KILLING MAINE

by Mike Bond

  And it got me thinking how we’re dropped into this universe that goes on forever and we don’t know where we come from or really what we are, if we’re here just for the transit or if something comes after. And being with Viv and Don it came to me like sudden lightning: All we have is love. And that maybe if there is a God then our love for each other feeds God and makes God stronger, and our multilateral hatreds tear God apart.

  And at that moment, with the plaid plastic placemats on the pine table, the needlepoints of woodpeckers, beavers, whitetails and chickadees hung on the pine walls, the crackling woodstove, the pictures of their three kids on the mantle and Don’s work boots sitting lopsided on the threshold – I understood, briefly, the meaning of life.

  And that the first rule is: We do not hurt each other.

  When the kids were young he and she’d built this home on the lake shore with Eagle Mountain tall, rocky and tree-clad across the lake, and now just like Lexie’s and Bucky’s, like Jane’s and everyone else in the area, their house was worthless. The endless howl and grind of windmills – “like a vacuum cleaner,” Don said, “that never shuts off.” He glanced at the woodstove as if seeking an answer there, in conflagration, turned back to me. “We took that money… we were stupid… Had no idea.”

  “I don’t blame you.” And I didn’t. How could anyone?

  “At first we tried to sue them,” he continued. “But we didn’t have money for lawyers. So they offered us the seven thousand to drop our complaint… I’m not excusing us but we didn’t have a choice.”

  “You know what it’s like?” Viv said, “to suddenly have seven thousand dollars? But we had so many debts… It didn’t last.”

  “They said they’d buy our place if we wanted,” Don said, “for what it was worth before the windmills.”

  “It was in the contract,” Viv said. “But then they had some other paragraph that made this one untrue.”

  “What’s the worst is at night,” Don said. “The flashing strobes. Like a cop car outside your window all night, his flashers flashing.”

  I looked at the beautiful living room, the rough-sawn one-by-twelve pine panels and the pine battens atop them, the spruce two-by-twelve staircase, the pine trim. It had the rough beauty of real wood – when you run your hand down it the grain tickles your palm. And it smells so good, that wood. Of pitch. For years it smells good.

  “Why can’t you move this place?” I said.

  “Costs nine thousand six hundred,” Don said.

  “We checked it,” Viv added. “With three different house movers.”

  “You can’t get a loan?

  “Us?” Don said.

  “What about your retirement?”

  “After I retired the mill got sold to a New York investment fund that borrowed the money to buy it. Then they emptied our retirement fund to pay off the loan and now we have no retirement fund. That’s happened to most folks round here.”

  It was nine-twenty-two on the wood clock with the blue jay beak and tail showing the hours and minutes. With the time change from Hawaii I felt I’d been traveling between solar systems.

  “In the basement,” Don said as if sensing my fatigue, “we have all the signed papers. Under the gag agreement we can’t show anyone. Well, Viv and me, we’ve decided if you can use them we’ll give ‘em to you. To Hell with consequences.” He pulled himself up straight and I got a sense of what a big tough guy he’d been, and how work in the woods wears you down and kills you young but barely pays you enough to live on.

  “So what’s in them?” I said.

  “If we agreed to vote for the turbines they promised us the seven thousand. That was a fortune to us, with Viv’s diabetes and my injuries and the leaky roof and all the other stuff that needed fixing.”

  “So they paid you that?”

  “Not till the turbines were built. Then we got it, but only five hundred dollars every three months.” He looked down, shook his head.” Can you believe that?”

  “But they promised you seven thousand –”

  “It was in something else they had us sign. They called it an addendum. On how they could pay us.”

  “The same one that took away their promise to buy the house,” Viv put in.

  “What else?”

  “Lots else. We’ll show you in the morning.”

  As I headed back toward Hallowell to break into Abigail’s house I worried about Don and Viv’s gag agreement. I’d caused enough trouble for myself; I didn’t want to screw up anybody else.

