The Lost Highway

by David Adams Richards

  This caused him to reflect on what he was doing, and to think once again of going to tell his uncle the truth and have a moment of reconciliation. This really seemed the best thing to do. And he started out toward his uncle’s house, with his heart lighter for thinking of this.

  When he got to the drive, however, he saw his uncle holding his fly rod up to examine it. His uncle didn’t see him. He looked to Young Chapman to be old and sad standing at the front of his 120-acre lot, with old crushed drywall and cinder block about his feet, staring at this rod he had made himself some fifteen years back, and had taken over two hundred salmon with. Perhaps the only thing he was justifiably proud of. As much as he tried to get Alex to fish with him, Alex could never seem to manage the motion to cast.

  It was very strange, but the sun seemed to come out furiously at this moment, and hit the eyes on the rod and make them gleam. Alex scratched his pointed nose and tried to think of what to do.

  Apologize, he thought, get it over and everything will be all right.

  He was set to do this, but something prevented him.

  What would happen after that reconciliation? Too many things disallowed it. His uncle’s cantankerousness. His constant displeasure at Alex’s democratic stands. Old Jim’s idea that God was just and therefore would have given him the ticket because of this supposed justice. All this would be held against Alex, so Alex would be forced to grovel, and he couldn’t do it again!

  Since all of this would come into play, he would not, could not, bring himself to tell his uncle anything. And he turned and walked back toward his house, as the wind blew against his face. He thought again of Amy and her mother, hoping he would get them a few dollars.

  Tell him tell him tell him, the wind seemed to say.

  —

  ALEX WALKED ON TOWARD HIS HOUSE, AND AS HE DID HE thought of his former belief in Christ and his hardness of heart when it came to this belief now. His constant response, at once cynical and satirical against it, was that millions upon millions had died because of this belief.

  In the seminary there were older men, teachers who believed in the winged serpents that were sent north by the devil, swept on the wild wind of the earth, to whisper sweet nothings into the innocent ears of children, all sleeping in innocent poses half-dressed, disheveled but sweet flowing hair, with lilacs and roses, and the blue, blue eyes of God. The devils, with red tongues, there to harm them; the guardian angels there to protect them.

  A fairy tale, almost sexual, among men who held power and very much power over others—simpering, confused, and arrogant men who until the end of the 1950s controlled whole households in their palsied grips, decided who was good or not, what families could be singled out for castigation at any time. (In fact, this was why the Tuckers and their counterparts the Patches stayed so destitute.)

  However, Alex’s uncle understood these men, and feared them, and they counseled and feared him.

  Alex, too, had believed in those angels and serpents, when he was a helpless child. But a child was so helpless he had to believe. Once he entered the seminary he was embarrassed by these men, with their fairy tales, their belief that there was nothing beyond our own earth and sun, and at that time he began to think of his uncle being exactly like them. Some of them believed man had not landed on the moon, that it was an atheistic conspiracy.

  So came Alex’s first rebellious act: “I will believe in God—but I will not believe in fairy tales,” he said. It wasn’t a tremendous rebellion, but still—he had been rebelling ever since. First he gave up Mother Goose, and then the Easter Bunny, and then Santa Claus, and then those guardian angels that never helped him when he prayed, and then the saints like Saint Jude and Saint Francis who were supposedly able to do so much for so many, and then the Virgin who so many believed they saw in apparitions, and finally Christ and God himself. With that, everything was complete. It took some years. But now everything was complete.

  He did not understand that even priests and nuns themselves, while remaining in the vestiges of holy orders, had given up these beliefs and did so with the compunction of our compliant age, and that for many of them nothing that secular man believed in would at all bother them.

  Still the guardian angel his mother had told him about, the one who would watch over him if she died, had never appeared. One day he had led himself to believe he saw a beautiful angel by the curtain, just for his mother’s sake, when she was very ill and told him she had prayed one visit him. This was in 1969 in a small little apartment in gloomy Saint John.

