The Bone Orchard: A Novel

“It don’t matter,” she said. “Billy did what he did, and now he has too much time to think on things. I don’t want him obsessing over the past. It’s unhealthful. He can’t change it anyhow, and I need him to start writing letters to his kids and not getting into fights that add years to his sentence or other stupid shit like that. Just tell him whatever he wants to hear so he can start living for today again.” She removed a dirty Kleenex from her skirt pocket and rubbed my nose with it. “You’ve got grease all over your face.”

“Thanks,” I said.

“Will you promise to go down there tomorrow? I know you filled out that visitor application, because I made you do it at dinner that time.”

She had put the sheet of paper in front of me at her kitchen table and refused to serve any of us until I’d completed the form.

“Aimee,” I said.

“Promise me you’ll go see him,” she said. “It’s more important than cutting firewood or any of this other shit. You’re his only real friend in the world, Mike.”

“What about his army buddies?” Billy had served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

“The band of brothers? Don’t get me started on those misfits. Will you go see Billy tomorrow or won’t you? I need you to promise.”

The chestnut-sided warbler started up again in a rosebush across the yard.

“I promise,” I said.

“Good, because I’m late for work. Can you stay and watch the rug rats until my sister gets here?”

I looked past her into the monster’s lair. I had close to zero experience caring for small children. Even baby-sitting the Cronklets for fifteen minutes was a frightening prospect. “What do I do?”

“Just listen,” she said. “If they’re crying and fighting, everything’s OK. But if it goes quiet all of a sudden, then you know all hell has broken loose.”

* * *

The text arrived a few minutes before Aimee’s sister did. I had taken up my post in the doorway of the living room, holding the sleeping eighteen-month-old in my arms, terrified she would wake up while two of the kids threw Legos at each other or put them in their mouths. There was one Cronklet missing, I realized. The question was whether to hunt that one down or risk having the other two choke to death on pieces of plastic due to my negligence.

Like many parents, the Cronks viewed child care as a rudimentary human skill, while to me it seemed like managing a sophisticated series of no-win situations. When the two children on the floor in front of me suddenly rushed off in different directions, one toward a kitchen full of sharp knives, another down a darkened basement stairwell, I found myself paralyzed with indecision.

My cell phone vibrated in my jeans pocket and I managed to fish it out without waking the little girl. It was a text from Kathy: I killed a guy. It sucks. Thanks for your concern.

When I was just out of the academy and Kathy was my field-training officer, she used to call me “Grasshopper,” after the old Kung Fu television show. It was the nickname the blind Shaolin monk gave to his naive young student. Even when I was no longer one of her district wardens, it had remained Kathy’s pet name for me. Its absence here affected me even more than the sarcasm in the text itself.

The Maine State Prison was located twenty minutes from the Gammons’ horse farm and not much farther from the hilltop where Kathy lived at the edge of a rolling field of blueberries. My promise to Aimee had committed me to revisiting at least one landmark from my past. I was still trying to decide about the others when Aimee’s sister burst through the door and rescued me from a house that had grown alarmingly quiet.





9



I spent the rest of that day reattaching the gutter and taking down a dead spruce that was threatening the Cronks’ roof. I used a chain saw to split the tree into lengths I could drag into the bushes. It was a white spruce: a species Mainers call “cat spruce” because the crushed needles have the ammonia odor of cat piss. Aimee wouldn’t want to put these fast-burning, smelly logs into her woodstove, not unless she was trying to clear the house of unwanted guests.

By the time I was done, I was coated in perspiration and sawdust. I’d applied a layer of bug repellent to every inch of exposed skin but had managed to sweat away the powerful chemicals, so my neck and ears were swollen with bites from the blackflies that follow you everywhere in the woods in May. I drank a gallon of rusty-tasting water from the hose, packed up my tools, and headed to Day’s General Store for a cheeseburger and a cup of coffee.

The store had been one of my regular stops when I was a game warden, and it wasn’t unusual to find other wardens, state troopers, and sheriff’s deputies sitting at the lunch counter. My friend Cody Devoe once explained to me why Day’s was popular among the law-enforcement crowd. “It’s the only place around where I know the guy in the kitchen doesn’t spit in my food,” he’d said.

