The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

daylight.
     
    I drove fast along the Beechwood Road, feeling the frustration inside me building to anger. All the hours I’d put into trapping the bear had been for nothing. The animal was dead, and I didn’t even know why I was speeding.
    The sun had just disappeared behind the ridge as I came up on Bud Thompson’s farm. I saw the dirty clapboard house, the broken-backed barn, the rickety chicken coop. It seemed ages since I’d last visited this place. I was startled to realize it had only been three nights earlier.
    Bud Thompson was nowhere to be seen. I’d expected him to be waiting for me on his front porch or at least to come running when my truck pulled into the driveway. Most of the windows were dark, but deep within the house I saw a faint light, like a dying ember.
    I circled around the house to the backyard. Thompson hadn’t bothered to repair the pigpen; the pieces of the broken fence still lay scattered where the bear had tossed them.
    I looked back at the house. The mudroom door was wide open.
    “Mr. Thompson?”
    There was no answer. I heard the chickens scratching about in the coop. A car rushed past the house and down the hill.
    “Mr. Thompson? It’s Mike Bowditch with the Warden Service.”
    The inside of the house smelled of stale beer and mothballs. I flicked on the kitchen light. Thompson’s .22 rifle lay on the table amid a bunch of empty beer cans and stock car racing magazines. There was a smear of blood on the cracked linoleum floor leading down the hall.
    “Mr. Thompson?”
    I heard a whimper. The bathroom door was ajar, light spilling out through the crack. Inside, Thompson was seated on the toilet. He had rolled up his pant leg and was clutching a bloody towel to his calf. He looked up at me with red, tear-filled eyes and shuddered. He smelled like he had showered in malt liquor.
    “What happened?”
    “I thought I killed it.”
    “It bit you?”
    “I went out to have another look. I must’ve only stunned it.” He shook his head sadly. “I hit it in the head. I thought I killed it.”
    “Let me see your leg.”
    “It’s bleeding pretty heavy.”
    He peeled back the towel. Blood began pumping out from the torn flesh. The bear had torn an egg-sized chunk of meat from the muscle of his calf.
    “It’s bad, isn’t it?” he asked.
    “You’re going to need some stitches, but you’ll be all right. Keep pressing hard against the wound.”
    He nodded and shuddered again.
    “What happened to the bear?”
    “It went off into the woods.”
    “Great,” I said.
    I left Thompson and went back to my truck to request an ambulance. With the sun down, the sky was turning violet and shadows were creeping out from beneath the trees at the edge of the forest. I didn’t have much time. I removed my Mossberg 12-gauge from its locked holder and ejected the buckshot shells from the chamber and magazine. Then I loaded the shotgun with heavy deer slugs and hooked my Maglite on my gunbelt.
    When I came back inside the house, I found that Thompson had dragged himself out to the kitchen. He was seated at the table, with a new towel knotted around his leg, and he was gulping down a can of beer like a man dying of thirst.
    I reached out to take the beer can away from him, but it was already empty. “If you move around, you’re just going to make it bleed more. The ambulance should be here in twenty minutes or so. Stay still and keep applying pressure to the wound. And lay off the beer.”
    He looked at the shotgun in my hand. “Where are you going?”
    “To find that bear.”
    He turned his head in the direction of the window. “It’s too dark.”
    “I’m not going to leave it out there all night suffering on account of your stupidity. Where did you last see it?”
    “Back behind the pigpen.”
    “Where was it shot?”
    “Back behind the pigpen.”
    “No, I meant where was it injured?”
    “In the head. I must have just stunned it.”
    I glanced at the rifle on the table; it looked like a child’s toy. “I told you you’d have a hard time killing a bear with a .22. You’re lucky it didn’t maul you just now.”
    “I thought I got it through the eye.”
    Under the fluorescent kitchen light I could see the feathery blue veins in his cheeks and along his nose. I doubted if he was even fifty, but he looked like a man twenty years older. “A deputy will probably arrive before the ambulance does,” I said. “Tell him where I’ve gone, but let him know that he shouldn’t