Moose Tracks (Fesler-Lampert Minnesota Heritage) Read online

  Clancy lowered his voice. “You mean, you’d—”

  “Don’t give me any grief. I warned you, this operation isn’t small potatoes. You’re in deep now, whether you like it or not. Let’s get out of here.”

  Their words faded away.

  Seth dropped deeper into blackness, free-falling down an endless chasm.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Seth?” Mom called. “Seth?”

  “Mhmmm.” Seth tried to reply, but his mouth felt as if it were full of cattail fluff.

  The light clicked on.

  “Oh, dear Lord … Seth!”

  Seth forced himself slowly up on his elbows. He looked around the barn. It was no dream.

  “What happened?” Mom asked. “Did Quest kick you?”

  For a few seconds he couldn’t remember where he was. Then it all came back. The poachers. How could he tell her about them? If the poachers found out, they’d come back and finish him off for sure. He didn’t want to lie, but he didn’t have a choice.

  “You’re bleeding!” she said, kneeling by his side. “Oh, Seth …”

  “I’m okay, Mom,” he said, pushing the words from his lips. “Really. I just, uh, was out riding and I fell off Quest—right onto my face. Stupid, huh?” His head throbbed. “I came back, put Quest into his stall, and then, um …” He sat up, turning his head slowly. Midnight walked over his outstretched legs. Seth’s neck felt stiff as a two-by-four. “Guess I just fell asleep.”

  “Pretty bad fall,” she said.

  Seth wished she’d just keep asking questions until she pried the truth out of him. But how could he tell her now?

  “Something sharp tore your cheek,” she said quietly, stroking his head.

  Seth brushed away her hand, slowly stood up, and wiped his hand across the dry blood on his cheek. He knew the poachers’ faces. He could identify them, but what if he did? Would they really come after his family? “I must have hit a rock. I’m all right, really. It’s no big deal,” he said, beginning to feel dizzy.

  Seth’s mother pulled Seth under the light and looked at his cheek, her eyebrows bunched together. “You need ice, and possibly stitches, too.”

  She held the barn door open. “Let’s get in the car and head to the hospital,” she said, and sighed. “I wish your father was home.”

  After his mom applied some ice and a large bandage to Seth’s cheek, they drove to the hospital. All during the half-hour trip, Seth felt awful. He thought he could stand up to the poachers, but look what had happened instead. They’d knocked him out cold, could have killed him. And if he talked, they’d come back. How could he have thought early this morning—it seemed like years ago—that he was ready to team up with Dad? The words, “You might get hurt,” pounded in Seth’s head. Dad knew Seth was no more than a wimpy, snivelly nosed kid.

  Walking down the long gray corridor of the Great Falls Hospital, Seth hoped he wouldn’t need stitches. He turned a corner with Mom and passed the admitting office and gift shop. Both were closed. As they passed patients’ rooms, his mom raised her forefinger over her lips.

  Moaning came from one room, and in another Seth saw a patient walking around—the back strings of the man’s gown barely holding it closed.

  Three nurses chatted at the desk.

  “Hello.” The blond nurse smiled, revealing two deep dimples. “What can we do for you?” She looked at Seth’s mother first, her eyes resting on her bulging belly. “Is it time?”

  “No, I certainly hope not,” she laughed. “I’ll be ready in a month—not a day sooner.”

  “Ah, under those bandages I bet,” the nurse said, pointing to the large flesh-colored bandage on Seth’s cheek.

  “He has a nasty gash on his face,” Mom said.

  Seth looked down. He knew what the next question was, and he knew he was going to have to lie again.

  “What happened?” the nurse asked.

  “Uh, I fell off my horse.”

  “You were riding on a day like this?” she asked with a laugh.

  “Yeah.” Seth suddenly felt exhausted. He went back to studying the square floor tiles.

  “Doesn’t make sense to me, either,” Mom said. “It’s hard to figure boys out sometimes.”

  Seth looked up quickly at his mom. She was smiling. If only she knew the truth of what had happened. She wouldn’t be smiling then. He looked back down at the ground again, feeling completely alone.

