Some Pheasants

Copyright 2020 Erik Helm

John Phillipson motioned to the waiter at the Fox and Hounds to pour the wine first for his guest. He had chosen the vintage carefully to accompany the lunch he was giving for his young employee Ed, who had been a key team member in the successful conclusion of a major project for his firm. Ed was a software engineer of rare talent. Slim and dark haired with thick glasses, Ed was someone one would pass on the street and not remember seeing, even if the street were otherwise empty. He had worked long hours for the past six months and even took work home with him to his small bachelor’s house. John thought perhaps Ed had worked a bit too hard at times. He needed to get out in the sun more, thus the lunch at his favorite restaurant, and further invitations to participate in activities that would take Ed away from his screen and keyboard.

What made John rather unique, he thought to himself, was that he got to know each and every one of his 92 employees on a personal level. Like a good general, he reasoned, a good manager and CEO should know his assets and how best to keep them active, happy, and even more… know what drove them in life. That last question was one that eluded him with Ed. He couldn’t believe that Ed’s work was his only reward or joy.

“What should I order?” asked Ed, who habitually had a brown bag lunch of a sandwich and a piece of fruit at his desk while he worked.

“I recommend the pheasant’” Phillipson replied. “I have it every time it is on offering, and it is very fresh and well prepared. They serve it with asparagus, wild rice, and a nice herb white-sauce.”

It was agreed, and John toasted Ed’s health, and after the wine was sampled, began to inquire about any hobbies that his valued employee might engage in. After some sundry talk about toy trains and stamps, John asked Ed if he had ever hunted pheasants.

“No, but I do love pheasants,” Ed exclaimed with some passion as the plates arrived with the delicately presented breasts of that most desirable of birds steaming and framed like a work of art with the rice and vegetables.

After the feast was consumed, and the coffee was served, John brought up the subject again.

“I would like to invite you to my home for a little pheasant hunt if you are willing… I have over 60 acres of scrub fields bordered by thin wooded copses that are full of pheasants. A couple of years ago my accountant suggested the idea of reducing our taxes by raising game on our land, so we stocked 25 pheasants and bought several chickens and even a pet goat. The chickens lay a few fresh eggs, and the goat… well, the goat just is a goat, but the pheasants multiplied like rabbits. There must be over a hundred cocks and hens, and I rarely get time to hunt them any more, but now that the project is over and a success, I suggest we take the time this Saturday for a few hours and do some nice upland wing shooting.”

Ed mentioned that back before grad school he was a keen trap shooter, but that his shotgun was back with his parents in Connecticut.

“No worries,” John assured him. “I have a little Spanish side by side 20 bore you can borrow, a spare game bag for you, plenty of shells I got from a little ma and pa sporting goods store that was closing, and anything else you need. Just come as you are, so to speak, and wear some tough pants and a jacket that will stand up to moving through brush, and also a stout pair of hiking boots or something on that order. We will hunt together, and then Ellen, Mrs. Phillipson, who you will meet, will do her magic to the birds. You also will meet my English Cocker Abby, the best bird dog I ever owned.”

“Do you enjoy a fine Scotch, by the way?” John enquired with one raised eyebrow.

Ed agreed he did indeed enjoy a fine malt, and would be delighted to enjoy this adventure offered so kindly to him. The time was fixed at 1 o’clock Saturday the next.

Sometimes fate turns and weaves its lines through the stories of our lives beginning with a little incident. The ‘incident’ in this case was that in un-boxing a fine 12 year old bottle of Speyside Scotch, Mr. Phillipson accidentally dropped it. The tinkling of broken glass and following invective brought Abby to investigate, and the poor dog trod on a bit of glass, cutting her front left paw. There was no other bottle of scotch in the house, and with Ed due to arrive in fifteen minutes, a change of plans was in order. Brandy would follow the hunt, which would now have to be conducted without the dog. More difficult for certain, and lacking in that essential quality of hunting over a champion bird dog who knows more about bird hunting than the hunters ever will, but not impossible he reasoned. The sheer quantity of birds on his land would allow the hunt to continue even without a dog. They would just have to do it ‘old-fashioned style,’ each of them zigzagging and flushing their own birds. He hurried to sweep up the glass as his wife placed a bandage over Abby’s thankfully very slight injury.

Ed was prompt, and Phillipson, upon opening the front door, was greeted by a unique sight. Ed had on a pair of old rubber galoshes complete with metal buckles. For a coat, his guest was sporting a dilapidated khaki barn coat obviously several sizes too big for him, and smelling faintly of mothballs. This outfit was crowned by an eager smile and delivered forward with a warm handshake. John wondered, just a fleeting thought in the back of his mind, if Ed’s hunting attire had come from a short visit to a local thrift store. But then, he recalled, Ed did say he loved his pheasants. Maybe he had no outdoor gear, since Ed seemed to be always working owlishly at his computer, or maybe he had his old hunting kit stored at his parent’s house along with his shotgun. Well, today he would show him a bit of the outdoor life anyway. Perhaps if Ed enjoyed it, Phillipson speculated, he could gift him with some briar pants, a game vest, and even a nice bird gun as an end of year bonus. He was worth it after all… all those long hours…

John ushered his guest into a little sun room located off the foyer that he playfully referred to as his ‘Safari room.’ He seated Ed in a nice leather chair, and took down a canvas gun case from a nook between shelves filled with outdoor books. He unzipped the case, and revealed the soft warmth of a hand-rubbed and oiled walnut stock, and case patterned side plates of the Spanish double. He broke the gun and handed it to Ed.

“This little girl needs to sound off a little. She hits exactly as you point her. You don’t need to lead too far with pheasants, and I think a box each of high-brass number 5s should do us fine today.” Ed was cradling the gun as if it would break or bite him, but Phillipson soon reassured him, and closing the action on empty chambers, executed a few snappy swings. Ed said the drop and length of pull were perfect. John was impressed. His associate knew a few things about guns. This would be a fine hunt, with the slight clouds, little wind, and a half-inch of powdery snow fallen in the pre-dawn darkness.

They began on the edge of a small corn-stand abutting the drive. Each side of the drive was a field, and on the edge of each field were the wood copses.

“Pheasants, like most game are creatures of edges,” John explained to Ed. “Edges and Cover. We will split the sides between us and work the edges of the field and wood. Cover everything in between. Pheasants can be runners instead of flyers, and you want to kick them up into flight. Try not to shoot runners, that can lead to accidents.”

“Good hunting!” he added. “We will meet back here in two hours, so take a look at your watch… I have it half past the hour.”

Ed nodded and smiled, his action broken and cradled expertly in his right arm, and his galoshes clicking and galoshing as he walked.

John turned and strode into the shoulder high grass and weeds, beginning the process of covering ground and every likely lie a bird might favor. After 10 minutes or so, he kicked up his first cock out a sort of snow-covered wigwam of brush. The bird flew straight up and angled right. John swung from behind and touched off the right barrel of his Fox 16 bore. The pheasant dropped in a shower of feathers. It was easy to locate due to the snow cover. It also helped that John had hit it with a headshot, so it never had a chance to run, hide, and slowly die hidden from prying eyes.

Five minutes later John found his second bird. A hen, this crafty gal ran straight away from him and then flew low and flat. He aimed the fowling gun and fired the left barrel, giving the hen a shot-string of full-choke 5s and bringing her down dead. As he retrieved the bird, he wondered at the lack of shooting from Ed’s side of the field. That morning he had spread a large bag of feed around on that side of the drive, and if the past were any experience, the birds would be on the feast pretty quickly. He did want Ed to have a successful and fun day today.

The third bird John flushed required both barrels to bring it down, and as he was searching for it where it fell near the edge of wood, he heard the joyful sound of a distant report followed by a second muffled ‘boom.’ Ed must have found a bird! The day would be a success if Ed could shoot one tenth as well as could write code… but then there were those galoshes… really, what was he thinking? Ed really needed to get out more often.

The next hour saw no more birds located by John, while on Ed’s side of the woods sounded like a slightly excited English shooting party on a driven hunt. No more than ten minutes elapsed between further exclamations from Ed’s shotgun. He must have found the mother-load thought John.

