by Paul Doiron
It was a brilliant morning. The blue of the sky and the green of the leaves looked like colors from a child’s picture book. After two hours on the road, I pulled into the driveway of my mother’s beautiful new house. Next door, a rainbow haze drifted across the lawn from the neighbor’s sprinkler system.
I rang the bell and waited. After a while, I had the sense of someone on the other side of the door, studying me through the peephole, and then it opened and there was my stepfather. Neil Turner was a tall, flat-stomached man with a full head of dark hair going silver at the temples. He wore a lime-colored polo shirt and khakis and was clutching his cell phone. He smiled awkwardly and extended a hand for me to shake. “You really didn’t have to drive all the way down here.”
“It’s OK,” I said.
“Is that Michael?” my mother called from the second floor.
“It’s me,” I said.
She appeared at the top of the steps. She was barefoot, and she was wearing white shorts and a striped blue cotton shirt. A small gold crucifix hung at the base of her throat. She hurried downstairs to embrace me. “It’s so good to see you.”
I smelled shampoo in her hair as she hugged me. “It’s good to see you, too, Mom.”
She held me at arm’s length. There were dark circles under her eyes. As she studied me, her forehead became wrinkled, the only lines in an otherwise perfect oval face. She touched my cheek. “Michael, what happened to your chin?”
“I scratched myself going through some bushes. I want to hear about the call you got from Dad.”
She glanced at Neil, who was now standing against the relocked door.
“Why don’t we go out into the living room,” he said.
They sat together on a couch holding hands, and I sat across from them. It was a cream-colored room with Scandinavian furniture, and sheer curtains that let in some gauzy sunlight. On the coffee table was a book of Matisse paintings and a framed picture of Neil with his daughter from his previous marriage. They’d redecorated since Sarah and I were last here at Christmastime.
“I shouldn’t have called you,” said my mother. “Neil told me not to, but I was in a panic.” The slight French-Canadian accent in her speech seemed more pronounced than usual: a sign of stress I’d learned to recognize.
“Tell me about the phone call,” I said.
She glanced at Neil, and he squeezed her hand. “He called early. It must have been eight o’clock. It sounded like he was on a cell phone. There was a lot of static.”
“What did he say?”
“He said he didn’t kill those men. He said he’d asked for your help, but that you wouldn’t help him.”
I felt a tightening in my chest. “Did he say where he was?”
“Canada somewhere. He wanted to talk with Neil.”
I met my stepfather’s eyes. “About what?”
“He wanted me to represent him.” Neil smiled a mirthless smile and shook his head. “Can you believe that? I’m a tax attorney.”
When I’d suggested my dad find a lawyer, he’d laughed at me. I guess he’d had a change of heart. But did he really want Neil’s legal advice? The two men hated each other. Then again, how many lawyers did my dad know? “So what did you say?”
“I hung up on him, of course, and I called the police. I spoke with that detective-Soctomah.”
“What if he wanted to surrender? How do you know he wasn’t looking to give himself up?”
“The man’s a murderer,” said Neil.
“He was asking for your help,” I said.
Neil laughed sharply. “It was probably some sort of ploy to find out if we were home. When I heard his voice, I was scared for my life.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
Neil looked at me as if he could not believe how slow-witted I was. “I thought he might come here. If he killed those two men, who knows what else he might do.”
“We don’t know he killed anybody. He says he’s been framed.”
Neil waved his hand as if to drive off a bad smell. “The evidence-”
“What evidence? Did Soctomah tell you what proof they have?”
“I was worried for your mother’s safety.”
I was about to interject something about his selfless concern for my mother’s welfare, but she spoke first. “He wouldn’t hurt me,” she said, shaking her head.
Neil said, “You don’t know that, Marie.”
“He wouldn’t hurt me,” she said again.
“Well, there’s nothing to stop him from hurting me. He threatened to kill me once. Or have you forgotten?”
My mom glanced at the window as if she hadn’t heard him.
Neil was looking at me now. “It was after your mother and I got engaged. He was waiting for me one night in the parking lot outside my office. He was drunk. He told me he would kill me unless I broke it off.”
“He wouldn’t have killed you,” said my mother softly.
“He showed me the gun!”
“Jack says things when he gets drunk,” said my mother. “It’s just talk.”
“Why are you still making excuses for him?” He glanced back at me again. “The man’s a murderer. I’m sorry, but it’s the truth.”
“You don’t know the first thing about him,” I said.
“I know the type of man he is.” Neil rose to his feet, smoothing the front of his shirt. “I can’t believe how naive you both are. He’s still manipulating you, and you don’t even see it. I’m going to finish packing.”
He left us there in that sunlit room. “Why is he packing?”
“We’re going to Long Beach-to visit Jessica. Neil’s afraid of Jack showing up here. We’ve had reporters calling. I just want to forget all this has happened. It’s like a nightmare.” She removed a wadded tissue from her pocket and dabbed it at her eyes.
So that was it. They were getting out of Dodge, leaving my dad to his fate. And if he had been thinking of giving himself up, Neil’s reaction would almost certainly have made him think twice about contacting another lawyer. “I can’t believe the bastard hung up on him.”