  The nurse held out a clipboard for Seth’s mother to sign. She asked a hundred questions about insurance, allergies, and family medical history. What did family medical history have to do with a cut on his face anyway?

  “And the father’s medical background?” the nurse asked.

  “Biological father’s background unknown,” Mom said quietly.

  Father’s background unknown. Seth’s face went hot. It made him feel like a nonperson.

  He glanced at his mom, her belly protruding beneath her cape. At least the baby would have a real dad. But suddenly Seth felt angry with himself. Maybe he was only a stepson, but by trying to prove himself to Dad, he’d put his family in danger, real danger.

  He put his hands in his pockets. He felt the fur of the rabbit’s foot. His mind raced. He pictured the poachers breaking into his house … moving in the darkness … heard his mother scream … What would he do then?

  He shuddered.

  “This way,” the nurse said, interrupting his thoughts.

  Seth and Mom followed her to a small white room.

  “The doctor will be right with you,” the nurse said.

  Mom sat in a chair, a magazine in her hands.

  Seth hopped up on the examining table and brushed his fingers across his bandaged cheek. Even a light touch sent streaks of pain to his jaw. His cheek burned. He looked around the room.

  Seth focused on a poster. At first it seemed just a haze of boxes, but as he looked more closely, he realized he was looking at hands—six hands in six large squares. Seth read the information at the top of the poster. “When a body appendage is lost,” the poster said, “the following precautions must be taken.”

  The poster showed a hand that had been cut off in a farming accident. It explained, step-by-step, what to do with a hand or arm so that it could later be surgically put back on the person. “Wrap it in paper towel wet with saline solution,” Seth read. He pictured adding salt from the shaker to water. “Place in a sealed plastic bag.” He pictured putting it in a Ziploc bag. Plunk.

  The doctor walked in, a man looking more like a clown than a doctor. His shoes were at least a size thirteen, and he wore a Hawaiian-print tie under his white doctor’s coat.

  “Dr. Gekko—Friday night—usually a busy night,” the doctor said in a rush, scratching his thin gray hair. “So, let’s check you out.” He walked to Seth and whisked off the bandage. “A slight laceration, bruised, but it won’t take much to make sure it heals properly.” He poked around. “Mmm … five or six stitches should do it.”

  Seth forced himself to sit up straight.

  As the doctor gathered his equipment, Seth kept his eyes on the wall in front of him.

  “Lie back,” the doctor said. “First I’ll give you a shot … numb you up.”

  He tensed up as the doctor pulled on surgical gloves. From the corner of his eye, Seth saw the needle.

  He felt a pain in his cheek. The shot was over.

  Next, Dr. Gekko held up a white cloth with a three-inch hole in the middle. “Just relax,” he said, and placed it over Seth’s wound. “Try and think of something else. Warm ocean breezes, music, Jamaica or maybe the Bahamas …”

  Seth thought of the poster. “Keep it cold,” he’d read. “Refrigerate if necessary.” Seth pictured putting the hand into his refrigerator. Disgusting. His head began to spin. In his mind, the hand turned into a paw—a rabbit’s paw. Weird.

  Before Seth knew what was happening, the doctor’s voice drifted farther and farther away, and he felt himself go limp.

  He fainted.
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  CHAPTER NINE

  “Fifteen miles per hour!” Mom said, gripping the steering wheel. “At this rate, it’s going to take us all night to get home.”

  Seth thought about the wounded moose calf. Was it smart enough to find shelter? Could it survive in weather like this? Was Dad still out trying to find the poachers?

  “That happened to me once, Seth,” Mom said.

  “What?”

  “Fainted.”

  “Oh, that,” Seth said, feeling pretty stupid.

  “I was watching my little brother, your uncle Peter, have an IV needle put in his arm. He had pneumonia, and they couldn’t find his vein. They kept poking around for it, and I kept watching. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor in a heap,” she said. “It happens to lots of people.”

  “Yeah,” he answered. He knew she was trying to make him feel better. But drawing attention to it didn’t help. The fact was, he’d fainted over nothing.

