Flatlander

In the old days, according to his people’s laws, it would have been perfectly fine to replace a relative who died with someone adopted into the family. That was especially the case if the relative had been murdered by a rival tribe. The tradition was straightforward. If justice was demanded, you would take the life of an enemy or take someone, preferably a child, as an adoptee. It had been that way since time began. All the groups, the tribes, understood this. Even now the French did, those sour men in their lice-ridden black robes.
But not Yankees. These people with their stinky animals pulling wagons that made your ears hurt when the wheels squealed, who’d scratched themselves rather than bathe in the river, who hit their children, even little ones, until they cried. Barbarians they were. Barbarians who didn’t understand the rules. Barbarians who were strong, though.
The one known as Good Heart to Sabbatis’s little group didn’t deserve the name. He stunk worse than the French, shot off his gun if people came too near what he called his property, property that once belonged to the family of Sabbatis. They, the few who hadn’t died of the sickness, moved away, north, after that, too far to visit.  Sabbatis wouldn’t join them or the other receding natives.  This land along the river in the shadow of the mountain was his home. He would never leave it. Ever.
He barely tolerated Good Heart.  Good Heart cheated in trading. He chased game away.  But Sabbatis knew better than to make trouble with him. Sabbatis stayed on his side of the mountain, too rocky for the whites. Good Heart stayed on his. For now.
Sabbatis found the child wandering in the woods as the sun was setting. How had he gotten lost in these woods, so far from the white farms? The child was freezing, too cold to cry. His blue eyes were filled with tears, though, you could see that he was frightened. Sabbatis wrapped him in a blanket, gave him some sweetened cornbread, and carried him to his wigwam singing silly songs along the way. The child managed to smile and fell asleep in his arms.
            At another time, perhaps, he would have been seen as a gift to fill the void of the child the sickness had taken. It was only fitting. Sabbatis remembered those days. He missed them. Here was a beautiful child, and a boy, too. That he was a white child would have made no difference; what counted was the spirit. There were other such children in villages to the north, in Canada, and to the west, who had been adopted from their homes where the Nipmucs and Pocumtucs used to live. Most never wanted to go back to their white family.
But in these days, with more Yankee farmers settling in the river valley, Sabbatis would find the child’s family and expect a reward. A musket would be a good gift for such a child whose orange hair seemed on fire. It matched the color of the leaves that were telling him winter would be here soon. Sabbatis’s wife washed the child, singing all the time, and gave him a corn-husk doll which he held tightly to his chest. That was fine. He could have it. It had belonged to his own son who’d died two winters ago from fever.
             Sabbatis started early carrying the child on his shoulders toward the white settlements, just a day away, toward the home of Good Heart, the closest farm to his people’s land on the other side of the low mountain. They would get there by nightfall and Sabbatis surely would be fed and asked to stay.  This was the polite thing to do.  Still, he brought his blanket – a bright red one with a black stripe down one side he’d traded for three beaver pelts – and his bow.  Winter was coming. If he killed a deer, even with the boy with him, he’d clean it out, hang it from a tree and retrieve it on his return. The aging would help make the meat better before he smoked and dried it for the coming season. 
The mountain was usually good hunting ground, but not today. Something was bothering the game. The birds were disturbed, flying about and their cries warning of dangers. Sabbatis sniffed the air, listened. Mohawks had raided the area once, years before, but they would come from the west and the birds were flying from the east. He always worried about more white farmers scouting for land, his land, but not this land; the steep slopes weren’t good for their farming, the soil too rock for their crops. The crows were telling him to leave – they spoke, and he would heed their sage advice.
He put the boy down and took an arrow from his otter-skin quiver. It was his arrow; the fletching made up of two turkey feathers and a red one dyed with ochre. There were two yellow rings in the middle; no one else had such arrows. He gestured for the boy to stay by his side and edged back down the slope when a voice yelled out “Winslow!” the boy turned half in fear, half in excitement, as a group of men scrambled over the rocks to meet them.  He started to walk toward one man asking “Papa?” as the group spread out to surround the pair.  Sabbatis smiled, hand raised in greeting, and nudged the boy forward. In his language, Sabbatis said “He is an explorer, brave. He’d make a fine Abenaki.”