“Michael!”
I knew I was being too hard on Neil, who had been a decent guardian to me for much of my life. It was all so perverse. Until four days ago, I’d pretty much stopped even thinking of my real dad, and yet now that he was back in my life, I felt compelled to side with him. “I still don’t understand why he called you after all this time. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“He still calls me,” she said. “He never stopped over all these years.”
The admission shocked me. “What do you mean he still calls you?”
“When he’s been drinking.”
“But Neil-”
“Neil doesn’t know. It’s my secret.”
It was a revelation that left me just about speechless. I had been certain my parents never communicated except through me. “What do you-what do you say to each other?”
“We just talk. I know he can be horrible, cruel, when he’s drinking, but there’s another side to him that people don’t see. He’s a lonely man who needs a woman in his life. He’s very passionate, and without a woman, he becomes lost. But his heart is good. When I heard that he was a suspect in those murders, I didn’t know what to think. Everybody’s so sure he did it. But I couldn’t make myself believe it. I just went to bed and cried.”
I went around to the sofa and sat beside her. “You could have called me.”
“Thank you.” She patted my hand, but I could tell that she never even considered it.
I cleared my throat. “When was the last time you spoke with him? Before this morning, I mean.”
“It’s been a while. He stopped calling about two years ago.”
“Did he ever mention a woman named Brenda?”
She looked up, and for an instant I thought I saw a spark in her eye-a little of the old fire from her trailer trash days. “Who is she?”
“Soctomah says she’s his girlfriend up at
Rum Pond. The state police are holding her as a material witness.”
“I don’t know the woman.”
“Was there anything else about your conversation? Maybe just something you sensed?”
“He’s frightened. You father would never admit to being scared. But I could always tell. Michael, you have to help him. You’re in law enforcement. Can’t you tell people he’s innocent?”
In her mind, it was as simple as that: If I said he was innocent, they’d believe me. “He has to give himself up.”
“He doesn’t trust anybody.”
“Well, he’s going to have to start.”
She pinched the gold cross around her neck between her thumb and forefinger. “It’s too late.”
With that she rose to her feet above me. She wiped the corner of her eye again and then smiled and took my face in her hands. “How are you, Michael? You don’t look well.”
“I’m fine. I’ve just had an exhausting week.”
“But you still like your job?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“Do you still think about applying to law school?”
“No.”
She nodded. “How’s Sarah?”
I’d never told them about Sarah moving out. In the two months since she’d been gone, it had never once occurred to me to tell my mother about it. That’s how estranged we’d become. Part of me was tempted to tell her the truth now-she’d been so candid with me-but instead I heard myself say, “She’s fine.”
She studied my eyes, and I wondered if she could detect my lie. “I’m sorry we never get up to see you two.”
“We all have busy lives.”
“Seeing you reminds me of so many things, Michael. You look so much like your father.”
I was beginning to realize that my mom-the rebellious Catholic schoolgirl who had gone from life in a backwoods trailer to suburban affluence-had depths to her heart I’d never be able to fathom.
18
When I was sixteen I told my mother I wanted to spend the summer with my dad. She tried to talk me out of it. She said I didn’t know what he was really like. I said, “That’s the reason I want to go.” Eventually, she gave in. She knew I hadn’t spent any significant stretch of time with him since the divorce, and I think she realized that the experience was something I needed to get out of my system. And I’m sure she didn’t mind being rid of me for three months during the tennis season.
“It would be great to see you!” my father said when I finally reached him over the radio phone that was Rum Pond Sporting Camps’ only connection to the outside world. “The only thing is, I don’t have space for you at my cabin. And I doubt Pelletier would give you a room.”
I said I would camp outside all summer in a tent, if need be.
“Let me think about it a bit and get back to you.”
But he never did. So I kept calling. I said I was willing to do whatever needed to be done at Rum Pond-washing dishes, splitting firewood, anything-in exchange for food.
“I guess we can find work for you,” he said. “But you know I’ll be busy, too. I don’t want you to expect too much.”
I said that wouldn’t be a problem.
Two days after school let out in June, I was on the bus from Portland to Waterville. My dad had said he would pick me up at the station, but there was no one there when I arrived. I waited and waited. When I finally got through to Rum Pond, Russell Pelletier said my father was off somewhere in the woods, and I’d just have to hitchhike the eighty or so miles up Route 201 to The Forks and from there find my way down a logging road-another twenty miles-to camp. If I was lucky, he said, I might be able to catch a ride into the woods with one of the pulp trucks. “Otherwise you’re looking at the longest walk of your life,” he said with undisguised amusement.
I wandered out into the parking lot, feeling the sudden weight of the packed clothes and books in my backpack. What the hell had I gotten myself into?
I started through Waterville in what I hoped was a northerly direction, looking for the road to Skowhegan. I walked maybe half a mile before I became aware of a pickup creeping along behind me. It was an old Ford, and it was moving at scarcely more than an idle, ten or so yards back. A flutter of fear announced itself down in the bottom of my stomach.
