“Ours too,” Pete said.
“Dad said he was going to post it next year so they can’t hunt back there,” Joe said to Pete.
“I said I might,” Alan said. “But I don’t want to stop people from doing things that they’ve been doing for generations. We have to talk about it. Does your father hunt, Pete?”
“Yeah,” Pete said.
“What do you do for October vacation?”
“Nothing,” Pete said. “Dad’s out driving. Me and Mom just sit around the house mostly. Mom said she’s going to can the rest of the tomatoes and vegetables.”
“Do you have a big garden?”
“Nope,” Pete said.
“Back to the boat, Pete,” Alan said. “Do you go out on boats other times of the year?”
“Yeah,” Pete said. “We have a boat that we put in at Jenny’s landing. Dad takes me fishing.”
“But you don’t go out in October?”
“Nope.”
“Because of the hunters maybe?”
“I don’t know,” Pete said.
“Because the fishing is no good?”
Pete shrugged. Alan caught the end of the motion in the mirror.
“So, no reason then?” Alan asked.
“Dad says it’s dangerous. He said that you might run across something you don’t want to know about,” Pete said.
Before Alan could follow up on that answer, his son broke in.
“Hey, Dad, can me and Pete watch a movie until his mom comes?”
“Care to rephrase that, Joe?”
“Can Pete and I watch a movie?” Joe asked.
“Sure.”
Alan swept quickly into the driveway. The rain had just started to fall and he still had laundry out on the line.
“Dad!” Joe yelled from the back seat.
“Yes, Joe, what?” Alan asked.
“I was just going to ask—what’s on the front porch? Did you put out decorations? What happened to the pumpkins?”
“I don’t know, maybe the delivery guy left a package. I didn’t put anything out there,” Alan said.
He pulled into the barn.
When he stopped the car, he turned to Joe. “Go start your movie and I’ll bring popcorn in for you in a minute.”
“Okay,” Joe said.
The boys were off in a flash. Joe was running down the shed hall and Pete ran after him. Alan looked around the barn as he got out of the car. Maybe kids raised out here were different—if he were a kid visiting this house for the first time, he would have been fascinated to explore the barn. All Pete and Joe wanted to do was go watch a movie they’d already seen a dozen times.
The rain picked up as Alan walked through the shed. He grabbed a slicker from the hook and threw it over his head as the cold rain pelted him. The sheets were getting soaked. They looked wetter than they’d been when he’d pulled from the wash. So much for saving energy. Alan gathered them quickly, leaving the clips out on the line—he could fetch them later.
He was just pushing through the door to the warm kitchen when Joe ran back in.
“Dad!” Joe shouted. “There’s something on the porch.”
“Yeah, you said,” Alan said. “Is it a box? Bring it in if it’s going to get wet.”
“It’s not a box. Pete says it’s a bear cub,” Joe said.
“What?” Alan asked.
He dropped the sheets on top of the dryer and shucked his wet coat. Joe ran off. The boys were in the TV room. Alan walked down the hall and found the front door still wide open. The rain was beating against the storm door. Alan couldn’t see much through the streaked glass. He pushed open the door and the bottom of the metal frame scraped across the thing lying there.
Pete was wrong, Alan thought as he saw the flash of white there. Then, as his eyes took in the complete reality, he thought, oh no—he might be right.
The animal had nothing covering its bones. Its legs were splayed to the sides and its belly was down on the granite slab of the step. The puzzle pieces of its spine ran parallel to the front of the house and the ribs stuck out to the sides. Its naked skull rested on the rock and looked off towards the woods. The rain was washing red and brown stains away from the creature.
Alan pulled the storm door shut and then slammed the front door closed. He shot the bolt.
When he poked his head into the TV room, the boys were sitting on the floor and their eyes were glued to the screen.
“You boys stay here and watch your movie,” Alan said.
“Okay,” Joe said. His eyes didn’t leave the TV. They had advanced the movie to the big battle scene.
Alan closed the door. He picked up the phone. While it rang, he walked back to the rear door. He locked that as well.
“Hello?” Bob asked.
“Hey, Bob, it’s Alan.”
“What’s up?”
“I just found a animal on my porch. It doesn’t have skin or muscles or anything. It’s like the thing we saw in the marsh.”
“The purple thing?”
“No, the other thing. After the purple thing was gone? It might have been a bear cub at one point. It’s just chum now,” Alan said.
“Oh,” Bob said. “Have you seen the TV this afternoon?”
“No, I was picking up Joe from school. What’s going on?”
“They’ve found a number of mutilated animals. They didn’t come right out and say it, but I think they’re tying these mutilations to the same thing that got Buster. They had one deputy interviewed who said that people should stay indoors, but then they switched officers. Now they’re only showing the deputy we met. He said there’s nothing to worry about.”
“What should I do? Call the police?”
“Can’t hurt,” Bob said.
Alan walked to the window as he said goodbye and disconnected with Bob. The rain pelted the window. Outside, the light on the front of the barn came on. Alan found the deputy’s card held to the side of the refrigerator with a magnet. He considered the number and even had it typed into his phone when he changed his mind. The number for the game warden’s office was on a card right below. Alan dialed that number. After describing his problem to the man who answered the phone, he sat down at the kitchen table.
“Hey, Dad?” Joe asked.
Alan jumped.
“Are you making us popcorn?”
“Yes, Joe. Go back and watch your movie. I’ll be there in a second.”
“We had to switch to a DVD,” Joe said.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah, the internet went out and the cable went out. DVD is the only thing that works.”
“Okay. You have that movie on DVD, right? Just watch that.”
“That’s what we’re doing,” Joe said. He wandered back through the dining room.
Alan dragged the big pot out from the cabinet under the counter. He kept one eye on the window, while the corn popped. When it was ready, he yelled for Joe to come serve himself. Alan turned on the radio. The reception was never very good in the kitchen, but today it was dismal. He only heard a few snippets of audio between the bursts of static.
The phone rang.
“Hello?” Alan asked.
“Hey, babe,” Liz said.
“Where are you?”
“I’m stuck in traffic. Did you know that the road is closed?”
“Which road?”
“The Old Belgrade Road. I’m going to have to come back on Summerhaven, I guess.”
“Take it slow,” Alan said. “That road is curvy. Oh! I have to go. Someone is pulling in the driveway.”
A dark shape rolled to stop in the middle of the drive. Alan put on his wet slicker as he walked down the hall. He flipped on the hall lights and wrestled with the door to get it open. He waited in the shed. Through the driving rain, he saw a brown truck with an oval white decal on the driver’s door. Finally, a person emerged from the vehicle. The person wore a plastic poncho that came down to knee-level. The hat with the wide brim had a clear plastic shower cap on it to keep it dry.