Otherworldly Maine Read Online Free

cuts acrost the slope to my east wood lot. I’ve let the bushes grow free—lot of elder, other stuff the birds come for. I was looking down toward that little break between the north woods and my wood lot, where a bit of old growed-up pasture shows through. Pretty spot. Painter fella come by a few years ago and done a picture of it, said the place looked like a coro, dunno what the hell that is, he didn’t say.”
    I pushed at his brown study. “You saw it there?”
    â€œNo. Off to my right in them elder bushes. Fifty feet from me, I guess. By God I didn’t turn my head. I got it with the tail of my eye and turned the other way as if I meant to walk back to the rod. Made like busy with something in the grass, come wandering back to the fence some nearer. He stayed for me, a brownish patch in them bushes by the big yellow birch. Near the height of a man. No gun with me, not even a stick . . . Big shoulders, couldn’t see his goddamn feet. He don’t stand more’n five feet tall. His hands, if he’s got real ones, hung out of my sight in a tangle of elder branches. He’s got brown fur, Ben, reddy-brown fur all over him. His face too, his head, his big thick neck. There’s a shine to fur in sunlight, you can’t be mistook. So—I did look at him direct. Tried to act like I still didn’t see him, but he knowed. He melted back and got the birch between him and me. Not a sound.” And then Harp was listening for Leda upstairs. He went on softly: “Ayah, I ran back for a gun, and searched the woods, for all the good it did me. You’ll want to know about his face. I ain’t told Led’ all this part. See, she’s scared, I don’t want to make it no worse, I just said it was some animal that snuck off before I could see it good. A big face, Ben. Head real human except it sticks out too much around the jaw. Not much nose—open spots in the fur. Ben, the—the teeth! I seen his mouth drop open and he pulled up one side of his lip to show me them stabbing things. I’ve seen as big as that on a full-growed bear. That’s what I’ll hear, I ever try to tell this. They’ll say I seen a bear. Now I shot my first bear when I was sixteen and Pa took me over toward Jackman. I’ve got me one maybe every other year since then. I know ’em, all their ways. But that’s what I’ll hear if I tell the story.”
    I am a frustrated naturalist, loaded with assorted facts. I know there aren’t any monkeys or apes that could stand our winters except maybe the harmless Himalayan langur. No such beast as Harp described lived anywhere on the planet. It didn’t help. Harp was honest; he was rational; he wanted reasonable explanation as much as I did. Harp wasn’t the village atheist for nothing. I said, “I guess you will, Harp. People mostly won’t take the—unusual.”
    â€œMaybe you’ll hear him tonight, Ben.”
    Leda came downstairs, and heard part of that. “He’s been telling you, Ben. What do you think?”
    â€œI don’t know what to think.”
    â€œLed’, I thought, if I imitate that noise for him—”
    â€œNo!” She had brought some mending and she was about to sit down with it, but froze as if threatened by attack. “I couldn’t stand it, Harp. And—it might bring them.”
    â€œThem?” Harp chuckled uneasily. “I don’t guess I could do it that good he’d come for it.”
    â€œDon’t do it, Harp!”
    â€œAll right, hon.” Her eyes were closed, her head drooping back. “Don’t get nerved up so.”
    I started wondering whether a man still seeming sane could dream up such a horror for the unconscious purpose of tormenting a woman too young for him, a woman he could never imagine he owned. If he told her a fox bark wasn’t right for a fox, she’d believe him. I said, “We shouldn’t