Otherworldly Maine by Noreen Doyle

last night?”
    â€œI heard it. North.”
    The sun was at the point of rising when we left on our snowshoes, like morning ghosts ourselves. Harp strode ahead, down the slope to the woods without haste, perhaps with some reluctance. Near the trees he halted, gazing to his right where a red blaze was burning the edge of the sky curtain; I scolded myself for thinking that he was saying good-bye to the sun.
    The snow was crusted, sometimes slippery even for our web feet. We entered the woods along a tangle of tracks, including the fat tire marks of a snow scooter. “Guy from Lohman,” said Harp. “Hired the goddamn thing out to the state cops and hisself with it. Goes pootin’ around all over hell, fit to scare everything inside eight, ten miles.” He cut himself a fresh plug to last the morning. “I b’lieve the thing is a mite farther off than that. They’ll be messing around again today.” His fingers dug into my arm. “See how it is, don’t y’? They ain’t looking for what we are. Looking for a dead body to hang onto my neck. And if they was to find her the way I found—the way I found—”
    â€œHarp, you needn’t borrow trouble.”
    â€œI know how they think,” he said. “Was I to walk down the road beyond Darkfield, they’d pick me up. They ain’t got me in shackles because they got no—no body, Ben. Nobody needs to tell me about the law. They got to have a body. Only reason they didn’t leave a man here overnight, they figure I can’t go nowhere. They think a man couldn’t travel in three, four foot of snow . . . Ben, I mean to find that thing and shoot it down . . . We better slant off thisaway.”
    He set out at a wide angle from those tracks, and we soon had them out of sight. On the firm crust our snowshoes left no mark. After a while we heard a grumble of motors far back, on the road. Harp chuckled viciously. “Bright and early like yesterday.” He stared back the way we had come. “They’ll never pick up our trail without dogs. That son of a bitch Robart did talk about borrying a hound somewhere, to sniff Leda’s clothes. More likely give ’em a sniff of mine, now.”
    We had already come so far that I didn’t know the way back. Harp would know it. He could never be lost in any woods, but I have no mental compass such as his. So I followed him blindly, not trying to memorize the route. It was a region of uniform old growth, mostly hemlock, no recent lumbering, few landmarks. The monotony wore down native patience to a numbness, and our snowshoes left no more impression than our thoughts.
    An hour passed, or more, after that sound of motors faded. Now and then I heard the wind move peacefully overhead. Few bird calls, for most of our singers had not yet returned. “Been in this part before, Harp?”
    â€œNot with snow on the ground, not lately.” His voice was hushed and careful. “Summers. About a mile now, and the trees thin out some. Stretch of slash where they was taking out pine four, five years back and left everything a Christly pile of shit like they always do.”
    No, Harp wouldn’t get lost here, but I was well lost, tired, sorry I had come. Would he turn back if I collapsed? I didn’t think he could, now, for any reason. My pack with blanket roll and provisions had become infernal. He had said we ought to have enough for three or four days. Only a few years earlier I had carried heavier camping loads than this without trouble, but now I was blown, a stitch beginning in my side. My wristwatch said only nine o’clock.
    The trees thinned out as he had promised, and here the land rose in a long slope to the north. I looked up across a tract of eight or ten acres where the devastation of stupid lumbering might be healed if the hurt region could be let alone for sixty years. The deep snow, blinding out here where only scrub growth