Claudia Casper - The Mercy Journals

I want you to show me the carcass, I whispered.

Sure … Griffin hopped on one foot as his other struggled to find a way through the leg of his pants. Only one problem. Well, at least one.

Yeah?

Parker. She doesn’t want to be left alone with Leo.

I let that sink in.

Because of the pistol?

No.

He did up his pants, then sat down and pulled up his socks. In my mind I replayed overhearing Leo making a move on Parker.

She doesn’t trust him, Griffin said.

Sure, bring her, but she can’t make a sound. I want to keep Leo out of it. I want to see the cougar alone.

We walked quietly, Griffin in the front, Parker in the middle, knives drawn. We filed past the meteor and headed up the slope of the mountain. Griffin sighted the carcass. It had been dragged partially into the underbrush, head and fore hooves poking out into the open. The bone buds of its antlers were just erupting. The eyes were cloudy and ringed with flies. Inside the brambles you could make out the red hollow of the chest cavity with flashes of white bone and tendon and you could see a claw mark on its back. Griffin and Parker both thought it had been moved since the day before. Griffin crouched down, peered into the bush and said that a large portion of the hindquarters had also been eaten.

I told Griffin and Parker my plan. Griffin was not happy about it. I rubbed myself with dirt and leaves and fir needles — under the armpits, the crotch, and scalp — to minimize my scent and threw a rope over the first branch and secured it. Climbing with the peg leg wasn’t easy, but I braced my legs against the trunk and pulled myself up hand-over-hand until I reached the first branch. I pulled the rope up after me and coiled it, ready for a quick descent. I cut some suckers and tucked them through my belt, then hoisted myself up onto the next branch. The branches higher up were not sturdy enough to hold a cougar’s body. It could only approach from below. I lay down and arranged the suckers to camouflage myself, with Griffin’s help. I had two knives and a whistle. I would’ve appreciated the pistol, but screw it.

Griffin hovered below, unwilling to leave me alone. I told him I’d faced much worse than a fifty-five-plus kilo cat and it wasn’t going to catch me by surprise this time.

Why do you want to see it so much? he fretted.

Curiosity.

Killed the cat, Parker whispered automatically. You don’t have a death wish do you?

Make space for the baby? I said and grinned. I’ve got the whistle. If you hear it send Leo with the Browning.

The light shifted across the forest floor as hours passed. The deer’s head strained away from its neck.

Mid-morning I was meditating on the neon-yellow-green of new leaves when, from the corner of my eye, I saw the carcass move. Without moving my head I refocused on the deer. The cougar had materialized in the clearing. She could have been the one that attacked me, based on Griffin’s description. Same size, same age, same slack belly. She got the buck by the scruff of the neck and tugged it into the clearing, the muscles on her haunches taut with effort. She bobbed her head a few times, sniffed at the gut, then lay down and ate from the haunch. Presently she yawned and burbled and a young male trotted into the clearing. He came over to her and nuzzled her under the chin until she batted him away. He was followed by two slightly smaller cubs, females I assumed.

After eating her fill the mother moved a short distance away and lay down where I couldn’t see her. Her offspring moved in to eat, growling at each other when one got too close to the other’s feeding place. The young male finished first and headed toward his mother but soon returned and started to eat right beside one of his sisters, who yowled and flattened her ears but didn’t stop eating. The male didn’t move. His sister swatted him, looking in their mother’s direction.

The male eventually stopped eating and skittered toward the trunk of my tree. I worried he was going to climb it — I hadn’t factored in offspring — but he lay down in the shade beneath me and started to groom. I wondered if the movement from my breathing would catch his eye. Eventually a huffing sound came from the mother and all the young stopped and looked at her.

The carcass moved back toward the bush. She must’ve come round under the bushes to pull it in because I couldn’t see anything. The young disappeared into the bush one after the other. I waited a long time, then lowered the rope down, waited another interval, then eased myself down.

Walking home I felt emptied out and filled up at the same time. I wanted to return the next day to watch her. I was mesmerized.

Then I thought of Parker and the baby and Griffin and Leo back at the house without me and sped up. I no longer liked the thought of the three of them there without me.

The air had lost the last traces of morning damp and the temperature was rising. I got a noseful of ocean as I walked past the meteor onto our peninsula, the incoming tide picking up whatever had died at low tide — crabs, mussels, sea worms — and wafting their scent inland with the breeze. Ravens cawed excitedly. For a moment, as I stood in the warm sun, the world seemed a perfect place. Then the sun started to burn.

I returned to the kill site the next morning, excited. As I approached I noticed turkey vultures in the trees. The carcass had been pulled out into the clearing and was picked clean. I sat and stared at it until the pressure of the waiting vultures activated my departure. On my return to the cabin, I felt low.

I came in through the sun porch, lay on my bed, and started writing. The house is quiet. Leo and Griffin are probably working in the field. I’m thinking that the goats and chickens may not escape the cougars’ notice for long. Four top-down predators are four too many.

Yesterday we discussed what to do about them. Leo was for killing them, but even Parker isn’t enthusiastic about killing a mother and her cubs. Leo pointed out that they’d be full-grown soon. I said that would mean they’d strike out for their own territories, though I had to admit waiting that out didn’t seem like much of a strategy. I reiterated that once the deer was eaten they’d probably leave. If they hung around I suggested we could scare them away. I actually suggested banging pot lids. Griffin took over at that point and said we should at least clear the brush from around the cabin, the goat pen and chicken coop, the outhouse and the kitchen garden, to eliminate hiding places.

The quiet around here is starting to bother me. I have a feeling of doom again, of things closing in, hanging by a thread, of this interval being some kind of pivot. I feel that what I do next could have bad repercussions if I fail to read the signs correctly.

Leo walked in on me as I was writing.

What’s that?

I closed this journal.

He cocked his head. You keeping a list? Naughty and nice?

What do you want?

That’s a little hostile, brother. I just came to talk about the cougars. I was hoping that upon reflection you weren’t still endorsing the let’s sit around and do fuck all approach.

I am.

Are you nuts? That thing attacked you, a grown man, with other men nearby. You have to believe it could try again. Parker isn’t safe.

If it’s the same one, Griffin managed to hit her hard with the frying pan, and she came away with nothing. She’s going to think deer are easier prey.

If. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to eliminate it? Even exciting? Kill the mother and the rest will scamper. I’ve never tasted cougar meat. Cat soup!

Do you even know who you’re talking to? They’ve got as much right to be here as we do. They haven’t harmed us.

Oh please. I’m going to vomit. You’re a soldier for fuck’s sake.