Matthew Null: Allegheny Front

Andy was trying not to cry. His face was red as his beard. Gingerly, Conner unlaced Andy’s boot and slipped it off him.

His son should have done that, I thought. Bud stood there, abashed, rifle slung.

The foot flopped about in a way it shouldn’t. The ankle was broken — you imagined you could hear the bones scraping together. Andy was a tough old bird. No, he said, no ambulance. They’d never make it up here, and even if they did, he didn’t want to pay the bill. “Somebody just drive me after we skin it out, is all I ask.” Beads of sweat formed on his forehead and face. He seemed to flutter in and out, like to fall off the rock. “I hate sitting in that fucking emergency room. Keep you for hours.”

The hunters winced at the sight of it. Already beginning to darken, the ankle would be ratsnake-black within the hour. Conner moved it. Andy sucked in a sharp breath. He’d slipped and fallen as the dogs swarmed about in the cave, gun kicking in the darkness. “Couldn’t see the fucker,” Andy said. “Should’ve took a flashlight.”

“You didn’t have a light?”

“Stupid of me. I forgot. Too old for that kind of shit. Young man’s game.”

I asked, “How’s it feel?”

Conner snorted. “Shitty, I bet.”

Andy began to protest he was just fine. He looked over at his sheepish son. “Twisted, is all. I’ll be running laps tomorrow.” He smiled for Bud’s benefit. Bud wouldn’t meet his gaze.

Someone I didn’t know, a man about thirty, stripped off his jacket and flannel and gave me the t-shirt beneath. The man’s torso was awfully pale, and tattoos shined bluely from his skin. All the fellows looked to be state-pen alumni — oxycodone people. I cut the shirt and made a wrap, as you would for a sprain. Now I know that was the wrong thing to do. All I did was ratchet up the pain.

Andy was given a couple fat white pills to get him through.

The dog you couldn’t do much for. Shovel’s ear was torn almost in two, ghastly, flapping like a piece of lunch meat. I tried scratching Shovel’s bony skull to calm him, but even then, he was proud and aloof, like the cotton-field debs I met at Vanderbilt.

Conner took Shovel’s head roughly in hand. The dog yelped and bled in earnest now. He frowned at the claw-tattered ear. Someone produced a medical kit, no bigger than a flask. Conner asked me to hold the dog, which whined and shivered in my arms. Conner stitched the ear together the best he could with a steel needle and gut. It wasn’t Conner’s dog, but he liked doctoring, perhaps because he’d failed biology three semesters in a row. Dad had to browbeat him to stay in school. The fights were epic howlers. You’d think he was sending the kid to Bergen-Belsen.

Conner looked at me. Gruffly, he said, “You look like you got something to say.”

He meant, as he always did, You’re not any better than me.

“Not really,” I said.

“There’s amoxicillin in the box.”

He forced a pill down the dog, clamping its mouth, massaging its throat. Shovel walked away on unsteady legs. The doctoring didn’t look sound, but I held my tongue.

We young fellows went into the cave. Bud fell in to help. Neither Conner nor I mentioned what he’d done, the way he refused to go inside and kill the bear. If not for me, the others might never have found out at all.

The cave smelled of grease and afterbirth, though she seemed to be a barren sow. The flashlight beam picked up a glint of light like a scrap of aluminum foil. I scooped up Andy’s pistol — an off-brand.40 S&W — out of the mud and stuck it in my pocket. The smell shifted to rancid milk: the gut-shot bear. In those confines, it was enough to make you ill.

A backbreaker dragging her out. We propped her on rocks, blood dripping from the muzzle. The dogs milled obsessively about her. She stood five-ten, my height, and maybe two hundred pounds before dressing: very good for West Virginia. It would’ve been a fine first bear for Bud. For anyone. I felt a twinge of jealousy. I worked out the claws and whistled. I wished it were mine. Conner opened the jaws wide and stuck his neck in between, feeling the yellow fangs on his neck. Everyone laughed.

“Christ,” Conner said, pulling out and letting the mouth snap shut. “Teeth stinks.”

A fellow said to Bud, “Hell of a bear. You ought to be proud.”

Bud stood there, frozen, unanswering, just a bashful, quivering smile.

Andy said, “You done good, pal. You can brag on that one.”

Andy was telling us that Bud had killed it! He didn’t know Conner and I had seen it all. Conner looked at me, muttering something obscene.

The lie made me unspeakably angry. I hated that lying child.

The shirtless, jailbird-looking guy (who had since pulled on an open jacket that read NOTHING FINER THAN A PIPELINER in stylized letters) took out a cell phone and snapped a picture of the bear. I remember that because no one here had cell phones in those years; the county didn’t even have a tower. Never would, until the ski resort demanded one. That was the first phone I encountered that could take pictures. Prideful, he showed us how it worked.

There were no normal trees, nothing with which to carry out the bear. Instead, we made a harness of rope and skidded it into a draw with road access. The exertion cut the cold. Andy hobbled behind, wincing, leaning on Bud. We hoisted the bear over the embankment with one final groan and onto the road. Eyes gone blue. Body stiffening. The hounds followed, leaping to lick blood from the coat. Conner socked them back with the ball of a fist.

When I looked at Bud, the inexplicable anger returned. The cold poison flooded me — the cold poison that is my life.

Thirty minutes later, we had a circle of trucks. We fixed a log-chain around the bear’s neck and made a gallows from a stout limb. As I cranked the winch, the chain yawned and tightened as it drew out the slack. The bear levitated as if wanting to stand again. Someone backed Andy’s truck under so we could stand in the bed and gut her deftly. The innards fell with slapping sounds on a garbage bag and steamed.

Crawling uphill in the Blazer, the Chinese came, and we got ready to split the bear: head and hide to the one who killed it, the meat divided equally among us, the gallbladder to the lead-dog’s owner, to defray the possible cost of death. Casting glances for game wardens, the Chinese weighed the gallbladder with scales and paid Andy a thin stack of fifty-dollar bills. The last warden used to take a little taste, but he had retired and times had changed. They slid the gallbladder into a Mason jar. It was a greenish-black sac, heavy with bile and big enough to fill my palm. Frowning, Andy held up the money.

This female bear, said the Chinese, isn’t as valuable. Andy said they were fucking liars. They’ll say it’s male anyhow. With a smile, he demanded full market value.

The bartering seemed to soothe his pain, but really, the synthetic morphine was in his bloodstream now.

A middle-aged Chinese man in a really nice Filson jacket approached me. He was handsome and dignified, the color of magnolias, and had no accent. In fact, he sounded more American than any of us locals, us who had no ties to any other land, with our twang that people at college — even my professors — made fun of behind my back, even when I took pains to lessen it.

The well-spoken Chinese said, “This is a fine bear, truly.” Her body swayed and drooled redly in the snow. “Particularly for a female.”

For some reason, I felt an urge to talk with him, which I always do with foreigners here, to show them we are good people. “She run the dogs hard,” I said, “this one especially.”

Then I realized two things: that I was just more white trash to him, and that he was a hired interpreter for the other Chinese.