Bad Little Falls (6 page)

“This is Duchess.”

“How old is she?”

“Fourteen. Helen and I got her when she was just a puppy.”

A call came from the interior. “Hey, Doc! Where’s the hooch?”

“Excuse me,” Doc said, and with that, he disappeared down the darkened hall. The dog followed like his four-legged footman.

The moccasins Larrabee had offered to me were high-topped, flat-soled, and fashioned from bleached deerskin. They looked Indian-made, which would have made sense. The Passamaquoddies owned reservation land that brushed up against the eastern edge of my district.

I found Doc and Kendrick in a dimly lit room at the end of the hall. With its hooked rugs, birch rocking chairs, and horsehair sofa, it had more of the the feel of an old-time sitting parlor than a modern living room. Doc had the woodstove cranking, but its efforts were in vain. The storm was pulling heat from the building through every crack and seam.

I seemed to have caught Kendrick declaiming in mid-speech.

“There are strange things done in the midnight sun

By the men who moil for gold;

The Arctic trails have their secret tales

That would make your blood run cold;

The Northern Lights have seen queer sights,

But the queerest they ever did see

Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge

I cremated Sam McGee.”

Kendrick paused and took a sip from a cocktail glass filled to the brim with amber liquid and ice. He was something to behold: a handsome brown-bearded man with wild, curling hair, dressed in a buckskin vest over a flannel shirt, and wool logger’s pants that were rolled up at the cuffs, exposing a pair of long bare feet. How in the world were his toes not freezing?

Doc was holding an empty bottle. With his free hand, he gestured at his other guest. “Kevin can recite ‘The Cremation of Sam McGee’ from front to back. That and ‘The Shooting of Dan McGrew.’”

“That’s because I’m from Alaska, where it’s mandatory you learn those poems in kindergarten.” He leaned forward on the couch and extended his strong, calloused hand. “Kevin Kendrick.”

“Mike Bowditch.”

“Doc was just telling me about your frozen zebra. That’s what prompted my little poetry recital. You might have tried defrosting it in a furnace, like they did with old Sam McGee.”

“I don’t think it would have helped.”

Kendrick raised his glass and the ice clinked. “Maker’s Mark?”

“I’ll have a cup of coffee.”

Larrabee left us alone while he went into the kitchen. I settled down in a rocker near enough to the fire to melt whatever ice had formed in my veins. The chair creaked alarmingly as I leaned back. Doc’s elderly mutt plopped herself next to the woodstove with a heavy expulsion of breath.

“That’s one old dog,” I said.

“Doc’s going to have to put her down one of these days, I’m afraid. She’s riddled with tumors. It’s the humane thing to do. But he can’t bear another loss after Helen.”

“I heard your dogs outside,” I said. “They were really wailing.”

“Those wimps just need some toughening up.”

“How so?”

“A night like this focuses their attention,” he said. “I’ve got fifty pounds of bricks on that sled to build their endurance. That’s what I like about canines. Their bad behavior is correctable.”

Unlike people? Charley Stevens had told me that Kendrick was a professor at the University of Maine at Machias. He had probably had his share of incorrigible students.

“Doc told me you’ve raced in the Iditarod,” I said.

“Anchorage to Nome by dogsled, twice. But that was a long time ago, when I was young and foolish. Now I’m just middle-aged and foolish.”

I would have estimated Kendrick’s age as being somewhere between mine and Doc’s, but exactly where he fell along the spectrum was hard to guess. People who spend a lot of time outdoors develop sun wrinkles and burst capillaries in their faces, making them look older than they actually are. But the professor had piercing eyes and an aquiline nose I suspected women found appealing.

As was my habit when I met a stranger, I let my gaze roam casually over him, looking for clues about his background and inner life. The buckskin vest looked handmade; I was guessing Kendrick had tanned it himself. Around his neck hung a necklace of three bear claws. When he leaned back on the sofa, I saw a big hunting knife in a sheath on his belt. His entire outfit seemed like a costume.

He crunched down hard on an ice cube. “Did you hurt your hand?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re rubbing your right thumb like it’s giving you trouble.”

