Bad Little Falls

by Paul Doiron

  That’s what happened, too.

  Dad didn’t know it was Randle who ratted him out until I told him. He didn’t thank me or nothing, though.

  13

  Lucas Sewall was still seated in the same chair, head bowed, skinny legs drawn up beneath him, lost in his own imaginings.

  “Lucas?”

  The boy continued to scribble. He was left-handed, so he held the ballpoint pen upside down. His pale little hand was stained with blue ink.

  “Lucas?”

  The boy stopped and jerked his head up, as if I’d tossed a bucket of cold water on his head. His hair was thin and chestnut-colored like his mom’s, and he had the same cleft in his chin. His head seemed two sizes too large for his scrawny body. He was wearing a hooded gray sweatshirt with abundant ink stains, and blue Dickies tucked into snow boots. A puffy orange vest was slung across the next seat. I had no clue whatsoever how old he was.

  I’d been nine when my mom left my dad and we began our gypsy period, moving from apartment to rented house, just the two of us, always on the move.

  I towered over the boy. “I’m Warden Bowditch. Your mom asked me to see how you were doing.”

  “Are you a ranger?”

  “No, I’m a game warden. Rangers work in parks, helping people camp or watching for forest fires. Wardens are like police officers in the woods.”

  “Is Prester dead?”

  “No,” I said. “But he’s very sick. Your mom is visiting with him now.”

  His eyes darted to my holster. “What kind of gun is that?”

  “It’s a semiautomatic pistol.”

  “Can I see it?”

  “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Guns are very dangerous. You should never play with them.”

  “Did you ever shoot anybody?”

  Unfortunately, yes, I wanted to say. Two people, in fact, and both occurrences haunted me in the predawn hours. But I kept my mouth shut. “What are you writing?”

  He closed the front cover and tucked the pen over his outsize ear. There was blue ink on his earlobe. “Stories.”

  “What kind of stories?”

  “Do you have a dollar and a quarter for a can of Coke?”

  “Maybe we should ask your mom if it’s all right.”

  “She don’t mind if I have a Coke if I’m in the hospital. I’m dying of thirst!”

  For some reason, I gave Lucas the money. He seemed so pathetic, I couldn’t deny him the treat. He leapt in the direction of the nearest soda machine. There was something toadlike about the boy.

  Kids had always scared the hell out of me. I had grown up as an only child, more or less. My stepfather had a daughter who was ten years older than I was. She’d been in college when my mom and I went to live in their McMansion, and she’d treated me like an unwelcome interloper until she finally moved away to California after graduation. So young children had never been part of my experience growing up, and the only ones I seemed to encounter these days were those who got lost in the woods and needed rescuing.

  Lucas had left the notebook on the chair. It was a spiral-bound one with a canary-yellow cover.

  “Don’t touch that!”

  The boy jumped past me, doing another of his froggish leaps, and grabbed the notebook. He tucked it to his chest. I had a brief mental image of Gollum clutching the Ring of Power.

  “I wasn’t going to read anything,” I said.

  He eyed me with mistrust as he settled back in the chair. “What happened to Prester anyhow?”

  “He got lost in the blizzard. He was very lucky to find help when he did.”

  “What about Randall?”

  “Randall Cates?”

  “Him and Prester said they was going to hunt coyotes. Not last night, but the night before. Then they didn’t come home. Ma was pissed.”

  “Did they say where they were going hunting?”

  “Nah, but that was just a lie anyhow. Randall was going to sell drugs, like usual.”

  I’d begun to wonder if Lucas was older than I’d first guessed. He stared at me through those thick glasses of his with such obvious intelligence. “How do you know that Randall Cates was dealing drugs, Lucas?”

  He gave me a broad smile. “I’m a detective.”

  The automatic door opened across the room. It was Jamie Sewall and the anorexic male nurse we’d met earlier. She shuffled along uneasily until she caught sight of her son. Then she stopped, took a deep breath, as if trying to collect herself for the boy’s sake. But her smile wasn’t fooling anybody.