The time came to make his way back to the rendezvous, and as Phillipson approached the little corn stand, a final pheasant flushed and flew left and high. John’s shot was on the mark, and the fourth bird fell fifty yards off as Ed appeared out of the field. John pointed to the bird, and motioned Ed to place it in his game bag, as he was much closer. Ed’s bag, John was very pleased to note, was sagging heavily and very full. The pheasant was added to the bag and the tail feathers stuck jauntily out as Ed smiled.

“Well, how did it go?” John asked with a wink.

“I had the best time ever!” Ed exclaimed with flushed cheeks. “Some of the pheasants flew kind of strange, and one just sat there, and then there was one that perched in a tree, but I only missed a few shots! I even hit a double…”

“Pheasants can be like that sometimes,” John explained as they walked back to the barn to breast-out the birds. “Predictability is not a pheasant’s strong suit.”

Phillipson had a bench at waist-height covered with plastic sheeting and a tin garbage container ready to accept the offal. He reached in his back game pouch and placed his three pheasants on the table. Ed opened the strap and turned out the contents of his bag next to it.

There are moments that time seems to move rather slowly. At this very moment, it crawled in slow motion. The contents of the bag that tumbled out onto the table included in order:

One cock pheasant (The one that Phillipson dispatched)

A large woodpecker.

One pigeon

Two grackles

A starling

One female cardinal

And wearing a rather stupefied expression, as if to say “Now what the hell?” a very dead member of the small Phillipson stock of chickens.

“Well, what do you think?” Ed proudly exclaimed.

The words almost formed in John’s mouth, but both because he caught himself in time, and due to the fact that his jaw was hanging open, only a sort of strangling gurgle made itself heard. He finally closed his mouth, straightened to his full six feet and with his back rigid, and his hand extended, turned to Ed, shook his hand, and exclaimed, “Good shooting!”

As he lined up the birds for dressing and stropped his knife, he reflected that it would not pay to even mention or explain to Ed what he had done, nor to inquire if Ed indeed had ever actually seen a pheasant before, and if he had or had not, what the heck he was thinking…

His knife hovered carefully over the little starling.

Ellen (Mrs. Phillipson) was presented a tray of ‘Pheasant breasts’ in the kitchen with a whisper from John. She arched her eyebrows in reply, and John placed his forefinger to his lips and winked.

Seated in the ‘Safari room’ after being introduced the smiling and lovely Mrs. Phillipson, Ed was offered a large snifter-glass of amber liquid. John proposed a toast, but Ed insisted in presenting a tribute instead. “To my first hunt and your excellent hospitality,” he proclaimed.

“Excellent Scotch,” he added on the subject of the brandy. The best I have ever tasted.”

Both Mr. And Mrs. Phillipson agreed with some shared reflections after dinner was over and Ed had left for home with grateful thanks; these were that the woodpecker was surprisingly delicate and tasty, that Ed had obviously thought of a ‘Pheasant’ as some sort of food he had been served once or twice that formerly had wings and flew a bit now and then, and that above all…. That Ed REALLY needed to get out more…

Strong Drink Take Ye... Not...

Copyright 2019 Erik Helm: Short Story, Fiction, Humor

 

 

Oh thou sinner!

 

The sermon

The parishioners to the Lutheran church in the town of Brule’ Wisconsin were a grim lot that Sunday when that memorable day happened. The motley congregation filed in silently, and sat with bloodshot eyes and sweating foreheads upon the notoriously uncomfortable pews that wobbled as one sat down, and creaked when one moved. Old Toivo’s hair had been combed and scrubbed, but was already coming astray with his twitching. The Paulson family, all 14 of them, were in the front with the patriarch, Linus Paulson trying to busy himself with the missal, his hands shaking from a wee too much brandy consumed at the Saturday festivities the evening before.

As the Pastor, Fr. Larsson panned his vision over the assembling devout; he reflected that today’s sermon was overdue. He blinked his rheumy eyes and nodded with a smile to Leena, the oldest of the worshipers, covered from head to toe in black lace. There were moans and coughs coming from the back, where the less pious and roughest sinners and recalcitrants of the area were packed together and fidgeting. Funny, Fr. Larsson thought to himself, how they always pack to the front and to the back, and leave the middle like an empty purgatory inhabited only by a few ghostly figures. Yes, they all were suffering the after-effects of potent potables. He could even smell them from the pulpit. So be it. The lord moves in mysterious ways.

Fr. Larsson looked at his watch, and then at his trembling hands. “Never again!” he mumbled under his breath, as he thought back to the bridge, and the birth of today’s sermon.

There was a conspicuous silence as the congregation followed Fr. Larsson out of the clapboard church, and shook his hand with a greeting and forced smile. As the parishioners broke into family groups and retired home to Sunday dinner or to Michael's tavern, the later a little guiltily, the questions were murmured, “What had made him do it?” After all Fr. Larsson was as fond of his spirits as he was of the holy variety. Didn’t he come every evening to Michael’s for a wee drop of something medicinal already smelling if he had gotten into the sacramental wine? Didn’t he toast them and their families, and even perhaps before leaving, sometimes even buy a round? Sure, didn’t he carry in his jacket pocket a bottle with no label half-filled with some sort of medicine against the cold fitted with a cork stopper? What had filled him with such brimstone and gall as he railed against alcohol and sputtered and spat the words from Proverbs and Ephesians at them? Was it hypocrisy now… or was it…? The thought of a repentant temperance-pastor and crusader gave them all a bit of a thirst, and the talk turned to what was to be done… if anything… or would it all just blow over in time?

 

Of delirium tremens and canoes

 

Ralph and Jake arranged their gear in the canoe carefully in order to prevent an imbalance. Duffle bags, picnic basket, cooler, and their fly tackle were strapped down as the sun rose over the birches and fir trees surrounding Stone’s Bridge landing. The two intrepid adventurers from the cities would be taking their first spring fishing trip down the Brule’ River for trout, and the May weather was perfect. Almost too perfect, Ralph thought to himself while glancing at the robin’s egg blue of the sky and the already warm morning sun. Perfect weather for a canoe trip, even if the fishing might suffer a bit.

There were a few splashes downstream against the weed beds as the trout showed themselves hungry and in pursuit of the mayfly nymphs that were climbing the waving fronds and hatching into little sailboats upon the glassy water. They launched the canoe after rigging up their fly-rods and pushed off, each taking turns at the paddle as the other cast to likely spots. The smooth flow carried them downstream slowly, and everything seemed to be in a nice rhythm that morning with the birds singing and swooping over the water, the splashes of trout, the whisper of fly-line making loops through the air, and the gentle hissing of the Brule’ as it wound its way sedately down toward Lake Superior.

Each angler began catching a few brook trout, and an occasional brown trout on the flies supplied at a local hardware store, and tied in a back room by a character called ‘Feather Betty,’ who also served the town as a sign-painter and local gossip. The trout sure liked her flies. They switched off on the paddle a few more times before rounding a bend and deciding to break the lemonade bottles out of the cooler. The May morning had blossomed into one of those rare spring days when the heat of the sun finally breaks through the wet of March and April and the foggy and cold memories of winter to release the denizens of the north woods from their many months of slumber. God it felt good!

Ralph handed a cold bottle of lemonade to Jake and they both drank deeply and dreamily. After the first mile or so of river, and six nice fat trout in the cooler wrapped in an old towel, they were casting lazily now, and more interested in just enjoying the spring day. A pileated woodpecker flew across the river and a kingfisher chattered, a young doe poked her head through a stand of cedars and drank from the river, and Jake spotted an otter slithering along the edges of the water. They began to get a hunger up for the cold fried chicken and summer-sausage and cheese sandwiches sitting in the wicker basket, but the only place to beach the canoe was up ahead a mile or so on a little sandy shore which offered a rustic public landing. No worries though, as the two anglers let the canoe float with the current, only keeping it straight by an occasional gentle stroke of the wooden paddles. Ralph even took off his shirt, and Jake let his bare feet dangle over the side to tickle his toes in the liquid mirror of the Brule’

Our two heroes were having a beer after lunch when Jake looked downstream and spotted an ominous dark cloud on the horizon. It is well known in those parts that Lake Superior, that greatest of the Great Lakes, with surface temperatures even on a sunny warm May afternoon under 40 degrees, is more than capable of making its own weather. Mariners more experienced with wizened eyes and calloused hands will head to a safe port rather than tempt fate with this inland ocean when the swells and clouds gather. Unfortunately when on a river…

“Hey Ralph,” Jake gesticulated with a shaky index finger, “Looky there!”

