“Well I’m not going to talk about it then.”
“Well shut up about it then.”
And both did.
This is tragedy, Alex thought, this is real tragedy, but then again the tragedy of whose life? Certainly not of little Amy’s—but of Bourque’s and mine? He didn’t know. He would have to wash his hands of it.
Of course, what he pleaded about was this insistence that he now have to think of God and godly men, of the Virgin and of godliness. For this is what the last few weeks had opportuned. He knew now that one rarely thought of this, until they themselves were broken asunder by some calamity or crime, and then they must think of it too. Who doesn’t pray until a maelstrom? This in fact was the absolute proof positive of God working in mysterious ways. Alex had thought of nothing in the last three weeks but of all that he had left behind when he set off to find the truth.
But what would happen if he was captured and said, “I have begun to think of Christ again, as being the one prophet in our lives. I scorned him too, too long!”
They would scorn him. No one would believe him, no matter how true it was. No one would think that this defrocked priest, as he liked to call himself, who had just murdered an old man short of his seventy-fifth birthday, and who then silenced a child by drowning her, was having any sort of self-debate about the nature of goodness.
“If only Christ had treated me with a little more respect,” Bourque said suddenly, as if to foil what Alex was thinking, so ingrained to each other had their thinking now become. “Then I could have been different. It’s probably a few weeks past the deadline now!”
After they drove the truck down, Bourque got out and made for the small dark kiln. And Alex saw him in a sad way, a small shadow against the forgotten machines of old Jim Chapman’s life, wearing his woolen jacket and riffling through what in fact was the legacy of the old man, as their own life was coming to twilight, without the least qualm.
“For our lives are coming to a twilight one way or the other,” Alex said, as his partner tried to strike the dash wires so they would go up.
After ten minutes of this he said, “The electrical fire will do nothing.”
“There is some kerosene here by the kiln,” Alex told him.
Bourque looked over, passively but with enough power in his passivity to cause a clammy sweat to break out on Alex’s forehead. There was a moment when both smiled at each other nervously.
“You’d better get out, because I’m pouring the kerosene inside,” Bourque said. “Unless you don’t want to go up like little Joan of Arc.”
The door was opened. The breeze off the bay blew up, sometimes still warm. This order to Alex seemed as though Bourque was issuing a direct challenge. And part of Alex wanted to accept it.
“Maybe I will,” Alex said.
“Do, if you want,” Bourque said.
“Maybe I will—for if there is an afterlife and I do go up in flames, it will I think be taken into account. The angels will sit about in the common room debating it and come to some sort of conclusion about me. Or if we are caught, which I think we very well might be, it will be nice to be remembered as the man who was burned to death rather than give up Amy Patch.”
“It is very unhealthy and unwise to think that way,” Leo said.
Leo began to pour kerosene on the floor and then up toward the seat. So Alex got out.
“But I am not saying I will,” Alex said.
“I always liked the smell of kerosene. The way we used to do it out logging, right in the middle of winter, is to peel a tree right down the middle with our axes and pour kerosene on it, then stand around, light the whole thing ablaze, and keep warm. The problem here, Big Cheese, is that it burns slow but gets a great smudge going. Then the gas will go, so we will have to stand back.”
“It will be seen and people will come over.”
“No—a hundred things have been burned off in this yard and no one said a thing,” Bourque answered, knowing the nature of the yard and its implication more than Chapman’s nephew.
“I’ve never burned anything this big before,” Alex said, a little amazed. Alex watched him, hands in pockets, rain spitting now, and the heavens lower and lower.
The day reminded Alex of a day long ago in Boston, where his mother had taken him looking for his father. He remembered they were in the Greyhound bus station. An old man was trying to comfort Rosa—and she seemed slightly insane. A rain fell down out of a gloomy sky. It was March, though the weather was warmer in Boston than it was in Saint John, and he smelled warm wetness in the soil, and wanted to stay there and play.
The old man, whoever he was, collected enough money for them to get the bus back. Alex remembered how grateful he was that his mother stopped shivering and crying, in that little part of his life long, long ago. He had never wanted to see a woman’s tears after that. He could not stand to see them, yet he would now cause untold numbers to fall.
“We have to do something about those tires too,” Bourquey said, “don’t forget. Now there it blows.”
Alex began to pour kerosene on the tires.
“Now we wait till night,” Bourque said, “and do it before Sam gets home. You know Sam thought enough of me to get me a job out there. I shoulda took it—but look what I did, I got mixed up with you.”
“Are you afraid of Sam?”
“There is not a man in his right mind wouldn’t be—” Bourque smiled cautiously. “No combat man, no boxer, no kung fu man, no one would be safe if you injure a child, as far as Sam Patch is concerned. Don’t let his size fool you—he could tear men twice his size up!”
They had to step back when the hood blew up and off, and fell near the kiln. Bourque gave a happy exclamation like one does at fireworks. It was almost as if they had done far too much and wouldn’t be able to stop it from burning, and both were smelling of dirt and kerosene, both a little terrified of their excess.
“I didn’t get to the fireworks this year, but look what we did,” Bourque said.
