DEVIL MOUNTAIN TRIPTYCH
ISSUE FOUR: March, 2020
DEVIL MOUNTAIN TRIPTYCH
by STEVE PASSEY
'Twas rehearsed by thee and me a billion years before this ocean rolled. Fool! I am the Fates' lieutenant; I act under orders. ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick
The Goddess calls.
A man answers.
Does man hunt?
Yes.
Does he need to hunt?
Yes.
No, he does not need to hunt.
Must man subsist on the flesh of other living creatures?
Yes.
No. He does not need to subsist on the flesh of other living creatures.
Does man hunt for trophy.
Yes.
Does man need trophy.
Yes.
No. Man does not need trophy.
Do animals subsist on the flesh of other animals?
Yes.
Do animals need to subsist on the flesh of other animals.
Yes.
No, animals do not need to subsist on the flesh of other animals, save for the very few. Is man of nature?
Yes.
Is man exceptional to nature?
Yes.
No, man is not exceptional to nature. Do animals get pleasure for killing other animals?
No. Yes. I don’t know.
Does man get pleasure from killing other animals?
Yes.
Yes. Man derives pleasure from killing other animals. Is man animal?
Yes.
No. Man is exceptional to animal. Just admit it, man is a devil to animals.
Yes. No, I don’t know.
Do you see?
No.
Are you hungry?
Yes.
For what?
Meat.
Meat, or hide?
Yes.
Twenty minutes out from where they’d left the truck on the old mining road, they spotted the grizzly. The silverback was maybe a half-a-click away and upwind. They could see it swing its head from side-to-side, nostrils flaring, and then stand up on its hind legs,
He knows we’re here, Mike said.
The other man nodded. They began to walk back to the truck. They’d come out for elk and each had a 7mm magnum. They had elk tags, but not grizzly tags. They had enough gun, but just enough gun. They had barely enough truck. The scopes on each rifle cost more than the old three-quarter ton was worth. Mike had a camo paint job on the truck and had spray painted meat wagon on each side in a color he called shit brown.
They walked in brisk silence back to the truck, looking back over their shoulders to where they’d seen the grizzly. Just under one-hundred yards away from the truck a black bear came out of the brush and charged them, wild-eyed and tongue-out panting, rolling-running with a bad limp. Mike fired first and the first round dropped it. They walked up to ten yards away and each put another round into it. There was the syncopated crack crack crack of the magnums and nothing else save the breath in their nostrils. No birds took flight. No crows sounded their alarms. The other man thought he saw a crow in one of the pines, but it didn’t move so it was hard to be sure.
They both looked around for the Grizzly at the same time but there was nothing.
Look at this, Mike said, standing over the black bear.
The black bear was missing one of its hind legs. It looked to have been ripped away from its body. Tendons and muscle hung there, the blood clotted so thick it clung like flatworms and the dying flesh ran with maggots. The smell was atrocious.
That explains a lot, he said.
He looked around and spoke again, saying that you would think there would be crows, no?
They both thought the grizzly had done it, but that it must have been a day or two ago or even longer. Grizzlies will eat carrion. Grizzlies will eat black bears. All at once or one leg at a time. They’ll dig them right out of their dens. If you want to eat, you have to get up early. If you want to not be eaten, you have to get up earlier. It’s a wonder any natural creatures sleep.
They left the black bear where it lay.
The grizzly will find it, Mike said. That’s what it was looking for.
The other man had to cover his mouth with a neckerchief to not throw up from the smell.
Hey, Mike said. Do you know the difference between grizzly shit and black bear shit?
The other man shook his head.
Grizzly bear shit smells like pepper spray and has little bells in it, Mike said.
The other man laughed and got into the truck. A crow flew overhead. They were starting to come, if not to contest, then to observe.
No one will believe us when we tell them this story, the other man said.
They drove twenty clicks south, gradually downhill and into lighter tree cover, like people lost in the wild do when they can’t find their way. Search parties always find the lost on the low ground, dead or alive.
You know Mike said, my ex’s dad hunted a lot. Hunted black bear too and had the pelts on the wall to prove it. He was sixty-eight years old before he told anyone his middle name. Baptiste. He was Metis from Manitoba. He was come from the courier-de-bois, the real thing, too. He wasn’t some internet Indian, like you see now, where everyone cites some treaty they’ve never read and is some sort of a lawyer without a degree. He’d been born on St. Jean Baptiste’s day – June twenty-fourth - so they’d given him that middle name. It wasn’t on his driver’s license though. He’d dropped the name on legal identification. I told him, shit man, that’s cool, why drop it? He shrugged it off. He didn’t know why he had done it. Mad at my dad, he said, but he wouldn’t say what for, and his dad was dead now and had been for many years. He’s dead now too. He never did change his driver’s license, so no one will ever know. That’s something.
What’s that got to do with us today, the other man asked?
Mike shrugged. Nothing, I guess.
He stopped the truck.
Do you think we have enough gun for that grizzly, he asked?
Just enough gun, the other man said, but we’re short enough right. We don’t have any tags. Way too risky.
Let’s do it anyways, Mike said.
The other man shook his head.
Look, Mike said, the crows are coming, flying back to where we came from. They will guide us all. You, me, and the Grizzly. If I turn this around, we can get back at about the same time he does. We’ll spot the bastard and put him down bang-bang just like that. In an hour I’ll have one-hundred pounds of pelt in the back of the truck under a tarp.
The other man looked away for a minute, then turned to look at the back window of the meat wagon. The crows were gathering in the pending gloom and circled high overhead back the way they had come, floating over the high ground, observing but not contesting whatever it was they flew over.
Mike turned the truck around.
You ever skin a bear, Mike asked? The cadaver – without the head – looks just like a human being.
The other man looked out the window of the meat wagon, keeping his eyes on the road without saying anything.
Look at the crows, Mike said, there has to be fifty of them now. Sure, some people hear crows and hate the sound, that’s why they call it a call and not a song but goddammit it’s a song, just like all birds have. It’s an acquired taste, but it’s still singing. That’s why they’re still in the air. They’ve seen this before. You up for this? I am sure you are up for this. You need only say no, and I ain’t heard no. Don’t worry, though, it’s just you, me and the crows. Ain’t no one to tell anyone else. Just listen to them. They’re singing. They know what’s happened. They probably know what’s coming. That’s why they sing.
This is how I, an animal, die.
Die.
I see in his hand a lance the shaft of which is made of the sun.
The sun.
The lance’s tip is a fire.
Fire.
He thrust it into my heart, into me and through me.
Through me.
I am dying. I am dying.
I die. I die.
This I knew to be the love of God for man, and not animals.
Not animals.
The great love of God.
God.
The pain was excessive.
Excessive.
I cried out.
I cried.
Surpassing the pain was ecstasy.
Ecstasy.
I want to feel this forever.
Forever.
My soul is satisfied now with nothing less than God.
God.
The pain is God.
God.
I pray to God.
God.
I pray to God is his infinite mercy to make them experience this who may think that I am not telling the truth.
The truth.
Truth.
God.
STEVE PASSEY is originally from Southern Alberta. He is the author of the short-story collections "Forty-Five Minutes of Unstoppable Rock" (Tortoise Books, 2017), "Cemetery Blackbirds" (Secret History Books, 2020), and many other things. He is a Pushcart and best of the Net Nominee and is part of the Editorial Collective at The Black Dog Review.