by Paul Doiron
Bent and broken vegetation juts up through the surface. Weeds?
No, bulrushes.
This isn’t a field. It’s a frozen wetland.
The absurdity of my latest problem almost makes me laugh out loud. I’m not on the eastern shore of the Androscoggin after all. I am on an island in the river, cut off from escape by many yards of uncertain ice.
18
I found the cat, Nemo, waiting on the hood of my Jeep. He’d left prints all over it. God knows how he’d gotten out of the house. Jewett, with all his high security, didn’t strike me as the cat flap type. Maybe he preferred the risk of a pet door to the certainties of a dirty litter box.
Nemo greeted me with a fluffed tail and an extra-long hiss. He was one of those enormous Maine coon cats, a twenty-pounder. In a fight between him and an actual lynx I wasn’t sure which feline would prevail.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” I said as I put on my sunglasses. “I’m going.”
He whipped his frazzled tail.
I’d never been a cat person. Dani had a stray she’d adopted named Puddin’. She’d tried to give the little thing a more dignified name, but the cat, being a cat, refused to respond.
Nemo jumped clear when I got within grabbing distance and, even then, he acted as if the idea had been his.
Cats, I have often said, are strange visitors from an alternate reality where they are the overlords.
I raised the lift gate to check on Shadow and found him sleeping again. It worried me that he was still sacked out this way. Had Lizzie Holman given him too heavy a dose of Midazolam after the anesthesia?
I hadn’t assumed I had time to visit the bartender, Burch. But with the wolf conked out, maybe I could stretch my visit an hour longer.
I drove slowly at first, taking in the view. Behind Jewett’s barn were shimmering white fields that stretched two hundred yards before running into a wall of oaks, birches, and pines. The distant trees were tall and picturesque; they looked like the woods in a Robert Frost poem.
Snowmobile tracks crisscrossed the field and converged behind the barn. I hadn’t caught a glimpse of Jewett’s sled, but I decided it must be a dependable, touring model with a scabbard on the side for an AR-15. He struck me as someone who patrolled his land regularly, looking eagerly for signs of intruders he could scare off at gunpoint.
I felt the automatic transmission downshift as the grade grew steep and the road entered a tunnel of trees. NO TRESPASSING signs were posted at state-mandated intervals: clearly visible, with less than a hundred feet between them. Bruce Jewett wasn’t allowing interlopers the slightest excuse to “accidentally” wander onto his land.
He struck me as a type I often encountered in rural Maine: a person who held strong yet contradictory views of the law. These men zealously guarded their own property rights yet thought nothing of taking multiple deer a season, in violation of state rules. They built buildings without permits and wantonly cut trees in protected wetlands.
I’d come to the conclusion that these hypocrites never suffered cognitive dissonance because they genuinely believed the law existed to protect their own selfish interests. Except when it became an unconstitutional encroachment on their God-given liberties.
But Jewett struck me as intelligent enough to recognize when he was actively violating statutes. He must have known his shooting range, for instance, wasn’t up to code.
Was he a murderer, though?
One of the perils of detective work is that, if you investigate enough crimes, every death begins to look suspicious. I had to check my own biases. Sometimes old professors fall out of boats without being pushed.
I was still seeing NO TRESSPASSING signs stapled to roadside trees when I rounded a turn and the pastoral forest transformed, all at once, into a wasteland. Someone had come into these postcard woods with chainsaws and a skidder and taken every tree thicker than a baseball bat. The bulldozer had even knocked a hole in a century-old stone wall to gain entry onto the property.
In the distance, beyond the handful of crooked trees still standing, I saw the dirty machines at work.
I braked, grabbed my 10 x 42 Leica binoculars from the dash, and scoped the brutalized hillside.
I counted three men: one driving the skidder, a second wielding a chainsaw, and a third supervising the job from atop an all-terrain vehicle. None of the loggers wore helmets, ear protection, goggles, chaps, or other safety gear.
