A Winter’s Red Tail

   Huey drove and drove and drove. He hadn’t hit her that hard. Not that hard. Couldn’t have been that hard. He looked at his hands on the steering wheel and the dried stains of red. It would be dark soon. He had to get gas. He was only halfway there.

   He stopped on the highway shoulder and got out and washed his hands in a snowbank, all the while worrying that the passing traffic might be watching him.

   He got more gas and paid with the cash he had gotten maxing out his overdraft before he left his hometown. Maybe his wife was alive? Huey hadn’t hit her that hard. But he knew she wasn’t. It wasn’t his fault. He told her he didn’t want kids. That was the deal. Why did she let herself get pregnant?

   It got dark back on the highway. Sometime in the middle of the night he found the logging camp road. Nearing dawn he found the dirt drive to the cabin. A little fox was by the drive entrance smiling as him as he turned in.

   The cabin. His wife’s great aunt’s cabin. The great aunt never came up here anymore, and they were supposed to inherit it when she kicked off anyway. He broke in, got a fire going in the cookstove and then slept.  

   It was night again when he woke. Outside he could hear howling, barking, and crying, like some yappy little dog or something. Huey opened the cabin door and it was dark and cold. The fire in the cookstove had died out. The moon and the snow offered a bit of a twilight to look by. Someone was outside.

   She was only twenty feet from the front of the cabin. She stood in the snow. She smiled at him. He slammed the cabin door. Huey grabbed a poker by the cookstove. It wasn’t his wife. His wife was a short crop gray blonde. This one had red hair. Long red hair.

   He made himself look out the front window. He saw nice smooth snow then as he shuffled sideways to see more, she was right where he first saw her. She was still smiling. Standing in the snow. She leaned her head forward then tossed it back and her red hair shook away snowflakes. Her smile widened and her teeth were showing.

   Huey went to the cookstove. He shoved in fresh kindling and logs from the bin beside it and lit it up again. All the while he kept the poker near him. There was a kerosine lantern on a mount by the front door, another at the side door, another at the back bedroom. Huey lit them all.

   He looked out the window again she was still there. Huey sat for a while in a rocking chair by the cookstove. It was in his head he decided. He opened the cabin door. She smiled at him. Again, with the teeth, Huey thought.

   Huey held up the poker, let out a yell and ran screaming towards her. She darted away from him in some crazy zigzag, turning to keep looking back at Huey, as if playing some kids game of keep away.

   Huey remembered the property sloped down sharply to meet the lake. The fluffy drifting snow near the cabin turned to a thin slush as he reached the slope. He lost his footing and was sliding on his butt down the hill. He stopped just shy of dropping off the bank into the freezing waters of the lake.

   Why wasn’t the lake frozen over? None of the weather made any sense up here. The woman was gone. Huey crawled back up to the cabin.

   He dried his only clothes by the cookstove and waited out the morning.

   Hunger forced him to drive to town some two hours away. An hour into the drive he saw a fox on the gravel road. The little red-haired thing trotted happily along the soft shoulder. Huey sped up to run it over. The fox danced into the ditch by the road, then back onto the road, then into the ditch. Huey was struggling to speed up but still keep his truck on the road, but still be close enough to….

   A bear cub had stepped out onto the road. Huey slammed the brakes and hit his horn. He hit his horn repeatedly. There were no other drivers on the road to hear it. The bear cub looked at him.

   Huey looked all around for the mother. His wife had warned him years ago, never mess with a bear’s cub, never mess with their food. Then he saw the partially snow-covered sign. Municipal Landfill. The dump. The bear mother must be hanging around the dump for food.

   Huey drove around the cub slowly.

   When he got to town, they at least had a grocery store big enough for him not to be noticed. He bought every dry bulk food he saw. More kerosene and wood matches. When he got to the checkout a uniformed police office was standing by the front automatic doors. No one else seem to notice the officer, but he looked so out of place in this little town. Young, clean cut, freckled faced, and wearing gloves and a black toque.

   Huey kept his head down and forced himself through checkout. He had to eat. The officer was smiling at him. Huey wouldn’t look, but he could feel it. The officer was smiling. Keeping his head down Huey pushed the shopper’s cart out to truck and loaded it in. Would he be followed? Huey refused to look.

   He white knuckled the drive back to the cabin. He went into the cabin without bringing in any of the groceries. He took up the poker from the cookstove and looked out the side door. The police officer was coming down the drive. No winter coat, just his uniform, gloves and a black toque.

   Huey closed the side door and got behind the front door. Then he heard the knock. It repeated. And repeated. Huey raised the poker. The young officer opened the cabin door and stepped in. Huey brought the poker down on the black toque and heard the skull break.

   Before the blood could cover too much of the floor Huey was dragging the body out to the truck. He knew what he was going to do with it even before he got home to the cabin. Huey knew he’d be followed.

   He drove to the dump. The Municipal landfill. He saw no bear cub on the road. No dancing fox.

   He drove into the middle where there were piles and mounds of decades of garbage. Snow covered everything. Huey dug with his hands into a snow drift until he uncovered garbage. Then he dug further, and further. He’d knew the snow would melt and in the spring all the garbage would be revealed and he wanted that only garbage would seen.

   When he judged he had dug deep enough, he put the police officer’s body in the hole he had made. Laying the body down the officer’s toque stuck to Huey’s hand and came off its head. The blood on it was sticky in the cold. Huey pulled the toque off his hand, and wiped everything on the snow. He went back to the officer and put the toque back on him. Red hair. The officer had short cropped red hair.

   Huey jumped out quickly. He pulled garbage from everywhere to cover the body over. He washed his hands again in the snow. He inspected his work and saw this area of garbage was the only garbage not covered with snow.

   Then a little bear cub went by Huey’s foot. The bear cub went straight to the turned over garbage and where the body was buried. Panicking that his work was being disturbed, Huey grabbed the bear cub. Then he heard the growl. He looked up. Three bars were coming from the other side of the garbage pile he had worked on. He looked back to the truck. Another three bears were circling it. He looked east. Four bears were coming down a hillside.

   Then a little fox came out from the garbage where Huey had buried the police officer’s body. The fox trotted over to another fox on the west side of the dump. The two foxes stood beside each other smiling at Huey.

   The bears closed in on Huey. His last thought was his wife’s advice; never mess with a bear’s cub.