Massacre Pond

by Paul Doiron

  “The hunters who shot the moose didn’t just leave them to rot,” I said. “They’re going to eat the meat. In many cases, these men and their families are poor, and they are going to save hundreds of dollars in food bills. Nothing is going to waste.”

  She waved her hand, and I saw that her fingernails were newly polished. “You pretend it’s all a utilitarian enterprise. What’s that word hunters always use? The deer harvest? That’s a cozy term for mass murder, in my opinion.” Her throaty voice began to rise in pitch. “But you’re deliberately ignoring the key similarity between the ‘legal’ hunters who gleefully pose for photographs with their trophies and the hunters who shot the moose on my land.”

  “Which is what, ma’am?” I tried to keep the personal insult I was feeling out of my voice.

  “The enthusiasm. The joy of killing another living thing. You hunters can pretend you’re engaged in some noble tradition that softhearted city people will never understand. But the truth is, you get a kick out of inflicting death, and I find that repugnant.”

  I had heard this argument before many times when I was in college, and I had usually answered that Homo sapiens evolved as a species of hunters. It wasn’t some cultural artifact we would morally relinquish, the way we had slavery or leaving old people on ice floes. Hunting was woven into the strands of our DNA. It was the reason we had incisor teeth. Man is a meat eater—and always will be.

  But I was already tired of debating with Elizabeth Morse, when what I wanted to be doing was searching for the men who had killed those animals. And the fact that I was stuck here, seemingly for the sole purpose of entertaining this wealthy woman’s whims, made me feel even more like a useless plaything.

  “Then you and I disagree,” I said.

  “Where did you grow up?” she asked me. “You don’t remind me of the other wardens I’ve met.”

  “In what way?”

  “You talk the same talk—about your proud outdoor heritage, et cetera—but it’s as if you’re pretending somehow. You don’t have much of a Maine accent, and your speech is different, not quite so folksy.”

  “I don’t understand what you mean,” I said.

  “The wardens I’ve met are always using words like critters to describe animals. It’s like you come from a very different background than your sergeant and lieutenant. Where did you go to college?”

  I paused before I answered. “Colby.”

  “And what did you major in?”

  “I was a history major.” I felt peeved that she had identified some special quality that separated me from my colleagues.

  “My daughter was studying dance and theater at Bennington. Now she tells me she wants to work for my foundation. She wants to use my money to help ‘people instead of animals,’ she says. Her latest fixation is curing typhoid fever in Zambia and Zimbabwe. I notice you don’t wear a wedding ring.”

  This woman took a lot of liberties. “No, ma’am.”

  “I think Briar likes you.”

  “She’s a lovely young woman,” I said.

  She leaned back in her Adirondack chair and brought her hand to her chin. She studied me with those perceptive hazel eyes. “I’ve decided to raise the reward I’m offering to twenty thousand dollars. What do you think about that?”

  “That’s a lot of money.”

  “Not to me, it’s not,” she said. “The question is whether it’s enough money to achieve the outcome I desire.”

  “In this part of the world, I would say it is.”

  “Good, then perhaps you can help me get the word out through whatever channels you use for these things.”

  “We have a program called Operation Game Thief.”

  She made an amused noise in the back of her throat. “Another euphemism.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Game. As in something you play.” She stood up from the chair and stood in a place where the sun was shining directly behind her, surrounding her silhouette with a celestial aura. “Dexter mentioned that I’m flying to New York today. I have some meetings, and I’m going to tape segments with the network morning shows tomorrow about the shootings. I’d thought of having you appear with me on TV—you are articulate and photogenic—but I have a feeling the idea would give your Lieutenant Rivard a fit. And I don’t get the sense that you enjoy the limelight.”

  Nor would I enjoy being used as a prop to advance your park proposal, I thought.

  “I don’t think the Maine Warden Service wants me to be its official spokesman,” I said, rising to my feet. “But I could check with the corporal down in Augusta who handles information requests. Perhaps he would be available to go with you.”