Real geniuses, these three.
While I watched, the skidder drove into a sugar maple and began to push against the trunk with the bulldozer bucket until smoke belched from its exhaust. (With a skidder you don’t need a saw or an axe to take down a tree. You simply rip it from the ground with the stick and grapple, or you use brute force to knock it down.) The maple snapped. The subsequent crash was loud enough that I could hear it above my hot air blower. The moment the tree fell, the young guy with the saw went to work severing its silvery branches. The loggers would then haul the de-limbed trunk to their improvised woodpile for later removal.
The signs along the road suggested this was still Jewett’s property, but he hadn’t mentioned logging it. Even if this was his operation, he didn’t strike me as the sort of landowner who would approve denuding the family estate. The savagery of the clear-cutting went beyond the limits allowed by Maine law. There was slash strewn everywhere, even near the road where discarded branches were not permitted.
Logging didn’t bother me; raping the land did.
One of the men—the driver of the faded yellow skidder—must have noticed my Jeep. He cut the engine and signaled to the others. I saw the man on the ATV lift his own pair of binos from around his neck and train them on my Jeep.
Then he shouted something up at the driver who dutifully moved onto the next maple.
The kid with the chainsaw, meanwhile, continued de-limbing the fallen tree. That idiot would be deaf before his thirtieth birthday. Maybe before his twenty-fifth.
While I watched, the man on the ATV had swung his machine around. He gunned the engine, zigzagging through stumps, toward the road. The four-wheeler looked like a recent model, but even the new shocks couldn’t cushion the ride across the deeply rutted ground.
I didn’t wait for him to arrive but stepped from the vehicle and unzipped my parka. I wanted the badge and gun on my belt to be plainly visible. I circled around to the passenger side, folded my arms across my chest, and waited.
The man on the ATV was dressed in winter-weight coveralls that made most people look tubby. Not this guy, though; he had to be a beanpole under that padding. He wore dark sunglasses and a black balaclava that he had pulled up around his head so only the oval of his face was visible.
He must have caught sight of my badge and gun because he braked hard before he reached the stone wall. The machine slid across the icy, torn-up earth. The rider didn’t dismount but sat with his hands on the vibrating handlebars.
“What do you want?” he shouted above the idling engine.
I made a motion with my hand, signaling for him to turn the key. He didn’t catch my drift.
I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Turn it off”
“What?”
“Turn it off!”
Like Nemo the cat, he obliged but in a way that suggested the choice had been his all along.
He was still far enough away that I had to shout. “Is this your land?”
“Who are you?”
“Game warden.”
Tired of shouting, I stepped through the gap the skidder had knocked through the wall.
The rider looked naturally pale, but the cold and exertion had brought blood to his cheeks and the tip of his nose. He seemed to be trying to grow out a reddish-blond mustache and goatee, but the beard refused to flourish. His eyes were hidden behind a pair of dark Ray-Bans.
I scratched my scalp behind my ear. “Did this forest do something to insult your manhood?”
“What?”
“It must have seriously disrespected yo
u for you to beat the shit out of it like this.”
His cheeks grew redder. “You think you’re funny?”
“Sometimes. But usually I’m the only one who does.”
It bothered me that he hadn’t removed his sunglasses. Not that I expected to recognize him. It was a simple courtesy.
“If you ain’t a forest ranger, what we’re doing ain’t none of your business, man.”
“I may not be a ranger, but I know enough about state forestry laws to count a dozen violations here. Has Bruce Jewett been up to oversee your work?”
He reached into the chest pocket of his Carhartt’s to find a tin of chewing tobacco. He stuffed three fingers worth of Skoal into his cheek. The bit of business with the dip was intended to provide the young logger with time to think.
“Yeah, he’s seen it.”
“And Mr. Jewett doesn’t mind the mess you’re making?”
He spit a brown stream onto a patch of snow. “This is how cutting looks, man. You want to call a ranger, go ahead and call a ranger. I ain’t got nothing else to do but wait. I’m still getting paid, sitting here. How about you?”
