The Poacher's Son

4

A number of years ago, some Hollywood producers made a movie about a man-eating crocodile that had somehow taken up residence in the frigid waters of a northern Maine lake. The hero of this motion picture was supposed to be a Maine game warden. Prior to filming, the actor who had been chosen to play the part of the warden took a look at the summer uniform we wear-dark green, short-sleeved shirt and pants tucked into combat boots, white undershirt, black baseball cap with a green pine tree and the words Maine Game Warden stitched around it in red-and refused to put it on. He said we looked like the Brazilian militia. Instead, the actor opted for a more casual outfit of khaki shirt and blue jeans, the better to combat the killer croc and romance Bridget Fonda.

So much for realism.

In my experience, the profession of game warden was misunderstood enough by the public without Hollywood drawing another caricature. Many people-urban and suburban people, especially-didn’t recognize the uniform or understand what it signified. Hikers would come up to me in the woods and say, “Oh, are you a forest ranger? How’s the fire danger today?” Others would say, “I’d really love to work with animals,” not realizing that most of the animals I saw were dead or seriously wounded or sick with rabies or brain worm.

What I tried to explain to these nice people was that I was a cop, and the forest was my beat. The statute that created the Maine Warden Service in 1880 gave the governor the authority to appoint wardens “whose duty it shall be to enforce the provisions of all laws relating to game and the fisheries, arrest any person violating such laws, and prosecute for all offenses against the same that may come to their knowledge.” That legal description was accurate, but it didn’t remotely describe my job.

For one thing, the duties change from season to season. Winter means game wardens must deal with ice fishing and rabbit hunting and hunting bobcats with hounds. It also means snowmobiling accidents, one of the fastest-growing law enforcement issues in the Northeast. In mud season-which is what Mainers have instead of spring-open-water fishing gets underway and dipping for smelts by night. Dogs chasing deer become a problem. And wardens begin enforcing boating laws on Maine’s 5,782 lakes and ponds, as well as all navigable rivers and streams. Canoes overturn; swimmers drown. Summertime brings ATV accidents in the woods. Wardens stumble upon secret marijuana gardens. And poaching-a year-round problem-gets worse as hunting season nears. Autumn is just plain crazy. Hunting and trapping of all sorts-bird, bear, raccoon, duck, moose, deer-keep wardens busy day and night. Investigating hunting accidents in Maine is the special responsibility of the Warden Service. Then there are the four-season emergencies: deer-car and moose-car collisions, tracking escaped convicts, rescuing injured mountain climbers, searching for people lost in the woods.

It’s a physically demanding job. A warden must be able to manhandle a dead moose into the back of a pickup truck using nothing but a come-along or be able to hike up a mountain in the night to rescue a camper struck by lightning. Mostly, it means spending a lot of time outdoors, alone, in all sorts of weather conditions.

As a district warden, I didn’t report to division headquarters in the morning. Instead, I worked out of my house, setting my own schedule and assisting other wardens in neighboring districts on an as-needed basis. Most days, I patrolled my district by truck, boat, or snowmobile, issuing warnings, handing out summonses, and making arrests. Wherever I went in the woods, I traveled with the heart-heavy knowledge that I was alone and without backup, that the most apparently casual encounter could turn bad on me if I let down my guard, and that if I ran into trouble, I should probably not expect help any time soon.

After leaving the Square Deal, I decided to drive north along Indian Pond. I swung past a couple of roadside turnouts-shady places along the bank of the pond where you could cast out into the weed beds for smallmouth or pickerel-but no one was fishing this early. Across the pond, though, I got a glimpse of the public boat launch. Someone in a black SUV was backing a big powerboat on a trailer down the ramp into the water. I decided to say hello.

By the time I arrived at the ramp, the powerboat was already in the water. A boy who looked to be about nine years old stood on the shore, holding a nylon rope that kept the boat from floating off across the pond. The sport-utility vehicle, a new-looking Chevy Suburban with so much chrome it reflected the sun like a mirror, had pulled up the road to park. As my truck rolled to a stop at the top of the ramp, the boy gave a quick look in the direction of the SUV.

I saw right off that there were no registration stickers on the bow of the boat. “Good morning,” I said.

The boy didn’t answer or make eye contact. He was a scrawny, dark-haired kid, dressed in a T-shirt and a baggy bathing suit.

I took a step toward him. “That’s a sharp boat you’ve got.”

The boy glanced again up the road. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a man climb from the Suburban.

I tried a new approach. “You going fishing this morning?”

The boy nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“Hey!” The driver of the SUV came walking up fast, holding a pair of spinning rods, one in each fist. He was dressed in a lavender polo shirt and white tennis shorts, and he wore a gold chain around one tanned wrist. His shoulders, neck, and chest were corded with muscle as if from lifting weights in a gym, but his legs looked like they belonged to a skinny teenager. “What’s going on here?”

“Your son and I were just talking about fishing.”

“Is that so?” The man approached within a few feet of me, his eyes on a level with my own. An invisible, aromatic cloud of aftershave hung around his head.

“You two headed out for the day?” I asked.

“That’s right.”

“You’ll find some good-sized smallmouth at the south end of the lake where the creek flows in.”

He didn’t answer at first. “You wanna see my fishing license, right?”

It wasn’t the way I’d wanted the conversation to go, but so be it. “Thank you. Yes, I would.”

