Iron County on Michigan's Upper Peninsula had a population density of 10 people per square mile. I never saw more than 9 people gathered in one place during my visit to Fire Lake in 1987. My friends Paul Fullerton and Greg Hunt didn't count, since we had traveled from New York in Paul's pickup truck. The skies were showing signs of autumn. It was time of preparing for winter. We had spent the afternoon chopping wood on a friend's farm.
Hard work.
Uvo sported a serious bruise on his forearm.
Dangerous work too.
"Plenty of people up here," Uvo said in his log sauna. His son had gone to college with Paul. He had left two days before we arrived, however Uvo extended his hospitality. Fire Lake was a no way from anywhere. The 50 year-old farmer threw water on the hot stones. Steam filled the sauna. "People just don't like getting together too often. Too busy working, but nothing gets them together faster than talk of a barbecue, so if you want to see people, we'll have a barbecue."
"Fresh meat too." Paul was a total carnivore. His blood pressure was that of a 300-pound man. The art professor weighed under 160. He ate steak four times a week. The Homestead Steak House on 9th Avenue him by name.
"Y-up." Uvo spoke with tinges of Finnish clinging to his accent. He scratched his buzzcut then rubbed his unshaven face. "Go shot a cow after we're done."
"Shoot a cow?" I was a meat-eater, but my steaks came from a supermarket. I wiped the sweat from my face with an old towel.
"Would rather he kill it with an ax?" Greg joked from under his wrap of towels. The English literary agent looked like a soggy mummy.
"I kill one cow every fall." Uvo stated matter-of-fact. "Keeps me in meat until the spring. The way snow falls up here you never know when you might get supplies."
Winters were hard this far north. 200 inches of snow were the norm. A few communities had recorded annual snowfalls nearing 13 feet.
"Killing a cow ain't sport. I known this cow all its life. Fed it as a calf." Uvo seemed sad about the upcoming culling of his herd. "Strange but the other cows sense waht's going to happen."
"You think they tell each other?" Greg was high on dope. He was holding out on me.
"Dunno. Cows are funny." Uvo shaved with an old straight-razor. Nothing went to waste on his farm. After finishing Uvo stropped the edge to an assassin's sharpness. My beard was scrapped from my face without a nick. Paul had a beard, but Greg wasn't so lucky. His skill with the blade suffered from his heroin intake. He exited the sauna patting his cuts with a towel.
We were naked. The sunlight dried our skin. The air felt like September. Crisp and cool. The wind was flipping up the silver bottom of the leaves. Uvo looked over his shoulder to the large pasture. The herd of cows were standing against the fence. One cow was in the distance.
"That's the one." Greg lifted his head from a nod. He was handsome in a desperate way.
"Weird, eh?" Uvo reached into the cooler and pulled out four cans. Budweiser. "They shun that one like killing might be contagious."
Death awaited all creatures. We drank our beer. Uvo saved the empties for target shooting. The cows stared at us like we were holding a vote to change the sacrifice.
"Funny how they'll protect themselves from other animals but not man." Greg was still on his first beer. I was on my third. "That's because they trust us."
"Trust?" Uvo laughed with a farmer's certitude. "Cows ain't no one's friend. How you think I got this black and blue on my arm."
"The lone cow." Paul was sitting on a log. His legs were thin. The sculptor needed more exercise.
"Yup that's the one." Uvo walked over to the gate. He lifted his fingers to his mouth. A long whistle got the attention of the solitary cow. The others huddled closer to the fence. The cow shook his head. Uvo whistled again and then banged the grain bin. Corn husk dust misted a halo around the farmer's head. The cow meandered to the gate. Uvo slipped a noose over its head. Long scars crisscrossed the haunches. Soemthing wild had had at it. Uvo led the beast to a trellis constructed of thick logs. A pulley hung from the beam. The naked farmer fed the lead line through the pulley and hauled the cow's head upward.
Uvo returned to us. The other cows scattered over the pasture to munch the long summer grass. Greg had nodded out in a sprawl against the sauna wall. It wasn't a pretty sight.
"Something wrong with that troll." The last word was Upper Peninsula slang for someone below the Straits of Mackinac or 'under da bridge'. We were almost 400 miles from Detroit. A long way from New York, but Uvo was no fool. "That boy better take care of himself. i don't want no one dying on my farm."
"I'll take care of him."
"You a doctor?" Uvo didn't approve of drugs. His son had a problem with cocaine. A lot of people did in the 80s.
