Almost Midnight

by Paul Doiron

  But for all our arrogance, we had both succumbed to the role of cultural tourist. Stacey bought a beautiful little ash basket shaped and colored like a strawberry. It had, at least, been made by an actual Passamaquoddy artisan from eastern Maine. My souvenir, purchased in my near drunkenness, was a slate-gray T-shirt bearing the aphorism WHERE THE RAVEN FLIES, THE WOLF FOLLOWS. Only after I had gotten home did I discover the Made in China tag inside.

  I heard a truck downshifting up the hill.

  It had to be Mary’s apprentice, Zane. She’d said he would be arriving soon.

  I began to hopscotch on the patches of snow in a path toward the dooryard. I arrived around the corner of the house in time to see a Toyota pickup spinning around the driveway in a circle. It let out a sudden farting burst of exhaust and disappeared down the hill in a cloud of noxious fumes.

  Gary Pulsifer had opened the door of his patrol truck, preparing to give chase.

  “Why’s he running?” I called.

  “I have no idea. Should I go after him?”

  I started forward through the slushy mud. “I’ll go with you.”

  The road up had seemed slow and steep; the road down seemed precipitous. The switchbacks came one after the other, and around each corner loomed a tree thick enough to flatten the most rugged of vehicles. Pulsifer reached to turn on his pursuit lights, but I stopped his hand.

  “I am afraid he’s going to panic and go off the road.”

  “Too late for that.”

  Just past the storm-blasted field of deadfalls Pulsifer pumped the brakes, but still slid across a patch of ice until the studs kicked in and caught us.

  We jumped out and looked down a hillside of snags and fallen timber. The plummeting path the Tacoma had taken showed itself in broken logs and flattened baby pines. The exhaust pipe was still smoking, but there was no sign of movement from the wrecked pickup, thirty feet below.

  16

  My first thought was that the poor bastard must be dead. Then I saw an arm emerge from the driver’s window, and a moment later a bearded young man began crawling from the wreckage. His face was covered with blood as if with war paint. But he seemed to be moving well, with no signs of broken bones.

  “Stay there!” I said. “We’ll come to you.”

  He kept scrambling as if he hadn’t heard me.

  Pulsifer shook his red head. “The fool is going to impale himself trying to climb through the blowdowns.”

  “Better get a rope.” I cupped my hands around my mouth. “Stay there, Zane!”

  But the bloody man would not be deterred. From above, I saw that he was a little guy, so skinny that even dressed in a hooded work coat, farmer’s overalls, and steel-toed logging boots, he looked like a kid wearing his father’s clothes. He seemed to have modeled his hairstyle and beard on Jesus as depicted on the covers of books aimed at teenaged Christian girls.

  Pulsifer’s truck was a mess, and he was having trouble finding a belaying line. Unwilling to wait, I began picking my way down the obstacle course of logs. Sheets of ice were hidden under the dead leaves. I slid and skinned my knee on the first log in the path.

  By then, Zane Wilson had almost reached my position. Even banged up and bleeding, he had clambered up that incline with the energy and sure-footedness of a goat.

  Behind me, I heard Pulsifer return and utter an all-purpose curse, probably at having had to fetch a rope that was not needed, but perhaps out of exasperation with the morning in general.

  “Take it easy, Zane,” I said as he drew near my position.

  It was almost as if he hadn’t been aware of me before. He stopped short, wiped blood from his eyes, and shook his head the way a wet dog might.

  “Are you all right?”

  He tapped his head behind his ear and opened and closed his mouth.

  “Zane?”

  “Sorry, I’m on the fritz,” he said in the blunted syllables of someone partially deaf. “Hearing aid’s not working right.”

  “What the hell were you running for?” Pulsifer shouted from above. He’d raised his voice even louder hoping it would penetrate Zane’s damaged eardrums.

  The guy had enormous blue eyes like those of a cartoon rabbit drawn by Walt Disney. “Are you going to arrest me?”

  “That depends.” I tried to move my lips so that he could read them. “Did you commit a crime?”

