by Paul Doiron
At the base of a moldering hunk of wood, the remnants of a formerly impressive tree, was a bulbous brown fungus the size and shape of a brain. “What is it?”
“Hen of the woods,” he said. “Some folks call it a ram’s head or sheep’s head. That fungus there—if I drove it down to one of those fancy restaurants in Portland, I could probably sell it for three hundred bucks.”
“Jesus.”
“And it ain’t even the biggest hen I’ve found.”
“I think you might consider a new line of work in your retirement,” I said.
“Who says I’m retired? The thing about these hens is that you almost always find them around red oaks. Sometimes you might see one under a black locust. But what do you see around you here?” He gestured at the nearly leafless trees around me.
“These are maples,” I said.
“Red maples,” he said. “This mushroom has no business being up here. It’s supposed to be in a stand of oaks, down on wet ground. Instead, it’s up on this sandy hillside, where no forager would ever think to look for it.”
“So this is supposed to be a metaphor about solving mysteries? Isn’t the point that you got lucky when you stumbled on it?”
“Not exactly,” he said with a wink. “See the thing of it is, that stump used to belong to an oak. She was a big beauty that blew down years ago when I was a young warden in this district. Crashed right down onto the tote road, blocking traffic. The Skillens crew had a devil of a time hauling it out of these woods. I happened to remember that giant tree when I was out poking around, so I scrambled up here, and what do you know? There’s a baby hen.”
“It still seems to me like you lucked out,” I said.
“Call it luck, then. I guess my point is that if I were following a guidebook, instead of thinking about my early days as a young warden, I would’ve strolled past this beauty. Instead, I let my imagination wander and it brought me somewhere I never would’ve explored otherwise. I only found it because I stopped looking where I was supposed to.”
I scratched a new mosquito bite on my neck. “I’m not sure I’m persuaded.”
“That won’t stop you from eating it, though, I bet.” He grinned. “Stand back a way while I give her a whack with this tomahawk.”
I stood aside while Charley chopped the mushroom free from its stalk. It had lobes that reminded me a little of feathers on a grouse, which was probably how the fungus got its name. He let me heft it in my hand, and it weighed a lot more than I’d expected. Then he eased it into his mesh sack, rearranging the smaller mushrooms to keep from damaging them. “The Boss is making a pasta dish with wild mushrooms,” he said, using his pet name for Ora. “But there’s more than enough to feed a Marine platoon, so I guess I’ll be drying some of these for the winter.”
As we clambered back down onto the tote road, I noticed how dark everything had gotten. The lichen on the boulders seemed luminescent in the half-light, and the hairy cap moss seemed to give off a spectral glow. If you looked up, you could see the gap between the trees on both sides of the road, but the bushes around us seemed to be closing in, and I found myself experiencing an unexpected sensation of claustrophobia. I loved being in the woods at night and never felt the slightest anxiety. It took me a minute to allow my mother’s gaunt face back into my thoughts.
I felt something brush past my head, flying in the same direction as we were going, back along the tote road beside the lake.
“Here they come,” whispered Charley.
“Bats?”
“Stand still a minute.”
The bats came in waves, just a few at first, zipping around my head and shoulders, using their amazing powers of echolocation to avoid colliding with one another and us. But I could feel the delicate tips of their wings inches from my skin, and I could hear their thinly pitched sonar squeaks. I don’t know how long it lasted or how many flew by us—hundreds, thousands—but it was like being surrounded and engulfed by a living, sentient cloud. The fear left me, replaced by an upwelling sense of wonder in my chest. I had an impulse to spread out my arms, wishing the bats might somehow lift me up and carry me off to some secret place only they knew about. Then, just like that, they were gone, and Charley and I were standing silently side by side on the benighted road.
“Happens every evening around this time,” he said in a hushed tone like one you’d use in church. “They fly up the lake, following this path in the woods, and then out over the water. Don’t have a clue where they go, but it’s a rare thrill to be standing here when they come past you in the dark.”