I was unaware of doing this. “I broke a couple of bones last year, but they’re mostly healed.”

Doc Larrabee reappeared, carrying a tray with two cups of coffee and a new bottle of whiskey. He spilled a little whiskey over the rim of Kendrick’s glass. “You sure you don’t want a shot in yours?” he asked me.

I shook my head no and held the cup in both hands, warming them. Then I rocked back in my chair, looking at Kendrick. “Doc tells me you’re a professor at the University of Machias. What do you teach?”

“Environmental studies,” he said.

“I call Kendrick ‘the Last of the Mountain Men,’” Doc said. “You wouldn’t believe the crazy things he’s done in his life—hiked the entire Appalachian Trail
barefoot,
paddled in a kayak he made himself out of sealskin from Nunavut to Greenland, discovered three new bird species in the Amazon, lived for six months with cannibals in Papua New Guinea—”

“The Asmat aren’t cannibals anymore.”

“The
New York Times
wrote a whole profile on him a few years back. Tell me, Kendrick, how many nights did that pretty reporter sleep in your wigwam?”

Kendrick didn’t take the bait. “That story made me sound like some strange hermit or survivalist because I choose to live in the woods and practice primitive ways.”

“That’s the name of the survival school he teaches in the summer,” Doc interjected. “Primitive Ways.”

“It’s not a ‘survival school.’ I teach basic wood skills—friction fire techniques, wildcrafting, tracking.”

“You have to admit that you’re something of a guru,” said Doc.

“I’m just a teacher who wants his students to question their assumptions about the so-called superiority of the modern world.”

I remembered the story Rivard had told me earlier that morning. “Someone was telling me today that you had a drug overdose at your university last year.”

Kendrick looked at me with a curious expression. There was something about his eyes that reminded me of a dog’s: a copper color you rarely saw in human beings. “Trinity Raye.”

“Did you know her?”

“Of course I did. It’s a small school.”

The sharpness of his response caused me to let the matter drop. We sat silently for a few moments, listening to the wind shake the clapboards and shutters. Out in the dark, one of Kendrick’s own dogs was wailing like a lost soul in purgatory. Then a buzzer sounded in the kitchen.

“I believe dinner is ready to be served,” said Doc.

*   *   *

At the table, Doc brought up the recent break-ins at Bog Pond. “You can’t see the lake in the snow,” he said, “but it’s right at the bottom of the hill. Those are my neighbors who got robbed.”

“Do you have any idea who might have done it?” I asked, remembering the contracted pupils of Barney Beal.

“Drug addicts,” said Kendrick. “Every crime around here is drug-related these days. I used to believe in legalization.” He didn’t elaborate. “If you want to make yourself useful, you’ll stop harassing good people like Bill Cronk and go after the real scumbags around here.”

Something I’d said had darkened Kendrick’s mood. I resolved to steer the conversation in what I hoped was a less controversial direction. “I forgot to tell you, Doc,” I said. “After I dropped you off last night, guess what I found waiting for me at my house.”

“A woman scorned?”

“A coyote skin nailed to my front door. There was a note with it welcoming me to the neighborhood, signed by someone who called himself ‘George Magoon.’”

Doc raised his eyebrows. “Is that so?”

“I understand that George Magoon is a character out of local folklore,” I said. “Sort of like Robin Hood.”

“Oh, he was real enough,” offered Kendrick. “Didn’t they teach you about the Down East Game War of the 1880s? When the state of Maine rebranded it as ‘poaching,’ it consigned hundreds of poor people to near starvation.”

“That’s one interpretation of events,” I said. “But I also know that two game wardens were gunned down in this vicinity in 1886 when they tried to seize a poacher’s dog.”

“There’s a book about it,” said Doc, rising shakily to his feet. “I’ll loan you Helen’s copy.”

“Does this Magoon character have some connection to the murders of those wardens?” I asked Kendrick.

“No, that was probably Calvin Graves,” he said. “Magoon never killed anyone. He preferred to use humor and embarrassment against his persecutors. Sort of like a nineteenth-century version of
The Monkey Wrench Gang.
”

The veterinarian returned from his office with a dog-eared green paperback titled
George Magoon and the Down East Game War.
On the cover was a pen and ink illustration of a group of men with guns standing beside a dead moose, which was suspended from a tree. “You’re welcome to borrow this.”

