The Lost Highway

by David Adams Richards

  Markus Paul’s great-grandfather shot the last caribou on these barrens, for an egotistical Dutch millionaire and his wife about the year 1911. That would have been John Proud’s great-grandfather too.

  Markus Paul had had a standoff at the reserve the night before, trying to talk a man—who was actually an uncle of his—into putting his shotgun down and coming outside. He was alone in the house and he was angered that his wife had gone to bingo and had not made him supper, and so he had not let her in when she had come home. Then when she went to get her son-in-law, to talk to him, he grabbed the shotgun.

  Markus tried to talk him out of the house. This had been arrived at finally at twelve minutes after four. Markus Paul’s attention, however, hadn’t been completely focused on the standoff or the negotiation.

  He was often sidetracked by the old hunting road that led through those barrens to the stand of hard trees against the soft, cloud-covered morning sky. The once principal and now forgotten hunting camp of his grandfather was halfway between the reserve and the highway, and he knew that John Proud, who was using this camp, would be in contact with many people along the road all summer long, and would have very likely spoken to Leo Bourque. So the standoff was important to Paul in this regard. (Besides, he knew his uncle didn’t want to hurt anyone.) He decided, looking at the old hunting lane, that he would go to the camp himself.

  So after the standoff, and after the dawn came, Markus Paul walked slowly up along the old path, through the trees, and into the camp, which seemed to be the epitome of a lost race. The rain had come and it was like those days moose hunting with his father, calling a long cow call in the dreary cold morning and hearing the bull coming from a mile away, cutting through the tamarack and birches, loud and still muted in the drizzle and the smell of pungent wood. No, the Micmac didn’t have horses or know them like the Sioux, but they could trudge out and run a moose to ground, had hunted caribou the same way.

  He could hear rain hitting the tin roof above his head, and running down the slope to the tiny east branch of Hackett Brook. It was all melancholy and soft and lonely. He was standing in John Proud’s hunting camp, which had belonged to their grandfathers. They had taken many moose from here, at various times of the year when they needed. Too, too many moose were slaughtered now by some, in the kind of political retribution that fed the airways as being “native rights.” His disposition was always to say that rights were not without obligation, and he was not liked for it among some of the men who some years took sixteen or seventeen moose out of the swampland off Hackett Brook.

  Could he see the highway from here? No. But that did not mean it wasn’t there. Now and again he could hear the drone of the cars approaching from the west or east, and then drifting away to the east or west. Through the small clearing, the old (ancient) hunting path of his peoples led now up to that road. The old barrens now trailing away with undergrowth, the blueberry fields that his people picked for cottagers.

  Everything that Markus wanted to keep from the scene of Poppy’s disappearance had been stuffed in three boxes at the back of the police station. There was only one set of footprints he was able to take. They were not prints of the men who had come to the truck, but of someone standing behind the truck, shuffling back and forth—perhaps waiting for the men in the house to come down the pathway. He had found out yesterday at six o’clock that these prints were not sneakers or boots, as he had expected, but sandals. Size 10, with the left sandal having a rundown heel.

  Of course he knew immediately. Alex Chapman wore sandals. But so did others. And then there was the standoff and he couldn’t go see Alex, who he was hoping to break. These prints had been lifted and photographed and fused onto plastic, an impression of an exact moment on the very night Old Poppy disappeared. Perhaps Alex, the consummate smoothie, did not know that his dancing a jig would be discovered in such a way. But of course he was no longer a smoothie.

  There was something else impeding the case’s progress. The paint he had sent off to Moncton had not been analyzed. He needed this analyzing done so he could confiscate the truck and do a Luminol test upon it. That is, he did not want to be wrong with the most significant piece of evidence in his life. If he was, it would be disastrous for him and the entire case and his reserve. If there was no blood, it would blow up in his face, and he would get no second chance. His cousin would simply be found guilty. The test on this paint would be done by tomorrow afternoon.