“That was amazing,” I said.
“It breaks my heart every fall when they migrate. I stand here waiting for them to come, but they’ve moved on. Ora says the first night without the bats is the official start of autumn around here.”
It was in that moment that I decided to tell Charley Stevens about my mother.
28
He didn’t press me for details. Charley’s preferred method of counseling was to let me say what I had to say, and if he thought I was being shortsighted or unreasonable, he might give me a gentle, usually humorous prod to remind me how irrational I was being. But what do you say to a man whose mother is dying, especially when it is clear that there are no longer any questions left to be asked, when the finality of the situation is all that remains? My friend, who had witnessed so many deaths, knew that all you could offer was condolences and the comfort of a listening ear.
After a few minutes, his German short-haired pointer, Nimrod, emerged from the undergrowth, his coat stuck all over with burrs and bits of leaves. Lacking a real tail, the dog wagged the whole back half of his body.
“I wonder if he found a bird.” I pulled a burdock from between his floppy ears.
“I’d thought of bringing my shotgun with me,” Charley said. “But I’ve killed more than a few partridge this fall, and mushrooming is a quieter pursuit.”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Of course, son.”
“Don’t tell Ora about my mom until after I’ve gone home tonight. I’m not sure I can tell it one more time.”
“She’ll sense there’s something worrying you,” he said. “The woman’s got a special insight into the human heart.”
“I just don’t want to talk about it right now, especially around…”
I didn’t have to say his daughter’s name.
I saw the shadow of his head nod and then felt the reassuring weight of his hand on my shoulder as we walked back to the house in the dark.
* * *
As we approached the Stevenses’ glowing home, I saw a porch light on outside the little guest cabin beside the water. Two vehicles were pulled up in front: a newly detailed Subaru Outback with a kayak roof rack and a black GMC Denali that I recognized as Matt Skillen’s. I hadn’t expected to feel any lower after my confession to Charley, but I found myself dropping through an emotional trapdoor.
At the top of the wheelchair ramp, Charley stomped his feet a few times to kick loose whatever mud had stuck to his boots, and I did the same. He opened the door, and we entered what was essentially a single enormous room that combined the kitchen, dining area, and seating area with a set of chairs arranged around the fireplace. Everything was a little lower to the ground than in a typical home, the countertops, the doorknobs: a concession to Ora’s wheelchair.
She was in the kitchen, peering into an oven, from which I caught the cinnamon and nutmeg smell of an apple pie.
“You’re back early,” she said, giving us a radiant smile.
“You know I can’t stand to be away from you, Boss,” Charley said, bending down to kiss her cheek.
“What did you find today?”
He patted my shoulder. “Aside from this lost soul? I found quite the treasure trove of fungi.” He emptied the dirty mushrooms into the sink. Ora had to raise her body in the chair to get a good look at everything. “Chanterelles, hedgehogs, matsutakes, and this whopper of a hen.”
“
Oh, Charley,” she said. “Those are beautiful.”
He glanced farther into the room with a furrowed brow. There was a fire crackling in the fireplace. It threw flickering yellow light on the metal surfaces of the lamps and chairs. “So it looks like we have an extra guest for dinner,” he said.
“Stacey invited Matt.”
Charley pulled off his hat and hung it from a deer-hoof coatrack I recognized from their former cabin. His short white hair stuck up in all directions. “Where are those two?”
“Down by the lake, watching the sunset.” She wheeled herself to the refrigerator and pulled it open with her strong forearms. “Would you like something to drink, Mike? I made some sun tea, but we also have milk and orange juice and beer.”
I accepted a glass of tea—I was still on duty—but my throat ached for a beer.
“So where’s this new porch?” I asked. “Ora told me you were building her something special, Charley.”
“Come have a look-see.” He stepped behind his wife’s wheelchair without her having said a word and pushed her across the carefully swept floor. Ora seemed not to mind having Charley do things for her—push her chair, fetch fallen objects from the floor—that other paraplegics might have felt undercut their independence. Their relationship seemed not to involve any second-guessing.