He transferred both of the rods into one hand and reached into his back pocket. He handed me a folded piece of paper. It was a fifteen-day, nonresident fishing license issued to an Anthony De-Salle, of Revere, Massachusetts. In the summertime it seemed that the entire population of Greater Boston participated in a mass invasion of the Maine coast. You could sit along Route 1, watching the traffic crawl north to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, and for minutes at a time you wouldn’t see a Maine license plate. Tourism was the lifeblood of the local economy, and so it was probably inevitable that these summer people-with their flashy cars and fat wallets-provoked equal amounts of love and hate among my neighbors in Sennebec.

“And your registration for the boat, too, please,” I said.

“You gotta be kidding.”

“No, sir. I’m not. You have no registration stickers on your boat.”

“I just got them yesterday.”

“You need to put them on.”

“I haven’t even gone out onto the fucking water yet!”

The little boy was watching us with wide eyes.

“Watch your language, please,” I said.

“My language? Jesus Christ.” He rummaged in his pocket for his registration. Then, realizing he didn’t have it on him, he dropped the spinning rods at my feet and turned and stormed off toward the Suburban.

“Mr. DeSalle?” I called after him.

“It’s in the car!”

I watched him throw open the door and begin rummaging around inside the vehicle.

I glanced over at the boy, who was now standing ankle-deep in the water, tightly clutching the boat line. His whole body seemed as taut as the rope.

A moment later DeSalle came walking back. He waved a piece of paper at me. “Here it is, OK? My goddamned registration.”

He thrust the paper with the attached validation stickers into my face.

“Sir,” I said, “your son is watching us. You might think about the example you’re setting for him here.”

“How I raise my son is my own fucking business, buddy.”

“You need to cool down, Mr. DeSalle.”

A sheen of sweat glistened along his forehead. “I’m renting a house on this lake, you know. Fifteen hundred bucks a week!”

I glanced down at the registration. Then I handed him his papers back. “I hope you have an enjoyable vacation.”

He jammed both documents into the front pocket of his shorts. “Yeah, I bet you do.” He brushed past me and waded out toward the floating boat, grabbing the rope away from the boy. “Pick up those fishing poles.”

The boy approached me cautiously, with one eye on the gun at my side. I bent down and picked up the rods and handed them one by one to him. “Here you go. I hope you catch a big one.”

“Come on, let’s go!” DeSalle stuck the new registration stickers onto the bow of the boat.

The boy hurried out into the water. His father grabbed the rods away and threw them into the powerboat. The boy tried to scramble over the gunwale, but he lost his footing and fell back with a splash into the water. DeSalle glowered. The boy stood up quickly, his rear end soaking wet. He grabbed the gunwale and pulled himself into the boat. I could see him blinking back tears.

“Don’t you cry,” said his father.

I took a step toward them. “May I see your flotation devices, please?”

DeSalle spun around. “My what?”

“Your flotation devices.”

“This is harassment!” He glared at me fiercely, and then, when I didn’t budge, he reached over the gunnel and held up an orange life jacket. “Here it is, OK?”

“You’re required to have two personal flotation devices, Mr. DeSalle. Do you have another one?”

He searched the boat with his eyes. The boy followed his gaze, as if wanting to help him find what he was looking for, but his father paid no attention to him.

Finally, DeSalle turned back to me. “No. That’s it. So write your fucking ticket and get it over with.”

“I need to see your driver’s license, Mr. DeSalle.”

For a second, I think he expected me to wade out to get it, but when I didn’t budge, he splashed back to the boat ramp. I summonsed him for having insufficient personal flotation devices, wrote down the date he would need to appear at the District Court in Rockland if he wanted to contest the fine, and handed him the ticket to sign. Throughout it all, he managed to keep his mouth shut, and I began to think he had smartened up, but as he thrust my pen back at me, he said, “So what happened? Did you wash out of real cop school or something?”

“Mr. DeSalle, you better think carefully before you say another word.”

I tore off the summons and handed it to him, and he crumpled it into his fist. For an instant I thought he might toss the paper into the pond, but instead he shoved it deep into his pocket.

“You’re going to have to find another PFD before I can let you onto the water,” I said.

“You’re fucking kidding.”

“No, sir. And I asked you to watch your language.”

We stared at each other a long moment, his eyes looking redder and redder, and then he snapped his head around to face the boy. “Get out of the boat.”

“Dad?” the boy said.

“Get out of the boat! Ranger Rick says we can’t go fishing.” De-Salle swung back around on me. “Thanks for ruining my kid’s day.”

“Don’t push your luck, sir.”

I expected him to have a smart-mouthed answer for that, but instead he just strode off toward the parked SUV.

The boy was standing knee-deep in the water, holding the boat line again in his fists. His mouth was clenched and his eyes were fierce. Whether his anger was directed at me, at his father, or at himself, I couldn’t say. Probably it was all three. Then the Suburban came roaring in reverse down the ramp, pushing the trailer expertly into the water.

DeSalle hopped out of the cab of the vehicle, leaving the door open and the engine running. “Stay out of the way,” he told his son, snatching the nylon line from the boy’s hands.

From the top of the ramp I watched while DeSalle winched the powerboat onto the trailer. It took him a few minutes to secure it in place. As he worked, he kept his eyes from drifting in my direction. He had made a decision to pretend I was no longer there. Maybe he realized how close he was dancing to the edge.

My last look at the boy was through the window of the SUV as they pulled onto the road. DeSalle was talking to him-I could see his mouth moving, a flash of teeth. The boy was pressed down in his seat, chin tucked close to his chest, shoulders hunched against the barrage of his father’s words. It wasn’t hard for me to imagine what the rest of the day was going to be like for that kid.