  He was certain blood would be found in this truck, and it would be Poppy Bourque’s. He had to bide his time a little, that is all. Tomorrow he was transferring Mr. Proud down to Richabucto jail, and therefore would travel later to Moncton to pick up the evidence about the paint. It all had to be verified, classified, and quarantined. He could have it all collected within the next day or two. Then he could bring the truck in for testing.

  What Bauer wanted in assigning him this task was two things. He wanted to show people that Constable Markus Paul was a loyal enough policeman who would take his cousin down to Richabucto, that it was also compassionate for him to assign a native to transfer a native. And Bauer wanted to quell speculation that there was a bigger and more mysterious reason for the disappearance of Poppy Bourque, when they had this man who had confessed. Now the confession had been signed, and it made no sense to keep looking for someone else until you first proved the confession bogus. The only problem was, no one at all took the time to try and find out if the confession was indeed bogus. The other problem was Alex Chapman himself—was there any kind of vendetta Markus had against him, Bauer liked to wonder.

  Of course Markus Paul knew all of these unsaid things, and kept quiet himself. He did not tell Bauer that tomorrow evening he would have the paint, and the sandals.

  He took off his gun belt and lay it across a small table, and tried to find the picture of himself with the twenty-one-point moose that had been here for years. He couldn’t. It could very well have been sold.

  He thought about the standoff. It was actually comic. The man ordering spaghetti before he would come out, because he said this is what his wife was supposed to make him that night for supper.

  “What did you say you wanted, Arnold?”

  In the Days Before, when Glooscap ruled the heavens, the great moose hunts were done in both fall and winter. And Markus Paul’s ancestor and John Proud’s ancestor too, Osepitit, was chief of the Micmac tribe along this waterway—all the way into Chaleur, where the Iroquois had come down from the land now called Quebec. His ancestor was then the justice and the law, and the understanding of the law, of the spirit of the law, and there was little to dispute how great he was. So when the Iroquois made inroads into Micmac hunting and fishing land, south of Chaleur on those long ago days, Osepitit’s people came to him. There was then no one to tell him what to do, and no one in the end to advise him. But he knew this: he knew the Micmac nation was not able to defend itself or defeat the more powerful tribe. Just as the Huron fought against his people along the Saint John, so the Iroquois fought here against them. Osepitit was an old man then, and had fought well fifteen years before, but he decided this: he would pit his life against the Iroquois chief, a younger, stronger man, to protect his people.

  The bloodletting ended when Osepitit and the Iroquois chief fought to the death on the great rock out in Miramichi. They were paddled out by their warriors, and faced each other with one tomahawk in the center of the stone, with the bay all about them. The Iroquois grabbed the tomahawk first, and drove it into Osepitit’s side. But it was his ancestor who snapped the back of the Iroquois chief, so the Iroquois left the land of the Miramichi to the Micmac. And this happened 150 years before the first white man arrived on their shores. The rock turned red in the late tide and had remained red ever since.

  Markus Paul did not know that in many ways he was like that great man, in sympathy and appearance, nor would he ever think of being so.

  Arnold, who would speak only to Markus in Micmac, came outside at about quarter past f
our, after eating some spaghetti. Many of the women and men who had gathered around to watch, yelling instructions first at Arnold and then at the police, started laughing uproariously because he had forgotten to take his bib off and still had some bread in his hand.

  “What have we done?” Markus whispered aloud.

  The rain fell over the tin roof, and along the streaked window, and felt of dreary autumn. This was once the great hunting camp of his family, but now had become a den of iniquity. Plastic bottles formed to blow pipes and pans, hydrochloric acid, and hundreds of empty containers of decongestion tablets that were opened and used with laundry detergent and old batteries for acid, all used for cooking methamphetamine. Here the seven men and women on the reserve who were hooked on crank came over the last three years, until late last month, when Markus finally put a stop to it. Now most of them were in rehab.

  Rotted food and bones, stained and bloodied walls, soiled and ripped panties, condoms, and used tampons littered the sight. The people were lucky the camp had not blown up. And it had something unusual in the woods: small black eyes looking at you from the corners. Rats.

