It was my last day in Maine on a fishing vacation from my home in England. Two fish-less weeks left me desperate enough to hire a professional guide and that is how I met Pete and spent a day with him. I still didn’t catch any fish but we exchanged tales and he told me all about his guns.
Captain Pete Bedford operates along the coast and up the big rivers that drain into Merrymeeting Bay and on down the Kennebec River to the Gulf of Maine. He really looks the part with his neat uniform, bandy seaman's legs and grey fisherman's beard but, in reality, he is a retired businessman who just likes to fish. Guiding makes him some seasonal income and that helps him to justify his fancy boat, on which he spent more money than he should have. The oversize outboard engine drinks too much fuel, which means that every time he takes it out he needs a client to pay for it.
His house is not an expensive waterfront property but an old painted wooden house in the pinewoods, not far off Route 1, about eight miles from the salt. If you have been there, you will know hundreds of properties that look like his. You drive along a black road with a yellow mid-line, pine trees on either side and no view. Every half a mile a track leads off to a house, a trailer-home or a cabin and you get a quick glance. Try for yourself on Google Earth. Some of them have vintage tractors parked out in front.
Pete’s place is smarter than most; well kept with a trim lawn and no derelict vehicles or fridges to act as rusting lawn ornaments. His boat usually sits under-cover on it’s trailer in the yard next to his white pick-up truck, two snow-mobiles and a variable number of family cars. A snow plough sits greased and ready to be attached to the pickup when winter sets in. Without it, he might not get onto the highway for days. He regularly digs out his neighbours and they repay him in various ways. His mail is left at the roadside in a black mailbox that he can empty without getting out of his car, but he can collect it in snow-shoes if need be. It has “Big Fish” written on it in white capitals.
As you go round the back you will see a rack of canoes and kayaks below a wooden deck with a bug-screen and a hot-tub. The black-flies and mosquitos can be fearsome, but before you worry about the flies you should concern yourself with the dog. His name is Bandit and he is a guard dog; after a single bark he will lick you to death.
Through the trees Pete can see the river, about a mile away across a railroad where wild turkeys perch on the hot tracks to warm their feet. Moose sometimes follow the tracks too, before turning away through the marsh towards the water. It is impossible to walk to the river from the house but Pete likes to look at it anyway. He cut down a swathe of trees to get this view and then the north wind blew through the gap and felled a dozen more, right up to the house.
Bald eagles have nested on his property and he sees ospreys all the time in summer. More than once he has encountered a bear in his yard; probably attracted rather than repelled by his dog and the smell of cooking.
In these parts where there is game all around you, rural kids learn to hunt and fish from an early age. Every householder is expected to bring home some wild meat once in a while, but Pete prefers to fish. All the same, he buys a ticket for one turkey gobbler and another for a deer each year. His son John does the same. They each have a rifle and a shotgun and they have tried using cross-bows too, with little success but Pete mostly enjoys hunting for the time it gives him with his son. Like the time he taught him to drive; he has the boy to himself with no distractions. They get on well, he thinks. His daughter is another story. He taught her to shoot and to drive, just like her brother, but when she hit her teens both of her parents became “The Enemy.” She went off to college in a “whirl of heck” and never came home.
Mid-coast neighbours may live miles apart but they tend to know each other much better than they know the folks from “away.” The school is the focal-point of the community for parents, but absolutely everyone uses the local store and gas station. It sells everything you need and they rent movies too. Coffee is free, they make their own cinnamon rolls and you can get a Wi-Fi connection. All the same, most people use the big supermarkets and the stores like Target and Walmart in the Topsham Mall for their monthly shop. The summer folks buy outdoor clothes from L.L. Bean in Freeport but all the locals shop at Reny’s.
Pete is a steady, upstanding man and gets a lot of respect. He was made a Selectman last year; a town councillor responsible for a community fund that is doled out to the most needy. He tries to be fair, but in truth he does not relate to people who he sees to be inadequate or incompetent. He would die of shame rather than accept a hand-out himself and he particularly has no time for junkies or alcoholics. His sympathy is reserved for the elderly and for young single mothers, of which his small township has it’s fair share.
This is not a bad community; not dysfunctional or even under-resourced but there is still poverty. The land is harsh and a lot of the work is seasonal so people often hold down several jobs at a time to make a decent living. At low tide, you might see a middle-class couple digging bait or clams to augment their income and people may drive for two hours each way to do a low-paid part-time job. Despite that, there is almost no crime.
Most Mainers own sporting guns and at least one hand-gun. People keep them in their bedrooms and kitchens and in their cars when they go out. Women have them in their handbags, but they do not drive around with their guns on view like cowboys. As a visitor, you won’t see a gun because people around here are discreet and understated. Folks do not dress to be different and they do not show off. The summer visitors do that.