  He had prayed to that angel that his mother not die. It didn’t help. He prayed that he be helped. Later on in the dead of winter, he prayed that his uncle not beat him anymore. It didn’t work either. He was not so silly as to believe in guardian anything anymore.

  He turned down along the shore. As he watched children rushing past him he thought this. Where were the guardian angels for millions and millions of suffering children? Who, then, did God send? But then as he said this, something came over him—a small epiphany—and he realized he heard something inside himself: “We have sent you.”

  He shuddered, remembering that priest, Father Hut, with his exuberant face speaking to him, whose body turned up in a river in Guatemala riddled with bullets.

  “We have sent you—it is not God but you who have turned your back on these children.”

  But he himself was too practical to give up his life to help a bunch of children he had no hand in making.

  “I had no fun in making the bastards, why would I do anything for them?” This was, in his mind, ethical liberal thinking and because of this there was no greater scapegoat for the liberal mind than Mother Teresa. He once had thought of sending money away and adopting a child in a foreign land, but it came down to this: he was too wise, and no hypocrite—while his uncle, who was a hypocrite, sent money away every month to two children in Chile.

  The only thing he remembered about the day he went to the foster home was standing at the corner of his street looking back at the house where he and his mom had lived in an apartment, a card she had gotten him for his birthday in his hand, tears running down his face. Now he was stunned by how Minnie and Amy lived this same way.

  Yet that was the day when he had first learned that there was no archangel with a sword or guardian angel either. He saw how adults looked upon him with irritation and pity. And he had become disgusted with himself, and with the fact that he had peed his pants after his mother died. He was sent to a foster home with seven children. He remembered smiling obsequiously at them trying to share the things, toys and chocolate, a funeral director had given him out of pity. But he soon realized these other boys were hardened and cold to him. As cold as the ice outside. So he tried to fit in with them, act and be like them.

  Alex took out a nicotine gum and put it in his mouth, for he longed for and wanted a cigarette.

  But then as Alex walked a voice came to him; always he had associated this voice with his mother: “Well, how did Old Chapman find you? Remember everyone said it was a complete accident, a stroke of luck—that he spoke to a man in Bathurst who happened to know the woman who had taken you to Jacket River, that he had seen you in church—when you went to confession and asked the old priest for help. That they then realized you had been taken to this place 250 miles away. And when he saw you at that place Old James started to cry—they brought their great-nephew to be with them. We know Old James treated you rough—but you don’t think he loved you? And you wouldn’t drive the old man’s truck over for an oil change? What was waiting for you if you did?”

  He tried to stop this voice, for the same things were always repeated, and his breathing became labored, and he cursed. For the first time in weeks Alex grabbed at his chest for a second, and not wanting anyone to see him in distress (for there were moments when he was very brave) he let go of his chest and suffered the pain by grimacing. He kept on walking and this voice wouldn’t go away. He was sweating, his face was pale, which made him l
ook very much older. He climbed the steps to his house slowly, with his hand on the pole banister.

  “Leave me alone—” he said.

  Still it did not leave him, this insistent voice that he had always associated with that red-headed girl, his mom. He fumbled about, sat down on his couch, waiting for the pain to subside.

  All of those others Alex had spoken to, as he sat in the university cafeteria in the middle of the day, all those exceptional people were gone and all his long discussions in the cafeteria with the young radicals meant nothing now. Most of them worked nine to five, and went home to their mortgages just as their parents had. And yet what was wrong with that, he thought now.

  He had not wanted Amy to be born. In fact, he had insisted she not be, and was often enraged that Minnie had not heeded his advice. He hoped or had hoped for Minnie to regret the child, for the marriage to fail, and for the child to somehow ruin it. That is, he hoped for vindication at their expense. He had visited Minnie and Amy last winter, speaking about the ethics course Amy should enroll in, believing that now the marriage had failed with Sam gone west to work. But the marriage as yet had not failed, hanging as it might be on only threadbare love.

