“I don’t know you well enough, Stan.”
“Ha!”
“But based on what I’ve heard—”
“Good! You’re shooting straight with me. Vaneese, would you mind fetching us another beer?”
I tapped the bottle. “I’m still working on mine.”
“Like hell you are. Get him another Corona, Vee.”
She hadn’t made much progress with her own dinner but seemed not to mind being at Kellam’s beck and call.
He watched her girlish hips with appreciation.
“I don’t understand it either,” he said, lowering his voice. “A young girl like that, falling for a lunk like me. She was getting a master’s in agronomy. Had been admitted to the U.S. on a student visa before the government clamped down on those. When I told her that I was renovating a lodge in the North Woods—she couldn’t even imagine this place. I finally showed it to her on a map. That was a mistake! She saw that Fish River Checkpoint is located in Garfield Plantation. You should have seen the fear in her eyes. I had to explain that a Maine township doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to the cane fields back in Haiti.”
It hadn’t passed my notice that, having begun our lunch with a proclamation that he would answer my questions about St. Ignace, he hadn’t once returned to the topic.
But as I learned from Joe Fixico—had it only been two days since my visit to the Everglades?—when someone gets talking, the best thing to do is keep quiet and let them tell their stories. People often reveal themselves in their digressions.
“What about her brother, Edouard?”
Kellam gave me a wink. “Don’t report me to ICE, OK?”
“He’s in the country illegally?”
“Oh yeah. He’s basically confined to the property through no fault of his own. He can’t risk being spotted by some nosy parker. Don’t get me wrong. He’s not my indentured servant. I pay him well, and he has a good life. Does a lot of fishing on the lake.”
Ferox noisily repositioned himself under the table, as sleeping dogs will do.
Kellam continued, “Sometimes I consider bringing Edouard to Presque Isle for a Big Mac, but it would be a stupid risk. When was the last time you visited the County? You must have noticed that our roads are crawling with Border Patrol trucks.”
“I noticed.”
“When I was first assigned here—this was before 9/11—you could cross back and forth to Canada three or four times a day. The customs agents in the booth would just wave you across. These days, it’s like climbing the fucking Berlin Wall. But the new laws keep us safe, the politicians claim. Safe from old French ladies in Edmundston who want to get their hair done in Madawaska.”
“I never would have guessed that Edouard and Vaneese were sister and brother.”
He leaned across the table, his breath grainy with beer. “You ever hear of the Tonton Macoute? The Duvaliers kept the people in line with their own personal death and rape squads. Edouard’s father—”
The door between the kitchen and the dining room swung open. Vaneese appeared with two more bottles. If she’d heard Kellam discussing the violent circumstances surrounding her brother’s conception, she didn’t show it.
“I was telling Mike about your field of study, Vee,” he said.
She showed off her marvelous, imperfect teeth again. “Potatoes.”
“I told her that Aroostook County was the best place to learn about potato farming—that she could write her master’s thesis on it here. I’d introduce her to a dozen spud experts, I promised.”
“I didn’t believe him about Maine,” she said. “To me, it seemed as foreign as Haiti must seem to you.”
Kellam slurped the foaming head off his beer. “You ever been to the Caribbean, Mike?”
“No, but I did get to Florida recently.”
Vaneese flashed that lovely smile of hers again. “Were you in Gainesville?”
“I never made it north of Fort Lauderdale.” I turned back to Kellam. “I was doing a background check on someone who’d applied for a job with the Warden Service.”
“I heard. You shot him down, so to speak.”
Kellam had been so convincing about having detached himself from the politics of the bureau, the announcement made me sit up.
“Pat Shorey told me,” he explained. “We still talk, Pat and I. He comes up here every fall to hunt. He was my sub-permittee when I shot that moose we just ate. He’s no fan of yours, but I expect you know that.”
Kellam missed his calling as a politician; the man had a rare gift for filibustering.
“About St. Ignace,” I began.
“How’d you like to go fishing, Mike? We could talk about it on the water.”
“You want to go fishing?”
“Vaneese will appreciate having us out of her hair. You have reading to do, don’t you, Vee?”
“Yes, but—”
Kellam stood up. “We’ve got a good Hex hatch on this pond. The bottom is nice and silty. They won’t be rising until dusk—although on dark days, you never know. I’ve had good luck fishing Maple Syrups on sinking lines. If you didn’t pack a rod, I have about three dozen for you to choose from.”
I was having trouble viewing the high-spirited chatterbox across the table as the “man of patience and guile” my friend had warned me against. But that might be a testament to Kellam’s cunning. Should I go out alone with him on a boat on a remote lake, though?
But you only live once. And I had never been afraid of taking risks. Then again, neither had Scott Pellerin.
“How about it?” Kellam said. “You want to pick out a rod from my collection? I’ve got everything from vintage bamboo to the latest graphite.”
“That won’t be necessary,” I said. “What kind of warden would I be if I didn’t pack a fly rod?”
25
In addition to his extensive fly rod collection, Kellam owned a bunch of boats of all shapes and sizes. The one he chose for us was a Crestliner 1756 Bass Hawk. It had a V-shaped aluminum hull, casting decks in the bow and stern, an overpowered Mercury V-8 outboard, and, in
