I wasn’t sure what response would be appropriate under the circumstances.
Eventually, we emerged from beneath the shadow of Bigelow Mountain. We passed a snow-covered field edged by white birches and red pines, in the center of which stood the burned-out remains of a mobile home. I almost exclaimed aloud for Pulsifer to stop but managed to catch myself in time.
My vagabond family had lived in that trailer briefly when I was a child, before my father lost whatever job he’d had at the time. He’d come in half-drunk or mouthed off to the boss or slugged some coworker whose face he didn’t like. Maybe all three. Suffice it to say, Jack Bowditch had never been the employee of the month at any place he’d ever worked. It was no wonder I had grown up in those early years eating day-old bread from the food pantry and venison burgers from deer my dad has secretly shot out of season.
I hadn’t noticed the torched building on my drive in, but now I found myself overwhelmed by nostalgia. Most of my memories of my early childhood were bittersweet at best, chilling at worst. But what I was feeling now, I realized, was sadness and loss. Someone had burned down my old house.
Pulsifer didn’t notice that I’d bolted upright in my seat. He was probably thinking about what he was going to tell his AA sponsor.
As we turned onto Moose Alley, he leaned over the wheel, peering at the road ahead. “What’s going on up there?”
Four or five vehicles were parked in a line along one side of Route 16. A group of men and women were gathered together atop the snowbank. They were all bundled up against the cold and staring through binoculars at a dead tree.
“Birders,” I said.
Pulsifer hit his blues and swung in behind the last car. He jumped out of the truck before I could ask him what he was doing.
“Folks, you can’t park here!” I heard him say.
A man in a hat with earflaps said excitedly, “We’re looking at a Great Gray Owl.”
I squinted up at the snag and saw an enormous bird, as big as an eagle, perched on the twisted topmost branch. Its feathers were the same color as the bark of the leafless spruce. It was the first Great Gray I had ever seen. I reached for the binoculars on Pulsifer’s dash to get a better look at the massive owl.
“I don’t care what you’re looking at,” said Pulsifer. “You can’t be blocking the road.”
“You don’t understand,” the man in the hat said. “This is an extremely rare bird.”
“We’re not blocking the road,” someone else said.
“People can still get by.”
Pulsifer stood with his hands on his hips. “You need to move, folks. It’s not open for discussion.”
The birders mumbled at one another. Steam from their open mouths created a single cloud among them in the early-morning air. For their sake, I hoped they wouldn’t put up a fight, but they must have agreed that discretion was the better part of valor when dealing with a pissed-off law-enforcement officer. One by one, the Priuses and Outbacks pulled away from the snowbank and started off toward Rangeley.
Pulsifer remained standing like a statue until the last one had driven off. I don’t think he so much as glanced at the owl.
“Some people don’t have a fucking clue,” he said as he climbed back inside in the truck.
“Great Gray Owls are pretty rare sightings,” I said. “They don’t usually show up in Maine. I’m sure this one was reported on some bird Listserv. Birders are going to be coming from all over to see it.”
“As if I don’t have enough to do but play meter maid to a bunch of bird-watchers.” He sneered in the direction of the dead tree. “I’m tempted to scare that bird off.”
I was torn between keeping quiet and speaking my piece. Being me, I inevitably chose the latter. “It’s not exactly rush hour out here. You didn’t have to be such a hard-ass.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, Mike. I’m not the one with the folder full of reprimands.”
I stared straight ahead. “Fine.”
“I thought I was doing you a favor bringing you along. But if you don’t appreciate it—”
I put on my sunglasses because I didn’t want him to see the annoyance in my eyes.
When it became obvious that I wasn’t going to continue the argument, he put the transmission back into drive and we lurched forward again. We went a full mile before he remembered to turn off his pursuit lights.
*
Now that the sun had risen above the mountaintops, the world had become too bright to look at. The new snow, piled high along the roadsides and clinging like cotton to every tree, didn’t just reflect the light; it intensified it a hundredfold. Soon Pulsifer was also reaching for his shades.