people in town. But as years passed and the boys grew, they took on greater challenges: a barn door, the kitchen sink, the curtain in the bedroom. The boys progressed to trees by species and cloud formations and diseases of the body and mind. Boak stopped there, but Ben aspired higher: to local geologic formations. He would stretch his arms, stand or squat, tuck his head or throw it back, fling a leg, turn the wrist depending on necessity and art. He peaked like Granite Peak and Castle Mountain. He lounged into Lazy Mountain, thundering into Pioneer Peak, a spitting image of Gunsight. He crescendoed into Denali, greatest challenge in a few continents.
They passed by a helicopter between some trees. One rotor was ripped off.
“Some crash,” said Ben. “I’d love to get her home.”
“Get her flying again,” said Boak.
They considered with hands on hips.
Then Boak aimed, fired, and made a fresh wound in the sheet-metal tail. He handed the rifle to Ben who blew away the remains of the windows. They squatted and drank their tea by a huge old ribcage. They wiped their mouths on their sleeves. The sun sank. In the ties, they found the femur to match to the ribcage.
“Gigantic.”
It had snapped in half long before, between steel wheel and steel rail.
Then the hip, “Enormous.”
Then the jaw, “Stupendous.”
Then hooves, “Only three,” all dragged, gnawed, and left hither and thither by some hungry someones. Gunfire rang out farther off. An owl called and another answered.
Head: a fragile clumsy sphere, teetering in space.
It’s hard not to think and Ben thought: Once, on a summer hunt as boys, Boak and Ben came to a camp on a shore where the men laughed and the bitch barked and the puppies were cooked up in a drum. The fire was rotten and the stirring was done with a broken paddle. A man found it on the rocks. The boys were offered the pick of the litter, ha, ha, ha. The boy Boak had cried. Death is a cricket by a creek. A million dead, a million born. A million dead again. So on, and yet. The willow is eaten, the moose is eaten. The fish never swam home. A blue whale yawns. A foot crushes a nest. A tremendous hoof. A splendid club. A bird hits the windshield, chaos of nature. A man drops from cancer, age, or accident, is forgotten, and never was.
Ben dug in the gear for the headlamps. He flicked one then the next on off on off on.
“Quit,” said Boak, and Ben flicked them off.
They walked.
Neck: a necessary and narrow conjunction between body and head.
Ben: a good-natured face, balding with ball cap, shit-kickers except on Sunday, Wranglers, knife on the hip, strides like a thing with a tail.
“It’s getting dark,” said Ben.
“My brother the genius,” said Boak.
“I mean it,” said Ben.
“Keep walking, little lady,” said Boak.
“It’s a long way back,” said Ben.
“We’ve got light yet,” said Boak.
“We should turn round and go,” said Ben.
“But we won’t,” said Boak.
The shack had the porch light on. The generator was buzzing. A dog was barking, people were moving around. A stupid little dog. The boys ducked behind a handcar parked in the splay of the tracks as the porch door opened and a man in an apron appeared for a smoke. The man puffed and the boys watched and the stupid little dog barked louder. The man threw the stub and slammed the door. They backed out of the clearing and kept going.
“What?” said Ben.
“Nothing,” said Boak. “Just a stupid dog.”
With the shack far behind and real dark near, Boak started up his singing:
“Riffraff. White Trash. Stupid Dog. Copter Bog. I’m a Hog! Creek!”
“Quiet,” said Ben.
“Where’s My Moose. Give Me The Noose. Hey, A Caboose Creek!”
“Quiet, I said,” snapped Ben. “I’m tired.”
“Tired Boy! Tired Boy!”
“Pipe down.”
“Pipe Down. Why the Frown!”
Ben stopped walking altogether. He slumped on a stump.
“Someone should Pay. Anyway. Make my day CREEK!”
He watched Boak over the rise and listened to him disappear: “Look this Luck, Stuck in Muck, Should have got a Duck Creek!”
Bliss among humans is rare. In the morning of the best day and the worst, a man does not know it. And how to tell them apart?
Once from some shrubs back home, Ben followed paw prints he had never seen before, even in books. These new paw prints were pressed into new snow. They made tracks from the shrubs to the pond and crossed. They were a barefoot baby’s feet, curved in, with pretty fragile lines, but giant: the size was a man-sized foot. The giant baby had walked down to town. It had turned corners and crossed crosswalks where boots then trod over its going. The baby, Ben could see, must have turned around from time to time to look back at where it had come from. Must have stood pigeon-toed at the drugstore window, then continued on to the bandstand in the square where Boak and Sue had wed, then to the fire hydrant by the courthouse curb.
Ben liked to go barefoot.
When Ben caught up on the flat, Boak was winded and spent. The rifle was ready, serious again about the task.
The wind kicked sand and they turned their faces into it.
Boak said, “Who makes them up then?”
“Makes what?” said Ben.
“Who decides the names?” said Boak. “Who get the say in what the name of the creek is?”
“Some guy in an office in town,” said Ben.
Boak started up more whispery: “Dead Dog. Red Dog. Red Neck. What the Heck. Clap Trap.”
“Who cares anyway?” said Ben to the sky.
“Crap Shack. Shitty Dog,” said Boak.
“He writes the name down on a paper,” said Ben.