  * * *

  I sat him down on the tailgate and checked his pulse. It was rapid-fire, but no more than one would have expected. Most of the blood was flowing from a horizontal cut along his forehead that resembled the initial incision a mad scientist would have made before attempting a brain transplant. Wounds to the skull bleed copiously and often appear worse than they are. This seemed true in the case of Zane Wilson, who, aside from his malfunctioning hearing aid, showed no signs of a concussion, broken bones, or internal injuries.

  “Can you read lips, Zane?” I said as I applied a compression bandage to his dripping forehead.

  “I haven’t had to in a while, but yes.”

  I’d given Pulsifer the injured man’s wallet to call in his driver’s license to see if he had outstanding warrants or a criminal record that explained his escape attempt.

  “What happened here? Why did you take off like that?”

  “I came up the hill and saw the police and figured you were here to bust Mary.”

  “For bootlegging?”

  “She’s always said the law was after her and would drag her off to prison someday.”

  Standing this close to him, I became aware of how dirty his clothes were and how badly he reeked of body odor. But his teeth were so white and perfectly aligned that a skilled orthodontist had to have played a starring role in his dental history.

  “Bootleggers aren’t my concern. I’m Warden Investigator Bowditch and my partner is Warden Pulsifer. The reason we’re here is that Mary discovered an injured wolf near her woodpile last night. Someone had shot the animal with a crossbow bolt. Would you know anything about that?”

  He paused so long I thought he hadn’t understood. “Is it dead?”

  “Not yet.”

  “And it’s an actual wolf, not someone’s dog or something?”

  “Mary told us you saw an animal that fit its description. Is that true?”

  It was a simple enough question, but I noted how his gaze shifted from mine.

  “I saw it in my headlights the other night as I was driving home. I didn’t see it well.”

  “When was this?”

  “Two, three nights ago.”

  “And did it look wounded? Like it might have been in pain?”

  He fiddled with his malfunctioning hearing aid.

  Pulsifer reappeared, waving Zane’s driver’s license between two fingers. “It’s no mystery why he hightailed it. His license is expired. Also his truck hasn’t been inspected in two years. Plus, he’s got three arrests on his sheet for possession.”

  The injured man finally piped up, but his tone was respectful. “I shouldn’t have run like that, but I panicked because of my history with the police. I’ve been apprenticing with Mary because my girlfriend and I want to open a legal craft distillery. Cannabis has caused me too much trouble, and it’s only going to get taken over by agribusiness anyway, so what’s the point?”

  Despite the grime and cloud of funk that hung about him, he spoke like a man who had received an excellent education.

  Pulsifer leaned close to my ear. “What do you want to do with this character?”

  I rubbed my unshaven jaw. “I think totaling his truck and losing a pint of blood is worse punishment than being arrested.”

  “I feel like a doc should have a look at him.”

  Where had this kindly man come from? Whoever he was, he certainly wasn’t the Gary Pulsifer I remembered. “You’re probably right.”

  “What do you say, Zane?” Pulsifer said. “How about I drive you to the hospital in Farmington. A doctor needs to stitch up that head wound.”

 
; “No, thank you.”

  “We can’t make you go, but take it from me, you need a professional to treat that cut.”

  Zane produced an oil-stained bandanna from his pocket. With horror we watched him tie the dirty cloth over the gauze bandage I’d taped to his skull.

  “It’s just a scrape. I’m not worried about it. Besides, I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to do about my truck.”

  “How about we call a wrecker for you then?” Pulsifer asked.

  “No, thank you. I can handle it.”

  Alcohol Mary appeared in the road near the top of the hill. Her coat was blowing open in the breeze revealing the faded dress beneath. “What’s going on there? What did you do to my apprentice?”

  Pulsifer answered before I could. “Mr. Wilson had an accident.”

  She dug her bare hands into her pockets and began marching toward us. “Accident? What kind of accident?” Then she spotted the skid marks where the Tacoma had left the road and launched into space. “Jeezum Crow, Zane! I’m not paying to haul your vehicle out of there. And you sure as shit ain’t leaving it. I’m not one of those hicks who likes having junked cars all over my property.”

