The Lost Highway

by David Adams Richards

  His mother rebuffed this boss in hope her friend would see him for who he was, and he with proud moral effrontery began to talk about her behind her back to other employees in the store. She thought she came from a rich family but was just a Miramichi twat, and who were they but French-speaking and Irish rejects that were kicked out of Saint John—who should be cut off from the rest of the great province of New Brunswick. She had a man who left her too, just as she should be! She better be careful if she wanted to hang on to her job!

  “That’s why we is backwards like Maine, if you ask me!”

  And she would arrive in the dreary damp of a Saint John morning, and hear against her the insignificant tattling of lonely, stupid women, one of whom was her friend Pearl, and guffawing, obedient men. Of course they were obedient, like schoolteachers and university professors; none of them in their lives had rebelled against anything or anyone that they weren’t taught to.

  Why did this insignificant life now matter so much to Alex, and why did he think of his mother? That she was at all those moments, in the harsh glare of this unsympathetic and pathetic life, dying. That each day she got up for work, waiting for the call from Roach who was going to take her away. She and their son, Alexander. And oh how happy they would be.

  She was in fact the only one to ever call him Alexander. After she died, his name was hacked away, until in some ways he lost his name and who he was. And so after a while he could be First Nations if he wanted, and write the historical novel about “his people.” Which is what he had been trying to do secretly for years.

  “Alexander,” his mother whispered, and clutched his hand. “Tomorrow—you go over to Lester’s Coffee Shop—you sit at a table and order whatever you want.” She tucked $10 into his jeans. He lay down with her, and when he woke late the next morning her body was cold.

  “Love and forgiveness,” he whispered now.

  What had happened to the Miller Britain painting, which might now be worth tens of thousands? He did not know; he never saw it again. He had tried to find it among the Britain paintings at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery one summer day, but could not. There in the still and broad-ceilinged rooms he walked about, with the gallery almost empty and the Salvador Dali painting taking up one wall, and everything to him at the moment seemed elusive and just out of reach. And what he realized was that it was his talent, his own talent that was now out of reach.

  It, and his great-aunt’s love of art, had propelled him to take up a blowtorch and hammer and chisel something out of his life. And once, once he knew, he could have been great. Perhaps not as great as Britain, but then again, perhaps, ah just perhaps greater. And so he made if nothing else the grotto for the local church—and suddenly he realized it was his great-aunt who had asked, and maybe paid, for his grotto to be made.

  Tears in his eyes, a flood of half-forgotten memories resurfaced. On those days long ago he went to the rink with his mother, and she would tie his skates, and he would flounder on the ice. She wanted him to play hockey. But he did not understand the camaraderie of children playing. His mother could not get him to play, and now he understood something—that he had rebelled against Canada and its hockey all his life. He had scorned those who played it or liked it, had cheered for the Soviets against Canada to get back at those childhood boys, heroes to so many girls, to show independence. He hated and mocked Canadian hockey players. And along the way, he missed the entire country’s essential grace and beauty, its magnificent poetic dance—for both men and women, a dance so captivating that not a ballerina in the world could ever match it.

  Now, in his darkness, he was beginning to see he knew nothing of his country, much like those baseball-lauding academics whose friendships he’d once cultivated at the university so he could be called cerebral and obtuse.

  He realized that he was, after all, much like his father, Roach.

  What would happen now if the ticket wasn’t found? He may as well die. So he would have to go back in the morning, he would have to search all over again, all day long.

  His little mouth turned down, and he grimaced like a child.

  “Send me a friend now, to help me—if you exist, you owe me that!”

  Alexander never knew how much he demanded from the God he no longer believed in.

