you’re a pussy. Especially way Down East, where they eat wardens for breakfast.”
Everywhere I’d gone for the past three weeks, people treated me like a leper.
Doc Larrabee was one of the lonely exceptions. Maybe he felt sorry for me, or maybe, as a recent widower living alone in an isolated farmhouse, he thought that hanging around with the hated new game warden would be the cure for midwinter boredom.
“Well, obviously the animal has expired,” said Doc.
“Obviously,” said Brogan.
“I would attribute the official cause of death to freezing its ass off.”
Larrabee was a slope-shouldered man in his early sixties. He wore round eyeglasses, which were constantly fogging over, requiring him to wipe away the moisture with a handkerchief. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, he wore an Amish-style beard: a fringe of hair along the jawbone, with no mustache to match. He was dressed in green coveralls and tall rubber boots fit for wading through all kinds of manure. His work as a large-animal veterinarian kept him busy in the outdoors-delivering breached foals and tending to sick cows-and he had the healthy glow of a person who breathes a lot of fresh air. On the drive over, he’d told me he was working on a book of his misadventures titled All Creatures Sick and Smelly.
“So that’s it, then?” the ranch owner said.
“Unless you have a musk ox or a greater kudu you’d like me to examine.”
Brogan moved the wad of tobacco in his mouth from one cheek to the other. “You’re one hell of a comedian, Doc.”
The veterinarian rose, stiff-kneed, to his feet. “I’m going to have to report this incident to the Animal Welfare Department, Joe,” he said, no longer grinning.
Brogan narrowed his eyes beneath his hairy brow. “What for?”
“Aggravated cruelty to animals is a Class C crime,” I said.
“I didn’t know it was going to freeze to death.”
“It’s a zebra, Brogan,” I said.
“We’ve got all kinds of animals here-African ones, too,” he said. “They all handle the cold fine.”
“Brogan,” I said. “It’s a zebra.”
“The guy who sold it to me said it was hardy. He misrepresented the animal. He’s the one you should be harassing.”
“I’m sure the district attorney will agree,” I said.
“Fuck you and your attitude,” Brogan said.
I heard murmuring and snow crunching in the shadows around me. My right hand drifted toward the grip of my holstered. 357 SIG SAUER.
Two years earlier, when I’d been a rookie fresh from the Maine Criminal Justice Academy and full of self- righteousness, I would have welcomed a confrontation with this jerkwad. But I had made strides in managing my anger, and besides, there was no urgency here: The zebra was dead. I would hand over my notes and photos to the Animal Welfare Department, and that would be the end of my involvement in Brogan’s bad business.
Doc glanced at me and gestured in the direction of the gate, hundreds of yards away through thick snow and dense pines. “I’d say it’s time for us to go, Warden.”
“Gladly.”
Brogan, of course, had to have the last word.
“Hey, Bowditch,” he said. “You’re not going to last long around here if you don’t cut people some slack.”
“I’ll take it under advisement,” I said.
When we got back to the road, I half expected to find my tires slashed, but no one had molested the vehicle in our absence. My “new” truck, a standard-issue green GMC Sierra, was actually older than the pickup I’d been assigned in Sennebec. It seemed like all of my equipment here was shabbier than what I’d been issued before. Maybe being given obsolescent gear was part of my punishment.
Doc Larrabee drew his shoulder belt tight across his chest. When he exhaled, I caught the sweet smell of bourbon on his breath. “Well, that episode was definitely one for my book,” he said.
I started the engine and turned the wheel east, in the direction of Calais-pronounced Callus in this part of the world-on the Canadian border. “I can’t believe that idiot brought a zebra to Maine.”
The veterinarian rubbed his mittens together. “Joe’s not as dumb as he looks. He’s smart about looking after his own interests. And like most bullies, he has an eye for a person’s weak spot. Those men who work for him are all terrified of pissing him off.”
Doc’s description of Brogan reminded me a lot of my own father. Jack Bowditch had always been the scariest guy in whatever town he’d happened to be living. Out in the sticks, where people live far from their neighbors and are leery of reporting misdeeds to the authorities out of fear of violent retribution, a reputation for ruthlessness can get a man most anything he wants.
“My new supervisor warned me about Brogan,” I said.
“How is Sergeant Rivard?”
As big a prick as ever, I wanted to say.
Like me, Marc Rivard had been transferred from the affluent south to dirt-poor Washington County some time back, and he was still bitter about his circumstances. Unlike me, he had subsequently earned a promotion and was now in the position of off-loading his frustrations on the nine district wardens under his supervision.
“Sergeant Rivard has a unique approach to his job,” I said.
Doc removed his glasses and wiped them with a snotty-looking handkerchief. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? Did you impregnate the commissioner’s daughter or something? You must have pissed off some eminence down in Augusta to get stationed out here in the williwags.”
I found it hard to believe Doc was truly ignorant of my notorious history. If he read the newspapers at all, he must have known about the manhunt for my father two years ago and he would have heard that I’d shot a murderer in self-defense back in Sennebec last March. Maybe he didn’t realize how deeply I’d embarrassed the attorney general’s office in the process. In the opinion of the new administration in Augusta, I had become a public-relations nightmare. And if Colonel Harkavy couldn’t force me to resign, he could at least sweep me under the rug.
“It’s a long story,” I said.
“I’d enjoy hearing it sometime,” Doc said. “I might be misreading your social calendar, but I’m guessing you don’t get many dinner invitations. Why don’t you come over tomorrow night and I’ll cook you my widely praised coq au vin. After Helen died, I had to learn how to feed myself, and thanks to Julia Child, I became quite the French chef.”
I didn’t much feel like socializing these days, and the idea of eating dinner alone at this old man’s house made me squirmy, I’m not ashamed to admit.
The veterinarian must have sensed my discomfort. “Maybe I’ll invite Kendrick over, too,” he said. “He’s a professor down to the University of Maine at Machias and runs the Primitive Ways survival camp. Kevin’s a musher, a dogsled racer. He and his malamutes have raced in the Iditarod up in Alaska a couple of times and finished in the money. He’s had a pretty unusual life and is something of a living legend around here. He knows these woods better than the local squirrels.”
Kendrick’s name was familiar to me. My friend, the retired chief warden pilot, Charley Stevens, had mentioned the professor as someone worth getting to know in my new district. My one consolation in being transferred Down East was that it moved me closer to Charley and his wife, Ora, who had recently purchased a house near Grand Lake Stream, an hour’s drive north of my new base in Whitney.
I tried to put Doc off, but he was persistent.
By the time I dropped the veterinarian at his doorstep, we had agreed that I would join him for dinner the following evening.
I took my time driving home. It wasn’t like I had anyone waiting for me in bed.
The moon was nearly full, so I paused for a while atop Breakneck Hill and gazed out across the snowy barrens, which extended as far as the eye could see. Washington County is the wild-blueberry capital of the world. During the never-ending winter, the rolling hills become covered with deep drifts of snow. In places, boulders jut up through the crust. At night, the slopes look almost like a lunar landscape, if you can imagine twisted pines on the
