“We’re about to close,” said a deep voice from behind a display case of hunting and combat knives.
“Uncle Denis! It’s Mike.”
“Who?”
“Your nephew. Marie’s son.”
He peered out from behind the register: a short man with narrow shoulders, an olive complexion, silver hair, and a black mustache. If there was a men’s petite clothing size, he was wearing it. This shrimp was my mother’s oldest brother.
I hadn’t seen Denis since her funeral. After the burial, at the reception held at the Prouts Neck Country Club, he and my other uncles had gotten drunk enough to send my mom’s tennis friends running for the exits. Next they had surrounded my hapless stepfather and begun arguing that my mother would have wanted her birth family to share in her bequest—never mind that the terms of her will explicitly excluded them.
“What do you want?” asked Uncle Denis, keeping his distance.
“I was in the area and thought I’d stop in and see your new business.”
Like all the Cormiers he had delicate bones and moody brown eyes. My mother’s had been as bright and lovely as opals. His were the color of unpolished agates. “You just missed the grand opening.”
I think I must have blinked. “Really? When was that?”
He glanced at the “Time to Fish” clock on the wall. Then he turned to me with a stone-cold expression. “Two years ago next month.”
Denis and his brothers had once worked high-paying union jobs at Madison Paper Industries. Then, like the mill in Pennacook, the papermaking factory had shut down. Suddenly the Cormier brothers—who had never saved a penny in their lives—found themselves in the unemployment line. Gary Pulsifer had been the one to tell me that Denis had opened a gun shop. Gary had also informed me about an illegal sideline he’d heard my uncle was involved in.
A paperback book lay on the counter; clearly my uncle had been reading it in the long intervals between customers. His choice of titles surprised me. It was Green Hills of Africa by Ernest Hemingway, one of my favorite authors.
“How are you liking that?” I asked, trying to shift the conversation onto a smoother track.
“The guy doesn’t know shit about guns.”
I could see how this was going to go. In a way, no longer having to work at being courteous made it easier. “I saw the ‘For Sale’ sign out front.”
“You want to buy the place? I happen to know the owner.”
“Actually, I’m looking for a crossbow. What do you recommend for coyote hunting?”
“A rifle.”
“But if someone wanted to use a crossbow?”
“Still a rifle.”
Denis carried three brands of crossbows, and only one of them—the Blood Eagle Tactical—took sixteen-inch bolts. It was secured by a bicycle cable to a standing rack. I lifted it from the hook on which it was hanging, and my fingers came away dusty. “You sell many of these?”
“Hell, yeah. Dozens and dozens. We can barely keep them in stock.”
In a bucket at my feet were crossbow bolts, fletching side up. I picked out a Spider-Bite X2 identical to the one that had pierced Shadow’s lung. “How about these?”
“You want to tell me what you’re really doing here, Warden Bowditch?”
“I’m looking for the names of anyone you might have sold sixteen-inch Spider-Bite X2 bolts to.”
He leaned his scrawny ass against the glass case holding used revolvers. “You think I keep those kinds of records?”
“I think you have a good memory and always have.”
“Flattery.”
“I’m serious, Denis.”
“So am I. How long do you think I’d be in business if it got around I was ratting out my customers to my nephew the game warden?”
“It looks like you’re going out of business as it is.”
“Touché.”
The man was such an unrepentant wiseass. He always had been. I had never met a person who wielded humor as a rapier the way he did. You left every encounter bleeding.
“Rumors have been going around about you, Uncle Denis. There’s been a lot of gossip.”
“It’s all true,” he said, unsmiling. “I really do have a ten-inch dick.”
“The thing I keep hearing is that, for the right price, you’re doing illegal modifications to AR-15s for customers who want full autos.”
“So now you’re trying to bully me into helping you?”
“I’m just sharing the gossip I’ve heard. If there’s any truth to it, you might consider turning your talents as a gunsmith in a direction that doesn’t lead to federal prison. But I’m not here to report you.”
To my surprise Denis crossed the room. For half a second I expected him to punch me in the crotch. Instead he fishhooked a finger inside his mouth to reveal a dental bridge where several of his molars should have been.
“Do you remember how I got this?” he mumbled, finger in mouth.
“I’m afraid I don’t.”
“No surprise since you were running around in a diaper that night. Your dad did it to me when we were camping over at Long Falls on the Dead River back before they ‘cleaned it up.’ He accused me of having scratched his truck when I opened my door. But that was a lie. That scratch was already there. Jack was looking for an excuse to beat the shit out of someone because he was bored. He shattered my cheekbone, broke my jaw, and knocked out three of my teeth.”
“I’m the last person to defend my father’s actions. And you weren’t the only one he assaulted.”
“Says his defender in chief. I should have known Jack Bowditch’s boy would grow up to be a bully. Like father, like son.”
“I was hoping you’d willingly help me out.”
“And what made you think that?”
“Because we’re family.”
The intensity of his laughter provoked a full-body coughing fit. “I’ve got to close up,” he said after he’d finally caught his breath.
24
I had made the turn to Augusta and home, with that feeling of having
