Paul Doiron: The Poacher's Son

I saw his eyes flick sideways, taking it in.

The bartender racked a shell into the chamber. “I said, ‘Drop it!’ ”

With one motion my father shoved the biker away and dropped the knife. The man fell to his knees beside me, gasping for breath, one hand clamped to his bleeding throat.

“They attacked my kid, Sally,” said my father.

“Tell it to the cops.”

Five minutes later a sheriff’s deputy arrived with his gun drawn. The deputy, a soft-looking guy with a face that made him look like an evil baby, made my father kneel on the broken glass. He twisted his arms behind him while he put on the handcuffs. But my father just grinned. He was having the time of his life.

More police arrived-a state trooper and an old game warden pilot I knew named Charley Stevens. They arrested my father and the three bikers on assault charges. Everyone wanted me to go in an ambulance to the hospital in Farmington, but I refused. The result was a scar on my forehead, right at the hairline, that I’d almost forgotten about until the Warden Service gave me a crew cut.

“He was just trying to help me,” I told Charley Stevens.

“That may be,” said the old game warden. “But he could have killed that man.”

“I’ll bail you out,” I told my father.

He shook his head. “I’ll be out before morning. It’s a bullshit charge and they know it.”

They led him away in handcuffs, and the next day when we went to the county jail in Skowhegan, we learned the charges had indeed been dropped against him, just as he’d predicted. I tried to phone him afterward at Rum Pond to say thanks, but he never did return my calls.

Until now. I didn’t know why my father had called me, but if he was coming back into my life after two silent years, trouble was sure to be close behind.

A few hours later I awoke to the cackling of crows. At dawn, a gang of them took over the pines around my house, and their harsh quarreling voices roused me from sleep.

The house I was renting bordered a tidal creek that flowed through a field of green spartina grass down to the Segocket River. As the tide went out, the creek would shrink to a bed of sour-smelling mud, and great clouds of mosquitoes would rise off the salt pannes. But at high tide I could slide my canoe down into the stream and follow the water all the way to the sea.

The house was a single-story ranch that Sarah and I managed to rent cheap on account of its ramshackle condition. A lobsterman had built the place without a blueprint, making improvements and repairs as necessity dictated and his bank account allowed. When he gave us the keys, he also gave us a hammer and a roll of duct tape, saying, “Expect you’ll need these from time to time.”

He was right. Each rainstorm seemed to reveal a new leak in the roof. Sarah had hated the place from the start, but she refused to stoop to renting a mobile home, and on my piss-poor salary and her school stipend, it was the best we could do. Still, I always liked the old place. From the window above the kitchen sink I could watch herons and egrets hunting in the tidal creek, and at first light there was always the good smell of the sea, miles downstream.

This morning, though, I didn’t hang around to enjoy the quiet. I took a quick shower, put on a clean uniform, and made a call to my supervisor, Sergeant Kathy Frost, at her home.

Kathy was an eighteen-year veteran of the Maine Warden Service and one of the first women in the agency’s history, back before affirmative action opened things up. She’d had to pass the same physical fitness test as a man to get in-bench press, sit-ups, pushups, running, and swimming. Now, in addition to being one of three sergeants supervising wardens in Division B, she oversaw the K-9 unit and was odds-on favorite to replace Lieutenant Malcomb when he retired.

This morning she sounded like she was coming down with a cold, her husky voice even huskier than usual. “I don’t know if you’ve seen the news, but a cop got killed last night.”

I felt as if I’d been punched in the gut. “Who?”

“A Somerset County deputy named Bill Brodeur.”

“Oh, shit.”

“You knew him?”

“We were at the academy together. What happened?”

“It was a double homicide-Brodeur and a guy from Wendigo Timber. They were shot up in Dead River Plantation.”

“Dead River?” I closed my eyes and saw my father’s bearded face, like the afterimage of a bright light, flash across the inside of my eyelids. When I opened them, the room seemed out of focus. “Did they get the shooter?”

“Not yet.”

“So does CID have any suspects?”

“Only two hundred or so pissed-off lease holders. You know the big controversy they’ve got going up there? How Wendigo bought up all that timberland and is planning to kick out the camp owners? Well, there was some sort of public meeting last night, and I guess it got pretty hot. Brodeur was there as a bodyguard to this guy Shipman from Wendigo, driving him over to Sugarloaf for the night, and someone opened fire on their cruiser.”

“Was Brodeur married?”

“No, but the Wendigo guy had a wife and two little boys.”

It had been years since a cop was murdered in Maine. Even so, it was something you always carried with you. The possibility of it, I mean. I glanced at the answering machine. The little red light wasn’t blinking anymore; my father’s voice was gone, erased. What had he wanted to tell me last night?

“Mike? You still there?”

“I got this weird message on my answering machine last night. It was from my dad. He lives up near Dead River.”

There was a pause on the other end. “Weird in what way?”

“Well, we haven’t spoken in a couple years.”

“Maybe he heard what happened and was concerned about you, being a law officer and all.”

I laughed, a single sharp laugh.

“Or maybe not,” she said. “You said he owns a camp up there?”

“Not exactly. Last I heard he was working for Russell Pelletier over at Rum Pond Sporting Camps. Wendigo owns all that land now. If they sell it, Pelletier will lose his business.”

“You think that’s why he called you?”

The suspicion in her voice made me uneasy, as if I’d somehow given her the wrong idea. “It’s probably nothing. He gets drinking late at night.”

“My brother’s like that.” She paused long enough for me to hear a dog barking in the background. “So did you talk to him?”

“I was out on a call.” I told her about my evening with Bud Thompson. “I think I know the bear that got his pig. The one I’m thinking of has a thing for greasy barbecue grills. Last month it was up on a patio licking some guy’s hibachi.”

“Sounds kinky. You want me to bring over a culvert trap?”

“What about Dick Roberge?” I said, referring to the local animal damage-control agent who assisted us trapping nuisance wildlife.

“Dick’s getting his knee replaced.”

“You don’t mind bringing over a trap?”

“I’m headed to Division B, anyway. Where do you want to meet?”

“How about that place where we caught that night hunter last month?”

“Give me a couple hours.” We were both about to hang up when she came back on the line.

“Maybe in the meantime you should give your old man a ring. Just a suggestion, but if it were my dad and I hadn’t heard from him in years, I’d be a little curious about the timing.”

In the few months we’d been working together I’d learned to follow Kathy’s advice. Better to make the call than spend the day wondering what my dad was mixed up in.

My father didn’t have a phone himself at his cabin but relied on the owner at Rum Pond Sporting Camps to take messages for him. The lodge itself was so remote no phone lines connected it with the outside world, and the surrounding mountains made cell-phone reception iffy at best. Instead, the owner, Russell Pelletier, used an old radio phone to make and receive calls. When no one picked up, I tried the in-town answering service and got an earful of static until the machine came on.