If the group of white men understood his words, they gave no indication. The boy’s father shook him until he started to cry, yelling at the boy he was told not to wander. Sabbatis reached and grabbed the man’s arm telling him to stop. The group of men tackled him to the ground, yelling words he did not understand, and tied his arms. They raised him to stand when the father hit him with the butt of his musket screaming now, screaming “murderous savage.”  Sabbatis struggled, yelling his own unintelligible words until a rope was put around his neck. This he understood. He struggled against more musket blows screeching a mournful prayer, shouting for help, then spitting on the mob as he was shoved up the hill to a massive chestnut tree. More rope was thrown over a branch and pulled. The little boy was crying but his father dragged him away. Sabbatis hung there for two days until a catamount dragged him to her den. 

Jeremy drove alone up dusty Gallows Hill Road swerving left to right to avoid potholes and frost heaves.  If he managed fifteen miles an hour, tops, he was probably driving too fast on this stretch.  Vast sugar maples that hadn’t been tapped in 100 years provided a shadowed canopy, their thick branches meeting over the narrow road. It felt like dusk more than high noon under them. It held promise.
Gallows Hill Road came to an opening then ended on a steep hill, overgrown fields on either side hinting at what once had been a farm.  On the left was what the map said was Indian Ridge that rose up from the forest.  Just in front of that ridge, stood the house.  The realtor, Betts Barnet, had cautioned it could use a little work.  She’d exaggerated.  It wasn’t a little work unless tearing down the remains of some busted dairy farmer’s home that was old when the Confederates fired on Fort Sumter, hadn’t been occupied other than by bugs, rodents, raccoons, and a family of porcupines that had chewed away at the punky studs and could be considered occupants, was just a little work.
At least the path leading to it was clear.  He took note of a pile of reddish wood covered by slate shingles and rightly assumed it was once a barn gone to pasture.  Jeremy walked around, smelling something musky under the porch, and something dead in the back. A family of deer, the buck with a huge rack, looked at him curiously from the backfield then took off when Apex, his yellow lab, barked.  Good hunting ground, Jeremy thought. He’d never hunted, never held a gun, but such was on his bucket list. Apex was a young dog, but an old soul. He had a look that said he knew things more than just what would get him a treat, preferably a liver treat. His gaze penetrated into people’s souls. 
Apex tore after the deer then stopped at the edge of the woods into which they’d disappeared, the fur on his back rising in a crest, and laid down staring into the forest.  That was unlike him.  Jeremy tried to see what stopped Apex but saw nothing.  Maybe he smells a bear. Jeremy made a mental note to get a can of bear spray.
            Back in front, he looked over rolling hills. Leaves on the hardwoods were just starting to get in some color, those stands streaked with the eternal green of the pines.  He must be standing at 1,500 feet, high by the standards of the Taconic Range, so high he could see tops of the Green Mountains to the east, the Adirondacks far off to the west.  He’d need a new car, four-wheel drive, and powerful, to get up here in the winter.  A truck, a Dodge Ram 3500, a big diesel.  Maybe with a snowplow.
He walked to the house and cupped his face against the rippled waves of the ancient windows. There were enough broken ones he could have just looked through if he could avoid the shards of glass jutting from the splintered muntins.  Something large and furry ran from the room he peered into. At least it wasn’t a skunk; that was one odor he hadn’t whiffed. And it was too big to be a rat. Good, he thought, a good omen.
Jeremy backed away, lifted his iPhone, and took a picture, a very good picture — he had an iPhone 12 Pro – of the house.
“It’s nothing to write home about,” he wrote in the text to his wife. “But it’s a million-dollar view so a bargain.”  He pressed the send arrow and immediately got a response that it couldn’t be sent.  “No service,” the phone read.  He added s atellite dish to his list. And chainsaw, tractor, shotgun, and a black and red plaid coat.
He thought writing “a million-dollar view” was clever.  They were asking half that for the house and its accompanying 230 acres that included two spring-fed ponds and a half-mile of a stream that the realtor assured him flowed twelve months of the year. “You could lease it to hunters and fisherman,” said Betts. “Or get loggers in there. The property might just about pay for itself.”
She’d also hinted that the owners were motivated buyers, a phrase she’d picked up after the Great Financial Crisis when she’d somehow sold $8 million worth of slope-side homes from owners who were more than motivated by lost jobs, lost fortunes, and left-leaning Vermont legislators thinking that higher taxes on ski-houses owned by New Yorkers, flat-landers by another name, would be a motivation for higher home prices and more tax revenues. Home prices dropped 25% the following year, tax revenues by a similar amount.
“Can you tell me who the seller is?” asked Jeremy.