The gas exploded and fumes caught and funneled up, and made black, thick smoke in the heavens that was seen well over a mile away. Some toads hopped and hobbled in the grass to get away, and both men turned in the direction of Groat’s house.
They had decided that Amy’s New Testament would be used for bait. This came after a long and separate argument.
“I can tell her I found it,” Alex said, as if in a daze, “and wanted to give it back to her. That’s better than telling her her mother is hurt.”
But then they debated whether they could or could not speak—for if they did, Fanny would know they were there and know who they were, and if anything suspicious happened it would be they blamed.
This was a great concern, and they argued all the way through the woods.
“No, we cannot speak—we must be silent.”
“Silent as thieves in the night.”
Then an hour passed, then two, when no one saw either of them.
—
THE RAIN FELL AND DARKNESS CAME, AND IT WAS SILENT on the lane. For over an hour she wondered what to do, for she had realized by a process of elimination that if she just by the off chance happened to be right, then tonight was the night they would come to the house. Yet she waited and they did not come.
Finally Amy turned to the old woman and said, “Do you want to come upstairs?”
“Come upstairs—it’s not yet seven o’clock—what do you mean? You have some boy coming here to visit, you have some boy coming here to see you? Show him your mustn’t-touch-it?”
“No.”
“Yes you do.”
“No, I don’t—”
She turned and went to the window and looked. She could see to the end of the lane and the trees waving. Now it seemed to her the most forlorn lane on earth, with its rocks and stubble that she had noticed all summer long. The very lack of it being sinister made it so. This was the road of her golden youth, her golden moment in the sun.
She was looking out
every ten minutes, trying to tell herself the truck she had seen that night was not in any way “that” truck. And blaming herself for having taken that pathway, to cause herself unnecessary worry.
“Nothing is wrong,” she said. “And he is a good man!”
But then, about ten minutes after saying this, came a little shock of terror. Suddenly and at once, though still not complete substantiation. After Fanny had her dessert, two shadows that had not been there ten minutes before were behind the elms. It was now after seven, so the shadows were lengthening even with the rain. She tried at first to dismiss them. She wanted to think they were the shadows of trees. But though she wanted them to be shadows of trees and nothing more, after she stared at them for five minutes she knew better. They were both there, thirty yards from the house. Her heart began to beat as fast as it had ever done.
They were just off the path. Amy had watched the lane too long not to know, had walked the road all her life, had fed the birds and herself hunted partridge. She looked at her wristwatch to see the time, to see how long before darkness came.
“I want to take you upstairs,” Amy said.
“What about our game of cards—and—?”
“I said I’d play cards—I said I would, but we could play them upstairs,” Amy answered. She did not once take her eyes off the lane as she spoke.
“Well it’s not even seven o’clock.”
“It’s just after seven,” Amy said, turning around a second.
She turned back, and saw only one shadow. She had missed someone. Someone had just gone by at the end of the driveway—she had just missed seeing who it was.
“You’d better not bring no boy here, I won’t put up with it—you aren’t supposed to. I’ll tell yer mom.”
“I’m not.”
“I’m staying up until your mother comes home—right until she comes back, late at night—I am. I want to play cards, you said you would! Your mom said she’d bring me home a present and I want to stay up.”
Amy walked past her quietly and made sure the door was locked. Then she turned and asked quite calmly, “Do you have a shotgun?”
“What’s the problem, what are you doing?”
Amy walked by again and put the hook on the basement latch.
“I want a cup o’ tea—go get it now—this is no fun, you said it would be fun. Mrs. Hanson should be here—I want Mrs. Hanson here right now.”
Amy started to draw the curtains. “Didn’t we have a picnic, just like I said, with chicken and cheesecake?”
“I hate cheesecake—too much cheese—and I’m going to tell,” Fanny answered. “Ha—just you wait and see, I will tell—and everything!” Fanny was resorting to her only weapon: tattling.
“I will play cards in a minute,” Amy said calmly. She thought she could see them both, almost clearly. It was Mr. Chapman who gave them both away. Up until that moment, she was hoping it was Rory and Robin come to tease. But her beau had not come.
Fifteen minutes passed, and she wondered the best way to keep them out of the house. The old lady had removed her phone three years ago, because she could never hear it, and so they were alone.
“I asked, do you have a shotgun?”
“Not since Hibbert,” Fanny said. “Why?”
“Nothing. Don’t cry and I will make you your tea,” she said, to calm the old woman.
She went over and combed her hair.
However, her thin legs were trembling just slightly, and some of the snaps glistened randomly. Fanny could feel Amy’s legs trembling and see her little jeans moving.
“You got a stump up yer arse—what is going on with your legs?”
“Just thinking of music,” Amy said, “you know how I like it.”
Though she had carried with her that book on Aristotle that Alex had told her to read, and had kept that as faith, there was no reason now not to believe he wanted to hurt her. Because she had seen something she had not known she had seen. From that moment, her life had been in danger. Now something she had never wanted to believe, she remembered. The tied sneakers of a man, lying there in the ditch. It was there in front of her as instantaneously as a flash from a welding torch. Suddenly she could never say she had not seen it.
