The Poacher's Son (Mike Bowditch 1)

like that happened.”
    I hadn’t followed the Wendigo land purchase all that closely, being so preoccupied, first with my new job and then with Sarah’s growing unhappiness. I knew the company had recently bought something like half a million acres of forestland in the northern part of the state, including scores of privately owned camps and sporting lodges. These were largely lake-and stream-front cabins built on sites leased from Atlantic Pulp & Paper, the local company that had previously owned all that timberland. It was the way Maine paper mills used to reward their longtime employees, by granting them leases to build rustic vacation camps on company property. Many of these leases had been in the same families for generations.
    “People up there are madder than hell,” said Dot, “and I don’t blame them. They were promised that land, and now this
Canadian
company comes in and says, ‘Sorry, we’re ripping up your contract, get out.’ I’m not excusing what happened, understand. I’m just saying you could have predicted things might turn ugly.”
    I thought of my father and Russell Pelletier and all the other people I had met up that way whose future was now in the hands of Wendigo Timber. “I hadn’t heard they were going to evict all those leaseholders.”
    Hank Varnum, six foot six with a mug like Abe Lincoln, came over to the counter to pay his bill at the cash register. “They’re not really evicting them,” he said. “Not outright, anyway. What they’re doing is offering to sell them the land their camps are on.”
    “For hundreds of thousands of dollars,” said Dot. “Who can afford to pay that kind of money?”
    “They have the choice of moving the buildings somewhere else,” said Varnum.
    “You ever try to move a fifty-year-old log cabin?”
    “I thought you were a believer in free enterprise, Dot.”
    “I am.”
    “Wendigo bought that land legally. It belongs to them, and by law they can do what ever they want with it.”
    Dot’s face glowed red. “You know what they’re going to do, don’t you? They’re going to sell that forestland to rich out-of-staters, and it’s all going to get developed. They’ve already put up a bunch of gates. It used to be you could hunt or fish or snowmobile wherever you wanted up there. Now it’s all going to be off-limits. Is that what you want to see happen?”
    Varnum said, “You can’t fight progress, Dot.”
    “It’s not progress,” I said.
    The sound of my voice seemed to surprise everyone, myself included. I almost never weighed in with a personal opinion at the Square Deal, just answered questions and made polite conversation. It had something to do with wearing the uniform, holding myself in check. But it pissed me off to think of the North Woods gated and turned into a private playland for the rich.
    “Mike’s right,” said Dot. “And if I was one of them leaseholders, you can bet I would have been at that meeting last night, screaming my lungs out.”
    “I’m sure you would,” said Varnum.
    After he had left, Dot said, “I’m sorry, Mike. What can I get you? You want a molasses doughnut?”
    “That would be great.” Truth was, I didn’t have much of an appetite.
    “The one I feel sorry for is that deputy,” she said. “I wonder if he had a family.”
    Of course, he did. We all do.

 
     
    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?