  “I’m sorry, Mary.”

  “Christ Almighty. You knocked your head, too? You already couldn’t hear worth a damn.”

  “My hearing aid broke, but I’m all right. The other’s OK.”

  “I won’t be legally liable for your medical bills either, so you better not be planning on hiring some slick lawyer to sue me. I maintain this road in tip-top condition. You sue me, and I’ll sue you right back.”

  “I’m not going to sue you, Mary.”

  “So are you going to sit there bleeding all day or are you going to char those barrels we talked about?”

  I doubted that Mary Gowdie was the first person to mistake his hearing difficulties and imperfect articulation as a lack of intelligence.

  “I have one last question for him,” I said.

  The woman put her hands on her hips. “You wardens are worse than the Spanish Inquisition!”

  “Where did you say you saw the wolf, Zane?”

  “Near the trees in back.”

  I dug out a business card, one with my private cell number on it, and gave it to him. “If you start having doubts and think you might have been mistaken or remember anything else of importance, you can reach me day or night.”

  He slid the card into his shirt pocket, where I was certain he would forget it. “I only saw it that one time at the edge of the field behind the house.”

  Misdemeanors aside, he seemed like a nice enough guy. Naïve, maybe. But nice.

  So why was he lying to me about Shadow?

  17

  Pulsifer and I shook hands, and I thanked him for what he’d done to save Shadow’s life, if only temporarily. He extended an invitation to visit him and his family on their farm, an hour to the north, and I sensed that it wasn’t merely a gesture of politeness. As I watched him drive off ahead of me, I remembered the words he’d spoken to Mary Gowdie when he’d rejected her temptation of a drink: People can change.

  I wasn’t certain I shared that belief. But seeing a serene Gary Pulsifer had given me pause.

  At the bottom of the hill, where the dirt road intersected the mountain pass connecting Pennacook and the Sandy River Valley, I had a choice to make. Turn right and return to the mill town on the Androscoggin where Shadow lay on his deathbed. Or turn left and begin collecting evidence that might lead me to the crossbowman and, with luck, the she-wolf.

  I turned left.

  The inquiry would have to be purely personal, done on my own time: Pulsifer had been correct that the Warden Service wouldn’t sanction one of its investigators wasting his duty hours on such a minor matter that probably wouldn’t even result in criminal charges. Fortunately, I still had a few days of vacation.

  As it descended, Route 142 afforded me fleeting glimpses of the early-spring valley and the backsides of the ski mountains beyond. While winter reigned on the summits, at the lower elevations there were faint indications of life returning to the land. The evergreens, which became darker during the cold months, had a verdant brightness in their needles. Elsewhere the colors were softer and more muted: a landscape rendered in pastels. Ochers and khakis, dove grays and taupes. To newcomers, the hills and fields along the Sandy River must have appeared dead, or at least sleeping, but what I noticed was the arterial redness of the dogwoods and the first furry catkins peeking out from the branches of the aspens.

  Adrenaline and caffeine had powered me through the night, but my body was beginning to crash. I wore my exhaustion like a lead-weighted coat.

  I pulled over at a sideswipe in the snowbanks where the plows had cleared an arc to turn around and continue back up the mountainside. I had worried I would lose my cell signal once I reached the bottomlands, but I hadn’t. I tapped out a text to the district warden, Ronette Landry.

  What are you up to?

  The answer came at once.

  Just rolling and patrolling. RU in the area?

  I’m in Phillips. But I don’t want to drag you from work.

  Please do! There aren’t a lot of anglers along the Sandy 2day. Want coffee?

  You read my mind. Where?

  There’s a place called The Bard. It’s in Avon.

  You’re shitting me.

  Coffee’s good even. Can meet you there in 15.

