Chapter XLIII

Ellar Michaud left Kit No. 174, the sack still empty, the spade unused. So distracted was he that he failed to notice the man standing on the far side of Sullivan Creek. Only when he moved did Michaud react, dropping the spade and reaching for the hunting rifle. But he held the weapon low and did not raise it to his shoulder, not yet.

"Ho!" said the man by the water, raising his hands. "I'm just taking a walk in the moonlight. I didn't mean to startle you."

He stepped forward, emerging from the shadows so Ellar could see his face. Ellar thought his name might have been Ungar, Lars Ungar—not that it was of any importance. They would never be friends, because this man did not belong in the woods.

"You ought not to be there," said Ellar.

"I'm on our side of the creek. I'm not trespassing."

"Our" side, noticed Ellar. This, from an interloper.

"That's a matter of dispute," said Ellar.

"Mr. Hickman says otherwise."

The Hickmans had owned the land east of the Michaud property for more than a century and a half, although their interests and those of the Michauds had not come into direct conflict until the 1970s, when Dennen Hickman—Den to his friends, or those who'd admit to it—was still in his early twenties. The Michauds had long been trying to persuade the Hickmans to sell them a parcel that would act as a buffer to the east, extending far beyond Sullivan Creek, but the Hickmans had refused all reasonable offers. As a result, the two families fell into a state of cold enmity that had persisted for the best part of fifty years.

But over the last decade or so, the animosity between the Michauds and the Hickmans had descended into outright loathing. The reason for the deterioration in relations was Sullivan Creek itself, which had, due to natural causes—principally the collapse of a promontory back in 1986—begun to alter course, until it flowed farther west than before. The Michauds believed it now moved through their property, but Den Hickman had argued that the original deed ceded to his family the territory east of Sullivan Creek—it was there in black and white for anyone to read—and the stream's new channel did not alter that fact.

All of which should have been incidental, a source of irritation to the Michauds but not much else, given the size of the affected terrain, but this would have been to ignore the attachment of families to their land, especially those with a lineage dating back centuries. In this case, Sullivan Creek's redirected meanderings also brought it close, at its westernmost point, to Kit No. 174—so close, in fact, that from the far bank one could pick out the roof through a gap in the trees.

To compound the difficulty, Den Hickman, possibly as a means of further antagonizing his neighbors, had recently rented out a patch of clear ground to a group of men and women to form a semi-permanent settlement. They varied in age from late teens to mid-forties, and a few were related to one another. According to local gossip, the ones who weren't related were sleeping with one another, and some of the ones who were related might have been sleeping with one another, too. A number of the men and women sported tattoos, among them the twin lightning bolts of the Schutzstaffel, along with the good old swastika, beloved of inbreds, peckerwoods, and general shitheads everywhere, as well as an Iron Cross or two. A few also had Russian flag bumper stickers on their vehicles, and one of their trucks had been sprayed with the letter Z, in the manner of the Russian tanks in Ukraine. Ungar was one of the old-school types, with a small jailhouse swastika tattooed at the corner of his left eye. It crinkled when he smiled.

Ellar Michaud didn't pay politics a lot of mind and had never voted in his life, but he knew enough about history to recognize that if the guy next to you was wearing a swastika, you were keeping the wrong kind of company; and if a whole such tribe moved onto the land adjoining your own, they presented a quandary that was moral as much as anything else. They could take their promises about keeping to their own side of Sullivan Creek and shove them up their asses, because that was what the Nazis had said about the Danube.

Den Hickman had recently hosted a brown-bag lunch in Gretton for a speaker from the William Stonehurst Foundation for American Ideas, a political and social pressure group founded by the retired Portland businessman Bobby Stonehurst, better known as Bobby Ocean. As far as Ellar Michaud could tell, the Stonehurst Foundation didn't like Jews, Blacks, Asians, Mexicans, feminists, queers, or Catholics. Ellar didn't know very many people in any of those categories personally, a few Catholics aside, and wasn't set to lose sleep should something bad befall them, but he wasn't about to go out of his way to make that happen, either. Some of those living on Hickman's land had attended the lunch meeting, and one of them had apparently threatened to beat the shit out of a reporter from the Bangor Daily News in the parking lot afterward. It might even have been Ungar, currently hollering at Ellar Michaud over Sullivan Creek. Ellar reckoned that, sooner or later, these people were going to attract serious attention from the law, government agencies, protestors, or the media, none of which would be helpful to the Michauds. Ensuring the outsiders' departure from Hickman land was, therefore, an issue of some urgency.

"You'd better be on your way," he told Ungar. "I don't even like you looking at my property."

Ungar grinned.

"See you got yourself a house back there," he said. "Anyone living in it?"

Ellar returned the gun to his shoulder and prepared to walk away. He was already done here.

"Maybe you ought to consider renting it out," continued Ungar. "Some of us are tired of trailers. We like it around here. We're contemplating a more substantial relocation. Isn't that right, fellas?"

More men were emerging from the trees. Ellar counted four, five, six of them, two with rifles at port arms and the rest with pistols in their belts. He wondered how long they'd been there, watching and listening. He should have spotted them earlier. He was growing careless, but he'd learn from this mistake.

"We should try to get along better," said Ungar, "seeing as how we're neighbors and all."

"I don't think so," said Ellar.

"That's just a shame. You don't want us as enemies, Ellar. We're here to defend the American way of life, and those who are not with us are against us."

Ellar regarded him evenly.

"Boy," he said, "you ever call me by my given name again, and I'll hurt you."

"Well, then I guess that's just the way it's going to be. We'll be seeing you, Ellar."

Ungar retreated into the woods, the others slowly joining him, until none was left in sight. Only then did Ellar Michaud continue on his way, but he did not turn his back on the creek, only keeping it in sight until he, too, was taken by the trees.