They stared at the advancing dark mass as the wind began to pick up, and came to the swift conclusion that they had better get the heck out of dodge as fast as the boat would take them. “How far is the takeout,” Ralph asked as Jake folded the river map. “About two miles… but river miles mind you, and there are a few rapids and ledges ahead of us.”

The two quickly packed up the picnic basket and cooler and pushed off downstream, this time with both men at the paddles, and using big strokes.

The front hit them and knocked them back upstream and toward the left bank after just half a mile was covered. The wind howled and the sun was suddenly shrouded from view. The temperature dropped by 30 degrees in a minute. They both knew they were in trouble.

As the front passed overhead, the winds died down just enough to allow the now worried friends to make progress down river. The trouble was that it was difficult to keep the canoe oriented properly. If it tacked just a little it caught the upstream wind and turned sideways. They began to fight every bend in the river when it started to rain.

Ralph asked Jake to hand him the green duffle bag. It contained his spare clothes and a sweater and rain jacket. He also told Jake that he had better put on his slicker as well.

“I didn’t bring one…” Jake said with slumped shoulders. “It was so nice out that I never thought to bring anything else but jeans and a shirt.”

“We can share,” Ralph countered, shaking his head. “I have a spare poncho in the duffle.”

Jake continued his furious paddling, propelling the canoe forward through some tricky ledges and fallen cedars. There was the sound of a zipper opening followed by a lingering silence behind him.

 

“Shit.”

“What… what does that mean…?”

“It means, my dear intrepid partner, that I grabbed the wrong duffle bag.” “The one with the sweaters, socks, and rain gear is back in the trunk of the car.”

“Umm… okay… so riddle me this… what is in that duffle?”

Jake turned away for a moment and twisted to look back as Ralph produced a large blob of colorful cloth.

“My kids costumes for the school play,” he explained, holding up what looked to be several clown outfits.

“What play?” Jake asked haltingly.

“Snow white and the Seven Dwarves,” was the reply.

“And…”

“And, we have here Dopey and Grumpy.” “My wife sewed them out of wool and felt, so at least they will be warm.”

“I’ll take Grumpy,” Jake stated. “At least it fits my mood.”

 

They back-paddled into a little eddy against the bank, and dropping the little coffee-can filled with cement that served as an anchor, quickly donned the too-small costumes. Jake looked at Ralph and started laughing, realizing that he had to be a mirror image in his Dwarf-suit. A huge gray fake beard that was integrated into his tall felt stocking cap hid Ralph’s face. Built into the side were huge fake ears. His arms stuck out from the costume from the elbow down.

“What?” Ralph asked with a smile.

“You look like… I don’t even know how to describe it!”

“You too, but even if we look like clowns, nobody will ever see us, and we are sort of warmer…”

 

They pulled the anchor and continued downstream, the drizzle soaking the costumes.

Before twenty minutes passed, Jake pulled the canoe over again, steering towards shore.

“What’s up?” Ralph asked.

“My hands… I can’t feel my hands anymore… they’re freezing.” “Hold up a bit, I have an idea!”

Jake rummaged around under the costume and triumphantly produced a small mason jar filled with a clear liquid.

“What’s that?”

“Moonshine!” “I bought it from an old Scot in the parking lot of the gas station.”

“You’re not going to start drinking?” Ralph queried in alarm.

“No, this is pure alcohol.” “We can burn it in one of the tin cups with a little cloth to act as a wick.”

Well, as ideas went, it might have been a desperate one, but it worked. Jake tore off and twisted a piece of his costume cuff and placed it into the tin cup, covered it with the moonshine, took a sip for good luck, and using his Zippo lighter, touched it off.

“I don’t see any flame…” Ralph commented as Jake rubbed his hands over the cup.

“It’s alcohol, the flame is invisible.” Jake replied, as both of them began to heat their hands over the impromptu fire.

They left the cup to burn out by itself on the center cushion, and shoved off downstream, their hands now toasty-warm. They had the bridge in sight as they rounded a bend in the river. The takeout was a couple of hundred yards past the old bridge. They would make it after all. That is when Ralph, in the rear seat, began coughing. Jake turned to look just as the old seat cushion, made of foam rubber and vinyl burst into flames and spewed black smoke that enveloped the canoe. The tin cup had toppled over and spread the burning alcohol. They began beating at it with their paddles, trying to put out the fire, and causing the now out of control canoe to spin in circles.

Fr. Larsson stood in a melancholy mood against the rail of the old bridge and took a swig from the nearly half-empty bottle of the best the still in Iron River could produce. He flavored it with crushed juniper berries from the bushes growing in front of the sacristy. One thing was nagging at him, and he came here to clear his head. He had no sermon ready for this Sunday’s high mass. It was bothering him, and so he was drinking and watching the river flow, letting his thoughts float away… looking for inspiration.

From under the bridge came a sound of swearing and banging, and the smell of burning brimstone. Emerging directly below him, Fr. Larsson, to his horror, imagined he saw what looked to be four clown-devils shouting at him and dancing around in a large fire that floated on the river. He closed one eye… now it was two clown-devils. He smelled the burning, and heard the incantations of the devils as they shouted. “Jesus!… Holy Christ!… Damn!" chanted the figures as they spun downstream slowly and out of sight.

 

Fr. Larsson took a long swig from the bottle and splashed some across his brow. He then made the sign of the cross, and heaved the bottle far into the river. Whatever he had seen, it couldn’t be real… or could it? Whatever the truth of that vision was that he saw on the river that day, one thing could be sure… if it was caused by the shakes… the D.T.s or by temptation, he would not touch a drop ever again! He crossed himself again, and wobbling back toward town, began to get an idea for a sermon after all. “By God, I’ll give ‘em hell, I will!” he shouted to a confused grouse perched above him in a tree. “By God I will!”

Sunday evening saw a certain lack of jocularity in the patrons of Michael’s tavern. The jukebox wasn’t playing, and the dice-cups were all alone at the end of the bar, silent. Silent too were the usual suspects seated at the bar and at the few tables, nursing small tap beers and looking sorry for themselves.

 

The door opened and the pastor stood there blinking. He walked slowly forward, his hands behind his back, acknowledging the silent nods with a tip of his head. He sat down slowly at the bar.

 

By now every eye was half-downcast in a sort of shame, but half-trained on Fr. Larsson, waiting for what might transpire. The silence lasted a full minute.

 

“What the devil are all you starin at? Haven’t you ever seen a repentant man before? Fr. Larsson bellowed.

 

 “Get everyone what they want, and make mine a double!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Oath-Takers

 

 

Two old friends have an adventure of a lifetime along a northern Wisconsin trout stream… one that they might want to keep amongst themselves for obvious reasons. Copyright 2019 Erik Helm

 

The plan, as Ed explained it to Pete, his life-long friend and fellow fly angler, was to fish Moose Creek in Northern Wisconsin for brookies. They would park the old Buick at the highway bridge, wade up the creek carrying their lunches, and be able to fish right until dusk without having to retrace their steps after dark by utilizing a dike which lay at the upper stretches of the creek, and ran back to the road through a cranberry bog after skirting a local lake.

This idea emerged after last year’s trip to this same river led to stubbed toes, a dunking or two, a lost wading boot in the bog, and an exhausting trek back out following the meandering river back downstream to the car, and missing the evening rise for fear of being trapped after dark. This seemed like a better plan Pete thought to himself, but asking Ed anyway “Are you sure about that dike short-cut… Is it public…?”

“Old railway bed, I checked with the guy at the gas station, and he says it’s fine.”

It was a warm sunny morning when they parked the car at the bridge after a drive of six hours from the city.

“Risers!” Pete said as he looked over the bridge into the little creek as Ed busied himself with waders and assembling his Garrison bamboo rod, his cherished possession. Pete had purchased a Payne rod ten or so years ago, but he always was jealous of the Garrison. Ed felt the same way, he was jealous of the Payne.

It had always been like that for the two old lifetime friends. Since they met in grade school, they had always done everything together, fished, hunted, dated and even married two sisters, having the ceremony together at the same church. The friendship had warmed to a form where polite teasing and friendly competition always formed a background to their adventures.

