The Warden Opened My Truck And Named Me A Poacher

Clayton Rusk held the paper sack by its folded top, well away from his uniform.

“You want to tell me why there's an owl in your tool bin?”

The wind pushed dust across the two-track west of Laramie. Behind him, the cottonwoods along the creek had started to turn gold. I could hear a loose buckle tapping against my truck.

“There wasn't one when I left town,” I said.

“That's what you're going with?”

I was thirty-three, a Filipino American man with brown skin, a narrow face, and black hair that never stayed under my field cap.

My name was Paolo Bautista. I worked as a wildlife acoustic surveyor. I set out recorders, checked batteries, and listened to nights most people slept through.

I knew one great horned owl along that creek by the long pause before her last two notes. I called her Seven because I usually counted seven slow beats in that space. It was a field nickname, not a scientific claim. My reports said that clearly.

Rusk glanced at the small gray recording unit on my seat.

“Bird tapes,” he said. “Good cover.”

He was forty-nine, a white man with a broad red face, pale eyebrows, and a square jaw pressed hard above his uniform collar.

He had stopped me twice that month. Once he had wanted my access letter. The second time he had asked who needed so much information about an empty creek.

I had shown him the letter both times.

Now he had a sack.

“Don't touch anything,” he said.

“I wasn't reaching.”

“Then keep it that way.”

I had parked beside a fence gap at six that morning. The landowner had given me access for the survey. At six ten, I had walked upstream to check three units. My truck's rear bin had a broken latch. A replacement part cost $46 and was due Friday.

Rusk had known about the latch. He had lifted it during his second stop.

I looked at his truck, parked nose out beside the road. When he had arrived, its starter had clicked twice, dragged, then caught with a sharp belt squeal after he moved it closer.

I remembered sounds. That was my work.

He set the sack down and called another officer.

“Protected bird remains,” he said into his radio. “Possible wider operation. Subject uses wildlife recordings as a cover for poaching.”

He spoke while looking right at me.

“Please record that I deny owning that sack.”

“You can tell the judge.”

“And that my truck was unattended.”

He stopped looking at me then.

My survey was for the Willow Draw Land Trust, which wanted a clear account of wildlife use before a gravel road and loading yard went through the creek bottom. A local company, Flintwake Materials, had offered the trust $92,000 for a strip of land.

My draft report recommended a nest check and a different road route. It did not ban anything. It did make the cheap route harder to defend.

Rusk took my truck keys. He took the unit from my seat, too.

“These things don't even send a signal,” he said.

“They're meant to listen.”

He gave a short laugh.

At his direction, I signed a property receipt with a note beside my name: Receipt Only. Ownership Of Sack Denied.

He pressed his finger against that line.

“You're making this difficult.”

“I'm making it clear.”

The tow cost $385. I learned that before anyone told me what would happen next.

A second officer drove me to town for an interview. I asked for a lawyer, gave my name and address, and stopped answering questions. They released me that afternoon with a citation and instructions to appear.

By five, the trust had suspended my $6,400 contract. Its director sounded sick when she called.

“Until we know more, Paolo.”

“Keep the draft,” I told her. “Don't replace it.”

At home, I opened the bottom drawer of my desk.

My original deployment log lay beneath a stack of electric bills. I never carried that book into the field. I carried copies. Rain ruined paper, and paper settled arguments that memory could not.

Inside were unit numbers, locations, start times, and small maps drawn beside fence posts. The trust had signed each week's deployment sheet. My contract also said that I owned my raw recordings and equipment. The client bought my report and permission to use the data.

Rusk had taken the unit he could see.

He had not asked how many I owned.

I turned to unit eleven. Its microphone faced the fence gap from a hollow under a stone shelf. I had tucked it there to cut wind noise. Nothing on the road looked like equipment.

Its batteries would last until Sunday.

Someone knocked while I was still counting the days.

Through the window, I saw Rusk standing on my porch with a new property form.