new writings from Brothers

Billy felt a nudge to his shoulder.  He ignored it.  The nudge became a push, and his eyes sprang open.  Angus was bent over him, hand still on his shoulder.

“You said five am, Billy.”  He lay motionless for moment, head still pounding as badly as he knew it would.

“You got some ibuprofen?”  

Angus smiled.  “I never run outta that stuff,” laughing as he strode off to get it.  Billy knew why.  The two of them got drunk a lot.  It was their go-to medication.  He pushed himself up into a sitting position and stretched his arms upward.  Several moments later, Angus re-entered the living space and gave four ibuprofens to Billy.

Billy turned his head up, looked at Angus crookedly and said, “nothing to drink with this?”

“Oh, uh, yeah, I’ll get you something.”  He came back holding a bottle of Surly Darkness, a beer made in Brooklyn Center.  Billy downed the pills while taking a full swig of the beer.  He belched, and then downed the rest.

“So much for breakfast.   We’d better get doing,” Billy said as he pulled a short sleeved T-shirt over his head.  They readied the canoe and enough gear to last for a few days.

They had been driving for about thirty minutes when Angus said, “We don’t even know where they are right now.  How we gonna catch up to them in this rain?” Angus asked the question while finishing off one of the two-day old donuts they had just picked up at the gas station on their way out of Ely.  

“We know they’re going to Agnes Lake.  You know the launch is off the Echo Trail, right?” Billy asked.

“Yeah, you put in at the Nina Moose River.”

“Well, I’m betting with this rain that they stayed at Nina Moose Lake last night.  They got off to a late start yesterday and it would have been stupid to go all the way to Agnes.  And they didn’t seem like the stupid kind.”

“Yeah, so when do we catch ‘em?”

“We don’t, we get ahead of ‘em.”

“How we gonna do that?  We can’t catch ‘em in the canoes.”

Billy Bobtail smiled thickly.  “We’ll take the old logging road and head ‘em off, wait for ‘em, and then, bam,” he took his hands off the wheel and slammed them together.  “Then we got ‘em.”

Angus gazed over at Billy in amazement.  “I never would have thought of that, Billy.  Most people don’t give that old logging road a lick of thought and here we are, using it to catch them dumb nut grabbers.”

“You know I don’t appreciate you bringing up unpleasant stuff like that, especially since I was the victim of that turd whacker.”

Angus laughed.  “You calling yourself a turd?  You said turd whacker, so that must make you a turd.”  He laughed again.

This was exactly what Billy didn’t like about Angus.  The guy was an idiot with a child’s sense of humor, but a useful idiot who bought drinks and allowed Billy to crash at his place on a fairly regular basis.  He glanced over at Angus and allowed him a smile accompanied by a slight chuckle, as if to say, ‘you got me there, Angus’.

The Echo Trail started out as a paved road, but quickly turned into a serpentine, gravel surface that contained many jump-off points for various lakes in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area.  Billy guided the 2004 Jeep well past the Nina Moose River parking area and continued on for several miles before turning off on a little used logging road that would take them past Ramshead Lake.  He knew the river was much higher than normal, and he knew by experience that the waterslide portage would be impassable.  

Billy was banking on the portage area to hold the brothers up just enough for Angus and him to get ahead and lay in wait for them on the other side.  He hadn’t counted on the logging road being quite as rough and wet as it was, but thank the lucky stars for the four-wheel drive on his Jeep.  

The Jeep dived into a deep rut, causing Angus’s coffee to spill over his leg.  Angus cried out in expectant pain that never came from the now cooled coffee.

“What’d ya think it would still be hot after an hour of driving out here?” Billy asked in disgust.

“I, uh,uh, don’t know what I was thinking.”  

The road devolved into something more resembling a moose trail, rather than something loggers had last used thirty years ago.

“I think we’re where we need to be.”  Billy peered through an area where the trees appeared to be thinning.  Opening his door and then slamming it with a vengeance, Billy began to unstrap the canoe.

“Get the gear and paddles out.  I’ll get the canoe off the rack and take it to the river.”  Angus did as he was told.

“Bring the rifle, too.”  

“I can only carry so much.  I’ll come back for it,” Angus said in a whiney voice.

“Whatever,” Billy said as he hoisted the canoe onto his broad shoulders and carted it to the river bank. 

The rifle was a Remington bolt-action 700, a favorite of hunters in the area.  It had a Kwik Klip magazine conversion clip that Billy had bought two years ago.  The clip held ten rounds, which seemed inadequate to Billy, but he took what he could get at the time.  It certainly would be enough for what he was planning over the next few days.  

He stopped before he came to the river bank and set the canoe down and waited for Angus.  A minute later, Angus arrived with a pack containing sleeping bags, tent, and some edibles.  He then went back to the Jeep for the rifle.