The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

speckled alder and sumac—that grew along the edge of the forest. I directed my light into the wet mass of leaves, half-expecting to see the beam reflected back by the eye shine of the bear’s retinas.
    Thompson’s description suggested a curious young bear expanding its diet from berries and beechnuts to the other white meat. Probably the animal was miles away by now, having gorged itself on Thompson’s beloved pig. Still, I found myself listening for anything to indicate the bear might be nearby. A mosquito whined in my ear. Ahead of me and all around, I heard trees dripping in the darkness. Switching the flashlight from my right hand to my left, I reached down to touch the grip of my sidearm. It was a heavy SIG SAUER P226 .357 Magnum that I had never fired except at a practice range.
    I pushed my way into the forest. Beaded rainwater spilled off the leaves onto my shoulders and face. I was drenched in an instant.
    After a few steps, I was through the green wall of bushes and saplings at the edge of the wood. Beneath the trees the air was still and heavy with the smell of growing things—as humid as a hothouse. I made an arc with the bull’s-eyed flashlight beam along the forest floor, looking for drag marks. But the soft carpet of moss and pine needles had absorbed all traces of the bear’s passing, and I saw no more blood drops. I wandered deeper into the woods, searching.
    I found the pig a hundred yards in.
    It lay on its side in a puddle of congealing blood. Its throat had been torn out, and its haunches had been chewed to a red pulp. The bear had not attempted to bury the carcass or cover it with leaves. It was possible it had heard me coming.
    I switched off the flashlight and stood under the dripping trees, listening. I knew retired game wardens and ancient trappers who could hear the rustle a buck made passing through alders across a stream. Men who were so at one with the woods that they didn’t fully exist among other human beings but were only truly themselves outdoors. Maybe someday I’d be one of those old woodsmen. But for the moment I was still a twenty-four-year-old rookie, less than a year on the job, and my senses told me nothing about where the bear was.
    I turned the flashlight back on. Then I went up to the house to tell poor Bud Thompson what I had found.
     
    By the time I got home it was well past midnight. I’d left the light on outside the screen door and moths were swirling about, butting themselves stupidly against the glass.
    As I stepped inside, I was surprised again by my empty house. Sarah had taken most of the furniture with her when she moved out. It always startled me, coming home, to see how little I actually owned. Stacks of books and newspapers, a steel gun cabinet, fallen antlers I had collected in the snow.
    Moonlight shined in through the windows, bright enough to see by, so I left the lights off as I moved through the house, shedding my damp shirt and boots as I went. I unbuckled my gun belt and put it away, then wandered into the kitchen. Frosty light spilled out of the refrigerator when I swung the door open. I found a bottle of beer and pressed it against my forehead as I made my way out into the living room.
    I cracked open the beer and toasted Bud Thompson and Mike Bowditch—two womenless men dousing our loneliness with alcohol. Except that unlike Thompson, I had chosen to be alone. An empty house was what I’d wanted all along, even if it had taken Sarah years to realize it.
    She’d hung in there with me from Colby College, where we’d met, through the Maine Criminal Justice Academy and the Advanced Warden Academy and my long weeks of field training. She’d toughed it out, thinking it was a phase I was going through, that eventually I’d go to law school like we’d talked about and become a prosecutor and maybe someday a judge. But it wasn’t a phase, and it was only after I had gotten posted in coastal Knox County that she realized that being a game warden was a twenty-four-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week way of life, and for reasons neither of us fully understood, I’d chosen it over her.
    So she left.
    And I missed her—and counted the days since she’d gone away. But I was relieved, too. Relieved that I no longer had to justify my emotions to anyone else. I could spend the night alone in the woods searching for a dead pig and be content in a way that made absolutely no sense to anyone who wasn’t a game warden. With Sarah gone, I could love