The Bone Orchard: A Novel Page 3

  We were drifting closer to shore than I had intended, and suddenly I heard a scraping sound under the boat and quickly pushed the paddle over the side to keep from running aground.

  “You should have dinner with us at the lodge and catch up,” Mason said.

  “You should!” said Maddie. “It would be our treat. Are you allowed to do that?”

  “Yes, I am.” I kept my head down and back-paddled the canoe away from a looming rock. The mention of food made me check my wristwatch. “I should make you two a shore lunch before it gets any later or it starts to pour again. There’s an island up ahead with a picnic table. The guides have set up a tarp, so we can get out of the rain for a while.”

  “It’s not raining now,” said Mason.

  “We’ve been so lucky today,” said Maddie.

  “We haven’t caught as many fish as I would have liked,” I said.

  “Oh, we don’t care about that,” she said. “We’re just grateful for the experience.”

  Magic words, as I said.

  Mason gazed out at the blurred shoreline and breathed in the pine-sweet air. “I can’t believe you get to come out here every day and see all this beauty,” he said. “You probably hear this all the time, Mike, but I think you must have the best job in the world.”

  Coming from a guy who pulled down a seven-figure salary, it seemed like a funny comment. But Mason was right that guides heard similar remarks from men who lived their lives utterly detached from the natural world. There was almost a physical shock that came from breathing air heavily scented with balsam and hearing the cries of a loon across a mirror-smooth lake. To the extent I believed in epiphanies, it was from watching people venture out to the edge of the wilderness and realize how hollow their souls were. Whether being a low-paid fishing guide was the “best job in the world” was another matter.

  Now that we were no longer strangers, some of the pleasure had seeped out of the morning for me. Maddie and Mason seemed perfectly nice, among the friendliest and least demanding “sports” I had met. But I had been enjoying the anonymity that came from being just another fishing guide in a town with dozens of them.

  I wasn’t sure about dinner, but it seemed rude to refuse their invitation. After I’d left the Warden Service, I’d made a resolution that I was going to put aside my regrets and direct my attention to the days ahead of me. Rehashing the past with Sarah’s friend might not be my idea of a good time, but it wasn’t like I had other plans.

  * * *

  Once we were clear of the shoreline boulders, I cranked the engine on the Evinrude outboard and pointed the bow in the direction of Bump Island. The canoe took off, and it felt like we were traveling along a corrugated surface. Every few seconds, the bow of the boat would hit a wave, and we would be momentarily jolted into the air before gravity pulled us back into our ladder-backed seats. I tried not to go so fast as to soak my clients or collide with one of the half-submerged trees that the winter storms had knocked into the lake.

  As we approached Bump Island—an almost perfectly dome-shaped rock just large enough for a cluster of spruce trees to have taken root—I spotted a boat floating offshore. Another fisherman was using our communal picnic site.

  The boat was a wedge-shaped Champion—the kind you see on Saturday-morning fishing shows. It had a flat deck for standing, a ruby red paint job that seemed to include a liberal amount of girlish glitter, and a huge black Mercury outboard. Eastern Maine has some of the best smallmouth fishing in the country, but it was unusual to see these tournament-style bass boats on our icy lakes.

  “Looks like it’s occupied,” said Mason.

  “I’m going to say hello, if you don’t mind,” I said.

  I didn’t recognize the boat and wanted to have a look at its owner. The impulse to investigate any unusual occurrence in the woods was one aspect of the warden’s mind-set I was having trouble letting go.

  As we drew nearer to the island, I saw blue smoke drifting sideways from under the spruce boughs, pressed down by the low-pressure system that had descended on the Northeast for the past week. Beside the picnic table, with its overhanging canvas tarp, stood an enormous electric-blue tent. Its owners had pitched it no more than ten yards from the NO CAMPING sign.