Ed opened up the sack with his lunch to check it before stuffing it into the back pouch on his vest, and the smell of burned bacon wafted forth. Betty was a great cook, Pete reflected, but she always burned the bacon. Everything Ed owned tended to smell a bit like bacon, even his fishing tackle. Pete’s wife, on the other hand, had a thing for cabbage, and cooked it into everything, even the eggs. His lunch would be stuffed cabbage rolls wrapped in foil. Between the two of them, they smelled like a cheap diner blue-plate special, but Ed liked burned bacon, and Pete had an affinity for cabbage. The friendship fit together like two puzzle pieces.

The rising trout were a good omen as the two friends fished their way up the stream. The air was filled with little brown mayflies, and each angler had several dozen flies they had tied in the weeks before the trip that matched the hatching insects perfectly, even if Ed’s flies smelled a bit like burned bacon.

By the late afternoon they had made their way a mile up the creek and stopped for lunch. Both Pete and Ed had released a dozen brook trout in the ten to thirteen inch ranges, and kept several of the largest for the ladies to cook for breakfast. They paused for an hour after they had eaten and smoked a pipe, quietly enjoying the beauty of the conifer forest, the spring warblers, the wood ducks flying overhead, and hidden calls of woodcock and bittern.

They needed this trip away from the noise and fast pace of the city and their jobs, Ed thought. They were both nearing retirement age soon, and the thrill of business was slowly being replaced with a longing for memories made in quiet places.

Memories…

Pete thought about the time in their early teens that the two of them discovered his dad’s beer stash under the porch, and climbed an apple tree to drink a few in secret, feeling like men, or at least playing at being one. The beer was warm and kind of skunky, but neither of them would admit it or say anything, so they finished drinking them while telling stories of the future, and what they would do when they were older. The problem became how to get out of the apple tree. Pete’s legs didn’t work right after the beers, and Ed was seeing double. They both had thrown up their dinners, and it took them several hours to sober up and get down from their perches among the branches.

Ed reminisced upon the time when he and Pete had first hunted grouse together. Pete’s first hunting dog was a remarkably dumb lab named ‘Pep’, short for Pepto-Bismol because that damn dog gave anyone hunting over her a case of sour-stomach. Sure enough, Pep never did flush a bird that day, but instead found a skunk, and deciding it might be a funny kind of grouse, chased it into some bushes. They returned to the car and drove home with Pep in the trunk covered in tomato juice. They both had to burn their hunting clothes.

Funny all the memories that old friends can share, and through all of them, they had kept the vast majority of any misadventures to themselves, despite temptation after a few drinks to tell the boys a hell of a story. “Let’s keep this to ourselves,” became their oath of silence.

With evening approaching and the sun beginning to angle, the woods and river cooled and mists began to rise along with the trout, giving an otherworldly almost spooky church-like atmosphere to the upper stretch. It was worth all the planning though. As dusk set the two friends caught more trout than they had ever caught before, and Pete hooked one while his fly was dangling beside him in the water between casts, while Ed managed to hook a trout on his back-cast. The fish were suicidal now in a crazed frenzy to eat the falling spinners of the brown mayflies that hatched all day.

The last light faded from orange into pastel pinks and fuchsias as the mists rising from the creek and surrounding bog became thicker. It was time to go. They could keep the trout fresh in the cooler in the car and breakfast tomorrow would be heavenly.

Ed led the way through the bog to a small rise that indicated the side of the dike or railway grade dimly appearing through the growing fog which smelled and tasted like something from prehistoric times. Whippoorwills began to call all around them, and darkness blanketed the woods.

They were ten feet from the dike when Ed stopped.

 

“Shh…” he whispered. “There is something big and dark standing out in the cranberry bog right ahead of us… Don’t look like a tree, kind of like a bear or some animal…”

Pete had better eyes than Ed. “That’s a Moose,” he exclaimed in surprise, trying to keep his voice low.

“Shoot. Moose are unpredictable and dangerous. Does it have antlers?”

Ed squinted through the fog. “Yup, big rack too. I can see them clearly outlined against the sky.”

As darkness settled into inky blackness, the two stayed very silent and still. Neither had any idea what to do at this stage, and the thought was beginning to occur to them that they may have to spend some time stuck here until the moose, still dimly outlined in the near distance, moved on from its feeding. Ed found a large boulder nearby, and suggested that if they were going to be stuck here for a bit, they might as well be dry. They climbed the knobby chunk of granite careful to not make an errant sound.

It became obvious to both of them before long that they were well and truly stuck. The moose might or might not be still there, and they could no longer see through the fog and moonless night to be certain.

“O.K., let’s take inventory,” Pete quietly murmured. “I have a bag of peanuts, what do you have?” “A half a pint of peppermint schnapps,” Ed replied. They had left the half-full thermos of hot coffee back in the car because it was such a nice day. Both of their minds ended up focused on that hot coffee as a light drizzle began to fall, and their backs began to ache from sitting on the uneven cold rock.

After midnight, they broke down. Ed offered the schnapps to Pete after taking a swig himself, and Pete opened the peanuts. “Wait a minute Pete!” Ed exclaimed. What if Moose like peanuts? I can smell them like anything, and I bet the moose can too.” The peanuts were put away, and a long silence began. After an hour a staccato rattling was heard.

“What’s that?” Pete asked in a hush. “My teeth!” Ed answered. “I’m freezing, and I can’t feel my feet!”

“We need energy… food. I am so hungry I could eat my hat.”

“Kind of like the Donner Party…”

“What…. Eat each other and our hats?”

“No, as in we need food and we are marooned. Moose don’t eat trout, get it?”

“Cold trout? I can’t see my pocketknife to clean them.”

Hunger and cold can drive men to do things they might think themselves incapable of in better circumstances. The raw trout tasted like bog, slimy and silty, and made an interesting combination with the last of the schnapps. They almost gagged, but managed to eat a trout apiece to help keep them warm through the night.

The two old friends spent the night on a cold knobby boulder in a cranberry bog miserable with the drizzle surrounded by woods noises that to both of their now acute imaginations sounded like a huge moose on the prowl. In the weak dead hours of pre-dawn, they managed to nod off to sleep, propped against each other for warmth and stability.

A cloudy and misty dawn broke slowly into the forest and bog, the light increasing until the two anglers could begin to see again. Awake, but bleary eyed, they both peered through the banks of fog and into the heart of the cranberry bog in the direction of the road and the position of the moose the night before.

“I can’t see it,” Pete sputtered, “It must be gone by now…”

“No… there it is!” Ed chattered through his teeth, “It hasn’t moved!” “It’s in the same place as last night.” “It’s huge! I can see its antlers from here!”

“Wait a minute…” Pete exclaimed, the increased volume of his voice causing Ed to cringe. “I smell foul here. No moose is going to stand out there in a field all night and not move. I am too tired and cold and hungry to care any more. I am going to creep forward and check it out.” They decided that Ed would follow behind, and if Pete got mauled, he was in charge of breaking the news to Erma, Pete’s wife. Pete figured he had the better end of the stick.

The two crept slowly forward on the relatively dry abandoned railway dike toward the outline of the moose, appearing now menacingly large before them. Fifty feet away they paused. Pete spoke first, standing up and clicking his tongue in disapproval. “Look Ed, It has wooden posts for legs!”

“I’ll be a monkey’s…” Ed began, trailing off into silence. They walked up to the moose. Ed knocked on it with his knuckles. Wood. It was over life-size and was painted black. They could see the highway now clearly as the meager sun began to burn off the fog of morning.

They walked around the moose and stared at it from the front. A stylized moose it was. Looking not half like Bullwinkle the billboard proclaimed cheerfully…

“Visit Scenic Moose Lake! Next Exit.”

 

“I’ll be damned…” they both exclaimed quietly.

“I feel like an idiot,” Ed admitted.

“That is beside the point Ed,” Pete laughed rather seriously.” “The point is I feel the fool too, but the important thing is to keep this to ourselves. Nobody, even our wives must ever hear of this.” “Even our wives?…” Ed grimaced. “Yea, especially them. You know the boys at the lodge and the tavern would here of it sooner or later, and we would be the butt of jokes forever.”

They came up with a story. The car broke down, and they had to spend the night huddled under blankets until in the morning, when they discovered the problem: wet spark-plug wires. That would do the trick, Ed thought aloud. “Yea… Betty is always nagging me about getting the spark plugs changed anyway. She would get a chuckle out of that one, and it would only cost me a few bucks for new plugs.”

