The Weirdo

  "I've got myself inside them, Samantha. I've put myself into their skins when they're being hunted. Felt their terror as the dogs chase them through the brush, mile after mile. My heart pounds out of my body. Then I finally go up a tree and wait for the dogs to go away. Instead, a hunter comes and there's a flash and a boom, and it's over...."

  He lowered his eyes, the good one and the droopy one, to look at her. "I know the ways of the bears. I'm going to save them," he said quietly.

  He's crazy, she thought. Totally insane. That airplane crash and all those times in the hospital trying to get new skin have twisted his mind.

  Little else was said until they started down the Feeder Ditch in the other boat, then Chip asked, "Would you be willing to let an expert hypnotize you?"

  Had she heard right? "For what reason?"

  "To sharpen your memory of that day when you found Howell and that morning in the stump...."

  "Hypnotize me?"

  He nodded.

  "This your idea?"

  "No, my father's. I told him how Truesdale reacted."

  Sam shook her head slowly. Chip Clewt had a way of dropping words that exploded. Hypnotize her?

  ***

  "MAMA, did Papa ever have some kind of power over you when you started going together?"

  Dell, having just returned from the Lizzie City swap meet, was in the kitchen finishing lunch. She looked up at Sam, brow knotting a little. "I don't know what you mean."

  "Asked you to do things you really didn't want to do? I don't mean going all the way. I mean other things," Sam said, sitting down at the table with a hurriedly constructed tuna on wheat.

  "Other things?" Dell's frown widened. "What other things?"

  "Oh, like getting you to help him do something you weren't sure about."

  "Samantha, it's been twenty-three years since I started going with your papa. I was nineteen. How can I remember unless you give an example? I was in love with him, and I did most things he asked me to do. He wouldn't ask me to do something wrong. That answer you?"

  Sam sighed and said, "No."

  "Quit beating around the bush."

  "Okay, Chip wants me to help him with that Save the Bears thing, and I think I'd be in the middle."

  Dell laughed softly. "Would you ever...."

  "But another side of me says I'd like to help him."

  "Those sides date back to Adam and Eve."

  "What would you do?"

  "Oh, no, you won't get any encouragement from me. You know how I feel about this situation."

  "But if you were sixteen and your boyfriend..."

  "He's a boyfriend now?"

  "Not really. But if you were sixteen and your friend asked you to help him on something like this, would you have done it?"

  "If I'd known my papa was dead against it I'd've thought a long time about it."

  "I've got to go." Sam gulped down her glass of milk, then headed for the door—but stopped short. "Do you know anything about hypnotism?"

  Dell shook her head. "Not a thing. What's more, I don't want to know. What brought that on?"

  "Tell you later."

  The door closed, and in seconds the Bronco started up Chapanoke Road, bound for Currituck and the Dairy Queen.

  ***

  SUNDAY morning Sam rode her bike out to the highway to retrieve the Pilot from the orange oval roadside container. Four of them perched by the mail route boxes for people who lived on Chapanoke. Sam always brought back Mrs. Haskins's paper along with theirs, tossing it onto her doorstep.

  Usually she waited until she was home before opening it, but this day she slid the rubber band off and there at the bottom of the front page was a two-column headline, Environmental Group Will Attempt to Save Powhatan's Bears.

  A photo of Charles "Chip" Clewt, in his baseball cap, with that half-baked, heart-wrenching grin on his face, stared at her. Under the picture was a caption: Seventeen-Year-Old Honorary Chairman.

  "He was serious," she murmured to herself in disbelief. Honorary chairman? They'd even given him a title.

  The lead paragraph said:

  The National Wildlife Conservancy, an environmentalist group headquartered in Washington, DC, announced plans yesterday to persuade the government to continue a ban on hunting bears in the Powhatan National Wildlife Refuge in eastern North Carolina. The five-year moratorium, established to let the game population recover, is due to expire next year.

  Sam drew in a deep breath.

  Three paragraphs down, the article said,

  James Emerson, managing director of the Conservancy, also announced that Charles "Chip" Clewt, seventeen-year-old son of Norfolk bird artist John Clewt, has been appointed honorary chairman of Save Powhatan's Bears. Emerson said that Clewt brought the matter to the attention of the group.