  The campers had heard my engine, because the tent flap opened and two men crawled out. They were both middle-aged, with big bellies, and were wearing relaxed-fit jeans, sweatshirts, and sneakers ill-suited to the woods or the wet weather. One guy had a mustache and was holding a can of Coors in his hand; the clean-shaven one was eating a sandwich.

  I maneuvered the Grand Laker so that it was parallel to the shore, not so close that the waves would push us aground, but near enough to have a conversation without shouting. I switched off the engine.

  The two men looked at us with the silent disinterest of steers.

  “Good morning,” I said.

  The mustached one touched his forelock in some form of salute. The other took a bite of his sandwich.

  “You guys must have missed the ‘No Camping’ sign on that tree beside the picnic table.”

  “No, we saw it,” Mr. Mustache said. The accent wasn’t southern, but it wasn’t recognizably from Maine, either. “We just figured that in this crappy weather, no one was going to care if we camped here.”

  “It’s still illegal, though.”

  “Is this your island?”

  “No.”

  The sandwich eater spoke with his mouth open. “Then why is it any of your business?”

  “I’m one of the fishing guides on the lake, and we maintain these picnic sites for everyone to use. If you’re camped here, it means none of us can come ashore with our sports for lunch. Basically, you’re hogging the place.”

  The guy with the mustache took a swig of beer. “So go find someplace else to eat.”

  Out of my peripheral vision, I saw Mason and Maddie fidgeting. I’d always had a low tolerance for assholes, but I had the safety of my clients to consider.

  “Look, guys,” I said, “there are lots of legal campsites along these lakes. You’re welcome to any of them.”

  “Fuck off,” said Mr. Mustache.

  I tried to keep the rising anger out of my voice. “If you don’t pack up, I’m going to have to call the game warden. He’s kind of a hard-ass. He’s going to give you a court summons. And if he’s really pissed off—which he usually is—he’s probably going to arrest you, too.”

  The mustached man pulled up his shirt, revealing both an abnormally white and hairy gut and the grip of a semiautomatic pistol tucked into the waistband of his boxers.

  “I said, ‘Fuck off.’”

  When I was a game warden, I had traveled everywhere with a firearm. My SIG Sauer .357 was my constant companion in life. Even when I was off duty, I carried a Walther .380 in a holster hidden inside the waistband of my jeans. But when I’d resigned from the service, I’d decided that going around armed would just be a way of clinging to an identity I was desperate to shed. I’d kept my concealed carry license for future use, but at this particular place in my life, it didn’t feel right to pack a pistol everywhere I went.

  The naïveté of that decision announced itself as a pain in my spleen.

  The clean-shaven one pushed the last of his sandwich into his mouth and rubbed the crumbs from his hands. He smiled wide to show his teeth.

  “We don’t want any trouble,” Mason said, his voice cracking.

  Mr. Mustache let his shirt drape over his beer belly. “Then stop bothering us, assholes, and go find your own fucking island.”

  I was clenching my back molars so hard, I was surprised they didn’t crack. I pulled the cord on the engine and turned the tiller so that the spray arced upward in a rooster tail behind the stern. I wanted to get clear of the island as quickly as possible so that I could make the phone call to the local warden, Jeremy Bard.

  For the past few months, I’d told myself that giving up the powers that came with wearing a badge was a fair trade for no
t being responsible for the safety and welfare of every single human being I came into contact with. I was deep inside my head, trying to tamp down my doubts and anger. It took me a long time to realize that Maddie had turned in the boat to face me. She was repeating my name, trying to get my attention, concerned that something was wrong with me.

  4

  When I’d told Kathy Frost that I had decided to leave the Warden Service, she’d responded with silence. The phone had gone quiet for the better part of a minute. It was an unusually cold day in early March, with the sky spitting snow showers outside the windows of my rented cabin.

  “Kathy?”

  “I understand,” she said at last.

  I had expected her to try to talk me out of leaving. I had even prepared a point-by-point counterargument, assuming that she was actually going to argue with me.