“It’s complicated,” said Betts. “A Boston lawyer named Hartwell was the last owner. When he got shot up here, the property went into a family trust.   They let the farmer who managed the place stay on as caretaker, raise some cows. After Hartwell was killed it just sat there. The farmer’s gone now. The Hartwell family fought over it for decades. And now, well, it’s on the market.”
“Hartwell was killed?” asked Jeremy.
Betts smiled and turned away to peer out the bay window of her office. “Oh look! That’s a bald eagle I think.” She pointed to a gull on its way to Lake Champlain.  “Can I get you a coffee?”
Jeremy shook his head and wondered about Hartwell. I bet he loved it up here, he thought, the air, the view, the color in autumn. I’m going to love it, too. It would be a great place to die…peacefully anyway.  He asked again about Hartwell. Betts said, “Hunting accident,” Betts said. “He was up in deer season and got himself shot.”
She saw Jeremy’s eyes widen as he reflexively pulled his head back.  “That was years ago. And in those days the property wasn’t posted like it is now. Those old-time hunters just wore those brown hunting coats. Hell, they looked like deer. No one goes into the woods dressed liked that now,” she said.
            “Gunshots can travel a mile,” said Jeremy as much to himself as the realtor. “You must get a ton on hunters out here.”
            “Fewer and fewer. You’d be surprised.  And nowadays it’s mostly bowhunters. You know, with arrows.  And they don’t shoot so far,” Betts said.  She hesitated for a moment and continued. “Anyway, the farmer wasn’t shot by a rifle.”
“Shotgun?” Jeremy asked.
            “An arrow. But that was before anyone who out went wore orange. The only accidents you hear about now are when bowhunters fall from tree stands.”  Jeremy wrote down first-aid kit.  “But you’re posted, so no one can come onto this property unless invited.” Her flirtatious smile made Jeremy cringe a little.  Jeremy added blaze orange to his clothing list.
           
Jeremy’s wife stared at him, at the photos he’d downloaded, then back to him. The crests and valleys across her brow reminded him of the view from the land he’d just bought.  “It was only a binder,” he pleaded.  “Twenty-thousand, we can get it back if…”
            “If what?” she interrupted.
            Jeremy didn’t have an answer to that.  The whole project, the search for a mountain home, hadn’t only been his idea. She’d said, “so look,” which seemed like agreement, even enthusiasm, especially when combined with weekends at inns and B and Bs. He mentioned that to which she countered that those had heat, running water – hot and cold! – were clean, served wonderful food, and were near to civilization to say nothing of fresh sheets, towels, and no furry things creeping around.
“Let’s go this weekend.  Take a look. The views are incredible. The land is perfect. I think we could renovate the house maybe. Or build one. Or just a cabin. A retreat. I don’t know you know,” he said searching for words that sounded more determined.  He pulled out two orange vests and matching hats.  “This weekend. I’ve booked an inn. It’ll be fun.”
            Her eyes blazed as much as the vests as he explained that it was hunting season but that the property was fully posted – he’s seen the signs himself – and no one would shoot anyone in orange. “And these days, it’s mostly bowhunters. They don’t shoot very far.”
            His wife’s mood softened not because of that explanation, but because the brochure for the inn mentioned a day spa, massage, and pilates classes. “I’ll make dinner reservations for seven,” she said. “Leave time for a shower. You don’t want to get Lyme disease again.”
            Jeremy insisted they didn’t have many ticks in Vermont, not at the altitude of the property, and that the couple of frosts had probably killed off any ticks by now but agreed a shower would be in order. “You’re right, of course. I’ll hike around and work up a sweat in this thing.” He hefted the heavy canvas vest. “Hell, this would stop a bullet,” he said and then caught himself.  “But that’s not an issue.”  If his wife heard that, she gave no indication; she went back to making notes on the brochure. “I think I’ll get a ninety-minute shiatsu session. Want one?”
           
He was glad his wife chose to stay at the inn.  The road up to the property seemed somehow more rutted than his first and only visit.  Apex, though, was happy and seemed to enjoy every jolt that sent him bouncing on the front seat.  Jeremy had to stop to haul off a large branch from one of the maples that had fallen across the road and underscored chainsaw on his growing list of must-haves to which he’d recently added a woodstove, six-month’s worth of emergency food, a water filter, and gardening supplies. Jeremy had bought into the post-apocalyptic scenarios made popular on reality TV. His wife thought he was an idiot, a lovable idiot, but an idiot, nonetheless.  Her list, though, was starting to build as well and inevitably would include a book of massages at the spa she was enjoying as he bounced his way up Gallows Hill Road.  He made a mental note to get the suspension checked. 
