The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

shoulders, neck, and chest were corded with muscle as if from lifting weights in a gym, but his legs looked like they belonged to a skinny teenager. “What’s going on here?”
    “Your son and I were just talking about fishing.”
    “Is that so?” The man approached within a few feet of me, his eyes on a level with my own. An invisible, aromatic cloud of aftershave hung around his head.
    “You two headed out for the day?” I asked.
    “That’s right.”
    “You’ll find some good-sized smallmouth at the south end of the lake where the creek flows in.”
    He didn’t answer at first. “You wanna see my fishing license, right?”
    It wasn’t the way I’d wanted the conversation to go, but so be it. “Thank you. Yes, I would.”
    He transferred both of the rods into one hand and reached into his back pocket. He handed me a folded piece of paper. It was a fifteen-day, nonresident fishing license issued to an Anthony De-Salle, of Revere, Massachusetts. In the summertime it seemed that the entire population of Greater Boston participated in a mass invasion of the Maine coast. You could sit along Route 1, watching the traffic crawl north to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, and for minutes at a time you wouldn’t see a Maine license plate. Tourism was the lifeblood of the local economy, and so it was probably inevitable that these summer people—with their flashy cars and fat wallets—provoked equal amounts of love and hate among my neighbors in Sennebec.
    “And your registration for the boat, too, please,” I said.
    “You gotta be kidding.”
    “No, sir. I’m not. You have no registration stickers on your boat.”
    “I just got them yesterday.”
    “You need to put them on.”
    “I haven’t even gone out onto the fucking water yet!”
    The little boy was watching us with wide eyes.
    “Watch your language, please,” I said.
    “My language? Jesus Christ.” He rummaged in his pocket for his registration. Then, realizing he didn’t have it on him, he dropped the spinning rods at my feet and turned and stormed off toward the Suburban.
    “Mr. DeSalle?” I called after him.
    “It’s in the car!”
    I watched him throw open the door and begin rummaging around inside the vehicle.
    I glanced over at the boy, who was now standing ankle-deep in the water, tightly clutching the boat line. His whole body seemed as taut as the rope.
    A moment later DeSalle came walking back. He waved a piece of paper at me. “Here it is, OK? My goddamned registration.”
    He thrust the paper with the attached validation stickers into my face.
    “Sir,” I said, “your son is watching us. You might think about the example you’re setting for him here.”
    “How I raise my son is my own fucking business, buddy.”
    “You need to cool down, Mr. DeSalle.”
    A sheen of sweat glistened along his forehead. “I’m renting a house on this lake, you know. Fifteen hundred bucks a week!”
    I glanced down at the registration. Then I handed him his papers back. “I hope you have an enjoyable vacation.”
    He jammed both documents into the front pocket of his shorts. “Yeah, I bet you do.” He brushed past me and waded out toward the floating boat, grabbing the rope away from the boy. “Pick up those fishing poles.”
    The boy approached me cautiously, with one eye on the gun at my side. I bent down and picked up the rods and handed them one by one to him. “Here you go. I hope you catch a big one.”
    “Come on, let’s go!” DeSalle stuck the new registration stickers onto the bow of the boat.
    The boy hurried out into the water. His father grabbed the rods away and threw them into the powerboat. The boy tried to scramble over the gunwale, but he lost his footing and fell back with a splash into the water. DeSalle glowered. The boy stood up quickly, his rear end soaking wet. He grabbed the gunwale and pulled himself into the boat. I could see him blinking back tears.
    “Don’t you cry,” said his father.
    I took a step toward them. “May I see your flotation devices, please?”
    DeSalle spun around. “My what?”
    “Your flotation devices.”
    “This is harassment!” He glared at me fiercely, and then, when I didn’t budge, he reached over the gunnel and held up an orange life jacket. “Here it is, OK?”
    “You’re required to have two personal flotation devices, Mr. DeSalle. Do you have another one?”
    He searched the boat with his eyes. The boy followed his gaze, as if wanting to help him find what