When he learned this was my first time on a puffin island, Garrett invited me to join him in his blind. “There’s only room for two. Unless you’d like to relive old times, Stacey, in which case I can go.”
“Thanks, but I’ve counted enough terns to last the rest of my life.”
“I thought as much,” he said with a smile.
It was settled that Garrett and I would meet the women back at camp for lunch in an hour. He opened the door of the blind as if I were a guest at his home. I had to duck and felt bad about taking the only chair, but he said he’d happily crouch. “I’ve been sitting all morning and need to get the blood pumping in my quads.”
Before she left, Stacey leaned in through the open door. “Don’t get lost coming back, Mike.”
“He’ll have me as a guide,” said Garrett. “I would also guess the warden knows a thing or two about orienteering.”
“Don’t leave the path is what I mean. The military used Baker Island for target practice during World War II, and there is still unexploded ordnance.”
I hit my head on the low ceiling as I rose from my seat. “How have I never heard this?”
“If you’d downloaded an up-to-date nautical chart instead of using a map from the FDR administration, you would’ve seen the warnings.”
“There should be a sign!”
Garrett already felt comfortable enough with me to pat my shoulder. “There is a sign—a big sign—on the southern tip of the island. Most boaters come that way from Boothbay Harbor. The state placed the billboard there so no one would miss it.”
Kendra squeezed her head in beside Stacey’s. “The unexploded bombs and shrapnel were supposedly removed, but there was a big boom ten years ago no one could explain. Maeve thinks a mink set it off. One had swum over from Ayers and was raiding nests.”
I thought it sounded like another campfire story.
“It must’ve been an obese mink to detonate a buried bomb.”
“Laugh if you want, but Maeve never saw the mink again.”
Then she closed the door, leaving Garrett and me alone in the intimacy of the observation blind. His skin smelled of mosquito repellent, which I took as a warning of biting insects to come. I noticed he’d patched the bullet holes in the blind with duct tape. And a can of taupe paint in the corner showed he’d attended to the exterior restoration personally.
“Why don’t you try out my binoculars, Mike? What I like about Swarovskis is they have a superior field of view and better color fidelity than their competitors.”
They must have cost $3,000 at least. Some little old Austrian had probably spent a year of his life grinding and polishing the lenses. I have twenty-ten vision, but the binoculars made me feel like a peregrine falcon.
I focused first on the distant island to the northwest where Stacey and I planned on spending the night. Spruce Island was easily accessible from Boothbay Harbor and a popular camping destination, but we had a secluded site reserved. I was still hoping for a romantic evening, and as for the rain in the forecast, I never would have become a game warden if I minded sleeping out in foul weather.
Garrett surprised me with a question. “How long have you known Kendra?”
“Five years, give or take.”
“Has she always been wound so tight?”
“I’d better plead the Fifth.”
“I thought as much. Well, she certainly has cause to be stressed, dealing with our esteemed boss. Maeve McLeary is proof of the old adage ‘Never meet your heroes.’”
It was cool in the shade and even relaxing if you could block out the constant cries of the birds, which I found myself hard pressed to do. Garrett asked how much I knew about seabirds, and when I said, “Not enough,” he gave me a quick tutorial in differentiating the three tern species on the island: common, arctic, and roseate.
Some razorbills were hopping about the boulders—majestic black-and-white birds related to puffins—but I found myself training the Swarovskis on the boats visible on the water beyond.
I scanned the lobsterboats and counted six. Sunlight flashed off the nearest ones as if they had mirrors for hulls. Most of the fishermen were busy hauling traps, meaning their boats were unanchored and often idling; but I managed to read four names. There was the Centerfold and the Bonnie, both out of Boothbay Harbor, the Guttersnipe out of Damariscotta, and the Frost Flower out of Ayers Island.
All but the Frost Flower had the same bumper sticker on their transoms:
“The birds here are also of interest,” said Garrett with a sly smile.
“Watching boats is a game warden thing. Sorry.”
He removed his glasses and held them up to the sunlight, then went to work on the dusty lenses with a microfiber cloth.
