The Terror of Living: A Novel

by Waite, Urban

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll figure this out and we’ll be all right.” She had cried then, but he didn’t know what to do except to hold her and run his hand along her head, down onto her neck, and then begin again.

  He didn’t tell her that these were his words from twenty years ago. That he had told himself these very same things. He’d said them then because that was what he believed. He’d said them because he knew that he couldn’t go back to jail, that he would never go back, and he’d known then, just as he knew now, that he would make something happen and they would be all right. That they might not have everything, but they would have something, and the only thing he could hope for was that it would be something good.

  WHEN DRAKE SAW DRISCOLL AGAIN, IT WAS IN THE hospital room. Drake’s surgery had taken five hours. His kneecap was partially shattered, pieces of the patella everywhere, the muscle so torn up that the doctors said he’d probably walk with a limp for the rest of his life. Sheri sat in the little chair near his bed. She’d pulled it out from the wall so that they could see each other around the IV drip, and from time to time she would hold his hand and tell him not to be so stupid again.

  Drake could see the sour look on Sheri’s face when Driscoll walked through the door. “I’ll get some ice chips,” she said. Then, as she passed Driscoll: “No more adventures.”

  Driscoll opened his mouth but didn’t say anything. He watched her walk past, and then when she was gone he said, “You read the paper today?”

  “I never read the paper.”

  “Can’t say I blame you.”

  Drake coughed. “Stopped reading it after my father went away. Kind of strange reading about your family in the paper like that. It’s like reading a review of the life you’re leading while you’re living it. Never made me feel too good.”

  “Your name came up.” Driscoll smiled and then said with obvious sarcasm, “You’re famous again.”

  “Seems like I can’t go a week these days without my name in print. I already know what happened, I was there.”

  “Still no sign of Hunt. Know anything about that?”

  “What does the paper say?”

  “Bag of knives, bag of heroin sitting in the snow. Two dead Vietnamese men inside the house. Nothing on Hunt.”

  “You think that’s it, then?”

  “Almost a hundred thousand in heroin.”

  “The girl was carrying that much?”

  “A little less,” Driscoll said. “But we found evidence they had been bringing in girls on an almost monthly schedule.”

  “Any girls?”

  “No.”

  “You think they got smart after what happened to Thu?”

  “I don’t know,” Driscoll said. “This story will never reach across the Pacific. They’ll just say it never happened, that Thu is still alive, living the good life somewhere.”

  “The good life, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s a crazy way of putting it.”

  “What’s crazy is it will start all over again.”

  “And Hunt? Anything?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What about the drugs? What about the stuff he took off Thu?”

  “I don’t know. Probably shot up in the vein by now, junkies from here to Montana.” Driscoll sighed. “I can’t say really.”

  “Do you think he’d have sold it?”

  “He’s your best buddy now. You tell me.”

  Drake made a face. “I’ll just give him a call. You got your cell phone on you?”

  “Come on, Drake. I don’t know. I’m just giving you some shit. Can’t I do that? Who knows where those drugs are now. Hunt knows. But who knows where he is?”

  “So that’s it, then?”

  “Found another dead guy in a house in North Seattle. Executed right there in his front room. Nice place, a view out over the water. The guy was supposed to be some sort of lawyer, seems to have done just about everything, you know? A little of this, a little of that. The bullet we took out of his head matches the twenty-two we found in Grady’s knife bag. We’re looking into it, but we’re pretty sure this dead guy was the one putting the whole thing together.”

  Drake coughed, looked out the window, the pain in his muscles tensing his body as his lungs filled. The wound in his arm was just a thick line of stitching, but nothing broken, nothing beyond repair.

  Driscoll walked over to the IV and fingered the bag. “What’s in here?” he said. “Anything good?”

  “Saline. Vitamins. Superpowers.”

  “No joke?”

  “No joke.”

  “There’s one thing,” Driscoll said. “It was hard to tell with all the snow out there, and the struggle. Footprints from the medics, from the cops, from our guys. I mean, there was blood everywhere, covered over by snow—half the time we didn’t even know we were stepping in it. But it looked, from what I saw, like Grady was shot from a standing position.”

  Drake thought about this for a moment. Almost from his subconscious, he moved a hand to his thigh and worked the muscle. He’d had an old basketball injury there once, a bruise the size of his hand, too big to hide. “I can’t really say how it happened,” Drake said. “The adrenaline was going, I could have done anything, stood on two busted knees if I had to. All I knew was that he was coming after me and I could only stop him one way.”

  “What did you say was in that IV?”

  “Superpowers.”

  Driscoll smiled but didn’t say anything. Sheri wasn’t back with the ice, though Drake knew there wasn’t going to be any. “What I said to you when we first met, about your father,” Driscoll said. “I’m sorry if I implied anything. You did a good thing out there.”

  “I know that—”

  “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Driscoll. I’m looking at six months of paid vacation time.”

  “Vacation time, huh? Just like your stay downtown this last week? That worked out well for you.”

