Wicked Woods by Steve Vernon

1982, there were sightings of the creature. That was the year a worker in a Lake Utopia paper mill, Sherman Hatt, spotted a creature that he said resembled “a submarine coming out of the water with spray on both sides. It was about ten feet long and put me in mind of the back of a whale.”
    Sherman reported that the creature surfaced, displaying a head as large as a good-sized washtub before sinking down into the murky lake waters. Perhaps the discrepancy between this description of the monster’s head and the one that compared it to a horse can be explained by a case of winter eye strain, or pos–sibly the great beast has spawned himself a baby or two. In which case one has to wonder where on earth the mate of the creature has got to?
    If you ask me, fishermen in the Lake Utopia area would be well-advised to carry along a jumbo-sized fishing rod, a very large fishing net, a year’s supply of flour, and one heck of a frying pan. An oar ought to serve you just fine for a spatula, if you’re not of the fussy sort.
    Hmmm. I imagine that sea monster ought to taste some sweet, after sizzling in the pan with a barrel of herbed butter, a bushel or two of potatoes, and maybe a bucket of sliced lemons on the side.
    I only hope somebody remembers to bring marshmallows.

16

T HE B LOODY
S TUMP OF
B ONNY R IVER
    BONNY RIVER

    Down in the southwest corner of New Brunswick, about ten kilometres north of St. George, lies a tiny village by the name of Bonny River. Not a lot happens here, but the landscape is absolutely spectacular. The entire region is one gigantic glacial wash, a carved out hol–low where retreating ice sheets dropped trillions of tons of granite as they boo–gied in slow motion across the face of the province somewhere around about the tail end of the last ice age.
    In the early 1800s, a young girl by the name of Mary Well lived on one side of the Magaguadavic River. On the other side of the river was a small settlement of hunting shacks. Two of these shacks were owned by a couple of good friends named Ben and Isaac. Now Ben and Isaac were long-time buddies who grew up hunt–ing and fishing on the side of the Magaguadavic River. Time and again the two of them had saved each other from terrible mis–fortune. When they were thirteen, Ben dragged Isaac out of the river. Of course, Ben had been the fellow who pushed Isaac into the river in the first place, but what else are friends for?
    In their later years Isaac sprained his right ankle snowshoeing and Ben lugged him over his shoulders across ten long, heavy kilometres of snow-covered wilderness. Afterwards Ben went back and fetched out the deer that the two of them had shot.
    It was a friendship carved in New Brunswick granite and only the love of a river woman could wash it away. As fate would have it, Ben and Isaac both fell in love with the same river woman, Mary Well of the Magaguadavic.
    The problem was that Mary loved both of them. Every morning she would watch as the two men struck out in their canoes across the Magaguadavic, trying to be the first to land on Mary’s shore. They had struck an agreement that whoever reached the far shore faster would have the chance to talk to Mary first that day while the other did the honourable thing and stood clear.
    Of course, talking to Mary first also gave the victor of that day’s canoe race the opportunity to escort Mary Well for the rest of the day, so the race soon became quite competitive. Folks would gather on the shoreline to watch Ben and Isaac paddle like the devil was swimming close behind. Occasionally they’d pause to swing an oar at each other or even chuck a rock. Everyone figured that a fight was inevitable.
    â€œYou have to choose one,” Mary’s mother told her. “There’s only room for a single ring on any girl’s ring finger.”
    â€œHunt one rabbit, you’ve got supper,” Mary’s father added. “Hunt two rabbits,