He was probably nineteen or twenty, I decided. He had the appearance of dozens of kids I’d met on patrol: wannabe outlaws looking for any way to demonstrate they were real men. And yet, for all his generic posturing, there was something naggingly specific about him. He looked familiar.
“You mind taking off your sunglasses?”
“Hell, yes, I mind. It’s bright out here.”
It was not bright.
“What’s your name?”
“I don’t got to tell you shit. I’m on private property minding my own business.”
“You’re on private property, true, but it’s not yours. How do I know you and your buddies aren’t stealing Mr. Jewett’s wood?”
Wood theft was, in fact, a widespread crime in the most forested state in the nation. I had heard of summer people who closed their camps in the fall, went south to Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Jersey for the winter, and then returned to find their sheltering pines missing. That said, it was not a common occurrence for thieves to steal wood in plain view, in the light of day, half a mile from the landowner’s house.
“Call the man and find out,” the young rebel suggested.
“I don’t have his number.”
“I do.”
He shouted seven digits at me.
I keyed the number into my phone.
The voice that answered was, unmistakably, Jewett’s. “For Christ’s sake, what do you want now?”
“Mr. Jewett, this is Mike Bowditch.”
He fell silent. Clearly, he’d assumed I was someone else or he might not have answered. “Where did you get this number?”
“A young man on an ATV gave it to me. I came upon him and two associates scalping the hillside above your house. He says he’s cutting here with your permission. Is it true you hired these amateur lumberjacks to cut your woodlot?”
The ATV rider expelled another stream of tobacco juice.
Jewett made a noise that I took to be an affirmative.
“Have you been up here to see it?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
“And you’re fine with their forestry practices? You don’t mind your woods looking like no-man’s-land?”
“What I mind and don’t mind is none of your business. Now are you going to leave me alone or am I going to have to file harassment charges against you with your superiors? I Googled your name and it won’t be the first time.”
“Bruce,” I said, “you and I both know you’re not going to do anything that results in more officers paying you a visit.”
“Don’t call this number again!”
The kid grinned at me as I put away the phone. “What did I tell you? We got permission. Now me and my cousins got work to do. Money ain’t gonna make itself, man.”
With a smug grin, he started the engine and revved it so loudly he must have damaged his ear drums. I watched the kid ride off, wondering where I’d seen his cocky face before.
19
Snow blows in waves across the frozen channel. The far side is hidden in darkness. The vegetation at the near edge suggests the water beneath might be shallow, perhaps even frozen down to the mud. Ice needs to be only two inches thick to support the weight of a man. I might be able to walk safely across.
But if I am wrong in my calculations, if I go through the ice again—even if it’s only up to my knees—I am doomed. I won’t be lighting another fire, not tonight.
What choice do I have, though?
I start making my way upstream along the marshy shore. What I want to find, as paradoxical as it might sound, is the deepest stretch of the stream. Shallow water is often turbulent and doesn’t freeze easily. The irregular river bottom causes the current to roil, and the ice above never thickens.
I hope for deer prints. I weigh as much as a big buck, and where he can cross, I can cross.
But the snow has accumulated more in the open than it did under the trees. Half an hour ago, I could still have spotted tracks. But any prints that might’ve been here were smoothed over by the wind.
I take a breather to lean against a snag and check my bandanna. The cloth is soaked, and blood continues to ooze down my pants leg. It puddles inside my already wet boot, making every step squishy. I don’t feel lightheaded yet, but if the hemorrhage continues, it’s only a matter of time before I enter the danger zone.
At 10 percent blood loss, I will feel dizzy, then nauseous. My blood vessels will constrict, as my circulatory system tries to protect itself, and the cold I am feeling now will become even worse. At 20 percent, I will experience disorientation and rapid breathing. My body will go into the state of shock I have so far avoided. At 30 percent, I will lose consciousness, and I will die without Jewett needing to fire another shot.