“I am serious about the silence thing Ed,” Pete said shaking his head and smiling. “I think we should take an oath.”

“What… like double dog dare, or spit and shake… that sort of thing?”

“I was thinking more along the lines of something else… If you tell anyone, I get your fly rod, and if I tell anyone, you get mine as a penalty. That should keep our mouths shut for a while.”

The two old friends shook on it and the oath was taken.

 

Ed got the nickname of ‘Bullwinkle’ a few weeks later. Pete was referred to as ‘Moose’ for the rest of his life.

It was worth it, Pete reflected as he landed a nice trout on his new Garrison rod. Pete was in the distance, proudly playing a fish on his equally new Payne.

Author’s note: On a trip to the Brule’ river in northern Wisconsin, I passed a field on foggy autumn morning and glancing to my right, spotted a huge bull moose with black fur and white antlers standing in a boggy lowland, partially shrouded by the enveloping mists. I was pumped to see such a rare sight in Wisconsin… until…

 

Two years later I was driving the same stretch of highway up to the Brule’ on a sunny day, and reflected that right about here is where I spotted that moose…

Out in the field stood a perfect replica of a moose, made of plywood and life-size, and painted black with white antlers. Some farmer’s idea of a joke. I felt the fool. Now that might make the basis for a good story I thought… until three years later here I am with the idea fully formed. A fishing trip and an oath of secrecy… else the fool!

 

 

The Stand

 

Short Story Copyright 2018, Erik F. Helm

 

Author’s note: This is fiction. The settings and background are historical, but the events were inspired by a stand of pines on a small stream full of wild brook trout here in Crawford county in the Driftless region of Wisconsin.

 

Part One: The Cutters

 

My fly-fishing partner Henry ‘Heck’ Bounty and I had made our way upstream through a road-like cut, the bushes and grasses scrapping and plunking off the underside of his old Ford pickup. We were in Crawford county Wisconsin fishing a pristine stream for brook trout, and the day was overcast and cool, the trout cooperative, and the scenery immense but quiet and bucolic, as farms gave way to hills, and valleys carved by flowing waters twisted and wound, separated and joined, offering eagles overhead, wildflowers, and a gentle humming of bees.

 

The path we were following curved uphill to the headwaters of the creek through a narrow opening in a valley, and the hills rose on both side as the temperature slowly dropped and the sound of flowing water burbling and trickling provided a counterpoint to the wheels crunching on gravel and vegetation.

 

We had spent the morning catching native trout up to 10 inches, as wild and old as the land when the glaciers covered Wisconsin, but missed this corner of the state, preserving towering vistas of limestone, and a land full of rivers. Heck decided to drive to the source of the creek to provide shade for our lunch, and to show me the springs that formed this little gem of a stream that he had fished since he was a little punter so many-many summers passed.

 

He stopped the truck at the end of the cut, and we set up a little camp table under a large shade tree, and began making sandwiches and pouring the cool beers. As we ate and poured the hissing cold beer down our parched throats, I looked into the distance at the top of the valley where it merged with the surrounding hills and remarked at the enormous stand of white pines dominating the view.

 

“Those pines mark the very headwater springs of this valley and her braided streams,” Heck reminisced. “There is a story in that stand of pines, something very few people know anymore, more local folklore than actual history, but the historic part… well… that is for the record. It’s the other part that my grandfather told me one evening when we were camping in this very spot. I probably have forgotten some of the details, but the essentials… well, those are too powerful in image ever to forget. If you have a like for a good story, I can provide one for you right here, as we rest… that is, if you are up for another beer.”

 

I nodded in contentment as well as with curiosity. Another cold beer would go down well, sipped slowly with a background story. As the breeze gently shook the leaves overhead, I nodded and slowly sat back in the camp chair, closing my eyes.

 

 

“Those pines mark the end of the logging road, or the remains of it that we drove in on” said Heck. “Back in the day, 1931 to be exact, this hill, and all the surrounding hills were covered in old growth white pines. Many of these towns in the county were lumber towns. The valleys grew tobacco, and the hills provided lumber, floated down the Kickapoo River to towns like Soldiers Grove, which back when logging was big before the civil war, was named Pine Grove. The logs were sawed up into lumber and shipped off to the cities. These hills probably re-built parts of Chicago after it burned in the great fire. Anyway, some of the hills were still covered with the last of the pine growth in the 1920s and 30s, but logging them presented a problem, as no access roads existed, the hills were steep, and the individual stands of trees were small. The last of the logging was delayed for many years until it became economically viable for some company or another to come in and cut. The streams in this whole area were often warm and full of silt and suckers back then due to the bare hills where the logging occurred. The floods began around that time too, as the Kickapoo was and is a relatively small and very crooked river, and the rain that used to be absorbed by the forests just ran off the hills and through the row-crops and tobacco fields carrying mud and rock and too much water for the river to carry. Nobody knew any better in those days. The very land the towns were founded on was destroyed by the town’s livelihood. The fishing was poor too; except for this hidden valley and its old growth pines and wildflower and prairie grass. There were only a few farms up this way, and all of them hardy Germans and Norwegians. There was only one dirt road in and out. Grandpa Bounty and his friends used to drive up here on Sundays after church for a picnic of fresh bread, fried chicken and freshly caught brookies. He is the one who told me the story of the valley, and the little war that was fought here. That conflict is why those pines remain standing to this day.”

 

I took a long sip of the refreshing beer, and continued to listen, alert to his every word, and nuanced expression.

 

“In 1931 a logging company began driving a road up the valley toward the pines. There were no conservation groups in those days, and permits were easy to come by. The first inkling that anyone had that these hills were to be logged was probably when the graders showed up with the bulldozers and dozens of men. Anyway, nobody asked the locals. They cut all summer until they removed most of the pines on the south hills, and then moved up here in the early fall. That’s when the troubles began. The company had about fifty workers, mostly town-folk, some of them local, but many not. They had a base-camp at the bottom of the valley with a mess tent, and even cabins for the workers. My great uncle Thomas was the carpenter that built some of the cabins and all the outbuildings.”

 

“The company had cut about an acre of pines beginning by the oxbow of the stream at the bottom of the hill when things began to go wrong. The first occurrence was that the saws all went dull overnight. It didn’t delay them much, as they had sharpening tools, but the company had to bring in more saws and equipment as the problem continued. There was even a local lawsuit that never went anywhere when the company tried to sue the hardware store that supplied some of the saws. That went on for over a week, and very little was cut down in that time. Eventually the problems grew. Some of the dozers and the trucks broke down after a few hours of morning activity. The mechanic they had with them to service the equipment couldn’t locate any problem, until a local guy who worked at an auto-shop took one of the engines apart. One of the dozers was missing all the ball bearings in its transmission. On further inspection, the other vehicles were similarly troubled by missing bearings, and even one of the cars belonging to the work-foreman had every bearing removed from it overnight, even in the wheels, and no sign it had been done. Every time something happened, it happened in darkness overnight. At first the company turned inward and looked for sabotage within their ranks. A logger who was half-indian nearly got hung, until one of the mechanics pointed out that it was physically impossible for anyone to soundlessly remove bearings from vehicles, especially in the darkness and timeframe of overnight. Rumors and murmuring began amongst the workers, and some speculated that this was the work of spirits of dead Indians from the Black Hawk war. How else could the impossible be explained?”

 

 “Soon enough the equipment and vehicles were overhauled and fixed, and the men went back to work. It was a Monday morning when the crew was ready, but before breakfast was even served, some of the guys noticed little ornaments hanging from the trees, and all around the camp. Hundreds of four-inch long little mayflies constructed from a strip of birch bark curled in the back, and with duck-feather wings tied in with a blade of dried grass were suspended from the trees by tiny vine-cuttings, and moving with the morning breeze. The foreman ordered the things removed, but several of the workers had had it, and left with their equipment, and the rest silently grumbled over breakfast. Their pay was based on the amount cut by each crew, and since nothing much was being cut, no pay was being earned. Smelling trouble, the company foreman gave each worker remaining the equivalent of two-weeks pay to compensate them. The company also hired a retired sheriff and two local hunters to provide security and investigate the strange happenings. Each guard was armed, and the company provided a hefty bounty if they could catch the culprits, for by now, the men and the bosses were convinced that a whole range of natural and supernatural enemies and boogie-men were behind the sabotage.”