  —

  SOMETIME THE NEXT AFTERNOON, WITH THE HAZE OVER the highway, and the carcass of a porcupine in the center of the road, Leo Bourque left Brennen’s tavern, one of those small red cedar buildings on an unpaved stony and water-holed lot, partially encompassed by a log fence, and went to the little garage on the highway. Along the black highway covered in a dusting of sawdust from the backs of trucks, one of them being his uncle’s, cut away by the treads of cars, he felt it might be time to put up his thumb and leave this oblivion. For this oblivion was grounded into the trees and hard soil, and begged those who had failed to keep going. And he had failed, and what is more blamed that failure on others whom he trusted, like Alex Chapman.

  Besides, he still owed $600 and had no idea how to get it. He thought Alex would help. Alex said he would meet him at Brennen’s tomorrow, but he suspected it would be just to buy time again.

  He was bitter and disappointed, and took pills to kill the pain of losing his wife and the pain still lingering in his hip. But these pills did not help. He was not a bad man so much as a man on the brink of despair. For instance, he had not taken cocaine until the pain in his hip became unbearable, and because of this he lost his wife. He had no pain until he gave the bid away and the boss gave him a new job, to operate a loader, and he fell from it. But he knew he was put on the loader because his boss wanted him out of his sight. And his boss wanted him out of his sight because of Leo’s wife. His wife and his boss became friendly after Bourque brought in the bid that made his boss an extra $120,000 that year, and perhaps every year from now on. All of this happened without anyone predicting it would. And yet it happened simply and without the least trouble. And here he was. Worse, his wife had almost come back to him, but he in so much pain had taken too much cocaine and swung a fist at her. That destroyed any chance he might have had. Worse is how his boss held her, saying, “Let’s go, we’ll get your things in the morning—I knew this would happen.”

  But what was the worst was this: he knew in his heart that the boss would never love his wife like he, Leo, loved her. Yet Leo would never be able to convince her of this now.

  He wondered much about his life, and it all seemed to have come to disgrace because of one thing: his meeting with Alex last year and his bringing the bid to his boss. Why had he taken the bid to his boss? Why didn’t he bring it back to old Jim Chapman, and tell on Alex like he should have? Or have just let it go. Why had he been put on the large loader? Why had his wife left? How could she love a man with such a small mustache and such a large belly?

  Alex.

  That is, Bourque felt he had been deceived by the man he had tried to emulate for a number of years, and he could not forgive this in himself or anyone else.

  —

  LEO WENT INTO THE GARAGE, AND THE SMALL BELL TINKLED as if a country store. The little fan whirred in a corner, side to side. So one would feel the circulation of air like small tingles against your skin. He picked up a new lighter and lay it on the counter—he had come to buy matches, but the Bic lighter would do. It cost $2.79 and he placed $5 on the counter.

  Burton was trying to operate a new computer sitting on the desk behind the counter—a wave of bright new possibility in a world so remote. Beyond starting it, it seemed Burton had no idea how to use it. He had forgotten his excitement at being talked into buying it from a man at Radio Shack as he had weaved back and forth on the mall floor one day last week.

  Burton glared at it, as if it was alive and an enemy. Once in a while he would push a button and wait. His hands were deformed because he had been left out in the snow, and one foot was partially missing. Bourque had always thought of this—that is, that Burton had had all his fingers and toes, fresh and wo
rking, for about three hours, breathed with a brain as fine as most for a tiny little bit. And so he was always kind to him.

  “Having a problem, is ya?” Leo asked. Outside the sunlight displayed the world in gold and greens against the old dusty windows, and slanted down on the hot pavement in the yard, and showed the garage to be emasculated, removed of pumps, and an old hose bleeding into nowhere. There was a smell of tar as cars passed along. Some junked cars lay hidden in the tall grasses behind the shop, their roofs blanched and peeled, and a curtain lay flat against the grimy back window, where flies buzzed and nubbed themselves into unconsciousness.

  Burton was almost crying, because of the new computer that he thought would save his business. He cried very easily and if you asked him why he was crying he would say, “Why, don’t you know—it’s the world.”

  He had no idea a computer was like this. He thought computers made you money.

