Almost Midnight

by Paul Doiron

  20

  Not until Gorman Peaslee had driven off did I notice that a young boy had come down the road from the farmhouse and was standing in the gap in the fence.

  He was wearing a blue shirt, high-water black pants held up by suspenders, clunky boots, and a broad-brimmed straw hat. His head was square shaped with wide-set brown eyes like those of a herd animal of the savanna. His hair, the same hay color as his hat, had been cut in straight bangs that fell below his eyebrows. In his small hand he clutched a switch he’d made from a ruddy birch branch. I guessed him to be about ten although he might have been short for his age.

  “Good morning.” He had the faintest trace of a Teutonic accent.

  “Good morning,” Ronette said for both of us. “What’s your name?”

  “Samuel.”

  “Samuel Stoll?”

  “Ja. Who are you?”

  “I’m Warden Landry, and this is Warden Bowditch. We’re game wardens. That’s a kind of police officer.”

  “I know what a game warden is.”

  “Are your parents home, Sam?” I asked.

  “Samuel.” His face had remained empty of emotions. “Datt went to town with Uncle Ike. I am supposed to watch the sheep.”

  “What about your mother?” Ronette said. “Is she here?”

  “Mamm is making pies with Indigo and my sisters.”

  I recognized the name of Zane Wilson’s girlfriend. “Can you get her for us?”

  He pointed the switch at the flock in the pasture. “I am supposed to watch the sheep.”

  The child’s lack of affect unsettled me. “I bet your donkey can protect them while you’re gone.”

  “Not if the black one comes back.”

  “The black what?”

  “The black coyote. He killed Little Amos and dragged him away before Datt could get his gun.”

  Ronette and I exchanged glances.

  “Little Amos was another of your family’s donkeys?” I asked as if the answer weren’t obvious.

  The boy bit his lower lip so hard I saw his upper teeth and he whipped the branch back and forth as if it were a cutlass.

  “Would it be all right if we walked down to the house, do you think?” Ronette asked.

  “If you are police, as you say.”

  “We are.”

  “Then you are welcome.”

  Ronette locked up her vehicle. Samuel stepped aside to let us pass. I wanted to make a new start with the blank-faced child. I squatted down on my heels. “I am very sorry about what happened to Little Amos.”

  But, of course, the boy didn’t understand why I felt the need to apologize for what a wild animal had done.

  * * *

  “Strange to see a house without power or cable lines, isn’t it?” Ronette said as we drew near the farmstead.

  “At least their lives don’t stop every time a storm knocks out power to the grid.”

  Most of the first-floor windows were dark, but several at the far end were illuminated by lantern light. I took that room to be the kitchen.

  The young woman who answered the door wasn’t remotely Amish. She was thin with honey-brown dreadlocks and a stud in her nostril. She wore blue jeans and a loose gingham shirt from which tattoos were peeking out at the wrists and above the neckline. On her feet were a pair of purple gardening boots. She smelled of marijuana.

  “You probably don’t remember me,” Ronette said.

  The woman wrinkled her nose. “Did you arrest me once?”

  “No.”

  “Then, sorry, no.”

  “I’m Ronette Landry and this is Mike Bowditch. We’re with the Maine Warden Service. We’d like to ask Mrs. Stoll a few questions.”

  “About what?”

  “Can you get her for us, please, Ms. Mazur?”

  From behind the young woman, a female voice said, “Let them in, Indigo. No need to be rude.”

  Nearly identical black coats hung from hooks along the wall of the mudroom. Where the hallway met the kitchen stood a woman wearing a homespun dress, a white apron, and a heart-shaped bonnet made of some sheer fabric. Her hair was the shiny brown of a model’s in a shampoo commercial, but her skin was ruddy with untreated rosacea. If I had to guess, I would have said she was somewhere in her late thirties, a full decade older than Indigo Mazur.

  “I am Anna Stoll,” she said in the same slightly Germanic accent as her son’s.

  “We saw you out there talking to Peabrain,” said Indigo.

  “You know how I hate it when you call him that.”

