The Lost Highway

by David Adams Richards

  “For God sake, no!” he yelled, jumping up and grabbing it. He took the ticket and looked at it. The numbers were not even close: 5, 7, 14, 20, 31, 45. Still, it would have to do.

  “Can I have it—please.” His lips moved despite himself, and he tried to remain calm. Yet he was sweating. Was this in fact (and this thought came so suddenly he felt cold) just another way to destroy them? Did he want to destroy them completely and was this a way to do it? He looked at Minnie, her tired warm eyes confused, and smiled.

  The little girl, Amy, took the ticket and examined it, looked at him curiously. She rubbed her nose and listened to the wind picking up. Then she went and got the numbers of the winning ticket from the paper and read them very seriously.

  “I don’t know why you would want it,” she said. “I don’t think it won.”

  “If I work this out, we might get some money—and it will be for all of us,” he said now. He coughed into his hand and tried to look nonchalant.

  “Oh,” Amy said. That was all. She was in bare feet and wearing a long slip, not knowing that at almost fifteen she was a young woman, and looked like Minnie herself had at that age.

  He adjusted his glasses once more and smiled at her. She looked at him impishly with her mouth twisted up into a half smile.

  Now things must be done, before everything in his life fell away. It was either do this or die.

  “Maybe a few hundred dollars, who knows,” he said hoarsely. “If so, I will give you half, Amy, how is that?” He moved his hand through his hair, and tried to dispel the ever-present cynical smile of his worst angels.

  “Fine,” Minnie said. Amy simply nodded, and managed to look both serene and elfin at the same time, her ears sticking up through her dark tossed hair, her lips sticky from eating taffy.

  “Yes,” he continued, “but there is something I have to see about before the money comes. So fair is fair—don’t worry—it is not so bad—just something I have to see about.”

  At that moment he was calculating how many millions he would actually give them. He thought that for over half his life he had dealt in papers and research, and now in grubby lotto tickets. He would give them something—but not Sam Patch. Not after all he had been through.

  He was somewhat at a loss for words and wanted to say something nice. He smiled and said he put Amy’s name in to take his night course on ethics. That he would teach her the great subjects, and they could transform her.

  “I don’t know if I want to,” she said. She smiled up at her mother, as if asking for help.

  “Oh, you’d love it—it would be good for you to use your brain,” he said offhandedly. “It would challenge you—to hear what I have to say!” He smiled at this nonchalantly and then was silent. “I put your name in, at any rate. Don’t worry, you won’t have to pay—you will just be allowed to go. Did you get the book on ethics by Aristotle I sent over?”

  “I did,” Amy said.

  “And what do you think—I mean, of a man who lived three hundred years before Christ?”

  “Very ethical—” Amy said, laughing.

  It was then that Minnie told Amy to thank him, and she did. He nodded. She folded her thin hands together and sighed, and thought of the ticket was diminished.

  He stayed for a cup of tea, and could not help but slurp it nervously. He was in fact out of tea at his house. He was ashamed to go to the welfare office because the main worker there had once been a student of his in university. So though he stalked the welfare office, he could not go in.

  The wind blew, and tree limbs tapped against the window. As soon as the storm came Minnie stood and, taking holy water from the crisper in the fridge, began to sprinkle the room. She rushed over and touched Amy’s forehead and Amy blessed herself nonchalantly, not so much out of commitment as out of practice. When she tried to touch Alex’s forehead he brushed her hand away, miffed that after all these years she would not know him.

  “Oh, I am sorry,” she said.

  She hauled the plugs out of the wall sockets for precaution, turned off the kettle, and sat down.

  “I’ll be back,” he said, sticking a piece of raisin bread into his pocket. He stood, touched Amy’s cheek, and smiled.

  “Don’t go out, it’s lightning,” Minnie cautioned.

  So he stood at the door.

  “Well,” he answered boldly, “I know for a fact we have little chance to be hit by lightning.”

