The Bear Trap: A Mike Bowditch Short Story by Doiron Paul

Author:Doiron, Paul [Doiron, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Mystery, thriller, Suspense, Crime, Adult
Amazon: B07232WR6C
Goodreads: 35155462
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Published: 2014-05-31T07:00:00+00:00

5

My “butcher” was a seventeen-year-old high-school dropout named Ricky Elwell.

Ricky was the son of the late Richard “Dick” Elwell, who had been a backwoods legend in his time, having disassembled thousands of deer, moose, and bear for hunters across the state of Maine. Dick had been a small man with a caved-in chest and a caved-in face who looked twenty years older than he was. He was an unrepentant chain-smoker who used to sip from a pint of Allen’s coffee-flavored brandy while he ran his bone saws. By the time the cigarettes finally choked the life out of him, he had been down to seven fingers and half a thumb.

I therefore shouldn’t have been surprised by the sight of Ricky as he emerged from the darkness of the barn where he continued his father’s trade. He had put on an apron that still bore bloodstains from the previous fall’s hunting season. When he waved hello, I saw that he had lost his left ring finger since I’d last seen him.

“Jesus, Rick,” I said, “what happened to your hand?”

He was a skinny, black-haired kid with a head that belonged on a person twice his size. His hair was cut in a heavy bang that fell like a crow’s wing over one dark, mischievous eye. He examined the intact digits of his right hand with a puzzled expression.

“Your left hand,” I said.

“You mean this finger?” He wiggled the stub at me.

“How did you lose it?”

“Didn’t lose it. I cut it off deliberate.”

Stacey didn’t know Ricky, but she should have realized that Dick’s boy would have inherited his old man’s desert-dry wit. “What? Why?” she asked.

“My girl wanted to put a ring on it. I figured cutting it off was the only way to shut her up about us getting hitched.”

“Did it work?” Stacey grinned, finally catching on.

“You bet it did. Next thing I knew, she’d gotten herself knocked up by Chip Emmons. His dad owns the autobody at Six Corners. I could’ve warned the poor bastard about Brittney if only he’d asked me.” Ricky pasted a cigarette to his lower lip and lit the end with his old man’s Zippo. “So let’s have a look at these cob rollers of yours.”

Ricky was too petite to peer over the side of the Sierra, so I was forced to open the bed for him. As he hopped up, I noticed he was wearing basketball shorts under his apron and flip-flops with white athletic socks. He poked and prodded the dead hogs as if he were a doctor performing a yearly physical on them.

“Well?” I said.

“They’re pigs all right.”

“We appreciate the confirmation.”

“I always figured wild boars would’ve looked wilder somehow. But I guess these are hairier than normal hogs. And the boar’s teeth are longer than average. How about you let me keep those? My mom makes wicked cool jewelry out of teeth and bones. She never worked with wild boar before, as far as I know. And her birthday’s coming up.”

“I think we can make a deal,” I said.

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