The Paper Grail

by James P. Blaylock

  Howard nearly choked, spinning the steering wheel hard to the right and sliding in a wide doughnut across the dirt parking lot above Glass Beach, clipping a fence post with the rear fender and fishtailing back out in the direction of the highway, fifty yards down from his startled pursuer, who stopped dead at the corner of Stewart Street, leaped up onto the curb, dropped down into a crouch, and pointed the gun at the windshield, straight at Howard’s head, tracking the Camaro as it hurtled toward him.

  Howard stomped on the accelerator, angling straight toward the curb and smashing himself down onto the seat, almost hidden by the dashboard. Fear of being shot pounded through him. To hell with the man’s car. If he started shooting, there would be lights on all over the neighborhood and telephones ringing down at the station house. Howard’s career as a felon would be assured.

  The Camaro slammed into the curb, up and over it with two wheels, as Howard pulled it hard to the left now, back onto the street, when his man lunged backward against the fence and out of the way, and then at once was up and aiming the gun again, training it on the car as Howard slewed around the comer onto Stewart, heading south now toward the train station.

  He sat up in the seat again and slowed down, watching in the minor. There was too much stuff in the way—telephone poles and parked cars—for the man to get off anything but a wild shot, and Howard was confident that he wouldn’t risk any such thing. “Follow me,” Howard said out loud. “C’mon. Chase me.”

  He didn’t, though. The man wasn’t going anywhere, but stood looking back at the warehouse. He clearly couldn’t see anything of the station wagon, but he seemed to be thinking hard. If he gave up on Howard now, then stealing the car would become suddenly pointless. Howard had to draw the man away. Right now.

  He punched the accelerator and shot forward again, tires squealing. Then he slammed on the brakes, locking them up and yanking the steering wheel hard, the car drifting sideways and forward in a slow spin. Howard threw himself down onto the passenger seat, covering his head with his hands. Almost instantly the car smashed into a curb tree, tearing out a length of grape-stake fence that catapulted across the hood. The crash threw Howard forward, nearly onto the floorboard, his knee cracking hard against the steering column. The horn honked one desperate blast, and then all was silent except for the clank of something falling onto the street.

  Howard groped for the door handle, throwing the door open and pulling himself out upside down. He rolled to his feet and loped away down Stewart, not looking back but pulling wildly at his ski mask, which had been yanked around so that he was nearly blind. His knee hurt like a bastard where he’d knocked it against the steering wheel, and he limped and hopped in a zigzag course, waiting for the sound of gunfire or for the hammering of feet on pavement.

  He was in trouble if the man caught him—the whole enterprise was in trouble. But it was in worse trouble if the man had gotten suspicious and gone back to the warehouse. For another few minutes at least, this had to look like a car theft, not a break-in. Howard rounded the comer onto Bush, past someone’s fenced-in back lawn. He stopped short, looking back now, past the comer of the fence, both relieved and horrified to see his man sprinting up the block, not twenty yards behind. There were people at the curb, too, wearing their nightclothes, gathering around the smashed car.

  Howard ran toward the ocean, his knee shooting a fiery pain up and down his leg every time he hammered his foot against the sidewalk. It was run or fight, though, and the farther he could lure the man away … He cut across the street, up onto a lawn and down a gravel alley, running south again, toward the lumberyard. The gate was a solid three blocks away. He could hide, maybe. But where? The fences along the alley were old and rickety and high, and even if he had time to pull himself over one, he’d be trapped in someone’s backyard.

  He looked back and immediately threw himself sideways. The man was at the mouth of the alley now, down on one knee, taking aim. He was sixty feet back, maybe—too close. Howard zigzagged again, hobbling and nearly pitching forward when his knee buckled. There was the sound of a shot, and a metal trash can ahead and to the right was punched backward, its lid jumping and clanking.

  Like a heavy wind the sound of gunfire propelled Howard forward. He was out in the street again, running up the center of a pair of railroad tracks toward the Georgia-Pacific yard. Everything was fenced with chain link and barbed wire, and there was a confusion of tracks running down toward the train depot and another up toward vast warehouses and stacked lumber.