He went around the house again, thinking that it wasn’t in such bad shape after all. It had been built better than the typical hilltop farm, post-and-beam, solid foundation; the Hartwells had been well off.  The slate roof was intact which meant no water damage and Jeremy counted fewer broken windows than he’d imagined.  Sure, some clapboards needed replacing, the kitchen and bathrooms he didn’t dare think about.  But the house would stand. Betts had recommended a contractor who specialized in renovations – “A miracle worker,” she’d said. That guy was supposed to be up here in a couple of hours giving Jeremy and Apex time to explore the land.  He felt silly putting on the orange jacket – the property had been posted after all – and even sillier with his Elmer Fudd hat. To Apex he said, “Be vewy vewy quiet, I’m hunting wabbits.”  Apex wagged his tail and looked around for wabbits.
Leaves crackled under Bean Boots when he entered the woods. Apex laid down just outside of the forest, reluctant to follow.  His muzzle lifted in the air, sniffing. The hair on his back again rose in a defensive crest. The soft growl was unusual for him. “C’mon boy,” said Jeremy slapping his leg.  Apex followed, with reluctance, walking close to Jeremy’s leg.  “Good heel,” said Jeremy rewarding Apex with some chicken. Three-thousand dollars of training might have been worth it, he thought.
            The pair went deeper together into the forest, Apex growling constantly and Jeremy trying to calm him with treats. “Easy Apex,” he said. “It’s okay.” City dog, he figured.  He’ll get to love this place. I’m starting to already.
            Apex stopped in his tracks, the hair on his back fully erect, and mixed growls accompanied bared teeth. He barked some, but the growling registered the fear.  Jeremy looked around, saw nothing, and tried calm Apex. He leaned over, holding his head in his arms, trying to rub his belly – Apex would usually roll onto his back for this – but Apex was stiff and staring straight ahead.  When Jeremy’s followed Apex’s gaze he, too, stiffened.
“How?” he laughed, lifting his arm in a greeting. “You scared the crap out of me!”
            The man had his back to a huge oak, his tanned skin clothing blending in with the bark. Jeremy walked toward him wondering why the bow hunter wasn’t wearing orange or camouflage at least.  Bowhunters wore camo, don’t they?
            The figure notched the arrow, his eyes fixed on Jeremy. It could have been in slow motion that he raised the bow, pulled back on the string, and let the arrow fly.
Jeremy ducked as it soared past. He didn’t need to, the arrow went straight to its target. Apex yelped and turned to see the buck behind them, the end of the arrow sticking out from just behind its shoulder. The buck was on the ground, struggling to lift itself, its front legs pawing the ground as it sunk deep to the forest floor. It slid forward, its movements less and less until it stopped.
Jeremy yelled “What the…” but stopped mid-sentence. The man was gone, disappeared. He looked for a running figure, something, and saw nothing.  Apex was relaxed now, sniffing at the body on the ground.  Jeremy was turning around, trying to see if the man, the figure, was there stalking him.  There was no one.  Poacher, he thought, caught in the act of some crazy hunter’s mindset.  What balls to shoot right in front of me.  He’d heard the term buck fever. Maybe this was that. He’d post more signs for sure.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Orson Wilcox the ancient game warden for the county.  “Never seen the like.”  He inspected the wooden arrow he’d pulled from the deer. “Lookee here. That’s a goddamn stone arrowhead.” He twirled the shaft in his hand.  “Odd thing for sure, but that hunter was a damn good shot.”
Wilcox speculated that the trespasser – he was reluctant to call it poaching – might have come from a primitive skills camp where they taught bushcraft and gotten lost on a hunt. “They’re not bad people.  Kind of like hippies getting back to nature. That sort. Fellow probably tracked the buck over this way. I’ll check on them.  Want the deer?”
            Jeremy shook his head. He’d get his own someday, he said.  Meantime, he wouldn’t know what to do with it. Wilcox nodded and asked for a hand loading it into his truck.  “Don’t want to waste it. Maybe the folks at that school will claim it. If they have a license.” 
Wilcox didn’t drive to the camp. He knew better. He knew this arrow. He was too aware of the story about Hartwell, killed by an arrow, a primitive thing of ash, two turkey feathers, quartz point, and two wide bands of yellow rings on the shaft. And the stories of these woods.  No one would believe them. The people that might have died years before or moved away so people from the city, like Jeremy, could move in.  His report called it a roadkill and he butchered the deer himself, a perk of the job.  The arrow he kept in his barn along with a dozen identical ones he’d taken over the years.