  His people. My God, what had happened to them? As Markus looked about, he decided these ones had stepped off the cliff into hell. And he realized it was not only, or not just, the white man’s fault.

  Markus’s own sister had been one. The one Alex so proudly said he knew. The one he had his picture taken with to appear in a paper, and make his name. She was dead now. Markus knew Proud had confessed because he felt so guilty about Markus’s sister, who he had introduced to crank. In reality he was confessing to Markus about the death of Markus’s sister, Peggy. It was one sure way to end his pain. Markus had seen this with alcoholics as well; all of a sudden they would confess to anything, to pay any price for what they had done to themselves, to their loved ones, and to their hope.

  In thirteen months Peggy was dead. In her pocket she had something one of the native women had given her at the last to comfort her, a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe, one of the ten pictures of Our Lady of the First People that Father Hut had given to the First Nations here long ago.

  She had had two children, who Markus now supported. He put his gun back on, buckled the buckle, sniffed and stood, and went to the broken door.

  The old path led away across the barrens, toward the houses, and Markus now followed it back, the rain slanting against his face. In the middle of a dense cluster of alders and small tangled spruce the path broke into three. One followed southeast to the upper end of little Arron Brook. One went to the northwest into the large country toward Tabusintac River. And one path turned directly north, and came out just below Poppy Bourque’s house. This was the path John Proud had followed. It could well have been the path someone like Leo followed down to the hunting camp, on many occasions, to buy the pills he wanted for his back, or perhaps to sleep with Markus’s sister, as many men did. (This is the one thing Markus had known.) And it may well have been Leo himself who sent John to Poppy’s, saying there was money there, that he must have owed Proud. This would have been very easy—but now it might be something Leo regretted, with all the added attention.

  There were tears in his eyes from being in the camp. He wiped them away.

  The rain beat down on the sour little space about him, splashed against the terrible late flowers on the barren slope. Thunder came as if Glooscap were angry about all of this, all this treachery going on in all this brand new world. This new God, well, he tried, but he didn’t do much for the hearts of men.

  —

  LEO BOURQUE SAW MARKUS COMING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE afternoon, his head down, as if inspecting the truculent mud. Leo was sitting at the table, eating a bowl of fish chowder, when Markus entered. He nodded and pointed with his spoon to a chair at the table, and Markus sat.

  He nodded again and pointed to the pot of fish chowder, and Markus nodded and took some.

  “Lobster in there,” Bourque said, “and mussels and clams—pieces of sole, sister made it.”

  “Ah, it looks great,” Markus said.

  He took a bowl and sat at the table, and salted it, and ate. He had forgotten how hungry he was.

  Leo opened a bottle of wine, and nodded. Markus took a small glass.

  “Is the investigation over yet?”

  “Pretty much,” Markus admitted. “I’m taking John down to Richabucto tomorrow—so they will hold him on B&E and try to get more on him.”

  “Well it’s a shame all around. Tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “And how long to lay charges about my uncle?”

  “Oh I’m not sure—there is no body of the poor old lad. The thing is, with the methamphetamine and the B&E John could do almost as much time—”

  “Well I’d like to get him for the murder too—I mean, since he did it and everything.”

  “Well we are working as fast as we can,” Markus said. He kept eating, staring down at the bowl. “Did you ever see Alex Chapman and John together?”

  “Who?”

  Markus put the spoon in his mouth, chewed, picked up a piece of bread, and shrugged. “With John—I mean, as a native rights activist—Alex Chapman?”

  “Never,” Bourque said, with obvious disdain at the name. “Never—leave you Indians alone is what I say, then everyone could get along.”

  “Oh ya, you say that?”

  “Sure I do.”

  Markus looked at him, put his spoon down and drank his small glass of wine. “Well there you go—”

  Bourque did not answer this. Markus watched as Bourque lit a native-brand cigarette and offered him one.

  “Sure,” Markus said. He stared around the little shed, and across to Poppy Bourque’s, and as if thinking of something his face lighted up, as it usually did, and he said: “So, Leo, what would you do if you won the lotto?”

