The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

long to find her tender spot. “I’m getting a master’s in education at the University of Maine while I teach at a private school.”
    “A teacher.” He lit the cigarette with a shiny Zippo lighter like the one he brought back from Vietnam. “Wish I had one as pretty as you when I was a kid.”
    Sarah excused herself to use the bathroom. We both watched her walk away. When he turned back to me, he was grinning again and shaking his head. “A game warden, huh?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Well, it’s your life, I guess.” He finished his beer. “What’s your mom say about this?”
    “I haven’t told her yet.”
    “You’re afraid she’ll be pissed. I’m glad I didn’t pay for your college, is all I can say. So how’s my buddy Neil?” He said my stepfather’s name like it was a ridiculous word. My parents had been divorced for more than a de cade, but somehow my father, who’d probably gone through dozens of women himself in the interval, was still jealous.
    “The same, I guess.”
    “So that Sarah is a good-looking girl. How serious are you two?”
    “Pretty serious.”
    “Do you love her?”
    “Yeah,” I said. “I think I do.”
    “You
think
you do? That’s a pussy answer. What I’m asking is, would you die for her?”
    Now it was my turn to be dumbfounded. “What kind of question is that?”
    “It’s the
only
question.”
    I would have asked him what the hell he meant, but across the crowded bar I saw Sarah waiting to use the ladies’ room. Three guys in leather jackets and denim were standing around, but she was ignoring them.
    My father turned to see what I was looking at. “You better go over there.”
    “She can take care of herself.”
    “So you’re just going to let them talk to her like that?”
    “Like what?”
    He leaned back in his chair, appraising me. In his mind there could be only one reason for not going over there: He thought I was afraid.
    I downed the whiskey, feeling the liquor scald the back of my throat. Slowly I rose to my feet.
    I felt him watching me as I crossed the room.
    Sarah was next in line for the bathroom. The three bikers had closed partially around her, and now she was speaking with them. Two were huge, fat in the gut, with arms as thick around as my calves. But it was the smallest one, half a foot shorter than me, who saw me coming. He had a blond beard and a red bandanna knotted around his head and he was wearing sunglasses despite the hour and darkness of the room. I knew it was the short ones who always have something to prove.
    “You all right?” I asked Sarah.
    “I’m fine,” she said.
    “Doesn’t look that way.”
    Her eyes blazed at me. “Sit down, Mike. I’ll be right there.”
    I couldn’t believe she was pissed off at me for trying to rescue her, but she was.
    “Yeah,
Mike
,” said the short one, tilting his head up at me. “Go have a seat.”
    I saw my face distorted in the dark mirrors of his sunglasses. The jukebox was blasting Guns N’ Roses’s “Sweet Child O’ Mine.” I felt the thudding bass line shake the wood floor beneath my feet.
    “OK, guys, that’s enough,” said Sarah. But they weren’t listening to her anymore.
    “Let’s go, Sarah.” I reached out to take her arm, but the short one knocked it aside.
    “Don’t touch her,” he said.
    “Fuck you,” I said.
    Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the big bikers swing a beer bottle up fast and felt it break against the side of my skull. My knees buckled and the next thing I knew I was down on the floor, being kicked in the face. I remember the iron taste of blood and the smell of spilled beer and the distinct sound of Sarah screaming.
    Then the music died, the lights came on, and I was flat on the floor, looking up into a kaleidoscope. My vision was blurred as if I had Vaseline in my eyes.
    Above me loomed my father. He had an arm wrapped around the short biker’s neck and was pressing the edge of a hunting knife against his throat. A crowd of faces, a wall of bodies circled us. The short man knew better than to fight. He let his body go limp. My father tightened his grip.
    I tried to rise, but the muscles had dissolved in my arms and legs.
    “Put it down, Jack!” It was the bartender, a lean, silver-haired woman with a deeply tanned face. She had a pump shotgun trained on my dad’s chest.
    I saw his eyes flick sideways, taking it in.
    The bartender racked a shell into the chamber. “I said, ‘Drop it!’ ”
    With one motion my