 

“ The next morning brought new mayhem. The guards were up half the night patrolling, but retired when by three A.M. nothing had happened. At dawn the cook came out of his cabin and was welcomed by animals all over the camp. Skunks and raccoons were everywhere. Small piles and trails of corn mush and sardines mixed with raisins intended for breakfast crisscrossed the camp, and the animals were following the trails devouring the free bounty. Two workers got sprayed, and the cook, armed with a frying pan, was bitten by a ‘coon when he tried to wade into the fray frantically swinging at the animals. As he was being bandaged, the guards examined the food-store shack, which they assumed he had left unsecured. The padlock was intact, and no footprints or sign of entry was discovered. One thing was certain though; someone or something had crept into camp, and without leaving any trace, had once again brought the work to a stop. The retired sheriff demanded the key to the lock from the injured cook, and upon opening the storehouse, was greeted by dozens more of those little mayfly creations dangling from the ceiling.”

 

“One wonders what must have been going through their minds, since none of the sabotage acts seemed capable by human hands. The whole crew and the guards became jumpy, and arguments and fights began to break out. The foreman even ordered one of the truck drivers to load all the liquor supply and the cases of beer for the workers and take them away for storage somewhere. He was taking no chances. That evening saw silence in the camp, and as the workers smoked after dinner, many of them brought out knives and began sharpening them. The guards retired in shifts, with one guard being on patrol at any time that night. The cabins were locked and secured that evening.”

“The final meltdown began the next morning. The retired sheriff woke up just before dawn to relieve his junior for the watch. His holster containing his colt revolver was draped over the bedpost near his head. When he reached for the belt to strap it around his waist, the holster disgorged a dozen of those little hand-tied mayflies. His gun was nowhere to be seen, and the door was padlocked from the inside… The funny thing is that the guy had seen service as a sheriff for something like 20 years down here and had seen it all, from murderous drunks, knife-fights, car crashes, farm implement accidents, bar-fights, and whatnot, but he had never encountered a foe that crept in on the pre-dawn mists, and had no face, no name, and left no footprints. He and the hunters turned guards just up and left the camp. He never spoke a word to the foreman. He just looked at him with a long stare, and shook his head slowly as he turned to leave. He never did collect any money or pay.”

 

“The driver that carried all the booze and beer away was never seen again, although there seemed to be a few rather oddly jubilant local family picnics in the area for the next few years… All in all, the crew was only in camp for less than two-weeks. After the beer and guards left, the workers followed, until the only remaining workers were two old stoic Norwegians, the boss, and a truck-driver. They took turns sawing one tree at a time for a few days until they were halfway through a tree and the saw stopped with a metallic grating noise. Thinking that the tree was ‘spiked’, an old trick used against loggers where large nails and railroad spikes were hammered into trees to cause the saws to fail, the tree was attacked by axes until it fell. The source of the obstruction proved to be a metal strong-box, which was quickly recognized as the pay safe for the operation. There were no hollows in the tree, and no way in hell that it could in reason have gotten in there. Departing for camp, the four of them visited the office, where sure enough, the safe was not in the locked desk, but instead found inside the live pine tree. The money was not missing, but a single one of those eerie little mayflies sat on top of the cash inside the locked box.”

 

“Well, that was it. The camp broke the next morning without further incident, leaving the final pines shading the headwater springs untouched to this day.”

 

I whistled low, popped the cap on another cold beer, and leaned back in the chair as the afternoon clouds darkened and the sound of the rushing waters of the headwaters seemed to increase not in decibels, but in clarity and intensity. One could hear voices in them, if one took the time to listen.

 

“Did anyone ever find out what or who was behind this?” I asked.

 

Part Two: The Interloper

 

“Good question…” Heck replied with raised eyebrows and a quizzical expression.

 

“There was an investigation by the Sheriff of the county, but nothing came of it. Officially, the case was closed with a note that the most likely cause was a disgruntled worker or two. They worked them pretty hard in those days.”

 

“Unofficially, my Grandpa figured it out. He was fishing one day when he ran into a tall thin fellow on the creek. The guy was fly-fishing with a bamboo rod he made himself, and with hand-tied flies. He introduced himself as Earl. Grandpa ran into him several times and they talked. Evidently the guy was some sort of educated gentleman from back east… college and so forth. He owned a large cabin in the woods at the top of the hill above the springs, and hunted and fished in the surrounding land. Now Grandpa was a farmer, but he was also a reader, what you might call a self-educated man, always with a newspaper or book and a slow pipe to smoke while he read in the evenings. Somehow he and Earl got to talking, and Earl invited him back to his cabin.”

 

“As he described it, the cabin was full of interesting stuff. A large library, a wine cellar all home-made, bottles of herbs, and antique firearms and even a wooden long-bow. He had artwork on the walls too. Not just everyday Saturday Evening Post cutouts badly framed, but actual art from Europe and back East. He served grandpa imported cheeses and home-baked bread and venison sausage and he talked of his love for the poetry of Robert Service while a phonograph played opera, La Boheme he remembered it as. That sort of thing was kind of unheard of back then. Some guy living in the woods who was educated and cultured, and who turned his back on the world. Apparently he was also some sort of armature magician too, for while several bottles of wine disappeared legitimately, Earl also made several vanish into thin air and then made them appear again. Who knows why he turned his back on society, or what made him pull up roots and move to a hill in Crawford County, my Grandpa never did find that out.”

“What made your Grandpa think it was him?” I asked.

 

“It was those little mayfly things that gave him away. See, Earl had a sort of thing… a mobile I think you call it, full of dozens of those birch bark, feather and grass legged mayflies hanging from the ceiling over his table. Every time the breeze blew in, they danced up and down and twirled. Earl said he liked to watch them late in an evening. Said they reminded him of spring on his little stretch of river.”

 

“Did your Grandpa ever report him, or tell anyone?” I asked.

 

“Nah…” Heck smiled… “Nobody would believe him anyway, but he only told dad and me, and that was after a few pulls of local whiskey. See, Earl did some good for the valley. Those pines are still there because he took a stand. He single-handedly defeated a logging company, and did it all non-violent. Other than the damage to equipment and the bite the cook got from the raccoon, nobody ever did get hurt. He haunted that valley and those hills himself. He was a one-man conservation group. How the heck he did it nobody will ever know, but Grandpa always referred to him as ‘special’. That magic he knew must have been special too, but anyone who read as much as he did, and knew about math and architecture, plants, and built all his own tools and fly-rods, and the cabin too probably knew a thing or two most men don’t know, and never will. Most folks can’t think beyond their own nose, much less imagine things and ways that may exist beyond our little mundane world.”

 

“That is one amazing story… too bad there is no real evidence that it was true.”

Heck smiled and turned to me. “Come on, I will show you something. Just a short hike up the hill.”

 We slowly ascended the steep incline in the shade of the pines, passing the springs and seeps that formed the creek, and found ourselves in a sort of clearing near the top of the ridge. At the center amongst the raspberry bushes and cow parsnip were the foundation remains of a wood cabin. Hanging from a small apple tree next to the ruins were a dozen or so of those little hand made mayflies, looking fresh and newly created, and blowing in the breeze like they were dancing.

 “Earl must have left several years after that stand he took. Nobody ever saw him again anyway, Grandpa included. He may have left those 85 or so years ago, but part of him, that special part must never have left. Something of him is still here, looking over his pines and the creek, a sort of river-keeper spirit… and watching his little mayflies… dancing into eternity.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Forgotton Valley

The Forgotten Valley

Author’s note:
There are moments that often stand out for sensory overload, where feelings, smells, and sights of an uncommon kind come together to form an impression so real and compelling that we never forget them. The less commonplace the experience, the richer the memories, even if sometimes the fascination stems from a sense of horror.
The name of the town in this story has been changed, and the cause of its decay and feral collapsed architecture and inhabitants is mere conjecture and fantasy, as are a few of the descriptions perhaps artistic embellishment, but the place exists as described still, and the images and perceptions are real. We found it on a fishing trip.
Erik Helm, 2015

I can’t remember exactly what led us to abandon the great trout streams of Wisconsin’s Driftless area to pursue a rumor, but I expect that the chance to encounter large Smallmouth Bass in their pre-spawn run up small streams could have been enough. Whatever the impetus, now long forgotten, Joe had the truck pointed south through the rolling valleys and was waxing on as only he can do, of the promise of trying to recreate an encounter he had shared with a friend ten or so years before.
Each spring Smallmouth would swim up the Wisconsin River to the Grant River, and on up into a small tributary called the Rattlesnake to procreate. He and the friend had had an incredible day catching huge fish on light fly rods, and we were now rattling toward Grant County in the extreme southwest of Wisconsin trying to defy the laws of probability and catch the lightning strike a second time. This time I was along, and as Joe says… I am “Strange Luck,” because something out of the ordinary always happens when we fish together.

