The Flatlander
Courtney Pasko
It started when the flatlander built himself a brand-new, plastic-smelling cabin on Springside Road and put up these NO TRESPASSING signs. Bright pink and blaze orange, good thick ones made of vinyl to withstand the snow. If that had been the beginning and end of it, it wouldn’t have gone the way it did—we respect property around here, even if we generally don’t care to be so showy about it. It’s a man’s right. And there are plenty of us that live close to the freeway or the state lands, places where it’s common to see a stray hiker or road tripper, who have one or two NO TRESPASSING signs of our own. The flatlander did it excessive, though, dotting half the trees on his property line, adding a big one like the cherry on top to the gate to the end of his drive.
Just not neighborly, we coulda told him, and some of us did when we saw him at the Kwik-Go, or in the dining room at the J&B. We said it in a friendly way, letting him know the way we do things. Of course we’ll be the first to admit that we’re not keen on flatlanders up here, generally speaking. Glorified tourists, driving up into the hills from the ’burbs in order to play lumberjack a few weekends a year in brand-new Mossy Oak, treating us that’ve been here for generations like the hired help. But still, we’re neighborly folks, willing to give the right sort of people a chance. Their money’s as good as any of ours, keeps the Ice Cream Spot and Louis’s Pizza afloat. Some become good neighbors with enough time, even friends, especially those willing to trade their lot’s hunting privileges for a little off-season upkeep. More than a fair deal.
A good skill to keep in your back pocket: the first thing what you can do is take a log, dried and split and all that and ready for the fire, and drill it narrow down the middle to make a cozy little channel. Don’t drill so hard that you split the log all the way, or you’ll have to start over. Just a neat bore-hole, almost like the kind a carpenter bee might dig. Next, take your log with the hollowed-out hole and stand it upright. Use a funnel and— gentle now— pour some black powder into the hole. Most of the folks around here do muzzle-loading and will keep a tin of Goex or some such handy. That’ll work fine. Careful not to spill. And don’t be smoking when you’re working with black powder unless you got a death wish. Old Tommy Benson over on River Road ever tell you how he lost three fingers on his left hand?
This flatlander was a typical weekend guy, driving himself up-down during hunting season and then every couple weeks in the summer, but we know when most days out of three-sixty-five a cabin sits empty. Shame, considering the money he spent on that thing. Matching porch furniture, for chrissakes. Last fall, he came to the fire department’s ham and leek supper but wouldn’t eat the leeks, asked for plain ham and didn’t toss an extra cent in the donation bucket, even though you could hardly ask for a better cause than the firemen. And all while any fella in that room could tell you how expensive the beautiful new Antimatter Blue F-150 with the extended SuperCab and Box Lighting sitting in the firehall parking lot was costing him each month.
Another night he comes into the J&B with his old lady and daughter and starts complaining about what game’s on the TV. Bitching to Eileen while she’s juggling the Saturday night rush about how the Maryland game should be on, even though we’re two hundred goddamn miles from Maryland and if it means so much to him, he can go right back to his cabin where we all know he has the good satellite package, not that he’s ever had folks over for a game. In the meantime his wife and kid are sitting there like princesses, holding their water glasses up to the light to look for fingerprints. And the tip? Well, Eileen wouldn’t tell us how much he left exactly, but he oughta be ashamed of himself.
Not that any of these is a crime, we know. If that was the beginning and the end of things we would have forgotten in time, chalked it up to the softness of suburban life, continued to nod in passing at the gas pump and left him be.
But it’s a pattern, when someone isn’t fitting in. When someone doesn’t know any better. That is, doesn’t even have the sense to know what they don’t know.
The trouble came properly when the flatlander called the cops on Reggie. See, a thing you have to understand about these woods is that the deer don’t see property lines, can’t read NO TRESPASSING signs. Neither do the black bear, for that matter, or the red foxes, or the spiked porcupines. Creatures, like us, born in these woods. One cold morning in December when the trees were frosty and bare and the sky was just starting to brighten, Reggie grazed a doe, the bullet meant for her red heart passing instead through the tough meat of her shoulder, too high. Scared, bleeding, she took off running towards the flatlander’s property, just over the line from Reggie’s lot.
No one that really belongs around here is going to think twice about any of their neighbors tracking an animal across their land. Anyone with half a brain knows that you don’t just let an injured animal run off into the woods to bleed out. Any man has a right to defend what’s his, of course. But a little shortcut across a yard for sake of a wounded animal? For the sake of mercy?
