Sixteen-year-old Unferth took a long drink from the can of Schlitz Blue Label beer and blinked his eyes. Not used to drinking alcohol, two cans of beer made him a little lightheaded. He stroked the 30-30-caliber lever action Winchester Rifle between his knees. He looked at his companion, Big Red, who was three years older and busily steering his father's battered '36 Chevy coupe down the dark, bumpy trail. The ten-year-old jalopy creaked and groaned.
"Do you think anything will be out tonight?" the boy asked in a whisper.
"We'll soon know," said Big Red. "Let's hope it's not the game warden. Pap's gonna be real mad if we get caught."
The Minnesota fall night was crisp and cool. Dry, shriveled cottonwood and oak leaves crackled as the tires crunched over them. Through the partly open window the boy could hear the sounds of night critters chirping and croaking. They passed among trees and bushes with the branches slapping the car. The air was laced with the odor of wild purple lilacs. The car meandered through the backwoods areas and beside swamps and ponds. Big Red hit the brakes just before the left front wheel dropped into a deep pothole. Unferth was thrown forward and bumped his forehead against the solid metal dashboard.
"Hang on," said Big Red.
"How can you follow the road?" the boy asked. They were driving with all of the car lights turned off. A fading harvest moon and shimmering stars cast the only light.
"I know these trails by heart," said Big Red. He reached down on the seat between them and unscrewed the top of a two-quart Mason jar. A strong odor of vinegar fumes made the boy gasp and cough and roll the window down completely.
"Have a strip of pickled pig's ear," Big Red popped a portion in his mouth and began to chew. "Pap makes it from a recipe brung from the old country."
The boy gingerly reached into the jar and took out a piece to taste. It was tough and salty but he was so hungry for meat that he ate the whole thing. "Tastes pretty good if you don't think too much about it," he said, and took a long gulp of beer.
The road came to the edge of an alfalfa hay field surrounded on three sides by a row of newly stacked corn shocks. Big Red killed the engine. He reached into the back seat amid all of the clutter of hamburger wrappers and empty beer cans and pulled out a long flashlight powered by eight batteries. He flicked it on and swept the field with the shining spotlight. At the far edge, startled by the light and standing motionless as a statue, stood the figure of a Northern Minnesota white-tailed moose. It looked at them with unblinking eyes that gleamed as bright as two model T headlights. Possessing a rack of massive antlers, it was missing one ear. It looked strange and unbalanced.
"Shoot it!" said Big Red in a low voice as he held the light on the animal.
The boy grasped the gun and levered a bullet into the chamber. He slowly and deliberately opened the door and moved around the car so that he was positioned under the beam of light and could align the gun sights. "Hurry Up!" whispered Big Red, holding the light steady across the window frame. The eyes of the moose gleamed back. The boy squeezed the trigger. There was an explosion. The moose fell to the ground and lay still. Big Red reached to the dashboard and pulled a large skinning knife from its sheath. "Go over and cut its throat and stay there 'till I get back," he ordered. "I'm going to run home to get Pap to come help gut it out."
Big Red turned the car and left the field. The boy approached the moose. It looked huge as he reached for its one limp ear and attempted to pull the head back so he could plunge the knife into the jugular vein. Like lightning, the moose struck. Flailing out with its legs, one hoof caught the boy in the stomach. He stumbled backwards and the knife flew out and was lost in the darkness. The boy turned and started to run. Halfway across the field something hard and sharp struck him squarely in the back and lifted him off the ground. Pinned to the antlers of a blowing and bellowing and very angry white-tailed moose, he was carried into the forest. Through the hazelnut bushes and jackpine trees and over windfalls they hurdled. The moose tossed its head trying to extricate itself from the weight. Finally they reached the banks of the swollen and rushing Hay Creek River and plunged into the icy water. The shock and pressure of the water freed the boy from the moose's horns.