"No,but I know what to do." I lived in the East Village. Drugs were sold on every corner. I had saved three friends from ODs. Greg was fine, but Uvo wanted action. I entered the sauna and came out with a bucket of icy water. Greg was only thinking of his own oblivion. I emptied the contents over Greg. The Englishman sputtered to life. Uvo and Paul laughed as only naked men can laugh. Hands over their genitals.
Greg wasn't too happy with the sudden reveille but understood that he had violated his guest privileges. Being marginally upper-class, he had been brought up with better manners than a Lower East Side junkie.
"Thanks."
"No problem."
"I have some calls to make and that cow has a date with a Winchester." Uvo walked over to his house. He entered by the front door. The cow in the rear mooed our surrender. We followed Uvo's path across the lawn. I went to my room. It was on the second-floor. the windows overlooked the cow. I stuck wet tissue in my ears waiting for the killing shot.
Uvo and Paul exited from the house. They were still naked. Uvo held a Winchester rifle. Paul had his 45. The cow mooed once and Uvo stuck the rifle muzzle in its ear. One bullet buckled its legs. Paul gave the coup de grace. The killing took less than 10 seconds.
Nudist killing camp.
Uvo and Paul tugged on the road around the dead cow's neck. The creature was ready for slaughter. I lay on the bed. The mattress was old. The sheets smelled of age. I fell asleep in a minute.
I woke to the sound of people talking and the smell of sizzling steak. I got out of bed and went to the window. Meat was burning on the grill. Ten people were drinking beer. Paul, Uvo, Greg, three women and four men. Everyone was wearing flannel shirts and jeans. Everyone's hair was long, except for Uvo.
I dressed in the uniform and joined the party. Paul's truck was parked next to the house. The tapedeck was playing a tape of garage music. ? and the Mysterians. Greg was entertaining the congregation with tales of Oxford. I had heard them before, but he was a good storyteller and I laughed along with the other guests. We drank beer and ate steak. Medium raw. Blood dripped from our lips. The meat went well with the potato sausage and cudighi, a spicy Italian meat.
One of the women had brought a nisu, a cardamom-flavored sweet bread. Another juustoa or spueaky cheese and sauna makkara, a Finnish bologna. It was good eating. The sun was going down. Uvo gathered the empties and placed them on a shot-up fence post 50 feet from the grill. Paul placed his 45 on the table. A box of ammo.
We shot the entire box in ten minutes. Only two of the beer cans survived the onslaught. Paul put his pistol under the seat of his pick-up and I at on the porch.
"Good steak, eh?" Uvo was aglow with beer. His smile was shared by his friends. They smiled broader when the stereo played DIRTY WATER.
"Delicious." Better than anything from the Homestead. "But i meant to ask you. What were those scars on that cow."
"Bear." The nisu woman answered my question. Paul was flirting with her. She was in her 40s. Scrawny like Paul. She wanted to dance to LOUIE LOUIE playing on the pick-up's stereo. They did the two-step.
"Yup, a bear attack that cow last spring. I shot it dead."
"Don't say that too loud." The woman glanced around the guests. "Game warden hear that and Uvo has a big fine."
"Maybe $2000 for out of season." Uvo popped open another beer.
"But it was attacking your cow." I had seen bears in Maine the previous summer. They were on the roam for blueberries. The police warned hikers to stay away from the patches. The two bear I saw were black. Smaller than a Grizzly, but big. They were scavenging a moose carcass across a river. Both studied me as if I were food.
"Bears won't attack something big unless they're hungry. Guess that bear was hungry. I shot him with that Winchester."
The same one with which he had killed the cow. It was almost like the scene in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA where Lawrence has to shot the man that he saved from the desert in order to seal the alliance of another tribe of Arabs.
"Uvo called me up and I came over with my backhoe." A longhaired farmer nodded his head in remembrance of that day. "Big hole."
"Yup." A chorus joined by the other locals.
"That cow was a little crazy after that. Always running around the pasture. Scaring the other cows. Sorry it had to go, but crazy cows are bad for milk."
"Yup." Another round of 'yups'.
"Bear meat tastes like pork. best are the legs and loin."
"bears too strong for me. Too much grease."
"Plus they get trichinellosis." Paul's date made a face. "Bears are no good eating. Not like steak.
"Yup."
Greg and I joined in the chant, for after the fifth beer everyone comes from the same place.
The land of beer.
And no bears.
At least not at a barbecue.
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