The Whisperers

‘Hotter than a Methodist hell, and all,’ he added. He was right. I hadn’t noticed while I was in the car, but I had begun to perspire as soon as I stepped from it. The taxidermist, meanwhile, wasn’t so much sweating as self-basting. No-see-ums hovered around us both.

‘Your name wouldn’t be Proctor, by any chance?’ I asked him.

‘No, I’m Stunden.’

‘You mind if I ask you some questions, Mr. Stunden?’

‘You already are, far as I can tell.’

He was gri

‘Sorry about the smell,’ he said. ‘I don’t notice it anymore. I’d talk to you outside, but I got this deer hide to finish, and I’m working on a couple of ducks for the same guy.’

He pointed at two clear containers of ground corncob, in which he was degreasing the duck carcasses. ‘Can’t shave a duck,’ he said. ‘The skin won’t take it.’

Since shaving a duck had never struck me as something I’d feel the inclination to do, I contented myself with observing that it wasn’t yet hunting season.

‘This deer died of natural causes,’ said Stunden. ‘Tripped and fell on a bullet.’

‘And the ducks?’

‘They drowned.’

As he worked the shaver, he began to sweat even more.

‘Looks like hard grind,’ I said.

Stunden shrugged. ‘Deer are hard. Waterfowl, not so much. I can take care of a duck in a couple of hours, and I get to indulge my artistic side. You have to be careful with the colors, else it won’t look right. I’ll get five hundred dollars for those ones. I know the guy will pay, too, and that’s not always the case. Times are hard. I take deposits now, and I never had to do that before.’

He continued shaving the deer. The sound was faintly unpleasant. ‘So, what brings you to Langdon?’

‘I’m looking for a man named Harold Proctor.’

‘He in trouble?’

‘Why do you ask?’

‘No disrespect, but al’st I know is that you look like the kind of man calls about trouble.’

‘My name’s Charlie Parker. I’m a private investigator.’

‘Doesn’t answer my question. Is Harold in trouble?’

‘He might be, but not from me.’

‘He coming into money?’

‘Again, he might be, but not from me.’

Stunden glanced up from his work. ‘He lives out by the family motel, about a mile west of here. Hard as a snowsnake to find, though, if you don’t know the road.’

‘The motel still in business?’

‘The only thing still in business here is me, and I don’t know how long more I’ll be able to say that. The motel’s been closed for a decade or so now. Before that, it was a camp, but motels seemed to be the way to go, or so the Proctors thought. Harold’s momma and poppa used to run it, but they died, and the motel closed. Never made much money anyway. Poor location out in the williwigs for a motel. Harold’s the last of the Proctors. Hard to believe. They used to run half this town, and the other half paid them rent, but they weren’t big breeders, the Proctors; or lookers, come to think of it, which might have something to do with it. The Proctor creatures were kind of homely, I seem to recall.’

‘And the men?’

‘Well, I wasn’t looking at the men, so I can’t rightly say.’ His eyes twinkled in the gloom, and I guessed that Mr. Stunden might have been quite the heartbreaker in his time, had there been anyone apart from homely Proctor women on whom to test his charms. ‘When they started dying out, the town died with them. Now we get by on what we can make from Rangeley’s overflow, which ain’t much.’

I waited as he completed his work on the hide. He switched off the shaver, and used dish soap to clean the grease from his hands.

‘I ought to tell you that Harold’s not too sociable,’ he said. ‘He was never what you might call outgoing, but he came back from Iraq – the first war, not this one – with a troubled disposition. He keeps himself to himself out there, mostly. I pass him on the road from time to time, and I see him at Our Lady of the Lakes in Oquossoc on Sundays, but that’s it. Best I can get out of him now is a nod. Like I said, he’s never been exactly friendly, but until recently he’d always give you the time of day, and a word or two on the weather. He used to come into the Belle Dam, and if he was in the mood we’d talk.’ He pronounced it ‘Belle Dayme.’ ‘In case you’re wondering, I own that too. During hunting season, I make a few bucks on it. The rest of the year, it’s just something to do in the evenings.’

‘Did he talk to you about his time in Iraq?’

‘Generally he preferred to drink alone. He’d buy his liquor in New Hampshire, or over the border in Canada, and bring it back to his place, but once a week he’d come out of the woods and relax some. He hated it over there. Said he spent most of his time either bored or scared shitless. But, you know-’

He stopped speaking, but continued drying his hands as he sized me up. ‘Why don’t you tell me your interest in Harold before I go any further?’

‘You seem protective of him.’

‘This is a small town, and barely that. If we don’t look out for one another, who will?’

‘And yet you’re worried enough about Harold to talk with a stranger.’

‘Who says I’m worried?’

‘You wouldn’t be talking to me otherwise, and I can see it in your eyes. I told you, I don’t mean him any harm. For what it’s worth, I’m working for the father of a former soldier who served in Iraq this time round. His son committed suicide after he returned home. It seems that the boy’s behavior had changed in the weeks before his death, and his father wants to know what might have brought that on. Harold knew the boy some, I think, because he attended the funeral. I just want to ask him some questions.’

Stunden shook his head in sadness. ‘That’s a hard burden to bear. You got kids?’

That question always gave me pause. Yes, I have a daughter. And, once, I had another.

‘One,’ I said. ‘A girl.’

‘I got two boys, fourteen and seventeen.’ He must have seen something in my face, because he said: ‘I married late in life. Too late, I think. I was set in my ways, and I never could get my head around girlin’. My boys live with their mother down in Skowhegan now. I wouldn’t want them to join the military. If one of my sons wanted to join up, then I’d let them know how I felt about it but I wouldn’t try to stop him. Still, if I had a boy over in Iraq or Afghanistan, I’d spend every hour just praying for him to be safe. I think it would cost me some of the years left to me.’

He leaned back against his workbench.

‘Like I said, Harold’s changed,’ he said. ‘I don’t mean just because of the war, and his injury. I think he’s sick, inside.’ He tapped the side of his head, just in case I was under any illusions about the nature of Proctor’s troubles. ‘The last time he came into the bar, which was, oh, must be two weeks ago, he looked different, like he wasn’t sleeping right. I’d have said that he was frightened. I had to ask him what was wrong, it was so obvious to me.’