The Lost Highway

by David Adams Richards

  The moonlight was eerie, and shadows had formed, and along the wall of stone turning into autumnal ashes—where there was once, if not laughter, at least a kitchen, and a pantry—was a ground fog that seemed to sweep over them. He looked up at the moon, close in its distant orbit about us. So he took to moving along the fringe of the derelict Roach property.

  He picked up a stick and kept banging it against the trees in front of him, in part to find his way, and in part to scare his prey. He did not speak. She did not speak. At points, without knowing it, but which could be known by an owl watching, he was some fifteen feet from her, but she had tucked herself down under some plants and was almost lifeless. When he moved away, she took off her pants and sneakers and lay them across a branch. Then she slipped toward Arron Brook, and walked carefully along the bank.

  He had lost her, he thought, as he walked back toward where he had come from. He stood silent once again, as if stand hunting for deer. Then he trashed ahead and behind him with the stick. He worked this way once again until he got to the remains of the small house, the stones crumbled with age and forgotten by men who would soon enough join them, and made his way toward the Roach orchard, the only thing they had managed in fifty-five years here.

  Just then he turned. At the far end of this place, lingering in the stubble of alders and grasses where he had just come from, he saw something sparkle. He moved toward Arron Brook—that is, to his right—and missed running into her by ten seconds. He swept around on the fringe of the Roach property, toward what he assumed was behind where she was. As soon as he got fifteen feet from her, he rushed ahead, and slashed at her with the stick. To his incredulity he swished at nothing but a pair of jeans with glitter snaps, and a pair of sneakers with reflectors. The jeans flew a few feet and landed on a branch, and Bourque, still stultified, looked about for her, to see if she was under them.

  He heard her crashing away to the north again, beyond Roaches’ and the apple orchard.

  He realized that she was on the far side of her house, and in fact he was closer to it. The moon was now high over the darkness of our land. Far away there was the sound of a truck on the highway, the pastures were wet and sullen, the water of Bartibog glistened in the night.

  Her room was the same as she had left it that day. She had her CDs in a box near her small guitar, and her book of Aristotle’s ethics—the same edition of the book Alex had sought a few days ago. Strangely, it was face up on the bed, turned to page 124. It was as she had left it. And Bourque waited under the porch, but she did not come.

  He waited ten minutes, but she did not come. But she knew where he was. That is, on the very far side of the Patch ground, near the small fence and birdhouse, she was waiting to see if the house was safe. He realized after a while that this was perhaps the only place she could be; for to her right was the bog, and to her left was back where she came from.

  He turned and went silently across the old Jameson tote road, and came up behind her.

  He could see her pathetically shivering and looking toward the house. She had seen the skunk hobble off the porch as she got there, and realized someone had spooked it. So, knowing this, she had waited.

  She was marblelike in the night air, her teeth chattering, wearing only her pink underwear and a T-shirt that said HILLBILLY HEAVEN!

  “How are you?” he asked.

  —

  SHE WAS BEING LED BY THE ARM, AS IF BY A VICE GRIP, straight through the dark woods, in her pink panties that were soaking wet, so she appeared completely naked from the waist down.

  He did not speak, and she did not speak. Until they came to the path toward Glidden’s pool she made no sound. Then she realized what he was going to do, and started to fight him, kicking and trying to bite.

  “You come along now, missy—you just come along now,” he said. “I want to tell you something.”

  He did not know what he was saying or why he was saying it, but she fought each foot of the way, both of her feet bleeding, her wrists swollen from him holding them. He wanted to cover her up but did not.

  “If you come with me, if you do, nothing whatsoever, whatsoever will happen to you,” he implored. “Scout’s honor. Nothing.”

  —

  THEY WERE SILENT AT THE SMALL TABLE IN THE LITTLE kitchen. Both Minnie and Sam had their heads down, and Markus had put his notebook away, and the flies still wobbled in the heat. The door was open to a smell of sweet air, being more clear and brisk than the stale summer heat, the air that was now coming down from the north to clean all things away. On better days, both Markus and Sam would have thought of moose hunting or partridge hunting soon to come, of the ducks and geese that would cross the marshes in the hundreds, of the nights to come when buck would move throughout the backyards scenting on doe. But neither of them thought this now.

  “She fought then as best she could,” Markus said quietly. “She still had only had a vague idea of why she was culpable in their eyes. She knew if he got her to the pool, she would have no chance.”

  They were very silent now, realizing as all folks do the immense stupidity of taking a child’s life for granted. Realizing that the little thing couldn’t swim. So she must have been doubly terrified.

