Wolf Hunt in the Boundary Waters

(The Beasts of the Woods, and the Empty Barn)



The Beasts of the Woods

It was near daylight, out of the darkness came two glary-eyes, spread apart like an owls; scared, looking everywhichway. Then they’d vanish. He could see—had caught a glimpse of—and now was refocusing, could see, a barn in the far-distance, between the naked trees and his shivering body, under naked branches, where he was huddled, and now over him was an emerging dim-whitish blue sky, rising; he was slightly blinded by the pure white snow that surrounded him, and night turning into day (he was in a wooded area, called the Boundary Waters, in upper Minnesota, it was the winter of 1990.)
In the darkness of the night, he walked like an ape, hands hanging along his sides, half arched, like the Hunchback of Notre Dame, a million shadows creeping off from the trees, surrounding him, and sounds, the sounds he was forced to listen to, meaningless cries of the woods.
But now at daybreak he saw a barn, he squatted down, resting on his bare knees, to get a better view. He spat out blood and yellowish slime from his mouth, onto the pure white snow. He looked at it, puzzled.

One little meager barn in the middle of the woods, in the Boundary Waters, sleeping like a mangy mutt, under an empty sky,
‘That’s something else,’ he told himself, as if he never saw it before (in a zoning like stare).
As he moved closer to the barn, he saw an axe, from the distance he was at, it was small yet, and by the axe was a dead wolf, it was chopped up—so it appeared, now frozen in the cold February winter snows. The barn door was slightly wedged open, held open by frozen snow, tucked under it. He got a better look at the wolf, as he drew nearer, “That’s something else…” he said aloud, no one around to hear him.

In front of him, there were raw patches of dirt, earth-patches, that seeped out of the snow, crept through the snow, thus, he was seeing footprints, the snow did not cover up, twelve-hours prior, along with wolf-tracks (or wolf embedded naked paw marks), along side shoe imprints (‘…an attack that took place,’ his subconscious whispered to his awakening soul), perhaps trampled over by wolves, and other wild sources, within those twelve-hours: these shoe imprints, he noticed, that is to say, the marks of soles from shoes, indented into the hard snow against the dirt, the imprints, he was examining, looked like his shoe-soles, his steps, leading into the woods, not out.


The Empty Barn


The path led up to the barn; and along side that path, leading up to those two heavy doors, belonging to the barn, being kept open by the frozen snow, wedged under it—slightly he could now see torn up overalls, shredded pieces, large pieces of the fabric, frozen blood on those pieces, thrown on top of the snow as if a beast had, spin and twirled about wildly, and in the process, whirled it into the air, after tarring it off its prey.
As he looked down into the pathway, still baffled, and profoundly so, full of unknown emotions—slowly nearing the barn, glancing over his shoulder at those shredded trousers—a last look, he got thinking, and thinking deeper, trying to put the puzzle together.

“They are not going to catch me,” he said aloud, and was now wondering why indeed he said what he said, he thought deeper,
“Who is not going to catch me?”
The only living things at this living moment that surrounded him were the tress, those haunting looking branches that looked more like thin arms reaching everywhichway.
He could smell out the dead flesh of the dog, he could see a face of a woman crying, although he couldn’t untangle the riddle in his head, not yet anyhow.

Now he stood, knee deep in snow, crossing over from the path to the barn, some twenty-feet in front of him. He made a sound in his throat, and nostrils, as if to clear them, then listened for any sounds but only the winds came to his ears. He looked in all directions as if he was part of a hunt, and he was the one being hunted, had been the one hunted all night long.
Motionless he stood looking at two thick almost completely closed doors, doors kept open by wedged frozen snow, doors leading into the barn. He felt like one lone lost beast: he remembered now (staring at those doors), a woman had been with him, in her hand, right hand, she held a rose— he had given it to her, it was her eighth anniversary, and he had given it to her; he remembered her fur-like hat.
He looked up at the sky, the sun was slanted, the clouds had a tinge, a tint of red fire in them, red like the blood he saw sprinkled about the entrance of the barn doors (for now he was but ten feet in front of them).