  The hippie chick rolled her bloodshot eyes. “The man’s a tool, Anna.”

  Anna Stoll wiped her flour-covered hands on her apron and beckoned us forward. “Please, come inside where it is warm.”

  Warm was an understatement; the kitchen was so hot that they had been forced to open the windows. The air smelled of woodsmoke from the stove and of kerosene burning in the lanterns mounted along the walls. More subtle odors drifted on the moving air: cinnamon, nutmeg, lemon. They were making pies.

  In my utter ignorance of their culture, I had been under the impression that Amish women were forbidden to speak with strange men, but Anna Stoll seemed poised and confident.

  Still, it was Indigo, the blunt Brooklynite, who took the lead. “Are you here about the coyote?”

  “It was too big to be a coyote,” Anna said. “It was someone’s pet dog.”

  “That’s what Zane keeps saying. I bet it belongs to Peabrain. He breeds some kind of super-aggressive watchdogs. We can sometimes hear them barking at our place, and that’s like two miles from his house. If it was his dog, he should be punished for letting it run loose.”

  I turned from Indigo to address Anna Stoll. “What can you tell us about the animal?”

  “It slaughtered their burro!” said Indigo. “His name was Little Amos!”

  She seemed pretty well baked to me. The cannabis had brought her emotions close to the surface.

  In the far door I spotted two little girls peeking at us. Both of them were brown haired and wore bonnets like their mother’s. I waved awkwardly, and they ducked, terrified, behind the door frame.

  “We’d prefer to get the story from Mrs. Stoll,” said Ronette. “When did you first see this animal?”

  Indigo Mazur puffed air out of her mouth and sat down in the corner on a stool that looked to have been designed for milking cows.

  The Amish woman began, “A week ago, my husband and his brother Isaac were coming home from town after dark. They have a furniture shop along the main road. Down near the swamp, the horses became very nervous. Then behind them a black animal crossed the road, just out of the light of the carriage. They thought it must have been a bear.”

  Ronette had an easy way with these women. “Have you seen bears here?”

  “Once last summer, a mother and cubs. But we had bears in Pennsylvania.”

  I thought of taking out my notebook, then reconsidered, not wanting her to stop talking. “How soon after your husband saw the animal did it attack your donkey?”

  “The next morning. My husband thinks it was after one of our sheep. But Little Amos was very young, and he didn’t know that this big dog couldn’t be frightened away like the coyotes. It was quite horrible. My son saw it happen and came and told us, but when my husband ran outside with his gun, the dog was gone, and he’d taken Little Amos with him in his jaws like one of my daughter’s dolls.”

  “Did your husband pursue the animal?”

  “Yes, but he couldn’t follow him through the swamp.”

  “Do you know if he fired his gun?”

  “He didn’t have a chance.”

  “What about your brother or your neighbors?” asked Ronette. “Did any of them encounter this animal?”

  “No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, because the men were all talking about it again this morning, before they went to town.”

  I thought of Samuel Stoll, alone out there with nothing but a sw
itch. I found myself admiring his parents for letting him play outdoors. They hadn’t felt the need to keep their son inside as so many modern people would have done. The world held its share of dangers, but it was highly improbable “the black dog” would return to make a meal of the child. Their attitude seemed to be that a boy needs to be a boy if he is to grow up to be a man. But I was probably projecting my own mind-set on these anachronistic people.

  “I have another question. Have you or any of your neighbors seen signs of a second large dog roaming the area?”

  “You mean there are two of those monsters?” Indigo nearly knocked over the stool as she rose to her feet.

  “No, we haven’t,” said Anna. “Are my children and our animals in danger from these beasts?”

  Ronette and I spoke at the same exact instant.

  “No,” I said.

  “Maybe,” she said.

  “Are they rabid?” Indigo asked. “Is that why they’re attacking livestock?”

  “There is no evidence to suggest that,” said Ronette.

  “This might sound like a strange question,” I said, “but does anyone in your family own a crossbow?”

  “Like a slingshot?”