  Ronette and I weren’t friends, but we had worked that hunting homicide on Maquoit Island together. In addition to being a patrol warden, she was a longtime member of the Maine Warden Service Evidence Recovery Team, an expert in DNA handling, blood-spatter analysis, and crime-scene photography. She did double duty as part of the Forensic Mapping Team, which utilizes high-tech data collectors to reconstruct crash scenes and determine bullet trajectories. As an investigator still wet behind the ears, I found myself intimidated by her breadth of knowledge.

  While I had been texting Ronette, I had missed a call from Dr. Holman. Driving distracted, with one hand on the wheel, I hit the callback button and prepared myself for bad news.

  “He’s still hanging in there.”

  I swerved close to a snowbank. “Really?”

  “His vitals are holding steady. He’s one tough son of a gun.” She cleared her throat in a way that reawakened the lepidoptera in my stomach. “I had one of my assistants do some reading about the laws concerning wolf hybrids. And I have a few questions I need you to address for me. They have to do with the clinic’s responsibilities and liabilities.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “It’s unclear whether he should be categorized as a wild animal or a feral dog. If he’s a wolf, doesn’t he legally belong to the state? That’s my understanding of how Maine laws apply to wild animals.”

  “Yes, but Shadow was originally registered as a wolf dog. That makes him a domestic animal under the statute.”

  She paused to consider the ramifications. “How do you know his name? What is it you’re not telling me?”

  “I rescued Shadow from some drug addicts a few years ago. To the extent anyone can lay a claim to him, it’s me.”

  “So what was he doing up on Number Six Mountain?”

  “A few years ago, he got away from me in the woods near the Widowmaker Ski Resort and has been on the run ever since.”

  “Did you make an effort to relocate him?”

  “Yes.”

  This was a complete lie. The truth was I hadn’t known what to do about the fugitive wolf dog, and it had been easier and more self-indulgent for me to fantasize about his becoming a modern-day White Fang.

  “I’m surprised we never heard anything about this from the state,” Holman said. “If not from the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife, then at least from the Animal Welfare people at the Ag Department.”

  “We thought announcing that a de facto wolf was on the loose near Rangeley Lake would cause a mass panic. We worried it might endanger domestic dogs, as well as coyot
es.”

  In this case, the pronoun we consisted of just me, Gary Pulsifer, and a few coconspirators.

  Holman paused to process my justification. “I feel like I should be in touch with someone at the Department of Agriculture, at least.”

  “That’s really not necessary. As I said at the clinic before, I am willing to cover all of his medical bills. Put my name down as his owner.”

  “You’re willing to swear he belongs to you then?”

  “I am.”

  “I’m serious about this because I could lose my license for knowingly violating the law.”

  I took a deep breath. “I swear.”

  18

  Never having visited the United Kingdom, I couldn’t compare Stratford-upon-Avon to the rural Maine town that had borrowed the name of the English river. But I suspected that the high street of Shakespeare’s birthplace didn’t include a fireworks dealership, a marijuana grow shop, or an automotive graveyard. Maine’s Avon consisted of little more than farm fields and two high-speed roads that ran parallel—one to the north of the Sandy River and one to the south—without a single bridge to connect them. You had to drive to the next town to cross the stream.

  I found the Bard of Avon coffeehouse across the highway from a masonry school and down the road from an airstrip named for Charles Lindbergh because the celebrity pilot had set down there once in the 1940s. From the outside, the building appeared to be nothing special: another box of painted cinder blocks. But it sported an artful-looking wooden sign with an image of Will Shakespeare hefting a steaming mug of joe.

  Somehow Ronette had beaten me there. Her black patrol truck was identical in every way to Pulsifer’s except that it gleamed with a fresh coat of wax and wasn’t dented and scratched from having backed into stumps and sideswiped tree branches. It was, notably, the lone vehicle in the lot.

  The interior of the Bard was like a trip back in time to the Age of Aquarius. Folk music keened from unseen speakers. The walls were papered over with leaflets, posters, and flyers for upcoming contra dances and candlelight vigils protesting wind farms, and advertisements for practitioners of Ayurvedic Yoga Therapy and Rolfing.