“No apology needed. You don’t have an accent, but I get the sense you’re a Maine native.”
“Right again. Where are you from, Garrett?”
“Most recently, the University of St. Andrews in Scotland where I’m getting my MSc in biology with a focus on ornithology. But I’m from West Philly originally. I did my undergraduate work at UPenn.”
“How did you end up here, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“I attended Germantown Friends on a scholarship, and they took us on a field trip out to Cape May, New Jersey, during fall migration. The hawk watch counted two thousand falcons that day, and when I came home, I knew what I wanted to do with my life. My mom did not approve until I showed her how much professors at elite universities could earn.”
One of the tuxedoed razorbills hopped to a nearby boulder. He was so close I could have reached out and touched him.
“But how did you end up on Baker?”
Garrett moved to a kneeling position. “I had lined up another position in the UK, but it fell through, and I didn’t know what to do with myself. Then I saw a posting from the Maine Seabird Initiative. The project had an unexpected opening. I knew I’d earn next to nothing, but Dr. McLeary is a legend in the field, and I had never been to New England. Only after I accepted did someone tell me Maine is the whitest state in the nation!”
I didn’t know how to respond to this.
Instead, I readjusted my ass on the frayed chair and turned my binoculars to the creatures around me, reminding myself that birders came from far and wide to see these beautiful rarities and I should seize the opportunity to appreciate them.
I spotted seven species of seabirds perched on the rocks or in the surf offshore. Laughing gulls occupied the highest boulders. The confusing tern species mingled below. The puffins hung together on slabs crusted with orange lichen. In the water, a raft of eiders drifted past while a lone cormorant dove deep and surfaced after what seemed like half an hour with a tinker mackerel.
Captivated by the birds, I was startled when Garrett spoke. “Not these two again.”
I let the binoculars fall against my sternum and saw a lobsterboat sliding into view from the south. Its engine was off, and it was drifting past on one of the powerful currents that surrounded the island and made it so dangerous.
The boat was larger than most of the vessels I’d been watching: thirty feet from stem to stern. It had a blue hull and a white cabin. A blaze orange buoy hung from the canopy so that their competitors would know the men aboard were pulling only their own traps. Its other signature features were two flags flying from the sides of the cabin. One was a pirate sigil: the skull and crossbones. The other was the battle flag of the Confederate States of America.
I slumped back against the chair and turned to Garrett. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“I wish I were.”
“They do this often?”
He blinked repeatedly, telling me how nervous he was. “Every damned day.”
Two men were aboard the boat, a captain and his mate, a position known in Maine as a sternman.
Physically, they couldn’t have been more different.
The sweaty-faced captain was dressed in a size XXXL tie-dyed shirt. His muscular chest merged seamlessly with his beer belly above faded orange Grundéns fishing pants. He wore those multihued, wraparound shades favored by Major League Baseball players.
The sternman, by contrast, seemed made entirely of bone and sinew. I could have counted every rib in his rib cage, traced every vein along his forearms. He wore only board shorts and rubber boots.
Even from a distance, I could tell there was something wrong with his profile. I zeroed in the binoculars and saw that he was disfigured: the lower half of his otherwise handsome face was seamed with red and white scars. His head was shaved up the back and around the ears, but the hair on top was long and fell to one side in golden-blond locks.
As soon as they got within shouting distance of the blind, the captain turned on a radio and cranked up the music. Suddenly, the speaker mounted inside the cabin started blasting an obscene rap tune. It was Sir Mix-A-Lot expressing his honest admiration for women with well-developed gluteus muscles.
I pushed open the door and sprang into the dazzling sunlight.
“Turn it off!” I shouted above the music and the birds.
The speaker went silent.
I peered into the cabin and located what I expected to see: a marine shotgun with a corrosion-resistant barrel mounted above the dashboard. The captain had only to swing around to grab the gun.
“Who the fuck are you?” the mutilated sternman called.
“Not the person you were expecting?”