  “I’ve done a lot of thinking, and I’m trying to be honest with myself,” I said. “I became a warden for the wrong reasons. I was young and wanted to show my father what a tough guy I was, which was stupid and pointless.”

  Silence.

  “The only reason I held on as long as I did was because of the faith you had in me,” I said. “But I was never a good fit for the service. I was always disregarding regulations because I thought I knew better, and then when I tried following the rules, that didn’t work for me, either.”

  More silence.

  “I know this must come as a shock,” I said. “You probably figured I’d finally turned a corner, and we’d been talking about me moving back down south again. But I’m tired of fighting against my own nature all the time. I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

  I waited a long time for her to speak. “Kathy?”

  “I understand,” she said again.

  In the time I had been a game warden, I had been investigated or disciplined for numerous infractions, from interfering in the homicide investigation of a young woman back in Sennebec to pursuing a sexual relationship with the sister of a murder suspect here in Washington County. I had been the subject of not one but two use-of-force inquiries. In both cases, the attorney general’s office had ruled that I had discharged my weapon in self-defense, but the fact remained that I had shot and killed two men.

  The warden colonel himself had called me an “embarrassment to the service,” and I had been hard-pressed to disagree. His plan, in exiling me to the wilds of eastern Maine, was to make my life so miserable that I was forced to quit. Instead, I had begun to transform myself into a semicompetent officer, which was why I had expected Kathy to insist that I stay.

  On the other hand, she knew better than anyone what kind of a year I’d just endured. I had recently buried my mother after a short, devastating illness. The suddenness of her death had left me feeling punch-drunk. Every time the phone rang, I expected to hear my mom’s voice calling from the great beyond.

  Over the winter, I’d also testified for the prosecution in a trial against one of my best friends, who had killed two men who had deserved killing, in my opinion, and I had watched him go to prison for manslaughter. Out of guilt, I had taken to doing chores around Billy Cronk’s house: chopping firewood, replacing the short-circuited bathroom fan, changing the oil in the family Tahoe. But my penance seemed incommensurate with the problems I had brought on his wife and children. If Billy managed to stay out of trouble in the joint, which was unlikely given his violent temper, he would return to them in seven or eight years.

  So maybe Kathy just looked at me and saw a person who needed to become someone else for a while, and that was why she understood.

  * * *

  After we got back to the ramp and I had winched the boat onto its trailer and returned my clients to the lodge, I walked down to the Pine Tree Store for a bottle of something. I didn’t drink wine normally. Bourbon and beer were my particular vices. But if Mason and Maddie were paying for my lobster dinner, it seemed the polite thing to take them. I stood in front of the wine display for several minutes with what must have been a dazed look in my eyes, because the kindly white-bearded owner finally came out from behind the counter, plucked a bottle from the cooler, and handed it to me with a sigh.

  “Does this go with lobster?” I asked him.

  “Rosé goes with anything.”

  There was no price sticker. “Can I afford it?”

  “I’m not sure there’s anything in here you can afford, based on the size of your tab.” He was a jolly old elf of a man.

  “I’m going to pay it off this month.”

  “That’s what you said last month. Fortunately for you, I am an incurable optimist.”

  “In that case, can you give me a pint of Jim Beam, too?”

  On the way back to the lodge, I made a stop at my Ford Bronco, parked in the wet grass behind the kitchen, and found a wrinkled but clean flannel shirt in the duffel bag I kept behind the passenger seat. I took it into the bathroom and used a bar of Lava soap to wash the fish smell from my heavily calloused hands. Having had a crew cut for years, I wasn’t used to having shaggy hair or a beard. Not having a comb, I did the best I could with my fingers.

  Looking at myself in a mirror had become an uncanny experience. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t recognize the reflected image. The blue eyes and scar on my forehead were still markers of my identity. But when I saw my bearded face now, I was reminded of someone else. I just couldn’t tell you who it was.