  “Except if God wants,” Amy said, as if speaking to herself. He took no notice of what she said.

  And with this, he took a step out the door.

  ——

  He walked along in the night, which was still warm, and witnessed sections of the forest light up with a peculiar crackle, so that he could see his boots over mud, see fern cones in among the slopes along the hidden forest floor.

  He had decided that he would switch tickets. But he had to have luck in this regard. That is, he was fortunate enough to know his uncle. Old Chapman had had lotto tickets before—and they lay for months in a cupboard without him even checking what they said. Alex was willing to bet Chapman had no idea he had in his shirt property worth $13 million.

  And why shouldn’t Young Chapman take it? He remembered asking for money one night to go to a dance at school, and Old Jim pinching the money out of his hand as rain dripped off the loose door of the barn, as if he was squeezing it out of his pores—so anguished he was to let go of it.

  “I never went to no dance when I was young,” he kept saying. “I worked from the time I was thirteen—me and Artie.”

  “Who is Artie?”

  The old man let go of the money and said, “Never you mind who Artie is.”

  Later, much later, Alex found out that Artie was his grandfather, Rosa’s dad, whom Jim had frozen out of the business because of that grader accident that ironically had taken his other grandfather. Artie had died broken-hearted about this death in 1957.

  “Don’t worry,” Jim said after Alex discovered this. “He would be proud of you!”

  But it was always like that. His own life was an enigma the world kept from him. So now he would pay his great-uncle back. To pay someone back it was best to negate who they were as a human being.

  As Alex walked a huge bolt of lightning, energized in the pulpy warmth of night, flashed over his head, and showed the reddish mud at his feet, and even lighted up his shadow before him, so close he could feel heat. And he thought a strange thought: What if I was killed now, when I am so close to becoming so rich? It was a strange, strange sensation, so he picked up his walk to quicken his homecoming.

  Taking off her clothes, Amy went over and said good night to her pollywogs, which were growing legs. She had four plastic cartons. In one was “the first stage,” then came “the noticeable changes,” then “almost croaking,” and finally, “happy hoppers.” At the happy hoppers stage she would band them and let them go into Glidden’s pool, only to return the next summer to see if she could find any.

  She had a pet skunk, and a beehive. The skunk was not descented, but would not spray her. It usually hung about under the porch, and there was a raccoon that slept in a maple at the side wagon road. The beehive was active, and she watched the drones day in and day out, sitting beside it without being stung.

  On her wall, besides a picture of Tony Stewart the NASCAR driver and a picture of her father pitching horseshoes, was the picture of her in the local paper, for winning the mathematics prize. In the far corner was a picture of her and Rory. Rory and she were supposed to get married when they were seven, but had not managed to do so. So now Rory was her love and she had his ring. But as long as she had known him, and had waited, he had not kissed her. It seemed as if he did not quite know how. And this summer they had drifted apart, and she knew he sometimes only said hello because he felt he had to, and spent more time down at the cottage with Robin Anderson, whose mom and dad were rich. She felt a loss deep in her heart, not because she thought of marrying him but because in one way it was the
loss of her youth. There was a time, on the first spring days, when changing to his short underwear he would strip off his pants, and she hers, and in his shorts and her panties they would run about in the yard, until twilight bade them stop. But one year they both realized they could not do it anymore, and it was a loss that was both understandable and melancholy. That the springtime would never again smell so sweet or be so inviting. And so was this loss. In her own way she tried to hang on to him and disliked that Robin Anderson a whole lot.

  She picked up her guitar and began to play. She played almost every night by herself. For she spent most every night and day alone. So with her feet going, and her legs and her bum moving, she strummed for thirty-five minutes “All Along the Watchtower,” which she had been trying to learn now for three weeks.

  Finally, after the fourth request to turn the music off, she put her guitar down, snapped off the amp, and lay on the bed with her hands tucked behind her head, her impish face suddenly looking serene and beautiful.