She, the woman with the rose, had been feeding a young dog (wolf) in the barn (perhaps the wind carried her sent—to and fro within the barn, and outside the barn—as the wind seeped through the crevasses of the old wood, and seeped out of those two barn doors, one wedged open by frozen snow, and down hill), a delicate woman, she was waiting for her husband to return with firewood, they had been warming themselves up, along with the barn, that is previously to this lone moment, warming it up with splinters of wood found here and there within the barn, then by surprise ‘Attack!’ came (her husband outside of the barn looking for branches he could dry out for burning wood later), consequently, during this interval period, a pack of wolves, hungry, starving wolves, with yellowish eyes, doted with a black marble iris’, and saber like teeth, growling, snarling, paralyzed the twenty-eight year old woman, as they kept circling her.


The Attack


They, her and her husband, came to the barn accidental like, they had gotten lost in the woods, upon noticing it, were warming up in the empty, abandoned barn, perhaps a hundred-years old: away from the elements of the winter snows, and cold; they were not suppose to have been in the park, the Boundary Waters, a geological wonder of the world, but they couldn’t help themselves, it was an adventure, an eight anniversary adventure. They had snuck in.
And then, the wolves came, he now remembered, and he heard her screams, and he came running, he was gathering wood, branches to feed a fire in the barn, it was all awkward to him, but it was now being absorbed into his body like osmosis, as if his subconscious broke down some walls to inform him, all and everything, perhaps for self preservation, for his subconscious knew something he did not know, not clearly anyhow, and he was not yet putting the dotes together, and to his subconscious, time was of the essence.

He remembered now—much more clearly than he had a moment ago, it was his wife, when he arrived, several of those wolves were dragging her around the barn like a rag doll, as if they all were trying to let the others know whose property she was, or was going to be, and he took the axe lying on the side of the barn, one lone wolf to its side, as if it was a guard, and he killed it, bloody like, insanely chopping and chopping almost forgetting his wife was being dragged about, and then refocusing, seeing she was dead, and her limbs half chewed apart, he had ran, and they ran after him, tore his pants off him, he was half naked—(now he looked down at his shivering legs, yet he hand long underwear on, keeping him from complete lower body frost bite). And they hunted him. Had he not dug a hole in the snow, like an igloo, having the snow become his insulation, he’d have died of exposure, it covered his scent likewise.
‘Yes, yes…yes, yes..? it has to be,’ he was talking out loud (standing in front of those big barn doors), perhaps to his subconscious, ‘they were hunting me all night!’
Now tears poured down his face, he had had no time to grieve his wife, and they came automatically, like Nigeria Falls. But his subconscious was trying to tell him something else: ‘…grieve later.’
But why, he asked himself, the tears were still coming, it would only be a few minutes to give homage to his dead wife, who was no more than bone and marrow, and separated, thrown about like the bones at the Killing Fields of Cambodia; don’t my subconscious know I got to grieve! So he told himself as the tears came, pushing his intuition, his instinct, the things the subconscious uses to warn back further into his cerebellum.

He remembered his wife now, as he had peered through the barn doors, her screams—(tears now coming along with the darkness he enclosed with the palms of his hands around his face and eyes)—he remembered now, her trying to get up, and once getting up, she ended up running from the wolves in circles, them chasing her, like ten-cats after a little mouse, but they outpaced her, pulled her down slowly, steadily, until she drew near the floor of the barn and collapsed.


Now he opened up his eyes, drew his palms away, and wiped his tears on his shirt sleeve, and took in a deep breath, let out a sigh, and was about to tell his subconscious ‘…see, it only took a moment (but the moment was more like five minutes),’ and then he shook his head, started looking automatically in all directions, an instinct told him do. He listened to it, and he saw in the far-distance, a wolf, just staring, then he looked to the opposite side, another one had popped his head out of the woods, and then two were creeping down the path to the barn. His heart pumped up the words, “The hunt…” it was not over for the wolves, that was what his subconscious was trying to tell him.

He stood there looking, and the more he looked, and the longer he looked, the more wolves that appeared…and closer and closer they came, as if testing the water, he even noticed one wolf, a lone wolf, his subconscious told him, ‘This one, this wolf you are looking at, the one staring you in the face some ten feet away, this wolf is also looking at the dead wolf behind you, the one you killed yesterday, they are related,’ and now he noticed the wolf had revengeful eyes, and he noticed the several other wolves, were surrounding him, combing out a perimeter…!

Notes: written in the evening of 11-14-2008