  “The computer does everything for you—you don’t even have to think,” the salesman had related to him. And to Burton, who was always waiting for an instrument like this to appear, it seemed divine. But now, again, he was tricked.

  Leo waited patiently, watching him. Then he said, “Double-click that there—and then give me my change!”

  “Here?”

  “Right there,” Leo said.

  Burton did, and quite suddenly all the work Amy had entered and saved came to the screen.

  “There,” Burton said, proud of himself.

  Leo went behind the counter to make his own change, for he was tired of waiting—and in doing so he saw the entry, first Poppy and his lotto number, 3, 5, 8, 19, 29, 31; and then Chapman’s name and the lotto ticket number: 5, 7, 14, 20, 31, 45.

  “What is this?” Leo said, pointing with his smudged finger at the top left-hand side.

  “Lotto,” Burton said.

  “You sell tickets.”

  “Yes, and give them to people who had their oil changed.”

  Leo looked them over, thinking nothing of it, his blunt face impassive.

  Then Burton said, “Well, it was the wrong one—for Jim—Mr. Chapman—and it was the wrong number.”

  Leo didn’t think any more about this, and was preparing to leave, lighting a cigarette in the grand dimness of late afternoon, when Burton said, as if he must expostulate because something was bothering him: “I thought they were the winning numbers—but I was wrong—”

  “Well, that’s a shame,” Leo said. “You mean it didn’t win anything—that number? My uncle didn’t win anything either?” This was in the pedestrian quietude of late afternoon, a moment between two country-bred men standing over a machine that would open the world to them—as if in doing so, the world would be any better.

  “No, yer uncle won nothing. Alex told me to forget about Jim’s number,” Burton said, “and erase it—and put these numbers down instead, so I done so.”

  “Who’s Alex?” Leo asked, though he knew of course.

  “Mr. Chapman’s nephew. I met him on the beach and told him Mr. Chapman had won a lot of money—and he said he would go and tell him the good news.”

  “I bet,” Bourque said, still not understanding the relevance of these comments.

  “Then he come back and said it was the wrong numbers.”

  “Oh,” Bourque said, catching his breath.

  “But they were in the paper—”

  “What was?”

  “The numbers that I had written down before,” Burton said. “They was in the paper as the winning numbers. Alex Chapman said to forget about it—and showed me the real ticket. So I erased them—and put these here.”

  “Alex showed you a ticket that didn’t match.”

  “It didn’t.”

  “And you thought Jim had the matching numbers?”

  “For a while I did—I was sure he did for a while.”

  “Well that’s too bad,” Leo said to his childlike friend. “And what were the real numbers—I mean the winning numbers, what were they?”

  “I forget by now,” Burton said with immaculate arrogance.

  Bourque opened the door to leave, but came back in.

  “How much was a lotto like that worth—a few thousand maybe?”

  “Oh—not so much—I heard thirteen million.”

  “Imagine to miss out on it,” Leo smiled. “Old Jim hisself never said anything about it?”

  “No.”

  “And Alex brought you his ticket?”

  “Yes.”

  “And have you heard who won it? It must have come out who won it?”

  “Of course not likely—” Burton said angrily. “And Mr. Chapman’s gone fishing—he came in here to get leader before he left.”

  “I see,” Leo said.

  Bourque then left to go downriver to his small shed where there was a half quart of wine hidden under a plank. Wine on a hot day gave you a particular kind of drunk. He passed the old Chapman house, with his eye cast warily toward a window, door. Warily on this late hot day (the second day of Alex’s search), he saw Alex Chapman leave by the side door and then move away into the back lots. Bourque watched him go, until one could only see his hair sticking up above the small reddish alders. Quite suddenly Leo was interested in the world again. Quite suddenly all his suffering seemed to be worth it once again. Of course he was furious with Alex Chapman, and why not? This man who he tried to emulate only thought he was superior to him, and had delivered a great blow against him, and then just walked away, impartial and imperial. Did he know that Bourque had taken night school in order to be more like Alex Chapman? And that even after all of that he was still called “right wing”?

