The Talisman
by Francis Flavin
Burns pulled the hood of his raincoat tight around his neck against the morning chill. It was a beautiful fall day. Sunlight shimmered off the turquoise and aquamarine glacial waters. The willows and alders on the river bank glistened with the early morning dew. But the sun lay far to the south, and lacked the solar punch that it had in the short Alaskan summer. The speed of the jet boat and the Kasilof’s icy waters chilled him to the bone. Burns tried to use the broad back of Trooper Ellis as a wind break. Ellis seemed impervious to the elements. He turned around and grinned.
“Having fun yet Professor?”
Burns just shrugged. He was only an associate professor, but his chattering teeth prevented any thought of correcting the undeserved title. He managed a slight smile; fleeting and frozen. Nobody outside academia gave a crap about scholarly titles anyway. He let it go.
“We should be there in a few minutes.”
That smile again. Burns resented the fact that Ellis seemed oblivious to the cold.
Burns owed his state of near hypothermia to several dry martinis and a misplaced sense of adventure. Two days previously he participated in a forensic anthropology workshop for Alaska law enforcement officials in Anchorage. His session covered the handling of human remains with an emphasis on protocols concerning the recognition and protection of Alaska Native cultural traditions.
At the cocktail hour following the workshop Trooper Ellis asked Burns if he wanted to put his expertise to work and have a bit of an adventure to boot. A moose hunter had found a human skull near the Kasilof River and Ellis had been tasked with investigating the circumstances surrounding the remains. Ellis invited Burns to participate in the inquiry. Intrigued, Burns readily accepted. Even though he worked in the forensic end of law enforcement, he recognized that an important anthropological find would look good on his curriculum vitae.
His reflections and misery were interrupted by a shout from Ellis.
“The GPS indicates the site should be just around the next bend.”
As the trooper beached the boat, Burns pulled up his hip boots that were folded down around his ankles. There was a good deal of tall grass running up the nearby ridgeline. His crotch would still be soaked in the dew, but at least his legs would be dry, and hopefully warm.
After Ellis had tied off the boat on a large driftwood log, he reached into the bow of the boat and pulled out a shotgun.
“12 Gauge!”
“Unplugged!”
He jacked a shell into the shotgun’s chamber.
“Ready for bear,” he grinned.
Ellis handed Burns a tall can of bear spray.
“Know how to use this?”
“Oh yeah!”
Burns indeed had some experience. An incident he did not want to repeat or even think about. He never could decide which was most scared; his brain, his bladder or his bowels.”
It was less than a hundred yards to the skull site. Even so, Burns was soaked through everywhere that wasn’t covered by rubber or Gor-Tex. He hoped that the site was worth the misery he incurred getting there.
The skull was located under a bouquet of orange tape hanging from a spruce branch. Before examining it, they both donned gloves to protect the evidence and took out their cameras to record the scene.
After taking pictures of the skull from a variety of angles Ellis picked it up and handed it to Burns.
“What do you think?”
Burns grimaced.
“Shit!”
One of the few remaining molars that had survived weather and scavenging animals had a large gold filling.
“I would say this is a male Caucasian. Been here several decades or so.”
While Ellis was photographing and cataloging bones, Burns decided to investigate a small clearing in a nearby spruce grove. To his surprise the clearing contained remnants of an old settlement of some kind.
“Well, this is more like it!”
Burns took a slew of pictures to record the site. As he prepared to leave and rejoin Ellis, he noticed something glistening under a spruce root.
He got down on his hands and knees for a closer look. It was a small talisman of some type; a bear. He took several pictures, marked the location with a small flag and picked it up.
Burns wondered why this site had remained hidden for so long. He rolled the bear over in his fingers. A wave of foreboding swept over him - then a shout from Ellis – a shotgun blast – silence. The bushes parted in a rush of fur and fury. His question was answered in the shockingly familiar stench of carrion, and the crush of teeth.
Francis Flavin draws upon his experience as an educator, public interest lawyer and observer on four continents. His work has been published in Poetry Quarterly, Poets Choice, Inwood Indiana, Blueline, Pacific Review, Blue Collar Review, La Piccioletta Barca, Three Line Poetry, The Closed Eye Open and Tempered Runes, among others. He was the Winner of the 2021 Poetry Quarterly Rebecca Lard Award and has received recognition for humor and flash fiction (2), short story (2), novel excerpt (3), creative nonfiction and personal essay categories in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, the social impact category of the Chicagoland Poetry Contest, the Partisan Press Working People’s Poetry Competition (winner) and the personal essay and rhymed poetry categories of the 2020 Writer’s Digest awards.