The boat’s captain leaned his top-heavy torso over the gunwale. He was wearing a cord necklace with a shark’s tooth pendant: a great white shark. “Where’s my brother Garrett?”
Like a genie summoned, the researcher emerged from the blind. “Hey, guys.”
“There he is!” said the captain. “The man himself. How’s it hanging, my brother?”
My temples began to throb. “What’s the deal with that flag?”
“We’re pirates,” said the sternman, thinking he was clever.
“I’m talking about the other one. Don’t pretend you don’t know what it means.”
The captain peered slowly at the Confederate flag, rippling in the sea breeze. “It’s just a symbol, dude. It can mean whatever you want it to mean. There’s not one interpretation.”
“Like hell there isn’t,” I said.
I couldn’t tell if he was stoned or just stupid.
“Ever hear of free speech, asshole?” said the sternman.
The captain flashed me a dumb grin. “I know what you’re thinking, dude, but we’re just having fun with our boy, Garrett. When we’re passing by the island, we like to play tunes to remind him of the hood.”
I glanced at Garrett. “The hood?”
“It’s nothing,” he whispered. “I’m used to this shit.”
“This isn’t a racial thing,” said the barrel-chested captain with the sincerity of someone who believes his own bullshit. “We’re all brothers under the skin. Right?”
I became aware of two gulls scrapping over a starfish. Their laughter was the humorless din of an asylum.
“You never answered my question,” snarled the sternman. “Who the hell are you anyway? I haven’t seen you around before.”
“Police.” I held up my badge so that it caught the sun. I didn’t want to confuse them by specifying that I worked for the Warden Service, especially since I had the same arrest powers as any other cop. One of the first things they teach you at the criminal justice academy is to always maintain a command presence. “How about you shut up with the wisecracks and give me your names?”
The sternman was having none of it. “How about you—?”
Fortunately, the captain possessed a teaspoon of good sense. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Take it down a notch, Chris.”
“You’re such a fucking pussy, Bear.”
“Maybe, but it’s my boat, and I pay your wages. Lower those flags.”
“For fuck’s sake!”
“I said take them down, dude.”
The sternman brought out a Bic lighter and a crushed pack of cigarillos. He lit one. He was thinking it through. After a tense moment, he reached for the pirate flag and ripped it off the pole.
“And the other one!” I said.
The man named Chris was gentler with the Stars and Bars; he even folded it respectfully in a triangle.
The captain pushed his shades atop his head to be sociable. “I’m Bear Goodale, and this is my homme de stern Chris Beckwith. I didn’t get your name, Officer?”
“It’s Bowditch. Where do you guys fish out of? Boothbay? Damariscotta?”
“We’re over on Ayers,” said Goodale amiably. In his mind we were all friends now that the flags were down.
“Maybe I’ll stop by later since I’m in the neighborhood.”
“You ain’t allowed, asshole,” said Chris Beckwith, exhaling smoke as if he’d swallowed burning coals. “The island is private property.”
“The man’s law enforcement, Chris,” said Goodale. “He can go where he pleases. Nothing much to see on Ayers, though. Listen, we should really get back to hauling.”
“Not without an apology,” I said.
“Absolutely,” said Bear. “We are one hundred percent sorry. We totally respect the badge. Blue lives matter.”
“Not to me, to Mr. Meadows here.”
Garrett pressed against my shoulder, whispering, “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but it’s not necessary.”
Bear extended his arms in a world-embracing hug. “Garrett, brother, we’re sorry if anything we did crossed the line for you. You know we mean well, and it’s all in good fun.”
“Can’t take a fucking joke,” muttered the sternman, Beckwith.
“It’s OK, guys,” Garrett said with such friendliness he almost convinced me. “We’re cool.”
Goodale gave us a thumbs-up as he started the engine. “Take care, Garrett. You too, Officer.”
Beckwith flicked his cigarillo into the sea. A gull made a dive for the butt, thinking it might be a snack. The bird had the sense to spit it out.
As Bear Goodale brought the boat around, I read the name on the transom.
Persuader.