Paul Doiron - Trespasser

“The Barters.”

“God, do you think? Are they going to come over here? What should I do?”

“They won’t come over. They know I’d shoot their whole fucking family.”

She removed the tray from my lap and set it on the bedside table. Her eyes seemed a different color from what I remembered-I felt like I’d never truly seen them before.

“How many of those pills did you take?”

“Just what the bottle said.”

“Your voice is slurred. I don’t think you should take any more.”

“OK.”

She put a hand on my forehead and then ran her fingers through my crew cut. “I’m worried about you, honey.”

Her concern struck me as misplaced but very sweet. I felt a sudden desire to share some of the insights I’d recently experienced. “Do you remember your First Communion? There was all this big buildup to it in the Catholic Church. We had these CCD classes-I don’t know what CCD stands for-it was like Sunday school, except it wasn’t on Sundays. The idea of eating the body of Christ-what’s a kid supposed to make of that?”

“Mike…”

“The wafer was just this dusty round piece of paper. I don’t know what I thought would happen-maybe that I’d see a vision of God with beams of sunlight and angels. But instead, there was nothing. So which church should we raise our kids in? Catholic or Episcopal? I guess you’d be the one to take them, so you should decide.”

She got up from the bed and lifted the tray. She seemed to be swaying dreamily herself, uncertain on her feet. “Get some rest.”

After she’d left the room, I stared at the shimmering light beneath the bedroom door. It seemed to ripple like waves of heat rising off hot desert sands. Sarah hadn’t understood what I was getting at. These revelations were peculiar to me. No one else could understand them.

On Monday morning, after Sarah had left for school, I awoke to a sensation in my right hand. It might best be compared to an elephant sitting on all five of my fingers. I stumbled into the bathroom and began rummaging through the medicine cabinet. The little orange vial of Vicodin had disappeared without a trace.

I telephoned Sarah’s school and left a message. I told the receptionist it was an emergency. Then I waited in my pajama bottoms on the edge of the unmade bed, cradling my bad hand in my good one.

After an eternity, the phone rang. “Mike, what is it? Did you hear something about Travis?”

“I can’t find my pills.”

In my mind’s eye, I saw Sarah easing the receiver away from her ear until she could decide how to respond. “Did you look in the medicine cabinet?”

“Of course I looked in the medicine cabinet.”

“Maybe you got up in the night and misplaced the bottle. You might have dropped it on the floor. Did you check behind the toilet?”

“No.”

A paranoid idea popped into my head: I wondered if she had hidden my pills during the night. Her voice had risen to a higher pitch over the course of our brief conversation. At the police academy, I had learned that was one of the telltale clues to dishonesty.

“I’m sure they’ll show up eventually.” Sarah sounded like the patient schoolteacher she was. “Why don’t you take a shower and get dressed? You need something to occupy your attention. You could read that book Kathy gave you.” She seemed to be making a conscious effort to humor me. “The principal told me she’s transferring the Barter twins from my class as a precaution. Everyone here knows about you and their father.”

“ He attacked me.”

“It’s unfair, but people blame you for what happened to Travis. You’re the district game warden.”

“Great,” I said. “That’s just what I need.”

“Mike, you didn’t do anything wrong. You were just doing your job. If you find your Vicodin, please just take half a dose, OK?”

“OK.”

After we signed off, I set to work rooting through her underwear drawers and closet shelves in search of my painkillers. I had the thought she might have stashed the vial in a coat pocket or the toe of a boot. But no matter where I looked, I found nothing.

I was still rummaging around the bedroom when there was a knock at the door. It was the mailman with an express package from my mother in Naples, Florida. Inside was a get-well card, signed “With Love,” telling me she hoped the enclosed present would help occupy me while I healed. She’d sent me a video game, Cabela’s Big Game Hunter for PlayStation 2. I didn’t own a PlayStation machine. I didn’t even own a television.

I dropped the video game in the trash. Ora was right that my mother and I would eventually need to have a serious talk about my dad. But I had a gut feeling that discussion would be a long time coming.

Why had I been such a jerk to Sarah? A broken hand was no excuse. She’d never made a habit of lying to me. And yet she had been behaving so strangely lately. I had been so quick to believe Ora’s suspicion that Sarah might be pregnant. I needed to get past my self-pity and paranoia.

I downed a handful of ibuprofen with a glass of tap water. Then I pulled a bread bag from a kitchen drawer and, after stripping naked, wrapped the plastic around my splint and awkwardly fastened it into place with a rubber band. Even with the bag secured this way, moisture from the shower found a way of seeping in and dampening the brace.

I put on a flannel shirt and some oil-flecked Carhartt pants and then made myself the simplest breakfast imaginable-dry toast and orange juice. I ate it at the kitchen table. Looking out at the tidal marsh, I saw a red-winged blackbird, another early migrant, alight briefly atop a swaying stalk of phragmites before winging down the river.

Fishing season kicked off next week, and I wondered who would cover my district. The first day of open-water fishing was one of my favorite days of the year to be a warden. For a moment again, I felt oppressed by my infirmity.

There was another knock at the door.

In my irritable convalescent state, I wasn’t sure who I was expecting, but it surely wasn’t the Knox County sheriff, Dudley Baker.

When I opened the door, I felt a mild brush of wind on my face. Much of the snow and ice had already dropped from the frozen branches. Our little patch of forest was loud with the staccato drip-drip of gravity pulling water down out of the trees.

The sheriff looked, as always, like a man whose entire appearance was sealed neatly into place; he seemed to begin each morning by coating himself from head to toe in immobilizing hair spray. His jowly cheeks bore a flush of color from the morning air. As we spoke, his tinted eyeglass lenses misted over, so that he had to wipe them with the corner of a pressed handkerchief.

“I hope I haven’t disturbed you,” he said, knowing full well that he had.

“I just finished breakfast.”

“How’s your hand?”

“Could be worse.”

He nodded his two chins. “Do you mind if I come in?”

We sat across from each other beside the expiring woodstove. I didn’t offer him coffee, tea, or even a glass of water. The sheriff had driven to my house for a specific reason, and I wanted to hear what it was.

“I thought I should give you an update about the Barter boy myself,” he said. “The doctors decided to fly him down to Boston. He’s in a drug-induced coma. There was extensive damage to the anterior frontal lobes of his brain. It’s too early to predict his prognosis.”

I didn’t know how to respond to this news. “So what are you doing with Calvin?”

“We’re holding him on some bench warrants, in addition to his ATV offenses. Unpaid traffic violations, failure to appear-that sort of thing. He’s going to be my guest for a while unless he can muster bail.”