  “My mother is independent,” Amy had told him one night last spring, trying to sound stern, her little eyes lowered, when she overheard him saying something belittling. Perhaps Alex did not think it was belittling. “Yes—she is independent too,” she whispered. Then she looked up with a carefree elfish grin, showing her small crooked teeth, so that her nose wrinkled.

  He almost choked on the tea he was drinking.

  “Oh—of who?” he asked, thinking it would be impossible for her to answer and smiling at Minnie, as if she too should take this as a joke.

  But little Amy lifted her head and spoke proudly. “Of you,” she said. “Why—she is independent of you.”

  And she smiled.

  Of course in so many ways our little elf only wanted to be known as smart too, so he would approve of her, for she knew how important he was. Some days she asked in her prayers if she could be just a little bit important too!

  —

  AT NOON THE NEXT DAY, ALEX DECIDED TO GO AND TELL his friends he was mistaken about their ticket. He went back to Minnie’s and sat there for an hour staring at the tea and cheesecake put in front of him.

  “I am sorry about all that false hope,” he said, and then added philosophically, “Hope in this world is so often dashed.”

  The heat had made Amy’s forehead damp. The sound of birds outside in the near bushes, and a hummingbird coming to the sugar water Amy had placed on their windowsill. Everything round them was drowsy and green.

  They didn’t ask him about the money—the seven hundred he was supposed to give them.

  “Just a big mistake—I thought four numbers were the same—” he said unapologetically. Then he shrugged. He too was sweating. It was very odd how much he felt like a criminal. They told him to never mind it, that Sam would have money when he got home. This rattled Alex as well.

  “How much?” he asked, in a way that pretended he was happy for them.

  “I don’t know—because we are planning something, which I will let you know later, but quite a bit I think,” Minnie said.

  “What are you planning?” he asked, as if this secret was enjoyable.

  But she simply shrugged and looked away. “I can’t tell yet.”

  He never wanted to believe he could be poorer than Sam Patch. But by the end of the year he would be. He told Amy she would be in his ethics course, so she’d better sharpen up her debating skills. She looked at her mom, placed her hands on her lap and watched the hummingbird.

  “Debates are not so much my line,” she said.

  The day was hot, and Fanny Groat was unwell, so Amy was going down to sit with her. Her temperature was 102 on a warm day. Amy had spent most of the summer with her, and that had alienated her from her friends. Yesterday, Fanny had told Minnie that she had dreamed that there would be blood on the statue of the Virgin before fall.

  “Her life is almost over,” Minnie said now.

  “Yes, well, it comes to us all,” Alex proselytized. (For some reason he had never forgiven Fanny Groat and disliked her.)

  Alex took his leave and they saw him move across the dusty lane and into the distance.

  Minnie told Amy that Alex was simply trying to be nice and to let it go, that she would learn much from him this fall.

  “I know, and I do like him. And I do think he is smart—and I wouldn’t go wrong in taking his course—but there is something about him” said Amy, in a way which did not accuse him, so much as baffle her. “Something—”

  “Well, whatever—tomorrow you promised you would help Burton with his computer,” Minnie said, to change the subject.

  “And so I am,” Amy said.

  For Burton had bought a computer and needed her help in setting it up.

  Amy was on her own this summer; as she told her pollywogs: “I was suppose to have fun. It’s a complete fuddling disaster.”

  But her mother was so busy she did not see the little one’s loneliness at this time. She didn’t know that twice this summer Amy was not invited to parties. Amy had indicated to her mother that she wanted one, too. But Minnie did not seem to hear.

  “Rory likes me, I’m sure,” she would tell her pet skunk, “and all in all I think Robin too.”