  On the wall near the NASCAR driver was a picture Father MacIlvoy gave her three years ago. It was of a little girl crossing a bridge over troubled water, at night, and a guardian angel guiding her way. Father MacIlvoy gave this to her at her confirmation, because Amy was frightened of water and had never learned to swim.

  Amy got into bed in her underwear and thought of what she would do if Alex actually gave them $700. She found herself dividing it up, between so many people she didn’t have a cent left for herself.

  She now stared at the ceiling, and listened to the night. The trouble was summer was fast coming to an end, and she had lost touch with Rory and everyone, and some didn’t speak to her anymore, for Amy was busy with Fanny Groat and did not see them. She thought of this, and thought of the demands Fanny made on her time.

  The night whispered around her, and rain fell on the tin roof. After a while, she rolled over, touched the statue of the Virgin for luck, and fell asleep.

  Once Minnie turned out her light, and the house became silent, the skunk walked up on the back porch and chewed at an apple left out on the arm of the veranda chair. The raccoon sat at the far end of the porch, watching the skunk carefully, now and then shaking water from its thick gray fur and lifting its paw.

  —

  ALEX CHAPMAN WANTED TO SEE THE NUMBERS THAT Burton had written down. He would do that in the morning by bringing in the ticket he had taken from Minnie, and saying it was his uncle’s. They would check the numbers and find they were not the ones—convince Burton he was mistaken. That would square him with Burton, and give him time to find the real ticket and claim it as his own.

  He would get into the house, find the ticket, switch it, and—he thought of what he would do with thirteen million. Once he did that, and got his hands on the money, no one would be the wiser. No one at all. Of course he would help everyone, and become the benefactor he believed his uncle could and should have been.

  Except, perhaps—Amy might know. She was a very wise little girl. But he would put her in his ethics course, and she taking this course would see how wise he was—especially as concerned young women. (This was in fact his main hope, to be considered by young women to be considerate of young women—especially, for some reason, Amy.) So, seeing this, she would realize he wasn’t like her father and all the others. Yes, and so it would all work out!

  He was overcome with giddiness, for in his mind the person he wanted to impress besides Minnie was her daughter.

  Seeing Amy tonight had brought back an uncomfortable memory, however. A few years ago, something had nagged at him. He wondered if he could ever have children. He wondered why Minnie would randomly meet Sammy at the shore, and then have a child, when he was the one who had saved for the album. He tried to forget this, but could not.

  He went to Dr. Miller, and got a sperm test done. This sperm test proved he was sterile. That in fact, he probably never would be able to have a child. It was what in a sense he had known from the first. He never told a soul about this, and sometimes late at night he would take out the letter from Miller and read it, then stare at the vast expanse of sky and all those stars, born and dying, and try to understand how the world worked. Was shy little Amy planned for in a way that superseded everything Alex himself intended? If this was the case, everything was known and understood, even the love that he and Minnie had for one another. If one wanted to believe such stupid things. But then sometimes he would think, what did he believe that was any better? That was, he thought, the one predominant question, and was either yea or nay.

  Lately he had again attacked Minnie for being supplicant to the wishes of society, to religion, and to other impediments, and believed or wanted to that it was he, not she, who had fallen away from love. But he hadn’t fallen away from love. Each time he saw her he still trembled. Little Amy noticed this but was too polite to say anything. And he sometimes felt badly saying sarcastic things with the little one there. He knew he shouldn’t. But at times he couldn’t help it. It seemed that the only friend Amy had this summer was her mother—he had noticed this. Therefore, it made it worse if he was sarcastic to the woman the little girl admired and relied upon.

  “But sometimes,” he decided, “you have to say what you know! How can she just sit around waiting for Sam—not a woman I respect would do that!”

  Perhaps he was remembering his mother here.