  Somewhere back in there was the gate. It was after five. Men would be going in and out. What would they make of him in his ski mask and gloves? He couldn’t pull the mask off, though, not yet. Not while the man who chased him could get a good look at him. He vaulted over a waist-high cinder-block fence, sliding on gravel. His feet flew out from under him and he landed hard, his breath whumping out of him. A shot pinged off the top of the wall, showering him with rock, and he jumped up and ran again in a crouch, trying to keep low behind the wall. Nearly winded, he ran in a half-stagger, half-trot, fueled only by momentum and fear.

  The cars of the Skunk Train sat in parallel lines on the several tracks between the depot and the machine clutter of the lumberyard, and he ran in among the cars, past the comical skunks painted on the sides. He couldn’t outrun his assailant. He would have to lose him among the silent trains, maybe work his way back around toward the old library, where his uncle would be waiting.

  He listened hard for the sound of feet scrunching on gravel, but there was only silence. Had the man given up? Howard tried to calculate how long they’d been chasing around. Not long enough if Uncle Roy and Bennet had run into any trouble breaking into the warehouse. Maybe the man hadn’t given up. Maybe he was sneaking around into position. Maybe he didn’t give any kind of damn about the car, but was simply hunting for Howard, just to take it out of his hide.

  Dropping to his hands and knees, Howard looked beneath the cars. A pair of feet were walking cautiously along the outside track. The man hadn’t given up. The feet stopped and suddenly there was a face peering back at him, and then, quick as a snake, the hand with the gun.

  Howard was up and moving, and he heard the shot ricochet off heavy steel as he clambered between two cars, trying to get around beyond the trains. He ran straight back along the chain link, north now, toward Fir Street. He needed company, people around. They could grab him and lock him up if they wanted to, but unless there were bystanders, witnesses, the man would shoot him dead. He was certain of that, and the certainty gave him a second wind.

  He rounded the corner, slamming away up Fir, across a set of tracks and past an old rusted crane and a water tower. There was the gate ahead of him and a half dozen men in flannel shirts and jackets, standing around. Howard ran straight toward them. “Hey! Help!” he shouted through his ski mask. He couldn’t think of anything else. The whole crowd of them turned toward him, looking serious, and a man stepped out of a little glassed-in guardhouse and stood there with his arms folded.

  Howard felt as if he were running toward his doom and with more doom following along behind. He risked a glance over his shoulder. His pursuer was coming along confidently and easily, like a man who had just hit a home run and was circling the bases as a matter of form. He had pocketed the gun, and was now just an innocent citizen chasing down a vicious car thief.

  For a wild instant Howard nearly stopped. He was trapped, fore and aft. Everything depended on the mythical Jack MacDonald, a man he had never seen. He wished he had paid more attention to Uncle Roy’s description of the man, but somehow he hadn’t meant things to go this bad. There was no place else to run now except up another alley, across another vacant lot, and that was so obviously futile that it wasn’t worth a second thought. His job was done, and done thoroughly—thoroughly enough to account for the next couple of years, during which he would learn to make license plates, maybe stamp one out to replace the one on the wrecked Camaro that he had stolen.

&n
bsp; He limped through the gate, exhausted, horrified to see a forklift bearing down on him fast, carrying a short, knee-level stack of plywood. The men around the gate closed in on him, between him and his pursuer, and the one who had come out of the guardhouse said, “Did you get the goddamn doughnuts?” Then the forklift slid to a stop in front of him. Someone said, “Hop on,” and at the same time pushed Howard forward so that he fell onto the plywood, sprawling on his stomach. He flailed for a grip on the edge of the wood, nearly sliding off as the forklift hummed away again.