  "Young Clewt, who has been assisting on a bear monitoring project for NC State, will have a far greater role in the campaign than 'honorary-implies," said Emerson.

  Sam sighed. "I'm sure."

  Emerson acknowledged that retaining the ban will face heated opposition. Asked if the Conservancy wanted a total ban on hunting in the swamp, Mr. Emerson replied, "I'm personally for a total ban but realize that some local people wouldn't be satisfied with that."

  Maybe he meant the Conservancy wouldn't fight deer or bird kills.

  Near the end of the story; Chip Clewt was mentioned again as living with his father in the Powhatan.

  Wouldn't be satisfied?

  Sam felt as if she was holding a lighted fuse. Telephones would be ringing this morning for two hundred miles around. The one at the Sanders's farm would definitely get a workout.

  Play dumb, she thought. Pedal back home, drop the paper on the kitchen table; have breakfast, then ease out of the house and go somewhere. Take Buck for a long walk. Don't get involved. Halfway home, she remembered she hadn't picked up Mrs. Haskins's paper and turned around, going back for it.

  Some local people wouldn't be satisfied?

  They had to be crazy in Washington, D.C., if they thought it was that simple. Mr. Clewt should have advised his son to stay out of it. Though he'd lived around here for four years, he was still a stranger and didn't know the local people, aside from Desmond Dunnegan. Local people understood farmers and Coast Guardsmen, highway workers, truck drivers, and the like. Not artists. Mr. Clewt didn't seem to know that hunting and fishing was a religion. If you belonged, it was like being a Baptist. Mr. Clewt should have told his son to stick to counting bears.

  Sam guided her balloon tires through the auto and truck ruts, talking to herself.

  ***

  BO'SUN Sanders was on the kitchen phone, bony face taut, when Sam entered, and he immediately cupped the speaking end. "You got the Pilot?"

  So he already knew.

  Sam placed the paper down in front of him and retreated, hearing him say, "Here it is, on the front page."

  Delilah was making breakfast. The smell of slab bacon frying would have stirred appetites a hundred yards away. Scrambled eggs, crisp bacon, grits with a gravy float, and honey-laced biscuits were Stu's standard Sabbath breakfast, when he was home.

  Delilah raised her eyes to Sam as she passed, saying silently, I told you so.

  Sam went on upstairs, Delilah's spoken words following her: "Biscuits'll be done in ten minutes."

  Sam hadn't been in her room ten seconds when Binkie Petracca called. "You read the Pilot yet?"

  "Yeah."

  "Your new friend made the front page."

  "Yes."

  "If I was the Clewts, I'd get in a boat and leave that swamp right now."

  "I don't think anyone should be shooting bears," Sam said. The scene in the gum tree grove with the mother bear and her two cubs was still vivid.

  "Have you said that to your papa?"

  "Nope, and I don't intend to. I have to live here two more years."

  "Did Chip tell you before you saw the article?"

  Sam hesitated, then said, "Yes. I was back in the swamp
."

  "With the Clewts?"

  "With Chip."

  "You got something going with him? I can't believe it."

  "I don't have anything going with him, Binkie." She'd told Binkie and Darlene about finding Telford's truck the previous Saturday.

  "You went back into the swamp with him again?"

  "Look, he needs a friend. I've only seen him four times."

  Binkie laughed. "That's how romance starts...."

  "God, Bink, next you'll be making us a pair."

  Binkie laughed again, mischievously. "Stranger things have happened. Remember Kit Estes? She had two dates with that sailor and got pregnant."

  "I'm not Kit Estes."

  Delilah's voice spiraled up the stairs. "Come down and set the table, Samantha."

  "I'll talk to you later," said Sam.

  "I'm going bowling at noon," Bink said.

  "Have fun," Sam said grimly.

  Her papa was still talking as Sam came into the kitchen and crossed to the silverware drawer. He was saying, "All right, you make five calls an' I'll make five, then get everyone else to make five. We'll fill the center. Let's not wait."