  —

  THE SAME WIND THAT YESTERDAY BLEW HOT ON HIS FACE now was tinged with the very first trace of autumn, and Burton stood in the garage behind the glass counter and said nothing about the ticket that Alex had passed him. He was angry at everyone today—and said he might close up his garage or sell it. Kids teased him, stole his chocolate bars, and older people tried to fool him always with that mischief, easily laughed at, that lessened human integrity. All summer long they played in his skiff, out on the Bartibog, and he never minded that—but yesterday a boy had thrown an oarlock into the water and had set his boat adrift. It had taken him an hour to find it, far down the shore in a swell of incoming tide. Sometimes they took and hid it up Arron Brook, or far down the shore. And he was mad at this as well.

  Alex had spent the morning polishing his shoes, so he still smelled of polish, and was wearing a crumpled white shirt that he had not worn in two years. For some reason he believed he would find the ticket today and make his way to Moncton to claim his winnings.

  “This is my uncle’s ticket,” he said, and he tried to catch his breath, which he almost always did when he lied.

  “What’s this then?” Burton said with authority. He took the ticket and checked the numbers he had written. He looked at Young Chapman and sniffed. He then shook his head as if he distrusted a former idea, and rubbed his nose quickly.

  The only sign that he was June Tucker’s son was the perplexed look that sometimes overcame him. Other than this, there was no resemblance—for June Tucker had organized the world about her, and demanded the world, and Burton had not. Alex had written June Tucker three letters, never mentioning that he knew her son but asking her opinions on various subjects he was writing columns on. She never answered him, but once in a while she would be quoted by someone else, and it always made him jealous. He did not know why. She had studied sociology, so therefore to him her views must be important.

  “I was far off,” Burton said and put the ticket up to the light. After he did this he stared at Alex strangely. Again the suspicious look that made him resemble his mother overcame him. Then he scratched the numbers over, that he had written next to Jim Chapman’s truck’s serial numbers, and painfully copied Alex’s numbers down, which to Alex seemed to be to his benefit. It was at this time that you got to see something of the problem. Burton had two fingers on one hand, and three on the other, and when he walked he hobbled, because one foot had been amputated halfway back on the day after his birth.

  “The only other ticket I give out that day was Poppy—but he always checks his ticket here, and he didn’t say nothing. I don’t think he was
the winner.”

  Any other ticket that had been sold had not been registered.

  “That’s all right—” Alex said, putting the ticket away. “We all make mistakes, Burton. But I’m glad we didn’t tell him,” he said. “He would never forgive you. So I told him I wanted to look at his ticket and here it is. He has never forgiven me for dozens of things. I still have the welts and sore ribs to prove it.”

  Burton nodded, scratched his face with his scarred right hand, and said nothing.

  “Never mind, Burton,” Alex said, remembering his own tears as a child, “everything will work out. Lots of people get tickets here—I often buy one.” (He was happy he planted that seed.)

  Alex stayed for a minute and then turned and walked out across the dusty front parking lot and the road, his suit pants billowing in the morning sunshine.

  He had managed to see the numbers Burton had crossed out. Yes, those were the exact winning numbers and the sight of them was both exhilarating and scalding. For those were the numbers Burton had told him, and the ones his uncle must have. But where would the ticket be?

  The trouble was Alex had lived on his own—but he was very worried about doing this all on his own. Still, who might he get to help him? Burton was out of the question—for obvious reasons. He wondered if he went to Minnie, might he entice her? “Entice” was the word, and just this once, too. Then his thoughts fell briefly to Amy. She perhaps was the one to try and entice.

  She would never do it, he thought, but he did not say, “She is too principled.” He said, “She is too straitlaced.” And he had the uneasy feeling again, of realizing he was trying to fool a woman and young girl, who for months had had only each other, who all last winter had lived alone in the little house. Alex knew as well that Amy’s friends had moved on to other friends. One day he was there she spent half an hour showing him her pollywogs just so she could talk.