  It seemed he’d been more scared in this one day than he’d been in a lifetime. More than the time he’d run into a bear and her cub in the apple orchard. More than before any horse show. More than when he took out the shotgun with Matt. But guys shouldn’t faint when they get a few stitches or when they look at a medical poster.

  Snow blew hard across the road, hiding the dividing line and pelting the windshield. The wipers pulsed back and forth, unable to keep up with the snow. A gust of wind sideswiped the car.

  “This is terrible,” Mom said, and hunched toward the windshield. “What a night.…”

  The wipers ticked back and forth.

  When they hit a patch of ice, the car fishtailed sharply back and forth. Seth felt his stomach rise to his throat. He grabbed the armrest.

  “Oh Lord,” Mom cried out. “Hang on.…”

  The car jolted off the smooth pavement toward the ditch. His mom swerved the car back on the road again, but this time too far to the other side. They were in the opposite traffic lane.

  Car lights loomed toward them through the white-speckled blackness.

  “Hit the brakes!” Seth yelled. He closed his eyes and grabbed the armrest more tightly.

  Just as the oncoming car came closer, his mom regained control of the station wagon and eased back into the right lane, slowing the car to a crawl.

  “Thank God we didn’t get hurt,” Mom said. “That was too close.” She let out a long breath.

  “Why didn’t you hit the brakes?”

  “If I’d slammed on the brakes,” she said, “it would have put the car into a spin. I’ll feel better when we get home and stay there. No more hospital visits tonight, okay?”

  “Promise,” Seth said, scratching lightly at the tape around his bandage.

  For a while, they didn’t speak.

  Seth thought of what his mom had said: biological father’s background unknown. It sounded so cold. Incomplete. Seth reached in his pocket. He turned the paw around and pressed the sharp toenails of the rabbit’s foot into his palm until it hurt.

  “My real dad,” he blurted out. “I want to know about my real dad.” There. He had the courage to say it.

  Mom kept her eyes on the road. She began tapping her fingers on the rim of the steering wheel, but said nothing.

  “Mom?”

  She cleared her throat and let out a sigh. “I’ve always wanted to tell you,” she said. “I just didn’t know when you’d be ready, when you’d want to know.…”

  Seth waited.

  “First,” she glanced quickly at Seth, her eyes pained, then back to the road. “You have to know: I’ve never for one moment regretted having you, Seth. Never.” She paused. “My only regret was, well, the way you were conceived, that you didn’t start out with a father to help raise you those first few years. I wish now that I had waited until I met and married Kevin. I can never change that, can I?”

  “No,” Seth said, waiting.

  “But when I held you for the first time, all red and wrinkled and beautiful, I suddenly realized that life is a miracle, a gift.”

  Seth swallowed hard. “But my real father,” Seth asked, trying to sound casual, as though it all didn’t really matter. “What’s his name?” His heart pounded.

  “He said his name was Michael O’Henry.”

  Michael O’Henry. The name sounded friendly, almost hopeful.

  “I met him when I went on a college ski trip in Steamboat Springs,” Mom said. “He said he played hockey for the Minnesota North Stars, and maybe that impressed me then.”

  The North Stars! His biological father was a professional hockey player? Incredible. Was he still playing? Could Seth go to one of his games sometime, maybe meet him afterward?

  “I was foolish,” Mom continued. “I let myself get swept away by him, not thinking about the future, not even thinking about protection at the moment. I wasn’t thinking at all. And later …,” she paused, rubbed the back of her neck.

  Seth waited for her to continue, clutching the paw even tighter in his pocket.

  “… when I found out I was pregnant, I tried to contact him, to tell him he was the father. I thought he should know. But the North Stars’ coach told me they’d never had a player by that name. Never heard of him.”

  “You mean … he lied to you?” Seth couldn’t imagine that someone would lie about their name. After all, if a person couldn’t be honest about their name, then they probably couldn’t be trusted with anything. He turned his face slightly toward Mom. “So then what happened? You were just on your own?”

  She nodded. “I’m sorry, Seth. I wish I could tell you he was a man you could look up to.”

  Seth felt numb.

  The wipers ticked steadily back and forth.