They were swept down the river for several hundred yards until after a bend the rushing stream became a semi-placid pond. Grasping the exposed root of a scrawny cottonwood tree, the boy crawled out of the water and collapsed, passing out among the pussy willows. He dreamt that he was being saved from drowning by a team of swimming champions dressed in furry leather costumes. They had great toothy smiles and whistled while they worked. Superb swimmers, they could dive and stay immersed for long periods of time. The heroes crowded around him and ceremoniously carried him to safety as if he were royalty. They deposited him above the water line on a dry bed of fragrant pine scented leaves and branches and began to apply soothing ointment to the bruises on his aching body. Oh! It felt so good. If only the dream would never end. Then the forlorn warble of a lonesome lakeshore loon, calling for its mate, pierced the boy's eardrums. He opened his eyes and became aware that something was very wrong.
The rescuers were not superheroes at all, but a band of beavers. They had deposited his body, along with logs, saplings, branches and other miscellaneous debris, onto a construction that they had been building over the river. The soothing salve he had felt was the clay-like mud that had been packed around his body to secure and cement it inside the structure.
"Damn!" said Unferth. "I got to get out of here fast!" It took all of the strength in his body to crack the drying mud, but he escaped the super-eager beavers.
He came next to another shallow pond. The water was pleasant and he stopped to wash the irritating mud and clay from his skin. He decided to rest for a time in its soothing coolness and fell asleep. When he awoke, his arms and legs and face and almost all of his body was covered with slimy, wriggling, worm-like creatures. In horror, he realized that he had fallen into a nest of the rare and lethal Hubbard County carnivorous leaches. He knew that if they were not removed he would have every drop of blood sucked from his body. Stimulated by pure adrenaline he started to run and pick, run and pick. Into the forest he ran, picking the leaches with both hands. His fingers became numb and blue with the urgency of ridding himself of the blood-sucking parasites.
When the last leach had been plucked and thrown into the bushes the exhausted boy sank to the ground beneath an ancient oak tree. There, amid the acorns he had just closed his eyes when he heard the sound of snorting and squealing. There was a cold prick of something sharp pushing against his side. It was the fourteen-inch tusk of a huge wild boar. A family of hungry looking wild pigs stood there. They belonged to the vicious white-lipped peccary tribe. They nudged him with cool, moist snouts and nibbled at his body with sharp incisors.
He remembered the bedtime story that his grandfather told him when he had been a toddler. About how Great Uncle Bunker had gotten smashed out of his mind on homemade moonshine cider and managed to stagger down to the river before passing out cold. How a group of these voracious white-lipped peccary pigs had happened along. They saw in the comatose carcass of the hapless Uncle Bunker a marinated morsel of tasty gourmet cuisine. At the end of a frenzy of grunting, smacking lips and bone crunching mandibles there was not a shred of evidence that there had ever existed an Uncle Bunker. Every morsel was devoured, even the feet and fingernails.
Unferth knew quick action must be taken to avoid Uncle Bunker's fate. Reaching around on the ground he grasped a large, hard pinecone knot. Lashing out with it, the alpha boar was struck squarely on the tender, sensitive snout. The surprised pig flinched backward giving the boy time to leap to his feet and grab onto the low hanging branch of a nearby jackpine tree. He was able to climb beyond the reach of the pigs. Pumped with excitement he kept climbing until almost to the top. There, hands grasping the tree trunk, he came to a rough place where the bark had been stripped away. He had seen this circumstance before and knew what caused it. There was no time to retreat before he felt a painful sensation, right between the shoulder blades. He had interrupted a pregnant porcupine indulging in her favorite nocturnal meal of tender bark and pungent pinesap. She had slapped him with her prickly tail for his intrusion. Now it felt like a thousand needles penetrating his body. He was so startled and shocked by the pain that he lost his grip on the tree and began to fall. Dropping toward earth, the descent was slowed as he struck branch after branch. Before reaching the bottom he was able to grasp a limb and stop the plunge long enough to make sure that the wild boar tribe had left the area.