  Markus had the bad habit of speaking very officiously to white people, because it was best here to follow his training to the letter, and so he told them what he had to tell them in that impressive and direct tone of voice.

  Bourque turned to pick her up and carry her down that long part of the path. He was on the grade going down, and had his hands about her, still trying to soothe her by saying nothing was wrong. The pool was eight feet deep and twenty-three feet wide. He could drown her very easily. Then he could get the ticket. Tomorrow he would stay in bed. He would see what happened with Alex. All of this must have been going through his mind.

  When Alex came from behind the trees, Leo thought he had come to his senses, and was back with him to do what was right. But Alex did not speak. Looking at Amy, he believed that she was naked and Bourque was going to sexually harm her. This was not at all Bourque’s intention. But Alex suddenly—in the only act of overt violence he ever committed—shoved the knife that had killed Poppy into his friend’s side.

  “Ooh,” Bourque said, “Christ, son?” His face was puzzled and questioning, longing and hurt by deception all at the same incredible moment.

  Amy found herself on the ground, dazed and bleeding, one of her legs caught up under her and her ankle sprained. Alex stood between them both, all three in this terrible small universe of themselves, while not three trees away two swallows that Amy had raised that summer had tucked themselves down, and the moon still lingered through the branches.

  “Goddamn you,” Bourque said, hauling away the knife. “Goddamn you, Alex, why did you do that?”

  It was like a plea or penance, those words, like an entreaty to the betrayer he had believed in.

  As Amy stood, Alex looked at her and said, “Run, sweetheart, run, and don’t stop until you get to Father MacIlvoy.”

  “Christ, Alex,” Bourque said, throwing the knife into the pool, where it twirled about like a propeller as it sank down.

  Amy turned and fled, mud to her knees, and ran over both rocks and branches, cutting her feet.

  Bourque realized his dream was floundering, and knew that the only possible way to have a dream left was to continue, and he managed to stanch the bleeding with his shirt.

  —

  MARKUS NOW TOLD THEM IT WAS NOT JUST A CHILD ALEX could not kill; he really could not kill anyone. He looked at Bourque with sorrow, and a plea for forgiveness, as Amy ran. Bourque turned and went after her, pushing Alex down as if he were a rag doll, so Alex fell into the cold pool—fearfully cold, so he realized what Amy might have experienced at about that same moment if he had not intervened. Though he could not swim, he did manage to flounder forward and haul himself out. He had to go after them now, to protect her.

  Down Bourque ran along the old fallow creekbed, to
ward the highway. He caught sight of her twice, her bare legs and almost naked behind, and then once more, as she moved across the highway. But as he came to the old respectable churchyard, Amy, who he had eyed running ahead, was not there.

  The yard was bathed in gold and green, from the one floodlight and the sweeping moon.

  Alex came up behind him, walking like a reluctant soldier who had lost his weapon and only did what he was told after all the other soldiers had complied.

  Leo, now and again looking to see where Alex was, began to look for her in the graveyard, hobbling between the monuments and stones. The priest was gone to Millerton. No one was here. Now and again he leaned against these stones to rest and bled upon them, and upon the stone of the little boy who had died of leukemia all those years ago.

  “Where is she?” he said.

  Alex shrugged. He looked up at the sky. He felt weak, and his left arm pained. He felt suddenly that both he and Bourque would die soon. It was now almost essential that they do so. He uttered some kind of a prayer for them both.

  “Go home,” Alex said. “It is over.”

  Bourque turned then. “Where is the ticket?” he asked. “Let me see it—or I will knock your statue down!”

  “The ticket—the ticket is Amy’s,” Alex said, and he moved down as if to protect the little grotto with the Virgin he had melted into life.

  Bourque came up to it, and tried to grab at the Virgin herself. It was rather small, this virgin, and not very heavy. He put his hand out and tried to crumple it, but Alex for some reason prevented him.

  “If you don’t give me my ticket I will knock the head off the Virgin!”

  “No, you can’t—it’s the best thing I have ever done and I won’t let you destroy it. It’s the only thing I have left to give away to the world!”

  Strangely, just before them that little candle still burned. They grappled for a second, and though Bourque tried to knock it down, the statue remained, for he was growing weaker and had no determination, and some of his blood smeared the Virgin’s face and seemed to run down her cheeks.

  “Damn you, Alex,” he said. “You have ruined my life from the moment you got on the bus!”

  “You have ruined mine—but you will not ruin my statue,” Alex answered. He waited, protecting this statue for some reason he had no real idea of.

  Then Bourque, weakened and breathing raggedly, moved off, and walked back up the lane looking for Amy.

  Alex left and went down the crooked steps to the shore. The night sky was brilliant and the shore light glittered. But he was worried, because when he turned, Bourque was following him.