  A WHITE CRUISER picked me up out of Liberty. I was the only game in town, maybe, so he pulls me over, lights flashing so bright you could’ve seen them from the International Space Station. I roll down the window and sit there nervous. It’s 21:48, a little late in Maine to be out visiting.

  Then I start to get out of the truck and he bullhorns me, “Get back in the vehicle!” which of course I do, not wanting to get shot.

  Up saunters O. Trask, the guy who’d stopped me before in Freedom, one hand on the butt of his forty-five. He shines one of those foot-long cop flashlights in my eyes so I can barely see. “You was ordered to fix that brake light.”

  “I did.”

  “It still don’t work.”

  “Damn. Must be a short somewhere.”

  “License and registration,” he says. As if he hadn’t seen them before.

  I handed him my Hawaii license and start to reach for the glove box to get the registration and he says real fast “Keep your hands on the steering wheel!” which of course I do, still not wanting to get shot.

  As I mentioned, Don and Viv had recently cooked up some very fine home brew that if you wanted to get to Mars in a hurry it was what you would put in your rockets. And not wanting to hurt their feelings I’d drunk more than my share, plus like most loggers Don had some home-grown in the greenhouse out behind the garage and though I hardly ever break the law he’d induced me to smoke more than a bit. Thus I was easy money for a back-country cop with cold balls and nothing to do on a winter night.

  He goes back to his warship and radios me in. They have a long chat, him and the cop shop, then he comes halfway back, hand on his gun. “Get out of the vehicle,” he calls, which of course is the opposite of what he told me before.

  I get out, and lo and behold the bottle of home brew Don had pressed into my hand as I was leaving tumbles out and smashes on the icy road. My first thought was what a sad waste and my second thought was I am fucked.

  By the time it takes to sing what I can remember of The Star Spangled Banner he has me in cuffs in the back of the warship, Bucky’s 150 sitting all lonely on the side of the road, and we take a trip to the station house where they read my rap sheet on the computer with enormous excitement and I get to puff into a breathalyzer, and the disappointment on their faces was tragic when I come up with 0.05, well under the limit.

  In seething frustration they throw me out to walk the two miles back to Bucky’s truck in the bracing ten below, boots squeaking happily in new snow, a soaring joy in my heart at being free, reminding myself to replace the brake light bulb again and check the wire for a short, imagining what the waves are like right now on Oahu’s north shore, because even if it’s 22:30 in Maine it’s not yet sunset in Hawaii and there’s time for a few more marvelous rides.

  Though I was truly beginning to fear I wouldn’t make it to Tahiti in time for the Tsunami. No, I kept reminding myself. Don’t give that up.

  But now it was too late to drive to Hallowell and check Abigail’s mail so I turned round and headed back to Lexie’s.

  On my right Titus McKee’s driveway crossed the roadside brook on a bridge made of an old railroad flatbed car without its wheels. In the glare of the headlights you could see a For Sale sign beside the driveway, which wound uphill through a dark pasture to a log home on a knoll. Behind it the conifered crests of Eagle Mountain rose up to the blasted, broken ridge and its carnival of flashing strobes. Why, I wondered, isn’t he complaining about the infras
ound, the strobes, the constant fifty decibels?

  A few hours later I’m tucked in at Lexie’s when a whole troop of headlights comes up the road. There’s a metallic banging on the bunkhouse door and when I open it there’s cops spread out with automatic weapons ludicrously pointed in my direction.

  It’s O. Trask, beaming with joy. “You’re coming to stay with us a while,” he says.

  I scratch my balls, being sleepy and all. “What the fuck for?”

  “Don and Viv Woodridge’s house burned down tonight,” he says cheerily. “Unfortunately they didn’t get out. We think you did it.”

  And my first thoughts are the horror and sorrow of it, then what Don had said just a few hours ago, “When they want, the Wind Nazis will get you. Any way they can.”

  By going to see Don and Viv, I realized, I’d sealed their fates.

  And mine.

  If I’d just stayed home and made love with Lexie like any sensible person none of this would’ve happened.

