“Hang on a minute,” Mart called from somewhere in the trees. “I’ll bring over a . . .” The brush rustled, and I shuffle-slogged in a semicircle just in time to see Mart emerging from the brush, dragging a fairly large log. Judging from the way he was looking at my mud-covered feet, the log was intended to provide a bridge of sorts, to transport me over the mire. “Guess we don’t need this anymore.” Mart tossed the log aside.
“I’m fine,” I said, indicating that I did this kind of thing every day.
Behind me, Reverend Hay called out, “Bonsaiii!” then jumped off the boat and landed past the muck line. Mart started toward the trees, and I squished my way to dry land. The pastor fell into step behind me.
“How far is it to the house?” I ventured, even though I was partially afraid of the answer. In contrast to our side of the lakeshore, the riverbanks here were wild and undeveloped, lonely and far from welcoming, framed by tall trees and thick tangles of underbrush, which, now that I looked closely, harbored copious amounts of poison ivy and probably snakes. As far as I could see in either direction, there was no sign of a house or a road, or human habitation of any kind.
Tipping his head back, Mart studied a tree ahead. “Well, we must be in the wrong spot. These trees’ve got too much bark on the north side.”
Three thoughts crossed my mind.
You mean I climbed out of the
boat and slogged through the mud for nothing? How am I going to get back
into the boat?
And then, a final, random thought,
He can tell where we
are by the bark on the trees?
“You’re kidding, right?”
Mart turned just far enough that I caught a glint in the corner of his eye, then he grinned, shook his head, and walked on.
Behind me, Hay chuckled. “Game wardens are full of hooey. It comes with the job.”
Ahead, Mart held aside a curtain of wild grapevines, waving a hand to usher us through. I glanced up to see if the smile was still there and caught the last bit of it fading. Somewhere under the uniform and the straight face, there was an actual personality. Go figure.
Once we’d made it through the underbrush, Mart quickly located a road that was little more than twin ruts winding off into the forest. Whether the trail was still in use seemed debatable, but Mart nodded like he’d discovered what he was looking for. “It shouldn’t be far from here,” he said. “I figured Len was using one of these old logging trails to cart his stuff down to the water. He probably has his boat hidden in the brush near here. He puts it in the water right past those cedar trees.”
A creepy feeling crawled up my spine, and goose bumps prickled my skin. All of a sudden, I felt like we were being watched.
Perhaps coming here wasn’t a good idea.
God gave men one mouth and two ears,
so they can listen twice as much as they talk.
– Anonymous
(via Mart McClendon, state game warden)
Mart McClendon
On the way up the hill, I started thinking maybe it wasn’t the brightest thing, bringing along Hay and Andrea. I wasn’t really worried about Len deciding to take a shot at us – after ten years of dealing with poachers, game thieves, and gun-toting rednecks of all kinds, you get a sense about people – but between Andrea asking questions and Hay jumping out of the boat yelling
Bonsai!
, we’d given Len plenty of warning. Usually, if I was making an unannounced visit, I didn’t want my suspects to hear me from a mile away. That’s what makes the visit unannounced.
I had a feeling Len could see us, but we weren’t likely to be seeing him. Folks who lived in these kinds of places had their reasons for avoiding people, but as we clattered up the ridge, I fanned a hope that having Hay and Andrea along would convince Len I wasn’t there to pin him down for having too many lines in the lake. Maybe seeing them would pique his curiosity a little bit, make him think we were there handing out free food baskets from the church or something. Folks up in these hills would put up with some interloping if there was charity involved. In general, they knew that strangers dressed too nice for the territory and church pastors tended to come bearing gifts. Game wardens came bearing citations and warnings, mostly.
“How much farther?” Andrea asked as we topped the hill. I could see a clearing ahead and a four-wheeler trail that somebody’d been using quite a bit. With the bridge washed out on County Road 47, it was a long drive down some pretty rough back roads to get into town from here, but going upriver and across the lake, Len could make the Waterbird in twenty-five minutes or less, which was probably why he’d been showing up there quite a bit this summer with vegetables and mushrooms to sell in the parking lot. The fact that he’d changed his pattern these last couple weeks and started selling at the Crossroads again could definitely mean he was trying to keep from being seen by too many people.
