Don't Fuck With Me Again

Payback! You betcha, there was going to be payback. I had nothing but time at the cabin to think about how I had warned Hank a few years ago what would happen if he screwed me over again. I knew the payback would have to be something that would end Hank's ever bothering me again... I promised myself that.

About the fourth day at my cabin I had cooled down enough to think clearly so I started plotting. I thought of a hundred ways to get back at him. All those plans went out the window because they all had something major wrong with them.

In the morning of the eighth day I finished my morning coffee and went to the creek with my pail for water. I stumbled on one of the baseball sized rocks that were everywhere and fell. I cussed at that rock, picked it up and threw it into the middle of the creek.

Something clicked in my mind as I watched that rock hit the water. I thought to myself that I wish I could toss Hank into the creek and have him disappear like that rock.

Eureka, that was it! All I had to do was get Hank out here and put him on the bottom of the creek where that rock went. That's when I did some serious planning. Once that first part of the plan was completed to my satisfaction, the rest just seemed to fall into place. I took my time thinking about every detail because I had heard my dad say more than once that in business deals it's all in the details. I spent a lot of time thinking about those small details.

The last week at the cabin I worked on the first part of my plan. The water flow had scoured the rocks so any dirt or other stuff that tried to settle in it was washed away. So the creek was solid rocks of all sizes with water flowing over them. Let me tell you lugging rocks out of the creek is a lot of work. It didn't help that this creek was fed off a small glacier thirty miles upstream and the water was near freezing. I could only handle being in the water for about ten minutes and then I would stumble over to a fire I had built beside the creek right by the water's edge. Once I had some feeling in my extremities again I went back at it. I only got about a quarter of the hole dug in the creek. I wanted to do more but I was running out of supplies and had to go back home. It was a real empty house that I went back to.

In every plan there are risks. It was time for me to take the first risk. I checked in with my family then headed out to a city five hundred miles away. Twice a year they held a gun and ammunition swap meet there. It was there I found one of the things I needed for my plan. A guy was carrying in some rifles and I saw the one I wanted. I stopped him before he entered the show. After some negotiation and me paying six hundred dollars for the rifle and shells, along with another two hundred for him to skip the paperwork, I went home with an untraceable rifle. That is untraceable as long as it didn't show up again which it wouldn't. That was one rifle no one back home was going to know about. After checking to make sure it shot where you aimed it, I hid it away in my attic under the insulation until the time it was needed.

At the gun show I heard about a sportsman show in a few weeks in a city two hundred miles south of my town. That's where I bought the one thing I appreciated the most. That being a diver's wet suit for cold water.

I got back home, checked in with everybody then stocked up on supplies and headed back to the cabin. I stopped at the airport and wrapped ten bales of hay in some tarps which then was wrapped in a sling that would attach under a helicopter. I left a message for my buddy Vern who as I mentioned before, has a helicopter that is usually hired out to whoever, but he had told me if he was flying out my way he would drop off packages for me. He could easily attach the harness he gave me for just this purpose and the load could be released from the cockpit without having to land. He would hover above the pasture and when the load touched ground he would release it.

I needed the hay because that pasture wasn't that big and those three horses of mine had just about grazed it down the last time I was there. The baled hay was for them.

Three days later I got to the cabin and like he said he would, Vern had dropped of that big bundle of hay for me. I spent some time untarping the hay and storing it away. Then I spent the rest of the day getting organized for my stay.

The next morning bright and early I donned the wet suit by the water's edge and was in the freezing water moving rocks and hauling sand out of the hole. That wet suit was a godsend but I still needed a fire real close to the creek because I still got cold.

It took me another four days to get that hole dug in that creek. Once that was done I sat back and spent another two weeks just enjoying the cabin, and thinking ahead about what I still had to do. Between the horses and the deer around the area that hay only lasted another two weeks so I headed back to town.

Blind luck then came my way. Vern and I were at an auction and there was a small wood burning cook stove for sale. I immediately saw where this could save me some trouble latter on. I had never thought of a good way to get Hank out to the cabin and was just going to throw his body on the back of a horse. This stove gave me a better alternative. Now I wouldn't have to haul Hank's body on the back of the horses.

