The Poacher's Son

“We’re going to start at the Kennebago and then fish the Magalloway.”

“Sounds good,” he said absently.

Sarah and I turned around in our seats to see what he was looking at. At the bar a stumpy man with a shaved head and a bushy black goatee was staring at us. He wore a camouflage T-shirt stretched tight across his thick chest. There was a strange smile-almost a smirk-on his face. He raised a glass of beer in our direction.

My father pushed his chair away from the table and stood up. “I’ll be right back.”

We watched him shoulder his way through a group of tie-dyed Appalachian Trail hikers waiting to be served beer. He stepped right up to the man with the shaved head and put a hand on his shoulder and said something. The man’s smile vanished. After half a minute or so with my father in his face, he put down his glass and left the room.

“Who’s your dad talking to?” asked Sarah.

“I have no idea.”

“Your dad looks a little like Paul Newman-if he hadn’t had a bath in a while. He’s got that beautiful wild man quality. I bet there are a lot of women who want to tame him.”

I didn’t know how to respond to her. I liked to think I had no illusions about my father, but it always annoyed me whenever anyone else criticized him. He could be crude and petty, but I also believed that he was a better man than anyone gave him credit for being. I knew he’d been badly scarred by the war, and so I made allowances for his drinking and his silences, consoling myself with the knowledge that I alone understood him.

My father returned with our drinks. He’d brought me a whiskey despite what I’d said.

“Who’s that guy you were talking to?” I asked. “The one with the shaved head?”

“Nobody.” He downed half his whiskey in a gulp. “Just a paranoid militia freak. So, you got a job lined up or what?”

For the past few weeks, ever since I knew we were coming here, I’d imagined him asking that question and I’d imagined myself answering it. I put my beer bottle down and took a deep breath. “I’m applying to the Maine Warden Service.”

He looked me full in the face, his eyes glassy from the liquor. “You’re fucking kidding.”

“No,” I said. “I’m not.”

He threw back his head and gave a loud laugh. “They’re not going to take you.”

“Why not?”

“You’re too smart. Why do you want to waste your education on those pricks?”

Sarah said, “He’ll probably apply to law school after a few years.”

I stared at her, but she avoided my eyes. Sarah still hadn’t come to terms with the financial ramifications of my decision. Her dad, back in Connecticut, had lost a fortune when the dotcom bubble burst. One of her great fears in life was remaining poor while all our college friends became successful doctors, lawyers, and bankers.

“Law school,” my father said. “Now there’s an idea. We need a lawyer in this fucked-up family.” He reached in his shirt pocket for a pack of cigarettes. He offered one to Sarah, but she waved her hand at it as if it were a hornet.

“You can’t smoke in here,” I said, but he ignored me.

“What about you, honey, you taking a vow of poverty, too?”

She stiffened in her chair. It hadn’t taken my dad long to find her tender spot. “I’m getting a master’s in education at the University of Maine while I teach at a private school.”

“A teacher.” He lit the cigarette with a shiny Zippo lighter like the one he brought back from Vietnam. “Wish I had one as pretty as you when I was a kid.”

Sarah excused herself to use the bathroom. We both watched her walk away. When he turned back to me, he was grinning again and shaking his head. “A game warden, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“Well, it’s your life, I guess.” He finished his beer. “What’s your mom say about this?”

“I haven’t told her yet.”

“You’re afraid she’ll be pissed. I’m glad I didn’t pay for your college, is all I can say. So how’s my buddy Neil?” He said my stepfather’s name like it was a ridiculous word. My parents had been divorced for more than a decade, but somehow my father, who’d probably gone through dozens of women himself in the interval, was still jealous.

“The same, I guess.”

“So that Sarah is a good-looking girl. How serious are you two?”

“Pretty serious.”

“Do you love her?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think I do.”

“You think you do? That’s a pussy answer. What I’m asking is, would you die for her?”

Now it was my turn to be dumbfounded. “What kind of question is that?”

“It’s the only question.”

I would have asked him what the hell he meant, but across the crowded bar I saw Sarah waiting to use the ladies’ room. Three guys in leather jackets and denim were standing around, but she was ignoring them.

My father turned to see what I was looking at. “You better go over there.”

“She can take care of herself.”

“So you’re just going to let them talk to her like that?”

“Like what?”

He leaned back in his chair, appraising me. In his mind there could be only one reason for not going over there: He thought I was afraid.

I downed the whiskey, feeling the liquor scald the back of my throat. Slowly I rose to my feet.

I felt him watching me as I crossed the room.

Sarah was next in line for the bathroom. The three bikers had closed partially around her, and now she was speaking with them. Two were huge, fat in the gut, with arms as thick around as my calves. But it was the smallest one, half a foot shorter than me, who saw me coming. He had a blond beard and a red bandanna knotted around his head and he was wearing sunglasses despite the hour and darkness of the room. I knew it was the short ones who always have something to prove.

“You all right?” I asked Sarah.

“I’m fine,” she said.

“Doesn’t look that way.”

Her eyes blazed at me. “Sit down, Mike. I’ll be right there.”

I couldn’t believe she was pissed off at me for trying to rescue her, but she was.

“Yeah, Mike,” said the short one, tilting his head up at me. “Go have a seat.”

I saw my face distorted in the dark mirrors of his sunglasses. The jukebox was blasting Guns N’ Roses’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” I felt the thudding bass line shake the wood floor beneath my feet.

“OK, guys, that’s enough,” said Sarah. But they weren’t listening to her anymore.

“Let’s go, Sarah.” I reached out to take her arm, but the short one knocked it aside.

“Don’t touch her,” he said.

“Fuck you,” I said.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the big bikers swing a beer bottle up fast and felt it break against the side of my skull. My knees buckled and the next thing I knew I was down on the floor, being kicked in the face. I remember the iron taste of blood and the smell of spilled beer and the distinct sound of Sarah screaming.

Then the music died, the lights came on, and I was flat on the floor, looking up into a kaleidoscope. My vision was blurred as if I had Vaseline in my eyes.

Above me loomed my father. He had an arm wrapped around the short biker’s neck and was pressing the edge of a hunting knife against his throat. A crowd of faces, a wall of bodies circled us. The short man knew better than to fight. He let his body go limp. My father tightened his grip.

I tried to rise, but the muscles had dissolved in my arms and legs.

“Put it down, Jack!” It was the bartender, a lean, silver-haired woman with a deeply tanned face. She had a pump shotgun trained on my dad’s chest.