by Paul Doiron
1. Raising as much of our own food as local soil and climatic conditions would permit.
2. Bartering our products for those which we could not or did not produce.
3. Using wood for fuel and cutting it ourselves.
4. Putting up our own buildings with stone and wood from the place, doing the work ourselves.
5. Making such implements as sleds, drays, stoneboats, gravel screens, ladders.
6. Holding down to the barest minimum the number of implements, tools, gadgets, and machines which we might buy from the assembly lines of big business.
7. If we had to have such machines for a few hours or days in a year (plow, tractor, rototiller, bulldozer, chain saw), we would rent or trade for them from local people instead of buying and owning them.
“Those commandments are different from the ten the nuns taught me at St. Sebastian.”
He smiled. “Oh, those are from the Nearings, too. From Living the Good Life. It’s funny, you know. I was the one who introduced Indigo to them, but she’s become a lot more hard-core about this stuff than me. She wants everyone to hear the message.”
I sat down at the table without Zane inviting me to do so. He stood with his arms hanging at his side, unsure. The warm air rising from the stove created currents that circled the room and fluffed the hair on my head. “Could I trouble you for a glass of water?”
“Absolutely. You want to try some of my ’shine? Mary won’t share her secret recipe, but I’ve been watching her, and people say my stuff isn’t half-bad. Indigo and I want to open a real distillery and tasting room out on the main road next year.”
“I can’t drink alcohol on duty.” Even though, technically, I was not on duty.
“How about a kombucha? Indigo and I make it ourselves.”
“I think I should stick with H20.”
“No worries.”
He pumped two stoneware mugs full of well water and sat down across from me at the table.
“Something’s been bothering me, Zane. I could beat around the bush, but I’m going to come out and say it. I can’t understand why you lied to me about seeing the wolf.”
I saw his Adam’s apple bob beneath the fringed beard. “I don’t think I lied.”
“First you told me you saw it in your headlights in the road. Then you said you saw it in the back field. Which was it?”
“Both.”
“You saw it twice.”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say so?”
“I guess because I was feeling guilty.”
I rested my forearms on the table, wondering if this was the start of a confession. “Why would you feel guilty?”
“Because I saw it was injured, and I didn’t tell anyone except Mary. And so it was suffering for days on my account. You keep calling it a wolf, but I could tell, from the way it looked at me, that it was a dog. In my head I had this idea that it had escaped from the person who owned him. Someone cruel like…”
“Gorman Peaslee?”
When Zane nodded his head, he put everything into it. “We always had dogs when I was a kid. I loved them so much. But then I read Peter Singer and realized pets are animal slaves. I refuse to confine living creatures in cages. It’s an ethical thing, you know?”
If this were a college dorm room, I might have argued that dogs and cats have done an effective job training humans to feed and shelter them. In many houses I’d visited it was unclear who the real master was.
“I’m going to share something with you, Zane. You were right about the injured wolf dog. He’s a hybrid—mostly wolf, genetically speaking—but he grew up in a human’s house. He slept on couches and beds and ate dog food for years before he escaped into the forest. His name is Shadow.”
“I knew it! Sometimes you can sense things.”
“I need to ask you another tough question, and I need you to be honest with me. You knew that Shadow attacked and killed the Stoll family’s donkey before he showed up at Mary’s place. How come you didn’t mention that yesterday?”
“I thought I did.”
“Nope.”
“Are you sure I didn’t?”
“Positive.”
He batted the mug around the tabletop with his filthy hands, even spilling some water. “I guess, maybe, I didn’t think it was relevant. And I was still kind of shaken up from wrecking my truck. Maybe I was a little high, too.”
“You know who shot Shadow, don’t you?”
He reacted as if I had called his good character into question. “No!”
“Maybe you have a strong suspicion.”
“I said I didn’t.”
“All right. Indigo must have told you that Shadow hasn’t been alone in the mountains. Game cameras have captured him with a large female canine that is almost certainly another wolf—a real one. It might sound like I’m looking to punish someone for shooting Shadow. But what matters most to me right now is finding out what happened to the she-wolf, whether she is alive or dead. Can you help me find her before she’s killed, too?”
He looked at his strong dirty hands cupped around the mug. “Maybe.”
“Have you seen her?”
“No, but Samuel Stoll told me he did.”
“Any chance you might be available to ride over there with me now? I have a feeling he’d be more likely to open up to you than to me.”
“What about Indigo?”
“Leave a note for her. You can blame me for twisting your arm. That should get her off your case.”
“No offense, Warden Bowditch, but you don’t know her. Sometimes I wonder how such a small woman can have such a big temper.”
30
The Amish boy Samuel Stoll was guarding the sheep again. He sat perched on the split-rail fence at the edge of the pasture with a new switch he’d fashioned from a thorny blackberry branch. He wore the same outfit as the day before except that his mother must have made him put on a black coat before he’d ventured out into the gusty afternoon.
“Hey, Samuel,” said Zane through the passenger window.
“Hello, Mr. Wilson.”
“You don’t need to call me that. You and I are buds.”
“My dad says I do.” Then Samuel grew alarmed, as if he’d unintentionally uttered a curse word. “I mean, my datt says I do.”
