Paul Doiron - Bad Little Falls

“Hotel California” was playing on the radio. Sprague tapped a beat to the music with his hands on the steering wheel, but more out of impatience than from a sense of rhythm.

“How long have you and Doris lived out here?” I asked.

“What do you mean-in the sticks?”

“In Township Nineteen.”

“Too long.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant, but he didn’t seem inclined to clarify the statement. “You two saved that man’s life.”

He made a snorting sound. “I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“Had you ever seen him before?”

His face had a lime-green cast from the dashboard lights. “Which one?”

“Either one.”

“No.”

“Do you know what they were doing out here?”

“Selling drugs. You saw that bag of money.”

“But why were they out here in the Heath, of all places?” I asked.

“I’m not a drug dealer. I don’t know why they do anything.”

Devoe and Tomahawk moved past our vehicles, heading down the logging road. We turned our heads to follow them. I couldn’t tell if the dog had found a scent trail or was just ecstatic to be doing what she’d been bred and trained to do.

“A dog can’t find someone in weather like this,” Sprague said confidently. “You won’t find his body until springtime.”

“They find people buried by avalanches.”

“Not in weather like this.”

We heard a garbled shout outside. I saw Rivard stick his head up from the car. He began walking quickly through the snow toward Devoe’s position. I grabbed the door handle and hopped out.

At the edge of Rivard’s dancing flashlight beam, Cody Devoe crouched in front of a roadside tree. He was down on his knees, holding Tomahawk around the neck. The German shepherd was straining toward a snowdrift piled against a leafless hardwood.

“What have you got?” Rivard asked.

“Something dead.”

Rivard knelt over the drift and began sweeping snow away with his gloved hands. Soon we saw matted brown hair, a human head nodding forward, as if a man had fallen asleep against the ash trunk. Rivard brushed the impacted snow off the forehead and shoulders. He gripped the head by the forelock and tilted the tattooed face up at us. The young man’s mouth was open and a blue tongue was thrust between the teeth. The eyes were glassy, sightless.

Ben Sprague came huffing and puffing along behind us. “Is he dead?” the plow driver asked.

Rivard removed a glove and pressed a couple of fingers beneath the man’s jawbone. “No pulse.”

I glanced back through the wind-whipped snow. “He didn’t make it very far.”

Rivard wiped the snow off his hands and bent to retrieve his glove. “He must have left the car after his friend went for help. He sat down under the tree to get out of the wind, and that was all she wrote.”

“Do you need a shovel to dig him out?” asked Sprague. “I have one in the truck.”

“We don’t know what went down here,” I said. “For all we know, there’s a bullet hole in the middle of Cates’s chest.”

“Mike’s right,” said Devoe.

“I know he is,” said Rivard sourly. “Use my radio to call Dispatch. Tell them to wake up the medical examiner. Make sure he brings his snowshoes.”

FEBRUARY 14

I was in the hospital last year.

We was having a Barbie Q in the backyard, and Prester was drinking beer. Ma had wheeled Tammi down the ramp and around the side of the house up onto the little hill. Tammi was wearing a cowboy hat Dad brought her from Texas because he was still trying to get back together with Ma even though they are divorced. There were no mosquitoes and the sun was warm before it went down behind the roof.

Ma hadn’t met Randle yet, so everybody was happy.

We was eating hamburgers and hot dogs. Prester had an apron that said on it MR. GOOD LOOKIN’ IS COOKIN’. I remember he called himself the Iron Chef and did some kung fu moves with the grill fork and the paddle thing you use to flip a burger. Kee-yaa!

Ma said something about how I needed to go out for a sport at school because she wanted me to be a student-athlete. The reason I needed glasses, she said, was because I was always reading comic books and Stephen King and writing in my NOTEBOOK.

You’ll develop more if you use your muscles, said Ma. You’re too scrawny, Lucas.

I’m the littlest kid in my class. I could maybe be a jockey if someone would teach me how to ride a horse.

Prester said, What about wrestling? That’s a sport for little fellers. What do you say, Luke Skywalker, you want me to teach you how to wrestle?

Wrestling is gay, I said. I don’t want to touch some kid’s boner.

Lucas! Ma said.

Prester got down on all fours and said, Come on. Kneel down beside me and grab my arm.

I didn’t have no choice. Prester got me all arranged. I didn’t really want to squeeze his belly, but that’s part of wrestling, I guess. He had a weird sour smell leaking through his skin from the beer.

Who’s going to count to three? Prester asked.

I will, said Tammi. Then she went, One, two, three! wicked quick.

The next thing I knew, Prester was sitting on top of me, belching beer breath in my face. I was gulping for air because he’d knocked the wind out of me.

Two outta three, he said.

This time he made me get down on all fours.

Don’t hurt him, Prester, Ma said.

I didn’t want to wrestle, so I figured I would just go limp. When Tammi said, One, two, three, Prester just picked me up like I was a doll and flopped me completely over-wham! — against my shoulder blades. Snap! went the bone. Everyone heard it!

Ma went mental after that. She made me wiggle my fingers and toes. You could have broken his neck, she told Prester. You could have paralyzed him!

He was sobbing like a baby. He cupped his hand and held it up to his face because he was embarrassed to be crying. Ma made us all pile into the van and drive into Machias.

Prester held my hand and slobbered all over it. Will you forgive me, Lucas? Please, please, please, forgive me!

Later I got my REVENGE-I sprinkled Tammi’s laxative all over his cold pizza.

Prester had the runs for a week.

Ha!

Shortly before dawn, Rivard sent me back to the house on the snowmobile because my cheeks were turning white. The wind had begun to die and the snow was lightening to flurries, but even so, I had trouble finding my way. In the minutes since Ben Sprague’s plow had cleared a passage for the trucks, the drifts had thoroughly reclaimed the logging road. In the east, there was a wash of color against the jagged horizon, a brushstroke of gray along the bottom of a black canvas.

I’d expected to find Kendrick’s dog team tied up outside the Spragues’ house. Instead, I discovered a white Ford Interceptor. On its door was a silver star against a black badge; on its fenders were the words WASHINGTON COUNTY SHERIFF PATROL. The rockers were spackled with salt brine. Because of Maine’s perpetually corrosive weather, our abundant potholes and frost heaves, the life expectancy of most new cars was little more than a decade. Less than that for police vehicles.

A balding blond man with broad shoulders and windburned cheeks greeted me at the door. His name was Corbett, and he was the chief deputy at the Washington County Sheriff’s Department. We’d met several times over the previous weeks as part of my orientation. He wore blue jeans tucked into L.L. Bean boots and a black fleece emblazoned with the sheriff’s department logo on the breast.

“You look like a Popsicle.” Corbett had a resonant baritone that made me think he’d missed out on having a lucrative career in radio.

“I feel like a Popsicle.”

“I can’t believe you spent the night out there. I live just up the road, and it took me forever to get out of my driveway.”