  No, but one must realize, that was long ago.

  —

  LEO BOURQUE WAS ALMOST LOST AT SEA AFTER THE BLESSING of the fleet. Much like Ishmael, he had hugged a board. The rest of the crew, kind Eugene Gallant included, was lost. A day and a half he was tossed in the Strait. At one moment he was sure he had seen the great fin of a huge shark rise out of the water and come toward him, then veer away when Leo slapped the water with his hands. He had bad dreams about this every night. He could not stand to go onto a wharf, and he’d never been on a boat again. If he smelled a herring it would make him sick. His wife had been able to relieve that pain, but now she was gone, and the steady numbing nightmare returned. Of course he had treated his wife badly, but he had not meant to. That is all he could say. Many nights he wished he could go to sleep and not wake again. He was actually the person Alex at one time had wanted to be, and Alex was much like the person Bourque had dreamed of being but could not become.

  Yet over the last twenty-four hours Leo realized why he had lived. It was to obtain this ticket. What infuriated him was this. He had asked Alex for $500 to pay some bills, and was feeling guilty about it, whereas Alex—Alex, who he had tried to emulate—was after thirteen million, and had tricked poor old Burton Tucker, the least of all men!

  Nothing made Bourque more conscious of his own gullibility than this. That is, he seemed to know immediately that the world did not care who became rich or who did not, who became successful or who did not.

  Bourque looked for and found the numbers in the old paper at his uncle’s, and stared at them. He couldn’t take his mind off them: 11, 17, 22, 26, 37, 41.

  As he drank, it came to him in a moment of blinding recognition. Think of how much more he could get from Alex if he played his cards right. Maybe they could share it! Did he want to share it or just take a million or so? And did he think really that Alex was in fact searching for this ticket? He pondered all of this, and decided that he would have to try, at least try to find out the truth. Then he decided that he would be culpable if he did not try, for the very reason he had learned of this was to benefit himself.

  He walked back up the lonely highway and watched the old Chapman house all night—but was too frightened to go to the door himself. Finally, at about three in the morning, it colder than he wanted, he lay in the grass near the highway and slept.
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br />   At mid-morning, he saw Alex sneak up from the lighthouse, through the old lots, and into the house. Alex passed by so close he might have touched Leo. Bourque woke with his hand lying in the grass, and hauled it in quickly as Alex approached. But Alex did not see him as he passed, and went into the back shed and closed the door.

  In three hours Alex came back out, and walked back toward his own shed, looking despondent.

  So now Leo knew. The ticket was there, and the old man was away, and as long as the old man was away they had a chance.

  Bourque had to decide how to treat Alex. It was as if he was talking to a strange being. Someone who read, and knew things Leo never could. And no matter what Alex thought, Bourque was intimidated by him. But Bourque realized he had one “in,” so to speak. And that was the bid that Alex had given up and blamed on Sam Patch. This was the terrible secret that he knew. If he could hold this bid over his friend, things would work to his advantage, in a big score as well as a small one. Thinking this, he lay on his bunk in the dark smoking, agonizing over what to do, feeling that his faithless wife would someday envy him.

  “If I find the ticket and get the money.”

  As chance would have it, everything seemed to work his way.

  —

  FOR BOURQUE, THIS TOO MUST HAVE BEEN AMAZING. THAT is, how easily things happened for his benefit. For once in his life he felt that things he had no control over were happening for him instead of against him.

  Bourque had just sat down at the tavern the next evening when Alex Chapman came in. And why was Bourque always there? To escape, yet to play the money machines that he thought he controlled though he lost every night. He was also in such bad shape that people who were his friends now no longer bothered with him, and so he was in the advantageous position of being alone. He fidgeted as Alex came toward him. A deep emptiness flashed through him like a train, because he had no more pills.