As we drove on the county highways through rural Wisconsin the landscape began to change. The lush valleys and hills full with vibrant greens and yellows and bursting with a sense of spring Botticelli would have captured in a painting began to fade slowly to a more somber mix of browns and tans, with wheat fields predominant. Towns seemed smaller and farther apart the closer we came to our area of destination, and the traffic of mixed pickup trucks and scattered Amish Horse Carts fell off to nothing as the bare hills rose and fell around us, and the landscape became more monochrome and sparse. Both Joe and I have fished the areas of eastern Washington and Oregon where one might think he had been transplanted onto the moon, so alien is the landscape and so desolate, and we both commented on the similarity as we rose to the top of a series of rolling hills and began a decent.

On the hillside in the distance was an odd sight for this bucolic area of Wisconsin. It seemed to be a mass of abandoned and rusted-out cars, some by their shape to date back to the 1940s and 50s. What was odd was the complete lack of newer cars in the pile of a hundred or so littering the hillside. Also puzzling was the fact that there was no road surrounding the hill, and we speculated that maybe the road had been left to return to dust as the cars had sometime in the past… but why on a hillside, and not down in a valley where most communities too poor to dispose of hunks of old metal would conceal them? Why put them on a highly visible hill?

We began a decent into the valley to the south of the abandon cars. As we drove toward the bottom through wildly winding roads the valley became narrower and darker, and the vegetation that poked out of the hillsides abutting the county trunk road was nearly leafless and grew at odd twisted angles like it had gone mad seeking the sunlight. A small creek ran along one side of the road in a ditch. We figured it as a tributary of the river we were looking to fly-fish, and grew anxious with anticipation like two kids.

An instant later, the scrub-brush and hillsides opened up without warning or expectation and we found ourselves in a small town. In both of our memories the initial shock and wonder as we traveled the two blocks of the main street occurs in a slow-motion kind of flashback. At least that is how we describe it today.

I was looking past Joe to the left when a scene out of the poorest of the poor coal towns of West Virginia popped into view. A car was beside the road, kind of slewed in a front yard at an angle and buried up to the windows in dried mud. What color it may have been I have no recollection, but it was mostly rust colored now. The windows were missing, and feral plants were growing at random out of the inside. The whole vehicle gave the impression of being there awhile, buried alive except for the crown of plants now growing out of its upholstery and the mud filling it.

Standing on top of the roof of the car was a tall emaciated man in filthy jeans and a dirty and torn white tank-top. He had greasy looking waist long light hair in a braid or ponytail. What he was doing on top of the car with a long metal pipe in his hand we will never know. He never looked at us as the truck rolled slowly past. Then we spotted the dog, which also ignored us. It was a mangy and shivery mongrel chained to the derelict car. It looked to be half Coyote and half terrier. Where it stood and twitched, the ground was bare of grass, as if in its eternal confined pacing, the cur had worn what might have passed for a sort of front lawn into a dirt farm. The house itself was a dilapidated clapboard single story of failing paint and warped paneling. It too was buried several feet in dried mud, and old plastic milk cartons replaced a rotted and fallen front porch as a stoop to the elevated doorway. The only thing new looking was an American Flag on a pole off the left front of the house and fluttering in front of the broken windows that had old stained cloth stuffed into the cracks and holes.

Next to this initial sight and again on the left side of the road as we slowly rolled on with mouths agape, leaned what must have been the city hall. Built out of stone and mainly intact, with an inscription with a date of 18?? above the door, it looked to be no longer in use. The leaning seemed to be caused by the cliff and hill rising directly behind the structure. It had encroached on the rear of the building and caused it to lean forward into the street.
On the mantle above the door below the date was a single word, ‘Dodtown.’

“I don’t remember this, said Joe. I don’t remember any of this being here. I would have remembered this!” he exclaimed, shaking his head. “Maybe you took a different road last time?” I half asked and stated. “Must have” he smiled with eyebrows raised. “This is a mess! What the hell is a town like this doing here in this valley where it must flood every year? Who built this here… and Why?”

Those were the questions in mind as the old Ford Ranger rolled on and we both looked to the right side of the main street. Here was a new squalor to be seen. A decayed sort of tavern and general store stood there with about half of its white paint missing. Parts of it sagged here and there, but the sign above the door still was half lit displaying a ‘Hamms’ beer logo speckled with dirt and dead bugs. Three Harley bike gang guys in leather gear looked at us as we passed. They were seated outside the building on an old bench drinking beer out of a can.

We came to the end of the road and turned left to climb back up a steep valley road. Most of the houses here had visible flood damage and mud, rock and brush was piled about. Each house had a little culvert and bridge leading to their yard off the road so that water could flow down to the bottom of the valley. These houses looked a bit better kept. Old tires had been painted and used as planters and attempts at gardening, including some blooming flowers among the feral weeds grew out of them. Several more vehicles were buried here and there at the side of the road. As we climbed out of the valley, one or two houses looked very well kept, with new shutters, and fully green and mowed lawns. Lights showed behind windows without any panes missing. Children’s toys were scattered in the yards.

We reached the top of the valley and the full force of the sunlight made us squint. We stopped the truck at a crossroads and wondered aloud again, what we had just encountered. Whatever Dodtown was, it certainly had a shadow hanging over it. No sunlight seemed to penetrate to the center, and we discussed our impressions that as the elevation descended, so did the decay and squalor.

We turned to the right this time and followed rural county trunks looking for the road leading to the Rattlesnake, and after awhile, located one that Joe thought he remembered well, with some prominent markings in the form of a high limestone cliff and an old white building with an antique tractor in the yard. We followed this road for awhile, traveling slowly with the windows open looking out over the wooded valley sloping down either side of the road for a sign of the river as we descended. As the road neared the valley floor, the walls of the cliffs and hills crept nearer again and it became darker. In front of us were rows of yards on both sides of the road. Chain link fences were strewn and piled on each other and covered here and there with piles of rock and mud debris. The houses here were either pre-fabricated or single-story clapboard and all were small. The yards were overgrown with wild brush and strewn with abandoned appliances, bathtubs, rotting cars, destroyed furniture and dust. Several people were shambling or leaning in the yards, and they stared with vacant eyes as we passed. The road opened up, and to our amazement, we rolled into Dodtown from the opposite direction, stopping at the only intersection in town. We both turned our heads and looked at each other with an expression of mock horror. “This is getting downright creepy,” I said out loud.

This time while driving through the town, the taciturn and vague figures we saw stared at us. Perhaps they were used to strangers driving through town on their way somewhere else, but they could spot a foreign car or truck as it went through a second time, perhaps up to no good or ‘spying’ as we speculated further. We pulled out of the valley once again, and turned in the opposite direction, finally locating a sign pointing us down Rattlesnake Road. “This has got to be it,” Joe exclaimed with assurance, turning down yet another winding path and descending slowly downhill.

Well, of course the reader already knows what happened next. After five minutes of wooded hollow we emerged at the bottom, right smack in the middle of Dodtown again.

This time Joe stopped the truck and got out. “What the hell are you doing?” I asked with a smile half hiding real concern. He answered, “I want to see what is in there,” as he pointed to the old store with the Hamms sign.

I slowly got out of the truck, wondering as I did so, if this was going to be something I told my children about twenty years in the future as the “Time when…” What? I could only speculate as we walked to the front of the building now empty of bikers.

I stopped at the door of the place, my feet crunching peeled paint chips against the rotting wood of the stoop. There was a screen door, but it had only the remnants of a screen at the edges where they were rusting away. There was no doorknob or lever, but an old piece of electrical wire thick in gauge was twisted through the hole the knob must have occupied in better times long past.
I slowly opened the door inward and we stood in the doorway blinking, for however the lack of light at the valley floor, the interior of this place was darker still.