The screen door snapped shut behind me on its too-tight spring as I stepped inside. Day’s was always dim—the fluorescent bulbs hadn’t been dusted in years—and the first odor to hit your nose was inevitably the oily starch of the deep fryer. I hated to contemplate the last time Bill Day had changed the grease in that contraption. Ratty taxidermy mounts—stuffed raccoons and fishers—stared down at you from the shelf above the register with glass eyes. The display of dead animals was Bill Day’s idea of interior decoration.

A state trooper was alone at one end of the counter, separated by two open stools from a redneck in the corner. I had to make up my mind where to sit. I chose the stool beside the cop.

His name was Belanger. We had worked together on a few occasions, but I couldn’t say that we were well acquainted. Like many troopers, he was an impressive physical specimen: a Greek statue in a powder-blue uniform. His eyes flicked sideways as I took a seat and then returned to watching the television mounted to the wall.

I had the feeling he didn’t know who I was. “Belanger? It’s Mike Bowditch.”

He put a paper napkin to his mouth and swallowed what he’d been chewing. “Didn’t recognize you under all that hair,” he said.

I rubbed my scruffy chin with my knuckles. “Sometimes I don’t recognize myself.”

“That’s a tough break you got,” he said.

“What’s a tough break?”

“I heard you were fired.”

“Actually, I resigned. I’m guiding up around Grand Lake Stream now.”

He nodded and took a sip of water. “Enjoying it?”

“Mostly,” I said. “You know, the grass is always greener.”

He nodded again and turned back to the TV. Now that I was no longer a cop, he had nothing to say to me.

The local news station was running a segment on the diluvial rain we had received. The weatherman was standing with an umbrella in a puddle while cars drove by, splashing his pants.

I studied Bill Day’s slope-shouldered back as he flipped burgers on the grill. He was a soft guy, bigger on the bottom than the top, and his body always gave me the impression of melting even when he wasn’t standing in front of a burner.

“Afternoon, Bill!” I said.

He glanced over his shoulder, his face red and streaming, and waved a metal spatula. “Hold your horses. Hold your horses.”

Day’s wasn’t known for its customer service.

I settled back on my stool. The television anchor was introducing a new story—the volume was too low to hear anything—but there was a picture of Jimmy Gammon floating beside the newscaster’s handsome head.

“Hey, Bill,” I said. “Can you turn up the TV?”

The cook refused to look up from his grill. “Remote’s on the counter.”

I glanced along the Formica and saw the remote control beside a ketchup bottle in front of the redneck.

“Can you turn that up?” I asked.

The man had a bird’s nest beard and a drawn face from a lifetime’s worth of booze and cigarettes. He was wearing an olive green sweatshirt, from which he had scissored the sleeves, revealing skinny arms patterned with tattoos. He peered at me from beneath the frayed brim of his baseball cap.

I pointed at the television. “Increase. The. Volume.”

With a grunt, he slid the remote down the counter, but it caromed off a napkin dispenser and landed on the floor behind me. I glared at the redneck, then hopped off the stool to retrieve it. By the time I got it aimed at the set and boosted the volume, the scene had changed to some sort of protest outside the headquarters of the Maine Warden Service in Augusta. There were a dozen or so people with signs, some bearing photos of Jimmy.

A female reporter had the microphone in the face of a fierce-looking young man with a crew cut and the shadowy suggestion of a goatee. He wore a navy suit and a striped tie, but the jacket seemed too tight; his shoulders looked ready to burst through the seams. Words along the bottom of the screen identified him as Sgt. Angelo Donato, Maine National Guard (Ret.).

“Jimmy Gammon was a hero,” he was saying. “What happened to him over there in Afghanistan I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. He had his share of problems, no doubt about it, but no way did he want to kill himself. Jimmy was one of the happiest guys I ever met. Those cops’ stories just don’t add up. And you know they’re going to get off with a slap on the wrist.” He stepped back and shouted “Justice for Jimmy!” to the people behind him.