  “It’s a kind of mechanical bow and arrow.”

  Her voice rose noticeably. “We don’t have anything like that in this house.”

  “What about your neighbors?”

  “I think I would remember that kind of contraption if I had ever seen them using it.”

  Indigo ran a hand along her face, almost as if to calm herself. “Is it dead?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “From what you’re saying, it sounds like someone shot the black one with a crossbow. Why else would you have mentioned it? There’s something you’re not telling us.”

  As stoned as she was, the young woman was quick-witted.

  “You are so distrustful, Indigo,” said the Amish woman. “It makes me sad.”

  “It makes me sad that you’re overly trusting.”

  Anna Stoll shook her head. “Would you like some pie before you go?”

  Ronette and I exchanged hopeful smiles.

  21

  The pie was a variety I had never before tasted. It was very sweet—predominantly molasses flavored—with a hint of ginger and cloves in addition to the cinnamon and nutmeg I had smelled on the warm air. Anna served it to us with big glasses of unpasteurized milk from a literal icebox.

  “Is this shoofly pie?” Ronette asked.

  The Amish woman gave us a delighted grin. “You have had it before?”

  “Not like this.”

  “It’s delicious,” I agreed. I had always been a sucker for baked goods flavored with molasses.

  Indigo Mazur excused herself before we had finished cleaning the last crumbs from our plates. She said she had chores to finish back at home, but I knew she had concocted the excuse to get away from us. Habitual users of intoxicants don’t make a practice of hanging out with law-enforcement officers. I had to wonder what had happened in her history to make her so reflexively cynical. By contrast, Zane Wilson had come across as a naïf, which made me question the future of their relationship.

  We had just said our goodbyes to Anna and her peekaboo daughters when we heard Gorman Peaslee’s truck roar past again. This time, he was headed out.

  “I guess he was serious about not wanting to be interviewed,” I said to Ronette.

  “Gorman wouldn’t have spoken to us in any case. The only authority he acknowledges is his own.”

  I removed the dirt-stained Constitution from my pocket. “What about this?”

  “Didn’t you hear? Gorman Peaslee was that document’s sole author. And the sole arbiter on its legal interpretation.”

  I put away the pamphlet. “Does anyone else live down that way?”

  “Not this time of year. There are a couple of seasonal cabins, all for sale. The buyers didn’t know what it meant to have Gorman for a neighbor. Not until it was too late.”

  I recalled the vandalized real estate signs at the corner. Unconsciously, I found myself looking around for Samuel, but the boy must have tired of playing shepherd and wandered off to pursue some new adventure.

  “I’d like to have a look at Peaslee’s house, anyway,” I said.

  “What for?”

  “Because he doesn’t want me to.”

  The sky was growing darker. It wasn’t all that late in the afternoon, but heavy clouds had begun to descend on the summits of the taller mountains to the north, giving them an almost bisected appearance, as if they had been chopped down to the exact same elevation. The likelihood of a snowy drive home weighed upon my mood.

  We passed the two other Amish farms. One of the families kept dairy cattle. The Holsteins paused in their cud chewing to turn their wide, empty eyes in our direction.

  “I find it hard to believe that Anna Stoll has never heard of a crossbow,” I said.

  “That did seem odd.”

  When I didn’t speak again, Ronette filled in the silence. “Now you understand why I called Indigo Mazur a firecracker.”

  “How does someone like her end up living in a yurt in the middle of the woods?”

  “How else? Love.”

  “Should we have told her about Zane’s mishap with the truck?”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t—knowing the delight you take in mischief making.”

  “Who says I take delight in it?”

  “A certain state police trooper, for one.”

  I needed to keep in mind what close friends Ronette and my girlfriend were. I hadn’t communicated with Dani since she’d left my house the day before. How was she interpreting my prolonged silence?

  I had always attributed my successes in life to my ability to focus in the midst of chaos, but that same focus inclined me to self-involvement and a careless disregard toward the people around me. The moment was wrong for a phone call, but I needed to reach out to Dani as soon as I was alone again, if only to explain about Shadow.