Ahead of me, a shadow detaches itself from the near trees and floats out onto the ice. Then it stops.
I can’t see the creature clearly, but I don’t need to.
The wolf is waiting for me. That much is obvious. Don’t ask me how, but Shadow knows it is safe to cross here. He wants me to follow him.
Carefully, I take a step onto the ice, then shuffle out my other foot. My balance is poor, and I totter for a moment like it’s my first time on skates.
After I have steadied myself, I call to Shadow. My voice is hoarse from sucking cold air into my voice box. “Hey! It’s good to see you.”
He merely waits.
When I am twenty feet from him, he trots forward and disappears into the dark. He overestimates how well I can see him in the storm.
But I can follow his tracks at least. They are huge, clawed, and the size of my open hand.
Soon I see that he is leading me toward a domed shape that I mistake for a boulder before realizing it is a beaver lodge. The top is crusted with snow from a prior storm. The logs and sticks jutting up from the mound appear gray and weathered.
The sight gives me confidence. Because beavers remain active all winter, they need the surrounding water to be deep. They spend the cold-weather months under the ice, hauling up the leafy branches they’ve dragged into the mud all summer. With their orange teeth, they carry these lengths of wood into their lodges to eat.
When I reach the den, I cast a glance behind me, and my heart drops. It seems like I’ve barely made progress. I reach out a hand to steady myself against the mound of sticks, and as I do memory returns. Despite my prior despair and general misery, I can’t help but laugh aloud.
I am thinking of Charley Stevens and a story he once told me about his stay in a “beaver house.”
He’d once found himself fleeing through the woods. A trio of poachers had unleashed their bear-hunting dogs on him, and the hounds were hard on his heels. He thought he knew a shortcut to safety, across a stream, but he found his escape route blocked by a newly created beaver pond.
“If I’d tried swimming across, those poachers would have p
ot-shotted me sure,” he said.
There seemed to be nowhere to hide. Then he’d gotten an idea. Fully dressed, he plunged into the pond and swam out to the lodge. With the dogs baying behind him, he took a deep breath, and dove down into the murk until he found the underwater entrance into the den with his blind hands. He’d wormed his way inside, up onto the raised platform where a mother beaver was nursing her three kits.
“A beaver has a nasty set of choppers so you can be sure I minded my manners,” he said. “When she saw I meant no harm to her family, she calmed down. I spent the night there, listening to those frustrated hounds. The dogs could smell me among the rodents, but fortunately their owners weren’t sharp enough to put two and two together. It must’ve seemed to them that I’d drowned. I caught up with those gents later, when I had a few armed wardens behind me, and they looked at me like I was Lazarus.”
It had to be a tall tale, I concluded. Game wardens are storytellers of the highest order, and Charley ranked among their elite. Then I’d met a warden who could vouch for his account.
“Stevens came into the office stinking of mud and beaver shit,” said Warden Mack McQuarrie. “We thought for sure he’d die of beaver fever.”
Meaning giardiasis. It’s a parasitic infection of the gut, usually contracted from swallowing water in which animals have defecated.
“I did have a wicked case of the scoots afterward!” Charley admitted.
Thinking of my grinning friend is almost as good as having him beside me. I feel the strength of his resolve as he fled the bear poachers, and it gives me new energy to follow Shadow. Humor brings me hope.
I drag my feet to keep from slipping. Then a mischievous gust yanks down my hood.
Before I can cinch it in place again, the wind drops and everything becomes still. The snow settles. I find I can hear the ice rumbling behind me in the Androscoggin.
I hear something else, too. Very faint. An engine.
It’s not a car or truck. The sound is higher pitched, like the whine of a giant, mechanized insect.
A snowmobile.
I cup my hands around my ears trying to echolocate the machine. It seems to be coming straight down the channel. Under the circumstances, that can mean only one thing. The rider is actively searching for me. And the odds are against him being a Good Samaritan.