“Thanks, but I’m more concerned with the joker who nailed a coyote pelt to my door.”

“I doubt he was joking,” said Kendrick. “It sounds more like a warning to me.”

“I agree with Kendrick,” said Doc Larrabee, stroking his beard. “The Game War might seem like ancient history, but people around here have long memories. If you don’t believe me, pay a visit to the little cemetery over in Wesley after the snow melts.”

I stopped flipping through the book. “Why? What’s there?”

Doc leaned his sharp elbows on the table. “The grave of Wilbur Day. He was one of Magoon’s band of rascals. I remember hearing about his exploits when I moved to this neck of the woods. One day I decided to visit his grave myself. A rifle bullet was set carefully atop the headstone. Every time I’ve been back, I’ve found a new cartridge there, and every time it’s made me thank God I’m not a Maine game warden.”

FEBRUARY 13

I have a BIG cut on my head where Randle hit me. Ma put OINTMENT on it before she tucked me into bed.

Do you think maybe someday Dad could teach me karate? I asked her.

She gave me the funniest look—like I just read her mind or something. Maybe someday, she said.

Dad is into mixed martial arts. He’s an Ultimate Fighter. He’s competed in octagons over in the Orient. I’ve seen him break a board with his fist … but it took a couple of tries.

Dad gave me a Bruce Lee poster for my room. It says DRAGON’S ROAR. I’ve never seen that DVD. But it looks pretty good from the poster.

He works over at the Shogun Karate Studio. I asked him once if he would give me lessons so I could kick the shit out of kids at school. He said that the purpose of karate ain’t attacking people. It should only be used in self-defense, he said.

What a load! Who would want to be a mixed martial artist if you couldn’t use your powers to beat people up? That’s the whole point of karate!

Try to forget about Randle, Ma said. She kissed my head before she closed the door.

Outside, the wind is really howling.

I forgot about the snowstorm. I’m worried SHE is going to come to my window again.

7

Every few minutes, a gust would come charging by the house, and you would have sworn it was a freight train from the way it rattled the windows and shook the pictures on the walls. I was both dreading the drive back to my trailer and eager to start out on my inevitable journey. If I had waited for Doc Larrabee to stop with the coffee and folklore, I would have been there all night. After a while I gave a false yawn and stretched my arms over my head. “I guess it’s about time for me to head home. In this storm, it should only take three or four hours.”

“You sure you don’t want another cup for the road?”

“My bladder will burst if I do.”

“How about you, Kendrick? I’ve got a collection of Helen’s cordials begging to be opened.”

Between them, the two men had already polished off the last of the Maker’s Mark as well as a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Doc had increasingly come to resemble Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, but Kendrick displayed no visible signs of intoxication. Even if he was a bit impaired, I figured his dogs knew the way home.

“Good luck catching your prankster,” he said in a not-unfriendly tone of voice.

Doc Larrabee followed me to the chilly mudroom and waited patiently while I laced up my boots. For the first time, I noticed that he was wearing thin little slippers, which made me think of Ebenezer Scrooge waiting for his ghosts on the night before Christmas.

“Careful out there,” he said. “It’s not a fit night out for man nor beast.”

“I suspect the beasts know better than to venture out into a blizzard.”

He shook my gloved hand with drunken formality and opened the door for me. A gust of wind caught it and snapped it open. The tipsy veterinarian grappled with the knob to regain control.

Snow was swirling like white smoke in the porch light and billowing from all directions. The sheer force of it made my eyes water. I had misjudged the storm. This one was the real deal.

My Jeep had burrowed deep into a snowbank. At first I had trouble waking it. The engine grumbled for a while before it turned over.

I turned the wheel and swung around through a windblown drift. I tried the high beams and the low beams and decided there was no appreciable difference between the two. Eventually I found my way back to the road and turned west, headed for Whitney. My hyperbolic estimation of the time it would take to get there—three or four hours—might not be out of line, I decided.