  Going through Hell

  WITH DRAWN GUNS three of them watched me dress. It was not a pleasant experience. As in most situations like this however I was quite calm. There was no way I could change things, just had to see what happened next.

  What happened next is Lexie comes out the kitchen door with a baseball bat, followed by a snarling Lobo. “What the fuck you doing here?” she yells at Trask.

  He’s clearly taken aback by this blonde vixen holding her short bathrobe shut with one hand and swinging a Louisville Slugger with the other. “Lady keep your distance!” he calls.

  “You know who I am, Orville Trask! You let him go right now!”

  “We’re taking him in on suspicion.”

  “Suspicion!” she screams. “Of what?”

  “Murder and arson.”

  “Murder! What the Hell! Who?”

  “Don and Viv Woodridge. We think he burned their house down. While they were sleeping.”

  “Oh my God!” She halted, stunned. “They’re dead?”

  “Crispy.”

  She dropped the bat. “This is awful!” She turned on him, tears in her eyes. “Don’t you see what’s happening?”

  “Happening?”

  “Who do you think did do it?” She shoved past Trask to me. “I won’t let them take you!” She swung on him. “You’re crazy! Crazy! If you think he did it.”

  Trask regained his composure, grabbed my arm. “Stay out of this,” he says to her, “or you’ll be arrested too.”

  “You know what this creep does?” she yelled at the others. “He pulls over women for no reason and says he’ll let them go for a quickie or a blow job!” She turned on him. “You tried that with me, didn’t you, you scaly little serpent!”

  Trask ducked his head and shoved me toward a waiting police Expedition like the oil tanker I’d rented two weeks ago. But the back seat was a cage and I was in it, in more ways than one.

  “Call Erica in the morning,” I yelled to Lexie. “Tell her what’s happened.”

  Trask dropped into Drive and we headed out Lexie’s road in the macabre glow of the wind turbines. “Who’s Erica?” he wanted to know.

  “She’s a TV producer,” I said. “You’re about to be on Good Morning America.”

  An unnerved silence fell over our Expedition. The dashboard digital said 03:17. A little past my usual bedtime. And far earlier than my normal arising.

  “That true?” the other cop asked Trask. “You tried to get her to fuck?”

  “Nah it’s a lie.”

  “Did she do it?”

  “Don’t believe none of it.”

  “Too bad. She’s a hot piece.”

  “We got this guy,” Trask thumbed back at me. “That’s what matters.”

  I breathed steady and deep, not too fast. Whatever this was, I could deal with it. Whatever it was.

  I GOT A CELL to myself in Augusta, the jail equivalent of four stars. But only because, Trask said, I might kill another prisoner. Which was hilarious except he seemed to believe it.

  Room service breakfast was at 06:15. Perhaps grogginess lessened my appreciation but it seemed tasteless and unnourishing.

  Lexie was there at seven, in a fury. I could hear her through concrete walls. “He’s got nothing to do with this!” she yelled. “You’re not going to keep him!”

  It wasn’t long after Lexie left to teach her first class that Erica showed up. From what I could tell she was not happy either. I sat there on the concrete bed in the metal and concrete cell, back Inside where I never wanted to be. But like many diseases jail gets easier to catch each time you get it, and pretty soon you realize you’re going to spend the rest of your life with it.

  In which case I’d never get to see Pa one more time before he died.

  Nor find Abigail.

  THEY BROUGHT ME UPSTAIRS to confer with Erica. She was fierce-looking and very pissed off. I wasn’t sure if it was at the cops or at me for dragging her all the way from Portland.

  “I don’t even like criminal work,” she snapped.

  “I’m not a criminal.”

  “I had a hearing scheduled this morning. The judge was not pleased I cancelled at the last moment.”

  She looked lovely and distracted and full of furious determination. “Thank you for coming,” I said.

  “Even when you were fourteen you were trouble. So tell me everything.”

  I explained her as best I could, from when I left Lexie’s and drove to Don and Viv’s, about the secret papers they were going to give me. Then I’d left, Trask pulled me over for the brake light and brought me in when the bottle Don had given me fell out and broke. I’d been under the alcohol limit so they’d had to let me go, I’d gone to the bunkhouse only to be woken up four hours later.

