..... The last time I saw Carl Krauss he was barely conscious on a hospital gurney. As for the fat man with the crooked thumb, he swallowed half a gas-soaked rag in the back seat of a 1981 blue-black Ford Granada. And that's where he died; face down on the cold vinyl with a wounded temple and no shoes in a used car with Jersey plates.
..... The date was set. The plan was simple. Cross the path of a wild bear on October the twelfth and kill it. It was an outing that began in the Hull County wilderness and following a luckless series of unforeseen events found me at sundown in the bathroom of a westbound bus using a folded matchbook to remove the hardened blood of two men from beneath my fingernails.
..... Tuesday. October eleventh. Fourteen years ago. On Route 23 at ten in the morning I sat cursing the draft of four open windows through Butler and Wanaque on my way to a place called The Big Plate. I was the passenger with Carl at the wheel. The car belonged to his mother. The open windows were on account of a faulty exhaust as the result of a makeshift muffler repair job out of a Sunoco in West Milford. I was seventeen that fall, Carl the same, older by three months but a minor nonetheless. The purchase of firearms through legal channels was not an option. And so, we borrowed the car and found a way.
..... The Big Plate, a converted tackle shop with counter and stools and a built-on kitchen, was a roadside eat spot near Anderson Quarry. It was far enough removed that you couldn't hear the interstate and the only thing close to the law that ever came around was an ex-cop from Rahway who sold pills from his glove box. The sign out front, nailed to an oak tree, was carved to resemble a giant hamburger. When they hung it, they hung it low, I imagine in the interest of making it easier to read. Thing is, the lot was unpaved. And the portion that met with the road was only three yards from the sign and covered in ruts. Ruts gather water and water means mud. So each time it rained and a vehicle turned, it was made illegible by the spray of filth brought forth by the tires.
..... A solitary letter on the oval sign was visible the morning we arrived for the rifles. A bold yellow L, which shone in the sun like something decent, something bright, something other than what it was. If ever a place had a bad feeling, it was here. And yet, we came time and again for all things illegal, all things unsafe, all things otherwise unattainable.
..... The sole owner and employee of The Big Plate was a broad shouldered, longhaired Armenian cook with a two-inch vertical scar on his forehead and a tattoo of the sacred heart in the center of his left palm. In addition to running the place single-handed, Yesnig Skerlic offered an array of assault weapons and other desirables from a four-foot lock box that he kept in a hatch beneath the broom closet floor; for sale to referred customers only. Year's back, before he joined the Navy, before he disappeared, Carl's older brother was an occasional bagman for Skerlic's second cousin, a man of few words with a nose like a falcon's beak who went by the name of Baghdasar Gazanian. And so, through trust by relation alone, Benjamin Krauss was our silent referral.
..... It was half past ten in the morning when Carl pulled to the rear and parked beside a small screen door from which Skerlic immediately emerged in a halo of steam, scanning the landscape and holding fast to a blackened iron kettle with both hands. He looked us over before motioning with a tick of his neck in the direction of the kitchen.
..... We entered the heat to the sound of boiling water and stood with our backs to the ice machine. Skerlic followed, placing his pot to the stove before leading us swiftly down a darkened corridor until we reached the eleven by fourteen copper framed portrait of a crucified Christ and the closet door on which it hung.
..... The transaction was rapid and clean: currency for contraband, a pat on the back and out the door. It was Carl's money that changed hands that morning as I had been given the boot from my job at the Exxon the previous August for stealing tires. We had a deal though, in the name of all things even and decent that following the hunt it was seventy-thirty in terms of the carcass with the lower percentage in my direction.
..... We returned to the vehicle and circled around front where Carl cut the engine, coughed twice and folded his arms. "That sign," he said. "On the tree there."
..... Across the road sat a Boxelder Maple, an orange notice tacked to its trunk. I leaned in and ciphered the script. "Private property."
..... "Not that one." He shook his head. "To the left of the car."
..... I looked as requested, and there in the distance, ancient and bent stood the oak with the oversized dirt-covered wooden hamburger fastened to its lower portion.
..... Carl sat rigid as a half-starved white dog appeared from the brush. "There was another sign…before that one," he said, following the motion of the animal with his eyes. "Same tree. Only it was larger. And it wasn't a hamburger."
..... The dog approached and began sniffing the bumper as I fastened my seatbelt without responding.
..... A truck passed. The dog ran off. Carl turned. "It was Ben," he said. "That first sign. He made it. Shaped it using a borrowed bandsaw and a Sears sander. Locked himself in the basement with a discarded section of an old barn door and emerged with a chicken leg the size of an elephant's skull."
..... Carl hadn't seen his brother in nine years. He didn't like to talk about him. But when he did, his voice was wrong. Like his mouth was underwater. And that's how he sounded that morning. "It was up for six days. And then it burned," he said.
..... "Who burned it?" I asked.
..... "Ben did, never said why exactly, at least not too clearly; something about bad blood and the Armenians dealing him dirt."
..... "Meaning what?"
..... "I don't know. But he torched the drumstick the same week he carved it. And when they hung the hamburger, he tried it again."
