I drove home with the gas pedal pressed flat against the floor. The road bounced me up into the air until the shoulder belt drew tight across my chest, then pulled me hard against the seat. Later, I would discover a strap-shaped bruise on my shoulder, but at the time, I didn’t feel anything but mindless fury.
Rivard’s truck was pulled up in the dooryard beside my snow-covered Jeep. He had the engine running and the headlights blazing, and I saw his darkened profile behind the wheel as I drove up. From the outside, my trailer looked intact. No windows had been broken; no new animals had been crucified on my front door. So why did Rivard think the place had been vandalized?
I got my answer as soon as I opened the truck door. The night air was cold and crisp; in my lungs, it felt as thin as the atmosphere atop Mount Denali. Then the night breeze pushed a sour but unmistakable smell in my direction: skunk.
Sergeant Rivard climbed out of his vehicle. He was wearing a black baseball cap with the embroidered Maine Warden Service logo, a green pine tree with red letters, on it. Despite the hour and the darkness, he had his sunglasses propped atop the bill of the cap, as if he might require their protection from some sudden glare.
“There’s a skunk loose in your trailer,” he said.
“I can smell it!”
“How did it get inside?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t put it in there.”
My eyes were adjusting to the darkness, and I could see that Rivard was having a hard time containing his amusement; the corners of his mouth kept sneaking up.
“This isn’t funny,” I said. “Do you know how hard it is to get stunk spray out of things?”
“I own two dogs, remember? I reckon you’ll need about a thousand gallons of tomato juice to start.”
“Do you think it’s still in there?”
“Only one way to find out.”
I fetched my flashlight from the truck and approached the front door as quietly as I could, which wasn’t very quietly, considering how loud the crunching snow was beneath my boots.
Rivard leaned against the hood of his truck. “I’ll wait out here!”
I turned the key in the lock and eased the door open. In an instant, I was enveloped by a vomitous miasma. My eyes began to gush as if they’d been smeared with raw onions, and I had to press my tongue against my teeth to keep from gagging. I shined the light slowly around the living room, knowing that a skunk’s retinas are reflective.
The stench was overpowering; I could feel it seeping through my pores.
“Do you see it?”
I glared at Rivard for him to be quiet. Except for the nauseating odor, all my possessions looked exactly the way I’d left them a few hours earlier.
I shined the light under the coffee table and sofa. No green eyes flashed back at me. The room was stuffy from the electric baseboards, but when I straightened up, a draft brushed my face. It seemed to be coming from the kitchenette. I crept in that direction until I could get a good look at the countertops and appliances.
The window over the sink was broken. Someone had shattered the glass in order to undo the lock, then raised the window until the gap was large enough to let in a skunk. George Magoon had paid me another visit in the night. The skin along the back of my neck grew hot as I recalled my confrontation with Brogan and Cronk. I would make them pay for this.
First, I needed to find the skunk.
My next stop was the bathroom. Nothing there but mildew.
The bedroom door was ajar. Gently I pushed it open and swept the flashlight beam around the walls.
The skunk was curled up on my unmade bed. Its fluffy black tail was draped like a sleep mask across its eyes. I saw the fur ripple as it breathed.
What to do? If I shot it, I feared the worst-a total, dying release of stench.
I edged into the room, feeling my heart pause when the floor creaked, and slid the closet door open on its cheap plastic wheels. On the shelf was a gray wool blanket. I spread it open in my arms, extending my wingspan to the widest possible extent. It would be like throwing a minnow net.
A skunk typically won’t spray if it can’t see. I’d caught many of them over the years in box traps. The trick was to creep up on the trap from the direction of the steel door and then quickly cover the cage with a sheet or blanket. A skunk can still empty its anal scent glands even when it cannot raise its tail, but it is unlikely to do so if it is blind. I reminded myself of these facts as I stepped toward the bed.
I came within a yard of the animal before it opened its eyes. The skunk cocked its tail as if an electric charge had shot through the hair fibers, and it let out a sharp, almost reptilian hiss. I dropped the blanket on top of it. As fast as I could, I gathered the animal into a ball. With the skunk hissing in my arms, I rushed out the front door, nearly tripping over my welcome mat, and threw the bundle from the top of the steps into a snowbank.
“Fire in the hole!” Rivard called, and ducked comically behind his truck.
I stepped back over the threshold and watched the skunk claw its way loose. It emerged, shaken but seemingly uninjured from the blanket, stomping its feet and shaking its fluffy taiclass="underline" aggrieved and looking for someone to punish. I slammed the door and waited a minute before peeking out again. My last glimpse of the skunk was of its black-and-white derriere as it waddled off into the balsams at the edge of the yard.
Rivard contorted his face muscles to keep from grinning as I went down to meet him.
“Nice work,” he said.
“Go to hell. Everything I own is ruined.”
“That’s really bad luck.”
“It has nothing to do with luck. It’s that George Magoon bastard fucking around with me again.”
Rivard narrowed his eyes. “What makes you say that?”
“Who else is going to set a skunk loose inside my trailer? It didn’t just wake up from hibernation and decide to invade my home. The kitchen window was broken.”
Rivard reached into his jacket for a tin of snuff and unscrewed the lid. He pinched some tobacco and jammed it down between his cheek and gums. “Was there another note?”
“No, but it had to be that son of a bitch Brogan again. He was just over here this afternoon with his Viking bodyguard.”
“I wouldn’t jump to conclusions,” my sergeant said.
“I want to hear him deny it himself.” I sniffed my forearm. I hadn’t touched the skunk. I hadn’t even spent five minutes inside the mobile home. But I smelled like a stink bomb had exploded in my face.
“You’re not going over there.”
“The hell I’m not.”
“That wasn’t a request, Warden.”
“You want me to just let this go?”
“No,” Rivard said, “I want you to wait here while I pay Brogan a visit. I’ll give you a call after he and I have a conversation. If he was behind this, I promise you that we’ll make him pay. Understood?”
I spat on the ground, trying to expel some of the bitter skunk taste from my mouth. “Understood.”
I watched his taillights disappear into the night, fighting the impulse to wait ten minutes and then follow. My head ached from frustration, pent-up rage, and lack of sleep. How do you de-scent an entire trailer? I’d have to rip out the carpeting and the drapes and probably jettison the furniture, too. In the meantime, I would have to get a motel room at fifty bucks a night, minimum.
Where had Brogan and Cronk found a skunk in mid-February? They must have known where one was hibernating.
A thought came to me.
I took the big Maglite I kept in my backseat and went exploring around my trailer. My feet punched holes in the deep snow as I made my way around to the backyard. I felt the cold snow being jammed up my pants legs against the bare skin.