“Are we close yet?” Behind me, Andrea had stalled out. Her pants were caught on a bramble, and she’d stopped to pull it off.
“Could be another mile or two – just guessing.” I looked at the clearing ahead. Back when Len’s parents were alive, that’d probably been a farm field, but now it was overgrown with shoulder-high Johnson grass and scrappy cedars. Across the way, I could see what was left of an old slabwood fence and the carcasses of a couple junk cars. Len’s house was most likely behind the cedar hedge at the other end of the field.
“Another
mile
or two?” Andrea repeated. I had to give her credit for determination. Even in dress shoes, she was keeping up pretty well. Hay’d started to lag behind after stopping to dump a rock out of his high-dollar rubber fishing treads. “You’ve got to be kid – ” Andrea’s heel hung on a root, and she stumbled, leaving the shoe behind. Her bare foot came down in the moss, mud, and nameless squishy stuff typical of a forest floor after a rain. Letting out something between a squeal and a growl, she hopped to the side of the trail and started wiping off her toes on a little fern plant.
“Better look out for poison ivy,” I said, and she shot a sneer my way.
“I
know
what poison ivy looks like.” Her hair had fallen out of the clip, so that it hung in long curls around her face. Her cheeks were red, and she had fire in her eyes. She looked good that way. Not so . . . stiff. “I’m not a complete idiot.”
Slipping around behind her, I grabbed the shoe, then set it on the ground by her foot. “There you go, Cinderella.”
She gave the shoe a shocked look, like she really couldn’t believe I’d bother. Guess I hadn’t made too good an impression so far. I wasn’t really trying to, but my mama did raise me to be a gentleman. I wouldn’t walk off and leave a lady stranded on one shoe. Not even this lady. I would’ve put that log down to help her off the boat, too, but she didn’t stay put when I told her to. The muddy shoes were her fault, mostly. Bet those were starting to chafe about now.
Hay caught up, and he was so busy looking for birds with his fold-up binoculars, he almost ran Cinderella off the path and toppled her into the ooze.
“Better put down those field glasses, Hay,” I said. “We’re here.” As usual, Hay was as out to lunch as anybody could be. Had his head in a sermon or in a book most of the time, and now he was an amateur bird watcher, too. One of these days, he was gonna step on a copperhead snake while he was busy watching clouds pass over.
Last year’s dead leaves crunched and squished as Andrea hurried to catch up. “I thought you said it was another
mile
or
two
.”
Pushing some brambles aside, I gave a shrug toward the clearing, where the logging-road-turned-ATV-trail wound its way through overgrowth toward the old fence. “You shouldn’t believe everything you hear in the woods.”
Andrea’s mouth dropped open, then snapped shut. “You’re . . . just . . .” She trailed off, seeming like she couldn’t find the word for it. It wasn’t the first time I’d had that effect on a woman. When you’re in the field all the time, you get in the habit of treating everybody the way you’d treat your work partner or law enforcement personnel in other departments. Guys joke around. It keeps you on your toes. And when you’re in the field, you need to be on your toes.
It’s all fine, until you’re dealing with women and children. They don’t always see humor where you do. More than once, I’d ended up with my nephews or my sisters-in-law crying at the annual McClendon campout in Big Bend, and I didn’t have the first idea what I’d said or done to cause it. My mama’s opinion was that the game warden school needed to add sensitivity training.
Andrea finally finished with, “. . . not . . .
nice
.” She turned up her nose and followed Hay through the opening.
“I try.” I ducked down to slip through behind her. A branch sprung back and whacked me in the head so quick I didn’t have time to catch it. Lucky for me, it was pretty pliable, so it just ripped half my ear off, sent my hat flying like a Frisbee, and took out a chunk of hair. I said something I probably shouldn’t have. When I grabbed my hat and looked up, Andrea was watching me with her hand over her mouth, and I knew right away that branch hadn’t come my way by accident.
