The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

lot, feeling the sudden weight of the packed clothes and books in my backpack. What the hell had I gotten myself into?
    I started through Waterville in what I hoped was a northerly direction, looking for the road to Skowhegan. I walked maybe half a mile before I became aware of a pickup creeping along behind me. It was an old Ford, and it was moving at scarcely more than an idle, ten or so yards back. A flutter of fear announced itself down in the bottom of my stomach.
    Suddenly I heard the truck’s engine rev and out of the corner of my eye saw it gunning toward me. I stumbled onto the shoulder and fell over on my ass. The truck squealed to a stop beside me, and the passenger door opened. Inside sat a dusky-skinned man with a case of Budweiser on his lap and a broken-toothed grin on his face. My father was behind the wheel.
    “Hey, pretty boy, want a lift?” he said.
    “I think he’s having a heart attack,” said the other man, speaking with a singsong accent I didn’t recognize. He looked to be about my father’s age, but not as healthy; there was a flabby look to his arms and chest. He had bowl-cut black hair and a face that was as round as a pie. “We got him, I think.”
    “Yeah, you got me.” I stood up. “That’s real funny.”
    “Lighten up, Mike,” said my father. “We’re just yanking your chain.”
    “Mr. Pelletier told me you were off in the woods somewhere.”
    “We told him to say that!” said the other man. “We wanted to see what you’d do.”
    “This is Truman Dellis,” said my father.
    “Howdy,” he said.
    “There’s not enough room up front. You’ll have to ride in back,” said my father.
    I wriggled out of my backpack and tossed it into the truck bed, then climbed in, trying to find a spot to settle down between the junk. There were a couple of chainsaws back there, two spare tires, and another four cases of beer. The bed was heavily rusted and wet with oil, and as we headed north, I felt it soaking through the seat of my new jeans.
    It was a long, spine-rattling ride. Every pothole jolted me into the air or caused my teeth to clack against one another. Through the back window of the truck cab I watched my father drinking beer while he drove. Every now and again, Truman would turn around and wave at me through the glass and laugh. The wind ruffled my hair and poked its cold fingers into my ears. Once I caught the faintest hint of Truman singing along to Garth Brooks on the radio.
    Meanwhile the country streamed by. The rolling agricultural lands around Waterville and Skowhegan gave way to the dark forested river valley of the Kennebec. Green-hazed mountains appeared in the west, and the houses became fewer and fewer along the highway—just the occasional old clapboard homestead lost amid the maples and spruce. North of The Forks, where the Dead River rushes into the Kennebec, we turned onto a rutted logging road and followed the setting sun up into the hill country. Dust, raised by the logging trucks, powdered the trees along the road, and one time a big truck, loaded with trees the length of telephone poles, came barreling out of the woods as if intent on flattening us like an insect against its grill. My father played chicken with it before dodging aside at the absolute last second. The truck rushed by, horn blaring, pulling a hurricane of dust behind it that left me choking, half-blind, and spitting mud.
    I was dirt-covered and sunburned when we reached the last forest gate that blocked the road down to Rum Pond. Truman scurried out of the truck and unlocked the chain gate so we could pass. Soon we were burrowing through old-growth pines, taller than any trees I had ever seen. I peered over the top of the cab and saw a flash of blue ahead through the pine needles and then suddenly we were stopped in a compound of buildings made of hemlock logs and pine planks.
    My father lay on the horn, and Truman leaned his head out the window and shouted, “This is it!”
    A man with a drooping black mustache appeared in the door of one of the log buildings. He had a cigarette clenched between his fingers. “Is this the new serf?” he asked, pointing at me with the lit end of the cigarette.
    “Yep,” said my father. “What do you think?”
    “Kind of scrawny.”
    “But he’s a hard worker—just like his old man.”
    “I thought he was
your
son.”
    “Fuck you,” said my father. “This is Russ Pelletier. He owns this dump.”
    “You want me to give him the