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By Root 479 0

as I recall, beer and whiskey at the state liquor store—and to pick up my friend’s grandfather, Cula, who everyone called Bump. So there was the stepfather, whose name was Maurice, my friend Jay and Jay’s grandfather, Cula, and me. (It was Bump, deep into his seventies, who consumed most of the beer on the trip, while Maurice drank the whiskey.) Our destination was Hainesville, a crossroads where Maine potato country meets the big North Woods. We arrived at our cabin late one frigid night; it was one big room with a massive old-fashioned cookstove along one side, and, on the other, a collection of beds with broken springs and cloth mattresses about as thick as your average dictionary. The sag of the mattresses was such that a forceful roll in the night would give you contact with the floor.

The temperature was in the single digits when we pulled in, and the snow was deep and frozen. Bump stuffed some newspaper and kindling in the stove. With a fire roaring and the stove sucking air through its many cracks, one side of the cabin reached about ninety degrees while the side with the beds hovered just below freezing. Bump’s genius was to find the precise location between the stove and the beds that kept his beer, stacked in cases nearly to the ceiling, at the right temperature for consumption, maybe ten degrees above lake ice. I also remember a wooden door, some tar paper fixes on the outside walls, a sloped floor and tiny windows.

It was late, but not so late that Bump was inclined to cancel the round of visits that were a ritual on arrival. Bump had brought with him gifts he intended to distribute to his local friends. One was Joe MacDonald. Joe was a woodcutter who hauled his logs out of the woods with draft horses, two big Belgians that, I was told, we would use to pull our deer out of the woods if we were to shoot one. This was more than I could take in. We would drag our deer behind a logging horse! We arrived in Joe’s driveway, and in the headlights I saw what looked like a fox hanging from his clothesline. And indeed it was: a dead fox awaiting skinning. Two clothespins held the rear paws to the line and the animal looked like it had just left the high dive.

We piled out of Maurice’s car, a big Buick, and knocked at the door. It eventually was opened a crack by Mrs. MacDonald. Joe was not home, she said. Where was he? Bump asked. Mrs. MacDonald was saying something quietly to Bump when we all heard a terrible yelling and banging coming from inside. It sounded like a wild animal was loose. Mrs. MacDonald stepped from the door toward the crashing, which allowed us to see inside to another door that was bulging as if a bear were pressing against it. The commotion was coming from behind the door, which apparently led to a basement. This was enough information to allow Bump to discern the situation. Joe, it seems, was a heavy drinker, and had even been known to put down a bottle of the liniment he used on his Belgians. When he got drunk he was impossible to control, and Mrs. MacDonald would lock him in the basement. Bump suggested we depart, but first, to my astonishment, he left a bottle of Canadian Club in a bag with Mrs. MacDonald. “This is for Joe,” he said.

Our next stop was a broken-down shed house at the end of a woods road occupied by a wisp of a man named Earl Lovejoy. Earl received us with a smile, and we entered into a room that was more hovel than human habitation. There were pieces of chain saw, car parts, gas cans, shovels and wood tools scattered about, and among all of this a swarm of scraggly kittens was tumbling and playing with a rag. Earl was about five and a half feet tall, twisted and bent from the waist, which made him look like he was constantly leaning over to pick something up, when in fact he was unable to straighten himself out. He had wild oily hair, and on both hands he had a total of six fingers, not evenly distributed. Beer cans were immediately popped, and after Bump gave Earl mittens, cigarettes, a flashlight and some wool socks, a conversation about the condition of the deer herd began.