Even Amish children, I gathered, were not immune to cultural homogenization.
Zane climbed out of the Scout as I turned off the engine. “Warden Bowditch is hoping you can show us where you saw the other wolf.”
From the boy’s reaction it was apparent he hadn’t expected his friend Mr. Wilson to violate their secret. Samuel glanced at the farmhouse as if he expected to see one or both of his parents storming down the lane to punish him for confiding in two outsiders.
“I am not supposed to leave the sheep.”
Zane gestured at the surviving donkey. The animal was watching us with ears up and swiveling. “I think Mose can keep the flock safe for a few minutes. Show Warden Bowditch the bite he gave you on the shoulder.”
Samuel Stoll would not be removing his coat and shirt to show me his tooth marks.
“You said you saw the gray one across the road, right?” Zane said.
“Ja.”
“Did I tell you I was carving a shepherd’s crook for you?”
“Really?”
With someone other than Zane Wilson, I might have assumed that this was a ploy to manipulate the child, but I detected no hint of dishonesty in the farmer’s voice.
The little boy had his mother’s oversize smile. He dropped off the fence and started forward along the gravel road in the direction of Peaslee’s house. After a hundred yards, he hopped over a watery ditch and entered a tunnel in the leafless bushes. Zane followed, and I brought up the rear. Being taller and broader than the others, I had to stoop and fight my way through the entwined branches of the willows and alders.
“Wait up,” I said.
I plucked a
grayish clump off a thorn. It resembled deer’s hair, but the fibers were not hollow.
“Is this where the black wolf dragged Little Amos?”
Samuel looked at me in wonder. “How did you know?”
I showed him the tuft and pushed it around my open palm. “Do you know what a deduction is? It’s when you draw a conclusion based on bits of evidence. This hair looks to me like it came from a donkey. I deduced that this path is where the wolf dragged Little Amos. How about I go first from here?”
The ground was soft and springy with patches of ice that collapsed beneath my boots and plunged me ankle-deep in muddy water the color and consistency of a frozen coffee drink. The surface, being coated with small multicolored leaves and having frozen and thawed multiple times, was hard for me to read. But I found more donkey hair and, finally, a few wisps of black fur.
In the distance, I heard the brisk clippety-clop of hooves. One of the Amish buggies was headed back up the road.
A rock face reared out of the tangled bushes, eight feet tall, made of lichen-crusted sandstone. Shadow had been stronger than I’d imagined. There was no missing the claw marks he had gouged in the moss as he’d hauled the burro, a hundred pounds or more of dead weight, up and over the crag.
When I turned to point out the marks to my junior guides, I noticed Samuel staring through the trees in the direction of the road with an upright alertness I associated with prairie dogs. My ears caught the rumble of a truck engine that became a roar as it drew closer. It might have been an aural illusion, but it sounded as if the pickup was accelerating.
The boy took off through the shrubs so fast he knocked off his hat and left it lying in a puddle.
Not thirty seconds later, we heard the crash. Wood shattered and snapped. The truck skidded on loose gravel to a halt. The horse let out a scream that became a series of guttural whinnies.
Now Zane and I were both fighting our way back through branches that whipped at our faces. By the time we stumbled out to the flooded ditch, Samuel Stoll had nearly reached the scene of the crash. The same black buggy I had encountered earlier lay on its side in the matted grass. Falling, it had snapped a fence rail and torn off a spoked wheel. The panicked bay horse, still in her harness, was trying and failing to rise. Her iron shoes tore at the wet topsoil.
An Amish man, jettisoned from the wreck, lay limp in the field.
Gorman Peaslee had not emerged from his truck. Cleaned of mud, the vehicle was a bright fire-engine red. Plumes of blue rose from its chrome tailpipe.
While Zane sprinted toward the crashed buggy, I pulled my phone from my pocket. Thank God, I had enough of a signal to call 911. I identified myself to the dispatcher as a game warden and called for immediate assistance.
Then I, too, began to run.
Samuel was pawing at the shoulder of the motionless man, who lay almost perfectly spread-eagled on his back. “Ike? Uncle Ike?”
Zane stood over the boy, arms loose, fingers spread, seemingly at a loss what to do.
“Check on the horse!” I said. “Get it loose if you can.”
I took the boy by the arms and, as gently as I could, lifted him clear of his injured uncle. “Let me look at him, Samuel. I’m trained in emergency medicine.”
A blood-smeared bone jutted through a torn coat sleeve. Compound fracture of the radius. How white it looked. I reached under Isaac Stoll’s bristly jaw until I located the carotid artery. His pulse was weak, whether from shock or a blow to the head, I couldn’t be certain.
“Isaac? Mr. Stoll? Can you hear me?”
He made no response.
Plenty of rocks, some as big as fists, protruded from the damp earth around us. Chances were good he had hit his head against one. A concussion was probably the best-case scenario. What I feared was that he had broken his neck or back.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw the mare rise. Zane had gotten the animal loose of her tack. Impossible to believe, her fragile legs seemed unbroken. She might have internal injuries, but they weren’t severe enough to stop her from galloping across the field. I had been prepared to put the horse down.