  “What do you know, Edgar Allan Poe?” she said to Lucas. “I see you met the warden.”

  “We were just getting acquainted,” I said.

  Without a word of reply, the boy flipped open his notebook and began writing again.

  Jamie looked at me. “He does that all the time. Lucas is going to be a best-selling writer like Stephen King. Isn’t that true, Lucas?”

  He raised his eyes at us and clenched his lips together, then returned to his scribbling.

  “So how are you doing?” I asked.

  “I need a cigarette.”

  The confession disappointed me, but I was in no position to judge her bad habits. “There’s no smoking here,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t smoke anymore. I just meant that I’m a wreck and am craving a smoke like you wouldn’t believe.” She ran both hands through her hair, pushing it back from her face. “This place gives me the heebie-jeebies. If I sit around here, I’m going to go crazy. Maybe I should just go home. They’ve got Prester pumped full of so many chemicals, he’s not waking up till next week.”

  “Did you speak with the sheriff?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I spoke with that sheriff,” she said sharply. “I don’t understand what the problem is. Prester’s the one who’s injured, and you’re all acting like he’s some sort of dangerous criminal.”

  I realized that the boy was watching us closely.

  “The police are just trying to determine what happened in the woods.”

  “I guess that makes sense.” She was fidgeting, swaying back and forth. She reached for her son’s orange vest. “This place is going to make me crazy. Come on, Lucas. Tammi’s probably worried sick.”

  “Are you sure you’re going to be OK?” I asked.

  She looked hard into my eyes. “I can take care of myself.”

  That was my signal to give them some distance, so I did. I stepped back and watched them bundle up against the cold. As they left the room, the boy looked back at me over his shoulder. Then his mother gave his arm a gentle pull, and they were gone.

  It had been ages since I thought of that period in my own childhood: between the time my mom left my dad and the time she married Neil. We’d been so poor. My mother had waitressed in a rough bar down on the Portland waterfront and worked as a temp in offices, hoping to meet a rich lawyer. And, what do you know, she actually did.

  I decided to return to the med-surg unit. When I got there, Sheriff Rhine was on her way out. “Where’s Little Miss Hot Pants?” she asked.

  “She took her son and went home.”

  “That one is a piece of work. She knows exactly what her brother and boyfriend were up to in the Heath, but she’ll never cop to it.”

  “She told me that she and Cates broke up last year.”

  “Really? What kind of conversation did you two have, anyway? Somehow she seemed to sense that Randall was no longer among the living.”

  I tried to keep the guilt from showing on my face. “She stuck me as a perceptive young woman.”

  “Perceptive young women don’t climb into bed with drug dealers.”

  “She seems like she’s trying to get her act together,” I said.

  “If so, that’s a news to me,” said the sheriff. “I just spoke with one of my deputies, and he said he’d been at her house a few times last year, mediating various nocturnal disputes.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “As soon as my
deputy gets here, I’m going back to the jail. The state police detectives are going to want a statement from you. If you want some motherly advice, I’d suggest you get some sleep. You look like hell.”

  I had no doubt she was right about my appearance. The adrenaline that had carried me through the night had evaporated from my bloodstream. I would need to dose myself with caffeine just to drive home.

  I said good-bye to Sheriff Rhine and then stopped in the cafeteria for a cup of coffee. I decided to call Rivard from my truck and see what was new, but as I left the Skylight Café, I came across an unexpected sight.

  Lucas Sewall was waiting outside the admittance desk, and I knew at once that the person he was waiting for was me.

  “Mister, can you help my ma?” he asked.

  “Sure, Lucas. What’s wrong?”

  “We’re locked out of the van.” And then he spun around and marched back through the automatic doors and across the parking lot. Puzzled, I followed him.

  Jamie was bent over, looking at the snowy asphalt around a gray Toyota Sienna. A cold wind was ruffling the hair around her face.

  “Did you lose something?” I asked.