On the ground, he continued onward, looking to find a way out of the forest. He stumbled unto a patch of blueberries and, with stomach growling, dropped to his hands and knees and began gobbling them up by the handfuls. The hunger was satiated and although the porcupine quills were a sore and hurtful ache, he lay down on his stomach and went to sleep. A furry presence interrupted his slumber. A group of skunks stood there watching. It consisted of an adult male and female with four half-grown offspring. The boy saw the open end of a hollow log that was likely their den a scant foot away. Trying not to panic, he knew there would be ominous consequences if a sudden move should frighten the family of six black and white striped woodland creatures. The question was who would make the first move? After what seemed an eternity to the boy, the adult male approached and raised his left hind leg. Unferth squeezed his eyes tightly shut and held his breath. He prepared himself for the terrible stench that would surely come. Instead, there was the warm, wet sensation of a stream of water striking right behind the ear and trickling down his neck. One by one the other members of the family followed the example set by the father. The boy was drenched from one end to the other. He did not move and finally the animals silently disappeared into the night. The boy arose, shook himself like a wet dog in a thunderstorm, looked upward and gave silent thanks. After all, it would have been much worse if he had done something to frighten and provoke them into utilizing their scent glands. You never want to get into a pissing contest with those guys! He remembered being given this advice many times.
Unferth knew what would happen if a person or animal became lost or disoriented. They would travel in a circle and eventually come back to the place where they originally started. And sure enough, he came to the field of alfalfa hay surrounded by the corn shocks. There in the field were two figures standing by the old battered '36 Chevy coupe. It was Big Red and his Pap, who was also known as "Old Stooped Grey Red". The old man had been just plain "Red" in his youth but then his son, Big Red, who weighed thirteen pounds at birth, had come along. Pap became "Old Red". Later on his bright hair faded and he became "Old Grey Red". Then he had become afflicted with some kind of arthritic rheumatic disease of the spinal column that caused his body to become permanently frozen in a ninety-degree angle stooped forward at the waist. He had an elongated neck that curved upward in an arc. Add to that a small head with an enormous hooked nose and furious, glistening, black eyes. He resembled an angry, starving vulture ready to attack.
"You Mother-Mucking Sons of Marinated Muskrats!" the old man croaked, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down. "I oughter tan your hides good, both of you smudgy snipperwhappers. Getting me up in the middle of the night for nothing! Where's this gol-durned thousand pound moose you was supposed to have killed?"
"Now Pap, simmer down," said Big Red. "Like I telled you. That old moose with one ear gone was laying right there deader'n a doornail when I left to come and fetch you." They looked at Unferth.
"I'm sorry, s-sir," the boy stammered. "I tried to stick him but he ran away."
"Well ye should've tried harder," the old man said. "I've a good notion to give the both of you a Brobdingnagian butt-belting!" He removed his heavy leather belt.
"Please sir," the boy cried, almost in tears. "Please, Mr. Old Grey and Stoopid Red. I'm sorry I couldn't hold onto the moose."
"What did you call me?" the old man shouted. "I will not take that kind of sass from nobody!"
Big Red moved behind Old Stooped Grey Red. He picked him up and lifted him high off the ground while the old man screamed and kicked and lashed out wildly with the belt flailing the air. Then out of the woods staggered the one-eared moose. The three figures stood still as the moose wove his way toward them in a straight line. It collapsed, gasped twice, and died right there at their feet.
They dragged the moose into the woods and strung it up with a rope tied to its hind legs and the other end thrown over the sturdy limb of a jack pine tree. Big Red and the boy built a small fire out of dry twigs and leaves while Old Stooped Grey Red dressed out the moose. The old man had mellowed out and seemed quite happy with the night's outcome. He even got his pliers out of the car and pulled the porcupine quills out of the boy's back. Nearby in the forest a tufted titmouse chirped.
"You all did a good job, kid," the old man said to the boy as they hunched down around the fire, roasting bloody chunks of moose testicles on sharpened sticks. "Come by the farm tomorrow and pick up your share of the meat."
"Yes," said Big Red, chewing loudly, moose grease from the morsels running down his chin. "We gotta go out shining again sometime real soon."
"I can't wait," said Unferth.
BIO: Richard Short was born in the backwoods of Northern
Minnesota in 1930. To supplement the family's meager
income some of the jobs he worked at were: Lumberjack,
farmer, beaver dam buster, weasel trapper, skunk
skinner, deer poacher, log roller and bounty hunter.
He was drafted into the US Army in 1951 and served in
a tank battalion in Japan. After his discharge he came
west to seek his fortune. One of the positions he held
was, Talent Coordinator at Mustang Molly's Bunny Ranch
on the outskirts of a small town in Nevada. He finally
settled in California and for a brief time he was
Entertainment Director at Forest Lawn. He was married
45 years and has three children, seven grandchildren
and four great-grand children.