  “Go home,” he said again, “it is over.”

  He could feel his heart, he clutched his chest. Soon he knew he would have a heart attack. He was going to go home, but Burton’s little scow lay where the kids had hid it. So he put it into the water, to prevent Leo from following, but Bourque came behind and jumped into it too, demanding the money, for some reason saying it as a mantra and a prayer. There were no oars in the boat—they had been hidden elsewhere—and both were swept by the current toward the north cape of Chapman’s Island.

  —

  AMY WAITED WHERE SHE WAS, UNTIL SHE SAW FATHER MacIlvoy’s car drive into the yard at eleven o’clock. Then she squeezed out from behind the little statue of the Virgin and made her way toward him, telling him of such a fantastic tale. He got a blanket and covered her, and said he could at that time see them out in the rip on the north side of Chapman’s Island, both of them locked against each other in silhouette, like mortal enemies in a death grip that would last forever, one type of mankind against the other, both somehow without recommendation to Christ.

  He called to them twice but they paid no mind at all, so bellicose in their charges, one against the other.

  He tried to get the oarlocks in his little dinghy, but by the time he got it to the water’s edge the scow was gone, and all the water stilled.

  When the police arrived, the scow had gone down a mile toward Hibbing’s landing—it was adrift and turned over. No one in it at all.

  The next morning, on what would have been Poppy Bourque’s seventy-fifth birthday, his body was discovered by graveyard attendants. Markus Paul in fact told them where to look. It was not hard for him to comprehend.

  The ground had softened by the rain, and the old man’s poor body became visible, like an unearthed specimen from a former time, his sneaker laces still tied into bows.

  —

  IT WAS NOW SEPTEMBER 23. THE DAY MARKUS FINISHED with his investigation, and the truck.

  The ticket by will and testament of Jim Chapman was Amy’s, for Alex had forgone his responsibilities to the estate. Both his and Bourque’s body were found washed ashore on Chapman’s Island.

  The ticket was found too, by Markus, in the copy of Aristotle, where Alex had left it after he had read what Markus asked him to. Alex had signed Minnie’s name to it. Markus had handed this ticket to Minnie and Sam on the afternoon of September 17.

  On the day Markus filed his last report, and closed his book on the case, and was promoted to sergeant, Amy and her parents and Burton went down to Moncton, and with the requisite lawyer claimed the money. People who knew them said they tried to look and sound too fancy—and Amy was too dolled up for a little girl, and they had made her hair real frizzy so you wouldn’t know her in the paper.

  The Patches were the only three, along with Markus Paul, to attend both Bourque’s and Chapman’s funerals, after all the paperwork was done. Both Leo and Alex became names synonymous with betrayal on our river, names that measured immediate disgust with everyone, and it was strangely only these four who had compassion for the two, whose battered, forlorn bodies had been found three feet from one another on a lonely windswept shore, neither with a cent in their pockets.

  —

  A YEAR HAS COME AND GONE SINCE THEN. JOHN PROUD IS out of jail and back on the reserve.

  Life has returned to normal.

  Did this windfall do the Patches any good? Who knows? They were able of course to get a bed for Fanny at the home, where Amy and Minnie visit her twice a week. The Gum Road houses are gone, and Sam, Minnie, and Amy live in the large Chapman house. But they don’t and won’t speak of the money much. Amy skipped a grade and is now in grade 12, thinking of her future. Sometimes Rory comes around to take her to a movie, and tells her with a somewhat obsequious smile that he is through with Robin. And she was asked to go to Prince Edward Island with Robin last Thanksgiving.

  Sometimes, though, this money is a weight around all of them. Sam has taken over Chapman’s enterprise, and they get a lot of requests from old friends who did not seem like friends when Sam lost his job.

  Some say Sam and Minnie have not been to bed together since that awful time, and it is only the child, Amy, the beautiful child, that keeps them together.

  It is true that there was a reunion between Burton and his mother.

  Suddenly June, who says she is no longer any friend of the university, came to the garage one day, in a fall dress and hat, smiling and shaking her head at the scallywag, as she called him, the hat creating a shadow on one side of her face, and her eye shadow making her seem a bit predatory. It didn’t take long for people to become frightened of her, though, and she is a force to be reckoned with. People say she dresses to the nines and has her own Lexus and a young man in Saint Leonard who she dotes on and convinced Sam to hire. She takes care of her son, makes sure he dresses in a suit, tries not to have him speak in public. And if Minnie and little Amy worry that Burton is spending too much, June is the first to say, “Leave him be—leave him be—please realize that he is, after all, a human being.”

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Other Books By This Author

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

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