  I took a swig of the whiskey and felt the warm liquid slide down my throat all the way to my heart. My pulse was still thumping from the confrontation I’d had with the men on Bump Island. I tucked the bottle in my back pocket.

  Mason and Maddie were waiting for me on the screen porch. They had both showered and changed. Mason was reading a dog-eared copy of Fortune magazine with a raised eyebrow.

  “I wonder how many people lost their shirts buying that stock last year,” he said.

  “Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” Maddie said.

  “Is it?” I asked.

  Maddie glanced up with a chemically brightened smile. With her blond hair pinned back, I could finally recognize her as Sarah’s former prep school roommate. It was like seeing a familiar portrait that had been heavily retouched.

  She must have been experiencing a similar sensation looking at me.

  “I still can’t believe it’s you,” she said. “You were always so clean-cut at Colby.”

  I felt self-conscious in my grease-stained jeans and scuffed L.L.Bean boots. “And now I look like a lumberjack?”

  “You wear it well, though.”

  There was a shine in her eyes that made me think the cocktail hour had already started back at their cabin.

  I offered her the bottle of wine. “I brought this.”

  She glanced briefly at the label. “We already have a couple of bottles of Pinot Grigio chilling in the fridge. But we can drink this one tomorrow.” It was my understanding they were leaving in the morning. She set the bottle down on the lacquered table beside her chair as if it was something she planned on leaving behind. “Did you ever reach the game warden about those scary guys?”

  “I left another message.”

  It didn’t surprise me that Jeremy Bard was ignoring my calls, given our mutual dislike for each other. I’d probably made a mistake not contacting the state police dispatcher directly and reporting the men for criminal threatening.

  “I’ve never had anyone pull a gun on me,” Mason said from his armchair. “It felt like something out of the Wild, Wild West.”

  “More like the Wild, Wild East,” Maddie said.

  Mason removed a neatly folded handkerchief from his chino pockets and used one of the corners to clean his tortoiseshell glasses. “You must have seen stuff like that all the time. How long were you a game warden, Mike?”

  “Three years, more or less.”

  “What made you decide to change careers?”

  His girlfriend scowled at him. “Mason!”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I
realized that being outdoors was what I loved most about the work and that there were other jobs where I could be in the woods without having people shoot at me.”

  He leaned forward. “You were actually shot at?”

  “From time to time.”

  I wasn’t going to tell him that one of the bullets had found its mark. Mason would just want me to roll up my shirt so he could see the scar on my chest—more like an indelible bruise really—where my ballistic vest had stopped a 9mm round from a Glock 19.

  “I’m fascinated by police work,” he said. “I think it’s because I could never imagine going into such a dangerous profession myself. I prefer to take risks with my client’s money rather than with my own life.” He had a disarming smile. “Did I just call myself a coward?”

  I admired the sense of humor he had about himself.

  “Most cowards I’ve met won’t admit to being afraid, so I doubt you really are one.”

  “You haven’t seen him around spiders,” Maddie said.

  “Some of them are poisonous! Have you ever heard of the brown recluse?”

  The door opened behind me, and I heard fast-paced female voices raised in conversation. A group of four young women dressed in bright-colored Patagonia rainwear and muddy hiking boots hurried in out of the mist. As I stepped out of their way, I found myself unexpectedly face-to-face with the woman I considered the love of my life.

  Stacey Stevens had long brown hair tied in a ponytail, light green eyes, and the lean body of an Olympic pole-vaulter. Her chin was probably a little too prominent, a genetic inheritance from her father, who had a jaw like the toe of a boot. The high cheekbones came from her stunningly attractive mother. I knew men who didn’t find Stacey particularly good-looking—“too bony,” they said—but to me, she was the most beautiful human being on the planet.

  She’d been avoiding me for months, ever since I’d made public some unpleasant information about her then fiancé, Matt Skillen, while I was still a game warden. My discovery had precipitated the end of their relationship. Stacey seemed to be taking out her humiliation on me.