  “It was just a fleeting idea I had. Now I should go pack some things. You’re free to stay or go. I’ll give you a call when I need you again.”

  And with that, I was dismissed. In Queen Elizabeth’s eyes, I was just another servant. I was beginning to understand Billy’s resentments.

  “Have a safe trip,” I said.

  “And good luck with your investigation. By the way, do you know what Thoreau’s last word was?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “It was moose. I’m coming to see that as an auspicious omen for me.”

  * * *

  I put a call into the Augusta headquarters and told the corporal who handled the media for the Warden Service about Elizabeth Morse’s twenty-thousand-dollar reward. He whistled when I told him the sum. It would be the largest amount of money ever offered through Operation Game Thief, he said.

  The comment made me reflect on Morse’s wordplay: game, as in a wild animal killed by hunters; game, as in a childish form of recreation. I didn’t want to think too hard on the point she had been trying to make.

  Leaf Woodwind escorted me to the Sixth Machias gate. He sat in my passenger seat, reeking so much of marijuana, it seemed like almost a deliberate attempt to taunt me. After riding with him for a few minutes, however, I concluded that the old hippie was just heedless of how obviously drugged he was.

  “So you guys really don’t have any leads on this thing?” he asked.

  “We have a few.”

  “Man, I hope you do, because Betty isn’t the most patient person on the planet.”

  I looked at him out of the side of my sunglasses, keeping my head facing the road. “I heard you used to be her business partner.”

  “Yeah, I was. Back in the eighties.” He stroked his beard softly, as if it were a pet he’d owned a long time. “But I never really saw it that way, you know? To me, it was more like we were together and the business stuff was just something we did to pass the time.”

  “I can’t really picture Elizabeth Morse as a back-to-the-lander.”

  He had a laugh that was more of a deep-throated giggle. “Betty was always more of a pretend hippie. The first time I saw her, she was standing next to this overheating VW Super Beetle, with her hair all in crazy curls, wearing this peasant dress. I asked her where she was heading, and she said nowhere. She was just this restless young thing exploring the Maine countryside. So I gave her a ride, and we ended up back at the shack where I was living, and Betty thought it was the coolest place in the world. She had read the Nearings, you know? She had all these fantasies of eating only food she grew herself and living the good life. She moved in with me that night. I was a bit older than her so I couldn’t believe my luck. I didn’t realize she was this rich kid from Boston.”

  Like most cannabis aficionados I had met, Leaf was a talkative character. I let him ramble.

  “I had this herb garden back then,” he continued. “And I used to dry and sell my stuff at various farmers’ markets—parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme, as the song goes. But one day, Betty heard two guys at the next stall talking about medicinal plants, and she suddenly got all interested in growing milk thistle and chickweed and nettle leaf. She started making tinctures and extracts and teas. I thought it was kind of fun at first, experimenting, but Betty was all business from the star
t. She got one of our artist friends to draw up the EarthMother logo to put on the packages. Then she took over a barn down the road and hired these local women to help her brew everything. The next thing I knew, she was driving all over New England to co-ops and head shops to sell her herbal products. I don’t know why it surprised me when she told me she wanted to move out of the shack to a real farm, where she could have a bigger operation. But I wasn’t interested in moving, and so she asked me to sign a paper giving up my rights to the business, and I did because it was always her thing and not mine, and we peacefully parted ways. Eight months later, she sent me a letter telling me she’d had a baby girl she’d named Briar.”

  “Briar’s your daughter?”

  “Betty’s never told me for sure, and I’ve never asked. We were into free love, man. What can I say?”

  I didn’t have a clue how to respond to this. “Isn’t that strange for all of you? Briar doesn’t want to know who her father is?”

  He pushed his glasses back higher on the bridge of his nose. “I’d say that anyone who has Betty Morse for a mom doesn’t need another parent. I think that’s how they both feel. But looking at Briar does make me smile, I have to say.”

  We passed the dry meadow where we’d found the first moose. A small flock of migrating sparrows that was feeding along the roadside took off, each bird flying away in its own crazy direction. When I’d first driven onto Elizabeth Morse’s woodland estate, I’d had the feeling of entering a different world. Now it seemed like more of an alternate universe.

