“Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“A mite chilly, I’d say.” He had a roseate nose, a scruffy beard that was more like a really bad shave, and was probably bald under his fur-lined bomber hat. “What can I do for you?”
“You wouldn’t have a dog, would you?”
“Used to.”
“What about any of your neighbors along this road?”
“Some do. Some don’t.”
I could see how this conversation was going to unfold unless I took the initiative. “Any of them let their dogs run free? I got a call from a woman down the road saying a dog was chasing deer through her yard. It killed a little yearling in the woods back of her property. I’m trying to find the owner.”
“Was it that lady with all that artsy crap in her dooryard?”
I nodded. “That’s the one.”
“Didn’t know you wardens was moonlighting as dogcatchers,” he said.
“Only when the dogs chase deer.”
His bathrobe opened when he straightened up and revealed a faded T-shirt with a Green Beret logo on the front and the Latin words De Oppresso Liber.
“Think Carrie Michaud might have a new dog,” he said. “Some kind of shepherd or husky mix, I think. Black as the Earl of Hell’s waistcoat. Saw it riding in the truck with her the other day. Thought I heard it howling the other night, too.”
“What do you mean, howling?”
“You know,” he said, and let loose with a loud and shockingly accurate wolf call.
I was getting a churning feeling in my stomach that told me my strange day might yet take a stranger turn. “You sure it wasn’t barking?”
He gave me a look as if the question was the most asinine thing he’d heard.
“Which house is Carrie Michaud’s?” I asked.
“Blue one at the corner. Got lots of yard art out front. You can’t miss it. Don’t tell her it was me who told you, though. Carrie’s a little thing, but she can get worked up pretty good.”
“I won’t.”
Before I could thank him for his help, he restarted the blower. I watched him shuffle along behind the noisy machine, smelling the heady gasoline exhaust on the cold air and wondering what this old Green Beret’s story was. You never know who you’ll meet holed up in some backwoods shack. I suspected that it might take a long time to pry this man’s tale out of him, and then I would be disappointed to learn he had bought the T-shirt for two bucks down at the Goodwill store.
*
Some breeds of dogs bark; others bay. I had heard dogs moan or wail when they were hurt or unhappy. They were capable of all sorts of unexpected vocalizations. But the old man had perfectly imitated a wolf’s howl, and unless he was having fun with me, which was a distinct possibility, it meant that I might owe Gail Evans an apology.
I had no trouble finding Carrie Michaud’s house. The front yard was littered with snow-covered appliances and rusting scrap metal. By “yard art,” the old geezer hadn’t meant sculptures like those outside Gail Evans’s house. He had meant junk.
The house itself wasn’t much better. Someone had once painted its cedar shingles bright blue, but the color had faded and had now turned a color I associated with the lips of people who’d frozen to death. The blinds were all drawn, as if whoever lived behind them was allergic to sunlight. A yellow plastic sign posted to a pine warned against trespassing. Another said BEWARE OF DOG.
In the driveway were parked two trucks: a Suzuki Equator and a Mitsubishi Raider, both painted black.
As I climbed out of my own truck, I removed my gloves and felt without looking for the canister of pepper spray on my belt. There were no dogs visible, but I did see prints in the snow, big ones like those I’d found in the woods behind Gail Evans’s house, and, the pièce de résistance, an enormous pile of shit.
They hadn’t bothered to shovel the walkway, but had worn a path from the drive that required me to place one foot in front of the other. I heard music pounding through the front door. Screeching guitars and machine-gun drums. I pushed the glowing doorbell and waited. I gave it a minute, then banged with my fist.
Eventually, the door was opened by a skinny guy who looked like he’d just walked off the set of a postapocalyptic horror movie. He had bleached hair, disk earrings that had stretched holes in the lobes wide enough to stick your finger through, and a bone-white complexion. He wore a sleeveless purple T-shirt, cargo pants, and leather boots with a surplus of nonfunctional buckles.
When Goth fashion had finally come to Maine—everything came to my rural state long after it was passé elsewhere—it had lost something in the translation.
“You wouldn’t happen to own a dog, would you?” I said.
He turned and yelled over his shoulder into the darkened, thumping interior of the house. “Carrie!”
“What?” came a shrill voice.
“Do we own a dog?”
“What?”
“There’s a game warden at the door.”