  “You tell them anything?” she said.

  “There’s nothing to tell.”

  “That’s not an answer.” She questioned me more on the details, talked with the cops about what happened, came back into the room. “You sign away your rights?”

  “Rights?” I thought a moment. “They never read them to me.”

  “What? They forgot?”

  “Holy shit.” I was astounded to realize. “They forgot.”

  She nodded. “Arraignment’s at three-thirty. See you then.”

  She was gone, and the world felt empty. It was very hard not to be depressed.

  “Oh my God,” I begged, “what can I do?”

  “Be nothing,” came the answer.

  ARRAIGNMENT was in the judge’s chambers. He was a tall stooping bald man with thick eyebrows the color of his black robes.

  Erica wasted no time in tearing into Trask and his buddies. “This man,” she pointed at me, “has been the subject of continued persecution by the police. It was clear that the bottle which fell out of his truck had not been opened, yet Officer Trask arrested him for it. When he was cleared by the breathalyzer they made him walk several miles to his truck at ten degrees below zero. His previous imprisonments were both reversed: he has no criminal record, yet they treat him like a recidivist. He’s a friend to the people of Eagle Valley and would have never harmed the Woodridges. By wasting time harassing him the Police are failing in their duty to find the real perpetrators of this crime. And,” she turned sweetly on Trask, “this officer is so deficient in his training that in his frenzy to implicate my client,” she paused for effect, “he never read him his rights.”

  You could hear the shocked intakes of breath. The judge raised his eyebrows at Trask, who bent his head, shook it side to side. “Sorry, Your Honor,” he said softly. “It was a dangerous situation –”

  “Dangerous?” the judge said. “For Mr. Hawkins perhaps. From what I understand he’s defended our nation through three tours in two of the most dangerous places on the planet.” He turned cool eyes on me. “Is that right, Mr. Hawkins?”

  “Yes, sir,” I said with proper military humility.

  “Are you a veteran, Officer Trask?” the judge asked mildly.
r />   “Yes, your Honor.”

  “What branch, if I may ask?”

  “Army, sir.” After a moment he added, “That is, National Guard.”

  “Ah, yes. And you were in combat?”

  “No, your Honor.”

  55 MINUTES LATER I was clutching the passenger seat of Erica’s 911 as the snowy Maine landscape flashed past. Compared to Bucky’s pickup it was like riding in an F-18 instead of a wheelbarrow. Seeing Erica behind the wheel smiling as she upshifted and downshifted through the curves back to Lexie’s, I felt like a kid whose big sister has just saved him from a losing fistfight.

  And as always when leaving jail unexpectedly you have a stunned elation, a fierce joy to be back in the world. But the sorrow of Don’s and Viv’s deaths, though I barely knew them, near-destroyed it. And there was no way to make that go away.

  “A scam,” she snapped. “Somebody behind it.”

  “What – arresting me?”

  “No way it would’ve stuck. So you ask yourself why’d they do it?”

  This was a revelation for me. And shows the value of good counsel. “I never thought of it that way.”

  “Of course you didn’t. It was clearly intimidation and attempted coercion. I could go after them just for that…”

  I felt suddenly humbled and protected by this lovely, brilliant woman, had again the surging sense of deep life I’d felt walking out of the jail. “What I don’t get,” I said after a moment, “is who and why.”

  “I’d love to have some one-on-one with Orville Trask and find who’s told the cops to put the pressure on you.”

  I couldn’t imagine her and Trask one on one. “Oh I don’t mean it that way,” she said as if reading my mind. “I want him under oath, see where it goes.”

  A STOP sign flashed past, snow-covered. “Don’t you ever slow down?” I queried.

  She hit second putting my eyeballs in the back of my head. “So you love me?” she said.

  “Ever since I was fourteen.”

  “God you were fun.”

  “Remember the first time? You wore a red dress and we were in the grass under the apple tree –”