  THE DOCTORS RELEASED HIM WHEN HE COULD WALK to the end of the hall and back again without resting. He knew there would be physical therapy, and lots of it. Twice a week he would need to drive down from Silver Lake and come to the hospital in Seattle, where the state paid for his rehabilitation.

  When he was eighteen he thought he’d have his own place, live out a ways and buy property the way his father had. But when his father went away, the property he’d grown up on became his. Twenty acres of land, a fence made of chopped alder and set in a frontier-style A-frame around two acres of the property, the soft wood rotted in many places. And the horses that his father had once kept—confiscated and sold. He was lucky even to have the house.

  Sheri drove him to the bottom of their steps and helped him walk up the stairs to the door. “Are you going to be okay here?” she asked, leaning him up against the porch railing.

  He’d been in the hospital a month, and just standing there in the open with his property all around him felt better than anything he’d felt in a long time. “I’ll wait for you here,” he said. He adjusted his balance a little, taking the strain off his bad leg and putting his weight on his good.

  “The doctors told you not to do that,” Sheri said.

  “The doctors told me not to do a whole lot of things. You just go park the car and come back over here and I’ll show you a few other things I’m not supposed to do.”

  She scolded him with her eyes. “Is that all you’ve been thinking of?”

  “Not all the time, just most of the time.” He smiled and watched her walk back over to the car and drive it around near the converted garage, where his father once stabled his horses.

  While she was getting the bags from the trunk, he opened the door and went inside. Using the cane the hospital had given him, he went to the kitchen and ran the water from the faucet and splashed it over his face, one hand on the counter and the other cupping the water. It tasted of the earth, a little bit alkaline, like water drawn up fr
om deep below, hard and cold as rock.

  All along the kitchen window were old jam jars Sheri had pulled from the dirt when she’d made rows for their garden, the glass discolored and chipped from its time in the earth. He’d thought of visiting his father then but hadn’t gone. He didn’t know anything about these jars, didn’t know where they had come from or if his father had known about them at all. The only thing he knew was that they were old, filled with dirt and history, and he’d put them up on the windowsill to remind him of that.

  THE LIMP WAS NEARLY GONE WHEN DRISCOLL CALLED, just a little half step added every ten feet, as if his bad leg was slowly losing a race with his good.

  “What is this, an anniversary call?” Drake said. He was driving around Silver Lake in his cruiser, and when Driscoll called, he pulled the car into a grocery store parking lot and turned off the engine.

  “I guess in a way it is,” Driscoll said. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor.”

  “I’m not going to get shot again, am I?”

  He heard Driscoll laugh. “I hope not.”

  “So there’s a possibility?”

  “There’s always the possibility, isn’t there?”

  “Only when I’m working with you.”

  Driscoll didn’t say anything, and then: “What do you say? Can you run over to the next county and see a sheriff for me?”

  “Which town?”

  Driscoll told him.

  “That’s twenty miles south of Canada.”

  “I’m not trying to get you into any more trouble here.”

  “What’s this about, Driscoll?”

  “The sheriff over there says he’s got a woman in custody who matches the description of Nora Hunt.”

  Drake paused. He watched a woman about his age pass in front of the cruiser with her shopping cart, a little girl two or three years old in the toddler’s seat.

  “Did you think I just forgot?” Driscoll said.

  “I just don’t think it’s her, is all. Wouldn’t have figured they were even in the country anymore.”

  “Yeah, well, maybe they’re not. Or maybe Hunt cut her loose and ran. I’m not sure. All I have to go on is an old photo from the Department of Licensing. I never met her in person. Never saw what she looked like. I’ve got nothing to go on here. But you’ve seen her, talked to her even. You could give me a positive identification.”

  “This is a stupid question, but I’m going to ask it anyways. Why don’t you just check the woman’s ID?”

  “Doesn’t have one, or at least didn’t have it on her. Even had the sheriff send me a digital photo. Based on this old photo I have, I can’t say either way.”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think it would be nice if you wanted to go over there.”

  Drake sighed. “Yeah, I can go over there. How long can they hold her?”

  “It’s not even legal as it is.”

  The drive took Drake a little more than an hour. He used back roads until he could get onto the highway and take the cruiser over the mountains and down into the next county.

  When he pulled up at the sheriff’s office, he adjusted his gun and put his hat back on his head, then went in through the front doors. He was wearing his brown deputy’s uniform, and he hoped that if it was Nora, she wouldn’t recognize him with his star on. He gave the deputy at the desk his name and stated his reason for being there. The deputy led him around to the sheriff, and the sheriff took him back to the holding cells.

  “You’re that one, right? Drake from Silver Lake?” the sheriff said. They were going in through the back office, finding the holding cell.

  “You’re probably thinking of my father,” Drake said.

  “You were the one who shot that psycho a year back?” the sheriff asked. “Heard you took something like five bullets.” The sheriff was smiling. He was a big man with a nice overhanging gut that Drake didn’t think would do him any good if he had to run anyone down.

  “Just two,” Drake said.

  “Goddamn!”

  “Just lucky, I guess.”