When you’ve about filled up the hole in your log full but not too full, plug it up with a little wax. Heck, wood putty or a piece of chewed gum’ll work in a pinch as long as it ain’t fruity-smelling or bright blue. Use your finger to smush it into the grain of the wood and no one will be able to tell a thing.
That cold morning, the flatlander, he sees Reggie following that trail of blood across the western corner of his property, rifle in hand, that blue dawn light just starting to come in through the trees. And that motherfucker without a hello, without even a “what are you doing back here,” he calls the cops, says something about there’s a man with a gun. And—all respect to the officers protecting and serving, just doing their job—the statie must’a had nothing better to do because he made the drive out and caused a big ruckus, as if ninety per cent of the population ain’t a man with a gun, especially during the season. The cop let Reggie off with a warning once he understood about the deer, checked his license and his doe tag, but.
That’s not how we handle things here. And who knows what happened to that poor doe? Left to bleed out in the snow god knows where. God knows how long. That’s the goddamn crime. And Reggie made sure we all knew it.
All you need to do after that is get the log into the woodpile. Cut in from the north side, where Springside Road crosses the creek. Everyone knows that black powder won’t ignite on its own, but your palms’ll sweat carrying it through the plush white woods anyhow. Bail if that big beautiful blue truck is in the drive. Set your log on top of the pile, maybe one or two down for good measure. Point the end with the wax plug towards the tree line. Melt back into the woods—don’t give it another thought.
Maybe it’s the hills or maybe it’s what our dads teach us or maybe it’s the soft, tall blanket of pine, but we from around here tend to grow up with a fair sense of direction. Whose land is north of your land, how the creek cuts across the eastern corner of your food plot, and so on. When the closest hospital’s over the state line, you better know where your neighbors are. Who your neighbors are.
We give directions that make perfect sense to one of our own—turn left at the Jackson’s mailbox, make a right after you pass the big wild blueberry patch—but are likely to confuse soft-bellied folks who depend on wi-fi Google robot directions to get from their bed to the toilet. All that to say is that most of us can take a look at a cloud of smoke floating towards the sky and tell you right away who’s burning off underbrush, who’s burning trash. Whose cabin’s on fire.
Sonofabitch was damned lucky no one was inside when the log, the black powder, the poison pill took flame. Must’ve chucked it in the fancy stone-mantle wood-burning fireplace and then went back out to his truck, or out to the woodpile for more logs. Lucky he didn’t bring the wife and kids up that weekend. Lucky all around, we’d say.
It was just about dusk when the police scanners and radios across the mountain started lighting up. Nearly all the boys around here have been in the volunteer brigade at one time or another, or know someone that is. We consider those men heroes around here. Even get a girl fighter every once in a while, somebody’s tomboy daughter.
It’s our land, after all. If we don’t look out for it, who will? The bars empty out quick when there’s a big job going. We kept the blaze from spreading well enough—the snow helped, the wet in the air—but the cabin was a total loss, a heap of black char around a mangled deep-freeze when all was said and done. Chewed-on silverware bent into black knots and lumps of PVC that had once been plumbing poked up out of the gray, slushy mess.
While we worked, the flatlander sat on the tailgate of his truck under a shock blanket, his face blank as the moon’s. Wouldn’t let the EMTs take him out on the bus, wouldn’t talk to any of us, wouldn’t take a Styrofoam cup of coffee that one of the rookies was passing around. Just there, staring into a pile of ash.
It was just too quick, we heard the chief say to the flatlander. Regretfully.
We wound the pipes back up, wiped the grit and grime off our helmets, chucked the last few cigarette butts into the muddy slush of the drive, and left him there in our rearview mirrors. There’s an energy in the air when there’s a big job, an adrenaline floating on the smell of smoke. Some of us went back to the J&B and asked for another beer, beat last call by a few minutes. Some of us went home, back to our women and our families, back to kitchens where a wife or a mother left something warm and hearty on a plate in the oven. Some of us fucked our wives with vigor and adrenaline, hot and panting, some for the first time in a long time. Some of us when we fetched more wood from the woodpile before getting in our soft beds checked each end of each split for a small, shiny spot of wax, or a fingerprint in gum.
By the time fawning season came back around the flatlander’s lot was sold. Word had it that it went at a bargain thanks to the mess and debris, parceled up by Reggie himself and the other two neighbors who planned to add the acreage to their own. Pretty good deal if you can get it. Flatlander’s mailbox is still there, on Springside Road. The mile-a-minute is beginning to creep towards it, climb up the post, wrap its spiky little tendrils around the red plastic flag. By the end of the summer, we won’t be able to see it at all.