  Bourque said nothing. He simply stared.

  Finally he said, “I don’t know—who knows. I hear many who get it blow it.”

  “Is that what you would do—blow it?”

  “I have no idea,” Bourque said, with a tone of voice which indicated he did not like being condescended to, and he was tough enough even with Markus Paul not to have to be.

  Paul acknowledged this with a smile. “Well I know you don’t, and either do I—but someone you or I know very soon will have over $13 million.”

  “How—?”

  “A ticket was sold here somewhere.”

  “Oh, well there you go,” Bourque said.

  They stared at each other uncomfortably, eye to eye.

  “You know what I’d do?” Markus said.

  “What?”

  “You know how Cid Fouy had that old Corvette?”

  Bourque shrugged.

  Markus smiled again.

  “I’d get myself a Porsche. Put him to shame. That is, if I ever got hands on that ticket!” He added: “Sure as hell!”

  —

  WHAT WAS COMING APART IN BOURQUE’S PLANS WAS THE actual physical aspect of the case. He knew this as Markus left—yes, it would all fall apart, trucks and tires and footprints in the sand. There was almost no way to alleviate this. He paced and grumbled and threw the almost full pot of chowder his sister had lovingly gave him over the floor. Then he had to mop it up, and felt all the stings of the world. He wondered about Alex, and what he might be doing. And was anything worth it anymore. That is, was tomorrow still the day? That is, though Bourque now realized it was all but over, he still looked blindly for a way out.

  What was closing in on his partner was the mental fatigue and torture. They wouldn’t see another few days without some desperate measure taking place. Neither of them knew what this measure would be. But both of them now lived constantly in each other’s minds and skin.

  The man known as Alex Chapman still paraded about, slowly of course, still elaborated on how he would find the cure for cancer once all of this was put behind him, still said he was doing it for his mother’s memory, still wanted and insiste
d that people call him professor when he taught his course on ethics. Still thought that someday very soon, after he received his money, he would revive his career at another university—perhaps the wonderfully secular University of Toronto itself. That is, his whole life was as positive as a terribly right-thinking member of the New Democratic Party—except for the lotto ticket itself. Such is the prize that once had is soon taxing.

  At noon tomorrow, Mrs. Hanson would leave the child alone with Fanny to go down and pick up Minnie and Samuel Patch coming in on the plane. Sam was actually named after Sam Johnson by his mother’s doctor, Dr. Hennessey, who was reading Boswell at the time. But this Sam had grade 7. There would for the first time that summer be no attendant adults around. Only Amy and the old lady.

  They had to entice Amy out of the house. The ruse actually was Minnie herself, and he, Alex, was supposed to be the ruser, for Amy knew him.

  “Just tell her Minnie was in a car accident and is laying face down in a ditch somewhere, gurgling and kicking.”

  “That, however, may be a little offputting.”

  “Why?” Bourque had asked yesterday.

  “She might expect a ruse if it is me.”

  “I daresay she won’t.”

  “Well she might,” Alex said peevishly. “And if she does, the game is over.”

  “I daresay she won’t.”

  “What if she brings Old Fanny with her?”

  “Then it’s curtains for them both,” Bourque said. “With all due respect to Fanny, she’d drown as quick as a kitten.”

  “But then will they say both of them committed suicide over the same boy?”

  “Well no, but she might have tried to save little bitty Amy?”

  Bourque had convinced Alex (and did it take so much convincing?) that if Amy lived, it thwarted his altruistic and humanitarian plans. This worked on a plain that took hours upon exhaustive hours of reasoning to reach. Then Alex teetered upon this elusive plain for a second, thinking all would be well, only to find himself one short hour later having to navigate the same murky and foul terrain to reach it all over again, with Bourque’s help. That is why all of this repetition went on, day in and day out, with the same problems and same solutions discussed again and again. However, Bourque seemed already to have found a foothold on this plain and remained, teetering but balanced.