  “I can’t find the goddamned key,” she said.

  “Did you check inside the hospital?”

  “Yes, we checked inside the hospital,” she said, her voice rising. “We checked inside the waiting room and inside the med-surg unit and inside the ladies’ room. We checked all over the goddamned parking lot.”

  “Take it easy,” I said.

  Lucas watched his mother. He was silent, but he seemed to grow more visibly distraught as Jamie lost her composure. The boy had his notebook tucked inside his orange vest. I saw the yellow corner protruding from the collar. He wrapped his arms across his chest to hold it in place.

  “We just want to go home,” she said. “We’re cold and tired, and we just want to go home.”

  “I’ll help you look,” I said.

  But the keys were nowhere to be found. Finally Jamie Sewall began to sob again, and I felt a compulsion to console her. “How about I give you a lift home, Miss Sewall?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “It’s no trouble,” I said. “I’m off duty anyway.”

  Jamie looked at Lucas. The boy made a show of shivering, but it was a poor acting job on his part.

  “OK,” she said hoarsely.

  I had to completely rearrange the contents of my patrol truck to make room for passengers. I removed the laptop computer mounted on its adjustable arm in the center console and zipped it into my briefcase, then moved a bunch of extra blankets and a toolbox in which I kept my evidence-collection kit. Somehow I found room for Lucas in the backseat.

  His mother sat quietly beside me, looking out the window at the shining landscape. I felt self-conscious. The inside of my truck smelled of stale coffee. I started the engine and idled to the edge of the parking lot.

  “So where am I going?” I asked.

  “Whitney,” she said without meeting my eyes. “The Machias Road. I’ll tell you where.”

  And with that, she fell silent again. She started to chew on a bothersome cuticle. I glanced in the rearview mirror. Lucas was writing in his notebook again.

  How could such a bright and alluring woman get involved with a tattooed creep like Randall Cates? Best-case scenario: She was a former addict with lousy taste in men but had sobered up and was seeking to repair her life. Worst-case scenario: She was a pretty little liar who was about five minutes away from a relapse.

  We drove for about twenty minutes on greasy back roads until we came to a two-story frame house, set back about a hundred feet from the roadside snowbanks. It had once been white with red shutters, but the clapboards were rotting and the paint had begun to flake. A poorly carpentered ramp—assembled out of two-by-fours, plywood, and asphalt shingles—angled up to the front door. The windows were heavily curtained and dark; they reminded me of an addict’s hollow eyes.

  The entire place was snowed in. No plow had cleared the drive; no shovel had liberated the door.

  “Do you need a hand shoveling out?” I asked.

  She unlocked the door and dropped down to the ground. “No, thanks.”

  “You sure?”

  “We don’t need anyone’s help. Come on, Lucas.”

  Jamie pushed down the passenger seat and the boy slid through the opening. As he did, he gave me the strangest look, and my immediate thought was: That kid just stole something from my truck. I turned around to see what might be missing as his mother slammed the door.

  I watched the two of them labor up the snowy driveway, plodding along through snow as deep as the boy’s waist, until they reached the ramp. Then Jamie stopped and looked back at my idling truck. I saw her mutter something to her son and then she came trudging in my direction.

  In spite of myself, I felt a buoyant sensation in my chest.

  Jamie came around to the driver’s side. I rolled down the window.

  “I want to apologize,” she said. “It’s been a bad night. I know you were just trying to be helpful. I’m sorry to be such a royal queen bitch.”

  I smiled back at her. “When you’re a game warden, getting yelled at goes with the job,” I said.

  “I bet it does.”

  “If you want to grab your extra car keys, I can take you back into Machias to get your van.”

  She laughed her pretty laugh. “I’ve left my sister alone too long as it is. I got a friend who can drive me later. But thanks for the offer. What’s your name anyway?”

  “Bowditch.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Your first name.”

  “Mike,” I said.