  He was talking about the Community Center, Sam knew. A meeting, obviously. All the area hunters.

  "What'll we do in the meantime?" her papa was saying. "I'll tell what we do in the Coast Guard. To stop a ship, we put a shot across the bow. It gets their attention in a hurry. Nothin' like some lead goin' under your nose to shake you up...."

  Finally he said, "Let's keep in touch." He placed the phone down, and said to Dell, "I think we can put it together in two or three weeks...."

  The meeting, Sam thought. All the area hunters coming in their pickups, dander up and jaws set, ready to do battle.

  Then he looked directly at her. "Hey, your new friends out by the lake have just stepped on a wasps' nest. You know that young Clewt was going to do this?"

  "Do what, Papa?" She kept innocently placing forks and knives.

  "Try to keep us from shooting next fall."

  "Is that right?" There were ways to answer anything.

  "Damn right, it's right."

  Ladling steaming grits onto the plates, Dell said, "Just so all you shooters keep it peaceable."

  Stu grunted. "That's up to those Clewts. But they need some education. They'll be able to count heads at that meeting. Two or three hundred. I'll invite our congressman. He'll get an earful."

  Sam remained silent, wondering if she shouldn't talk to Mr. Clewt since Chip wouldn't listen, tell him how high feelings could run on the coastal plain. Hunters would just as soon kick them into the ditch as look at them.

  After they sat down, Dell saying grace, the bo'sun said, "They'll get plenty, I'll tell you. People like that come in here and don't mind their own business are just askin' for trouble. I wish your grandpa was alive. He could tell them how many folks in this area lived off the swamp during the Depression. Nobody had any work...."

  Sam had heard the stories of the thirties, when the local people had no jobs or money.

  "They ate bear, they ate deer, they ate possum, they ate birds—they survived. That swamp fed two or three thousand people, Grandpa said." The Sanderses were lucky, having the farm.

  That was then; this is now, Sam thought. Nobody was starving now. Nobody needed bear steaks. She had nothing to say during the meal.

  Her father noticed. "You're awful quiet."

  "I don't know enough to say anything, Papa."

  He flared. "You know enough to speak up when rights are violated, don't you?"

  "I guess," she said.

  "Well, these damned animal rights environmentalists want to violate my hunter's rights. It's that simple, isn't it?"

  She nodded, feeling his pressure to say she agreed.

  Dell, always the master at short-circuiting family arguments and keeping her husband's temper in check, said, "They'll see how many people think they're wrong at the meeting."

  "You bet," said the bo'sun, finishing off his eggs and grits, wiping his mouth, rising, and going out the back door to the pickup. The hood was up.

  Now that Sam thought about it, almost everyone for miles did have a pickup. Truesdale was right. Which one was in the Alvin Howell dream?

  As the back door slammed, Delilah said, "That argument was as predictable as sunup."

  Sam looked out the window at her papa bending over the engine. "I'll never understand how they get joy out of shooting helpless animals."

  "Oh, Samantha, you've said that a hundred times if you've said it once. You do understand it. You do! Sportin' blood. It's in his veins, his great-grandpa's veins. It goes back to the settlers who lived off the land. Come the first frost, an' they oil gun barrels an' triggers...."

  "If we lived in the city..."

  "Oh, don't go blamin' it on where we live."

  Sam got up and began to clear the dishes.

  "If you were a boy, you'd probably be in a duck blind every weekend beside your papa," Delilah added.

  Probably not. Her brother had been a hunter side by side with her papa. Yet she didn't think Steve had ever shot a bear. Running hot water to rinse the dishes, she thought about calling him in Seattle, asking him what he'd do about this. They were close. Tell him about Chip.

  "I saw Chip Clewt again yesterday."

  Dell, dropping the old-fashioned ironing board out of the wall slot, said, "Did you now? On purpose or accidental?"

  There was no reason not to tell the truth. "On purpose, Mama. He took me back up the ditch to show me a sow and her two cubs. In fact, I also saw him a week ago Saturday. I was afraid to tell you...."