  The vacant cabins Ronette had mentioned began to flit past, one after the other.

  “In a way it’s kind of impressive that one man could drive away so many people,” she said. “Awful, but impressive.”

  I didn’t find Peaslee’s tactics unusual. I had encountered plenty of men, and women, in the Maine woods who’d borrowed the same playbook. The prisoner Billy Cronk had killed, Trevor Dow, had been one of the worst offenders. For years, he and his redheaded clan had bullied an entire community into keeping mum about their multifarious crimes.

  “Is Peaslee married?”

  “Why get married when his money attracts an endless supply of girls? How that middle-aged creep manages to keep persuading young women—I was going to say it was a mystery, but the truth is it’s not mysterious at all. There will always be frogs willing to carry scorpions across the river.”

  “Is he gratuitously hateful or does he have an actual reason for acting like a shit heel?”

  “I’m no psychologist, but I think he’s terrified people are going to discover he’s not the big man he pretends to be. My priest would probably say Gorman’s fear has made him a slave to sin.”

  For Ronette everything came back to faith. I envied the comfort it obviously provided her. For me there had only ever been doubt.

  The road dead-ended at Peaslee’s property, running headlong into a wooden gate that bore a resemblance to a colonial-era stockade. Made of heavy logs, sharpened to points at the top, and secured with a chain big and strong enough to haul an eighteen-wheeler out of a ditch. Dual security cameras focused, like the binocular eyes of a carrion bird, on the entrance. Gorman would have a video record of our visit to review when he returned to his fortress of solitude.

  The fence continued in either direction from the gate, hiding the portion of the yard immediately behind it, but the house itself sat upon a low rise and was visible above the toothed barrier. The three-story cabin was made of the same orange-stained logs used to build the pal
isade. It wasn’t difficult for me to imagine Lord Peaslee in his rough-hewn castle, surveying with rage the farm fields of the religious zealots.

  Even before we stopped, dogs began to bark from inside the enclosure. To my ears they sounded large and hungry.

  “Rottweilers?”

  “Rottermans. They’re a Rottweiler/Doberman cross. Gorman breeds them and sells the puppies for a thousand bucks apiece.”

  Shadow and the she-wolf would have given the Rottermans a wide berth, needless to say.

  “How does Gorman make his money, aside from running a puppy mill?”

  “Guys like Peaslee always have some racket going. He and his brother own a snowmobile and ATV dealership in New Sharon. They make most of their money by financing machines to people who can’t afford them and then reselling the high-interest loans. They also run a rent-to-own franchise in Wilton. More recently, the Peaslees opened the first payday-loan business in Franklin County.”

  “The way you described him, I didn’t expect the blazer.”

  “I guarantee you he was carrying at least three handguns on him and probably had a fourth pointed through the door at you. I don’t know about you, but the sociopaths I’ve met are usually well-dressed.”

  Ronette rolled down her window and waved at the security cams.

  With the glass down, I listened to the hostile dogs massing on the opposite side of the gate. Even above their barking, I could hear the collisions of their big bodies against the logs as they sought to scramble over the high fence, their claws digging into the wood. I expected any second to see them come slobbering over the palisades, a vicious pack of hellhounds.

  “Seen enough?” Ronette asked.

  “No. But it’ll have to do for now.”

  * * *

  We had passed the Amish farms and were entering the birch thicket when I put a hand on Ronette’s forearm.

  “Pull in here.” I indicated the steep muddy track leading up through the ghost wood to the hidden yurt.

  “What else do you need to ask Indigo about?”

  “She seemed in a hurry to leave when the topic turned to Shadow.”

  “She might just dislike cops.”

  Call me crazy, but it seemed Indigo had been expecting us. She met us in her vehicle halfway down the deeply gouged dirt road. The car was a mid-aughts Subaru Baja. The eccentric design—a station wagon with an open truck bed—reminded me of the “Fiji mermaid” that P. T. Barnum had constructed by sewing the top half of a monkey to the back half of a fish.