“Oops,” she muttered and bit her lip, but she wasn’t very convincing. For one thing, she was kind of smiling when she said it.
“Good trick,” I told her, pushing the dent out of my hat.
“I try.” She tipped her chin up, then headed off across the field with Hay trailing along behind, looking for bluebirds.
Halfway through the Johnson grass patch, we cleared the end of the cedars, and I saw Len’s estate ahead. It was pretty typical of the area – a patchwork barn, piles of junk here and there, a couple rusted-out tractors floating like flotsam in a sea of broomweed. Beside the house, a dilapidated school bus had been sitting in one place so long the wheels were buried up to the axles. No telling how they’d gotten that thing up here. The house itself was old, gaps in the siding covered with bits of secondhand lumber and scavenged road signs, the knobby cedar porch poles pushing outward like buckteeth. The whole place listed to one side, so that it seemed like it might just fold up if a good enough wind moved through.
I stopped near the edge of the yard, if you could call it that, and hollered Len’s name, then identified myself and told him we wanted to talk to him. Near the barn, a mule brayed, a rangy old milk cow climbed to her feet, a pig squealed, and in a ragtag pen built from shipping pallets and hog wire, two grown dogs and a batch of pups went wild, barking. I hoped those dogs were locked up. They didn’t sound friendly. Andrea and Hay slipped around behind me, like they were thinking the same thing.
I identified myself again and called out Len’s name over the barking. No answer. Hay tried raising Len, next. During his time in Moses Lake, he’d learned that, out in the hills, even a pastor ought to hail the house before walking up to it. “I don’t think anyone’s here,” he said finally.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Andrea agreed. Both of them turned toward me.
“Won’t hurt to go on up and check,” I said. “Could be he’s out in the barn.” Occupied or not, I wanted to get a look at the place while I was there. Besides, if Len was hiding in the woods and saw us sniffing around his farmyard, he might flush out. “You two stay put a minute. I’ll be right back.”
Andrea and Hay stood side by side, watching me head off to the house. When I rounded the cedar break and started across the yard, the dogs took a run at the rickety fence behind the house. In the dry-dirt corral next door, the mule ran around bucking and kicking. Even with the noise, the farm had an eerie feel to it, a little like a graveyard when you’re all alone, and you can feel the people there, even though they’re gone.
The dogs ramped up the threat level when I stepped onto the porch and leaned close to the two wood-paned windows on either side of the weathered door. Between the layer of dirt on the glass and a set of dry-rotted curtains hanging inside, I couldn’t see anything.
Leaving the porch, I walked across to look in the barn. Inside, the light was dim, the shadows of the hills and trees falling long now, but I could make out Len’s collection of live traps, deer feeders, and a harness for the mule.
Along one wall, a stack of homemade cages of various sizes looked to be ready for use. They were empty at the moment, but I wondered what normally lived in them. There were bowls with mold-covered food, and bug-infested water dishes, and the whole place smelled like scat. Several cages had been recently emptied, the ground still wet from tipped-over water bowls. If nothing else, the cages were grounds for me to come back. Keeping wildlife without a permit – either for sale or for skins – was illegal.
I wasn’t surprised to find the cages, considering Len’s history in terms of fish-and-game regulations. What I didn’t see here was any sign of a little girl. . . .
“Did you find anything?” Hay’s voice made me jump and grab for my belt. I turned and had a Barney Fife moment, tripping over some boards hidden underneath the loose layer of straw.
“Dadgummit, Hay. You trying to give me a heart attack? Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
Andrea was standing beside him. She gave my hand on the gun a concerned look, like she was wondering if I could be trusted with the thing.
Hay surveyed the inside of the barn, then wrinkled his long, narrow nose and sneezed. “What do you think he keeps in here?” He pointed at the cages, and beside him, Andrea’s brown eyes got wide. She looked like she was picturing something out of a horror movie. Shivering, she took a step backward, and headed out of the barn.