Free Bloodline by Gerry Boyle

at midday. There were deer yards in the cedars down below, groves of Druid trees where the ground was covered with deer droppings, and there were feathersof deer fur on the branches. I had made it a habit of stopping there until Clair had told me that doing so would chase the deer away. Ever since, I had skirted it by several hundred yards, leaving the deer to their refuge.
    I was heading downhill now, bushwhacking in the direction of the road and the house. The mist had turned to light rain and the woods were silent except for the dripping in the trees. And then there was another crack, behind and above. I turned, expecting to see a buck bounding through the trees, but saw nothing.
    For the rest of the walk, the woods were dark and deep but not quite so lovely. I fought back the urge to break into a trot and walked, pretending, as do so many people, to have everything under control.

10

    I drove back up to the store in Knox that afternoon, waited a half-hour for Dulcy and the girls to show up in their big truck, and then took them up on their invitation to follow them to see “the pit” where they hung out.
    The pit was three miles out Route 137. The entrance was a dirt path cut through the wall of birch and spruce that ran along both sides of the road. We slowed and pulled in and I followed the girls’ truck, branches raking my windows on both sides. After about fifty yards, we emerged from the woods into a sandy clearing, rimmed by raw, eroded bluffs which were ringed by a fringe of blood-red sumac.
    The place had been a gravel pit, and later, some kind of dump where people had left refrigerators, a couple of stoves, and old cars and trucks that now were flipped over, their rusting undercarriages exposed like the bellies of dead beetles. When we passed close to one truck, an old red Chevy, I could see that its sides were perforated with bullet holes and the bigger, peach-size tears made by shotgun slugs. The place had the desolate feel of a wasteland, which probably was why, in a part of Maine where there were mountain trails, hillside pastures, and majestic ocean views just down the road, the kids had picked it as their refuge.
    Bring teenagers to the Louvre and they instinctively will gather in the restroom.
    Here, they’d gathered at the far end of the pit, in a small dogleg section that could not be seen from the point where the road first came out of the woods. The girls swung their truck in beside two others, both older models, both lifted high on big tires. One was painted with black primer but had a blue tailgate and blue doors. One was white with gray primer spots and a Confederate flag across the back window.
    â€œAh,” I said to myself, as I pulled up and shut off the motor. “A Civil War buff.”
    Three guys stood between the trucks and all three stared at me, ignoring the girls, who slid down from the cab of their truck one by one. I got out of the truck and walked toward them slowly, but with what I hoped was an easy confidence, the kind you try to exude as you’re approaching a mean dog. What was the old saying? He’s okay as long as he doesn’t know you’re afraid.
    Which I wasn’t. It was just that I was getting the feeling that these guys would no more want to talk about teenage moms than about Lee’s blunders at Bull Run.
    One was bigger than me. One my size. One smaller. They had long hair tucked under baseball caps, which topped a uniform of dungaree jackets and jeans. The jeans were tucked into work boots, which were unlaced. How would they put it in the fashion pages of the Times ? A loose, casual look for those weekends in the country.
    The girls broke the already-long silence.
    â€œHey,” Dulcy said.
    â€œThis is Jack,” Belinda began. “He went to Portland to talk to Missy Hewett about her kid. Except she doesn’t have it now. She gave it away so she could go to college.”
    I detected disapproval of Miss Hewett’s