  Maybe he’d never fully admitted it to himself, but he must have hoped that someday he’d meet his real dad. Now, it was as if a door had slammed in his face. Yet, if his real dad wasn’t someone Seth could respect—someone like Kevin Jacobson—then maybe it was best the door had closed.

  “Mom,” he said. “It doesn’t really matter.”

  “But of course it matters,” she said, “otherwise you wouldn’t have asked. If it makes you feel better, you inherited his good looks.”

  “I was hoping it was my slam shot on the ice.”

  They both laughed.

  “Any more questions?” Mom asked.

  “Not right now,” Seth said, reaching across the seat and placing his hand on her shoulder.

  As the station wagon pulled into the driveway, Seth looked for Dad’s truck. It wasn’t the first time Dad was gone late, but this night, more than ever, Seth wished he were home.

  He wanted to tell Mom about the poachers, but they had him in their grip.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Water steamed in the claw-foot bathtub, rust-stained from minerals that continually leached from the earth into the well water. Seth soaked his body, absorbing heat like a lizard on a sun-drenched rock.

  It was 10 P.M., and Seth wondered if his day would ever end. He tried to forget everything, but the poachers’ faces loomed before him. One with a face like a cabbage head, round and colorless. The other, long-nosed like a wolf, with steely eyes. A shiver zigzagged through Seth’s body despite the hot water, which had turned his legs beet red.

  What made him madder than anything was that he didn’t have any evidence against them. Nothing. Who would believe a twelve-year-old kid?

  He avoided getting the stitches on his cheek wet as he put his head back and washed his hair. Then he stepped out, grabbed a towel, and looked at himself in the cabinet mirror. What a mess! One eye was puffy and half-closed, just a small slit to see through. His cheek was bluish gray with a touch of green and swollen with five small stitches across his cheekbone. The face in the mirror didn’t even look like his. And it was older, he thought, more serious.

  He moved closer to the mirror. His expression reminded him of Dad’s, the angry look that crossed his face when he talked about deer shiners, poachers who use a bright spotlight in the middle of th
e night to hunt. Blinded by the brightness, the deer freeze and then the shiners shoot. Maybe some poachers are trying to put food on their table, Seth thought. That might be forgivable. But for others, poaching must be a sort of game, like shooting ducks at a carnival booth and taking home cash.

  The more he thought about the poachers, the madder he felt. Beyond being a threat to Seth, there was a rottenness about them that posed a threat to the woods and everything in it.

  He pounded his fist on the sink. They can’t just come in here—on our property—and threaten me! Rough me up! He couldn’t let them get away with it. It was wrong, and they deserved to be arrested. He couldn’t let them scare him into silence. He owed it to the moose calf, he owed it to himself. As soon as his dad got back … if Seth could just hold it together until his dad returned, then maybe … Maybe what? Tell Dad what happened, only to have him go out and get himself shot?

  Seth dressed and joined his mom in the kitchen. He plugged in the popcorn popper. Over the whir of the popper, he heard the phone ring.

  Mom answered it, stepping into the living room.

  Seth finished popping a bowl of fluffy white kernels and unplugged the popper.

  “Dad called,” Mom said, putting the phone back down. She picked up a blue-striped dish towel and began drying a pot. “He won’t be back tonight.”

  Seth felt himself sag inside. “What?”

  “He said he’s working with Ray and moving in on a big arrest of bear poachers. I’m just relieved to know he’s not in a ditch somewhere.”

  “Bear?” Seth couldn’t believe it. Dad was completely off the poachers’ trail. “But he said he was going after moose poachers!”

  Seth’s mother leaned her back against the sink and lightly massaged the top of her round belly. “I don’t know what he’s doing exactly, Seth. He didn’t say very much.…”

  “He’ll never catch them now,” Seth muttered.

  “C’mon Seth, you know he doesn’t make an arrest every time. If you’re implying that he’s not doing a good job, if that’s what your tone means …” She stared at Seth and adjusted her hairclip. “Seth, you’ve been acting strange all day. I know you wanted to talk about your real dad, maybe that’s it. But is there more that I should know about?”