  Howard looked back in time to see the mill workers approaching his pursuer, who slowed down, looking puzzled. “He’s got a gun!” someone warned, although there still wasn’t any gun visible. The man stopped, holding up his hands as if in surrender as they surged in around him. A fist lashed out in a wild haymaker to the man’s belly as someone pushed him hard from behind, and he went down with a look of profound amazement on his face, the men surging in around him. The one who must have been Jack MacDonald walked placidly back to his guardhouse and lifted the receiver on a telephone, and for the moment Howard was safe, borne away on the forklift deeper into the yard, back among loaded pallets and stacked lumber and idle equipment.

  WITH a scream, Heloise Lamey awakened from a dream involving fish. She had stood on an almost deserted pier, where an old man was fishing with a pole made out of a stick and a bit of string. The end of his pole wavered in little circles as he sat there, leaving a misty afterimage behind, like chalk drawings on the sky.

  In the dream she had looked over the railing into the clear salt water, seeing nothing at first, but with the understanding that something was pending, that something under the surface of the ocean had shifted and was drawing near. There were shadows beneath the surface, too deep and dark to identify, but she knew abruptly that beneath the pier there was a great shoal of fish, and that the old man had hooked one and was pulling it in.

  His line tightened and his pole bent, and the entire pier shifted with it, as if his fish were so vast that it would pull them, pier and all, into the sea. Mrs. Lamey held on to the iron railing as the pier tilted. Her feet slid across the wooden floorboards. Her hands were torn loose from the railing, and she slid wildly past the old man, who still sat there placidly and steadily, holding the bent pole, playing the fish.

  She screamed as she plummeted toward the shadowy green ocean, and the scream woke her up. She sat for a second, breathing hard, pulling herself together, reminding herself that it was simply a dream. She was shivering beneath her nightclothes. After a moment, when she could think, she reminded herself that it was the same dream she had had last night, too, and the night before, only this time the old man had caught his fish.

  She climbed out of bed and switched on the light. It was four-thirty in the morning—early, but there’d be no more sleeping for her tonight, anyway.

  She dressed and went downstairs to put on water for instant coffee. Then she stepped out into the predawn morning and found her pruning shears. She hurried around the dark garden, clipping off a bouquet of discolored flowers, wide enough awake now to make a joke in her mind about never going to visit someone without taking him a little gift.

  19

  THERE was a knock on the door. It was too early to be Edith bringing around the breakfast. It might be Roy Barton, smelling trouble and dishing up plots, but it didn’t sound like his knock. Graham got slowly off his bed and pulled his pants on over his long underwear. Then he put on his hat and slippers, found his cane, and made his way to the door. It was just dawn, and the morning was gray and dim. He could see who it was, through the window glass, and he knew for certain what was wrong with the garden.

  It had come to this at last, his showdown with Heloise Lamey. He knew what she wanted to take from him, but such a thing was impossible. It was out of his hands now. The die was cast, his successor chosen. The man had come north of his own free will, had asked to come. He was caught in the turning of things. Heloise Lamey, Michael Graham’s half sister, was too late.

  Together they walked down to the pond in the half-light of early morning. Graham leaned heavily on his cane, moving slowly on the hill, taking a step, setting his cane and his feet, and then taking another. She was impatient with him for being slow, so he stopped entirely to give her blood time to boil. He pulled a clasp knife out of his pocket and began to scrape his fingernails, working methodically.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, exasperation in her voice.

  “What?” He blinked at her, as if he only half recognized her.

  “You wanted to fish. We were going down to the pond so that you could fish. Do you remember?”

  He looked at her curiously. “I moved up here in 1910,” he said slowly, gazing into the dark woods across the pond. “Worked on the railroad. Built me a house down on the bluffs. One thing was that there was whales going up and down, twice a year. Like clockwork. Jimmers had a telescope. He could watch for hours.” He shook his head slowly, watching the look on her face. Her eye twitched and the side of her mouth rose toward her ear every time it did.

  “You were going to fish, Michael. Try to grasp that. Forget about the past. It’s the future we care about.”

  He shook his head. “Nothing but a mud hole,” he said. “Used to be trout in it as long as your arm. Trout everywhere.”