The new porch was actually two connected porches—one half was screened and roofed, the other was open to the elements. “The bugs here are worse than back home,” said Ora, which was how she still referred to their lost property on Flagstaff Pond. “And I wanted to put plastic up and create a sort of greenhouse here in the wintertime.”
I inspected the joinery, as if I knew a thing or two about carpentry beyond how to hammer a nail. I was about to say something meaningless about the impressiveness of Charley’s work, when we heard a woman’s laugh down the hill and then the creak of footsteps on the zigzagging ramp that climbed from the lakefront up to the new porch. A moment later, Stacey slid open the screen door and stepped into the sheltered half of the porch, followed by her fiancé.
She was wearing jeans and a bone-colored thermal pullover that showed what a string bean she was. She usually dressed in mannish clothing: a quirk that had given rise to some rumors about her sexuality when she’d first joined the department. I’d never once seen her in a skirt, I realized. But she had inherited her mom’s natural prettiness, which needed no help from mascara or lipstick to make her face look feminine.
Matt Skillen was dressed as if he’d just come from celebrating casual Friday at the office: crisp pink oxford shirt, open at the throat; unwrinkled chinos; wingtips. He, too, looked slim and athletic; you could picture them as one of those couples who run 10K races together on Saturday mornings. His hair was thick and wavy, as if he took pride in it and liked to leave it a little long. He was holding an open bottle of Grolsch beer.
“Hello,” said Stacey with a polite smile, neither friendly nor forced.
Skillen held out his hand, which was rougher than I would have expected. “Hi, Mike. Good to see you. I heard you were joining us for dinner.”
I had been under the impression it was the other way around.
“Did you see the bats?” Ora asked her daughter.
“Not tonight,” said Stacey. “I think we were too late.”
“Your dad and I ran into them coming up the tote road,” I said. “That was quite an experience, to be surrounded by them like that.”
“Tomás was telling me that in his village in Mexico there are vampire bats,” said Skillen.
“It’s so good of you to mentor him the way you do,” said Ora. “Those migrant families have such hard lives.”
“When you see the living conditions at those camps, it just turns your stomach,” said Skillen. “I’ve been really lucky in my life, and I think it’s important for someone in my position to help people who haven’t had the same breaks.”
If I hadn’t seen him fishing with the boy on Grand Lake Stream, I probably would have rolled my eyes at this high-minded speech. But Skillen actually seemed to care about the boy. I found myself both respecting his altruism and resenting it as yet another reason for Stacey to prefer him to me.
“Those farmworkers must be headed back south soon,” Charley said.
Skillen took a sip from his beer bottle. “Most of them have left already for Florida, but Tomás’s family stayed for the apple harvest.”
“He asked if he could join us for dinner,” said Stacey.
“I don’t think Tomás quite grasps the concept of date night,” said Skillen, wrapping his arm around his fiancée’s shoulders.
Ora peered at her daughter’s chest. “Is that a new necklace, dear?”
Stacey smiled and clutched at the black pendant. It looked like a piece of stone carved into the shape of a raven with outstretched wings. “Isn’t it gorgeous? Matt bought it for me in Belfast.” She turned to her fiancé. “How did you know to get me a raven?”
“The day we met, you told me they were your favorite birds,” he said. “I also brought you some good beer, Charley. There’s a store that sells imported varieties in Augusta.”
“Matt was testifying in front of the Land Use Regulation Commission today,” said Stacey, fondling the necklace.
That explained the business attire. “My dad and I also met with some legislators and lobbyists to discuss how we can promote woods products in Maine,” he said. “We need to do a better job of messaging if we’re facing a radical with the deep pockets of Betty Morse. I wish she’d invest her millions into helping out the poor people in this county instead of creating a wildlife sanctuary no one wants. So many people are suffering around here, and she’s totally oblivious to their desperation.”