  FEBRUARY 14

  A game warden came through the hospital door. At first I thought he was a ranger, on account of his uniform, but he says rangers only work in parks. That ain’t the way it is in NORTHWEST PASSAGE.

  I wonder if the warden’s the one who found Uncle P.

  The game warden comes up to me and says that Ma asked him to check on me. He is tall and has a crew cut and a scar on his head.

  I ask him if I can see his gun, and he gives me a lecture about how guns ain’t toys.

  He don’t know that I got a rifle! It ain’t mine really, but it will be now if Prester dies. He showed me how to shoot beer cans from the picnic table once, but Ma made him stop.

  I ask the warden for money for a Coke, and he gives me the money. Ha!

  Then he starts asking me all these questions about Randle, which means Randle’s DEAD, because he ain’t here in the hospital. If he was in jail, they could interrogate him themselves.

  Yes!!!

  He asks me how I know Randle is a drug lord, but I don’t tell him about the secret stash in the sewing room.

  Instead I tell him, “I’m a detective.”

  Then Ma comes out of the emergency and she’s crying and crying because she’s seen Uncle Prester.

  I guess he ain’t dead.

  The game warden likes Ma! He’s all nervous and stuttering. But she don’t seem to notice because she is freaking out. She freaks out a lot now that Randle ain’t giving her those pills. She used to get all dopey before and would fall asleep all over the house.

  Now she’s like a different person.

  The warden is giving us a ride home because Ma lost the keys! She used to lose shit all the time.

  You can see the warden has a crush on Ma, which is why he offered to give us a ride. He keeps looking over at her when she’s looking out the window.

  Ma says she and Dad ain’t never getting back together—never, ever. Maybe the warden will become her new boyfriend now that Randle’s dead. That would be kind of cool, I guess. He could show me how to shoot a pistol and solve crimes and stuff. I could be like his deputy.

  His truck is really cool. It’s got a shotgun rack and GPS and police radio and everything.

  There’s some binoculars on the floor.

  They’d be good for spying and stuff. I bet I could hide them un
der my vest if I zip it up good.…

  14

  Lucas didn’t realize he’d dropped his notebook when he stole my binoculars, and it took me days to notice they were missing. It took me even longer to unlock the secrets that he kept in his weird journal, although I understood from the start that he was a child used to keeping secrets. Lucas didn’t exactly remind me of myself at that age—I’d always been athletic and big enough to scare away bullies—but there was something in his obsessive scribbling and the intensity of his stare that seemed disconcertingly familiar. My parents’ violent marriage had also forced me inward in certain ways. Perhaps it was my own sad dreaminess that I saw reflected in Lucas Sewall’s eyeglasses.

  Or maybe it was just his miserable circumstances.

  After leaving my dad, my mother had dated a couple of hardened assholes—a bartender named Rick and a builder (also, unfortunately) named Mike—handsome, confident guys who couldn’t disguise their disdain for my existence. I was my mother’s baggage and not necessarily worth the high cost of bedding her. Fortunately, my mom chose loneliness over the false comfort of a strong man’s arms. But that choice never seem preordained at the time. Instead of marrying an affluent tax attorney, she might easily have ended up with her own Randall Cates, and what would have become of us then?

  * * *

  I drove down the road a ways until I came to a Department of Transportation maintenance lot. Plow trucks had been exiting and entering the facility during the blizzard, reloading with sand and salt brine to spray on the roads, but at the moment all was quiet. I parked beside a snowbank and let my engine idle.

  “You’ll be all right once you get laid,” Kathy Frost had said.

  If I closed my eyes, I could picture Jamie Sewall’s full lips, and I felt an all-too-familiar stirring. Sarah had been the last woman I’d slept with. There were nights after we’d broken up when I’d thought about going out to bars with some of the other single wardens and cops, but I’d become worried about my growing thirst for alcohol. Then the Maine Warden Service had seen fit to transfer me to the wilds of Washington County, where the term nightlife referred to the sorts of creatures that got into your garbage cans at three in the morning.