  Dell always knew what to pass along to her husband. This was information to be kept, not passed on. "Well..." She eyed Sam.

  "Mr. Clewt seems to be a nice man. He's so soft-spoken you can hardly hear him. He's made the living room of that old house into a studio. There are bird paintings all around. That's what he paints—birds."

  "I've heard."

  Then Dell, turning away from the board, asked, "Why did you go up there, Samantha?"

  "Dunnegan said Chip needed a friend. I agree."

  Dell nodded. "That's admirable, but under the circumstances I still wouldn't get too friendly." She shook out a pillowcase before laying it down for ironing, then looked thoughtfully at the iron. "Let me see that paper."

  Sitting down at the table, putting on her reading glasses, Dell bent over the Pilot.

  Sam began to unload the dishwasher before putting the dirty load in, glancing over at her mother. Delilah always read slowly.

  Finally Dell sat back. "If this country girl has any gumption at all, the Clewt boy is being used."

  "What do you mean? Used?"

  "I mean those Washington, D.C., folks are pretty clever. I see his face is marred, an' you say he limps. Right there is cause for sympathy. I'll bet you they put him on TV an' photograph him huggin' a black bear. 'Honorary chairman' is a yard o' wool, if you ask me...."

  "He wants to be used, Mama, if that's what you call it. He wants to protect those bears."

  "Samantha, he's ready-made for usin'. Tragic figure, mother an' sister dyin' in an airplane crash, him survivin'. That's how things work nowadays. Milk the public on TV."

  "That's not how it is at all. If you met him you'd know that's not how it is. I doubt he's ever asked anyone for sympathy."

  Dell rose up, casting a skeptical look over her half-glasses. "I'll guarantee you they'll make your father an' every other hunter look like a heartless, unthinkin' monster."

  Sam felt resentment welling up. Anger mounted with every word. "Well, that's what they are, aren't they? Killing animals that can't defend themselves. Big heroes!"

  "I hope you don't really think that," said Dell quietly, going back to the ironing board.

  Fuming, Sam finished emptying the dishwasher and inserted the rinsed plates, saucers, and stainless steel utensils.

  The anger, aimed both at her father and at Chip Clewt—Chip for having
drawn her into the whole mess—bottomed out in helpless frustration, and she left the kitchen without further conversation, retreating from her mother's silence and the soft steam-breathing of the iron.

  She stood in her room for a moment and then decided to go down to the orchard and pick whatever apples were still left in the treetops. That's what Chip had suggested, hadn't he? She was now his puppet, dammit.

  ***

  JUST after lunch, she put the rope leash on Buck and walked him west along Chapanoke, past the orchard, a place she was beginning to dislike. If only that dumb bear would stay in the swamp, where he belonged.

  She glanced at the tree nearest the road and tried to ignore the damage to its branches. If and when her father set the baited trap she'd spring it and spring it and spring it ... try to make sure no animal would stick a leg into those cruel jaws. Did she have enough courage to spring it even once? She wasn't sure.

  A hundred yards up the road, on past the orchard, was a harvested peanut field. Reaching it, she removed the leash from Buck. He soon chased a rabbit, zigzagging over the torn-up plants.

  Bounding, swerving, his body a gray projectile, Sam thought, Now, that's the way it should be. Animal against animal. Then she laughed softly to herself. Sounds like Chip Clewt.

  Returning home, she borrowed the Bronco a little early to go to Dunnegan's before driving on to Currituck and another afternoon at Dairy Queen. She waited until a customer departed, then asked, "You read this morning's paper?"

  Dunnegan nodded.

  "Don't you think you should tell the Clewts to be careful?"

  "I already have. I told John a month ago, when I first heard about all this, that the quickest way to get in trouble around here is to get involved with hunting rights."

  "He didn't listen?"

  "It's not him, Sam. It's Chip. He's involved because of Chip. All he wants to do now is paint his birds and live in peace back there. At the same time, if Chip wanted a piece of sky, John would try to get it for him. When John stopped feeling sorry for himself and started staying sober, he dedicated the rest of his life to Chip. John owes Chip quite a lot."

  "Have you talked to them today?"