  She took him by the elbow, urging him down the hill. He let her lead him along, as if he didn’t know quite where he was bound anymore, but would trust her to take him there, anyway. He stopped for a moment, though, when a knife edge of pain shot across under his ribs and down his left arm. Closing his eyes and breathing evenly, he wondered if this was it, if he would die without hearing what she had to say. He half hoped so.

  The pain dwindled, though, and he forced himself to go on. Irritating her was easy, but tiring. What he wanted suddenly, more than anything else in the world, was to sit peacefully on the bank and watch the water striders play across the surface of the water. There was a duck on the pond, too. That was good, almost an omen. He stepped over the side of the beached rowboat, finally, and sat down heavily on the middle thwart, pulling his fishing pole out from underneath.

  He hadn’t ever caught anything at all in the pond, although there supposedly had been a time when it was full of fish. He remembered when that was generally true, when you could pluck abalone off the rocks of any cove along the north coast and the fishing boats hauled in tuna fish as big as milk cows. Salmon ran thick and huge in the river mouths and in the longshore currents in those days, and the lakes and rivers were full of native trout.

  That was always the way, wasn’t it? The seasons changed. Time passed. Things lived and died, and as you got older, there seemed to be more dying than living. Nothing was the same anymore, and you regretted the passing away of bits and pieces of the world.

  He baited his hook slowly while she yammered at him, perched on the edge of the bow. He only partly understood her complaints and her desires. Her greed was lost on him. He couldn’t believe in it like she did, because he didn’t share it. He reached up and pretended to adjust the brim of his hat, while actually turning down his hearing aid. The morning was suddenly nearly silent, and her voice blathered along distantly, in a garble now, like the voice of a dissatisfied spirit. He could hear the blood rushing in his veins. He tossed the salmon eggs out into the pond, and they sank to the bottom, dragged down by a couple of small split shot.

  She was suddenly yelling something. He nodded, jerking awake. The duck on the pond flew off in a rush of beating wings. He had dozed off and infuriated his half sister. There was no time in her day for his dozing off. “What?” he asked, smiling. “You what?” He turned his hearing aid back up, conspicuously this time, and she glared at him, her mouth set in a line. She seemed to be counting to ten, trying to keep an even temper. He could probably goad her until her heart burst, but he wouldn’t. She might kill him then and there. She had it in her.

  “I said that I’m prepared to take it. I’ve
readied myself.”

  “Take what?” he asked, trying to look puzzled.

  She said something, but he didn’t hear her because his throat suddenly was full of stuff, and he hacked up a clot of phlegm and spit it onto the grass, shaking his head tiredly and catching his breath. After a minute he could talk again. “What?” he asked, pretending to be confused.

  She stared at him, clearly horrified, either at all the coughing and spitting or at his seeming failure to understand her. “I said that I’ve prepared myself,” she said slowly, enunciating each syllable roundly and loudly, like a person trying to force English into the head of a foreigner.

  “How? For what?”

  “I’ve had an operation. I’m infertile now. There was a secondary infection that affected my hip joint. It won’t heal. I know what you know, Michael, and I’ve cultivated certain powers. I’m a vessel now, waiting to be filled.”

  “The garden,” he said. “I don’t know why you bothered to blight it. It’s part of the process, anyway, all the drought and the dying. Why do you try so hard to help it along? Why don’t you simply let it alone to run its course?”

  “There’s no profit in letting things run their course. That’s what I mean. That’s what I’m talking about here. I’m prepared to take up the burden, to relieve you of it. You’re dying. You know that, don’t you? And when you die, there will have to be someone else. The Grail is rightfully mine. We’re of the same flesh and blood. You have no more right to it than I have, and you know it. It was selfishness, your keeping it hidden all these years when it might have been put to use.”

  Explaining things to her was futile. She heard what she wanted to hear, what her mind was long ago made up to. He would try, anyway, briefly. “The Grail, is it? Don’t be so confounded specific. It’s not meant to be ‘put to use.’ The world is full of things that aren’t useful, Heloise.”