  “After all that,” I said, “how did you ever end up working as her personal assistant?”

  “I got busted for growing dope—it was a game warden pilot who spotted my little plantation, actually—and then the IRS took my shack for nonpayment of taxes. Betty somehow heard I was in trouble, and she asked if I wanted a job, and I didn’t have a whole lot of options, you know?”

  His muscles had tensed up when he mentioned being arrested for marijuana cultivation, and for the first time during this conversation, I remembered that he’d been a soldier in the Mekong Delta long ago. I wondered what roiling emotions the harmless old stoner might be keeping at bay through regular hits from the bong. Leaf had been Elizabeth’s business partner, but now he was merely her assistant. He was seemingly Briar’s father, but Morse had denied bestowing that status on him, as well. I couldn’t imagine how the man lived with himself.

  “If you had kept your share of the business, you could have been rich,” I said.

  “That’s true. But I’ve never needed a whole lot to be happy.”

  We entered the thick stand of evergreens, then a minute later rolled to a stop in front of the Sixth Machias gate. As he reached for the door handle, I couldn’t help but ask, “The situation doesn’t make you feel bitter at all?”

  “Sometimes, yeah, it does.”

  “How do you deal with it?”

  Leaf Woodwind shook his head and giggled again, as if the answer were staring me in the face. “I get high, man. I get high.”

  19

  With the rest of my afternoon free, I decided to pay a visit to the home of Billy Cronk. I figured I would give myself a couple of hours before I alerted anyone that I had been temporarily dismissed as Elizabeth Morse’s personal liaison. And I wanted to have a frank talk with my friend about his strange behavior over the past forty-eight hours.

  On the way, I stopped to use the outhouse at the rest area where Route 9 crossed over the babbling East Machias River. Given what a beautiful day it was, I would have expected to see picnickers at the raised grills and red cedar tables, but there was only a single vehicle in the paved lot: a black Sierra Denali. The truck was brand-new, recently washed and waxed. I didn’t recognize the plate number, but I had a vague sense of having seen the expensive pickup around town. The driver was probably fishing on the river. I decided to have a look at him.

  Wardens spend a lot of our time spying on people. If your intention is to catch someone taking too many trout, there is no better substitute than watching him from behind a bush. The anglers we arrest—or “pinch”—for these misdemeanor offenses complain that our methods are sneaky and unfair, but most law-enforcement officers aren’t prone to worrying whether the ends justify the means.

  I made a semicircle away from the river and then back again, heading for an upstream pool where fishermen liked to dunk worms. Whirlygig samaras spun down from the sugar maples on their rotary blades: the seeds of future giants.

  Eventually, I heard voices and spotted a flash of movement through the alders that hugged the riverbank. I crept close to the water, getting lower and lower as I went, until I was crawling on my hands and knees through the puckerbrush.

  Out in the river, a man was trying to teach a very small boy how to cast a fly line. My first thought was that it was a father and son. Both were dark-haired and on the skinny side. The man wore a fishing vest and khaki waders; the boy was dressed in a white T-shirt and bathing trunks, and he was having a hard time managing the long fly rod. His fluorescent yellow line just flopped on his head when he tried to throw it forward into the current.

  “No trate de forzarlo, Tomás,” the man said.

  It was Matt Skillen and his “little brother,” I realized.

  “No puedo hacerlo,” said the boy.

  My college Spanish had gotten rusty, but I didn’t need a translator to understand that the kid was feeling frustrated.

  “Watch me,” said Skillen in English. He took the rod from the boy’s hand and executed a beautiful roll cast that fully extended the leader and dropped a bushy dry fly in the eddy behind a boulder. Just as the fly hit the water, a fish rose to bite it. I knew at once that it was a brook trout because of the glimpse of orange I saw on its underbelly, and I knew that it was big.

  Skillen set the hook and then handed the rod back to the boy, who seemed reluctant to take it. “Reel it in, Tomás! Keep the line tight!”

