Vaara in the woods

Then it’s that terrible June day and James, out in the woods, has been watching a Finn named Vaara. Sometime around lunch, sitting on my log, slapping at the black flies on my sweating neck, I see James walk by and spit at Vaara’s feet. Either Vaara has been with her or James believes he has, and it doesn’t make a difference which version is true.

Vaara takes a long look at the wad of spit by his feet and considers it and James keeps walking past him, to the oxen, and among them he finds one of the healthiest we have and he pulls it into the middle of our lunch gathering and he begins to beat it with his short whip.

It takes him 15 minutes to kill it. No man says a word. The ox cries out at every strike. I shut my eyes.

Once it has gone to its knees, a bloody mess, James takes the pistol from his holster and shoots the ox through the head.

He looks at Vaara for a long time, breathing hard, and says, “Help me drag it back to camp.”

Vaara, pale now, looks at the dead ox and says, “Would be impossible,” in his thick Finn accent.

James says, “Come with me, then. I’d like to speak to you.”

Vaara puts his sandwich down. Together the two men walk out into the woods. Not long after that we hear the shot.

James tromps back and says, “Far more to do before the day is done, boys.”

I am part of the group left behind to burn the beast in a pyre, and we shrug and think two birds with one and don’t think about the pain and we go find Vaara in the woods and put him in the pyre as well.

We burn them both up and go back to camp, but as I eat I think back to the smoke I saw coming up from the pyre and think of how it seemed different and think of the stories of the monsters but let that go from my mind quickly, as I’m not the type to believe it. Near dusk, as I’m washing up, I see James come out of his shanty and go out into the woods. Twenty minutes later he’s back and he walks straight to me and says, “Where is Vaara?” “We burned him,” I say, and he says, “Where?” And I say, “With the ox you killed.” James’s eyes go wide and he stares at me for the longest time. “The same fire?” he says, and I say, “Yes.” “You goddamned fool,” he says, and his neck snaps around and he looks out into the woods.