“I Can Smell Him Creek,” said Boak.
“He stamps the paper just like that,” said Ben and stamped his hand with his fist.
“I Can Taste Him Creek,” said Boak.
“Some fool stamp,” said Ben.
“Come out, brother,” said Boak.
“Puts the paper in a drawer,” said Ben.
“Show yourself, friend,” said Boak.
“It’s in the drawer forever,” said Ben.
“Show yourself!” said Boak. “Show yourself!”
“People go somewhere else entirely,” said Ben.
The stars blinked awake. The sun was gone behind a pink edge for good. It happens every day.
The bull stood huge between the railroad ties. He turned his rack on cue. Boak fired for the lungs. The bull went down in a heap.
“He’s had a setback,” said Boak.
They stood, then ran. They stood over him and gaped. They gaped at the long way down the Pass, which was almost too dark except for light in the shack far below.
“Must be eight miles,” said Boak. “I’m tired.”
“Maybe seven,” said Ben.
They sat against the bull. He was hot and died. They leaned on him and drank their last tea. They chewed cake from the bake sale and smiled like girls.
“Long night,” said Boak.
“A good day,” said Ben.
The beams from the headlamps prodded the black. The fur and his face. The old bull stared out too. Night lowered and the last of the pink faded.
They slit him open, pulled his insides out, and quartered him quick. With the rack he was eight hundred pounds easy. They threw the guts to the trees. They piled his parts off the rails just in case. They wiped the ground with their fingers, then lay between the rails for a nap. The wind picked up. The stars were the Big Bang all over.
On Ben’s best day, there was a moving van in it, a little blue house, and the T: a big heavy box with Sue’s thin arms around it, saying “FRAGILE,” on the side, so true. A blue print dress. Sue teetered past the mailbox. Ben jammed it into neutral, dead center of the T, Ben blocking traffic just like that, King of the Road. Ben ran up the walk to Sue. Ben making the save just when Sue’s arms were about to give. The mailbox, the doorstep, the threshold. “Oh, thank you. Oh thank you oh so much. It’s my mother’s china.” Sue could not tell the difference between them then. Boak or Ben, Ben or Boak?
The trucks backed up at the T in all three directions. Sue held her head while laughing hard at the trucks.
“Your truck’s still running,” said Sue, and Ben looked and so it was.
Once Ben saw Sue’s face in the paper made with a thousand tiny dots, first prize for jam. Who can find anything when it’s really lost? Yours sincerely, Ben. Sincerely yours, Ben. Always and Forever yours, Ben. It’s Ben. I’m Ben. And so happy, Sue, to be Ben.
“A guy should ride him down,” said Ben in the dark. “That’s how.”
“That shack,” said Boak. “Those handcars.”
They stood and looked down on the bull’s face. They threw the gear by the moose rack.
“Hate to leave him,” said Ben.
“He’s not going far,” said Boak.
“Seems tranquil,” said Ben.
“Others will want to sample him,” said Boak. They looked around and at the trees for watchers.
“Best be quick,” said Ben.
“Let’s go.”
The boys ran the first mile at full steam. Their lights ricocheted off tree and stone, down and down and down.
The windows of the shack glowed but the generator was off. The racket inside was louder, music blaring. The door was propped with a five-gallon bucket and the dog’s nose stuck out of it. They slipped among the handcars and picked the one they wanted. They hid when the man came out, stood, and whistled a tune.
They pushed the handcar up the tracks the long way. The ground froze with each step. The moon rose high. They leaned and strained and pressed and sweated and groaned and wheezed. The cliffs gleamed. The headlamps flashed on the rails. A man gets tired. They grunted like pigs made of bone and gristle, skin, tendon and teeth, up and up, and no one there to see them suffer.
“A long way,” said Ben pushing. Ben felt bush in his gut: red and hot with thorns. He knew it was there, but he didn’t. The tendrils reached and rubbed Ben’s insides.
“So far.”
The bush burned his insides: his arms and ribs, rooted in his thighs, it fingered his lungs and squeezed. The crown of it shoved up and choked him alive, hot and cold.
“It’s hurting,” said Ben, sweating and puffing.
“What, Ben?” said Boak, sweating and puffing. “It’s a long way up.”
“Sure,” said Ben. “Heavy forever.”
Their headlamps reflected in the moose’s eyes. They wrestled him in over the rim of the handcar: like the scuba man sitting on the bench by the handrail. No whale in sight for the scuba man. The world is big. Gravity is fast and fair. Like falling back in gray water, ready to breathe through his mouth, falling to the judge in black, the bench splitting and spraying spit over the deck and duffel, alive, gray water inviting, Come in and live here, scuba man! Come in, come in, whoever it is you are!
“That was a good idea,” said Ben, flinging a thigh. “Two can be, one can be, or two can be one. That scuba man had all he needed.”
“What?” said Boak. He was heaving the moose ribs, so heavy, Ben had to help.
“Nothing,” said Ben. “Her freezer’s full now.”
They loaded the gun and gear. Ben found a spruce limb for a brake. He tucked it under his arm. The trees were white in the moon.
“A great ride.”
“Yes.”
They leaned on steel and ran. They left the snout by the tracks as if to watch for trains.
