The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

he tied off her anus and vagina with a pigging string and, climbing up on the table and straddling the deer’s leg, pulled out the entrails. As a child, I remembered watching my father field dress a deer but never with this kind of speed. My father did all the cutting while Truman caught the organs in a five-gallon pail.
    “Here,” said my father, tossing something at me suddenly.
    I caught a small piece of metal in my hand. It was the mush-roomed bullet that he’d dug out of the doe’s heart. For some reason I didn’t drop it but instead squeezed it tight in my fist.
    Truman cocked his head. “Oh, shit,” he said.
    That was when I heard the plane.
    It was flying in low across the lake getting louder and louder until we heard the splash of the pontoons setting down on the water’s surface. I glanced through the window.
    “It’s coming up to the beach!”
    My father blew out the gas lamp, plunging the cabin into darkness. “Go down there,” he said to me. “Don’t let him come up here.”
    “What am I going to say?”
    “Just stall him.”
    I slipped outside and paused for a moment on the plank deck looking down at the small floatplane as it taxied into the shallows. The door popped open and a man dressed in a darkish uniform climbed out and stood on one of the floats. Then he splashed into the water and waded to shore. It was my first look at Charley Stevens.
    “Hey!” I said, and jumped barefoot down the plank steps to meet him.
    He squinted up at the dark figure hurtling toward him. “Good eve ning.”
    “Hi!” I said. “Hello.”
    “Now who might you be?”
    “Mike Bowditch.”
    “Bowditch, you say? You’re Jack’s son, then.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Could you tell him that Charley Stevens would like a word.”
    “He’s busy.”
    He paused and gave me an appraising look up and down. “Mike,” he said finally, “I’m going to ask you a question, and I’d like you to answer with the truth. If I go up to that cabin there, what am I going to find?”
    A jacklighted deer, I wanted to blurt out. The words were literally at the tip of my tongue. But when I spoke, it came out as, “Nothing.”
    He shook his head and let out a sigh, and I realized the expression on his face wasn’t dis plea sure so much as disappointment. Even though we had never met, he had expected better of me. “I’m afraid I’ll have to have a look, anyway.”
    He brushed past me and had taken two steps up the stairs when my father’s voice sounded above us in the darkness: “Kind of late for flying, isn’t it?”
    Charley squinted up at the moonlit silhouette looming at the top of the stairs. “Is that you, Jack?”
    “What’s going on?”
    “I thought we might sit down and have a cup of coffee.”
    “I’m all out of coffee, Charley.”
    The warden smiled. “Maybe you can help me with some detective work.”
    My father laughed. “Is that so?”
    “You see, I’ve been flying to night and—maybe you saw my plane earlier?”
    “I saw it.”
    “The thing of it is, we’ve had a bad problem with night hunters out this way. So I thought I’d fly around a bit, what with the moon so bright, and see what I could see. And wouldn’t you know about a half hour ago I saw a pair of headlights over on the King and Bartlett Road. The funny thing about them, though, was that they weren’t moving. In fact, it looked to me like maybe what was going on was that somebody was jacking a deer over there. You know what also gave me that impression? The minute I swung over in that direction, those lights just snapped off all of a sudden.”
    “What does that have to do with me?”
    “Well,” said Charley. “The coincidence is that the truck I saw bore a resemblance to that old Ford you drive.”
    “That’s quite a coincidence.”
    “It occurred to me it might actually be your truck, in fact.”
    “I’ve been here all night. Ask the boy.”
    The warden looked at me. “Is that true, son?”
    I nodded.
    “You mind if I have a look at your truck, anyway? Just so in the future I can learn to tell it from the other one.”
    “How about showing me a warrant first?”
    “What do you say I just have a look around so we can clear up any misunderstanding.” The warden took another step up.
    “Don’t come up here!” said another voice.
    Charley froze. I saw his hand drop down near his holstered sidearm. “Now who would that be?”
    “Truman Dellis,” I said.
    “I’d like a look around, Jack,” Charley said.