  —

  LEO BOURQUE LIVED HAND TO MOUTH. THIS IS WHAT THE highway became aware of. He was possessed of what so many were, a great ignorance about things outside of himself and his surroundings. He had tried to improve himself for his wife, had taken night classes and read articles written by Young Chapman, who he had tried to emulate, but it had not happened. He carried a pencil and two pens, but did not use them. And now his wife had gone away. And he longed to have her back.

  Leo never had any of the chances Alex had. If Alex’s life was tough, Bourque’s was ten times worse. He’d been beaten by his father to within an inch of his life when he was twelve years old because he had been late for supper. He’d spent three months in the hospital. Later, he’d fished on the sea—on the very herring boats the priests had blessed—and saw Mr. Gallant drown in the storm of 1979 while making sure he, Leo, was safe. And now he lived in a shed behind his uncle’s house. His uncle, Poppy Bourque, tried to find him work. It seemed that each thing Poppy did, Leo would find time to do something else, and wait patiently for his uncle to help him once more.

  Poppy was now trying to get ready for the agricultural exhibition. He had grown fifty-five prize zucchinis, ten tubs of what he called Poppy’s Patats—his wonderful white potatoes. The fair would stretch into September, ending at Labor Day, and he told Leo he could earn $200 if he helped him set up and take down. Leo helped him so Poppy wouldn’t have to do it alone. And though he grumbled and growled at Poppy, he did not want to take the money. He, however, had no choice now. This very human quality of his was hidden under so many shells it was at times hard to see.

  The stand at the exhibition would be called Poppy’s Place, just as it was for the past twenty years. But this year his young nieces would go with him on opening day. All of this Leo remained interested in to take his mind off his wife.

  Leo had never heard what Aristotle had said about friendship, honor, or wisdom when he spoke to the young Alexander, never looked into the Book of Psalms when worried—and wouldn’t care to anymore. The New Testament was a fairy tale now, as was the Old.

  Funnily, he believed that not any of this would have happened if Alex had not come to him a year ago with the information about the bid. But the bid became his ticket, or so he thought. Since that time his wife had left and he had started owing money. Leo lived in a shed much like Alex did, except he was on the other side of the highway. Surrounded by smoky afternoons from the large empty fields, he could not believe his fate. If he had not given the bid, his wife would still be with him. That he had fallen and hurt himself at work, and that his boss laid him
off for some kind of dereliction of duty, allowed his wife to leave him, the moment he needed her.

  Leo only knew that it was in some way all Alex Chapman’s fault. What enraged him about this was how he had looked up to the man, because he wrote articles about the dispossessed, about the First Nations. But in another way, very much because he was the grand-nephew of the great Jim Herbert Chapman, who had created out of his own muscle and blood the asphalt highway that stretched before him, shimmering in the summer and buckled and frozen in the winter months.

  “The English get everything,” he would say. And he believed this, even though not only was it less and less true, but the English were ridiculed as much as anyone else. Beyond that, Jim Chapman was only a quarter English and Young Alex a fifth. Alex was less English than Bourque himself.

  Now Leo spent his time gambling at the tavern, on the money machines in the corner, certain that some day, in some way, he would make it rich. If and when he did, he would never lose anything again, he would get his wife back from Cid Fouy. Worse for Leo Bourque was this gnawing truth, that though with one hand he could knock Cid Fouy cold, he was frightened of the man, for the man had money and power Leo Bourque never could understand.

  —

  THE HEAT STILL LINGERED IN THE BACKROOM, WHEN ALEX woke the next morning. Another day of heat, the maple stand beyond his house shimmering under the blue sky. Would, he thought waking and sitting up, this be the day he found it? He wanted to know that—and he was going to flip a coin. Heads he would find the money, tails he would not. But he did not do this for two reasons. One, he was too practical and reasoned ever to believe in such nonsense. Secondly, he did not want to waste his luck by flipping a coin. The heat was oppressive—just as last winter the snow and cold were. The old stove had not been lit since mid-June, and Alex spied it thinking, Well then—once I have the ticket it will never have to be lit again, for I will build a house the likes they’ve not seen here.