Ora held up both hands. “Please, can we not get into that subject until after dinner?”
“You say that,” said her daughter with a smile, “but I know the only reason you invited Mike over here was to quiz him about Elizabeth and Briar Morse, what they wear around the mansion, and whether they’re as elegant in person as they look in photos.”
“That’s not the only reason,” said Charley, pulling on his nose.
“Well, you know what a gossip she is.”
“Stacey!” Ora said.
Skillen gave me a wink, for some reason. “My dad suggested that the solution to all our problems would be for me to marry Briar Morse.”
Stacey pushed herself away from his chest with mock violence. “And what did you say to that?”
He gave her a handsome grin. “I told him airheads aren’t my type.”
“She’s not an airhead,” I said.
Everyone looked at me, as if the statement was meant to be the start of a longer defense of Briar’s intellectual capabilities, instead of just a reflexive act of chivalry on my part.
“Actually,” I said, “she’s got a pretty wry sense of humor. They both do.”
Again, they all waited for me.
“So what’s for dinner?” I asked, as if I didn’t already know the answer to that question.
* * *
During the meal—pasta with wild mushrooms and a buttery sauce—I remembered my first dinner with Charley and Ora.
Two years earlier, I had gone to western Maine to assist in the manhunt for my fugitive father. I’d been in a state of wild desperation back then, willing to sacrifice everything to prove my dad was innocent of murder. Out of unexpected and unwarranted kindness, the Stevenses had invited me to spend the night at their cozy cabin overlooking Flagstaff Pond. I’d drunk too much at the table and ended up sleeping it off in Stacey’s childhood bed. I recalled seeing photographs of her as a girl, thin and tomboyish, with a natural confidence that leaped out at you from inside the picture frames. I never could have predicted that, one day, her physical presence would cause me such joy and misery.
Somehow we managed to steer clear of Morse’s national park through the salad and entrée courses, although everyone wanted me to share what I knew about the moose shootin
gs. Ora couldn’t disguise her horror as I described the dead animals. Skillen put forth a new theory of the case; he suggested the massacre might have been an act of vengeance against the Warden Service for something we had done the previous week during the moose hunt.
“It’s no secret you guys are disliked in Washington County,” he said, refilling his and Stacey’s glasses of wine while Charley made coffee. “I’ve never understood it myself, but I guess it goes back to the history here. Have you ever read that book about the Down East Game War?”
“Yes, I have.” In fact, I still had the borrowed copy I had forgotten to return to the veterinarian who’d loaned it to me.
“At the mill, guys are always bitching about how they got pinched for this or that infraction,” Skillen said. “It seems to me like something a couple of pissed-off, drunk guys would do: drive around and kill stuff as a way of saying ‘fuck you’—excuse me, Mrs. Stevens—to the local wardens.”
“That’s not what happened,” I said. “This was all about Elizabeth Morse.”
“Right,” said Stacey, whose voice had grown a little wobbly after her second glass of wine. “Because there was that shoot-’em-up at Morse’s house, too.”
Skillen took a sip of wine. “Yes, but there’s no way to know if the two incidents were even connected. It doesn’t sound like they were. Or am I wrong about that, Mike?”
“Too soon to tell,” I said. “We’re still waiting for the ballistic evidence to come back from the state police lab.”
“I can’t imagine what makes a person so hateful,” said Ora, turning her napkin in her hands.
“I don’t know how you guys are ever going to solve this,” Skillen said. Both he and Stacey had drunk a fair amount over dinner, but he showed no signs of being intoxicated, except that he had grown progressively more talkative.
“We will,” said Charley, returning to the table with a tray of coffee.
Skillen set down his wineglass, spilling a little. “You talk like you’re part of this investigation, Charley.”
“Technically, I might not be,” said my old friend. “But I’m going to keep looking for the murdering bastards who did this, no matter how long it takes, and so is Warden Bowditch.”