Suddenly I heard the truck’s engine rev and out of the corner of my eye saw it gunning toward me. I stumbled onto the shoulder and fell over on my ass. The truck squealed to a stop beside me, and the passenger door opened. Inside sat a dusky-skinned man with a case of Budweiser on his lap and a broken-toothed grin on his face. My father was behind the wheel.
“Hey, pretty boy, want a lift?” he said.
“I think he’s having a heart attack,” said the other man, speaking with a singsong accent I didn’t recognize. He looked to be about my father’s age, but not as healthy; there was a flabby look to his arms and chest. He had bowl-cut black hair and a face that was as round as a pie. “We got him, I think.”
“Yeah, you got me.” I stood up. “That’s real funny.”
“Lighten up, Mike,” said my father. “We’re just yanking your chain.”
“Mr. Pelletier told me you were off in the woods somewhere.”
“We told him to say that!” said the other man. “We wanted to see what you’d do.”
“This is Truman Dellis,” said my father.
“Howdy,” he said.
“There’s not enough room up front. You’ll have to ride in back,” said my father.
I wriggled out of my backpack and tossed it into the truck bed, then climbed in, trying to find a spot to settle down between the junk. There were a couple of chainsaws back there, two spare tires, and another four cases of beer. The bed was heavily rusted and wet with oil, and as we headed north, I felt it soaking through the seat of my new jeans.
It was a long, spine-rattling ride. Every pothole jolted me into the air or caused my teeth to clack against one another. Through the back window of the truck cab I watched my father drinking beer while he drove. Every now and again, Truman would turn around and wave at me through the glass and laugh. The wind ruffled my hair and poked its cold fingers into my ears. Once I caught the faintest hint of Truman singing along to Garth Brooks on the radio.
Meanwhile the country streamed by. The rolling agricultural lands around Waterville and Skowhegan gave way to the dark forested river valley of the Kennebec. Green-hazed mountains appeared in the west, and the houses became fewer and fewer along the highway-just the occasional old clapboard homestead lost amid the maples and spruce. North of The Forks, where the Dead River rushes into the Kennebec, we turned onto a rutted logging road and followed the setting sun up into the hill country. Dust, raised by the logging trucks, powdered the trees along the road, and one time a big truck, loaded with trees the length of telephone poles, came barreling out of the woods as if intent on flattening us like an insect against its grill. My father played chicken with it before dodging aside at the absolute last second. The truck rushed by, horn blaring, pulling a hurricane of dust behind it that left me choking, half-blind, and spitting mud.
I was dirt-covered and sunburned when we reached the last forest gate that blocked the road down to Rum Pond. Truman scurried out of the truck and unlocked the chain gate so we could pass. Soon we were burrowing through old-growth pines, taller than any trees I had ever seen. I peered over the top of the cab and saw a flash of blue ahead through the pine needles and then suddenly we were stopped in a compound of buildings made of hemlock logs and pine planks.
My father lay on the horn, and Truman leaned his head out the window and shouted, “This is it!”
A man with a drooping black mustache appeared in the door of one of the log buildings. He had a cigarette clenched between his fingers. “Is this the new serf?” he asked, pointing at me with the lit end of the cigarette.
“Yep,” said my father. “What do you think?”
“Kind of scrawny.”
“But he’s a hard worker-just like hi
s old man.”
“I thought he was your son.”
“Fuck you,” said my father. “This is Russ Pelletier. He owns this dump.”
“You want me to give him the ten-cent tour?” Pelletier asked my father.
Truman was unloading the cases of liquor and lugging them into the back of what I assumed was the main lodge.
“Go ahead,” said my father. “Send him over to my camp when you’re done.”
“What about my stuff?” I asked.
“I’ll take care of it. Damn, it’s good to see you, Mike.” He clapped me on the shoulder so hard it hurt, but the gesture made me happier than anything in a long time.
For the next half hour Pelletier showed me around.
The sporting camp consisted of a main lodge, four guest cabins, an open-sided woodshed, toolshed, and boathouse, all built on the shore of a long lake carved between mountains. There didn’t appear to be a single other building on the lake, just miles and miles of spruce and maples sloping down from talus cliffs to the water’s edge.
“This was originally a logging operation,” Pelletier said. “Built back in the eighteen nineties. You see that building over there by the lake? That used to be a post office. It served as the central location for distribution of mail for this whole area-from Flagstaff all the way up to Jackman.”
Black flies had descended in a buzzing cloud around my head as we stood looking at the lake. “Where’s your nearest neighbor?”
“That depends,” said Pelletier, oblivious of the biting insects. “There’s another sporting camp over to Spencer Lake, but you’d have to hike over those mountains there to get to it. We have to drive down to Flagstaff or out to The Forks to get our mail and everything else we need.”
I waved my hand near my face, but the bugs kept biting me.
Pelletier looked at me with a sly smile. “I guess they like your blood,” he said. “Come on, let’s go inside.”
Inside the kitchen of the main lodge, a skinny little girl was chopping onions for a stew pot. Truman was leaning against the sink eating a raw onion as if it were an apple.
“Howdy,” he said.
“This is Truman’s girl, B.J.,” said Pelletier. “She and my wife, Doreen, do all the cooking around here.”