Anyway no one uses those stoves anymore so I snapped it up real cheap. Damn that thing was heavy. I had to be about five feet long and a cast iron top. Vern was kidding me about the thing but when I told him it was for the cabin he could see the practicality in having it. At least now I would be able to cook inside instead of over an open fire. He helped me lug it home and set it in the garage. I told him that one day, after I got the thing cleaned up and workable he would be flying that stove out to the cabin for me. All he said was that I better wrap it up good so it would make the flight.

I spent the next month tearing down that stove and made three trips to the cabin packing the parts of the stove on the back of the horses. I hid it under some brush right beside the horses pasture and covered it so I couldn't be seen from the air. It was there to be used as part of my alibi so I would look like Vern had dropped it in the middle of the pasture with his helicopter.

On one of the trips when I was back at home I bought two body bags on line. I was perusing E-Bay one day and saw them. Why this guy had those, and was selling them I don't know. When I realized they would make it easier to hide the evidence of my work I knew I had a use for them. After all wrapping a body in plastic wasn't the best idea and these body bags were so convenient.

That brought it to the end of summer and all I had to do was wait for the right time. The last thing I did was build a heavy duty box that would look like that stove when it was covered in tarps.

The one thing I learned when I was with Maggie was that she always made two trips back east to visit her parents for two weeks every year. She always went about the first week in April, and the third week in November. The November trip she took always worked great for me because it was hunting season. It gave me a chance to get out and bag a deer or moose without having to worry about leaving her behind. This year I would be bagging something else.

Maggie leaving just then was going to work just fine for me. I acted normal around town and just carried on as if nothing was out of the ordinary. The day before Maggie was scheduled to leave I watched Hank and her like a hawk.

During a talk with Vern over a few beers one night, I found he was flying personnel out to a new mine past my cabin on Saturday. Wow talk about a plan coming together that was perfect timing because everyone figured I was going out of town on Thursday. Vern and I came to an agreement that he would drop of my stove sometime Monday.

I spent some time the day before Maggie was to leave town telling a bunch of people I was heading up to the cabin. I even had my stuff loaded in the truck so they could see it. As far as anyone was concerned I was leaving bright and early Thursday. I hid out until the time was right.

Maggie was predictable and left right on time. Now came the start of the messy part of the plan. I got out the gun I had got at the swap meet, checked it out and made my way over to Hanks place. I had scouted a spot a quarter mile from his drive and I drove my truck in there to conceal it.

I took those body bags and after a short walk set myself down in the woods where I could see Hanks house. He had a place five miles out of town in a treed well secluded location with a small rise just off to the side of the house. That's where I went.

I had some time to think. I wasn't sure I had the guts to pull this off, so I spent my time thinking of all the things that Hank had done to piss me off over the years. Doing that steeled my resolve to finish this. By the time Hank pulled in I was ready.

I'm not proud of what I did next, but I leveled the gun, sighted in on him, and as soon as he stepped out of his car and was in the open, I shot him. Not very gentlemanly I know but I wasn't going to give him a chance to get away. I quickly ran over to his body and checked to make sure my aim was true. It was. There was now a hole right in the heart.

I then swiftly got out those body bags and securely wrapped him in one of them. I didn't want too much blood to be seen here so any bleeding he was going to do I wanted in the body bag.

Surprisingly there wasn't much blood. Just enough so when someone saw it they would know something had happened. I hurried back to my truck and when I got back to Hank's place I backed up close to him. I spread out that second body bag in the bed of the truck and put him in it and sealed things up. I noticed he had dropped his keys so I opened his door on the house and turned on some lights and scattered some furniture around to make it look like there had been a fight in the room.

I pulled ahead and onto the road with my truck then went back to check that I hadn't left any tire tracks or anything else that showed I had been there. I had been wearing gloves and thick socks over my boots through the whole thing and was glad I planed that because there wasn't a visible trace that anyone had been there except for that small blood spot. I left that so people could see it and figure Hank had come home and been in a fight inside the house and the blood on the driveway would let people know he had been hurt.