“Should I go after her?” Zane asked.
“I need your help here.”
“We’re not supposed to move him, right? That’s what they told us in Outward Bound.”
“It depends on whether he has a spinal injury or not. As long as he keeps breathing steadily, we should leave him where he is until the EMTs arrive. The danger is if he starts to vomit. Then we have to find a way to ease him onto his side. If there’s damage to his vertebrae, we could snap his spinal cord.”
Tears had run rivulets through the dirt on Zane’s cheeks. “Shit, man!”
“Samuel?” I said to the boy. He had lost his own hat, but he had retrieved his uncle’s and was clutching it to his chest. “I want you to run back to your house. Tell your parents what happened. Tell them I have called an ambulance. Have them bring me blankets. This is important. We need to keep your uncle warm until the emergency medical technicians arrive.”
The kid nodded and took off. He was more composed than his adult neighbor.
“Here’s what I need you to do,” I told Zane. “Kneel down beside me. You don’t want to block him from getting air. You need to be close enough to listen to his breathing. If you hear him start to have problems—”
“What kind of problems?”
“Gasping. Gurgling. Anything that sounds like he’s in distress. If his breathing changes at all, yell for me. Of if he wakes up.”
Zane’s blue eyes widened. “Where are you going?”
I jerked my head toward Peaslee’s idling truck. “To arrest that son of a bitch. If he’s lucky, that’s all I’m going to do to him.”
31
Peaslee must have been watching in his rearview camera because, as I neared his truck, he cut the engine and stepped out. He squared his shoulders to meet me. His clean-shaven face and scalp were red and shone with perspiration. He was dressed as he’d been the day before: in a blazer, open-collared shirt, and gray slacks. I spotted the bulge of an ankle holster on his lower leg and assumed the coat was covering another hidden firearm. He might even have had a derringer in his pants pocket.
“The idiot was driving down the middle of the road,” the big man said preemptively. “He wouldn’t move over.”
“And for that you drove him into a fence?”
“The horse spooked.”
“Like hell she did. That mare is accustomed to being around motor vehicles. Ike Stoll is unconscious with a compound fracture of the forearm and God only knows what internal injuries. Were you ever going to get out of your truck to check on him?”
“I was calling 911.”
“How about handing me your phone then?”
“Why?”
“So I can check your recent calls to confirm you’re telling the truth.”
“I’m not violating my own Fifth Amendment rights.”
“You know what, Gorman—”
“You and I are not friends. You will address me by my last name. And put a mister in front of it.”
“You know what, Mr. Peaslee? That man over there might not even live until the EMTs arrive, and I haven’t heard a contrite word come out of your mouth. What am I supposed to make of that?”
“Do you want to know who I called, hotshot? I called my fucking lawyer.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“He told me not to say a word to the cops. I’m not going to help you assholes build a case against me. I take it that’s your Scout parked back along the road.”
I ignored the comment. “Are you carrying any weapons, Mr. Peaslee?”
“What business is it of yours?”
“Turn around and bend over the hood with your hands straight out behind you.”
“You’re going to cuff me? Why?”
“I’m stopping you from fleeing the scene.”
“What?”
“Your failure to exit your vehicle combined with your
refusal to provide aid makes you a flight risk in my opinion.”
His fat hands became fat fists. “Fuck you.”
“Don’t make me tell you again.”
“Fuck off.”
With that, he turned toward the open door of his truck, daring me to stop him.
It was a foolish move. Dani, the black belt, had been teaching me some jiujitsu takedowns.
As he raised his right boot to mount the running board, or nerf bar, I lunged into him and wrapped my arms around his waist, my head pressed flat against his lats, my hips lower than his. I pulled him backward, he stutter-stepped, and I pressed my right foot against his heel, causing him to totter over. As he lost his balance, I fell to my side, swinging him around with me. He landed hard on his enormous chest. As he tried to reach around at me, I snapped a cuff on his right wrist and gave the chain a twist. He cried out in pain from the torque, and I took the opportunity to snap the other cuff onto a strut supporting the nerf bar.
Gorman Peaslee was on the ground, manacled to his own pickup. The whole move had taken less than five seconds.
Before he could blink, I had pulled three firearms off him: a Smith & Wesson engraved 1911 in a shoulder holster, a Ruger .38 at his ankle, and a Beretta Pico in his blazer pocket. Plus an illegal dagger stuck in his sock.
He pawed at his chained hand with his free one. “Asshole! You nearly broke my wrist.”
“Tell your lawyer to file a complaint.”
“Don’t think I won’t!”
The lit screen of his cell phone glowed from where he’d dropped it. I snatched it up and pressed the phone icon and recent calls. Peaslee had reached out to someone in Portland. No doubt his lawyer. But the son of a bitch hadn’t phoned 911 as he’d claimed.
“That’s an illegal search under the Fourth Amendment!”
“Relax, Mr. Peaslee. I was picking it up for you. Here, I’ll put it inside your truck where it’ll be safe.”
I tossed the phone onto the passenger seat. From his position on the ground, there was no way he could ever reach it.