Old faded curtains of questionable color over dusty windows and one naked bulb provided the light for the single room. Against the wall on the right was a bar of sorts and a number of mismatched wooden chairs faced it. Behind the bar were arrayed an amazingly eclectic spread of goods attached to pegboard or lying on shelving: rubber boots, hip waders, shovels, kitchen cleaner, bib jeans, hand tools, saw blades, knives of every variety, cans of oil, etc, competed for space on the crowded back wall. A mounted fish above the counter could either be a trout or a carp; it was so covered in tobacco smoke, one couldn’t tell. A fat middle-aged woman sat on a tall crate behind the counter, her mouth full of something she was slowly chewing. She had on overly tight sweat pants and a massive T-shirt that doubled as a sort of dress or cover-all. She had no shoes on. Joe and I slowly made our way to the bar or counter and sat down a few spaces away from a guy in dusty and smelly overalls with long stringy hair and a stained NAPA parts ball cap. He was drinking a bottle of grape soda. I asked what the place had to drink, and the woman answered “Beer or soder, Whatchoo wan?” “Two cans of beer.” Joe said, looking at me when emphasizing the word ‘Cans’.

She bent over an old ice cooler set against the back wall, pulled out two cans of Old Milwaukee, and set them unopened on the counter. “One dolla.” she spit out. As we paid, I noticed the guy at the counter looking at us. “Soups O.K.” he said, “if your hungray…” “Its otta can too,” he added pointing to his own bowl of vegetable soup. “All there is anyway…” “Them’s above wont look nohow neither.” He added cryptically with a glance. “Let’s go outside and drink these I said to Joe, as he nodded.”

As we turned to go to sit on the bench out front, we saw an elderly woman mumbling to herself at the only table. She was smoking a pack of unfiltered Pall-Malls through her remaining several crooked teeth, and seemed to be playing cards. The odd thing was that there were only two cards. She kept dealing them to herself, turning them over, and cussing to herself repeatedly. She looked up for a heart beat and her eyes were red and surrounded by gray shadows. The other two had similar eyes I noted as we opened the door and took a deep breath of air.

“Cheers!” I said to Joe, as we first wiped off the tops of the beer and opened them. That’s when I noticed that my hands were really dirty; almost gray-black with a powder residue. I poured some beer into them and tried to wipe them on my pants, but it only half helped. Joe’s hands were similarly dirty, but neither of us could get them clean by wiping them. It was if they had been covered in oily graphite. “This place is filthy!” I said out loud, and poured my remaining beer on the ground with Joe following suit. “Even those bikers just drank their beers outside and got out of town.” We got into the truck, and after consulting a map, which we should have done an hour ago, located the correct route out of Dodtown and into the next valley over which held our smallmouth bass river.

We turned onto the original road we drove in on and turned up the only side road we had not yet driven on. It began to climb out of the valley.
The last impression I had of Dodtown was perhaps the worst. As Joe downshifted and we drove past a series of run-down and dilapidated hovels, I spotted a yard with long poles and ropes strung up. Hung on these ropes were the carcasses of numerous coyotes and deer with their throats cut, bleeding out. A thickset and meaty man with wild black hair peered at us as we past. His eyes were surrounded with gray like a cadaver, and they burned bloodshot and red as he held swaying in his hand a bloody hatchet.

When we found the river at last, the first thing we did before even gearing up, was to attempt to wash our hands. It took a few minutes to clean them of the gray soot, and we noted that we both had a funny dull metallic taste in our mouths. “Probably that old stale beer.” We stated with dismissal.

The fishing was awful. The banks of the little river were collapsed and eroded, and trees and debris were jammed at every bend. Joe caught exactly one smallmouth, I hooked a diaper lodged against debris on the bottom. We noted that the great floods of 2008 had destroyed this area far worse than we thought. That was why those cars were buried back in town. In two years, nobody had even tried to remove them. To add insult to injury, I fell down the muddy bank like a hippo and rolled into the water, causing us both to chuckle.

“Hell of a fishing trip,” I quipped. Joe smiled. “Always is when you and I get together.” Joe answered smiling.

We drove back out of the valley and turned onto the main state highway back toward the Driftless area trout streams and Joe’s cabin. The road took us through the largest town in the county, and after stopping to fill our bellies with a greasy burger, I spotted a building next to the post office with a sign stating it to be the county historical society.

“Let’s go in and see if we can’t find out more about that town and Valley.” I suggested.
The neat interior was covered in historical photos and maps. Rows of books and old bound newspapers sat neatly indexed behind the counter where we were met by an older thin woman wearing a light blue dress and horn-rimmed glasses who instantly smiled and asked if we needed help.

“We just came from driving through a small valley with an odd little community called Dodtown.” I stated, “and we wanted to see if we could find out more about it, and what its history was… and what happened there.”

She raised her eyebrows and looked at us with a wry smile. “Dodtown huh?”

“Yea, we would appreciate any information you could give us.” “We are just two fly-fishermen, but that town made us curious.”

“I have some coffee I just made, let me get you a cup and come sit down at the research table in the main library.” She asked.

Returning with two very welcome cups of hospitality, she set them before us, and taking a sip on her own, began to tell us the tale.

“It was a lead mining town founded back in 1830. There used to be two large loads or veins of ore right in town in the cliffs and running into the hills. It grew quite quickly to a population of almost five hundred people, mostly miners and their families. Cornish, Welsh, Norwegians, and some Germans and Poles mixed in. The veins were rich with lead ore, and they were easy to work as well. The miners drove their tunnels following the ore straight into the hills. Money rolled in, and for a time Dodtown was the fastest growing community around, and one of the wealthiest too. They built a road right out of town to carry the ore to smelters. It is abandoned now and blocked by an old dump filled with rusting cars.

Around about 1941 the ore began to run out. There was always plenty of lead in that valley, but the lead in the soil was almost impossible to remove, so when the veins began to dry up, the people followed suit and moved on… or most of them did.
I guess there were two types of people then, and two choices too. Those that chose to get out of town, and those who chose to stay. In all, the town lost two-thirds of its population in three years. For awhile the people who stayed did O.K. with cottage industry and what was left of the mining on a vastly diminished scale. By 1950 Dodtown was pretty much forgotten. People seemed to avoid the few residents, who grew increasingly insular, inbred, and suspicious of outsiders. The flooding didn’t help. God knows why anyone would construct a town at the bottom of a massive drainage area and flood plain, but I guess the founders were mainly concerned with ore extraction and not much else. The fortune extracted left Dodtown along with the owners of the mine and the few wealthy citizens when they left. I have newspaper articles from that time where people up here referred to Dodtown as ‘Floodtown,’ and ‘Poverty Hollow.’

It was in the 1960s that the state and county began to expand social welfare programs, and those workers that visited Dodtown came away with a look of concern and alarm. The census takers too had a hard time trying to make out the actual population. Knocks on doors went unanswered. Did you notice how shy and retiring the Dodtowners are? Not bad people, but strange. People thought there was something wrong with them too. They seemed to be underweight and developmentally disabled. They looked sick.

A few years later, in the late 1960s, some Dodtowner brought a sick child to the county hospital. The girl was lethargic, and was slurring her speech. Her eyes were sunken and red too. The doctors puzzled over her until a blood test revealed elevated levels of lead four times the acceptable maximum. That began an investigation in the county of well water and soil samples, and what they found was shocking. All the flooding had washed the mine tailings of lead dust down to the bottom of the valley and in addition to fouling the wells, had become so prevalent that one could get a coating of lead dust just walking about or digging in the dirt. Nothing would grow there either, except weeds.

I don’t know why those people are still there. Goodness knows enough agencies have tried to force them to move out, offering cash buyouts for the flood plain issues on their properties, and serving evictions based on unsafe and downright lethal pollution of lead, but over half of the inhabitants stayed on. Today it is, pardon the expression, our little ‘Piece of Appalachia.’ Sad. Every year the population decreases by a few people, and nobody replaces them. Should be a ghost town in ten years or so. In many ways it is now. None of those people really ever come up here anymore. I wonder what they eat for Pete’s sake. Some of them are so distorted that they can’t walk right anymore and seem to just shamble and drool. Lead poisoning is nothing to take lightly”

We thanked her as we left, and wondered at our chance encounter with a piece of history and decay.
“Next time I get to choose where to go fly-fishing.” I said to Joe.

“Nah,” he replied, “Then it might not be quite the adventure.”