She turned out the lights, and snuck upstairs to the window at the top of the landing. The birds began to sing their night song—and she remembered as a little girl going to bed in the spring, with the excitement of birds singing.
Ten minutes passed. All the shadows had lengthened in the dreary little house, with its gleaming living room floor, and the old cold kitchen, and all the tales of woods and forest, and walking bosses and laughter, gone now, but still present with the house so quiet and dark.
She came back downstairs so quietly Fanny didn’t know.
“Do you have the drawer upstairs that you had when I was a girl and used to hide there, when Rory and I came over?” she whispered.
“What drawer, I don’t know what drawer—you are making it all up. Why can’t you make me tea?”
—
LEO AND ALEX WERE STANDING JUST AT THE LANE’S EDGE, in the darkened autumnal trees, rivulets of muddy water running down the lane toward them, past pebbled ruts that had turned rust colored. They did not know they had already been spotted; they assumed the little girl would know nothing of their presence or their intention, though she had figured it out little by little and had procrastinated in self-doubt, which she promised herself if she lived she would never do again. The day was gone now, the clouds low and angry, and with each moment the puddles filled with red water. The pathways off the edge of the lane were overgrown, and rain pattered down against them, as the tops of the trees blew against each other, wildly as if cursing.
“We can’t do this,” Alex whispered. That is, he had to try to decide in his own mind what he could or could not do, separate from Bourque who was leading him. And for his own comfort, he pretended that this was simply another intellectual problem.
“Well then, go back and phone the police!” Leo said.
“I can’t do that either.”
“Stop shaking.”
“You’re shaking too.”
Leo said Groat (as he called her) had no phone. Alex knew this, of course. He had been to her house, doing a survey on the plight of elderly women for the New Democratic Party last year.
But now Alex had returned to being quiet. He simply stared at Leo. There was, he decided, almost no way out. Going through with it was perhaps the only recourse.
Still, he said this, and it annoyed his partner: If he had doused himself with kerosene, he might have had a painful death but now be sitting in paradise. He shivered.
“Oh, you’re back to paradise,” Bourque sneered.
Bourque was right to sneer. There was simply no way out. The only possible chance they had was to go forward, Bourque cautioned. No matter how they discussed it, this fact would not change. As soon as Old Poppy had said no, they had been frozen together in a dimension neither had predicted nor wanted. Like the two combatants in Star Trek placed in mortal combat for eternity.
“One right wing, one left wing.” Alex laughed, remembering the joke about the hockey players in the seminary.
“It is not up to us anymore,” Leo said, “it is part and parcel of the universe. What we must do is now written in the sky or in our souls—even if you don’t believe it—for the course of events is predetermined, and was so when we first met at the tavern. Or we can say it is not, but then again, either way—either way in this horrible, dark world—and don’t kid yourself, it is a dark world—you think it is a dark world? Go for a drive on our highway on an autumn night. Because, you see, when I went to see you in the tavern I had the note from Sammy in my pocket telling me to come out west and I could earn $160,000 a year. I must have been mad—but you see, like you and Minnie, I couldn’t leave her—I couldn’t leave Doreen—can’t you see?”
Alex nodded a short, heavy nod that one does in the rain that makes the skin look somewhat el
astic, as water had dripped down the back of his neck when he did. He was shivering and his legs ached. He had not taken his medicine, and that as much as anything could precipitate a heart attack. But now he returned to his overall lucidness.
“Except it was not when we met at the tavern. Every moment in our lives contributed to this moment now, and each syllable that we suffered through had something in its very measure for this, and the rain falling on us in this space. That is, if you believe that which you have just said, all else means that all pointed to this. From the first moment you disparaged me on the school bus—”
“I never did.”
“You did so, you surely did—it is no time now to be less than honest. So then from that moment when you called me the big cheese, we have been locked in torment. And our relationship blossomed into only what it indicated it would, when you first threw my pens from the window or begged my money with a mischievous smile!”
“Well, did we create this dark old world, this Sodom and Gonorrhea kind of place? No, we were thrust into it, like little slaves, trying to eke out a living and everything like that there, don’t you kid yourself. We are not the smartest puppies in the pen.”
Alex nodded.
“So we are just doing only what we have to do—predetermined or not, it suits us. Build her her own rec center without any qualms.”
Alex again nodded. It was once again Plato’s rather esoteric principle of the noble lie.
Bourque spoke slowly into his ear.
Alex took the New Testament out and held it, its old faded cover turned back to expose the front page, with its quote from Joshua: “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth.” Alex glanced at her name at the top of the page, disappearing in the rainwater coming down from his eyes as if he was crying.
“She’d understand that you want to give it back,” Bourque said nervously. “She’d understand it—”
What Bourque was conscious of at this moment was the roadblocks Young Chapman was trying to set up in their consciousness, and he was very angered by it. This was not the time for roadblocks or for turning back, now with the very road behind them washed out, and a cavernous gap between now and their former lives. Alex was saying that if they went back now, the cavern could still be traversed.
The Lost Highway Page 38