I was a bit worried heading home. I was concerned that I would get stopped for a random check, but I made it without any trouble. I backed into my garage and got my assembled box positioned. Just to be sure there would be no leaks I lined it with plastic. Dropping Hank into the box was easy and the rifle also went into the box. Then I nailed the box closed.

The night had turned pretty dark when I pulled into the airport. I spread out my tarps and got the lifting harness from beside Vern's hanger and wrapped the box in tarps and that went into the lifting harness. For all intense and purposes it looked like the stove was wrapped in it. I attached the lift wires so it was ready to be hooked to the helicopter. I checked everything and everything seemed fine. I left a note for Vern telling him that the stove was all bundled and ready to be hooked up.

Now I had to hustle. I drove like mad to get to the stables where the horses were. I arrived about one in the morning and quickly saddled and packed up and with the three horses headed out. I don't know how those horses never broke a leg or anything but we hustled like the wind to get to the ranger station. We usually took a couple of days to make the trip to the ranger station but this time we did in a day and six hours.

The rangers always took off on Thursday to do their rounds of the park and never got back until sometime Sunday evening. I usually was there Friday evening and headed out again on Saturday, but here it was already Saturday and I had to do another days hard riding. I made the regular area where I camped the night look like I had been there, and left them my note which was dated Saturday telling them I had been there and was going to my cabin. That was a regular thing to do because if they saw smoke in that direction they knew it was me and wouldn't panic.

I spent the night there and left early the next morning. Boy, were those horses worn out by the time we got to the cabin the next day. Vern had dropped off my package that morning and everything looked copacetic. Bright and early the next morning I was out getting that box opened up. I grabbed the rifle and it was the first thing that went into that hole where I had dug out all those rocks and sand in the middle of the creek. The gun was followed by Hanks wrapped up body.

I had a bit of trouble with that because those body bags kept trying to float off, so I had to tie it to a tree with some rope and then put some rocks in with Hank. At least that made him sink and I spent the better part of the day filling in that hole with those rocks and sand that I had so painstakingly removed just a short while ago.

I was worn out by the time I finished so I spent all night feeding the fire by the creek where I burned the box, and the diving suit.

The last chore by the creek I did was to gather up all the nails from the burnt box then gather the ashes from the fire and add them to my ash pit. That fire location was one thing I didn't want to leave a trace of. Then using pails of water from the creek I washed the whole area down so there were no ashes to make anyone curious as to why there was a fire in that location. That done I went on a hike in the creek so I wouldn't leave a trail to dispose of those nails from the crate. They went into the creek about five miles downstream under some more rocks.

The next morning I got to work putting some of that stove together in the middle of the horse's pasture where Vern had dropped off the fake box. Also some of that stove was assembled in the cabin making it look like I was disassembling it in the pasture and assembling the pieces in the cabin.

I then sat back and wondered how long it would take until someone wanted to question me. I knew they were going to want to question me because everyone in town knew of the hate Hank and I had for each other and I'm sure more than a few people knew about Hank taking Maggie from me and how mad I was. I was a natural suspect.

It only took a week for the law to show up. I figured it would be a couple of weeks so them coming early was a bit of a surprise. Four of them arrived by helicopter and almost scared my horses half to death when it landed in my small pasture. That's when the questions started and they did a thorough search of the area. Like I said, they were sure I got rid of Hank and were looking for some evidence.

In the end things went the way I hoped things would go and they couldn't find anything. They left but I was sure they were going to keep an eye on me. That was OK because I wasn't planning on doing anything out of the ordinary and I was sure Hank's body would never be found.

Epilogue

To make a long story short, Maggie was sure I got rid of Hank, and I'm sure most of the people in town thought the same thing. Old Charlie the cop kept coming around and asking questions, but after a year he gave up. Hank's disappearance was never solved and every time I go to the cabin I sure smile when I go fishing in the creek.

So that's my little tale. I hope no one uses my imaginary story to think they can try something like this.