  “Yeah, well… it’s two more than I’d like to take.”

  They came to a stop in front of the little ten-by-ten cell with the woman in it. Drake looked through the bars to where she sat on a small bench. “What did you say her name was?”

  “Joan Thomas,” the sheriff said.

  “She got any type of ID?”

  “Just a few twenty-dollar bills on her, a grocery card, and a movie-rental punch card for the convenience store we got here in town.”

  “What do those say her name is?”

  “Joan Thomas.”

  Drake looked in on the woman. She didn’t look up at either of them, kept her face to the floor. “Hey,” Drake said through the bars. “What’s your name?”

  The lady looked up at him and then quickly looked away. He could see it was Nora Hunt, the gray roots grown out, hair cropped close around her face, but the same thin features, a nose as small and delicate as crystal.

  Drake took his hat off and scratched his temple. Then finally, after he’d straightened the hat back on his head, he said, “That’s not her.”

  “Shit,” the sheriff said. “I thought for sure we had something here.”

  “Sorry,” Drake said. “Do me a favor and call Driscoll over at the DEA and tell him it’s not her.”

  “Yeah, I can do that.”

  “What are you going to do with her now?”

  “I think we better release her,” the sheriff said.

  Nora was watching them now, listening to everything they said.

  “Sorry,” the sheriff said through the bars. “I thought you were someone else. Do us a favor and carry some ID next time.”

  Nora didn’t say anything.

  “You want to press charges against the sheriff’s department?” Drake said. He smiled a bit, and the sheriff looked uncomfortable.

  “No,” Nora said. “I just didn’t think walking around without an ID could cause such a fuss.”

  The sheriff went over and undid the lock and opened the gate to the cell. “Come on out,” he said.

  “You going to give her a ride back to wherever you picked her up from?” Drake asked.

  The sheriff gave him a hurt look, then said under his breath, “Honestly, she wasn’t so much fun to get into the car the first time.”

  “I can give her a lift,” Drake said. He looked at Nora. “If that’s all right with you?”

  They drove up the road, past the town hall, past a Mexican restaurant with a green awning and neon beer signs in the window. Drake pulled over a half block down from the convenience store.

  “You going to get a couple movies with your rental card?” Drake said.

  They hadn’t spoken at all in the car.

  “That and go buy some groceries,” Nora said.

  Drake leaned into the windshield and looked up at the store awnings that appeared in a line down the street. They were parked next to a Laundromat, and he read the signs all down the block. At the end of the street, he could see the big diesel. “What happened to the trailer?”

  “Oh, you know,” Nora said. “It’s around.”

  “Just around?”

  “Here and there.”

  “Hopefully more here than there,” he said. “Please tell me I did the right thing back at the sheriff’s office.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “Don’t tell it to me just because I want you to.”

  Nora made an ugly face, then looked out the window. He thought she’d just get out then, just get out and leave him there in the cruiser. And he didn’t know what he’d do about that, what he could do, or what he’d want to if it did come down to it. When she turned back, she said she couldn’t remember his name.

  “Bobby Drake.”

  She looked away, looked into the Laundromat, at the people in there with their spinning clothes. “Bobby, I’m not going to take you up there and show you we’re doing fine. But I�
��ll tell you we’re okay, we’re raising horses and leasing a bit of land. And it’s been good to us so far.”

  “What kind of horses?”

  “Quarter horses.”

  “Are you racing them?”

  “Not yet.”

  “You must live pretty hand to mouth?”

  “We do all right. Two foals this spring, and I give lessons on the weekends.”

  “Maybe I should come by.”

  Nora smiled. “No, I don’t think Phil would like that.”

  “No, I don’t think he would either.”

  Nora leaned over in the seat and gave him a hug. The smell of pears, something else, too, sweat possibly, fear. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Wait,” he said. She had the door halfway open. She turned back to look at him. “Why up here? Why so close to Canada? Why not just move up there?”

  “Phil knows this area. Knows the hills and knows the mountains. We weren’t going to move somewhere we didn’t know anything about.”

  “You could have, though. It probably would have been better.”

  “We’re too old for that, too old to start again.”

  “You could have avoided incidents like today if you had. I’m glad I was called to come take a look, but I may not be the one to show up next time.”

  Nora looked up the street for a while; she seemed to be thinking this over. “Are you going to say anything?”

  “No. The way I see it, you’re both good people, it’s just bad things that happen.”

  “They certainly do.”

  “Just tell Phil not to make any cargo deals across international borders.”

  Nora smiled. “I don’t think it’s crossed his mind.”

  “I don’t think it’s something I could look the other way on.”

  She made a little motion to get out of the car.

  He put out a hand to stop her. “What happened to the heroin Hunt got off Thu?” He said this quickly, as if it had just come into his mind, but the truth was he’d been thinking about it for a year. Thinking about it and in a way regretting it. “What did Hunt do with it?” he asked.

  She looked back at him, her hand on the door handle. “Bobby, you don’t have anything to worry about,” Nora said. “As far as I know, it’s gone. Just the way Grady went, dead and gone.”