The household gun collection is modest, comprised of a couple of .22 rifles that the kids used to shoot targets and squirrels with, a nine-gauge shotgun for birds, a .38 pistol and a Smith and Wesson .45 for self defence. None of the guns is flashy or collectable and Pete spends a lot more on fishing rods than he does guns.
Late one moonless Friday night, Pete heard a noise from downstairs. It was hot and humid and the stars were obscured by low cloud. The air almost fizzed with static and fireflies flashed green lightning in zig-zag nose-dives above the dark corners of the lawn.
To a visitor like you or me, the cicadas and crickets would sound deafening, but he really didn’t hear them. Wooden houses talk to themselves all the time, so Pete was used to hearing the familiar creaks and pops as the house breathed. What he heard now was drawers and cupboards being opened and busy footwork on the kitchen floor.
He lay there, tense in the dark and then he shook his wife awake. Pete signed with his finger over his lips for her to keep quiet while he pulled his stubby black .45 revolver and a head torch out of the drawer on his side of the bed.
It may seem an irrelevant thing to worry about in a crisis, but he scouted around the room in the dark to find something to cover his nakedness and laid his hands on his wife’s blue night-dress on the back of the door.
Now, Pete is a big man and his wife, Mary-Beth, is a wiry little woman who stands 5 feet in her shoes. Threads snapped in protest as he tried to drag the flimsy garment over his sweating, bulging frame, but he managed to tie the sash across his belly.
He took the stairs slowly, trying to make no noise, but every step creaked. A low yellow light seeped from the kitchen and there were shadows busily moving about. Raccoons would certainly raid a kitchen if the window was left open but they would not turn a light on to do it. This was definitely an intruder and he was probably armed.
Pete’s gun was loaded, but he felt the chambers over with his fingers to be certain. The metal felt reassuringly cool and heavy, with a trace of oily film on the surface. He steadied his breathing, slipped the safety catch off and cocked the hammer as he leaned over the banister to take aim through the open kitchen door. A long minute passed while he waited to get a view of his target but all he saw was shadows.
If an intruder has both feet inside your house, etiquette only requires that you call out a warning before letting loose, but he decided to stay put on the stairs and wait for the intruder to show. Time dragged on and tore at his patience, so he decided to take the initiative before he lost his nerve. He shouted hoarsely:
“I know you are in my kitchen and I have a gun. Come out with your hands raised, or I’ll shoot your head off.”
His voice did not sound like his own and the words seemed ridiculous, but they got the desired reaction. There was a loud clatter, a chair scraped and a slight figure moved into the frame of the door, backlit and silhouetted like a target in an arcade game. He almost pulled the trigger.
Above the pumping hiss of a pulse in his ears he heard a girl’s voice:
“Hi Mr. Bedford. Please don’t shoot me. It’s me, Louise.”
Louise is John’s long-time girlfriend from college. The couple had loaded his beat-up green Subaru four-by-four and then set out late from Portland to avoid the Friday evening traffic, stopping off in Freeport for supper. John thought it was too late to call his folks and figured that he would surprise them in the morning.
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Saturday breakfast was more like brunch. Mary-Beth had risen first and made waffles and French toast and nuked some maple syrup. Outside on the deck, Pete (in shorts and a garish red surfers’ shirt) had grilled up Canadian bacon, sausage patties and burgers on the gas barbecue. There was coffee, juice and milk on the table.
John was into his second coffee when Louise came in with her long black hair piled into a towel. Even without her morning make-up she looked exotic with big dark eyes set in a pale triangular face. She said “Hi” to the family and immediately set about pouring herself an orange juice and filling a plate with food. She said absolutely nothing about the night before and chatted amiably with Mary-Beth about the house and college life. Bandit lay under her chair and begged to be patted and rubbed.
Pete felt obliged to say something;
“It’s not every night someone points a revolver at you is it?”
“No Sir, but I’m from New York so, you know, its not that unusual. But what really freaked me out was seeing you in drag. I mean, do you normally wear something that doesn't cover anything up?”
“I gotta say this though: My folks live in New York City, America’s Capital of Crime, but they don’t own a gun. Out here in the woods where the crime rate is about zero, you are so scared of being burgled that you are prepared to shoot some kid who might be raiding your fridge. Why is that?”
_____________
Out in the fishing boat, after hearing about the incident in his kitchen, I asked Pete about gun ownership in Maine and he told me that guns were the reason for the low crime rate. I thought there must be a lot of other factors at play and I explained that we had a pretty low crime rate in England without guns.
He made less effort to be sociable after that point.
They call it “New England” and until my day with Pete I felt pretty much at home there, but as our session on his boat dragged on, our differences grew more apparent. He still has my respect and I am grateful to him for giving me more than a tourist’s glimpse of the real Maine, but I think we were both glad to cut the day short, shake hands and call it quits.
