The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

moving the beam of the flashlight over the puddled ground.
    “Call me Bud.”
    “What happened, Bud?”
    “That bear just scooped him up like he was a rag doll.”
    I shined the light against the farm house. It was a clapboard frame building with a broken-backed barn that looked about to collapse and a chicken coop and toolshed out back. Behind the house was a dense stand of second-growth birch and alder with pine woods beyond. The bear had only to cross thirty feet of open field to get to the pigpen.
    “You said you saw the bear attack him?”
    “Heard it first. I was inside watching the TV when Pork Chop started screaming. I mean squealing. But you know it
sounded
like screaming.” He slapped a mosquito on his neck. “Anyhow, I looked out the window, but it was raining, and I couldn’t see a damned thing on account of how dark it was. Then I heard wood snapping and Pork Chop screaming and I grabbed my gun and came running out here in the rain. That’s when I seen it.”
    Now that I was close to him I could smell the heavy surge of beer on his breath. “Go on.”
    “Well, it was a bear. A big one. I didn’t know there were bears that big around here. It was reaching over the fence with its paw, leaning on the fence, and the boards were just snapping under its weight. And poor Pork Chop was back in the corner, trying to get away, but it wasn’t any use. The bear just hooked him with its claws and pulled him in.”
    “How come you didn’t shoot it?”
    “That’s the thing of it. I did, but I must have forgot to load the gun.” He rubbed his hand across his wet eyes and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “It wouldn’t have really attacked me, would it?”
    “I doubt it.” There are no recorded reports of fatal black bear attacks on humans in the state of Maine, but I’d read of fatalities in Ontario and Quebec, and it was probably only a matter of time until something happened here. “You were right not to provoke it, though. If you’d shot the bear with a .22 you probably wouldn’t have killed it, and there’s nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal.”
    Except a drunk with a gun, said a voice in my head.
    “I loved that pig.” He swung the rifle off his shoulder and held it up by the strap. “I wish I’d shot that son of a bitch.”
    “You shouldn’t handle a firearm when you’ve been drinking, Bud.”
    “He was the smartest pig I ever had!”
    I raised my flashlight so the beam caught him in the eyes. “Do you live alone here?”
    Whether it was the light or the question that sobered him I don’t know, but he blinked and ran his tongue along his cracked lower lip and looked at me with renewed attention.
    “My wife’s moved out for a while,” he said. “But she’ll be back before too long.” His expression turned pleading. “You don’t need to talk to her, do you?”
    “No. I just wondered if anyone else saw what happened.”
    He scratched the mosquito bite on his neck. “I got an old dog inside. But he’s deaf and just about blind.”
    “I meant another person. You said you hadn’t seen the bear around here before. Is that right?”
    “I didn’t even know there were bears this near the coast. You don’t think it’ll come back here, do you?”
    “Probably not, since you don’t have another pig. But I see you keep some hens.” I gestured with my flashlight toward the chicken coop, using the beam to draw his attention. “The bear might come back for the hens, although I doubt it will. Why don’t you go inside and put that gun away. I want to take a look in the woods.”
    He glanced at the trees and shivered. “Be careful!”
    I watched him shuffle away into the house, head hanging, beer in hand. No wonder his wife left him, I thought. Then I remembered my own empty bed back home and I stopped feeling so superior. Sarah had been gone exactly fifty-five days. Earlier, I’d gone to bed thinking that it would be fifty-six days when I woke up, but that was before Thompson called. So here it was fifty-five days again.
    I got to work mea sur ing the paw prints in the mud. They resembled the tracks a barefoot person might leave walking along a beach. Judging by the distance between the front and hind feet, I figured it was a medium-sized bear, two hundred pounds or so.
    I followed the drag marks through the field, and the rainwater that clung to the weeds soaked through my pants legs. The trail disappeared into the low bushes—scrub birch and