  Tomás had a hard time keeping the tip of the rod up and working the reel. I was certain that the trout would escape, but Skillen leaned over and guided the boy’s hands, almost the way a father would teach a young child to pedal a bicycle. The man was doing all the work, but the boy was the one laughing.

  After a few minutes of playing the fish, Skillen maneuvered the trout into the net. It was a beautiful male brookie, more than a foot long, with an impressively hooked jaw. Skillen unhooked the fly from the fish’s lip and lifted the dripping net for the boy to see.

  “Wow, Tomás! Look how beautiful he is. Your first fish on a fly rod. We need to take it home to show your mama.”

  “Pero lo agarro.”

  “No, no,” Skillen said, putting the fish into an old-fashioned wicker creel. “You caught this one. I just helped. Come on, let’s see if we can catch an even bigger one.”

  On the boy’s face was the biggest smile I’d ever seen.

  I could have made my presence known to them; I could have congratulated Tomás on his magnificent trout. But the scene seemed so private, I felt almost embarrassed to be watching, especially from behind a bush. Tomás would never forget this moment. My own father had never taught me how to fish like this. Never once had he shown me such patience and kindness. And so, as much as I wanted to resent Matt Skillen for being the man Stacey had chosen over me, I found myself unable to dislike him.

  As quietly as I could, I crept away through the alders and left the two of them alone on the sun-spangled river.

  * * *

  When I arrived at Billy’s house, I found Aimee stringing wet sheets along a clothesline between two trees. The Cronklets were nowhere in sight, but Billy and Aimee seemed to worry less about their children’s safety than did parents in more urbanized areas. At first, I had viewed the Cronks’ approach to parenting as something like negligence, but over time, I had watched the eldest boy carrying the youngest girl up and down stairs, seen a younger child chastising his twin for climbing atop the picnic table when he’d clearly been told not to, and
I’d realized that child care was more of an art than a science, and that I should be careful about making judgments on a subject I knew nothing about.

  “Hey, Mike,” Aimee said, pushing a red strand of hair out of her eyes and gripping the clothesline with her other hand, as if for support. “Billy’s taken his bow and gone turkey hunting.”

  “That answers one of my questions,” I said. “How long was he in jail?”

  “The sheriff let him out yesterday morning. I think she was only holding him overnight to make a point. But she’s the law, so whatever. Billy’s still facing a trespassing charge.”

  “The DA isn’t charging him with assault on Khristian?”

  “Threatened to,” she said, “but everyone seems to agree it was more like self-defense than Billy kicking the shit out of that old dwarf.”

  I glanced around at the second-growth forest that clustered at the edges of the Cronks’ dooryard. The oaks had held on to their tattered brown leaves, but the limbs of the maples, birches, and beeches had mostly been stripped bare by the autumn winds. An old skidder trail led up through the woods to an overgrown field where I knew Billy liked to hunt.

  “Is he up that way?” I asked.

  “Yep,” she said. “But you won’t find him unless he wants to be found.”

  I started off around the house, feeling the Indian summer heat on my neck, wondering when it would finally break. By the time Moosehorn National Park ever received its official designation, Elizabeth Morse’s dreams of creating a sanctuary for boreal flora and fauna would be foiled by global warming. Instead of observing woodland caribou and timber wolves in their natural habitat, visitors would see feral pigs and opossums; rather than wandering beneath the boughs of hemlocks and jack pine, they would pass through sapling thickets of dogwoods and blue ash. The scorching weather might or might not be a harbinger of climate change, but it was definitely turning my thoughts in morbid directions.

  As I came around the corner, I heard the shouted voices of children, overloud, as kids always are. Then, all at once, they fell silent. I raised my shaded eyes at an ancient red oak in which Billy had constructed a ramshackle tree house, with irregularly carved windows and a dangerous-looking ladder that would undoubtedly snap beneath the weight of an adult. Several blond heads poked out through the haphazard windows and doors. The kids were all gathered inside like a nest of raccoons, and like baby animals, they knew to be quiet when an unknown presence approached.