..... Carl went on to tell me Ben laid low exactly two weeks after the second sign went up. And then one night he travels west through the woods with a handful of foot long grill matches and a quart of Beacon brand kerosene. He comes within twenty feet of the final row of pines, lowers his body and peers from the brush. And there, on the far side of the road, beneath a lantern which dangles and another at his feet sits Yesnig Skerlic in a lawn chair. He wears an apron, white pants and no shirt. He is holding a Springfield Armory M6 Scout rifle. It's three-o'clock in the morning. A second attempt is made the following night. Same intentions, identical encounter; one lawn chair, two lanterns, an M6 Scout and a shirtless Armenian. Ben, squatting, remains perfectly still for several minutes, contemplating the mind of a man who pulls fifteen hour days, seven days a week at a grill and counter and spends his downtime armed, half naked and guarding a sign shaped like a hamburger on a rural back road in northern Jersey. Ben retreats. He does not return. He has nothing more to do with the Armenians. A year later he ships out, sends one letter home, goes A.W.O.L and is never heard from again.
..... We stayed in that drive without speaking for a good five minutes, staring into the wood and field and green-brown land we grew up around. I opened the door and looked to the sky; the threat of bad weather and a small plane were up there together. You couldn't hear it, but there it was.
..... "Let's go," I said finally. "I don't think I like it here today."
..... We pulled out slow with two eight-pound Marlin model 336 bolt-action rifles with 30.30 cartridge and scope under a blanket in the back seat and plans to take to the forest in the morning. Carl's eyes looked wet. I tried the radio. It didn't work.
..... My father had been on me for some time about getting fired and for stealing what I stole. Every time I came in he called me "leech" or "sneak thief" or "my son the white nigger." He said if I didn't find a job soon I had to leave. So I didn't go home very much. I stayed with Sheila most nights or in Carl's basement. Following our trip to The Big Plate that afternoon, he dropped me at Sheila's and took off. It was windy and damp but as usual she was on the front steps in her bathrobe, surrounded by cats, talking to herself with the nail file going. I was hungry. She gave me a hug and said there was food -- pork chops, spaghetti, peas and cream soda. I ate and went to sleep early. I was lucky to have Sheila, I really was. She was older and didn't look too good in the mornings. But she was kind. And that's something.
..... It must have been four in the morning when I heard the horn. I crept from bed, found my pants, kissed Sheila on the chin and met the cold. We had a spot in mind forty minutes south, the near tip of Anders woods on the border between counties. The tank was low and there was no money. I suggested my neighbor's garage for a loan. Ten minutes later, with the headlights off, we rolled down Cedar Lake and parked the car a few houses away.
..... My father slept heavy but still I told Carl to walk in his stocking feet when I sent him indoors for a warmer coat. Jackass showed up in a windbreaker. I went around back to the Ahler's garage with a spare tire, gave the heavy door a three foot lift, wedged the spare into the space, slipped inside and crawled on the hard floor with a flashlight. There were three cans on a high shelf near a circular saw in the corner. All cans were full. I took one, slid out, emptied half the gasoline into the tank, refilled the missing portion with water from a plastic jug, went back to the garage, returned the can to the shelf, got out and quietly placed the door to the ground. I then checked the trunk. We had beer and bullets, two rifles, three cans of beans, a toolbox, thick rope, some peanuts, extra socks and a shovel. Carl finally came from the side of the house. He had found one of my father's grey work jackets from his days with Secaucus Electric. I remember Carl looked old that morning, older than usual. Maybe it was the jacket. We took to the road. Carl put his finger to the radio. No sound.
..... "Does it ever work?" I asked.
..... He couldn't hear me. His head was out the window in an attempt to briefly escape the slow build of exhaust. I did the same. And like two dogs minus the enjoyment, we traveled that way in the pre dawn chill with chapped ears and second thoughts.
..... We arrived at first light and prepared for the killing. There was a tree stand just off the main trail that a friend of Carl's family had built in the early 80's, a quarter mile walk and sturdy as a porch. We climbed up and settled in. The beer went down. The sun rose. No life stirred below. We sat and drank and kept quiet. The last thing I remember is lying back and focusing on the scattered patches of visible sky between branches. I can't recall falling asleep. But I did. And when I woke, there was blood.
..... It was a lone shot of incredible volume that cut the silence that morning. Amidst the collective flutter of unseen wings I sat up half deaf to a thin mist of black smoke and the smell of boiled copper. Turning, I saw Carl in prime firing position, one knee to the floor with the Marlin's barrel propped to the base of the wooden ledge. His mouth was open with his chin to his chest and his earlobes resting on his shoulders. It wasn't until the air began to clear that I noticed a scattered series of crimson welts on his neck and forehead.
..... Whether it was the alcohol or the gunpowder or the strange light of the cloud-hidden sun or the toxic repercussions of a broken exhaust, I don't know. But I will tell you this; it took much longer than it should have for me to realize that Carl's rifle had misfired and that what used to be most of his hands were spread among the floor of the tree stand including some flesh on my jeans and a thumbnail stuck to the sleeve of the coat he borrowed from my house. I'm still not sure how he managed to hold on to that gun. All I could see of his left hand was the ring finger. At least I think it was the ring finger. It was fastened to the barrel on account of the heat and judging by the lack of volume to the digit I feared the muscle and bone had been removed altogether and what remained was nothing more than skin casing. I couldn't see his right hand at all. It wasn't my intention to scream but I couldn't help it. This took Carl from his stupor, which in turn caused him to drop the rifle, look down and begin to hyperventilate. I removed my jacket and outer shirt, cut the sleeves with a knife, wrapped the stumps and somehow got us both down the ladder. He was able to walk though his breathing was still abnormal.